Page 190 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

190 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

so-called main strongholds were established. Thus, the foundation of the Austrian Military
5
frontier, the so-called “confin”, was laid. The steadily growing pressure by the Ottomans
resulted in a systematic enlargement of the frontier defence system, which was concentrated
at the key fortresses of Croatia and Slavonia. Despite all armistice treaties between Aus-
tria and the Ottoman Empire, from 1529 to 1532 petty wars were carried out in the border
regions, which forced Ferdinand to establish a permanent defence organization by having
fortified villages, blockhouses and watch-towers built in the South-East, which were guarded
by military colonists and mercenaries – recruited by Austria and sent into the border region
under imperial command. But all this required high financial and personal resources. (Table
6
1) The human potential was recruited from among the Balkan population. The increasing
deterioration of the living conditions in the Ottoman Empire as well as in the Danubian
principalities Moldavia and Walachia resulted in the flight of the people who had lived there.
Some fled to inaccessible areas within the empire to avoid interventions by state and local au-
thorities; others crossed the borders into the neighbouring countries – Habsburg Hungary and
Venice-Dalmatia. These refugees – who mostly came in small groups, but in case of major
unrests or during the rollback also arrived in large numbers reaching up to tens of thousands
– got known under the names “Walachians”, “Uskoks”, “Servians”, “Morlaks”, “Bunjevci”,
“Pribeges”, “Martolos” or “Rascians”. Over the years, large numbers of Walachian families
settled in the vicinity of the strongholds. The male refugees were recruited for active military
duty from the very beginning. In return for their obligation to do military service, they were
granted their own jurisdiction, internal administration and exemption from taxes. 7
Although the Austrian military commanders assigned depopulated places at the frontier
or abandoned property to them according to strategic points of view, problems soon arose
with the Croatian-Slavonian landlords, who persistently tried to cling to their inherited land
and to bring the Walachians under their control. Moreover, complaints were often put for-
ward alleging that the Walachians acted on their own initiative, engaged in guerrilla warfare
against the Ottomans on their own account, and raided Ottoman territory only to go looting,
even in peacetime.
Around 600 Bosnian (Uskok) families, in total about 3,000 persons, were confronted with
similar problems as they were given land in an abandoned area in the Sichelburg district (Uskok
Mountains) as hereditary loan in return for unpaid military service. The Croatian magnates of
8
this area welcomed them with massive protests and tried to expel them by force.
5 Geza Pálffy, The Origins and Development of the Border Defence System against the Ottoman Empire in
Hungary (up to the Early Eighteenth Century), in Géza Dávid – Pál Fodor, eds., Ottomans, Hungarians and
Habsburgs in Central Europe. The Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest (= Suraiya Faroqhi –
Halil Inalcik, eds., The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage, Politics, Society, and Economy, vol. 20, Leiden
– Boston – Cologne 2000), 15.
6 Peter Krajasich, Die Militärgrenze in Kroatien mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der sozialen und wirtschaft-
lichen Verhältnisse in den Jahren 1754 bis 1807 (= Schriften des Heeresgeschichtlichen Museums, vol. 6,
Vienna 1973), 95 [in the following quoted as Krajasich, Militärgrenze 1973].
7 Amstadt, Die k. k. Militärgrenze, vol. 1, 19, 255 – 258. http://www.kuk-wehrmacht.de/regiment/grenzer.
html.
8 Bayer, Die Entwicklung der österreichischen Militärgrenze, 30. For the fate of the Bosnian (Uskok) families
see the chapter 2 of Kaser, Freier Bauer und Soldat: “Das Modell: Die Uskoken des Sichelburger Distrikts”,
67 – 98.