Draft:Miloje Petrovic-Trnavac

• Comment: Two sources, especially when one of them only seems to support one factoid in this draft, is not enough to establish notability.
  Offline sources must be cited with full bibliographical details to enable them to be reliably identified for verification. (The citations are also incorrectly formatted.) DoubleGrazing (talk) 17:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

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Miloje Petrović "Trnavac" (Trnava near Topola, Ottoman Empire, around 1760 — Svileuva near Šabac, Revolutionary Serbia, 1810) was a Serbian duke from the time of the First Serbian Uprising. Along with Uzun-Mirko Apostolović and Konda Bimbaša, he was one of the military commanders in the battle for the liberation of Belgrade in 1806.

Biography

He was born in the Šumadija village of Trnava near Topola, hence his toponymic - "Trnavac". His friend and godfather was Mladen Milovanović, one of the most famous and richest people from the era of Karađorđe's Serbia. Historian, Milan Đ. Milićević (1831-1908) in his work "Monument of Famous People in the Serbian People of the Modern Age" (1888), literally says:

"These two took the best houses and shops in Belgrade, and the most beautiful fields and meadows around Belgrade." The whole of Belgrade was theirs. Hence the hatred and envy of other elders, especially the elders, flared up against them. Contemporaries say that these two men are mostly to blame for discord, disagreements and all major national disasters during Karađorđe's time".

Before the outbreak of the Battle of Čegar, in 1809, Miloje was appointed to the post of commander for the projected attack on Niš, strategically, an important target for Karađorđe's vision to revive the Serbia of old. Karađorđe was open in his talks with the representatives of Russia, as well as in his talks with Napoleon and the Turks, pointed out to everyone that Niš had to belong to Serbia, stressing it crucial for the renewal of the Serbian state. The Serbian rebels headed towards Niš in order to take it over and continue towards their next goal -- Old Serbia. Karađorđe's suggestion was to use the whole army to liberate Niš, while the rest of the commanders demanded to attack Niš from four different points, which was accepted. On 27 April 1809, the Serbian rebel army with its 16,000 soldiers approached the villages of Kamenica, Gornji Matejevac and Donji Matejevac, near the town of Niš with Miloje Petrović as Commander-in-chief. The Serbian rebels made six trenches. The first and biggest was on Čegar Hill under vojvoda Stevan Sinđelić. The second one was in Gornji Matejevac under Petar Dobrnjac. The third trench was north-east to Kamenica, under Voivoda Ilija Barjaktarović. The fourth trench was in Kamenica under Miloje Petrović. The fifth trench was in the mountain above Kamenica and under the control of vojvoda Pauljo Matejić, while the sixth one was made in Donji Matejevac. Miloje Petrović's request to attack Niš directly was not accepted. The rebels were told to wait while the town was under siege. On the other hand, the Turkish army received a large reinforcement of over 20,000 soldiers from Jedreno, Thessaloniki, Vranje and Leskovac.

The Battle of Čegar

The Turks attacked the trench of Petar Dobrnjac at night on 30 May 1809, and the battle began in the morning hours of 19 May 1809 (31 May 1809 according to the new calendar). The following day, the Čegar Hill trench under Stevan Sinđelić was attacked. The battle lasted all day. As veteran fighter Milovan Kukić testified, the Turks attacked five times, and the Serbs managed to repulse them every time, however, each time with great losses. Finally, when they attacked for the sixth time, they filled the trenches with their dead so that those alive fighting went over their dead bodies and they began to fight against the Serbs with their rifles firing, or with their bayonets, knives and sabres sticking and cutting down their enemies. The Serbian soldiers from other trenches cried out for others to help Stevan, but there was no help without their cavalry or Miloje ignored the plea?

When Sinđelić saw that the Turks had taken over his trench, he ran to the powder cave, took out his gun and fired at the powder magazine. The explosion was so strong that all the surrounding area was shaken, and the whole trench was caught in an explosion and a cloud of dense smoke. Stevan Sinđelić, who up to that moment had reached everywhere, helping and encouraging everybody, was blown up. Three thousand Serbian soldiers and more than twice as many on the Turkish side were killed on Čegar Hill. An important Serbian monument is the Skull Tower, a tower which contains the human skulls of dead Serbian rebels in its construction, a memorial eerily unique in its design.

A wall of the Skull Tower a unique monument in Europe.

Disagreements

Voivode Petar Dobrnjac wasn't pleased when he heard about the appointment of Miloje Petrović-Trnavac as commander of the Niš military detachment. In fact, he took it as a personal insult, because he considered himself a better leader and more worthy in experience. Because of this, great intolerance soon arose between Peter and Miloje, which, unfortunately, had a negative effect on the morale and combat readiness of the insurgent army. In addition, just before the decisive battle, Trnavac made a big tactical mistake, that is, he ordered Hajduk Veljko Petrović to leave his position with a large contingent of men to go to Gurgusovac, in order to prevent a possible Turkish penetration from that direction towards Kamenica. Immediately afterwards, Petar Dobrnjac, without the consent of Miloje Petrović-Trnavac, left Kamenica and headed towards Gurgusovac with his fighters and two cannons. The Turks probably found out about the departure of Dobrnjac and Hajduk-Veljko from their positions, as well as about the disagreement of the Serbian commanders, and that's why they immediately moved with the army towards the most advanced Serbian trench located on Čegar. The decisive battle took place at dawn on 31 May 1809. Duke Stevan Sinđelić defended his position on Čegar with 2,000 insurgents. When a ten times larger Turkish army attacked his trenches, Sinđelić asked Trnavac to urgently send him help in a strong cavalry detachment. Instead, Trnavac started retreating towards Deligrad. Seeing that he could not maintain his position on Čegar without help, Stevan Sinđelić, as is known, fired his pistol at the ammunition powder keg blowing up the whole trench while still in close-quarters combat. It was the greatest tragedy and defeat of the Serbian army in the First Serbian Uprising.

After learning about this great defeat and Miloje's mistake, Karađorđe stripped Miloje of his ducal title and exiled him to Ostružnica near Belgrade.

Death

Soon Miloje became preoccupied with the idea of ​​taking revenge on Karađorđe. That opportunity came to him in the fall of 1810, in the village of Rogači below Kosmaj, during a wedding. In the moment of greatest joy, the prince and duke of Kosmaj, Marko Katić, was killed. Apparently, Miloje Petrović-Trnavac persuaded the killer to commit this crime. As it turned out later, Trnavac wanted to provoke protests in the people and raise a rebellion against Karađorđe by killing a prominent Kosmaj knez. When he failed, he fled to Zemun, which was then in Austrian territory.

At Karađorđe's request, the Austrian authorities returned Trnavac to Serbia (to Šabac), and ordered Luka Lazarević (1774—1852) to cut off his head. The son of Luka Lazarević - Aleksandar, later told Milan Đ. Milićević, that Miloje offered Luka 70,000 ducats not to kill him:

"- How can I not kill you - answered Luka - when I was ordered to send your head or my head!" - At least you kill me when I'm sleeping, when I don't know! - I'm not going to sleep, but you really won't know when you're going to die. And, when he was leaving Luka, Luka's boys killed him on his way down the the stairs when he least expected it! "

Literature

• Milan Đ. Milićević, "Monument of famous people in the Serbian people of the modern era" (1888).
• Vuk Karadžić, "The Life of Serbian Dukes and Other Famous Serbs", edition (1967).

References

• Translated from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr-el/%D0%9C%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%98%D0%B5_%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B