Native name Bozhidar Јankoviћ Role Military Commander Name Bozidar Jankovic | Commands held Serbian Third Army Rank General | |
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Battles/wars Serbo-Turkish warsSerbo-Bulgarian WarFirst Balkan War Similar People Radomir Putnik, Nikola I Petrovic‑Njegos, Georgi Todorov, Stepa Stepanovic, Panagiotis Danglis | ||
Božidar Janković (Serbian: Божидар Јанковић; 7 December 1849 – 7 July 1920) was a Serbian army general commander of the Serbian Third Army during the First Balkan War between the Balkan League and the Ottoman Empire.
He graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff School. He became State Secretary of Military Matters of Serbia in 1902. As President of the "National Defence", he participated in the Chetnik fighting for Macedonia.
In the Balkan wars he commanded the Third Army, which occupied Kosovo and carried out the occupation of Albania. When according to the testimony of Archbishop Lazarus of Skopje General Jankovic understood that the Albanian tribes of the forest would not allow Serbian troops to continue advancing towards the Adriatic Sea, "he declared them enemies of humanity who should be killed" [1]. Viennese journalist Leo Freundlich said that Jankovic commanded troops against the Albanians to act with special vigor. [2] According to some sources, the army massacred the population, men, women and children, and burnt 27 villages in the forest. [1] [2] The Daily Telegraph at the time wrote about the "atrocities committed by the troops of General Jankovic." [2]
In World War I he was the Chief of Staff of the Montenegrin Supreme Command until June 1915 and a delegate of the Serbian Supreme Command at the Montenegrin Supreme Command.
General Jankovic was killed in 1920 by members of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization [3].
His son Milojko B. Jankovic (1884 - 1973) was the army general in the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Janković died on 7 July 1920 in the town of Herceg Novi. The town of Elez Han in Kosovo was named 'Đeneral Janković' after him.