| Battle of Čegar | |||||||
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| Part of First Serbian uprising | |||||||
Monument to commemorate on the Battle of Čegar Hill |
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Serbian revolutionaries | Ottoman Empire | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Miloje Petrović Petar Dobrnjac |
Hursid Pasha Ismail bey |
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| Strength | |||||||
| ~3,000-5,000 troops | ~20,000 troops | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 4,000[2] | ~15,000 troops killed and wounded[2] | ||||||
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The Battle of Čegar was an engagement in the First Serbian Uprising against the Ottoman Empire. On May 31, 1809, the most prominent trench on Čegar Hill, under the command of Stevan Sinđelić, was attacked by the Ottoman troops. The battle lasted the whole day. As Milovan Kukić witnessed, the Ottoman troops attacked five times, and the Serbs managed to repulse them five times. Each time their losses were great. Some of the Ottoman troops attacked, and some of them went ahead, and thus when they attacked for the sixth time they filled the trenches with their dead so that the alive went over their dead bodies and they began to fight against the Serbs with their bayonets, cutting and stabbing their enemies. The Serbian soldiers from the other trenches cried out to help Stevan. But there was no help, either because they could not help without their cavalry, or because Miloje Petrović did not allow it. When Stevan Sinđelić saw that the Ottoman troops had taken over the trench, he ran to the powder cave, took out his gun, and fired into the powder magazine. The ensuing explosion was so powerful that all of the surroundings were shaken, and the whole trench was caught in a cloud of dense smoke. Everyone that was in the trench was killed, as was everyone in the vicinity of it.
Three thousand Serbian revolutionaries, and more than double of that on the Ottoman side were killed on Čegar Hill.[2]
Afterwards, the Ottoman commander of Niš, Hursid Pasha, ordered that the heads of the killed Serbians were to be mounted on a Skull Tower to serve as a warning to whoever opposed the Ottoman Empire. In all, 952 skulls were included, with the skull of Sinđelić placed at the top.[1]
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