Battle of Karanovasa The Battle of Karanovasa ( lit . " Battle of the Trenches " ) took place on 10 October 1394 between the Wallachia n army led by Voivode Mircea cel Bătrân against an Ottoman invasion led by Sultan Bayezid I . This battle is sometimes confused with the later Battle of Rovine ( lit . " Battle of the Marshes " , Rovine is old Romanian - Latin for ruins , modern Italian rovinare to tear down ) between the same combatants , and which took place also along the valley of the Argeş River . Background . The Ottoman Empire emerged as a small principality in the early fourteenth century in the northwestern part of the Anatolian Peninsula . In the following decades , the Ottoman Sultans combined their growing military strength with astute dynastic politics to expand their territory eastwards into the whole of Anatolia and westwards into the Balkan Peninsula . Thus , in 1387 Murad I ( 1362 – 89 ) conquered much of Greece and fought a large Christian army at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 . In the early 1390s his successor Bayezid I ( 1389 – 1402 ) established his suzerainty over Stefan Lazarević of Serbia , the Turnovo Bulgaria of Ivan Shishman and the Vidin Despotate of Ivan Sratsimir . The Ottoman Empire had become one of the most important powers in the Balkans , threatening the remaining independent states of central Europe : Wallachia , Moldavia , the Kingdom of Hungary , as well as the Venetian colonies in the Aegean Sea . Mircea of Wallachia previously secured an alliance with several Karamanid princes of Anatolia , which antagonized Bayezid I . Yet Bayezid despite defeating the Karamanids , had to plan and act every action carefully , since he had more enemies than friends among the Muslim Turkish aristocracy , and could not simply turn around and declare a new " holy war " against those whose troops helped the Karamanid princes in Anatolia . His opportunity came when the Wallachians and the Hungarians invaded the weak states from the south of the Danube , which were vassals of Bayezid . The Wallachians occupied the Principality of Karvuna and the city of Silistra apparently with the consent of Ivan Shishman , while the Hungarians tried to conquer the Vidin Despotate . These infringements on his vassals ' lands gave Bayezid authority to move . Returning from Asia Minor to the Balkans in 1393 , the Sultan expelled the Wallachians from Silistra and the Dobruja , and declared that Turnovo Tsardom , unable to fend for herself , was now an Ottoman pashalik . The final attack on Wallachia was to take place . The battle . In the autumn of 1394 , after a raiding campaign along the right bank of the Danube , Bayezid launched the attack on Wallachia . He commanded the Ottoman Rumelian army , and the armies of his Balkan vassals , most of which were Bulgarians and Serbs under Stefan Lazarević , the son of the late Serbian prince Lazar . The armies crossed the Danube at Nicopolis , at advanced along the Argeş River with the intention of capturing Curtea de Argeş , the capital city of Wallachia . After a weeklong march in which the constant attacks Wallachian took their toll , the Wallachian army met the Ottoman one on October 10 . The Wallachians launched a sudden ambush from the forests , slowly pushing the Ottomans closely to the bank of the Argeş River . The bloodiest fighting took place around the Ottoman camp , strengthened with earth walls , palisades and ditches ( hendek in Turkish ) . Hence , the name with which this battle appears in Serbian chronicles , as the Battle of the Trenches ( of Karanovasa ) . Surrounded , the Ottomans managed to resist until the dawn , when Bayiezid hardly managed to escape the battle , fleeing over the Danube Nevertheless , most of his and his vassals ’ armies perished , including the Serbian kings son , Marko Kraljević . Aftermath . It would turn out that his vassals suffered more from the Sultans " help " than they did from the Wallachians and Hungarians . The Turnovo Tsardom not only ceased its existence , but Ivan Shishman was accused of collaboration with the enemy and was executed at the orders of the Sultan . Bayezid spent the winter and the spring warring in Anatolia with Seljuk princes , besieging Constantinople , and leaving the lands south of the Danube in the hands of Mircea , who by now managed to provoke an anti - Ottoman rebellion as far south as Rumelia . A much better prepared attack , in which the entire Ottoman army , as well as the whole of the Ottoman vassals took part , was started by the Sultan in spring , in May 1395 . The alliance documents signed at Brașov on March 7 , between Mircea and Sigismund of Luxembourg , reveal that by 1395 , a huge concentration of Ottoman forces took place in the southern Dobruja . The Ottoman army launched a two - directional attack via Nicopolis , and via Vidin - Craiova . Another Ottoman army group , led by Vlad I of Wallachia , Mircea ' s nephew , who was attempting to take the throne with Turkish support , was invading along the Ialomiţa River . Faced with a much larger force , Mircea applied guerrilla tactics , and delayed direct confrontation with the Ottoman army until he received help from his ally Sigismund . The final confrontation would take place at the Battle of Rovine ( lit . " Battle of the Marshes " ) .