The Liberation Of Serbia Under Kara-george 1804-13


The liberation of Serbia from the Turkish dominion and its establishment

as an independent state were matters of much slower and more arduous

accomplishment than were the same processes in the other Balkan countries.

One reason for this was that Serbia by its peculiar geographical position

was cut off from outside help. It was easy for the western powers to help

Greece with their fleets, and for Russia to help Rumania and, later,
/>
Bulgaria directly with its army, because communication between them was

easy. But Serbia on the one hand was separated from the sea, first by

Dalmatia, which was always in foreign possession, and then by Bosnia,

Hercegovina, and the sandjak (or province) of Novi-Pazar, all of which

territories, though ethnically Serb, were strongholds of Turkish influence

owing to their large Mohammedan population. The energies of Montenegro,

also cut off from the sea by Dalmatia and Turkey, were absorbed in

self-defence, though it gave Serbia all the support which its size

permitted. Communication, on the other hand, between Russia and Serbia was

too difficult to permit of military help being rapidly and effectively

brought to bear upon the Turks from that quarter. Bessarabia, Wallachia,

and Moldavia were then still under Turkish control, and either they had to

be traversed or the Danube had to be navigated from its mouth upwards

through Turkish territory. The only country which could have helped Serbia

was Austria, but as it was against their best interests to do so, the

Austrians naturally did all they could not to advance, but to retard the

Serbian cause. As a result of all this Serbia, in her long struggle

against the Turks, had to rely principally on its own resources, though

Russian diplomacy several times saved the renascent country from disaster.



Another reason for the slowness of the emancipation and development of

modern Serbia has been the proneness of its people to internal dissension.

There was no national dynasty on whom the leadership of the country would

naturally devolve after the first successful revolution against Turkish

rule, there was not even any aristocracy left, and no foreign ruler was

ever asked for by the Serbs or was ever imposed on them by the other

nations as in the case of Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. On the other hand

the rising against Turkey was a rising of the whole people, and it was

almost inevitable that as soon as some measure of independence was gained

the unity the Serbs had shown when fighting against their oppressors

should dissolve and be replaced by bitter rivalries and disputes amongst

the various local leaders who had become prominent during the rebellion.



These rivalries early in the nineteenth century resolved themselves into a

blood-feud between two families, the Karagjorgjevi['c] and the

Obrenovi['c], a quarrel that filled Serbian history and militated against

the progress of the Serb people throughout the nineteenth century.



The same reasons which restricted the growth of the political independence

of Serbia have also impeded, or rather made impossible, its economic

development and material prosperity. Until recent years Austria-Hungary

and Turkey between them held Serbia territorially in such a position that

whenever Serbia either demurred at its neighbours' tariffs or wished to

retaliate by means of its own, the screw was immediately applied and

economic strangulation threatened. Rumania and Bulgaria economically could

never be of help to Serbia, because the products and the requirements of

all three are identical, and Rumania and Bulgaria cannot be expected to

facilitate the sale of their neighbours' live stock and cereals, when

their first business is to sell their own, while the cost of transit of

imports from western Europe through those countries is prohibitive.



After the unsuccessful rebellion of 1788, already mentioned, Serbia

remained in a state of pseudo-quiescence for some years. Meanwhile the

authority of the Sultan in Serbia was growing ever weaker and the real

power was wielded by local Turkish officials, who exploited the country,

looked on it as their own property, and enjoyed semi-independence. Their

exactions and cruelties were worse than had been those of the Turks in the

old days, and it was against them and their troops, not against those of

the Sultan, that the first battles in the Serbian war of independence were

fought. It was during the year 1803 that the Serbian leaders first made

definite plans for the rising which eventually took place in the following

year. The ringleader was George Petrovi['c], known as Black George, or

Kara-George, and amongst his confederates was Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c]. The

centre of the conspiracy was at Topola, in the district of [)S]umadija in

central Serbia (between the Morava and the Drina rivers), the native place

of Kara-George. The first two years of fighting between the Serbians and,

first, the provincial janissaries, and, later, the Sultan's forces, fully

rewarded the bravery and energy of the insurgents. By the beginning of

1807 they had virtually freed all northern Serbia by their own unaided

efforts and captured the towns of Po[)z]arevac, Smederevo, Belgrade, and

[)S]abac. The year 1804 is also notable as the date of the formal opening

of diplomatic relations directly between Serbia and Russia. At this time

the Emperor Alexander I was too preoccupied with Napoleon to be able to

threaten the Sultan (Austerlitz took place in November 1805), but he gave

the Serbs financial assistance and commended their cause to the especial

care of his ambassador at Constantinople.



In 1807 war again broke out between Russia and Turkey, but after the Peace

of Tilsit (June 1807) fighting ceased also between the Turks and the

Russians and the Serbs, not before the Russians had won several successes

against the Turks on the Lower Danube. It was during the two following

years of peace that dissensions first broke out amongst the Serbian

leaders; fighting the Turks was the sole condition of existence which

prevented them fighting each other. In 1809-10 Russia and the Serbs again

fought the Turks, at first without success, but later with better fortune.

In 1811 Kara-George was elected Gospodar, or sovereign, by a popular

assembly, but Serbia still remained a Turkish province. At the end of that

year the Russians completely defeated the Turks at Rustchuk in Bulgaria,

and, if all had gone well, Serbia might there and then have achieved

complete independence.



But Napoleon was already preparing his invasion and Russia had to conclude

peace with Turkey in a hurry, which necessarily implied that the Sultan

obtained unduly favourable terms. In the Treaty of Bucarest between the

two countries signed in May 1812, the Serbs were indeed mentioned, and

promised vague internal autonomy and a general amnesty, but all the

fortified towns they had captured were to be returned to the Turks, and

the few Russian troops who had been helping the Serbs in Serbia had to

withdraw. Negotiations between the Turks and the Serbs for the regulation

of their position were continued throughout 1812, but finally the Turks

refused all their claims and conditions and, seeing the European powers

preoccupied with their own affairs, invaded the country from Bosnia in the

west, and also from the east and south, in August 1813. The Serbs, left

entirely to their own resources, succumbed before the superior forces of

the Turks, and by the beginning of October the latter were again masters

of the whole country and in possession of Belgrade. Meanwhile Kara-George,

broken in health and unable to cope with the difficulties of the

situation, which demanded successful strategy both against the

overwhelming forces of the Turks in the field and against the intrigues of

his enemies at home, somewhat ignominiously fled across the river to

Semlin in Hungary, and was duly incarcerated by the Austrian authorities.



The news of Napoleon's defeat at Leipsic (October 1813) arrived just after

that of the re-occupation of Belgrade by the Turks, damped feu-de-joie

which they were firing at Constantinople, and made them rather more

conciliatory and lenient to the Serbian rebels. But this attitude did not

last long, and the Serbs soon had reason to make fresh efforts to regain

their short-lived liberty. The Congress of Vienna met in the autumn of

1814, and during its whole course Serbian emissaries gave the Russian

envoys no peace. But with the return of Napoleon to France in the spring

of 1815 and the break-up of the Congress, all that Russia could do was,

through its ambassador at Constantinople, to threaten invasion unless the

Turks left the Serbs alone. Nevertheless, conditions in Serbia became so

intolerable that another rebellion soon took shape, this time under

Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c]. This leader was no less patriotic than his rival,

Kara-George, but he was far more able and a consummate diplomat.

Kara-George had possessed indomitable courage, energy, and will-power, but

he could not temporize, and his arbitrary methods of enforcing discipline

and his ungovernable temper had made him many enemies. While the credit

for the first Serbian revolt (1804-13) undoubtedly belongs chiefly to him,

the second revolt owed its more lasting success to the skill of Milo[)s]

Obrenovi['c]. The fighting started at Takovo, the home of the Obrenovi['c]

family, in April 1815, and after many astonishing successes against the

Turks, including the capture of the towns of Rudnik, [)C]a[)c]ak,

Po[)z]arevac, and Kraljevo, was all over by July of the same year. The

Turks were ready with large armies in the west in Bosnia, and also south

of the Morava river, to continue the campaign and crush the rebellion, but

the news of the final defeat of Napoleon, and the knowledge that Russia

would soon have time again to devote attention to the Balkans, withheld

their appetites for revenge, and negotiations with the successful rebels

were initiated. During the whole of this period, from 1813 onwards,

Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c], as head of a district, was an official of the

Sultan in Serbia, and it was one of his principles never to break

irreparably with the Turks, who were still suzerains of the country. At

the same time, owing to his skill and initiative he was recognized as the

only real leader of the movement for independence. From the cessation of

the rebellion in 1815 onwards he himself personally conducted negotiations

in the name of his people with the various pashas who were deputed to deal

with him. While these negotiations went on and the armistice was in force,

he was confronted, or rather harassed from behind, by a series of revolts

against his growing authority on the part of his jealous compatriots.



In June 1817 Kara-George, who had been in Russia after being released by

the Austrians in 1814, returned surreptitiously to Serbia, encouraged by

the brighter aspect which affairs in his country seemed to be assuming.

But the return of his most dangerous rival was as unwelcome to Milo[)s] as

it was to the Turkish authorities at Belgrade, and, measures having been

concerted between them, Kara-George was murdered on July 26,1817, and the

first act in the blood-feud between the two families thus committed. In

November of the same year a skup[)s]tina, or national assembly, was held

at Belgrade, and Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c], whose position was already

thoroughly assured, was elected hereditary prince (knez) of the country.



Meanwhile events of considerable importance for the future of the Serb

race had been happening elsewhere. Dalmatia, the whole of which had been

in the possession of Venice since the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, passed

into the hands of Austria by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, when the

Venetian republic was extinguished by Napoleon. The Bocche di Cuttaro, a

harbour both strategically and commercially of immense value, which had in

the old days belonged to the Serb principality of Zeta or Montenegro, and

is its only natural outlet on the Adriatic, likewise became Venetian in

1699 and Austrian in 1797, one year after the successful rebellion of the

Montenegrins against the Turks.



By the Treaty of Pressburg between France and Austria Dalmatia became

French in 1805. But the Montenegrins, supported by the Russians, resisted

the new owners and occupied the Bocche; at the Peace of Tilsit in 1807,

however, this important place was assigned to France by Russia, and

Montenegro had to submit to its loss. In 1806 the French occupied Ragusa,

and in 1808 abolished the independence of the ancient Serb city-republic.

In 1812 the Montenegrins, helped by the Russians and British, again

expelled the French and reoccupied Cattaro; but Austria was by now fully

alive to the meaning this harbour would have once it was in the possession

of Montenegro, and after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 took definitive

possession of it as well as of all the rest of Dalmatia, thus effecting

the complete exclusion of the Serb race for all political and commercial

purposes from the Adriatic, its most natural and obvious means of

communication with western Europe.



Though Milo[)s] had been elected prince by his own people, it was long

before he was recognized as such by the Porte. His efforts for the

regularization of his position entailed endless negotiations in

Constantinople; these were enlivened by frequent anti-Obrenovi['c] revolts

in Serbia, all of which Milo[)s] successfully quelled. The revolution in

Greece in 1821 threw the Serbian question from the international point of

view into the shade, but the Emperor Nicholas I, who succeeded his brother

Alexander I on the Russian throne in 1825, soon showed that he took a

lively and active interest in Balkan affairs. Pan-Slavism had scarcely

become fashionable in those days, and it was still rather as the protector

of its co-religionists under the Crescent that Russia intervened. In 1826

Russian and Turkish delegates met at Akerman in Bessarabia, and in

September of that year signed a convention by which the Russian

protectorate over the Serbs was recognized, the Serbs were granted

internal autonomy, the right to trade and erect churches, schools, and

printing-presses, and the Turks were forbidden to live in Serbia except in

eight garrison towns; the garrisons were to be Turkish, and tribute was

still to be paid to the Sultan as suzerain. These concessions, announced

by Prince Milo[)s] to his people at a special skup[)s]tina held at

Kragujevac in 1827, evoked great enthusiasm, but the urgency of the Greek

question again delayed their fulfilment. After the battle of Navarino on

October 20, 1827, in which the British, French, and Russian fleets

defeated the Turkish, the Turks became obstinate and refused to carry out

the stipulations of the Convention of Akerman in favour of Serbia.

Thereupon Russia declared war on Turkey in April 1828, and the Russian

armies crossed the Danube and the Balkans and marched on Constantinople.



Peace was concluded at Adrianople in 1829, and Turkey agreed to carry out

immediately all the stipulations of the Treaty of Bucarest (1812) and the

Convention of Akerman (1826). The details took some time to settle, but in

November 1830 the hatti-sherif of the Sultan, acknowledging Milo[)s] as

hereditary prince of Serbia, was publicly read in Belgrade. All the

concessions already promised were duly granted, and Serbia became

virtually independent, but still tributary to the Sultan. Its territory

included most of the northern part of the modern kingdom of Serbia,

between the rivers Drina, Save, Danube, and Timok, but not the districts

of Nish, Vranja, and Pirot. Turkey still retained Bosnia and Hercegovina,

Macedonia, the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, which separated Serbia from

Montenegro, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).



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