The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

organisation and development. Fortunately Austria, whose entire energy was engaged in the Napoleonic wars and subsequently in suppressing every liberal movement in Europe, was little interested in the creation of a new Serbian State or felt unable to hinder it; she therefore left Serbia alone to make her way—painfully and slowly, but surely—towards progress and recognition. It was during the period of reaction and strict surveillance of Metternich’s rule that the Roman Catholic branch of the Serbo-Croat nation was awakened to new national life and consciousness. But although the national feelings of the Croatians had slumbered, it cannot be said that they were ever extinguished. Though united with Hungary, Croatia enjoyed a special status and considered herself always as a separate community linked only by a personal union with Hungary. And whenever Austria or Hungary attempted to denationalise Croatia or to reduce her to the level of a mere province of Austria, the national feelings proved very much alive and prompted the Croatians to resist. Several attempts had even been made at various times by Croatian nobles and patriots to render Croatia completely independent. Thus when Vienna in the middle of the seventeenth century attempted the forcible centralisation of Austria, the universal dissatisfaction in Croatia found expression in a plot of the Croatian nobles, Zrinski and Frankopan, who schemed the complete independence of 71