Mihailo Ilić (major)

Mihailo Ilić or Major Ilić (Serbian: Михаило Илић; Jagodina, Principality of Serbia, 26 November 26 1845 - Javor, Principality of Serbia, 5 September 1876) was a Serbian officer, military writer, scientist and translator. He spoke German, Russian, and French and was a member of Serbian Learned Society. His works served as textbooks for military schools. He died in the fighting on Jankov vrh on Javor courageously., near Ivanjica in the First Serbian-Turkish War of 1876 referred to as Javorski rat. His grave is located at the Belgrade New Cemetery.

Biography

Mihailo Ilić was born 26 November 1845 in Jagodina to mother Jelica and father Nikola Ilić whose father Ilija was a close cousin of voivode Jakovljević.: Mihailo Ilić's ancestors are from the surrounding area Prokuplje. His father was a merchant and guild master shoemaking, company owner. He had his own house and shop in the Papudžija Bazaar (Shoe Bazaar). Mihailo was baptized in the Serbian Orthodox church in Jagodina. Five years later, in 1850, his brother Vladimir was born. Their uncle's brother was Major General Pavle Đorđević.

Education

He attended primary school in his hometown from 1852 to 1856. He was a good student, but extremely restless.After finishing primary school, despite the poor financial situation, in order for the children to continue their education, their parents sold their house in Jagodina and moved to Belgrade. There, Mihailo was enrolled in First Belgrade Gymnasium. As a son of poor parents, in a school mostly attended by children of wealthy parents, Mihalo became serious and devoted himself to study hard.

After finishing the fifth grade of high school, due to poor financial situation, and living in the time of the great national revival, when many educated young men dreamed of a military call-up and only a few months after National Assembly on the holy day of the Assumption, he enrolled in Artillery School of the Military Academy and became a cadet. He studied at this five-year semester school from 1861 to 1866. Attending the school at the time of the Čukur Fountain incident were classmates who would eventually reach high military positions. The teachers of the Artillery School were the most educated Serbian officers who graduated from there.

He studied at a very turbulent time when relations with the Turks were strained. After the events at Čukur Fountain, there were more bloody clashes. His father was among the first to be severely wounded in these conflicts, and he died from his wounds on 15 June 1862 ^ . After his father's death, Mihailo became the head of the family and had to support his mother and brother who was ill.

While still in school, he acquired several ranks. He was promoted to the rank of Corporal on 24 April 1864, then on 24 March 1864 he was promoted to sub-sergeant then to the rank of First sergeant and on 14 November 1865, he became Sergeant major. His classmate in the year he graduated was Radomir Putnik, the Serbian hero of the Great War as well as other future generals in the Serbian army.

Service

After graduating, he was assigned to various duties. He was the commander of the infantry, and then sent to the pioneer platoon in Belgrade as a platoon commander in the IV Field battery, the staff officer of the Užice headquarters, then the mine platoon, and then the adjutant of the Belgrade infantry brigade of the standing army. He was often sent across the border, on dangerous and confidential missions. In the summer of 1875, he was sent to inspect the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War, by order of the Ministry of War, and very soon after that, he was returned to the border of the Užice district, because of the Bosnian-Herzegovina uprising (1875–1877) and because he already knew the area quite well. From the Javor border, he reported to the Supreme Command on the movements of Turkish military formations, which were very frequent at the time, at the dawn of the first Serbian-Turkish war. During his service, he also progressed in rank. Thus, on 13 January 1870, he received the rank of lieutenant, and then in 1874, he was promoted to the rank of captain.

Family

He married 20-year-old Savka Piroćanac, the daughter of the Jagodina captain Stevan Nedeljković-Piroćanac and the sister of Milan Piroćanac on 30 May 1872 in Belgrade. The two of them had a daughter, Jelena, the following year. After his death, Savka got married again to another military man, Pavle Jurišić Šturm who died at the age of 32. After that, Jelena became a protégée of Queen Natalija Obrenović. Later, she married Lieutenant Milutin Mišković and gave birth to six children, two daughters and four sons who all graduated from the Military Academy, two of them died in the First World War. Jelena lived to very old age. She died in Belgrade in 1965.

Other interests

According to the testimonies of his contemporaries, he was highly esteemed in the Užice district, where he knew almost all the villages and was seriously committed to helping the locals. He also became active around the Užice reading room, at that time the center of cultural and social life in Užice, whose literary fund contained a few hundred books, as well as all daily newspapers of the Principality of Serbia.

He was especially interested in military literature: German, French and Russian, which he read regularly. He himself published his works, first in the then only, oldest Serbian military magazine Vojin (founded in 1864). In the period from 1867 to 1869, this magazine published a dozen of his articles, of which "Literacy in our Army" (1868) and "Something about the geographical structure of the Užice district" (1869) are particularly interesting. He later wrote for the science section of the magazine Otadzbina. In 1875 his two published articles "Landscape on the other side of Shara", a topographical account of military and passenger lines in which he described the trip to Thessaloniki and his impressions:

As much as I saw Turkish towns on the coast, they all made almost the same impression on me. When they look from the sea, going to them on a heavy merchant ship, there is nothing more beautiful in the world than this view: domes and minarets, some corners and verandas, they look especially wonderful. But when he enters the town itself, then with everything the opposite feeling overwhelms the passenger, who passes here for the first time. So it was with me in Thessaloniki.

and finally, he concluded:

There is no trace of the life of the one that Thessaloniki deserves for its position at sea, on a good port at the bottom of Suez and at the bottom of the richest valleys of the Balkan Peninsula. In Thessaloniki today, only after the commotion does it feel that it is in the middle of so many people and lives. Everything is left here for the future, just as this whole country has nothing but a glorious past and future, which must come fatally.

And the second article "Roads in southwestern Serbia, with one sketch" was written, as he himself says for the following reason:

Even if our country has always tried to develop its own paths, in this sense it is still far from being ready with that. But in this respect, our mountainous regions, with everything natural, are still the most scarce in good roads, and I have therefore undertaken the task of expounding my thoughts here on work well known to me; it probably won't be of any use.

He was referring to the Čačak and Užice districts. In the same year, 1875, he made a map of northeastern Herzegovina, while his report entitled"Morava Gorge between Ovčar and Kablar" was published in the journal of the Serbian Scientific Society Glasnik.

Serbian-Turkish war

As part of the preparations for the First Serbian-Turkish War, the greatest attention was paid to training armies for war, so that in April 1876, the War Council was formed in Belgrade. He was also in charge of preparing a plan for the development of initial operations, on the basis of which four armies were formed: Timok Division under the command of Colonel Milojko Lešjanin, Morava Division under General Chernyayev, Drina Division under the command of Ranko Alimpić and Ibar Division under the command of František Zach, while the supreme commander was Milan Obrenović, and the chief of staff, was Colonel Jovan Petrović. The Ibar army was to play an important strategic role: to penetrate from the starting positions on Javor towards Sjenica, Nova Varoš and Novi Pazar.

However, after twelve days of the war, it became clear that the Serbian army did not have much success. The main reason lay in the fact that Serbia was weaker than Turkey, in terms of weapons, number and training of the army. Also, the Serbian army had no experience, nor was it accustomed to discipline, it was not trained for fast marches, maneuvers, or assaults, it did not know how to protect itself from the enemy, and it easily left the occupied territory. There was a shortage of officers because those who were educated were mostly deployed in the headquarters, while the Russian officers, volunteers, did not know the language or the terrain well enough, so they made tactical mistakes. Volunteers came to Serbia, mostly from Russia, where public opinion was very willing to help the Serbian people. However, while the two brotherly states of Serbia and Montenegro were waging war against the Ottoman Empire, the emperors of Austria-Hungary and Russia met and discussed the outcome of this war conflict in the Balkans and agreed on how to divide the territories when the war ended.

As for the penetration of the Ibar army, General František Zach deployed it on a front 150 kilometres wide, to operate alone, without support. The Turks, on the other hand, had a very well-fortified defence here, which the Serbian army lacked cooperation between the Serbian and Montenegrin armies during the operations in the Raška area since the Montenegrin prince Nikola sent the majority of his army to Herzegovina to succeed. to expand its borders in Herzegovina and towards the central Adriatic, since it had already secured significant territorial gains in that area with the alliance agreement with Serbia.

The defeat was the Battle of Kalipolje, which took place on the holy day of Ivandan on 6 July 1876, in which a great clash took place for the first time. For Captain Ilić, that was the first baptism of fire, with the task of operating on the right bank of the Ibar. In three days, he managed to clean the Ibar gorge from Raška to Mitrovica. However, the main part of the army that was supposed to penetrate from Raška to Novi Pazar, under the lacklustre leadership of Ilija Čolak-Antić, failed to complete the task and retreated without engaging with the enemy, therefore Mihailo Ilić had to return to his starting position due to withdrawing of the main column, thus he remained alone in enemy-occupied territory. Owing to this failure, the commander of the Ibar army, General František Zach, who was responsible for the execution of the schedule, was replaced, and Lieutenant Colonel Ilija Čolak-Antić (father of Vojin Čolak-Antić) was appointed in his place, who was the oldest in rank after Frentišek Zach, and Mihailo Ilić for his steadfastness was promoted to major.

After the failure of the Serbian offensive on the Ibar front, the Turks quickly launched a counterattack to break through Javor, which was then occupied, through the Moravica valley, towards Čačak, into the valley of the West Morava and thus endangering the background of the main Serbian forces in the Morava Army. The commander of the Ibar Army, Lieutenant Colonel Ilija Čolak-Antić, understood the great Turkish counterattack on the Serbian positions on Javor as a certain defeat and, panicked, ordered the withdrawal. His staff was the first to retreat towards Kušići, which caused great confusion among the army and officers.

Thanks to the courage and skill of commanders such as Major Mihailo Ilić, Lieutenant Colonels Petar Borisavljević and Jevrem Vukosavljević, the Serbian army recovered and stopped the Turkish army in August, defending the border on the Javor Front and protecting the army's rear on the main battlefield. Ilić stood out especially in the battle of Pogled on 9 August 1876, which is why he was promoted to the rank of Major General on 14 August. After that, he went to Čačak on a short leave with his mother, and on his return, he became the commander of the Užice Second Brigade,which on September 3 was given the task of helping Jevrem Vukosavljević, the commander of the Arilje battalion, who he held the positions on Čemernica with difficulty. The bloody fight, which was fought until late at night, ended with the victory of the Serbian army.

After that, Ilić intended to use the mood of his soldiers and launch an attack on Javor. He divided them into two attack columns. The first, under the command of Captain Sima Mičin, was to attack and capture Vasilin vrh, the highest point of Javor, while the second column, led by himself, was to occupy Vasilin vrh. He also foresaw the participation of another auxiliary column, which would demonstratively attack Javor from the center, as well as the help of a Field battery. But this help did not arrive. Seeing that, he decided to leave anyway, and when he got up to call the soldiers to attack, he was hit by a bullet. The place where it happened is called "Ilić's Karst".

He died on 5 September 1876, as commander of the Užice Second Brigade.

His body was then transferred to Užice. He was originally buried in the cemetery on Tasmajdan in Belgrade, near Church of St. Mark in Belgrade, and after its construction belgrade New Cemetery, his grave was moved there. Between the two world wars, a obelisk was erected over the tomb with the inscription:

Đeneralštabnom majoru Mihailu Iliću – Javorskom junaku – Zahvalna otadžbina("To General Staff Major Mihailo Ilić" - The Hero of Javor - Grateful Fatherland).

In his honor

Milan Obrenović posthumously decorated him with the Order of the Cross of Takovo.

In Belgrade, Užice, Jagodina, Nova Varoš, Ivanjica and Valjevo have streets named after Major Ilić. Since 1962, Elementary school "Major Ilić" in the village of Kušići, near Ivanjica, bears the name of Major Ilić.

On Javor, where the Serbian-Turkish border used to be, on a hill above the former customs house, there is a monument to Major Ilić, erected in 1907. In addition to the monument, there is a Memorial cemetery on Javor commemorating the soldiers who died at Kalipolje.

See also

This is a list of all those who attended the Military Academy with Mihailo Ilić at the time of the Čukur česma incident in 1862:

• Radomir Putnik
• Jovan Petrović
• petar Borisavljević
• Milovan S. Pavlović
• Pavle Šafarik
• Stevan Velimirović
• Zivko Pavlović (general)
• Jovan Praporčetović
• Koka Milovanović
• Mihailo Srećković
• Jovan Mišković

Also, the other two heroes of Javor:

• Petar Borisavljević
• Jevrem Vukosavljević

References

• There is a translation from Mihailo Ilić's biography in Serbian Wikipedia

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