In September 2010, Serbia will mark a significant anniversary: a century and a half since the death of Prince Miloš Obrenović. We announce the event in advance. So, Miloš died on 14/26. September 1860 in his 81st year. He was succeeded by his son Mihailo and, after the "Topčider Tragedy" in 1868, by his nephew Milan (grandson of Miloš's brother Jevrem, because Mihailo had no heir from his marriage), so that the dynasty was extinguished in the May Revolution in 1903 by the murder of King Alexander (Milan's son). .
The Obrenovićs ruled Serbia for 75 years (three years longer than the Karađorđevićs). The continuity of rule was interrupted only once (1842–1858), when Karađorđe's youngest son, Prince Aleksandar, sat on the throne of Serbia. In the first part of Obrenović's reign (1815–1842) and the beginning of the second (1858–1868), in addition to the founder of the dynasty, princes from Miloš's branch were on the throne, while in the period from 1868 to 1903, descendants of Miloš's brother Jevrem were on the throne, although Miloš had sixteen children.
RULER WITH THE MOST CHILDREN: We can claim with great certainty that of all the European rulers who ruled in the last two centuries, the Serbian Prince Miloš Obrenović had the most children: a total of sixteen - eight married and eight out of wedlock.
He married only once. He married Ljubica Vukomanović, who was eight years younger, and at the invitation of Miloš's half-brother Duke Milan, he was godfather to Karađorđe. When he got married in the spring of 1804, Miloš was 24 years old. As he himself said, with Ljubica he fathered "eight children, that is, four male and one female": Petar, Petrija, Jelisaveta (Savka), Ana, Milan, Mihailo and Teodoro. Four died as children, Petrija and Mihailo outlived both their parents, and Jelisaveta outlived her mother.
Petrija and Jelisaveta got married and gave birth to five children each, Milan died unmarried and childless at the age of twenty, while Mihailo had one son (Velimir), but from an extramarital (premarital) relationship.
Two of Miloš's sons were on the princely throne of Serbia: Milan in 1839 and Mihailo from 1839 to 1842 and from 1860 to 1868. When in 1830 Miloš acquired the hereditary princely dignity, then according to the rule of primogeniture, his older son Milan became the heir to the throne (Milos' first son Petar died as a child), while he came to the throne after his father's abdication on June 1, 1839. Unfortunately, the seriously ill Milan received the news of the princely dignity in bed; he died on the twenty-sixth day of his reign without signing any official act as ruler. Miloš's second son, Mihailo, did not live to old age either; he was killed by conspirators at the age of forty-five.
ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN: Miloš had eight illegitimate children with eight wives. We do not know that he entered into extramarital affairs during the First and Second Serbian Uprisings. The first such relationship he had was with the beautiful Petrija, the wife of Hadji-Prodan's brother Mihailo, whom he saved at the last moment from going into Turkish slavery, after the Turks captured Hadji-Prodan's entire family during the time of Hadji-Prodan's rebellion. Miloš brought Petrija to his home "to meet the princess" but, above all, to satisfy his passions.
Thus, at the beginning of 1819, Petrija gave birth to a daughter to Miloš, whom the lovers named Velika. By the time the first illegitimate child was born, Ljubica had given birth to four children for Miloš; son Peter and three daughters. As Petar died as a child (1814), pressure was put on Miloš to provide an heir. It was rumored that Ljubica could no longer give birth and that Petrija could give the prince an heir. But, remaining in another state, the princess gained the confidence to end her husband's infidelity. In March of the same year, after an insolent answer from Petrija, Ljubica reached for a gun and killed her husband's lover. Miloš mourned for Petrija for a long time, and he forgave Ljubica for the heinous act when he found out that she was carrying his child. Ljubica will give birth to Milan, the future prince, in September, but she will also take care of her husband's illegitimate daughter, whose mother she killed. Unfortunately, four years later, after a smallpox epidemic, Velika died - four days before the death of two-year-old Maria, the sixth child of Miloš and Ljubiča. Three months later, the princess will give birth to Mihailo, the future Serbian prince.
AFTER THE BIG ONE, SEVEN MORE: Miloš had another illegitimate child, Gavrilo or Maria, with Stanka, who almost escaped Petrija's fate. The princess's intention to put an end to her husband's infidelity with a weapon was thwarted, after a tip-off, by the prince's boyfriends. The princess was punished with beatings, and Miloš married Stanka. After her divorce, the lovers started meeting again, and the relationship lasted even when Miloš met Jelenka, a young Turkish woman who was in Milenko Stojković's harem until 1811.
Jelenka gave birth to Miloš's son Gavrilo in 1826 and thus only strengthened her position at the duke's court, which Princess Ljubica could no longer influence. Miloš appeared in public with Jelenka, which is why she was called the Little Lady. The sick Gavrilo did not live long - he died in 1828 before turning two years old. Until he married her (1835), Miloš maintained an intimate relationship with Jelenka, asking about her and occasionally sending gifts while he was in exile for two decades.
Miloš's fourth illegitimate child was his son Teodor, born most likely in Vienna in 1842. Teodoro's mother's name was Danica, who was named by Miloš himself after he bought her as a slave at the Constantinople market (13) as a 14 or 1835-year-old girl and brought her to Serbia. When he entered into an intimate relationship with the young Danica (around 1839), Miloš was already in his sixth decade, when his legitimate son, then eighteen-year-old Prince Mihailo, approached him about the inheritance (due to rumors that the aged Miloš would transfer his entire property to a small Theodore). It is also the only known case of the relationship between the prince's legitimate and illegitimate children (admittedly, in one direction). Mihailo received an assurance from his father that he was his eldest legitimate son, but also that he was obliged to take care of his father's other children. Teodor died in Vienna on May 31, 1846, Mihailo was freed from worries about inheritance, and Miloš married Danica to a Viennese merchant a year earlier with a rich dowry. Miloš did not attend the wedding, but he arrived at the feast with his new lover, Francisco Hittenberg.
By the end of 1846, Miloš would have two more illegitimate children: son Alexander Gustav and daughter Maria. A son was born to him by the aforementioned Franciska, and a daughter by Sidonia Reichel, young girls who worked as servants in Miloš's Viennese houses. He paid off both lovers, and we don't know what happened to the children.
The following year, in 1847, Miloš did not rest either. His daughter Maria Klara was born to him in early 1848 from his relationship with Maria Graf from Bečlijk. Apart from the fact that the mother received a lump sum from Miloš for her daughter's support and education, we have no other information about the two Marias.
Miloš had his last illegitimate child in 1857, when he was already 77 years old. His son Milan was born to another Maria, a beautiful Russian woman with whom he spent the last years of his exile in Bucharest. Milan did not live long either - he died in 1859, and the devoted Maria then moved to Serbia, where she was with Miloš until he died, on the Day of the Cross on September 26, 1860.
FOOLISH: There is no reliable information that Milivoje Petrović Blaznavac, general, minister of war, prime minister and first deputy, was Miloš's illegitimate son. It is true that his mother (we do not know her name) served at Miloš's court in Kragujevac, but it is only an assumption that she became pregnant with the prince and as such married Peter from Blaznava. Later, it will be up to Milivoj to pass this off as the truth in order to advance in the hierarchy of the state administration, which he will succeed in due to the circumstances. But when he died in 1873, at the request of Mrs. Tomanija (the widow of Miloš's brother Jevrem and then the oldest and most respected member of the Obrenović family), he was buried in the Rakovica monastery, in the tomb where several Obrenovićs rest.
Whether Blaznavac was Miloš's son remains to be investigated, but also that, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of Miloš the Great, he will receive his scientific biography.
(The author is a historian and curator of the History Museum of Serbia)
