tober the latter were again masters
of the whole country and in possession of Belgrade. Meanwhile Kara-George,
broken in health and unable to cope with the difficulties of the
situation, which demanded successful strategy both against the
overwhelming forces of the Turks in the field and against the intrigues of
his enemies at home, somewhat ignominiously fled across the river to
Semlin in Hungary, and was duly incarcerated by the Austrian authorities.
The news of Napoleon's defeat at Leipsic (October 1813) arrived just after
that of the re-occupation of Belgrade by the Turks, damped _feu-de-joie_
which they were firing at Constantinople, and made them rather more
conciliatory and lenient to the Serbian rebels. But this attitude did not
last long, and the Serbs soon had reason to make fresh efforts to regain
their short-lived liberty. The Congress of Vienna met in the autumn of
1814, and during its whole course Serbian emissaries gave the Russian
envoys no peace. But with the return of Napoleon to France in the spring
of 1815 and the break-up of the Congress, all that Russia could do was,
through its ambassador at Constantinople, to threaten invasion unless the
Turks left the Serbs alone. Nevertheless, conditions in Serbia became so
intolerable that another rebellion soon took shape, this time under
Milo[)s] Obrenovi['c]. This leader was no less patriotic than his rival,
Kara-George, but he was far more able and a consummate diplomat.
Kara-George had possessed indomitable courage, energy, and will-power, but
he could not temporize, and his arbitrary methods of enforcing discipline
and his ungovernable temper had made him many enemies. While the credit
for the first Serbian revolt (1804-13) undoubtedly belongs chiefly to him,
the second revolt owed its more lasting success to the skill of Milo[)s]
Obrenovi['c]. The fighting started at Takovo, the home of the Obrenovi['c]
family, in April 1815, and after many astonishing successes against the
Turks, including the capture of the towns of Rudnik, [)C]a[)c]ak,
Po[)z]arevac, and Kraljevo, was all over by July of the same year. The
Turks were ready with large armies in the west in Bosnia, and also south
of the Morava river, to continue the campaign and crush the rebellion, but
the news of the final defeat of Napoleon, and the knowledge that Russia
would soon have time again to devote attention to the Balkans, withheld
their appetites for revenge, and negotiations with the succe
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