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Battle Of Smilevo | |||||||
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Part of Ilinden Uprising | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
IMRO | Ottoman Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Dame Gruev Boris Sarafov | Unknown |
The Battle of Smilevo occurred on 5 August 1903, during the Ilinden Uprising against the Ottoman Empire, in the village of Smilevo, in what is today the southwest of North Macedonia. [1]
Smilevo has a mountainous terrain and a number of forests. The Ottoman forces were unfamiliar with the area and because of the layout or surroundings of the village this went in favour of the local resistance detachments. With the help of a revolutionary leader by the name of Dame Gruev, one of the founders of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), the people of the village decided to go ahead with the revolutionary ideas of Dame's work. The Smilevo Congress was also in the process of forming, with the assistance of a number of revolutionary leaders that worked together with Dame Gruev. Boris Sarafov and Atanas Lozanchev had decided to also join the Smilevo Congress to assist with the process of maintaining the set up of the Congress associated with Dame Gruev's workings. The battle saw a Turkish force, withdraw from the village after great losses on the Ottoman side. The rebels achieved a victory. Because of the number of battles lost near the area of Smilevo and Demir Hisar, the Turkish forces had named the area "the iron fortress".
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The Ilinden–Preobrazhenie Uprising, or simply the Ilinden Uprising, of August–October 1903, was an organized revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was prepared and carried out by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization, with the support of the Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee, which included mostly Bulgarian military personnel. The name of the uprising refers to Ilinden, a name for Elijah's day, and to Preobrazhenie which means Feast of the Transfiguration. Some historians describe the rebellion in the Serres revolutionary district as a separate uprising, calling it the Krastovden Uprising, because on September 14 the revolutionaries there also rebelled. The revolt lasted from the beginning of August to the end of October and covered a vast territory from the western Black Sea coast in the east to the shores of Lake Ohrid in the west.
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The 1896–1897 Macedonian Rebellion was a Greek rebellion, launched in 1896, and a guerrilla movement that took place in Macedonia in order to preserve the conscience and ready-mindedness of the Macedonian Greek populations, to create a rivalrous awe against the Bulgarians the demarcation of the Greek territorial claims in the Ottoman area and the creation of a distraction for the events of Crete. The movement was of Macedonian character, as the regiments invading Macedonia from Thessaly consisted primarily of Macedonian chieftains and fighters, most of whom were from Northwestern Macedonia. The initial impetus was given by the Ethniki Etaireia (Greek National Company), but then several Macedonian chieftains spontaneously and without coordination were involved in the events, while in some regions of Macedonia the events took the form of massive uprisings. The main rebels of the Macedonian Revolution of 1896 were the areas of Sanjak of Monastir (Florina, Bitola, Prespes), Sanjak of Korytsa (Kastoria), Sanjak of Servia, Sanjak of Salonica (Thessaloniki, Pieria, Imathia, Pella, Tikveš) and Sanjak of Serres (Serres, Upper Nevrokopi, Lower Nevrokopi).
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