Battle of Mišar

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Battle of Mišar" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (March 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Serbian. (October 2017) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Serbian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Serbian Wikipedia article at [[:sr:Битка на Мишару]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|sr|Битка на Мишару}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Battle of Mišar
Part of the First Serbian uprising
The Battle of Mišar by Afanasij Scheloumoff
Date 13–15 August 1806 Location Mišar Ottoman Empire (now Serbia) 44°43′45″N 19°45′39″E / 44.7292°N 19.7608°E / 44.7292; 19.7608 Result Serbian victory[1]
Belligerents
Revolutionary Serbia	Ottoman Empire Bosnian militia Yamaks
Commanders and leaders
Karađorđe Petrović Jakov Nenadović	Sulejman-paša Skopljak Bey Kulenović † Sinan-paša Sijerčić † French artillery officers
Strength
7,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry	40,000
Casualties and losses
Around 500[1]	Over 6,000 killed[1]

The Battle of Mišar (Serbian: бој на Мишару) was fought between Serbian revolutionaries and an Ottoman army, it took place from 13 to 15 August 1806 during the First Serbian Uprising.

After repulsing an Ottoman force at Ivanovac, the year before, the Serbian insurgents under Karađorđe took strong position, entrenched in sconces on the field of Mišar Hill, near Šabac west of Belgrade. For two consecutive days they faced costly assault by an Ottoman Army and its Bosnian allies. On the third day, the Serbian cavalry attacked and defeated the Ottomans, the insurgents then conquered the citadels of Šabac and Belgrade.^[2]

The Ottoman army made its way towards occupied Belgrade. Karađorđe came to Mišar, and made his plans with the rest of the Serbian commanders. Karađorđe calculated the strategic position and decided that the sconce should be on top of Mišar Hill, on the field on the hill, between the river Sava, the wood and the villages Zabar, Jelenča and Mišar. The sconce was placed in a north-south direction with cannons placed at two of its corners. The fortress was made from earth in shape of a square with the northern side a little curved from the middle up to the gun position. It had a palisade as protection, and it had trenches around it. It had four cannons — one in a redan — and a place to put powder and ammunition.^[3] For four days, from Saturday to Thursday, there were smaller clashes with Ottoman scouts; the main engagement happened on Wednesday morning.^{[when?][which calendar?]}

The fighting began on Mišar Hill, with an opening charge of the Ottoman sipahi cavalry followed by a charge of their infantry units led by the Bosnian captain Mehmed-beg Kulenović of Zvornik. The Serbian rebels made a sconce in the form of a square, which measured 300 x 280 m. The rebel leader Karađorđe remained in the fortifications to keep the morale of the men. The fortification had trenches around it. The plan consisted of Karađorđe and the infantry remaining in the fortification, while the Serbian cavalry led by Luka Lazarević and Miloš Obrenović would wait for the moment to attack. The Serbian rebel cavalry, intended as a reserve, were situated close to the ditch near the village of Žabar. The Serbian sharpshooters were divided into two lines on the sconce parapet, and beside them were two lines of men who loaded the muskets in the trench beside the parapet.

The Serbian shooters and gunners mowed down the first line of cavalry and panic struck the Ottoman lines when the horsemen retreated into the infantry led by Kulenović. However, the Ottomans soon regrouped and engaged the Serbian infantry. At one point Serbian soldiers panicked and retreated to the sconce fortress, but Karađorđe took his sabre and ordered them to get back to their posts. Then he signaled for the charge of the Serbian cavalry from the opposite ends with two simultaneous cannon shots. Kulenović and the remaining Ottoman troops continued asymmetric efforts against the advancements of the Serbian rebels. Then Luka Lazarević charged with the cavalry, broke the Ottoman line, and the cavalry divided into two parts. One part charged boldly on Ottoman artillery. The first rank was killed, but the rest killed all the artillerymen, and arrived at the Ottoman headquarters, where chief-in-command Sulejman Pasha Skopljak was celebrating too soon. The fights at Mišar lasted several days with mutual losses, but the battle itself ended with the collapse of the Ottoman center and the exposure of the right and left columns. Kulenović and his Bosnian troops were killed on the battlefield. Some Serbian sources say that Kulenović was slain in a duel with Luka Lazarević, in which Luka was wounded. Other sources say that Kulenović was killed by riflemen who ambushed him after the duel. The remaining Ottoman Bosnian army fled in panic from the battlefield. Some crossed Drina, some were killed, and some crossed Sava.

During the battle, numerous Bosnian leaders, including beys and aghas, fell to the Serbian forces. The victory bolstered the morale of the lower class Christian population, within the Ottoman’s Eyelet of Bosnia, stoking their sense of identity and resistance.^[4]

A monument was erected in the village of Mišar commemorating the victory. Mehmed-beg Kulenović is the central figure in Filip Višnjić's epic poem Boj na Mišaru ("Battle of Mišar"), in which Mehmed-beg's wife waits for news to be brought to her from the battlefield by two ravens.

From 13 to 15 August 1806, a battle was fought between the Serbian insurgent army, led by Karađorđe, and the Turkish army, on the Mišar hill near Šabac. The victory was immortalized by Serbian guslar Filip Višnjić, with the epic poem Boj na Mišaru, and the Russian painter Afanasy Ivanovich Sheloumov, with a monumental composition of oil on canvas with the same name. The battle itself is indescribable in a few lines. From topography to strategy and number of celebrities. It is interesting that Serbian soldiers were recognized by their long hair tied in braids, while the Turks shaved their heads. Šafarik, Pop Luka Lazarević, Prota Mateja Nenadović, Lazar Mutap, Miloš Stojčević Pocerac, Cincar Janko Popović... are some of the names of this epic battle that Serbia won. The Turks tried to escape to Bosnia, but they were met there by Stojan Čupić and Miloš Pocerac, and Cincar Janko Popović and Lazar Mutap who chased them across the Sava where few of the enemy survived.

• 
  The monument in Mišar.
• 
  Mišar battle sconce earthwork 3D model.
• 
  Serbian position in the sconce redoubt.
• 
  The Mišar Hill where the battle occurred.

• Battle of Bratačića

• Jaques, T.; Showalter, D.E. (2007). Dictionary of Battles and Sieges: P–Z. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-33539-6.
• Leopold Ranke, Die Serbische Revolution pp. 86–87.
• Tošković, J.B. (1930) Odnosi između Bosne i Srbije 1805–1806 i boj na Mišaru. Subotica
• Protić, A. (1892). A history from the time of the Serbian leader Karađorđe. Spomenik (in Serbian).