Napoleon's praise for Karadjordje

Karadjordje Petrović has been and remained to be a symbol of the Serbian fight for its freedom against the occupation from the Turkish reign and oppression. The skills and warfare techniques of Serbian leader were recognized and admired by French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Between 1804 and 1813, Napoleon took over almost the whole Europe. This widely known French imperator has had help in these conquests in form of a well-armed and greatly numbered modern army, with whom he even reached Moscow.

Breaking the Uprising and Napoleon

By chance, the breaking of the First Serbian Uprising in 1813 was somewhat linked to Napoleon, since Russian allies who aided Serbs in their fighting had to abandon those notions because of Napoleon’s warfare and conquests of Russia. Weakened by these affairs, Serbian army has been defeated, Turks entered the Belgrade, and Karađorđe and other royals fled to Austria.

There are citations which claim that on his route of conquests, after the battle of Aspern-Essling near Vienna on the 22nd of May, 1809, Napoleon told his soldiers about a marshal from the Balkans, who had fought with his peasants against the almighty Ottoman empire.

“It is easy for me to be grand with our well-experienced army and vast financial means, but down in the south, in the Balkans, there is a marshal who had arisen from the simple peasant folk, and who gathered his sheepherders, and without sophisticated weapons with just the cherry cannons, shook the foundation of almighty Ottoman empire thus freeing his enslaved people. That is Karađorđe, to him goes all the glory of being the greatest marshal.”