Battle on Čegar Hill

At the beginning of the 19th century the crucial thing for the renewal of the Serbian state was the liberation of Niš from the Turks. The Serbian leader Karađorđe, in his talks with the representatives of Russia, as well as in his talks with Napoleon and the Turks, pointed out that Niš had to belong to Serbia. The Serbian insurrection army headed towards Niš in order to take it over and go ahead towards Old Serbia and Kosovo. Karađorđe's suggestion was to use the whole army to liberate Niš, while the rest of the commanders demanded to attack Niš from four different points. The latter was accepted. on April 27, 1809, the Serbian insurrection army with its 16,000 soldiers approached the villages of Kamenica, Gornji and Donji Matejevac, near the town of Niš with Miloje Petrović as Commander-in-chief. The Serbian soldiers made six trenches. The first and the biggest one was on Čegar Hill in charge of Duke Stevan Sinđelić. The second one was in the village Gornji Matejevac (near the newly rebuilt Latin Church) with Petar Dobrnjac as the commander. The third trench was North-east to Kamenica, with Duke Ilija Barjaktarević. The fourth trench was in Kamenica with Miloje Petrović as the chief commander. The fifth trench was in the mountain above Kamenica and under the control of Duke Pauljo Matejić, while the sixth one was in Donji Matejevac. Miloje Petrović's request to directly attack Niš was not accepted. The demand was to wait and to besiege the town. Meanwhile, the Turkish army was reinforced with 20,000 soldiers from Adrianople, Thessalonica, Vranje and Leskovac.

The Turks attacked the trench of Petar Dobrnjac on 30 May. The following day, on May 31, 1809, the most prominent trench on Čegar Hill, under the command of Stevan Sinđelić, was under attack. The battle lasted the whole day. As Milovan Kukić witnessed, "the Turks attacked five times, and the Serbs managed to fence off them five times. Each time their losses were great. Some of the Turks attacked, and some of them went ahead, and thus when they attacked for the sixth time they filled the trenches with their dead so that the alive went over their dead bodies and they began to fight against the Serbs with their rifles, cutting and sticking in their enemies with their sabers and knives. The Serbian soldiers from other trenches cried out to help Stevan. But there was no help," as Milovan Kukić said, "either because they could not help without their cavalry, or because Miloje Petrović did not allow it. Anyway, when Stevan Sinđelić saw that the Turks had took over the trench, he ran and took out his gun and fired into the powder magazine. The explosion was so strong that everything was shaking, and the whole trench was caught in a cloud of dense smoke." Three thousand Serbian soldiers were killed on Čegar Hill. Twice the Serbian toll died in the Turkish army.

At the end of the summer 1809, after the battle on Čegar Hill, the skulls of the killed Serbian soldiers were built in a tower, Skull Tower, on the way to Constantinople. It was ordered by Turkish pasha Hurshid, the brutal Turkish commander of the town of Niš at that time. Rectangular in its base, 3 meters high, Skull Tower was built out of 952 skulls of the Serbian heroes as a warning to the Serbian people. In 1833, on his way back from Constantinople, French poet Alphonse de Lamartine stopped for a moment in front of Skull Tower. He was shocked at the sight of it and wrote down in his book, later published as his travel accounts Journey to the East, the famous words: "My eyes and my heart greeted the remains of those brave men whose cut off heads made the corner stone of the independence of their homeland. May the Serbs keep this monument! It will always teach their children the value of the independence of a people, showing them the real price their fathers had to pay for it." In 1892, a chapel was built over the skulls, which now protects remaining 58 skulls. Skull Tower represents a unique monument of this kind in the world, and it faithfully depicts the true nature of the Turkish crimes against the Serbian people.

The place where Battle on Čegar Hill had happened was first marked on July 4, 1878 with the following inscription: "To Duke Stevan Sinđelić and his undead heroes who lost their lives on May 19, 1809, in their attack on Niš. Prince Milan M. Obrenović IV and his brave soldiers redeemed them on December 27, 1877 by liberating Niš." Today's monument in the shape of a tower - a symbol of the soldiers' fortification - was erected for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Niš from the Turks, on June 1, 1927. In 1938 a bronze bust of Stevan Sinđelić was positioned in the semi-circle niche of the monument.