Circular silver medal with laterally-pierced loop for ribbon suspension; the face with St George on horseback, a sword in his raised right hand, the dragon beneath the feet of his horse, the arms of Serbia below, circumscribed ‘СВЕТИ ЂОРЂЕ БУДИ СРБУ И ДАЉЕ УГПЕД БРАНИОЦА ПРАВДЕ И ИСТИНЕ’ (Saint George be you always renowned defender of justice and truth for the Serbs), signed in script to either side of the arms of Serbia; the reverse with an allegory of the Maiden of Kosovo offering red wine to the dying knight Pavle Orlović, dated ‘1912’ on a radiant field below, circumscribed ‘СЛАВА ОСВЕТНИЦИМА КОСОВА ПОМОЗИМО ИЗНЕМОГЛОГ РАТНИКА’ (Glory to the Avengers of Kosovo. Give aid to the helpless warrior); on probably original ribbon with dark stain. The medal was issued to commemorate the victory of the alliance of Balkan states over Ottoman Turkey in the First Balkan War of 1912-1913 and, in particular, the Serbian recovery of Kosovo, the scene in 1389 of the crucial battle won by the Ottoman Turks that consigned the Serbs to 500 years of Turkish rule. The legendary Maiden of Kosovo appears in an epic Serbian poem, tending to the wounded on the morning after the first Battle of Kosovo, bathing the wounds of the mortally wounded Pavle Orlović and offering him red wine and bread in sacrament. A monumental painting by the great Serbian artist Uroš Predić (1857-1953) of the scene shown on the reverse of the medal hangs in the National Museum, Belgrade. This medal shows the Maiden tending to a soldier in Serbian army uniform of 1912 with a rifle, lying on the body of a dead Ottoman soldier, a broken field gun to the right and a broken limber to the left. The medal is known but, as far as our research has discovered, undocumented and is very rare.
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