What were the Croatian-Ottoman wars?
They were the long struggle between the Croatian kingdom and the Ottoman Empire in the century after the Ottomans conquered Bosnia. It began in earnest with the destruction of a Croatian army at Krbava Field in 1493, cost Croatia most of its lands after the Hungarian defeat at Mohács in 1526, and pushed the Croats to elect the Habsburgs as kings in 1527. The Ottoman advance was finally stopped at Sisak in June 1593.1
A kingdom on the frontier
Since 1102 Croatia had shared its king with Hungary while keeping its own assembly, the Sabor, and its own viceroy, the ban. In the fifteenth century it found itself on the front line against the Ottomans. The Croatian Encyclopedia notes that King Matthias Corvinus built two lines of fortresses against them after Bosnia fell in 1463, from Belgrade and Jajce to Knin, Klis, Bihać and Senj.2
Krbava Field, 1493
In the spring of 1493 Ottoman raiders under Jakub Pasha, the sanjak-bey of Bosnia, plundered Croatia, Carniola and Styria. On their way home, on 9 September, Ban Emerik Derenčin met them on Krbava Field near Udbina in Lika. Suzana Miljan and Hrvoje Kekez write that Count John Frankapan urged him to trap the Ottomans in one of the mountain passes, but the ban chose to fight on the open field. The Ottoman cavalry, fewer but more experienced, surrounded and destroyed his levies.3
The losses fell on the ruling class. Many lords of the Frankapan, Zrinski and Blagaj families were killed and the ban himself was taken prisoner. Yet the Ottomans did not follow up with conquest. For decades they raided rather than occupied, as their main effort went into Hungary; Miljan and Kekez note that the county of Krbava itself fell only in 1527.4
Mohács and the Habsburg crown
The defensive system broke in the 1520s. In the Croatian Encyclopedia's account, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent took Belgrade in 1521 and Knin and Skradin the next year. On 29 August 1526 his army crushed the Hungarian and Croatian host at Mohács, and King Louis II drowned in his flight, leaving no heir.5
The Croatian estates chose their own way. On 1 January 1527, meeting at Cetin, they elected Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg their king, expecting help against the Ottomans. Britannica notes that Ferdinand's dynasty went on to defend what Croatians called the remnant of the remnants of their kingdom.6
The Military Frontier
That defense took the form of the Military Frontier, a belt of border fortresses, watchtowers and garrisons paid largely by the estates of the Austrian lands. From 1578 its Croatian and Slavonian parts were run from Graz, and the ban and the Sabor kept direct control only over a narrow strip between Karlovac and Ivanić. The fortress of Karlovac was built in 1579 to anchor it.7
The frontier changed the country. The Croatian History Museum's account describes peasant soldiers who worked their fields with weapons at hand, and new settlers, among them Vlachs, were given land in return for fighting. Britannica adds that many of them were Orthodox Christians from the Ottoman lands, the origin of Croatia's later Serb minority.8
Szigetvár, 1566
The most famous episode came in Hungary. In August 1566 Suleiman besieged the fortress of Szigetvár with an army the Croatian Encyclopedia puts at about 100,000 men. It was held by Nikola Zrinski, a former ban of Croatia, with about 2,500. On 7 September, with the fortress lost, Zrinski led the last of his men out in a sortie in which almost all of them died, and the sultan himself died during the siege.9
Sisak, 1593
Toward the end of the century Hasan Pasha Predojević, the Ottoman governor of Bosnia, pressed hard on what was left. He took Bihać in 1592, the last great fortress on the Una, and attacked Sisak, the fortress of the Zagreb chapter where the Kupa meets the Sava, in 1591 and 1592. In June 1593 he besieged it a third time. The Croatian Encyclopedia gives the garrison as 300 men commanded by two canons of Zagreb.10
A relief army gathered under Ban Toma Erdődy and the frontier commanders, with Ruprecht von Eggenberg in overall command. On 22 June 1593, about 4,500 men in the Croatian Encyclopedia's count, about 5,000 in the museum's, attacked an Ottoman army twice their size. The Ottomans, with the Kupa at their backs, broke and fled; thousands drowned in the river, Hasan Pasha among them.11
Why Sisak mattered
The Croatian Encyclopedia calls the battle a turning point: for the first time a military balance was established on the border, the Ottoman conquest of Croatian lands was halted, and the way was opened for the Christian offensives of the Long War of 1593 to 1606. News of the victory spread across Europe in prints made in Vienna, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Ljubljana and Antwerp.12
Britannica notes that Croatia regained much of its lost territory only after the Ottoman defeat at Vienna in 1683, through the peace treaties of Karlowitz in 1699 and Passarowitz in 1718, but that even then most of it was attached to the Military Frontier rather than returned to the kingdom.13
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Krbavska bitka”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Sisačka bitka”. ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Krbavska bitka”; Suzana Miljan and Hrvoje Kekez, The Hungarian Historical Review. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Krbavska bitka”; Suzana Miljan and Hrvoje Kekez, The Hungarian Historical Review. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Krbavska bitka”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Mohačka bitka”. ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”; Povijesni muzej Hrvatske, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”; Povijesni muzej Hrvatske, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine”. ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”; Povijesni muzej Hrvatske, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Siget”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Szigetvár”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Sisačka bitka”; Povijesni muzej Hrvatske, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Sisačka bitka”; Povijesni muzej Hrvatske, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine”. ↩
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Sisačka bitka”; Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina”. ↩
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia”. ↩
Sources
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography, “Krbavska bitka” (in Croatian)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Croatia: History”
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Sisačka bitka” (in Croatian)
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Vojna krajina” (in Croatian)
- Suzana Miljan and Hrvoje Kekez, The Hungarian Historical Review 4, no. 2 (2015), “The Memory of the Battle of Krbava (1493) and the Collective Identity of the Croats”
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Mohačka bitka” (in Croatian)
- Povijesni muzej Hrvatske (Croatian History Museum), exhibition booklet, 1977, “Bitka kod Siska 1593. godine” (in Croatian)
- Hrvatska enciklopedija, “Siget” (in Croatian)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Szigetvár”
