In the beginning of the 10th century Simeon I launched several campaigns against the Serbs who were acting as Byzantine allies and by 925 he managed to conquer Serbia completely but the Bulgarian rule was short-lived.

[1] 10th-century Byzantine military manuals mention chonsarioi, light cavalry formations recruited in the Balkans, especially Serbs, "ideal for scouting and raiding".

It included Macedonia, Albania, Epirus and Thessaly, reaching from the Drina and Danube rivers as far south and east as the Gulf of Patras and the Rhodope Mountains by 1350.

One Byzantine chronicler noted with evident satisfaction that the Serbian nobility were soon divided into '10,000 factions', while John VI Kantakouzenos wrote that Dušan's empire fell 'into a thousand pieces'.

The pronoia itself - hereditary by some accounts, non-hereditary by others - is only first recorded in Serbia under that name in 1299 (the Serbs spelt it pronija, or pronya, and called its holder a pronijar), but even from as early as Stefan Nemanja reign (1186–96) every able-bodied man possessing a bashtina (a grant of hereditary freehold land, the holder being called a bashtinik or voynic) had been obliged to attend the army whenever required, only monastic tenants being exempted in exchange for performing part-time garrison duties in local fortresses and fortified monasteries.

The Byzantine chronicler Gregoras, as ambassador for Andronikos III to Emperor Dusan, encountered some krayishnici (men of a border- lord) on crossing the frontier.

He wrote: 'When we passed the Struma River ... and came into thick woods, we were suddenly surrounded by men clad in black woolen garments, who darted forth from behind trees and rocks like devils out of the earth.

From the 11th century on the commander-in-chief of the army was the king (kral), a veliki vojevoda or 'high military chief, equivalent to the Byzantine Grand Domestic, being appointed in his absence.

However, since any call to arms had to be approved by the Sabor (the National Assembly) the king actually had limited military power, in effect being no more than a glorified Grand Župan, or elected tribal leader.

Under Stephen Uroš II Milutin (1282-1321) these mercenaries included such diverse elements as Cumans; Anatolian Turks (some 1,500 were employed in 1311 from amongst those who had been allied to the Catalans in Thrace and Macedonia); Tartars from South Russia; and Christian Ossetians (Jasi in Serbian and Russian sources) from the Caucasus.

Serbian documents indicate that as well as Germans the other predominant European mercenary elements comprised Spaniards (possibly as many as 1,300-strong at one point) plus Hungarians, Frenchmen, Italians and Swiss.

Serbian armies were composed of lance-armed light and heavy cavalry, plus infantry (armed with spears, axes, and above all bows and, later, crossbows) and a baggage-train (komora) manned by shepherds ("Vlachs").

After the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, Ottoman suzerainty was accepted by the Serbian rulers in Macedonia: King Marko (Vukašin Mrnjavčević's son), Konstantin Dragaš, and Radoslav Hlapen.

[13] According to Serbian historiography, Stefan from 1390 on, was obliged to pay an annual tribute of 1,000 lbs of gold and to provide the sultan with a contingent of 1,000 cavalry when called upon.

Bertrandon de la Brocquière, in his 'Travels' of 1432-33, recorded of the despot of Serbia that 'every time the sultan sends him his orders, he is obliged to furnish him with 800 or 1,000 horse, under the command of his second son.'

Konstantin Mihailović reports that when the treaty with Serbia was renewed under Mehmed II the obligatory tribute was set at 1,500 lbs of gold and a contingent of 1,500 cavalry.

George Branković even supplied an unwilling contingent of 1,500 cavalry under voivode Jakša according to Konstantin Mihailović, for the final siege of Constantinople in 1453, plus some silver-miners from Novo Brdo whom Sultan Mehmed employed as sappers.

On August 11, 1473, the army that marched against Uzun Hasan which resulted in an Ottoman victory in The battle of Otlukbeli included many Christians - Greeks, Albanians and Serbians, in their number.

Later on, after the fall of the Serbian Empire, these troops were used as "Krajišnici" meaning frontiersman in the Habsburg Monarchy (today Croatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina) which southern parts became the military frontier, defending and liberating as they believed Christendom from the Ottoman invasion.

According to Webster's the word hussar stems from the Hungarian huszár, which in turn originates from the Serbian хусар (Husar, or гусар, Gusar) meaning pirate, from the Medieval Latin cursarius (cf.

[19] A variant of this theory is offered by Byzantinist scholars, who argue the term originated in Roman military practice, and the cursarii (singular cursarius).

[20] Through Byzantine Army operations in the Balkans in the 10th and 11th centuries when Chosarioi/Chonsarioi were recruited with especially Serbs,[21] the word was subsequently reintroduced to Western European military practice after its original usage had been lost with the collapse of Rome in the west.

Guns were apparently employed in the field by the Serbians as early as 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo, being clearly mentioned in one later Ottoman chronicle (Mehmed Neşrî) and alluded to in a contemporary Serbian source which says that 'fiery explosions thundered, the earth roared greatly, and the air echoed and blew around like dark smoke'; we know too that King Tvrtko of Bosnia (1353–91) brought one gun, a gift of the Italians, with him to the battle.

The Serbian contingent in the Ottoman army defeated at Ankara in 1402 also had artillery, but as at Kosovo it failed to affect the outcome, probably for the same reasons on both occasions - i.e. the guns were too small to be effective in order that they might be maneuverable on the battlefield.