Original scientific paper
The Ottoman threat and Croatian nobility - Count Bernardin Frankapan and his era
Ivan Jurković
Abstract
As a shield and Antemurale Christianitatis in the late fifteenth century and during the sixteenth century, Croatia called for the attention not only of local historiography. However, modern historiography has offered only modest explanations to the causes of crack and ultimate collapse of the border anti-Ottoman defense system that had been organized and established during the reign of the Hungaro-Croatian king Matthias Corvinus. This is due to the fact that historians very often tended to neglect the fundamental preconditions that always led to disastrous outcomes of long-lasting warfares in Croatian lands. First of all, this refers to distinctive geographic pecularities of the Croatian territory and also the arrangement of opposing sides. From the military and strategic points of view, the very first look into these two features explains an extremely unfavourable position of the Croatian part of border defense fortifications. One more military-tactical inferiority of the Croatian defence forces was in their inadequate mobility when compared to highly mobile paramilitary units of the martolosi and the akinji. Another decisive factor was, by all means, the one elaborated by Count Bernardin Frankopan in his Speech for Croatia. He said: “By the Grace of God, Louis, the king of Hungary, our kindest master, neither can defend nor help us “. Consequently, the overbearing shortage of funds and logistic support from the central government over a period of many decades of struggle for survival were crucial reasons for the decay and final collapse of the defense system. Croatian noblemen were trying hard to find a solution to this bare existential problem and they often did so in the way that very much resembled to the social process termed feudal anarchy in professional literature.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
15836
URI
Publication date:
1.3.2000.
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