The Kingdom of Croatia was part of the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, but was subject to direct Imperial Austrian rule for significant periods of time, including its final years. Its capital was Zagreb. It was also a part of the lands of the Habsburg monarchy from 1527, following the Election in Cetin, and the Austrian Empire from 1804 to 1867.
The Kingdom of Croatia had large territorial losses in wars with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. Until the 18th century, the kingdom included only a small north-western part of present-day Croatia around Zagreb, and a small strip of coastland around Rijeka, that were not part of the Ottoman Empire or part of the Croatian Military Frontier. Between 1744 and 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia included a subordinate autonomous kingdom, the Kingdom of Slavonia. The territory of the Slavonian kingdom was recovered from the Ottoman Empire, and was subsequently part of the Military Frontier for a short period. In 1744, these territories were organized as the Kingdom of Slavonia and included within the Kingdom of Croatia as an autonomous part. In 1868, they were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia.
History and government
Habsburg rule
Following the fall of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács, in 1527 the Croatian and Hungarian nobles needed to decide on a new king. The bulk of the Croatian nobility convened the Croatian Parliament in Cetin and chose to join the Habsburg monarchy under the Austrian king Ferdinand I of Habsburg. Some nobles dissented and supported John Zápolya, but the Habsburg option fully prevailed in 1540, when John Zápolya died.
Territory recovered by the Austrians from the Ottoman Empire was formed in 1745 as the Kingdom of Slavonia, subordinate to the Croatian Kingdom. In 1804 the Habsburg monarchy became the Austrian Empire which annexed the Venetian Republic in 1814 and established the Kingdom of Dalmatia. After the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (by which the Austrian Empire became the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement (Nagodba) of 1868, the Kingdom of Croatia and Kingdom of Slavonia were joined to create the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia within the Hungarian part of the empire, while the Kingdom of Dalmatia remained a crown land in the Austrian part of the empire.
Croatian-Ottoman Wars
The change of leadership was far from a solution to the war with the Ottomans, in fact, the Ottoman Empire gradually expanded in the 16th century to include most of Slavonia, western Bosnia and Lika. After many battles against the Turkish invaders in which Croatian troops participated (Battle of Gorjani, Siege of Klis, Siege of Krupa, Battle of Belaj, Siege of Kőszeg, Battle of Otočac etc.), Croatian territory under Habsburg rule was 25 years later reduced to about 20,000 km2 (7,700 sq mi). In 1558, the parliaments of Croatia and Slavonia were united after many centuries into one. The centre of the Croatian state moved northward from coastal Dalmatia, as these lands were conquered by the Ottomans. The town of Zagreb gained importance, as did nearby Varaždin.
Taking advantage of the growing conflict between King Sigismund II of Poland and Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent started his sixth raid of Hungary in 1565 with 100,000 troops. They successfully progressed northwards until 1566 when they took a small detour to capture the outpost of Siget (Szigetvár) which they failed to capture ten years previously. The small fort was defended by Count Nikola IV Zrinski and 2,300–3,000 men. They were able to hold their ground for a month, and decimated the Ottoman army before being wiped out themselves. This siege, now known as the Battle of Szigetvár, bought enough time to allow Austrian troops to regroup before the Ottomans could reach Vienna.
By orders of the king in 1553 and 1578, large areas of Croatia and Slavonia adjacent to the Ottoman Empire were carved out into the Military Frontier (Vojna krajina or Vojna granica) and ruled directly from Vienna's military headquarters. Due to the dangerous proximity to the Ottoman armies, the area became rather deserted, so Austria encouraged the settlement of Serbs, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks and Rusyns/Ukrainians and other Slavs in the Military Frontier, creating an ethnic patchwork.
The negative effects of feudalism escalated in 1573 when the peasants in northern Croatia and Slovenia rebelled against their feudal lords over various injustices such as unreasonable taxation or abuse of women in the Croatian and Slovenian peasant revolt. Matija Gubec and other leaders of the mutiny raised peasants to arms in over sixty fiefs throughout the country in January 1573, but their uprising was crushed by early February. Matija Gubec and thousands of others were publicly executed shortly thereafter, in a rather brutal manner in order to set an example for others.
After the Bihać fort finally fell to the army of the Bosnian pasha Hasan Pasha Predojević in 1592, only small parts of Croatia remained unconquered. The remaining 16,800 km2 (6,500 sq mi) where around 400,000 inhabitants lived were referred to as the "remnants of remnants of the once great and renowned Kingdom of Croatia" (Latin: reliquiae reliquiarum olim magni et inclyti regni Croatiae).
The Revived Croatia
By 1699, the Ottoman Empire was driven out of Ottoman Hungary and Croatia, throughout the course of Great Turkish War, and Austria brought the territory back under central control.
The Enlightened Absolutism Period
Croatia was one of the crown lands that supported Emperor Charles VI's Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and supported Empress Maria Theresa in the War of the Austrian Succession of 1741–48 and the Croatian Parliament signed their own Pragmatic Sanction of 1712. Subsequently, the empress made significant contributions to Croatian matters, by making several reforms in the administrative control of the Military Frontier, the feudal and tax system. In 1767 she founded the Croatian Royal Council (Croatian: Hrvatsko kraljevinsko vijeće) as royal government of Croatia and Slavonia, with its seat in Varaždin, later in Zagreb, presided by the ban, but it was abolished in 1779 when Croatia was relegated to just one seat in the governing council of Hungary (the Royal Hungarian Council of Lieutenancy, also known as the Hungarian Vice-regency Council, headed by the palatine), held by the ban of Croatia. The empress also gave the independent port of Rijeka to Croatia in 1776. However, she also ignored the Croatian Parliament.
Napoleonic Wars
With the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, its possessions in the eastern Adriatic mostly came under the authority of France which passed its rights to Austria the same year. Eight years later they were restored to France as the Illyrian Provinces, but won back to the Austrian crown by 1815.
19th century
In the 19th century Croatian romantic nationalism emerged to counteract the non-violent but apparent Germanization and Magyarization. The Croatian national revival began in the 1830s with the Illyrian movement. The movement attracted a number of influential figures and produced some important advances in the Croatian language and culture. The champion of the Illyrian movement was Ljudevit Gaj who also reformed and standardized Croatian. The official language in Croatia was Latin until 1847 when it became Croatian.
By the 1840s, the movement had moved from cultural goals to resisting Hungarian political demands. By the royal order of January 11, 1843, originating from the chancellor Metternich, the use of the Illyrian name and insignia in public was forbidden. This deterred the movement's progress but it couldn't stop the changes in the society that had already started.
Springtime of Nations - 1848
In the revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire, the Croatian Ban Josip Jelačić cooperated with the Austrians in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by leading a military campaign into Hungary, successful until the Battle of Pákozd. Despite this contribution, Croatia was later subject to Baron Alexander von Bach's absolutism as well as Hungarian hegemony under Ban Levin Rauch when the Austrian Empire was transformed into a dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867.
From 1848 to 1850 Croatia was governed by the Ban's Council (Croatian: Bansko vijeće) appointed by the Ban and the Parliament or the Croatian-Slavonian Diet (Croatian: Sabor; in 1848 first Diet with the elected representatives was summoned). In 1850 the Ban's Council was transformed into Ban's Government (Croatian: Banska vlada) which, after the introduction of the absolutism (31 December 1851), was under the direct control of the Austrian Imperial Government in Vienna. From 1854 to 1861 the Imperial-Royal Croatian-Slavonian Lieutenancy (presided by the ban) in Zagreb (Croatian: Carsko-kraljevsko namjesništvo za Hrvatsku i Slavoniju), under the Austrian Ministry of Interior, was the main governing body of the Croatian-Slavonian crown land (Kronland). After the fall of Bach's absolutism (the October Diploma of 1860 and the February Patent of 1861), the Royal Croatian-Slavonian Court Chancellery (Croatian: Kraljevska hrvatsko-slavonska dvorska kancelarija) in Vienna - from 1861 to 1862 "courtly (aulic) department for Croatia and Slavonia" (ministry) - and the Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian Royal Council of Lieutenancy (also known as the Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian Vice-regency Council, it was headed by the ban; Croatian: Kraljevsko namjesničko vijeće) in Zagreb were founded. These remained Croatian-Slavonian government until 1868.
Ban Jelačić had succeeded in the abolition of serfdom in Croatia, which eventually brought about massive changes in society: the power of the major landowners was reduced and arable land became increasingly subdivided, to the extent of risking famine. Many Croatians started emigrating to the New World countries in this period, a trend that would continue throughout the next hundred years and create a large Croatian diaspora.
The Illyrian movement was rather broad in scope, both nationalist and pan-Slavist. It eventually developed into two major causes:
Dual Monarchy Period
The loss of Croatian domestic autonomy was rectified a year after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, when in 1868 the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement was negotiated, which combined Croatia and Slavonia into the autonomous Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. With this agreement, the Kingdom of Croatia received autonomy in administrative, educational, religious and judicial affairs. However, the governor (ban) was still appointed by Hungary, 55% percent of all tax money went to Budapest, and Hungary had authority over the biggest sea port of Rijeka (something that was reportedly not part of the Settlement actually agreed upon).
Subdivisions
The Kingdom of Croatia was divided into counties (Croatian: županije; German: Comitate (modern spelling Komitate) or Gespanschaften; Hungarian: vármegyék; Latin (also in other languages): comitatus).
Until 1848
For most of the period of Habsburg rule the Kingdom of Croatia was divided into three counties:
These were direct continuations of the medieval counties of Croatia. (The remainder had fallen to the Ottomans, and when conquered by the Habsburgs had become part of either the Military Frontier or the Kingdom of Slavonia.) In the late 18th century a fourth – Severin County – existed, carved out of the part of Zagreb County west of the Kupa, but it lasted for less than a decade before being reintegrated; however, the coastal area was instead attached to the Corpus separatum of Fiume (Rijeka) as the Hungarian or Croatian Littoral.