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The Pacta Conventa under Hungary

The frontier between the Servian and Croatian settlements is the frontier between the East and West of Europe, between the Greek and the Roman worlds. While the Servian state succeeded in maintaining its independence until 1389, the excitable, military, and highly gifted Croatian people had been made tributary to their neighbors as early as the end of the eleventh century; while Servia had been able easily to enrich herself at the expense of the declining power of Byzantium and Bulgaria, Croatia had to deal with the rising state of Hungary and with Venice, at that time the first commercial power in Europe. The consequence was that these two related tribes entered upon divergent careers. While the Serbs came under Byzantine influence and accepted the Greek Church and civilization, Croatia, united to the West, lived under wholly different conditions.

In 1075 a papal legate crowned Dmitrije Zvonimir (1076-89) king of Croatia. But a faction of nobles contesting the succession after the death of Zvonimir offered the Croatian throne to King László I of Hungary. After a period of self-rule and the establishment of an independent kingdom, Croatians agreed to the Pacta Conventa in 1091, submitting themselves to Hungarian authority. In 1091 Laszlo accepted, and in 1094 he founded the Zagreb bishopric, which later became the ecclestictical center of Croatia. The Magyars, an Asiatic tribe, who in 883 burst into Pannonia from the eastward, could not subjugate the Croats, who had valiant kings of their own; but in 1102, some years after the death of the last king of the house of Croatia, the act of union took place in a pacific manner. The Hungarian king, Kálmán, crushed opposition after the death of Laszlo and won the crown of Dalmatia and Croatia in 1102.

The crowning of Kálmán forged a link between the Croatian and Hungarian crowns that lasted until the end of the Great War. Croats have maintained for centuries that Croatia remained a sovereign state despite the voluntary union of the two crowns, but Hungarians claim that Hungary annexed Croatia outright in 1102. In either case, Hungarian culture permeated Croatia, the Croatian-Hungarian border shifted often, and at times Hungary treated Croatia as a vassal state. Croatia, however, had its own local governor, or ban; a privileged landowning nobility; and an assembly of nobles, the Sabor.

Different courses of development were followed by the two parts of Croatia. While the coast line, within the area of the Roman world, shared in Roman culture and economic development, the interior of Croatia remained part of Hungary and steadily declined in consequence. In religious matters also the two parts were divided when Ladislaus, the Saint, of Hungary fouuded a bishopric in Agram and made it subordinate to the archbishopric of Gran, in 1095 [in the year 1853 Agram was raised to the dignity of an independent archbishopric]. In the diocese of Agram the Slavonic ritual was gradually driven out by the Latin, though the Slavonic maintained its ground in Dalmatia, after Innocent IV had recognised its equality with the Latin ritual (1248). At the present day the Slav liturgy is allowed throughout the diocese of Zengg, while in the rest of Croatia only the epistles and the gospels may be read in the Slav tongue. In the Hungarian portion of Croatia adherents of the Eastern Church certainly maintained their existence and even multiplied during the Turkish period (after Suleiman II), owing to the influx of Bosnian and Servian fugitives; at the present day there are in the country thirteen monasteries of the Eastern Greek Church. Notwithstanding this fact, Croatia has remained a distinctly Catholic country.

Among the towns, the most important, with the exception of the ancient Sissek, which dates from Roman times, was Kreutz, where the Hungarian king Koloman is said to have concluded his pact with the Croatians in 1097, and where, at a later period, the Croatian national assembly was accustomed to meet With these exceptions town life developed comparatively late. For example, Varasdin secured municipal privileges from Andreas II in 1209. Bela IV was the first to promote town life by granting new privileges, a step to which he was chiefly forced by the devastations of the Mongols (1224).

At the head of the Croatian government was a ban; this dignitary was originally equivalent to a viceroy, and has retained his prestige to our own days, notwithstanding all the restrictions which the office has undergone. In the course of time the ban was appointed by the king, on the proposal of the estates, and was solemnly inducted into Agram by their deputies, accompanied by one thousand riders, the "army of the banate." Holding in his right hand the sceptre as the sign of his knightly power, and in his left hand the standard as the sign of military power, he took his oath to the estates in the church of St. Mark, according to the formula dictated by the royal plenipotentiary. The powers of the ban were great. He was able to call an assembly of the estates on his own initiative, without previously securing the king's consent. He presided over the national assembly and signed its decrees. He was the supreme judge, from whose decisions appeals might be made only to the king; he was the commander-in-chief of the collective Croatian troops, and in time of war led the army of the banate in person; coins were even struck bearing his name. In view of these facts, Lewis the Great divided Croatia between several bans in 1359; this, however, was only a temporary expedient, introduced to provide the strong frontier government required to meet the Turkish danger.

In the thirteenth century, when the Magyars were completely vanquished by the Tartars, it was the bravery of the Croat provinces that alone opposed a barrier to these savage hordes. The idea of a war with the Turks had occupied the Hungarian King Maximilian from his earliest youth, and only a few weeks before the death of his father King Frederick III, father and son took steps in common to effect a league against the Infidels. Their exertions were fruitless; the enemy was in no way intimidated, but invaded Croatia and returned with rich booty before Maximilian could come up. The king vainly tried with the help of his hereditary lands to raise an army primarily fur the protection of Hungarian Croatia. A new Turkish invasion followed in August, 1494. It was now only too clear that without vigorous help from the empire Croatia would be alienated from the Christian faith, and that its embodiment into the Turkish Empire would constitute a serious menace to Germany. Notwithstanding all the king's exertions no serious measures were taken, and so in April, 1495, Maximilian joined the three years' truce which Ladislaus of Hungary had struck with the Sultan.

The chief legislative body of Croatia was from ancient times the national assembly, which, previous to the union with Hungary, was summoned by the king, and after that union by the ban. It was originally held in Dalmatia, and after the transference of the central power northwards in some one or other of the Croatian towns, such as Agram, Kreutz, Warasdin, Cakathurn, or Krapina. The most important powers of the Croatian Assembly enabled it to deal with questions of legislation, taxation, the levying of troops, the choice of officials, and administrative details. The attempts of Lewis the Great to unite the financial administration of Croatia with that of Hungary resulted in the revolt of Croatia after his death; the plan was consequently abandoned by his son-in-law King Sigismund. Notwithstanding these privileges, Croatia never ran a steady course of development. It was a frontier land and was involved, to its detriment, in every war. Hence it required another kind of supervision than that which Hungary was able to provide. Croatia suffered more particularly in the Turkish period, and it then became wholly obvious that Hungary was unequal to the task of administering the country. The land became utterly desolate, and the taxable wealth of Croatia steadily declined. At a former period the county of Kreutz contained some twelve thousand taxable houses; while in the sixteenth century there were hardly three thousand to be found in the whole country.

By the Turkish victory of 1526, at Mohacs, both nations were involved in a common ruin. The Magyars conducted themselves with unavailing courage and bravery, but they stood not a whit more successfully than the Servian Empire had done; and the reconquest of Hungary, in 1684, was a result of the failure of the siege of Vienna and the victory of the arms of Sobieski; while, in the succeeding century, the further progress was due to the splendid victories of Prince Eugene of Savoy, backed by the whole resources of the Emperor of Germany.