Draft:Luka Vukalovic

Luka Vukalović (Bogojević Selo, 18 October 1823 - Saltakča, Odesa, 6 July 1873) was the leader of the Serbian uprising in Herzegovina from 1852 to 1862.

Biography

Vukalović learned the gunner's trade in Trebinje and practiced it for some time in Herceg Novi. At the time of Omer Pasha's campaign against Montenegro, he returned to his native region in 1852, where he was elected a tribal leader and captain. When, in March 1852, Omer Pasha ordered the confiscation of weapons from the Raja (that is people) of Herzegovina, the regions where Vukalović was the head resisted adamantly.

The resistance against the handing over of weapons led to minor conflicts between the Herzegovinians and the Turks, which meant an introduction to the uprising, behind which Vukalović stood from the beginning.

The uprising took place in the winter of 1852/53 when the people of Grahovo, Banjan and Drobnjaci refused to pay the third due to the Turks. As there was also an action by the Turks against Montenegro, the Eastern Herzegovina tribes fought alongside the Montenegrins. Although there were no major uprising actions in the period from 1853 to 1857, the uprising did not subside. Austria obviously hindered Luka Vukalović's action, knowing that Montenegro was helping it, and at the same time it monitored the work of French consular representatives.

The uprising flared up in December 1857, when Prince Danilo began to support the insurgents, outraged at the Porte because of her statement at the Paris Congress in 1856 that she considered Montenegro part of her territory.

After the battle on Grahovac on 1 May 1858, when the Montenegrins and the Herzegovinian insurgents defeated the Turks, Prince Danilo appointed Vukalović as duke of Zubac, Kruševica, Dračevica and Sutorina, where he established a kind of autonomous administration.

Forced by that defeat to yield, the Porte established a demarcation with Montenegro, thereby recognizing the independence of Montenegro. As a large part of eastern Herzegovina, except for Grahovo, a part of Banjan, Drobnjak, Župa and Nikšići Rudin, still remained under Turkish rule, Vukalović continued the insurrectionary action.

This resonated strongly in Bosnia, especially in the large-scale riots in Bosanska Krajina and Posavina in 1858. Fearing that the uprising would not spread to its territory, Austria began to interfere with Vukalović to an even greater extent, helping in various ways and by itself to the Turks.

In his demands, Vukalović did not limit himself only to solving the economic problems of the Herzegovinian Raj, but gave the uprising the stamp of a struggle for national liberation, demanding that Herzegovina be annexed to Montenegro.

Such a character of the uprising aroused the interest of the European great powers, whose consular representatives worked to make Vukalović submit to the Turkish authorities. Vukalović continued the fight against the Turks even after the violent death of Prince Danilo (1860), encouraged by examples of the struggle for unification led by Garibaldi in Italy.

From 1861, Omer Pasha tried to kill the uprising with various promises and concessions, but he was unsuccessful. But when, after the defeat in the war with Turkey in August 1862, Montenegro committed in writing that it would no longer help the insurgents in Herzegovina, Vukalović, considering that the local people had been left in the lurch, entered into a written agreement with Omer Pasha, who promised amnesty to all insurgents. Omer Pasha promised Vukalović that he would make him duke of Zubac, Kruševica, Dragačevica and Sutorina, but he did not do that, instead appointing him as a Bimbash to 500 policemen who were tasked with keeping order and peace on the border.

When he saw that the Turks did not fulfill the promises made to the people regarding the relief of feudal duties and the reduction of taxes, he tried in 1865 to start an uprising once again, but without any support from the outside, he failed.

After that, he left his homeland and moved to Russia, where he died in 1873

The commemoration of Duke Luka Vukalović and the battle of the Serbs with the Turks are described in the poem of Duke Mirko Petrović Njegoš "Battle on the Teeth" (Junački Spomenik collection, Cetinje, 1864).