Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg)

Origins

On 1 January 1527 the Croatian nobles assembled at Cetin elected Ferdinand of Habsburg as king, in return for his help against the Ottomans. By the late 16th century Ottoman conquests had reduced Croatia to a narrow band around Zagreb, Karlovac and the coast, the reliquiae reliquiarum of the old kingdom.

Rule and society

Croatia was governed by a ban and its own Sabor, within the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, while much of its territory was detached into the Military Frontier under Vienna. The victory at Sisak in 1593 halted the Ottoman advance. Nobility, Catholic Church and Latin dominated public life until the Illyrian movement of Ljudevit Gaj revived Croatian in the 1830s.

Decline and legacy

In 1848 Ban Josip Jelačić led Croatian forces against the Hungarian revolution. The Croatian-Hungarian Settlement of 1868 joined the kingdom with Slavonia as the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, an autonomous part of the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary.