The impaling and death of Macedonian rebel leader Karposh on the stone bridge in Skopje marked the end of this heroic struggle for freedom by Karposh and his brave rebels. The aftermath of the failed Karposh Rebellion of 1689 was devastating for the northern regions of Macedonia. What followed was slaughter and mass-migration of the Macedonian population. A sad legacy of the failed rebellion, the repercussions of which are felt to this very day, is the opportunistic mass migration by Albanian newcomers into these regions.
I once read a gruesome story about how the unarmed civilian population, fearing Turkish reprisals, desperately made a run for it, heading north towards Vojvodina, following the example of the Great Serb Migration into the Hapsburg Monarchy. The bloodthirsty Tartars, who were assisting the Turks at the time, apparently caught up to the stragglers and set upon them without mercy. There was wholesale slaughter of a section of the Macedonian civilian population that didn’t make it north to Vojvodina with the rest of the Macedonians. Apparently, to this very day, there are macabre reminders of this slaughter, known locally as “kasapski livadi” i.e. “slaughter fields.”
After having arrived in Vojvodina, the surviving rebels and civilians were disappointed to realise that the ruling Austrians of Vojvodina were attempting to Germanise them so they decided to pack up and leave once more. This time they headed further north into Russia, what is now, Ukraine. Once there, they organised themselves into military units and entered the ranks of the Russian Imperial Army.
From 14th October 1741, the Russian Army had employed the services of four cavalry (Hussar) regiments that were made up of foreign nationals who had remained in Russia. These were Serbian, Moldavian, Hungarian and Georgian Hussar regiments. Under the orders of Russian Empress, Elisaveta Petrovna, three more Hussar regiments were formed in 1756:
•Zeltiy (Yellow)
•
Makedonskiy (Macedonian)
•Bolgarskiy (Bulgarian)
These three extra regiments were to compliment the existing four regiments. The following quote from Wikipedia’s Hussar page says it all.
“These regiments were enlisted, not conscripted as the rest of the Russian army, and were on a level between regular and irregular cavalry.
Hussars were recruited only from the nation indicated by the regiment’s name, i.e. these regiments were national units in the Russian service and all troops (including officers) were national and commands were given in the respective languages. Each regiment was supposed to have a fixed organization of 10 companies, each of about 100 men, but these regiments were recruited from different sources, so they were less than the indicated strength.
Documents of the national historical archives of Ukraine contain some very interesting and invaluable information about the bravery of the Macedonian Hussar Regiment. The soldiers of this regiment distinguished themselves time and again with their bravery and warrior spirit and were constantly used in the front lines, along side the equally brave Cossacks, to lead the charge into battle. The regiment was praised and commended by both Elisaveta Petrovna and Ekaterina II. Some officers from the Macedonian Regiment were even promoted to Generals in the Russian Army.
The stats on the Macedonian Regiment were 4000 men at arms who had their own specific seal, uniform, flag and coat of arms of a lion. The lion symbol of the coat of arms was subsequently replaced in 1776 by two crossing spears. The separate units making up the regiment also had their own unique flags.
Macedonian Wikipedia highlights the fact that the members of the Macedonian Regiment had a strong sense of Macedonian national identity and called themselves Macedonians. On arrival to Russia, they declared to officials that they are part of the Macedonian nation which is evident in the many documents of the period which are currently kept in the national historical archives of Ukraine in Kiev. See picture below of a document from this archive.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...vo_Ukraina.jpg
In this document you can clearly see that the members of the Macedonian regiment have been identified as having a Macedonian nationality. And this is dated
1756!!! 122 years before the birth of the modern Bulgarian state of 1878.
Naturally, Bulgarians are refuting this information. Not the existence of the documents. They’re irrefutable, but the actual sense of identity of the people who declared themselves as Macedonians. Again, they meant it in a regional sense, according to Bulgarians. They were really Bulgarians and not Macedonians. This argument falls to pieces for the Bulgarians for the simple fact that the Russian Empress, Elisaveta Petrovna, also oversaw the formation of a separate Bulgarian Regiment. If the Macedonians felt they were really Bulgarians, they would have joined the ranks of the Bulgarian Regiment and not the Macedonian Regiment.
09-26-2021, 05:02 AM
