The relatively unknown story of how the Croats and Slovenes paid with their blood, to stem the advance of the Jihad into Europe.
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According to al-Bukhari [d. 869] an early Muslim jurist; "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force…"
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In their effort to Islamize Europe, the Muslims repeatedly attacked the Byzantine empire, but they had been checkmated at Constantinople by the Byzantines for Eight Hundred years, from their very first siege of the city in 674 and repeated attacks that continued throughout the next eight hundred years. Constantinople stood like a sheet anchor, refusing to succumb to the Jihad, defying the Arabs.
After the eleventh century, the Turks emerged as the vanguard of the bloodied march of the Jihad. In their zeal as new converts to the blood-seeking, violent creed of Islam, they attacked the Byzantine empire at Manzikert in Eastern Anatolia in 1071.
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The now rebuilt Sultan Suleyman’s bridge at Mostar depicts the attempts made by the Muslim Ottomans to make inroads into Croat territory over four hundred years from 1566. The bridge also represents the efforts by the Croats to demolish this symbol of Muslim tyranny during the War of liberation. Today the bridge has been rebuilt, but the mistrust between the Croats and Muslims cannot be rebuilt as within the veneer of geniality of the Muslims lurks their ambition to Islamize Croatia.
The extent of Muslim bestiality was seen during the Ottoman occupation of Croatia and again during the war of Croatian liberation. When in addition to the Yugoslav military, the Croat nationalists had to face the fire of the Muslims whose ambition was to carve out another Muslim province from Croatia (Bosnia being the first one). Some astute Croats have not forgotten history and they realize the danger that the Muslim neighbors present while re-establishing contacts among the Croats and Muslims. Ratko Peric is one such Croat. He is the Catholic Croat Bishop of Mostar, and boycotted the festivities at the reopening of this bridge. His defiance underlined the future dangers from the designs that lurk in the minds of the Muslims with their unfulfilled ambition of seceding from Croatia and carving out another Muslim state in the Balkans in addition to Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania.
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Following this victory, the Seljuk Turks kept advancing closer to Constantinople, but even after an assault for over the next four hundred years, they could not breach the city. As the major part of the city was on the European side of the straits of Marmora (Bosporus), the Turks decided to invade the city from its European side.
For doing this they had to cross swords with fellow Turks, the Bulgars who had embraced Christianity. We shall look at the bloodied struggle between the Bulgars and the Turkish Jihadis in a separate page. Another pincer of the bloodied trail of the Turkish Jihad went onward from Armenia, through south Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania (Lvov), Moldovia, Rumania, Bulgaria, into Serbia, Greece, Croatia onwards to Poland (Crakow), Hungary, Slovenia up to the borders of Prussia and right up to walls of the Austrian capital, where they were finally defeated at the outskirts of Vienna by Jan Sobeiski the king of Poland.
But before they were finally defeated and rolled back from Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman Turkish Jihadis, had left a bloodied trail across the Balkans. Serbia was their first staging post of the Jihad to invade the Balkans
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By 1391 the area between the rivers Drava, Danube and Sava was exposed to violent attacks from the Ottoman light cavalry, which plundered, devastated and annihilated everything along their way, giving the first indications of the type of ruthless enemy the Muslim Jihadis were. The defeat suffered by the Slavic (Serbian) army at Kosovo Polje in 1389 smoothened the way for the Ottoman Jihad towards Hungary and Croatia – the targets of their future campaigns and military expeditions. But thanks to personal courage and decisiveness of Ivan Morovic, the Croat Viceroy of Macva, this attack was repulsed; however, the whole region became deserted and the frightened Croat population evacuated from their settlements.
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The defeat of the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, heralded the entry of the Turkish Jihad into Croatia
The defeat suffered by the Slavic (Serbian) army at Kosovo Polje in 1389 smoothened the way for the Ottoman Jihad towards Hungary and Croatia – the targets of their future campaigns and military expeditions.
Already in 1391 the area between the rivers Drava, Danube and Sava was exposed to violent attacks from the Ottoman light cavalry, which plundered, devastated and annihilated everything along their way, giving the first indications of the type of ruthless enemy these Muslim Jihadis were.
But thanks to personal courage and decisiveness of Ivan Morovic, the Croat Viceroy of Macva, this attack was repulsed; however, the whole region became deserted and the frightened Croat population evacuated from their settlements.
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In the eastern Croatian provinces a majority of the Christian population succumbed to Muslim coercion and was forced to embrace Islam. To implant a Muslim identity in an erstwhile Christian province the Ottomans renamed this province the Vilayet (Turkish for province) of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But the Croats in North Western Croatia waged a continuous partisan war and resisted pressure to convert. This led to the ethnic differences within the Croat population. The South Eastern part became predominantly Muslim and was termed Bosnia. To cement this division, the Ottomans established the Bosnian Border (serhat) dividing Croatia into two halves.
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Partition of Croat Kingdom into Bosnia and Croatia
The Croats appealed to the Christian kingdoms of Europe to help them out. This led to formation of the combined army of the West European knights under King Sigismund. The allied European armies clashed with the Ottoman Turks at Nikopolje (Nicopolis) in 1396. But in the face of the Jihadi ferocity and subterfuge, the European alliance had to face defeat. This defeat marked the end of the European dreams about ousting the Turks from the European continent.
After this success for the Jihad, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I crossed the river Drina from the direction of Serbia, and also seized the first Croatian strongholds in the Eastern part of Croatia. These eastern provinces were later to be called the Vilayet (Turkish for province) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where a majority of the Christian population succumbed to Muslim coercion and was forced to embrace Islam.
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Under the military command of their local commanders, the Ottomans repeatedly plundered the settlements throughout Bosnia and Herzegovin
a in lightning attacks, capturing the local population to enslave the adults and bring up the Croatian Christian children among the captives as Muslims who were to be used as suicide contingents of the Ottoman army called Jannisaaries (Jan = Life, Nisaar = Given Away). The Turks will have you believe that the term Jannisarry is derived from Yeni = New, and Soldier = Cheri. But this is a part of the Muslim tactic of ritually lying to the Kafirs non-Muslims to put them off-guard and mislead them into defeat and doom.
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But the Croats in North Western Croatia waged a continuous partisan war and resisted pressure to convert. This led to the ethnic differences within the Croat population. The South Eastern part of Croatia became predominantly Muslim and was termed Bosnia and Herzegovina. To cement this division, the Ottomans established the Bosnian Border (serhat) dividing Croatia into two halves.
How the Ottoman Jihadis enslaved Christian Children and brought them up as Muslims to be used a suicide contingents – the Jannisaries
Under the military command of their local commanders, the Ottomans repeatedly plundered the settlements throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina in lightning attacks, capturing the local population to enslave the adults and bring up the children among the captives as Muslims who were used as suicide contingents of the Ottoman army called Jannisaries (Jan = Life, Nisar = Given Away). The Turks will have you believe that the term Jannisarry is derived from Yeni = New, and Soldier = Cheri. But this is a part of the Muslim tactic of ritually lying to the Kafirs non-Muslims to put them off-guard and misled them into defeat and doom.
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The devastation of material goods and the enslavement of the local population meant a systematic destruction of the Croatian economic and military power, which was to prepare the ground for further extension of the Ottoman power into Croatia. The panic-stricken Croatian population escaped to safer areas, retreating across the rivers Sava, Drava and Danube.
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These attacks opened up the southern, western and northern parts of Croatia to Ottoman Jihadi depredations. Such devastation of material goods and the enslavement of the local population meant a systematic destruction of the Croatian economic and military power, which was to prepare the ground for further extension of the Ottoman power into Croatia. The panic-stricken Croatian population escaped to safer areas, retreating across the rivers Sava, Drava and Danube. And some even left for northern Hungary, eastern Austria, Bohemia and the coastal regions under Venetian rule, all the way to the islands of the Adriatic and farther to the Apennine Peninsula leading to today’s Slavic population of Slovenia.
The Fall of Constantinople to the Jihadis
After the Turks had softened the Balkans with these attacks, the Jihadis turned their attention to their main prize quarry, the Byzantine capital city of Constantinople, which they had been unable to take from the Asian side. Now with their foothold in Europe, led by Ottoman chieftain Sultan Mehmed II they attacked the city from the European side and finally after eight hundred years of coveting it, the Jihadis stormed it on an unfortunate Tuesday in the year 1453.
After overrunning his prize catch Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II, also managed to annex the remaining independent part of Serbia to the Ottoman Empire in 1459. The remaining independent part of the Kingdom of Croatia (which the Turks later merged into their newly created Vilayet of Bosnia, that was carved out of Croat and Serb territory) that had survived the first Turkish attacks seven decades earlier also fell into his hands as well in 1463.
The fall of Eastern Croatia (Bosnia and Herzegovina) meant a direct threat to the independent North-Western half of Croatia, the next target of the Ottoman army. The Ottomans knew how to use that opportunity and carried out a fierce, full-scale attack into the heartlands of Western Croatia. In a counter-attack in the very same year, the Slavic (Croat) King Matthias Corvinus managed to take back the town of Jajce and decisively defeated the Sultan’s army.
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The Christian powers of Europe always had the upper hand at the sea. They defeated the Turks in numerous naval battles. The battle of Lepanto was by far the most famous. This series of naval defeats played no uncertain part in weakening the Turkish power on land.
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The original massacre at Srebrenica
In order to protect the southern territories of Hungary and the northern part of Croatia stretching between the rivers Drava, Danube and Sava, in 1464 the Slavic (Croat) King Matthias Corvinus, established the districts of Srebrenica (and Jajce) and fortified it extensively to defend the region again further Turkish depredations. This act of defiance so infuriated the Turkish Sultan, that when the province finally fell to the Turks in 1490, the Turks carried out a mass massacre of the entire adult Slavic population and marched off the children into captivity to Turkey to be enrolled into the Jannisarries.
Unfortunately this history has been forgotten and ironically the province of Srebrenica is more well known today as the place where in the closing years of the 20th century, the Slavs (Serbs) unsuccessfully tried to reverse history by re-establishing the majority Christian character of the district by evicting the Muslims. In the recent past this town was also the scene of fierce warfare between the Christians (Serbs) and Muslims (Bosnians who are the descendants of the Turkish Jihadis and the converted Slavs)
The final defeat of the Croats at the Battle of Krbava opened Hungary and Austria to the Ottoman Jihadis
But in spite of this victory, the southern and central parts of Croatia remained unprotected, the defense of which was left to Croatian gentry who kept smaller troops in the fortified border areas of Srebrenica and Jajce at their own expense. The Ottoman Jihadis meanwhile reached the river Neretva and having conquered Herzegovina in 1482, they found their way towards Croatia, skillfully avoiding the fortified border towns of Srebrenica (and Jajce).
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The Ottomans encouraged their border officers, called Sanjakbeys and the Border commanders to plunder the area as they wanted, inflicting enormous suffering and damage to the local Croat population.
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Through the conquest of Croatia, the Ottoman light cavalry pushed its way towards the towns of Carinthia and Carniola, threatening thus to a broader area of Venice as well. In order to stop such invasions, in 1493 the Croats rallied their troops under the command of Viceroy Emerik Derencin at Krbava field (Krbavsko polje), and lay in wait there to trap the Ottoman Sanjakbey Hadum Jakub-Pasha who was returning from one of his plundering campaigns.
But the Croats overestimated their power, rushed at the Turks and suffered a total defeat in which the cream of the old Croatian nobility perished to a man. The Ottomans encouraged their border officers, called Sanjakbeys and the Border commanders to plunder the area as they wanted, inflicting enormous suffering and damage to the local Croat population.
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After a whole century of full-scale wars and cruel battles had passed, in which the Croats had learned how to fight against the deceptive and dishonorable tactics of the Ottoman army and the local members of the Turkish Governor’s forces. Quite soon they learned how to counterattack slyly, retaliating viciously with guerilla tactics in the areas under the Ottoman rule. Tactics that were used by another great Croat against the Nazis. His name was Marshal Tito.
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The defeat at Krbava field (Krbavsko polje) shook all the social strata in Croatia; however, it did not dissuade the Croats from making even more decisive and persistent attempts at defending themselves against the attacks of the much more powerful Muslim enemy. Prior to that tragic battle, a whole century of full-scale wars and cruel battles had passed, in which the Croats had learned how to fight against the deceptive and dishonorable tactics Ottoman army and the local members of the Turkish light cavalry forces.
Quite soon the Croats learned how to counterattack slyly, retaliating viciously with guerilla tactics in the areas under the Ottoman rule. Tactics that were used by another great Croat against the Nazis. His name was Marshal Tito.
After capturing Constantinople, the Ottomans were relentless in inching towards the next prize Austria
The orientation of the next Ottoman Sultan, Suleyman Kanuni toward the campaign of conquest in the Pannonian Valley marked the beginning of the most brutal and tragic period of Croatian history, during which the survival of the Croats and Croatia as a Christian nation was in imminent danger.
The Serb-Croat-Austrian-Hungarian alliance against the Turks
The fall of the then Serbian city of Belgrade in 1521 and the conquest of Knin in 1522 represented ominous anticipation of hard times that were ahead of Croatia and Hungary. The Ottoman army soon took the remnants of the districts of Srebrenica and Jajce, while the towns of Jajce, Banja Luka, Kamengrad and some other fortifications remained as solitary islands of Croat defiance in the Ottoman sea. The Croats asked the Western European rulers for their support; however, it was all in vain. No one heard their cry for help, except the fugitive Serbian contingents who fleeing from the Turks had taken refuge in South Eastern Croatia. It is these Serb contingents who helped to stiffen the Croat resistance against their common enemy – the Muslims.
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The Ottoman authorities settled numerous livestock breeders, the so-called T~lasi, all along the border, to perform various auxiliary services with the military. Included in the light cavalry troops, they also used to break into Croatia across the border, where they were plundering, destroying, stealing the cattle, laying ambushes, murdering and taking away the people as captives
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On his way toward Hungary, in 1526, Sultan Suleyman took possession of the Croatian towns of Petrovaradin, Ilok, Sarengrad, Vukovar, Erdut, Osijek and the entire region of Srijem. Having led his army across the Drava near Osijek, Suleyman destroyed the Hungarian army on August 26, in the battle at Mohacs. King Lodovic II and a great number of Croats lost their lives there. The defeat at Mohacs marked the end of the Christian states of Croatia and Hungary.
The merger of Croatia into Austria as a defense against complete Turkish domination
Expecting and hoping for help in their struggle against the Turks, on January 1, 1527 in Cetin, the Croatian classes elected the Austrian Grand Duke and King of Bohemia Ferdinand Habsburg as their king, who pledged his word to provide them with any kind of support. So that instead of one, Croatia now had two kings – one Croat and the other the Austrian Grand Duke. Gradually the position of the Croatian king became that of a Viceroy of the Austrian Emperor.
This was a last desperate attempt by the Croats to save themselves from the Ottoman Jihadis by making the Austrian king, their King, and in the process ceding the sovereignty of Croatia to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But despite his pledge and formal commitment to provide every kind of support to the Croats in their struggle against the Turks, King Ferdinand’s primary goal was to secure his right to the Austro-Hungarian throne from local Habsburg rivals, leaving Croatia largely to its own devices. This imprudent act endangered Austria for which the Austrians were to pay a heavy price in the form of the first siege of Vienna in 1529.
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In 1578 the Croatian Military Border was established along the border with the Ottoman Empire, stretching from the river Drava to the Adriatic Sea.
Construction work on a massive military fortress at the foot of the town of Dubovac, that was to be in the possession of the Prince Zrinski. This was the beginning of the co-ordinated Croat-Austrian resistance to the Ottomans.
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The inevitable Turkish lunge towards Austria came in 1529
One could not help asking how long the Croats would resist the Ottoman invasion and actually defend the Austrian Empire. Furthermore, the Croats received irregular and insignificant support from Austria, very often at the expense of their own compatriots and the Croatian viceroys who used to finance the army with their own means. As the position of defense in Croatia worsened dramatically, upon the initiative of the Styrian Grand Duke Karl and by consent of the Court Military Council, in 1578 the Croatian Military Border was established along the border with the Ottoman Empire, stretching from the river Drava to the Adriatic Sea.
Construction work on a massive military fortress at the foot of the town of Dubovac, that was to be in the possession of the Prince Zrinski, started in the very same year. The fortress was named after Grand Duke Karl – Karlstadt, i.e. Karlovac, although the Croatian classes proposed that it should be erected on the road to Zagreb. They had guessed that the Ottoman military commanders would easily make a detour and direct their troops toward Sisak and Zagreb. Quite soon their thoughts proved to be true.
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The three centuries of the Ottoman occupation of Croatia represented a devastating disaster for Croatia and the Croatian nation, which had not been experienced by any East European nation before. About 3,000 Croat settlements were reduced to ashes, and the local population disappeared without a trace. A number of Catholic dioceses disappeared – Makarska, Skradin, Knin, Krbava, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dakovo, Mostar, Srijem – together with their chapters. The Zagreb diocese area was reduced to almost one third of its earlier size. More than 550 Catholic churches and monasteries, the centers of cultural life and education, were devastated and pulled down.
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The establishment of the Croatian Military Border came as a belated act in the defense of Croatia, since the countryside was already reduced to a miserable state due to constant Ottoman Jihadi depredations. Furthermore, the area of Croatia had been reduced to one tenth of the area it had been in the period before the wars against the Ottoman Empire. More precisely, it was reduced to the County of Varazd
in and the Counties of Zagreb and Krizevci, which were more than halved.
Thus Croatia became completely dependent upon the Military Border headquarters in Graz and the Emperor’s Court in Vienna. Due to that position, although reduced to a small piece of territory, Croatia was compelled not only to defend frantically its state and legal autonomy but also to hang on for dear life.
To integrate with Austria, the German language (spoken by the Austrians) was introduced as the official language of the Croatian Military Border. In addition the Croat consented to being place under the command og German speaking military officers, who came from the Austrian provinces, marginalized the Croats and occupied all major positions in the military.
While the Croatian Military Border fortresses were still in the process of being built and manned, the Ottomans had started their preparations to overwhelm this boundary and make their first lunge towards the Austrian capital of Vienna in 1529.
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Due to the Ottoman invasion, Croatia shrunk territorially, it was turned into a narrow belt stretching from the border with Austrian provinces and the river Drava, via durdevac, Bjelovar, Sisak, Karlovac, Otocac and Senj to Rijeka, while its eastern part across the Croatian Military Border became the Bosnia and Herzegovina of today. Having lost its ethnic and political space, Croatia lost nearly two thirds of its territory that comprises Bosnia and Herzegovina and which prior to the Ottoman depredations was a part of the Croat nation. The Bosnians Muslims of today are the forcible Croat converts to Islam, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are lost Croat territories.
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The Ottomans had always coveted Austria and acquiring these Croatian-Austrian border-lands had always been a part of the conquering policy of the Ottoman Empire, which dated back to the very first Ottoman attacks in 1389. The weakening of the Croat resistance in Croatia proper gave an enormous strategic advantage for the Ottomans in their aspirations toward the adjacent countries and territories. And now with the extension of the Ottoman Empire into Croatia, the Croatian hinderland served as a starting point of further invasions and conquests in Hungary and Austria.
How the Ottoman Jihadis changed the demographic character of South-Eastern Croatia, by making it majority Muslim province that they named Bosnia
Around 1580, along the border with Croatia, from the river Drava to the Adriatic Sea, there were more than 6,000 Ottoman mercenaries deployed in the fortresses and military strongholds, their most important combat strength consisting in cavalry.
Apart from the mercenaries, the Ottoman authorities settled numerous livestock breeders, the so-called T~lasi, all along the border, to perform various auxiliary services with the military. Included in the light cavalry troops, they also used to break into Croatia across the border, where they were plundering, destroying, stealing the cattle, laying ambushes, murdering and taking away the people as captives.
Due to all this, the Ottomans became most detested in Croatia. After the Croat convert (Bosnian), Hasan-Pasha Predojevic had become the supreme commander of the Vilayet of Bosnia, the Croats’ struggle against the Ottoman Empire reached its critical point. The conquests of Ripac in 1591 and Bihac (on the river Una) in 1592 removed the last obstacles on the way toward realization of the Ottoman strategic plans. Having gathered the army from all over Bosnia and Slovenia under the Ottoman command, Hasan-Pasha undertook an all-out attack in order to defeat the Croatian combat troops and wipe away the last remaining independent slice of Croatia.
The Croat Victory in the battle of Sisak, prevented the Ottoman Jihad from ravaging Slovenia and moving into the Venetian Republic in Northern Italy, thus preventing the Jihad from making back door entry and saving Western Europe from the Jihad
However, in the battle of Sisak, in 1593, Hasan-Pasha suffered a total defeat and fell together with thousands of his soldiers and a great number of the Ottoman commanders. Finally, the glorious victory in the battle of Sisak marked the end of the Ottoman invasions after almost two hundred years of the Croatian fighting against the Ottoman Empire. The Croatian Viceroy’s army, chasing the Turks away from Petrinja in 1595, crowned the great victory.
Croats liberated Serb villages and led to a Serb-Croat alliance against the Turks
In further combats the Croat Viceroy’s army, together with the Military Border troops, broke deeply into the area under the Ottoman rule, inflicting tremendous damage to the Turks and turning the whole border area into a battlefield and the scene of many fierce and destructive skirmishes that jutted into Serbia and liberated many Serbian villages.
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During the Dark Days of Ottoman tyranny the once flourishing, commercially powerful and densely populated areas of Croatia, in which Croats lived a peaceful and comfortable life, much better than in many parts of Western Europe of those days, were turned into a horrifying wasteland. It is difficult to describe in words all that was destroyed and reduced to ashes in Croatia under Ottoman tyranny. This way an advanced stage of development, that Croatia had once attained in the 14th and 15th centuries, was brutally interrupted and turned centuries back.
The Muslim Menace is casting its long shadow over Europe once again. By present reckoning, Eurabia will not be for us a distant nightmare. At current birth and immigration rates, Europe would be a Muslim majority continent by 2027. If Turkey is admitted in to the EU, then this could happen by 2012. In the interests of saving civilization and our European heritage, Turkey needs to be kept out of the EU.
The venom of Islam is already corroding Europe and if we do not rise to the occasion and nip this threat in its bud, all would be lost within a generation. And the losers would not only be practicing Christians, but also post-Christians and non-Christians (who are non-Muslim). Folks going by the developing calamity, we could be done in for unless we do something about this today and sap the fountainhead of this venomous outgrowth in the Middle East, before it engulfs us.
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Due to the success of such missions, numerous Serbs who had been turned into refugees by the earlier Ottoman depredations followed the Croat army and resettled in their original villages and then joined the Croatian army in fighting further Ottoman depredations. Among them also a great number of the people known as Iilasi, under the leadership of their headmen and Orthodox priests who went over to the Croatian side.
The Croatian Military Border authorities settled these Serbian people along the southern border and encouraged their further settlements in the liberated territories, promising them privileges in military service, regardless of the fact that the lands belonged to the Croatian nobility by right of conquest.
The devastation and human rights violations of the Jihadis in Croatia
The three centuries of the Ottoman invasions represented a devastating disaster for Croatia and the Croatian nation, which had not been experienced by any East European nation before. About 3,000 Croat settlements were reduced to ashes, and the local population disappeared without a trace. A number of Catholic dioceses disappeared – Makarska, Skradin, Knin, Krbava, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dakovo, Mostar, Srijem – together with the
ir chapters. The Zagreb diocese area was reduced to almost one third of its earlier size. More than 550 Catholic churches and monasteries, the centers of cultural life and education, were devastated and pulled down.
Thousands of the gentry manor houses were destroyed, the middle and lower gentry and clergy was exterminated. The educated individuals were particularly targeted in these slaughters. Cultural artifacts from Churches and all traces of literacy achievements, along with precious manuscripts of the Bible were destroyed without a trace. Thousands of women, children and men were captured and taken prisoners. This was in addition to the large number of people fell at the battleground, defending their country, freedom and existence.
Once flourishing, commercially powerful and densely populated areas, in which one could live a peaceful and comfortable life, much better than in many parts of Western Europe of those days, were turned into a horrifying wasteland. It is difficult to describe in words all that was destroyed and reduced to ashes in Croatia under Ottoman tyranny. This way an advanced stage of development, that Croatia had once attained in the 14th and 15th centuries, was brutally interrupted and turned centuries back.
Bosnia and Herzegovina are the lost Croat territories
Even territorially Croatia shrunk, it was turned into a narrow belt stretching from the border with Austrian provinces and the river Drava, via durdevac, Bjelovar, Sisak, Karlovac, Otocac and Senj to Rijeka, while its eastern part across the Croatian Military Border became the Bosnia and Herzegovina of today. Having lost its ethnic and political space, Croatia lost nearly two thirds of its territory that comprises Bosnia and Herzegovina and which prior to the Ottoman depredations was a part of the Croat nation. The Bosnians Muslims of today are the forcible Croat converts to Islam, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are lost Croat territories.
Due to Ottoman tyranny, Croatia also lost its complete mediaeval tradition, characterized by numerous churches, abbeys and monasteries, towns and castles of the Croatian nobility, built in Romanesque and Gothic styles and decorated in the spirit of the time in which they had been created.
In other words, under the conditions that made life enormously difficult in those days, in grinding poverty, famine and misery caused by the Ottoman conquests, the people also became rougher and everything served the purpose of struggling for survival. A once refined nation, the Croats now had to struggle for survival in the face of Muslim depredations and tyranny.
Why the famous Bridge at Mostar was constructed by the Ottomans
To facilitate the march of the Ottoman armies, the Turks laid new roads and built new bridges. The most famous one was in 1566, on the left bank of the Drava that was erected by Sultan Suleyman and was hence officially called Suleyman’s bridge in 1566. Around this bridge grew a town that had was the largest commercial and urban centre of those days. This town is the Mostar of today.
As compared to the subordinated local population, the Ottomans made up a very small ruling and social stratum, situated mostly in larger towns, market towns and border fortresses, where they protected their rule by military force. Aware of its position, the subjugated Croatian population could not reconcile with the brutal Ottoman tyranny and made every effort to fight it, never giving up hope of their liberation.
The last rounds of Croat-Muslim warfare
The erection of the fortress of Novi Zrin by the Croat Viceroy Nikola Zrinski, just opposite of Kanizsa, was the immediate cause for the next round of warfare between the Ottoman and the Croats in 1663. The Grand Vizier Ahmed-Pasha Koprulu led his army toward northern Hungary and took Gyor, Nove Zamky and Levice. His lack of experience in waging such a war, as he sent his troops to distant territories in winter, was cunningly used by Nikola Zrinski.
In a lightning attack, in the middle of winter 1664, he reached Osijek, devastated the town outskirts and set the Suleyman’s bridge at Mostar on fire. The courageous undertaking of the Croatian Viceroy caused much admiration throughout Europe but unfortunately it also caused envy in the minds of the unrealistic Austrian Emperor’s military strategists. An envy that was soon to burn up to the walls of Vienna in 1683
Having come to terms with the unpleasant surprise, the Turks reconstructed the Mostar bridge so that in the summer of the very same year the Grand Vizier could march his armies across the Bridge and carry out a vicious attack on Novi Zrin and level it to the ground. But when returning from this mission, his army reached the village of Mogersdorf, where they suffered a crushing defeat on August 1, 1664 at the hands of a joint Croat-Austro-Hungarian army.
But instead of seizing the opportunity offered by such a great victory, ten days later, the cowardly Austrian Emperor Leopold I concluded the peace treaty at Vasvar. This event caused dissatisfaction among the members of the Hungarian and Croatian nobility who were expecting the continuation of the war for driving the Turks out of the occupied territories.
This foolish act of the Austrian Emperor Leopold spurred the Turks to make a string of bold attacks on Austria that culminated in their attempt to take Vienna twenty years later in 1683 where the Turks were routed due to the daring tactics of the Polish King Jan Sobeiski who saved Vienna from falling into the hands of the Ottoman Jihadis.
The Christian Counterattack and the liberation of Hungary and parts of Croatia
The siege of Vienna in 1683 and the double defeat of the Ottoman Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa-Pasha’s army by Jan Sobeiski, represented the introduction and immediate cause of the war for the liberation of Hungary and certain parts of Croatia from the Ottoman rule.
Upon the creation of the Holy Alliance, consisting of the Austrian Empire, Poland and the Venetian Republic, war was waged throughout Hungary, in the north and south of Croatia and on the Peloponnesian peninsula. Already in the summer 1684, the Ottoman defense lines were broken in the north of Croatia, by the conquest of Virovitica, and by the autumn 1686 the Ottomans were thrown out from Hungary.
The glorious victory over Vizier Suleyman-Pasha in 1687 provided an additional impetus to the war operations in Croatia, so that the whole region between the rivers Drava, Danube and Sava was soon regained, as well as Dubica and Kostajnica on the river Una. In mid-summer 1689, the regions of Lika and Krbava were also liberated. In the south of Croatia, i.e. Dalmatia, the Venetian Republic managed to take over Sinj, Vrlika and Knin. Having suffered crushing defeats at Slankamen in 1691 and in the vicinity of Senta in 1697, the Ottoman Empire was compelled to conclude a peace treaty in 1699 according to the principle of Uti Possidetis, i.e. each of the parties was to retain what it had taken in military operations.
Upon such delimitation, the borders of the Ottoman Empire with Croatia followed this line: the river Sava to the Una river mouth, the Una river to Novi and from there across Lika and Krbava to the border with the Venetian Republic. Although Croatia was in a desperately poor state and terribly ruined, the idea of its reconstruction aroused great enthusiasm, particularly after Emperor Leopold’s formal pledge that all territories regained in the wars against the Turks, that had earlier belonged to Croatia, would be returned under the rule of the Croatian Viceroy.
But the south-eastern Croatian territories that is today’s Bosnia-Herzegovina continued to languish under Turkish rule for two more centuries during which the Croatian population was entirely Islamized and hence was lost to Croatia.
During three centuries of wars against the Ottoman Empire, Croatia was torn into pieces and spiritually disunited. Having lost its
historic territories, it also lost a half of its population. The borders of the Ottoman Empire, won in the wars, became the spatial, i.e. physical, and political borders of Croatia. Under a heavy burden of the legacy of its past, Croatia and the Croatian nation entered the eighteenth century. The consequences of those events of the distant past were felt for centuries, until the Croatian war of liberation and the reestablishment of the Croatian state and its international recognition in 1992.
The Muslim Menace is casting its long shadow over Europe once again
The Muslim Menace is casting its long shadow over Europe once again. By present reckoning, Eurabia will not be for us a distant nightmare. At current birth and immigration rates, Europe would be a Muslim majority continent by 2027. If Turkey is admitted in to the EU, then this could happen by 2012. In the interests of saving civilization and our European heritage, Turkey needs to be kept out of the EU.
The venom of Islam is already corroding Europe and if we do not rise to the occasion and nip this threat in its bud, all would be lost within a generation. And the losers would not only be practicing Christians, but also post-Christians and non-Christians (who are non-Muslim). Folks going by the developing calamity, we could be done in for unless we do something about this today and sap the fountainhead of this venomous outgrowth in the Middle East, before it engulfs us.
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* For those uninitiated, PBUH expands to Perpetual Battle Upon Hagarism (Islam) – founded by the mass-murderer and pedophile pretenderprophet Mohammed-ibn-Abdallah (Yimach Shmo – May his name and memory be obliterated).
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Select Bibliography
Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict, by Obadiah Shoher
Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries (Hardcover) by Paul Fregosi
The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World by Srdja Trifkovic
Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer
Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam) by David Cook
Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq
Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer
Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’Or
Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Yeor
What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq
Islam and Terrorism: What the Quran Really Teaches About Christianity, Violence and the Goals of the Islamic Jihad by Mark A. Gabriel, Mark A. Gabriel
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
The Great Divide: The failure of Islam and the Triumph of the West by Marvin Olasky
The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims by Robert Spencer
Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith by Robert Spencer, David Pryce-Jones
The Koran (Penguin Classics) by N. J. Dawood
Don’t Keep me Silent! One Woman’s Escape from the Chains of Islam by Mina Nevisa
Christianity And Islam: The Final Clash by Robert Livingston
Holiest Wars : Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden by Timothy R. Furnish
The Last Trumpet: A Comparative Study in Christian-Islamic Eschatology by Samuel, Ph.D. Shahid
Unleashing the beast: How a fanatical islamic dictator will form a ten-nation coalition and terrorize the world for forty-two months by Perry Stone
Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Religion and Politics) by David Cook
Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle by Mark A., Ph.D. Gabriel
The Challenge of Islam to Christians by David Pawson
The Prophetic Fall of the Islamic Regime by Glenn Miller, Roger Loomis
Prophet of Doom : Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words by Craig Winn
The False Prophet by Ellis H. Skolfield
The Approach of Armageddon: An Islamic Perspective by Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God by George Weigel
Infiltration : How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left by David Horowitz
Unveiling Islam : An Insider’s Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs by Ergun Mehmet Caner
Perfect Soldiers : The Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It by Terry McDermott
Islam Revealed A Christian Arab’s View Of Islam by Anis Shorrosh
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out by Ibn Warraq
The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book by Ibn Warraq
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This Article used by permission of "History of Jihad.Com." Thank You!
© 2009 – 2011, Matt. All rights reserved.
