The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

and while stopping at a wayside inn in Lientz, Ban Jelaci¢ was not a little amazed at finding at the inn where he stopped, whilst changing the horses, that the Official Vienna Gazette of the 19th of June contained an Imperial rescript in which the King gave orders from his town of Innsbruck and dated on the 10th of June that Croatia and Slavonia should return to their allegiance, repent of their illegal acts, acknowledge Baron Habrovski as Royal Commissioner and disavow Jelaci¢, who, for disobedience to the King’s orders, was deprived of all his honours as Ban and General.t Only the Court and Cabinet of Vienna were capable of such an act of mean treachery and vile bureaucratic plotting. The Vienna Court deemed this insult to the Southern Slavs and their Ban necessary to reconcile the Magyars; but nothing availed.

Events refused to be governed by the petty intrigues of Austrian courtiers. The Magyars revolted against Vienna and fell with special fury upon the prosperous Serbian villages in the Banat and Baéka. The ruins of thousands of their houses and the blood of their sons were a new price of their loyalty and fidelity to the Hapsburg throne.

In their struggle against the Magyar oligarchy the Serbs of South Hungary fought not only in brotherly union with the Croats, but a strong

1 M. Hartley, The Man who Saved Austria. Mills & Boon, Ltd., London.

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