A slovene history society politics culture
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129 Cilli lands in upper Carinthia – from the fight in 1460, all the former Cilli lands were in Habsburg hands. However, the death of King Ladislas (1457, known as ‘the Posthumous’) dragged Frederick III into another war with Hungary. According to the dynastic principle, the Hungarian and Bohemian crown fell to the Habsburgs, but the nobles of the two kingdoms elected two native rulers: George of Poděbrady in Bohemia (1458–1471), and Matthias Corvinus in Hungary (1458–1490) of the house of Hunyadi. Frederick was prevented from making a military intervention in Hungary by a war over the division of the Habsburg’s Austrian lands started by his brother Albert (Albreht). In 1461, Albert combined forces against Frederick with Matthias Corvinus and, over the following two years, another fierce war was fought, mainly in Lower Austria, though Styria was not spared from battle. Frederick received considerable help from mercenaries led by Andreas Baumkircher, Inner Austrian troops, and the Bohemian king, but he was finally saved by Albert’s death without an heir, in 1463.
Venice. On the Gulf of Trieste, the Venetian towns of Piran, Koper and Muggia, in competition with Habsburg Trieste, were attempting to gain as much as possible of the trade flowing to the coast from the hinterlands. Every year, large numbers of cattle passed through Slovene territory to the sea, as well as over 40,000 freight horses carrying primarily ox hides and wheat down to the coast, and salt, oil and wine in the opposite direction. Trieste used force in its attempts to gain a share of the Venetian towns’ trading revenues, which eventually led to war. The Venetians blockaded Trieste without taking the city, but according to the terms of the 1463 truce the city had to allow merchants freedom to choose their route, surrender its own saltpans and two strategic outposts – the castles of Socerb and Moccò. Frederick III, as prince and emperor, issued an order that all trade from Inner Austria directed towards the Gulf of Trieste had to pass via the city itself. However, a considerable proportion of the goods were clearly avoiding the route, as the ruler reaffirmed the order on numerous occasions. Peasant smuggling became common in the Koper area. Meanwhile, the emperor was opening another gateway to the seas for the Habsburg lands: in 1466, he acquired authority over Rijeka (Fiume) and the Kastav seigneury, subordinating them to his representative in Carniola.
The uncertainty caused by the continual attacks was heightened by unemployed mercenaries, who roamed the region robbing, at a time at which there was peace between Venice and the Habsburg lands. Violence broke out on a larger scale when the mercenaries did not receive their expected pay. This led to the nobility in Styria joining their mercenary troops in open opposition to Frederick. In 1469, Andreas Baumkircher assumed command of the
130 noble revolt, and declared ‘war’ on the ruler. The ferocious pillaging of large estates, mainly in Slovene areas of Styria, forced Frederick to settle his debts. The Inner Austrian Estates agreed to the introduction of a poll tax on everyone from beggars to lords, from babes to the elderly. It was announced as a tax that would be used for the defence of the Länder, but in reality served as “compensation for the rebel knight.” The threat from the rebellious mercenaries only passed after Baumkircher’s capture and beheading in Graz in 1471.
While internal military conditions were increasing the defensive fragility of individual Länder and the population was no longer guaranteed protection, Slovene territory again succumbed to Turkish incursions. The Ottoman Empire was spreading across the Balkan peninsula at astonishing speed. In just ten years Mehmed II the Conqueror (1451–1481) had turned Constantinople into Istanbul (1453), converted the Athenian Church of the Mother of God into a mosque (1456), ended the Serbian Despotate (1459) and had the last king of Bosnia killed (1463). The border of the Turkish state was now just 100 kilometres from Carniola, and for the next 130 years, Croatian and Slovene regions would experience a continual threat. The Ottoman push gradually slowed, but Turkish designs on Croatian and Slovene territory were at their height in the second half of the fifteenth century. In 1469, fourteen years of incursions – the logical extension of the Ottoman conquests – began; it was the period of the largest and most destructive Turkish attacks. The raids were intended to exhaust the Slovene-populated Länder to such an extent that their occupation would be a simple affair once the occasion presented itself. Over the period, Turkish attackers, coming from Bosnia as they would again later, entered the territory of present-day Slovenia around thirty times. Many incursions were relatively brief, and affected only a very localised area, but just as many lasted weeks or even an entire month. In 1471, a commander in Celje sent a report to the imperial diet in Regensburg, writing: “The vicious enemy destroyed and burned 40 churches in Carniola, 24 in Styria, leading 10.000 souls from the former and 5,000 from the latter, and robbed and destroyed 5 market towns and up to 200 villages.” Five years later, after an attack on Carinthia, Paolo Santonino wrote that of the many villages in the Gail valley, “all were in flames.” The Turks rode through Styria, Carniola and Carinthia on five occasions – 1473, 1476, 1478, 1480 and 1483, and also went on raids into Istria, and via the Triestine Karst to the Soča (Isonzo) and into Friuli. In Carniola, which suffered most over this period, every valley, however remote and hidden, received the ominous visit of the Turks. After 1483, once a new sultan had taken the throne and the first lengthier truces had been signed with ‘infidels’, only lower and inner Carniola (Dolenjska and Notranjska) and the surroundings of Ptuj and Celje were subject to minor raids by Ottoman troops until the end of
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