Petar II Petrović-Njegoš
Petar II Petrović-Njegoš was born Radivoje "Rade" Petrović on in the mountain village of Njeguši, near Cetinje. His father, Tomislav "Tomo" Petrović (b. 1762–63), was a member of the Petrović clan of the Njeguši tribe of Katuni "nahiya". Njegoš's mother, Ivana Proroković, hailed from the hamlet of Mali Zalaz and was the daughter of Njeguši captain Lazo Proroković. There is no reliable information about her exact year of birth, but it is believed that she was about ten years younger than her husband. Tomo and Ivana had five children; their eldest son was Petar ("Pero"), Rade was their middle son and Jovan ("Joko") was their youngest. The couple's daughters were named Marija and Stana; Marija was married to a Montenegrin chieftain named Andrija Perović, the "serdar" (count) of Cuce, while Stana was married to Filip Đurašković, the "serdar" of Rijeka Crnojevića.
Smail-aga Čengić
In 1836, on Montenegro's northern border with Herzegovina, Serb tribesmen around the town of Grahovo, who were still feudatories of the Muslim ruler of Herzegovina, refused to pay the "haraç" (tax for non-Muslims). Recognizing the need for outside assistance, the tribesmen declared that they were subjects of Petar II Petrović Njegoš and thus invoked the support of Montenegro. Determined to crush this insubordination, Ali-paša Rizvanbegović, the vizier of Mostar, launched an assault against Grahovo at the beginning of August 1836. When the town fell to the Ottomans, the vizier ordered his forces to seize captives and to burn the town to the ground. As honor demanded, the Montenegrins, under the command of Njegoš's brother Joko and eight close kinsmen, gathered several hundred men to launch a counter-attack in an attempt to rescue the captives. Although initially successful in rescuing the local clan leader and his followers, the Montenegrins were quickly overrun by the cavalry of feared Ottoman commander Smail-aga Čengić while they skirmished with the combined forces of Rizvanbegović and Ali-paša Resulbegović of Trebinje. In total, nine members of the Petrović-Njegoš clan perished in the battle, and it is believed that Smail-aga personally killed Njegoš's teenage brother, Joko. During the confrontation, the teenager was hacked to death by the Ottomans along with forty other warriors. Čengić had Joko's severed limbs placed on display.