Peter Tekeli
Imperial Russian Army general
Peter Tekeli (Russian: Пётр Авраамович Текели, romanized: Pyotr Avraamovich Tekeli; Serbian: Петар Поповић Текелија, romanized: Petar Popović Tekelija; Hungarian: Tököly-Popovics Péter; 1720–1792) was a Russian general-in-chief of Serb origin. He achieved the highest rank among the Serbs who served in the Imperial Russian Army.
Tekeli was born in a noble family of military tradition, whose men were officers of the Austrian army in the Military Frontier. Prior to his emigration to Russia in 1748, he fought as a young officer in the War of the Austrian Succession. Characterized by both courage and military cunning, he made a splendid career in Russia. He participated in the Seven Years' War, the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792. Under his command, the Zaporozhian Cossacks were disbanded and subjugated to the Imperial authority in 1775, without spilling a single drop of blood, for which he received the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky from Empress Catherine the Great. He retired in 1790, and died two years later in his mansion at Novomirgorod.
Family background and early career
The Tekeli family emigrated to the Kingdom of Hungary from the village of Tekija in eastern Serbia (then part of the Ottoman Empire), long before the Great Serb Migrations. Peter Tekeli was a grandson of Jovan Tekelija and a son of Ranko Tekeli.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Tekeli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.