Page 189 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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Life at the Border – the Military Frontier and its Population

CLAuDIA REICHL-HAM

In the 16th century large parts of Habsburg territory bordering on the Ottoman Empire
were almost totally depopulated by Ottoman armies and their reconnaissance troops, the
so-called akinci, villages and castles devastated. In many areas the social and infrastructure,
which had previously developed, broke down completely; in others it still existed but under-
went major changes over the decades. In large parts of Croatia for example former cultivated
land turned into thick forest again.
1
The knowledge that a depopulated territory is difficult to defend and the interest in a
functioning defence led to the construction of fortified strongholds on both sides of the bor-
der area, to the establishment of a military administration and the re-settling of an agrarian
population in the course of various decades.
Already before the collapse of Hungary’s medieval frontier defence system , the Hun-
2
garian kings as well as the Croatian estates, which were not able to take effective defence
measures on their own, had turned to the Habsburgs for military support in order to jointly
avert the Ottoman danger, which threatened the Austrian provinces as well. It was only in
1522 that Archduke Ferdinand of Austria summoned the estates for a special Reichstag meet-
ing to get their support and that he concluded an agreement with King Louis II of Hungary
on 22 December, according to which the fortified places at the South-western border of
Hungary were to be occupied and defended by Austrian troops, especially the Lika and Kr-
bava regions. This treaty was in his very own interest “as Croatia’s capability of defending
3
itself also constituted a protection for Inner Austria and the setting foot on an adjacent Hun-
garian territory was welcome with regard to his possible hereditary title to the Hungarian
crown”. To prevent the Ottomans from setting foot on Habsburg territory, Ferdinand and the
4
Inner-Austrian estates had about 2,000 German infantrymen deployed in Croatian towns and
castles thus creating a border-defence belt in that region. At strategically important places

1 Hannes Grandits, Krajina: Historische Dimensionen des Konflikts, s. p., http://www-gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/
csbsc/ostwest/7-2-95-Grandits.htm. For a detailed information see Karl Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat. Die
Militarisierung der agrarischen Gesellschaft an der kroatisch-slawonischen Militärgrenze (1535 – 1881) (=
Zur Kunde Südosteuropas, vol. II/22, Vienna – Cologne – Weimar 1997), 29 – 53.
2 After the destruction of the medieval empires in the Balkans the advance of the Ottomans signified a serious
th
threat for Hungary. Already in the 15 century the Hungarian kings were forced to introduce a defence
zone for the endangered Frontier territories, as they were not able to defend areas difficult to reach due to
their geographic conditions, e. g. in Southern Croatia and Slavonia. Jakob Amstadt, Die k. k. Militärgrenze
1522–1881, PhD thesis, 2 vols., Würzburg 1969, vol. 1, 1.
3 Peter Krajasich, Die Militärgrenze in Kroatien (= Dissertationen der Universität Wien, vol. 98, Vienna
1974), 6 [in the following quoted as Krajasich, Die Militärgrenze in Kroatien]; Ilse Schindler, Aspekte zur
Organisation der Militärgrenzverwaltung und deren Auswirkung auf Handel und Verkehr unter Joseph II.
(1780-1790) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Kantonsystems, Dipl. Arb., Vienna 1992, 14f.
4 Martha Bayer, Die Entwicklung der österreichischen Militärgrenze mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des
Karlstädter Generalates, PhD thesis, Vienna 1935, 18.