In this article, we will continue our story about the Ottoman period in the history of Serbia. We will learn about how the Serbs gained autonomy as part of Turkey, and talk about Kara-Georgiy and Milos Obrenovic, the founders of two dynasties of princes (and then kings) of this country.
Serbia on the way to independence
For the first time, Serbia received autonomy after the uprising of 1804, which was then headed by "Black George" (Kara-Georgiy), and thanks to Russian assistance (the war of 1806-1812). In 1811, the Assembly declared Kara-Georgy the hereditary prince of Serbia. In 1812, one of the articles of the Bucharest Peace Treaty concluded by Kutuzov secured for Serbia the right to broad autonomy and self-government. But after the passage of Napoleon's armies across the Niemen and the beginning of the Patriotic War, the Ottomans violated the terms of the treaty and invaded the territory of Serbia, again subjugating it to themselves. In 1815, a new anti-Ottoman (Takovo) uprising began in Serbia. And the resistance to the Turks was led by Milos Obrenovic.
But where was the national hero Kara-Georgy at that time? And why did he give up his place to Milos Obrenovic? And who eventually came to rule Serbia? Obrenovichi or Karageorgievichi? Let's try to understand this bloody and merciless struggle of the supporters of the Karageorgievichs and Obrenovichs.
Covered in the blood of the saint … and the terror of people, and glory was worthy
Georgy Petrovich, nicknamed Black, was born in 1762 into a poor family in the territory of Central Serbia under the control of the Ottomans. It is known that there were Montenegrins among his ancestors, therefore a monument to the hero stands in the capital of Montenegro - Podgorica.
In the 60s of the 18th century, George lived for some time with the famous Serbian Stanoje Glavash, who was one of the owners of a "construction company" for the production of adobe houses. According to some sources, George was a student of Glavash, according to others, he had already become a hayduk by that time. And the house of Glavash served as a shelter for him. Later, Glavash himself (together with Stanko Arambashich and Lazar Dobrich) led one of the Haidutsk detachments.
Glavas died in 1815 - during the second Serbian uprising.
In 1785, George killed a Turk, whom he accused of harassing his fiancée. After the wedding, they fled together to the lands of the Habsburgs.
George also killed his father, who came to persuade him to return to his homeland, because he decided that he wanted to betray him or lure him into a trap. It is believed that it was after this murder that he received the nickname "Black". You can read about this episode in the poem by Alexander Pushkin "The Song of George the Black" from the collection "Songs of the Western Slavs" (in fact, written by P. Merimee):
“Old Petro reproaches his son:
“You rebel, you damned villain!
You are not afraid of the Lord God, Where can you compete with the Sultan, Fight the Belgrade Pasha!
Al about two heads were you born?
Disappear to yourself, accursed, Why are you ruining all of Serbia?"
George answers gloomily:
"From the mind, the old man, apparently survived, If you bark crazy speeches."
Old Petro became more angry, More than he scolds, rages.
He wants to go to Belgrade, To give a disobedient son to the Turks, Declare a refuge for the Serbs."
In response, George:
“I took out a pistol from my belt, He pulled the trigger, and fired right there.
Petro shouted, staggering:
"Help me, George, I am wounded!"
And he fell on the road, lifeless.
The son ran back into the cave;
His mother came out to meet him.
"What, George, where did Petro go?"
Georgy answers sternly:
“At dinner the old man got drunk
And fell asleep on the Belgrade road."
She guessed, screamed:
“God damn you, black one, Kohl you killed your own father!"
However, there is another version of the origin of this nickname, according to which it appeared later - after the murder of his own brother.
In the poem "To the daughter of Karageorgiya", written in 1820, Pushkin also mentions this version:
Thunderstorm of the moon, freedom warrior, Covered in the blood of a saint
Your wonderful father, criminal and hero, And the horror of people, and glory was worthy.
You, baby, he caressed
On a fiery chest with a bloody hand;
Your toy was a dagger
Sophisticated by fratricide."
The daughter of "Black George" at that time was about 7 years old, she lived with her mother and brother in Khotin. Pushkin could see her mother who came to Chisinau, but not the girl herself. The poem, apparently, was written based on the stories of Serbian settlers. I. P. Liprandi reported that Pushkin
"I listened with interest and wrote down Serbian folk songs, legends from their words … and often in front of me asked about the meaning of certain words for translation."
But let's go back to 1787 and see Kara-Georgiy in the so-called Serbian Free Corps soldier, who fought with the Ottoman Empire as part of the Austrian army.
Among his fellow soldiers at that time was also Alex from the princely family of Nenadovich.
And then Kara-Georgy considered his foster father to be his commander - Radic Petrovic, a Serbian border guard, who, as they say, was wounded 30 times in his life. In that war, for the capture of the Belgrade fortress, Radic Petrovic received the rank of captain of the Austrian army. Later, Kara-Georgy, who came to power in Serbia, appointed him voivode.
One of the main characters in the anti-Ottoman struggle of those years in Serbia was the captain of the Austrian army Kocha Andjelkovic, the hero of one of the folk songs, who led the uprising in this country. The number of his detachment reached three thousand people. In his name, this uprising, which lasted from February to September 1788, in Serbia is called "Kochina Krajina" (Kochina war).
Vuk Karadzic, a writer and reformer of the Serbian language who lived in the 19th century, noted his merits, wrote:
"The regions and Serbs knew how to fight with Kochina."
In September 1788, Kocha Andzhelkovich, along with the thirty last soldiers, was captured. All of them were then impaled by the Turks.
But back to Kara-Georgiy, who fought on the side of the Austrians until 1791, earning a medal for bravery. Then, until 1794, he led a detachment of royal (Hungarian) hayduks, similar to the registered Cossacks of the Commonwealth. In 1796, George returned to Serbia, where he asked the people and the church for forgiveness for parricide.
Meanwhile, the commanders of the Janissaries stationed in Serbia revolted against the central government and took possession of the Belgrade Pashalyk. They divided these lands into 4 parts. And it became even worse for the common people to live with them than under the Ottoman officials. Seeing the general discontent, the Janissaries decided to forestall a possible uprising by killing everyone who might lead it. In the second half of January 1804, more than 70 authoritative elders and priests were captured and killed. These events went down in the history of Serbia as the “massacre of princes”. It was then that the national hero Alex Nenadich died.
Kara-Georgiy was warned that assassins would come to their village. As a result, the Janissaries themselves were killed in an ambush set by him. This contributed to his election as the leader of the uprising, the decision on which was made at a meeting in the village of Orasac in February 1804. Another candidate was Stanoe Glavash, already mentioned by us. But he refused, speaking in favor of Kara-Georgiy's candidacy and urging everyone to vote for him.
At first, the goal of this uprising was declared to be the expulsion of the Janissaries (which was only welcomed in Constantinople), but after the first successes it was decided to achieve complete independence from the Ottoman Empire.
A very important figure in the first Serbian uprising was the governor of Rudnica, Milan Obrenovic.
He was familiar with the Russian generals P. Bagration and N. Kamensky. On the presentation of the first, Alexander I in December 1809 awarded the Serb with a saber, the second contributed to his rewarding with a silver medal depicting the Russian emperor (in April 1810). He died unexpectedly in Bucharest on December 16, 1810. Some believe that Milan was poisoned on the orders of Kara-Georgiy, who viewed him as a rival in the struggle for power in the country.
The situation was generally favorable for the Serbs, especially after the start of the next Russian-Turkish war in 1806.
In 1811, Kara-Georgy was proclaimed the supreme prince of Serbia. But after the end of the war between Russia and Turkey and the conclusion of the Bucharest Peace, the Ottomans in 1813 again invaded Serbia. In September 1813, Kara-Georgy was forced to flee to the territory of Austria. In 1815, the second Serbian uprising began, led by Milos Teodorovic, the half-brother and heir of Milan Obrenovic, who was killed by Kara-Georgy, who took his last name. Kara-Georgiy returned to Serbia in 1817, but was killed on the orders of Milos Obrenovic. Milos, in full accordance with national traditions, avenged his brother, and he did not need a competitor in the struggle for the princely title.
On November 6, 1817, it was Milos Obrenovic who was elected Prince of Serbia. Three years later, Turkey recognized the autonomy of Serbia and reaffirmed it in 1830.
Now a few words about the founder of the Obrenovic dynasty.
Milos Obrenovic
Milos Obrenovich, unlike the irreconcilable Kara-Georgiy, often preferred not open clashes with the Turks, but agreements with them, in which each side made certain concessions. Because of this, some in Serbia considered him a traitor (this version was chosen by V. Pikul in the novel I Have the Honor! the most destructive were precisely for ordinary people. For example, Serbia did not oppose the Ottomans during the Greek uprising. Moreover, this position was welcomed even by Nicholas I, who ascended the throne, since the complication that threatened a new war with Turkey in another region of the Balkans was then at the wrong time.
However, Milos Obrenovich turned out to be too power-hungry and greedy: he could publicly beat his closest associates and without any reason confiscate the property he liked in his favor. This caused discontent among both ordinary people and the Serbian nobility. Already in 1825, an uprising began, which went down in the history of Serbia as the "Diakov revolt", which was brutally suppressed. However, a new uprising in 1835 forced Prince Milos to agree to the adoption of a constitution (Sretensky charter), which at the end of 1838, at the request of Russia, was approved by the Turkish government and operated until 1869, when a new one was adopted. Milos Obrenovic practically did not pay attention to the provisions of this constitution, and therefore a movement of “statutory protectors” soon emerged, led by Toma Vucic. Moreover, the prince's opponent was his wife Lyubitsa (relations between the spouses had long been ruined), who campaigned everyone for the transfer of power to her eldest son Milan.
By 1839, Milos Obrenovic, who tired everyone in Serbia with his greed and desire for autocratic power, was still forced to cede power to his son Milan, but he died less than a month after accession to the throne. His younger brother Michael inherited him.
The beginning of the bloody Serbian "Game of Thrones"
The Serbs overthrew the new prince already in 1842, passing the throne to the son of Kara-Georgy - Alexander.
Russia was quite satisfied with the Obrenovichi on the Serbian throne, and Petersburg at first did not recognize the new prince.
It was during the reign of Alexander Karageorgievich in 1844 that Ilia Garashanin (at that time - the Minister of Internal Affairs, in the future - the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs) published the program of foreign policy actions "Inscription", in which the Great Serb idea was first outlined,and the main goal of the Serbian people was proclaimed the unification of the South Slavs under the rule of the Serbian monarchy.
During the Crimean War, Alexander Karageorgievich did not support Russia, remaining neutral.
This prince was also overthrown by the Serbs - in 1858. Alexander hid under the protection of the Ottoman garrison in the citadel of Belgrade and then left for the territory of Austria. And the Serbs restored Milos Obrenovic to the throne, whose lust for power and greed had begun to be forgotten by that time, but they remembered about the Takovo uprising and the struggle against the Ottomans.
Just two years later, in 1860, he died and his son Mikhail, exiled in 1842, ascended the throne again.
By the way, it was under him in 1868 that the first Serbian coins were issued.
Mikhail's great diplomatic achievement was the treaty on the withdrawal of Turkish garrisons from Serbian cities.
This prince did not have children, so he adopted his own cousin Milan (grand-nephew of Milos Obrenovic), whom he appointed as his successor.
This time, the supporters of the Karageorgievich dynasty decided to kill Prince Mikhail III Obrenovich so that, God forbid, he would not return to Belgrade for the third time. It happened on June 10, 1868. The Radovanovich brothers shot the prince when he was walking in a horse-drawn carriage in the Kossutnyak park (the name comes from the word "roe deer").
Together with Mikhail, his cousin Anka was killed, and her daughter Katarina (the prince's niece and mistress) was wounded.
The supporters of the Karageorgievichs failed then to elevate their candidate to the throne. The throne of Serbia ascended the 14-year-old Milan Obrenovic, who urgently returned from Paris, where he was at that time studying at the Lyceum of Saint Louis.
Earlier deposed Prince Alexander Karageorgievich was accused of complicity in the murder of Mikhail Obrenovic and sentenced in absentia by a Serbian court to twenty years of imprisonment. His descendants were declared deprived of the rights to the Serbian throne by the Assembly. The Hungarian court sentenced him to 8 years on the same charge: in this country he served his sentence.
The continuation of the bloody and merciless Serbian "game of thrones" will be discussed in the next article. In it we will talk about the long-term rivalry for the throne of the descendants of Kara-Georgiy and Milos Obrenovich, about the organization “Unification or Death” (“Black Hand”) and its founder Dragutin Dmitrievich “Apis”.
