Karađorđe

Origins

Đorđe Petrović was born into an impoverished family in the village of Viševac, in the Šumadija region of Ottoman Serbia, on 14 November [O.S. 3 November] 1768. He was the oldest of his parents' five children. His father, Petar Jovanović, was a highwayman (or hajduk) in his youth, but had since become a peasant farmer. His mother, Marica (née Živković), was a homemaker. Petrović's surname was derived from his father's given name, in line with contemporary Serbian naming conventions. Like most of his contemporaries, Petrović was illiterate. His family celebrated the feast day of Saint Clement. They are said to have been descended from the Vasojevići tribe of Montenegro's Lim river valley. His ancestors are thought to have migrated from Montenegro to Šumadija in the late 1730s or early 1740s. Petrović's childhood was strenuous and difficult. His parents were forced to move around often in search of a livelihood. His father worked as a day labourer and servant for a sipahi, an Ottoman cavalryman. Petrović himself spent his adolescence working as a shepherd. In 1785, he married Jelena Jovanović, the daughter of Nikola Jovanović, obor-knez of Jasenica, whose family hailed from the village of Masloševo. The couple had seven children, six of whom reached adulthood.

Petrović worked for several landlords across Šumadija until 1787, when he and his family left the region and settled in the Habsburg monarchy ("Austria"), fearing persecution at the hands of the Ottoman janissaries. It is said that as they were preparing to cross the Danube into Austria, Petrović's father began to have second thoughts about leaving Šumadija. Knowing that the entire family would be put in jeopardy if his father stayed behind, Petrović either took his father's life or arranged for someone to kill him instead.

Early military exploits

Following the outbreak of the Austro-Turkish War of 1788–1791, Petrović joined the Serbian Free Corps (German: Serbische Freikorps), and took part in fighting the Ottomans in western Serbia. The Free Corps was a volunteer militia made up of both Ottoman and Habsburg Serbs that was armed and trained by the Austrians. It was led by a Habsburg Serb officer, Major Mihailo Mihaljević. Petrović's participation in the war brought him invaluable military experience, as well as insight into the Austrians' military techniques. He distinguished himself in combat and was decorated for bravery, reaching the rank of sergeant (German: Wachtmeister). In this capacity, he was given command over a squad of 25 men.

The Austrians and Serb rebels briefly succeeded in liberating a strip of land east and south of Belgrade, which in Serbian historiography came to be known as Koča's Frontier (Serbian: Kočina Krajina), after one of the senior rebel leaders, Koča Anđelković. In 1791, the Austrians and Ottomans signed the Treaty of Sistova. The Austrians agreed to return all the territory that they and the Serbs had captured south of the Danube in exchange for minor territorial concessions in northern Bosnia, effectively abandoning the Serbs and leaving them to resist the Ottomans on their own. The rebels were crushed by 1792 and most of their leaders executed. Unwilling to surrender, Petrović became a hajduk and briefly fought the Ottomans as an outlaw. He and his family once again sought refuge in the Austrian Empire, this time finding sanctuary in the Krušedol Monastery, at the foot of Fruška Gora, where Petrović worked as a forester.

In 1793, Hadji Mustafa Pasha was appointed governor of the Pashalik of Belgrade. He declared a general amnesty for former rebels and announced that Muslims would no longer serve as tax-collectors in areas where Christians formed a majority of the population. These changes were part of a plan devised by Sultan Selim aimed at improving relations with the Pashalik's Christian population. Sensing that it was safe, Petrović returned to Šumadija in 1794, together with his family. He settled in Topola, where he became a livestock merchant and traded with the Austrians. His business dealings led him to establish connections with many Habsburg Serbs. In 1796, Osman Pazvantoğlu, the renegade governor of the Sanjak of Vidin, who had rejected the authority of the Sublime Porte, launched an invasion of the Pashalik of Belgrade. Overwhelmed, Mustafa Pasha formed a Serbian national militia to help stop the incursion. Petrović joined the militia and became a boluk-bashi (Serbian: Buljukbaša), leading a company of 100 men.

First Serbian Uprising (1804–1813)

Revolt against the Dahis

In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt, forcing the Porte to redeploy thousands of regulars from the Balkans in order to resist the French. The janissaries in the Pashalik of Belgrade, known as Dahis (Serbian: Dahije), who had been expelled from the region on Selim's orders nearly a decade earlier, were pardoned and allowed to return to Belgrade on the condition that they obey Mustafa Pasha. The détente between the aging governor and the Dahis did not last long. In 1801, Mustafa Pasha was killed by a Dahi assassin.

The power vacuum caused by Mustafa Pasha's murder resulted in a period of infighting between the Dahis that would last until 1802. By this time, four senior Dahi commanders emerged triumphant and agreed to share power within the Pashalik. The Serbs were stripped of the privileges that they had been granted under Mustafa Pasha. Dahi bands roamed the countryside, killing peasants, looting property and setting homes on fire. Thousands of villagers were displaced and forced to flee into the mountains, where over the next several years, the able-bodied men formed ad hoc guerrilla bands.

In mid-July 1803, Karađorđe obtained arms and munitions from Habsburg Serb merchants in Zemun. Later that month, he dispatched couriers through Šumadija calling for a meeting of Serbian notables to devise a strategy for resisting the Dahis. The flow of arms from the Austrian Empire into the Pashalik, combined with their inability to crush the guerrillas in the countryside, made the Dahi leadership increasingly uneasy. In January and February 1804, the Dahis launched a pre-emptive assault against the Pashalik's Serbian chieftains (known as knezovi, or "princes"), killing between 70 and 150 of them. The killings outraged the Serbian rayah, the Pashalik's tax-paying lower class. By this time, Karađorđe was a well known and well respected figure in Šumadija. He narrowly escaped being killed in the two-month massacre, which came to be known as the Slaughter of the Knezes (Serbian: Seča knezova). Upon killing the chieftains, the Dahis impaled their severed heads on wooden stakes and put them on public display.

On Candlemas, 14 February [O.S. 2 February] 1804, the surviving chieftains assembled in the village of Orašac, near Aranđelovac, to decide on a course of action. They agreed to launch a rebellion against the Dahis and Karađorđe was elected without opposition to lead it. It is said that he twice refused to lead the uprising, arguing that his violent temper would make him unsuitable for the role. Karađorđe's initial refusal only reinforced the chieftains' convictions that he was the only suitable candidate, and eventually, he agreed to lead the rebels. This event marked the beginning of the First Serbian Uprising, the opening phase of what would come to be known as the Serbian Revolution.

Rebellion against the Porte

The rebels first clashed with Ottoman regulars at the Battle of Ivankovac in August 1805, scoring a decisive victory. Belgrade was soon besieged by about 16,000 rebel fighters. The rebel leaders used anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilize the peasantry, calling upon them to rise up and drive the Ottomans "across the blue sea". In order to further galvanize the population, Karađorđe appealed to memories of the Battle of Kosovo of June 1389, which paved the way for the Ottoman conquest of Serbia and the rest of the western Balkans, declaring that Serbia's defeat in the battle needed to be avenged. He sought to further cement his authority by harkening back to symbols of Medieval Serbia, such as the relics of Stefan the First-Crowned, and placing old heraldic symbols on flags and seals to establish continuity between the Serbian Empire and himself. Portraits of Dušan the Mighty, the founder of the Serbian Empire, are said to have hung from the walls of the rebels' headquarters.

Karađorđe was feared by enemies and allies alike because of his volatile temper. He considered executions to be the only way in which military infractions could be rectified, and according to the military historian Brendon A. Rehm, personally killed 125 people. In 1806, he ordered that his brother Marinko be hanged. According to one account, Marinko had been accused of raping a peasant girl. Another suggests that he had been attempting to seduce young women whose husbands were away at the front. Whatever the case, Karađorđe entertained senior rebel leaders in his home while his brother's lifeless body dangled from the front gate—a warning to others to refrain from the behaviour in which Marinko had been engaging. Muslims, combatants and non-combatants alike, were killed unremittingly, as illustrated in this contemporary account describing the capture of the village of Čučuge, near Ub, in April 1806:

In their flight the Turks threw away their arms and clothing in order to run the better, but to no purpose. The Serbs caught up with them and killed them, some with swords, some with knives and some with daggers, while others had their brains beaten out with cudgels and staves. They say that over 2,800 Turks perished and only those got away who had good horses. When our army mustered again at the camp at Ub, I saw that many of our soldiers had blood-stained swords ... and their gun-butts also were smashed and broken; they were laden with every sort of spoil.

Serbs who neglected to join the uprising were brutalized in equal measure. Males who could not produce an adequate excuse for why they were not fighting were killed and their houses torched. While most of the rebels were Serbs, the Pashalik's Romani (Gypsy) residents, the majority of whom were Muslim, also fought on the rebel side. Some Albanians also pledged allegiance to Karađorđe and fought on his behalf.

Exile, return to Serbia and assassination

Upon crossing the Danube, Karađorđe and his followers were arrested by the Austrian authorities. They were initially detained at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad and later transferred to a prison in Graz. The Ottomans demanded that Karađorđe and the other rebel leaders be extradited to face punishment. The Austrians refused and instead turned them over to the Russians. Karađorđe spent a year in Austrian custody before being allowed to go to Russia. Like many of the other rebel leaders, he settled in Bessarabia. He attempted to adjust to civilian life, commissioning a portrait of himself by the painter Vladimir Borovikovsky. In April 1815, Obrenović orchestrated another anti-Ottoman rebellion in Serbia, which came to be known as the Second Serbian Uprising. Unlike Karađorđe's revolt, the Second Serbian Uprising ended relatively quickly and resulted in a rebel victory. In November 1815, the Ottomans accepted Obrenović's demands for wide-ranging autonomy. The terms that they agreed to were identical to those rejected by Karađorđe in 1807.

The Russians prohibited Karađorđe from returning to the Balkans to take part in the Second Serbian Uprising. Karađorđe objected and traveled to Saint Petersburg to plead his case, but was arrested and detained. Upon his release, he joined the Filiki Eteria, a Greek nationalist secret society that intended to launch a pan-Balkan uprising against the Ottomans. The Filiki Eteria promised Karađorđe a position of military leadership in the planned uprising and offered to smuggle him into the Pashalik of Belgrade. Karađorđe secretly entered the Pashalik on 24 July [O.S. 12 July] 1817, crossing the Danube together with his servant, Naum Krnar. He then contacted his kum, Vujica Vulićević, who offered him an abode in the oak forest of Radovanje Grove, near Velika Plana. Unbeknownst to Karađorđe, Vulićević was on Obrenović's payroll. After escorting Karađorđe and his servant to a tent in the forest, Vulićević informed Obrenović of Karađorđe's whereabouts through a courier. Shortly thereafter, he received a letter from Obrenović telling him that Karađorde was to be killed. Vulićević enlisted one of his close confidantes, Nikola Novaković, to take Karađorđe's life. The following morning, just before sunrise, Novaković snuck into Karađorđe's tent and axed him to death while he slept. He then went to the riverside and shot Krnar with a rifle as he was gathering water. Karađorđe's lifeless body was beheaded. His severed head was taken to Belgrade and presented to Marashli Ali Pasha, who had been appointed the governor of the Pashalik two years prior. Ali Pasha had the head flayed, stuffed and sent to the Sultan himself.

Legacy

Karađorđe's descendants adopted the surname Karađorđević in his honour. His murder resulted in a violent, decades-long feud between his descendants and those of Obrenović, with the Serbian throne changing hands several times. The feud came to an abrupt end in June 1903, when rebellious Royal Serbian Army officers killed the Obrenović king, Alexander, and his wife, Queen Draga, thereby rendering the Obrenović line extinct. Karađorđe's grandson, Peter Karađorđević, then ascended the throne.

In order to tie himself to his grandfather's legacy, Peter commissioned a bronze crown cast from a piece of Karađorđe's first cannon. In addition, the Order of Karađorđe's Star was introduced as Serbia's highest state decoration. The first feature-length film to emerge from Serbia and the Balkans, whose plot revolves around Karađorđe and his actions before, during and after the First Serbian Uprising, was released in 1911. Work soon began on the construction of the Church of Saint George, a Karađorđević dynasty mausoleum at Oplenac, near Topola. In 1913, a monument to Karađorđe was unveiled at Kalemegdan Park. During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia, the monument was torn down by the Austro-Hungarian Army and destroyed.

In November 1918, Peter ascended the throne of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was later renamed Yugoslavia. Karađorđe's head was repatriated from Greece in 1923 and reunited with the rest of his body. His remains were buried in a white marble sarcophagus within the church in 1930. The Karađorđević dynasty ruled Yugoslavia until 1941, when its members were forced into exile by Germany's invasion and occupation of the country. The monarchy was abolished by Josip Broz Tito's communist government in 1945.

Misha Glenny, a journalist specializing in the Balkans, believes that the First Serbian Uprising "marked the beginning of modern history on the Balkan peninsula." The uprising kindled the flame of ethno-religious nationalism among the Christians of Southeastern Europe and inspired the subsequent Greek War of Independence. Karađorđe's struggle against the Ottomans also had an important influence on the Bosnian Muslim revolutionary Husein Gradaščević, who instigated the Great Bosnian Uprising. Karađorđe is viewed in a negative light by some modern Bosniaks. In 2011, the chief Mufti of the Islamic Community of Serbia, Muamer Zukorlić, filed a petition to rename a street in Sjenica named after Karađorđe. Zukorlić alleged that Karađorđe and his followers had indiscriminately targeted the town's residents in 1809, a notion disputed by Serbian historians. The historian Ivo Banac surmises that "there would be no Bosnian Muslims today" had Karađorđe extended his uprising west of the Drina.