Peter I of Serbia
Peter I was King of Serbia from 15 June 1903 to 1 December 1918. On 1 December 1918, he became King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and he held that title until his death three years later. Since he was the king of Serbia during a period of great Serbian military success, he was remembered by Serbians as King Peter the Liberator and also as the Old King.
Peter was the fifth child and third son of Alexander Karađorđević, Prince of Serbia, and his wife, Persida Nenadović. Prince Alexander was forced to abdicate in 1858, and Peter lived with his family in exile. He fought with the French Foreign Legion in the Franco-Prussian War. He joined as a volunteer under the alias Peter Mrkonjić in the Herzegovina uprising against the Ottoman Empire. In 1883, Prince Peter married Princess Ljubica, daughter of King Nicholas I of Montenegro. Ljubica became known as Princess Zorka upon her marriage. Peter and Zorka had five children: Helen, Milena, George, Alexander, and Andrew. After his father died in 1885, Peter became head of the Karađorđević dynasty.
After King Alexander I Obrenović was murdered during the May Coup of 1903, Peter Karađorđević became the new king of Serbia. As king, he advocated a constitutional setup for the country and was famous for his liberal politics. Peter's rule was marked with the great exercise of political liberties, freedom of the press, national, economical and cultural rise, and it is sometimes dubbed a "golden" or "Periclean age". Peter was the supreme commander of the Royal Serbian Army in the Balkan Wars. On 24 June 1914, the aging king proclaimed his son and heir Alexander as regent. In World War I, the King and his army retreated across the Principality of Albania. Peter died in 1921 aged 77.
Early life
Peter was born in Belgrade on. He was the fifth of ten children born to Prince Alexander Karađorđević and his influential consort, Persida Nenadović. He was the grandson of Karađorđe, the leader of the First Serbian Uprising and the founder of the Karađorđević dynasty. Peter was not born in the Royal Court, which was undergoing renovations at the time, but at the home of merchant Miša Anastasijević, whose daughter Sara was later married to Peter's first cousin Prince George Karađorđević. His birth was not met with much celebration because he was his parents' third son and his older brother Svetozar was the heir to the throne.His parents' oldest son, Aleksa, had died three years prior to Peter's birth, aged five, at which point Svetozar became heir. Peter did not become heir until Svetozar's death in 1847 at the age of six. Besides Belgrade, Peter spent much of his childhood in the town of Topola, from where the Karađorđević dynasty originated. He received his elementary education in Belgrade.
Exile
Post-secondary education and Franco-Prussian War
In 1858, just as the fourteen-year-old Peter was preparing to depart for Geneva to attend high school, his father was forced to abdicate the throne. The Karađorđević dynasty's rivals, the Obrenović dynasty, were reinstated, and an Obrenović prince, Mihailo, claimed the throne. The two dynasties had been vying for power since 1817, when Karađorđe was assassinated on the orders of Miloš Obrenović, the founder of the Obrenović dynasty.Peter left Geneva for Paris in 1861 and enrolled in the Collège Sainte-Barbe, located in the heart of the city's Latin Quarter. The following year, Peter enrolled in the Saint-Cyr, France's most prestigious military academy. He graduated from the academy in 1864, and continued living in Paris for some time thereafter. During this period, he pursued interests such as photography and painting, and read works of political philosophy, learning about liberalism, parliamentarism and democracy. In 1866, he entered the Higher Military School in Metz, which he attended until the following year. Two years later, his Serbian-language translation of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty was published.
At the outbreak of the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, Peter joined the French Foreign Legion under the pseudonym Petar Kara, together with relative Nikola Nikolajević. During his service, Peter held the rank of either lieutenant or second lieutenant, depending on the source, and fought with the 1st Foreign Regiment. He participated in the Second Battle of Orléans on 3–4 December 1870, as well as the Battle of Villersexel on 9 January 1871. He was awarded the Legion of Honour for his conduct during the two battles, but was captured by the Prussians shortly thereafter. He managed to escape captivity and returned to the front. Peter was involved in the Paris Commune in the spring of 1871, together with close friend and relative Vladimir Ljotić, though the exact nature of his involvement remains unknown.
Guerrilla activities
With the outbreak of the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875–78, which erupted after Bosnian Serb rebels in Nevesinje staged a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, Peter returned to the Balkans and fought the Ottomans in northwestern Bosnia.He adopted the nom de guerre of Petar Mrkonjić, and upon reaching the regions of Banija and Kordun in Austria-Hungary, took control of a guerrilla unit of about 200 men.
He arrived at Bosanska Dubica in August 1875, but received a cold welcome. He discovered that Prince Milan of Serbia was plotting to assassinate him fearing that Peter would attempt to wrest back the throne from the Obrenović dynasty. This revelation, combined with a string of battlefield defeats, compelled Peter and his followers to leave Bosnia and withdraw to Austria-Hungary.
They were subsequently detained by the Austro-Hungarian Army in the village of Bojna, near Glina. Peter escaped, returned to Bosnia and organized another band of rebels. Once again, his involvement in the fighting aroused suspicion in Belgrade, and by May 1876 his presence proved divisive.
The rebels split into three separate camps: one that supported Peter, another that supported Milan and a third that advocated Austro-Hungarian arbitration. Not wishing to cause further divisions among the rebels, Peter agreed to leave Bosnia. Prior to his departure, he wrote a letter to Milan explaining why he was leaving the battlefield and offering to make peace with the Obrenović dynasty.
Despite his attempts to make peace with Milan, accusations of treason continued to be levelled against Peter. He decided to travel to Kragujevac, the seat of the Royal Serbian Government, and address the National Assembly in an attempt to clear his name. In 1877, an anti-government uprising erupted in the Toplica region of southern Serbia, for which Milan blamed Peter and Karađorđević sympathizers. Peter was accused of treachery and collaboration with the Ottomans.
In the summer of 1878, he illegally crossed the border between Serbia and Austria-Hungary at Golubac via the Danube. Peter and his guide became lost in the Homolje mountains and were forced to hide from the authorities in the wilderness. Peter returned to Austria-Hungary shortly thereafter, but was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian police and interned at the Karađorđević family home in Bokszeg. In 1878, he was allowed to leave Bokszeg. He first went to Budapest and then to Paris. During this period, he was closely monitored by Austro-Hungarian spies, who took note of all his movements.
In January 1879, court proceedings were initiated against Peter and his closest companions in Smederevo. The plaintiff, Prince Milan, alleged that Peter and his followers had attempted to overthrow the Obrenović dynasty and place a Karađorđević on the throne. Peter and his companions were charged with high treason, for which the mandatory penalty was death. As he was living in Paris at the time of the proceedings, Peter was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by hanging.
Move to Cetinje
Peter moved to Cetinje in 1883, the capital of the second independent Serb state, Montenegro, with the intention of marrying the eldest daughter of Montenegro's ruler, Prince Nicholas I, whom he first met in Paris. Peter and Princess Ljubica of Montenegro were married in Cetinje in the summer of 1883. The marriage upset the region's volatile geopolitical balance, causing great unease in the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Serbian capitals. Belgrade perceived it as a sign of increasing closeness between the Petrović-Njegoš and Karađorđević dynasties. Relations between the two Serb states worsened, as did relations between Austria-Hungary and Russia, which had been vying for power in the Balkans for decades.When his father died in the spring of 1885, Peter became the head of the House of Karađorđević. Serbia, previously a principality, was declared a kingdom in 1882, and henceforth, the Serbian monarch used the title King of Serbia. Ljubica died during childbirth in March 1890. The couple had five children, three of whom reached adulthood: Helen, Milena, George, Alexander, and Andrew . Milena died in infancy and Andrew died along with his mother during childbirth.
Following his father's death, Peter's financial situation deteriorated and he became dependent on his father-in-law, as well as Russia and his brother George, for support. Following the Royal Serbian Army's rout in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, Peter and Nicholas devised a plan to invade Serbia and overthrow the Obrenović dynasty. At the last minute, Nicholas abandoned the idea. Peter felt betrayed by the Prince's decision to back out, leading to long lasting animosity. Nevertheless, he remained in Cetinje until 1894, devoting himself to his surviving children, who finished their primary education there.
In 1894, Peter moved to Geneva with his three children, where he was to remain until 1903. In 1899, Tsar Nicholas II invited Prince George and Prince Alexander, as well as Peter's nephew Paul, to attend the Corps des Pages military academy in Saint Petersburg free of charge. Due to his precarious financial situation, which prevented him from sending the boys to private schools in Switzerland, Peter accepted the Tsar's offer.
During his exile years, Peter, now a widower, proposed himself as a suitor to Princess Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen, niece of Wilhelm II, who was thirty-six years his junior, though this was likely a bid to gain support of the Kaiser for succeeding to the Serbian throne. Her mother, Princess Charlotte of Prussia declared that "for such a throne Feodora is far too good".