The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

autonomy in Hungary were issued by the Austrian Court Chancellery on the 21st of August, 1690. However at the instigation of the Roman Catholic Cardinal Kolonitch a clause was inserted that those privileges were in power only as long as the Serbs “ collectively and individually remain faithful to us” (et quantemus et quamdiu nobis universi et singuli fideles et devoti erunt). And this last clause has always proved a mighty weapon to suspend or simply to annul all the autonomous privileges of the Serbian people whenever the tortuous ways of Austria’s policy demanded that Serbian rights and _ privileges should be sacrificed for the promotion of some other dynastic, German, or Magyar interests. The privileges granted were never put in force. In vain the Serbs demanded a special territory in which to settle down, there to be administered by their Voivoda and national leaders; that demand was never fulfilled. On the contrary, Vienna promoted a scheme for the German colonisation of Hungary and Slavonia. The Serbs were used to form the military frontier (the celebrated granica) against Turkey in the Banat, Slavonia and Syrmia, without ever having their position towards the Hungarian State and Crown regulated.” As soon as the war danger was no longer imminent, the Serbian merits were forgotten and all means were employed to break up the compact masses of the Serbian population. Part of the Serbs was put under the direct ad62