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The Croatian nobility rode out to meet the Ottoman advance near Udbina with roug
1493 Event

September 9

Battle of Krbava Field: Ottomans Crush Croatia

The Croatian nobility rode out to meet the Ottoman advance near Udbina with roughly 10,000 knights — and ran into a force they'd catastrophically underestimated. The defeat at Krbava Field killed most of Croatia's military leadership in a single afternoon. Historians later called it 'the Croatian Thermopylae,' though without the redemptive framing. The Croatian nobility lost so many men that the country never fully rebuilt its defensive capacity before further Ottoman advances consumed its territory for the next 150 years.

September 9, 1493

533 years ago

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