Karađorđe

Born into poverty in Ottoman Serbia in 1768, Đorđe Petrović fought for the Habsburgs against the Turks in the late 1780s, fled when the Austrians lost, and returned years later to trade livestock. In February 1804, after renegade janissaries slaughtered local chiefs, surviving Serbs elected him to lead an uprising - within months his forces had crushed the rogue faction, but the Sultan read the rebellion as a bid for independence and sent armies south. Karađorđe's fighters took Belgrade and other towns by 1806, expelled their Muslim populations, and held out with Russian backing until Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia left them exposed. The Ottomans rolled back the gains; he fled in October 1813 and spent years shuttling between Austrian detention and Russian exile, joining a Greek conspiracy for a wider Balkan revolt. He slipped back into Serbia in July 1817, but Miloš Obrenović - another rebel leader who'd won concessions from the Ottomans - had him killed within days, igniting a dynastic blood feud that would seize the Serbian throne for generations.