Page 200 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

200 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

War Council was forced to issue an order according to which refugees or immigrants from
Bosnia were no longer accepted. In numerous imperial regulations and decrees the life of the
Frontier population was again subjected to strong rules. (Table 5/Table 6).
th
In the time of the “national awakening” during the first half of the 19 century the
Habsburgs could rely on the loyalty of the frontier men; special mention has to be given to
their loyalty to the Emperors Ferdinand and Francis Joseph during the Revolution of 1848
in Vienna and Hungary. During the revolutionary events the banus of Croatia, Baron Joseph
of Jelačič, who had been assigned the command over the Carlstadt, Varazdin and Banal
Frontiers, joined sides with the Habsburgs against the insurgent Hungarians. together with
Prince Alfred of Windischgraetz he inflicted a defeat upon the Hungarian troops, which had
marched towards Vienna to help the Viennese insurgents, at Schwechat on 30 October 1848
and pushed them back into Hungary. 36
As a consequence, it was laid down in the Austrian Constitution of 1849 that “the insti-
tution of the ‘Military Frontier’ will be maintained for the protection of the integrity of the
empire in its military organization and will be subject to the executive power as an integra-
tive part of the imperial army”. 37
The new “Grenz-Grundgesetze” (basic laws of the Frontier) of 1850 at first sight seemed
to contain enormous advantages for the Frontier men, but in fact they already laid the founda-
tion for the gradual dissolution of the Military Frontier. The conveyance of the soils together
with the real estate into unrestricted property and the introduction of compulsory military
service as well as the request of the Frontier population to participate in the constitutional
institutions of the monarchy speeded up this dissolution process.
With the abolition of the feudal system in Croatia in 1848 the Military-Frontier system
was increasingly put on the stake, as with the dispensation from the feudal duties imposed
by the landlords the peasant population in Croatia had obtained the same rights that the fron-
tier men had enjoyed for centuries due to their privileged status. Apart from tax advantages
not much was left from the former privileges, but the innumerable military duties weighed
heavily on the Frontier men and their families. And what was more, a “militarized peasant
system” became increasingly anachronistic in the modern Habsburg Empire of the second
half of the 19 century.
th
38
After the dissolution of the Transylvanian Military Frontier the Croatian and the Sla-
vonian Frontiers still remained intact. From 1868 onwards, however the remaining special
conditions for the Frontier men were abolished there as well.
In June 1871 the last phase of the history of the Military Frontier, which had existed for
more than 300 years by then, started. In a manifesto to the two Varazdin regiments, to the cit-
ies of Zengg and Belovár and to the fortresses of Ivanič and Sissek Emperor Francis Joseph

36 For the behaviour of the Croats in the Revolution of 1848 see above all Wolfgang Häusler, Der kroatisch-
ungarische Konflikt von 1848 und die Krise der Habsburgermonarchie, in Die Revolution von 1848/49
im österreichisch-ungarischen Grenzraum (= Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten aus dem Burgenland, vol. 94, Ei-
senstadt 1996), 5 – 19; id., Banus Jellacic vor Wien. Der Ungarische Konflikt und das Ende der Wiener
Revolution von 1848, in 1848, „das tolle Jahr“. Chronologie einer Revolution, exhibition catalogue of the
Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna 1998, 124 – 131.
37 Amstadt, Die k. k. Militärgrenze, vol. 1, 231.
38 Grandits, Krajina, s. p.