After Habsburg troops captured parts of Serbia from the Ottoman Empire during the Great Turkish War, Branković attempted to restore the medieval Serbian state with him as its hereditary ruler.

Đorđe Branković was born in 1645 in the town of Ineu (Serbian: Jenopolje) in Arad County, at the western border of the Principality of Transylvania, which was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.

[2][3] Đorđe, who was the youngest of Jovan Branković's four sons, lost his father and two brothers to the plague when he was less than ten years old.

The metropolitan planned a diplomatic and political career for his younger brother, who learned Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, and Latin.

In 1663, during the government of Prince Michael I Apafi, Đorđe was employed as dragoman for the kapı kâhyası (agent) representing the ruler of Transylvania at the Ottoman Porte.

The metropolitan had an audience with Tsar Alexis, and informed him that the Orthodox Serbs, Bulgarians, and Wallachians were ready to liberate themselves from the Turks, with Russia's military help.

[11] After his release from prison, Branković left Transylvania and moved to Bucharest, the capital of Wallachia, another vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.

The Serbian Patriarch wrote his letter after Branković informed him through an emissary about Cantacuzino's intention to contact the tsar.

[16] At the end of May 1688, Cantacuzino sent Đorđe Branković and two more emissaries to Emperor Leopold, to relate his support for the Christian fight against the Turks.

Leopold's counsellors regarded that Branković could be used to motivate the Serbs south of the Danube and Sava Rivers to join the Imperial Army after its deeper advances into the Ottoman Empire.

With his help, he gathered 800 armed men, with whom he went to the town of Orșova on the left bank of the Danube, across the area of Kladovo in eastern Serbia.

On 12 June 1689, Đorđe proclaimed his alleged subjects, the "peoples of eastern and northern Illyria, Thrace, Moesia, and other countries", calling them to rise against the Turks.

[22] Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, who was in command of the Habsburg troops fighting in Serbia, gathered information on Branković's activities, and he concluded that they were against the interests of the Empire.

[23] On 24  September, Louis William captured Niš with the help of Serb insurgents under Pavle Nestorović Deak, and then he returned toward the Danube.

[26] They intended to take Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Bulgaria from the Ottomans, and to annex these lands to the Kingdom of Hungary as part of their empire.

[27][25] By the end of 1690, the Ottomans recaptured Serbia, and many Serbs, including Patriarch Arsenije III, emigrated to the Habsburg-held southern Hungary.

[36] While he resided in Bucharest, Branković wrote Istoriile domnilor Ţării Româneşti, a world history in the Romanian language with a special emphasis on Wallachia, Moldavia, and Hungary.

[37] During his captivity in Vienna and Cheb, Branković composed his main work—Slavo-Serbian Chronicles in five volumes—written in the Serbian recension of the Church Slavonic language (Serbo-Slavonic).

[42] In total, Branković wrote 5 volumes of 2681 pages of chronicles which are the first effort to distance history writing from medieval hagiography and similar styles in Serbian and other South Slavic historiography.