Voivode Stoil

Stoil Voyvoda, whose real name was Stoil Ivanov Uchkov, was a Bulgarian revolutionary born in 1841 or 1842 in the village of Endzhekyoy. Between 1864 and 1873 he worked as a shepherd in Dobrudzha, then returned to his native village. There he formed a small hajduk detachment in Bashovska Forest, carrying out raids towards Varna and Balchik.

In 1875, after the failure of his activities in Bulgaria, he emigrated to Giurgiu, Romania, where he established contact with revolutionary emigrants. During the April Uprising in 1876, he was appointed assistant revolutionary organiser to Ilarion Dragostinov and voivode of a detachment in the Second Sliven Revolutionary District.

Supported by other revolutionaries such as Kondyo Kavrakov and Mihail Gadzhalov, Stoil Voyvoda established a camp in the Balkan Mountains at Kushbunar. This camp became a gathering point and operational base for the detachments being formed.

During the April Uprising, Petar Topalov, a Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee activist, arrived from Wallachia and seriously harmed the uprising by persuading the Sliven revolutionaries to wait for Tanyo Stoyanov's detachment from Wallachia. This led many activists to abandon the uprising. To prevent the cause from failing, Ilarion Dragostinov and Georgi Obretenov decided to launch the revolt immediately. Stoil Voyvoda and his detachment joined the detachments of Dragostinov and Obretenov after the uprising began.

Stoil Voyvoda and his band fought fierce battles against the Turks. On 10 May the detachment fought near the village of Neykovo in the Kotel district, where Stoil Voyvoda himself was wounded and the standard-bearer Stefan Sertkostov was killed. After being wounded, Stoil Voyvoda led the remaining fighters and continued participating in the uprising. On 13 May, however, he was captured near the village of Binkos by Turkish pursuit forces. Because his wounds prevented him from walking, he was beheaded, and his head was carried on a stake to the village of Bliznets.