STEVAN SINĐELIĆ - AN EXPLOSION FOR ETERNAL GLORY

BIJELJINA, MAY 30 /SRNA/ - The Duke of Resava, Stevan Sinđelić, died on May 31, 1809, by firing a shot from his flintlock pistol into the ammunition depot in the trench on the Čegar hill near Niš, at the height of the battle with the numerically superior Turks in the First Serbian Uprising.

The explosion blew the trench into the air, killing both the defenders and the Turks who had stormed the fortification. Sinđelić participated in all the battles in the Pomoravlje region since the beginning of the uprising in 1804 and distinguished himself in the battles at Ivankovac in 1805, when he received the rank of Duke /VoJvoda/ for his bravery, as well as at Deligrad in 1806 under the command of Petar Dobrnjac. In May 1809, Sinđelić, along with 3,000 men from Resava, joined the rebels who intended to liberate Niš. At Čegar, he was in the most exposed of the six Serbian trenches, and the commander of the Niš Fortress, Khurshid Pasha, directed the attack at him, but the rebels repelled multiple Turkish assaults. When he realized that the thinned-out defenders could not resist the Turkish force, he ignited the ammunition depot. After the battle, in order to intimidate the Serbs, the Pasha ordered a tower to be built from the skulls of the fallen rebels, which became known as the Skull Tower /Ćele-kula/. Originally, there were 952 skulls built into it, while today, only a few dozen remain.