His memoirs give no insight into his early life. Instead, they begin in 1455, when an army under the command of
Sultan Mehmed II laid
siege to the
castle of
Novo Brdo for forty days. The Ottoman Army had marched from
Edirne via
Sofia in a campaign to establish certain control over the area that is now
Kosovo. At the time, Novo Brdo was a rich mining city for
silver. The garrison surrendered on June 1, 1455. According to Mihailović, the Sultan stood at the small gate of the castle and sorted the boys from the girls. He then sorted the women on one side of a ditch, and the men on the other. He then ordered all men of any distinguished rank or importance
decapitated. The young women and girls, some 700 of them, were taken and given to soldiers and Ottoman commanders. Following this, the young boys, some 320 of them including Mihailović and his two brothers, were taken to be trained as members of the janissaries. He wrote later that he and nineteen other boys ran away during the night near a village called
Samokovo, only to be recaptured, bound, and beaten. He writes that one year later he was present at the
Siege of Belgrade. While it is likely that he was present, he had not been with the Ottomans long enough to have become a janissary by that time. Mihailović goes into great detail about that siege and the events that followed.
Campaign against Vlad III and in Bosnia After completing his janissary training, he next serves with the Ottoman Army during its advance against
Vlad III of
Wallachia, who would later be the inspiration for the
novel Dracula by
Bram Stoker. In this segment, Mihailović confirms the use of
impalement by Vlad III, and adds the fact that Vlad III often cut off the noses of Ottoman soldiers and sent them to
Hungary to show the number of enemy soldiers he had killed. He states that in one battle, while the Ottomans were crossing the
Danube, some 250 janissaries were killed by the Wallachians, but the sheer numbers of the Ottoman force eventually drove Vlad III's forces away. He also records that during the night the Ottomans were most fearful of Wallachian attack, and that they protected their camps with wooden stakes. This still did not prevent attacks, and they lost thousands of soldiers, as well
camels and
horses. He gives some mention of the "forest of the impaled" that has since become
legend, but also spares details. It is possible Mihailović, being in the rear of the army, did not directly witness it. His next writings were about the campaign to take
Bosnia in 1463. He details the sieges involved in that campaign, and as it comes to a close he and a garrison of janissaries are left to hold the
Zvečaj Castle. By this time he seems to have had a considerable rank. His force was not able to withstand a siege led by
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, and Mihailović was one of the prisoners taken. After his identity and ethnicity was discovered, he was repatriated back to his own country. == Works and publications ==