Chapter 59 - Klingenbach History, Pt. 4 ... the Croatian Experience

So we're in central Europe in the year 1500.



Klingenbach is still in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Aristocrats and royals are wearing lovely flowing clothes.


They wear beautiful jewelry.


They decorate their castles with golden works of art like this Cellini sculpture.


They can even tell time with this early clock that has one hand to indicate a 24-hour cycle.


They live in places like Rakoczi Castle in Sarospatak, Hungary, built about this time.


Yes, I realize that I show people, places and things primarily relating to the nobility. I know there were a lot more peasants, but they didn't wear pretty clothes or jewelry, have art or live in castles. Whatever they had is lost to history so I choose to show the only artifacts that have survived, even though they did pertain to the upper classes.

So in 1500 everything was hunky dory - relatively speaking of course. Everyone back then shared vulnerability to invaders and epidemics; most of them in all classes died young. And everything was about to get a whole lot worse.

The Kingdom of Hungary had ruled for over 500 years. During its golden age in the reign of Matthias Corvinus, he actually occupied Vienna for five years. But beginning in the early 1500s, the Hungarians faced their worst enemy, the Ottoman Turks. It was a disaster for Hungary and basically an end of their empire.

A depiction of an attack on a castle.


At the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, the Hungarian army was defeated by the Turks.


Under the press of war, the central authority in the Kingdom of Hungary collapsed, and the kingdom was split into three parts which remained separate for about 200 years. The Klingenbach area was part of Royal Hungary controlled by the Habsburgs. The population in this area was severely reduced by the repeated incursions by the Turks.

Meanwhile, about 150 miles southeast of here, things were going from bad to worse in Croatia. Almost continual war against the Turks had decimated the population. [All told, in three centuries of Ottoman occupation, 3,000 settlements and over 550 Catholic churches and monasteries were destroyed. Under severe pressure some Croats converted to Islam, mainly in Bosnia, but the population in northwest Croatia resisted, which has led to the ethnic differences that persist today and was a big factor in the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.]

Three contemporaneous depictions of Croat suffering and war against the Ottoman Turks






The Austrian king, realizing that the Burgenland area in Austria had lost population and the people of Croatia were suffering greatly from the Turks, offered land and houses in Burgenland to Croatians. They jumped at the opportunity and over a period from 1533 to 1584, it's estimated that about 300,000 emigrated from Croatia to Austria.

The emigration of Croats into Austria.

The Croats fled from riverland areas of Gacka, Lika and Krbava, Moslavina in Slavonia and an area of present-day northern Bosnia near Tuzla.

The Croats left behind continued to fight the Turks. In the Battle of Szigetvar in 1566, 2,300 Croatian and Hungarian soldiers held back a 100,000-man Ottoman army for two months. They fought to the last man in a battle that Cardinal Richelieu of France called "the battle that saved civilization." It is believed that the battle delayed the Ottoman push against Vienna that year - and by extension, Klingenbach. Of course the Turks weren't done - they invaded several more times in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In 1593 at the Battle of Sisak, a vastly outnumbered force of Croat and Hungarian soldiers defeated an Ottoman Turk army. Another battle that prevented an Ottoman invasion that would have decimated Burgenland.

Sisak Fortress


A Hussar of the day


The Klingenbach area began the 16th century peacefully before being ravaged and depopulated by the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the century a whole new population resettled the area, and they have a strong presence in Burgenland today.