FIRST SERBIAN UPRISING 1804–13
The First Serbian Uprising began in 1804 and lasted until the insurgents were finally defeated in 1813 and forced to flee. Its causes and the wider circumstances against which it has to be understood go back a little further. The fortunes of the Serbs waxed and waned according to the policies of the Great Powers towards the Balkans. Russia and Austria were always looking for ways to take advantage of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire. In 1774 the Russians concluded the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji with the Turks, which gave them the right to represent the interests of the Christians living in the Ottoman Empire, most of whom were members of the Orthodox Church. War between Russia and Turkey broke out again in 1787, and the Habsburg Empire, suspicious of Russian motives in its backyard, joined in and captured Belgrade, holding it for a brief period between 1788 and 1791. In Serbia this brief conflict is known as Koča’s War after the name of the leader, Koča Andjelković, who led the local contingents of Serbs in support of the Austrian forces.
International interest in Serbia was not generally guided by principles of Christian or Slav solidarity. The Russians and Austrians only intended to further their own interests. In 1791 the Austrians made peace with the Ottoman Empire and left their erstwhile allies to the Turks’ mercies. The Russians continued to insist on their right to speak on behalf of the Serbians as protectors of the Orthodox Church but actually did very little. Nonetheless the policies of the Great Powers were of fundamental significance for the Serbs who could not hope to defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own. Their next chance came with the rise of Napoleon who invaded Egypt, an Ottoman province, in 1798. The Napoleonic Wars provided the Serbs with the ideal conditions with which to pursue their bid for independence.
The situation closer to home was also changing for the Serbs. The new Sultan Selim III (1789–1807) was a reformer who was anxious to halt the declining influence of his imperial authority. To this end, he introduced certain of the modernizing tendencies in administration and the military that he saw had already brought benefits to the European states that were now threatening him. Recognizing that many of the problems in the border outpost of Serbia were caused by the greed and unruly behaviour of the janissaries, he decided to curb their influence. He installed a new pasha, Hadji Mustafa, who ruled with a benign attitude towards the sultan’s subjects, earning him a reputation as a friend of the Serbs. Even so, his enemies were numerous and very strong. In 1801 the janissaries returned to Belgrade, murdered Hadji Mustafa and returned to their previous vicious ways.
The Serbian rebellion began as a reaction against the harsh treatment meted out by the new regime. Intolerable burdens were placed on the local Christian population through taxes and new obligations to the authorities, while any kind of resistance met with the severest penalties. The most powerful men in the province were now those who commanded the janissaries, the Dahijas: Mehmed Aga Fočić, Kučuk Alija Đevrlić, Mula Jusuf and Aganlija. Toward the end of January 1804, Fočić left Belgrade with a retinue of armed men to meet one of the local leaders, Aleksandar Nenadović, at the village of Ljubenino Polje. They were to travel to Valjevo together, but Fočić had received intelligence that Nenadović was planning a rebellion and was importing arms across the River Sava from Habsburg territory. Nenadović was arrested and executed, the first of many to suffer in quick succession as the Dahijas turned on the most important Serbs in the district with the intention of killing them all. The Serb leaders rallied round and nominated as their commander Đorđe Petrović (1752–1817), more popularly known as Karađorđe or Black George. He was a man with military experience who had fought in Koča’s War and whose descendants were to derive their surname from him as the royal Karađorđević dynasty.
In February 1804 the rebels met at Orašac, not far from Belgrade, and offered the leadership of their small and rudimentary force to Karađorđe. According to legend, he at first refused the offer on the grounds that he had a hot, at times uncontrollable, temper and could not vouch for his conduct. The Serbs, however, took this as a sign of his resolve to defeat the Turks and continued to clamour for him to accept the commission. He took the proffered office and the insurgents enjoyed initial success against the vast resources of the Ottoman Empire, which was embroiled in the consequences of the Napoleonic Wars.
The rebels laid siege to Belgrade in 1806 with around 25,000 men and forty cannon. Karađorđe put his cannon around the area of today’s St. Mark’s Church (Crkva svetog Marka) and the adjoining park of Tašmajdan since, from there, his guns were in range of the citadel. He deployed his main camp on the more distant plateau at Vračar. The fighting around the city was fierce, with much at stake on both sides. The defenders resisted as far as they could but the Ottoman Empire could not afford to send them much-needed reinforcements. On the night of the 29 November the Serbs launched their biggest attack on the city. A small force led by Uzun Mirko began the action by taking the Town Gate on the Sava slope. The legend goes that one of his men then climbed on top of the Turkish cannon by the gate and sang out as a signal that the gate was securely in their hands and that the main force led by Vasa Čarapić should strike at the Istanbul Gate. Čarapić was fatally wounded in the offensive, but the attempt was successful and the rebels broke through. The Ottoman commander had no choice but to surrender the city into the hands of the insurgents.
The First Serbian Uprising is pivotal in the development of Serbia and had much wider repercussions for the whole region; Misha Glenny concludes that “the rebellion marked the beginning of modern history on the Balkan peninsula.” Another historian, however, is more circumspect in his judgment of these events. While not disregarding the impact which the rebellion was to have on Serbia, Stevan Pavlowitch draws our attention to its original aims: “The First Serbian Rising—as historians would call it—was hardly the outcome of revolutionary ideological thinking or political planning.” Instead, he emphasizes the odd alliances that were formed at what was nothing more than a time of national and international chaos. The traditional landowners who supported the rule of Hadji Mustafa were Muslims and not Serbs by origin. They held land which had been granted to them by grateful sultans for their services to the empire. Conversely, the Dahijas were Serbs who had gained powerful positions in the local hierarchy, which they exploited for their own ends. The rebels initially saw their fight to be a struggle against local tyranny imposed by the janissaries and their leaders, not a national rebellion against the authority of the sultan. As time went on they began to change their ultimate goal and began to think of their efforts more as a war for independence.
Local conditions were, moreover, subject to the vagaries of events happening on a much bigger stage. The Napoleonic Wars in Europe were diverting the attention of the Great Powers from any consideration they might have given to Serbian aspirations. The Ottoman Empire was facing pressure on a number of fronts, from the French in North Africa and the Russians around the Black Sea. It suited the Russians to add their encouragement to the rebels in Serbia, although their support was not translated into men and money.
Karađorđe was hence spurred on by international events that seemed detrimental to the Ottoman Empire, and he put his hopes on the Russian connection. Yet when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, the Tsar hurriedly made a treaty with Turkey to free his southern flank. The Treaty of Bucharest included mention of Serbia, but only to confirm that Russia agreed that the province be returned to its old position under Ottoman suzerainty, giving the Serbs some limited control of local affairs. The Turks now took their chance to crush the rebellion without outside interference. Three armies entered Serbia in 1813, and Karađorđe was forced to flee across the Sava into Austrian territory. The Uprising was over and a terrible revenge was extracted against the local population by the triumphant Turks. Nonetheless, the desire for independence from Ottoman rule was kindled and became the central platform of Serbian policy for most of the nineteenth century.
THE FIRST UPRISING IN SERBIAN NATIONAL SONGS
Ottoman rule over the Balkans excluded the local Christian population from positions of authority and power, leaving them an illiterate peasant society. The achievements of the medieval Serbian state and Church, evident in the art and architecture of churches, monasteries and royal palaces, receded into a distant memory. The writing practised in the administration of the country, in replicating the Holy Scriptures and in recording the lives of the saints of the Orthodox Church was lost and became moribund. Although the continued existence of the Church was an important factor in maintaining a commemorative link with the past, the written language became largely ossified in the form used in the fifteenth century, moving ever further away from the spoken vernacular as it evolved in everyday use. The language of law and government was that of the imperial rulers. In these circumstances, oral literature, songs and stories of different kinds came to represent the most vibrant form of local art.
Serbian national songs, or epic ballads, developed over the centuries along quite sophisticated lines and some have been compared to the achievements of Homer’s Iliad. These ballads tell stories from Serbian history in the form of heroic myths. They were sung by a bard called a guslar to the accompaniment of a simple single-stringed instrument, the gusle. He did not know his songs by heart, but as compositions made up of traditional phrases and formulaic expressions on which he could call each time he sang. His repertoire was based on a type of rapid composition recalling these fragments and lines and guiding them into place for each performance. Some of the parts were just phrases: a hero’s “black horse” or a maiden’s “white throat”, in which the adjective barely registers its meaning. Other parts were long descriptions of soldiers arriving at a battlefield, details of the arms they carried, the numbers in each contingent, confrontations between heroes and their enemies. Thus, each song was composed anew at each performance. The narrative outline of a story was well known to the audience, rather like some modern film genres such as the Western. The audience revels in the fulfilment of expectations while taking pleasure in the singer’s skill to add a new turn of phrase.
Some of the best-known songs are about the Battle of Kosovo and the legendary hero, Prince Marko (Kraljević Marko). The songs about Kosovo celebrate the battle of 1389 as a tragic Serbian defeat and the beginning of Turkish rule. According to the myth, Prince Lazar is visited by the prophet Elijah who offers him a choice: he can win the day and build an earthly kingdom, or lose but in defeat earn for himself and his people a heavenly kingdom. Lazar, naturally, chooses the latter option. He and his lords meet for a last supper on the eve of battle and with a sense of premonition he accuses his loyal retainer Miloš Obilić of treachery. Greatly hurt, Obilić denies any such thought and declares that he will kill the Ottoman leader, Sultan Murat. The Serbs are indeed betrayed, but by Vuk Branković, who leads his men away from the field when he should support the main army. Both Lazar and Obilić fulfil their epic roles: Lazar dies a martyr, and Obilić is hacked to pieces after killing Murat.
This bare outline is the myth of the famous battle as preserved in the song “The Fall of the Serbian Empire” (Propast carstva srpskoga). The Kosovo cycle contains many other songs that tell of associated events—the fear of the wives of the Serbian lords as they head off for Kosovo, the Kosovo Maiden who gives comfort to the wounded heroes, all telling a narrative with numerous strands and various characters. The Serbs are defeated because of betrayal from within, while preserving the integrity of their heroic demise framed in a strong biblical allegory.
If the Kosovo cycle offers compensation in piety and heroism, the other well-known cycle of epic ballads about Prince Marko offers a different kind of consolation. He is the most highly developed character of all the ballads, an archetypal hero and yet also something of an anti-hero. He is strong and determined in action, but will use tricks and subterfuge in order to win. He shows a comical side: when his mother wants him to get married, he points out that she wants a daughter and he wants a wife, and that these are not compatible aims. He drinks copious amounts of red wine, as does his horse. This mixture of epic and comic elements makes him a more grounded type, someone with whom the peasant society which created him could easily identify.
The legendary prince is based on a real historical figure, Marko, the son of King Vukašin, a Serbian feudal lord. The real Marko was a Turkish vassal who fought for the sultan and paid homage to his authority. The epic Marko is also a servant of the Ottoman Empire, but a servant whom the sultan fears and on whom he has to rely to fight his enemies. Marko can afford to be kind in a cruel world, and very severe when affronted or when he sees dishonesty. He upholds the honour of his family according to the traditional values of a patriarchal code, and at the same time one can laugh with him and at him. In fact, he reflects the very complicated relationship that developed between the Serbs and their Ottoman masters. Not challenging the status quo, the mythic Marko works within its framework, an invention of the colonized imagination, an image of a preferred world.
The epic ballads were not the only form of oral literature. There were other types of songs providing a whole library of material that could cover all occasions while working or celebrating, at harvest time or at a wedding. Yet the large-scale stories and colourful characters in the epics have persisted longer and, perhaps more importantly, they captured the imagination of Europe in the nineteenth century. Goethe and other German Romantics considered these songs to possess an authentic ring which their more sophisticated, modern equivalents had long since lost. The Serbian epics offered a nostalgic glimpse of a purer national soul about which people abroad wanted to know more. Their reputation spread and translations soon appeared in Germany, France and Britain. In Serbia, however, the songs remained very much a daily entertainment, which, like all art, could be enjoyed on many different levels. Although the product of an agrarian and illiterate society, with their place in an urban, educated context limited, they survived within modern Serbian culture as they form a background to later developments.
Belgrade is one of the settings for one of the last great ballads created by the blind bard Filip Višnjić (1767–1834), “The Start of the Revolt against the Dahijas” (Početak bune protiv dahija). The song reworks the story of the First Serbian Uprising using the recognizable formulaic expressions of the traditional ballads and augmenting the historical outline with more dramatic flourishes.
The opening sets the scene for the remainder of the story; the translated lines here are taken from Geoffrey N. W. Locke’s The Serbian Epic Ballads: An Anthology (in which the translator prefers the spelling Dahiyas):
Dear God, what great and wondrous happenings!
When in the Serbian lands there first swelled up
The tide of change that swept away the Turks,
And saw the realm of Serbia restored.
It was not done by princes waging war,
Nor did the Turkish gluttons wish for it.
The hungry common people of the land
Arose—they could no longer pay the tax,
Nor bear the threefold burden of the Turks.
For all those who were blessed by God were roused—
The blood began to boil up through the earth.
They knew the time had come for waging war,
The time to shed their blood for Christianity,
And to avenge their ancestors at last.
This celebration of the Uprising stresses some elements of the Serbian cause that were absent from the real context. It begins with a reference to God and the hint that this war is a holy crusade, fused with the popular nature of the campaign against the Turks prompted by the “hungry common people”. In reality, the Serbian standard was raised at Orašac by local chieftains coming together under Karađorđe’s leadership. The song suggests that Serbia will be restored as a consequence of the rebels’ action, although it was actually returned as a province to the Ottoman Empire with limited local powers. Blood will be inevitably spilled, since this is a conflict bet
ween two diametrically opposed sides, a basic story of good versus evil, in which the downtrodden Serbian peasant will carry the cross of Christ into battle. The final line focuses on vengeance and the demand for retribution for “their ancestors”, which the Serbian audience would understand to mean the Battle of Kosovo. Thus, the Uprising is invested with a divine call to arms supported by the cultural memory of the community.
The song, however, continues to tell a rather more complicated story. The Turks themselves are not looking for a fight, which in a roundabout way reflects the historical position of Sultan Selim III, who tried to pursue a more conciliatory policy toward the Serbs. In the ballad the local leaders, the Dahijas, meet by the Istanbul Gate and go to the Danube to fill a bowl with water. They carry it from the banks of the river to the top of the Nebojša Tower at Kalemegdan where, standing round the bowl, they hope to see their futures in the water. What they see disturbs them greatly, as each of them stares at an image of himself without his head. The oldest among them councils that they have wronged the Serbs who will seek their freedom and he recalls the dying words of Sultan Murat after his victory at Kosovo:
O brother Turks! Vezirs and Generals!
Now I must die; the empire falls to you.
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