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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.149.157.86 (talk) at 01:14, 28 June 2009 (The Turks built the tower of skulls. You do know that there were other Turks outside of the battle Not every SINGLE Turk alive at the time was at the battle and not EVERY SINGLE Turk died=common sense). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Battle of Čegar
Part of First Serbian uprising
Monument on Čegar, near Niš
Date May 31 1809 Location Čegar, Serbia Result Ottoman victory;both armies annihilated
Belligerents
Serbian revolutionaries	Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Stevan Sinđelić	Hurshid Pasha
Strength
~3,000 troops	~20.000 troops
Casualties and losses
most of the contingent	~12.000 troops

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 Kukic witnessed,

the Turks attacked five times, and the Serbs managed to repulse them five times. Each time their losses were great. Some of the Turks 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 rifles, cutting and sticking in their enemies with their sabers and knives. The Serbian soldiers from 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 Turks had taken over the trench, he ran to the powder cave, took out his gun, and fired into the powder magazine. The explosion was so strong that all the surroundings were shaken, and the whole trench was caught in a cloud of dense smoke.

Three thousand Serbian insurgents, and more than double of that on the Turkish side were killed on Čegar Hill.

After the defeat of the Serbian rebel army, the Turkish 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.

Notes

1. Judah, Tim, The Serbs, (Yale University Press, 2000), 279.
2. Judah, Tim, The Serbs, 279

See also

• Skull Tower

• Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2008
• Battles involving Serbia
• Battles of the Napoleonic Wars