Draft:Lazar Mutap

Lazar Mutap-Čačanin (Serbian Cyrillic: Лазар Мутап-Чачанин; Buđevo, Ottoman Empire, c. 1775 - Gornja Trepča, Revolutionary Serbia, 1815) was a Serbian duke (voivode) who later distinguished himself in the service of Karađorđe and Obrenović.He is mentioned in Serbian folk songs memorializing the Liberation of Serbia.

Biography

Lazar Mutap-Čačanin (Ćušajić) was born in the village of Buđevo near Sjenica, on the Pešter plateau under the name Lazar Ćušajić. He was a participant in the First Serbian Uprising as the Duke of Morava.

At the beginning of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, together with his brother, in the village of Buđevo, he burned alive Ganić, the Turkish commander along with his 20 Turkish policemen (all Serb converts) who arrogantly forced Lazar's family to host them and spend the night in his log house. Fearing reprisal, he moved to the village of Prislonica, near Čačak, and his brother later became a Turk, a Serb-convert, with a reputation as a cruel killer of Orthodox Serbs. After settling in the vicinity of Čačak, he was nicknamed Čačanin (man from Čaċak), an erroneous belief that he was from the Čačak region prevails to this day, when in fact he came from the vicinity of Sjenica, the village of Buđevo. Before the First Serbian Uprising, Lazar was engaged in the craft of Mutavdžija. He got the nickname Mutap after the trade he did.

The first Serbian uprising

When the uprising broke out, he was one of the first to join the ranks of the elders of the Rudnik Nahija. He was the first buljukbaša with Duke Milan Obrenović in the Battle of Čokešina. In the first year of the uprising, he was given the greatest credit for the conquest of Čačak.

During the uprising, he participated in the battles against Turkey from the Drina River to Deligrad. In 1805, he fought for the liberation of Karanovac and Užice, and a year later he distinguished himself in the battles on the Drina and Mišar.

In the critical year of 1809, he participated in Karađorđe's offensive against the Sandžak of Novi Pazar, fighting in the area of ​​Prijepolje and Sjenica, and the following year he was again on the Drina in the battles near Bradić and Loznica. When, together with Karađorđe, he temporarily liberated Sjenica in May 1809, and after the battle on Suhodol briefly liberated Pešter, he was drawn by his desire to come to his village of Buđevo on Pešteri where to host Karađorđe there. Preparing to spend the night in Ćušajić's house in Buđevo, Karađorđe jokingly said to Lazar: "Somewhere, Lazar, will you set me on fire like Ganić if I spend the night here?"

Karađorđe said about the battle of Loznica that it lasted eight hours of continuous wrestling between Serbs and Turks, and the entire two hours were clashes with bare sabers, and that such a battle had never happened in Serbia until then. In those battles on the Drina, Laza Mutap was wounded in the hand (1810), and a year after that, Karađorđe proclaimed him duke.

In the last years of the First Serbian Uprising (1813), Mutap fought in Deligrad and Morava. He and his army were first in the trenches on Mozgov, where the insurgents were disastrously defeated.

More than 2,000 Serbs died there, and the defeat forced Mutap and Vujica Vulićević to leave the trenches and retreat to Deligrad. When Karađorđe found out about it, he told them from the Drina battlefield that it would be better for them all to die, than to leave the trenches.

Unlike many Serbian uprising leaders, Mutap remained in Serbia after the collapse of the uprising.

Second Serbian uprising

As a sincere associate of Miloš Obrenović, Lazar Mutap was in the closest circle of people who organized and initiated the Second Serbian Uprising. Lazar participated in two secret meetings of the people's champions in the village of Rudovci, in the house of Pop Ranko, in the dense forest under Milićevo brdo and Vreoci. It was then that a decision was made to respond to the Turkish atrocities with weapons. It only took a year and Miloš Obrenović launched the Second Serbian Uprising at the Takovo Meeting.

Rudnička, Čačanska and Kragujevac nahijes, with support on the Rudnik massif, formed the territorial basis of the uprising. The Battle of Ljubić was the most decisive one.

Injury and death

After defeating the Turks at Ljubić, where Karađorđe's standard-bearer Tanasko Rajić was also killed, the Turks suffered a heavy defeat in further battles in the area of ​​Čačak, during which Imšir Pasha was also killed on the Morava. Lazar Mutap also died in that battle in 1815, attacking the trenches where the Turks were around the Čačan mosque. Mutap's forces were overpowered by the mounted Turks, but what happened was that the Turkish soldiers, who were retreating from Konjević, retreated to Čačak, directly behind Mutap, and pressed him there between two fires. Mutap was wounded and from there he went to his village Prislonica, and then to Gornja Trepča, where he soon succumbed to his injuries.

He was originally buried in Gornja Trepča, but years later his remains were transferred to the Vujan Monastery, where his ducal banner is still kept.

After the capture of Čačak, the insurgents started a violent pursuit of the Turks who were heading towards the Sandjak of Novi Pazar. Many Turks perished in Jelica mountain in that retreat, and the rest became victims of the Hajduks of Stari Vlah.

After this defeat, the insurgents held a meeting and said that duke Lazar Mutap was avenged.

References

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/sr/%D0%9B%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%80_%D0%9C%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BF