The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowers the Balkan…

The expanding Ottoman Empire overpowers the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

At first, the feuding Albanian clans prove no match for the armies of the sultan.

In the fifteenth century, however, Skanderbeg unites the Albanian tribes in a defensive alliance that holds up the Ottoman advance for more than two decades.

His family's banner, bearing a black two-headed eagle on a red field, will become the flag under which the Albanian national movement rallies centuries later.