Page 193 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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as the soil’s fertility. The farmsteads of the Frontier families were almost entirely aimed at
self-support. The type of agricultural production was anything but intensive compared with
other territories of the monarchy, and in many Frontier areas people lived in abject poverty.
The basis of self-administration in civil affairs was the village, formed mostly by several
zadrugas, with their knez as village chief and judge. In 1749 e. g. the Varazdin generalcy
counted 344 villages, and in 1764 an average village consisted of 29 houses – some had much
less houses, namely only five. Being the land of genuine farmers and soldiers, the confin did
not have any urban settlements up to the middle of the 18 century, when trade was promoted
th
by the so-called military communities, which became the most important centres of trade and
administration in the Frontier territory. (Table 4)
15
After the defeat of the Ottomans in the second siege of Vienna in 1683 the re-conquest
of the territories in Hungary and South-eastern Europe, which had been occupied by the Ot-
tomans, began; the imperial troops advanced as far as Macedonia, Bulgaria and Walachia.
The Ottomans appeared surprised by the dimensions of the mobilization in the Occident,
as they had not expected that Pope Innocence XI would indeed be able to set up a genuine
war coalition in the sign of the cross, as Bernd Rill and Ferenc Majoros stated so well in
their book “Das Osmanische Reich”. But in 1684 Emperor Leopold, King John Sobieski of
Poland, and Venice united in a “Holy League” against the Ottoman Empire. In 1686 Russia,
th
th
an opponent who was to inflict heavy defeats on the Ottomans in the 18 and 19 centuries,
joined the league. 16
In the course of this war the Frontier men developed an enormous offensive power, which
contributed to the success of the imperial arms on the theatres of war of the great field battles
in Hungary as well as in the territory between the Drava River and the Adriatic Sea. They
did not only participate in the campaigns of the imperial armies, but also invaded Ottoman
territory in minor and major raids on their own account. Thus they helped to re-conquer most
of the places lost to the Ottomans since 1521 and extended the Military Frontier southwards,
which resulted in an enormous increase in land and people. It was not only the spirit of ad-
venture and the prospect of rich booty that caused the frontier men to do this, but also the lack
of available land, which had become scarce due to the continuous immigration of refugees
from the Ottoman Empire. The growing problem of overpopulation in some regions was
finally solved by colonizing the territories which had been re-conquered from the Ottomans
recently. As soon as the places were purged of the enemy, the Frontier men who had engaged
in action there had their families follow and settled in that region. 17
The advance of the Habsburg army into Serbia in 1689 gave the Christian population
living there the chance for a large-scale uprising, which might have put a sudden end to Otto-
man rule in South-eastern Europe. Imperial negotiators secured the support of the Orthodox
patriarch Arsen črnovič of Ipek, and together with the local clergy they managed to win
over many Balkan Christians. But as a counteroffensive of the Ottomans forced the imperial
troops to retreat, about 30,000 families headed north to Southern Hungary and Slavonia with
their patriarch črnovič and under the protection of the imperial army to escape the impend-

15 Krajasich, Militärgrenze 1973, 22 – 25.
16 Majoros – Rill, Das Osmanische Reich, 284.
17 Amstadt, Die k. k. Militärgrenze, vol. 1, 125f.