Bosnia, Ottoman eyalet of

Most historians believe that the Croats are a purely Slavic people who probably migrated to the Balkans from present-day Ukraine.

A newer theory, however, holds that the original Croats were nomadic Sarmatians who roamed Central Asia, migrated onto the steppes around 200 BCE, and rode into Europe near the end of the fourth century CE, possibly together with the Huns.

The Sarmatian Croats, the theory holds, conquered the Slavs of northern Bohemia and southern Poland and formed a small state called White Croatia near present-day Kraków.

The Croats then supposedly mingled with their more numerous Slavic subjects and adopted the Slavic language, while the subjects assumed the tribal name "Croat."

A tenth-century Byzantine source reports that in the seventh century Emperor Heraclius enlisted the Croats to expel the Avars from Byzantine lands.

The Croats had overrun the Avars and Slavs in Dalmatia around 630, then drove the Avars from today's Slovenia and other areas.

In the eighth century, the Croats lived under loose imperial rule, and Christianity and Latin culture recovered in the coastal cities.

The Franks subjugated most of the Croats in the eighth century and sent missionaries to baptize them in the Latin rite, but the Byzantine Empire continued to rule Dalmatia.

Croatia emerges as an independent nation in 924.

Tomislav (910-ca. 928), a tribal leader, establishes himself as the first king of Croatia, ruling a domain that stretches eastward to the Danube.

The Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Macedonians, and Albanians have virtually independent histories.

The Slovenes will struggle to define and defend their cultural identity for a millennium, first under the Frankish Kingdom and then under the Austrian Empire.

The Croats of Croatia and Slavonia will enjoy a brief independence before falling under Hungarian and Austrian domination; and the Croats in Dalmatia struggle under Byzantine, Hungarian, Venetian, French, and Austrian rule.

The Serbs, who will briefly rival the Byzantine Empire in medieval times, will suffer five hundred years of Turkish domination before winning independence in the nineteenth century.

Their Montenegrin kinsmen will live for centuries under a dynasty of bishop-priests and savagely defend  their mountain homeland against foreign aggressors.

Bosnians will turn to heresy to protect themselves from external political and religious pressure, convert in great numbers to Islam after the Turks invade, and become a nuisance to Austria-Hungary in the late nineteenth century.

A hodgepodge of ethnic groups will people Macedonia over the centuries.

As the power of the Ottoman Empire wanes, the region is contested among the Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Albanians and also is a pawn among the major European powers.

Finally, the disputed Kosovo region, with an Albanian majority and medieval Serbian tradition, will remain an Ottoman backwater until after the Balkan wars of the early twentieth century.

The expanding Ottoman Empire had overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Present-day European Turkey and the Balkans, among the first territories conquered, are used as bases for expansion far to the West during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Ottoman Turks have by 1517 conquered Persia, Syria, Palestine, the Hejaz and Egypt itself, in the process destroying the Mamluks, who have failed to adopt field artillery as a weapon in any but siege warfare.

The Ottoman Empire is a world power when Suleyman dies in 1566.

Most of the great cities of Islam—Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, and Baghdad— are under the sultan's crescent flag.

The Porte exercises direct control over Anatolia, the sub-Danubian Balkan provinces, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia.

Egypt, Mecca, and the North African provinces are governed under special regulations, as are satellite domains in Arabia and the Caucasus, and among the Crimean Tartars.

In addition, the native rulers of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Ragusa (Dubrovnik) are vassals of the sultan.

Selim II had posed less of a threat to Europe after Sultan Suleiman's death in 1566.

Though Cyprus had finally been captured, the Ottomans had failed against the Habsburgs at sea.

Selim had died not too long after, leaving his son Murad III, a hedonist and a womanizer who spends more time at his Harem than at the war front.

The Empire, under such deteriorating circumstances, finds itself at war with the Austrians yet again.

After intensifying skirmishes from 1591, Murad now turns to Europe, beginning what will prove to be a fifteen years’ long war against Austria, sparked by fighting in the Bihac region of northwestern Bosnia.

Tough Imperial troops fresh from savage fighting in the Low Countries have come under the supreme command of the Styrian general Ruprecht von Eggenberg.

Their crushing defeat of the Ottoman troops of Bosnian governor-general, or Beylerbeyi, Hasan Pasha Predojević at Sissek (Sisak) on June 22, 1593, enlarges the hostilities into a full-scale war.

Croatian troops are led by the Ban of Croatia, Tamás Erdődy, and some forces from the Duchy of Carniola are led by Andreas von Auersperg (Slovene: Andrej Turjaški), nicknamed the "Carniolian Achilles".

Recent analysis of several hitherto unknown or unused Ottoman sources has shown that there seems to have been a conflict of interest between the policy of the central Ottoman administration and the aims of the belligerent Hasan Pasha.

It appears that the struggle for more land and power was an important incentive for the offensive action on the side of the Bosnian sipahis, an action which at this time is not really in accordance with Constantinople’s policy.

The Sultan, on the other hand, may have felt that such an embarrassing defeat even of a vassal acting independently could not go unavenged if he himself was not to lose face.

The Battle of Sisak is the prelude to the long Second Ottoman-Habsburg War that begins in earnest on July 29, 1593, when the Ottoman army under Sinan Pasha, the Grand Vizier, launches a military campaign against the Habsburg monarchy, marshaling a large army of thirteen thousand Janissaries plus numerous European levies against the Christians.

A large uprising has begun against the Ottoman Empire in the Banat region, which forms part of the Ottoman Eyalet of Temeşvar, in the area around Vršac.

The leader of this uprising is Teodor Nestorović, the Bishop of Vršac.

Other leaders are Sava Ban and voivode Velja Mironić.

The Serb rebels capture, for a short time, several cities in Banat, including Vršac, Bečkerek, and Lipova, as well as Titel and Bečej in Bačka.

The size of this uprising is illustrated by the verse from one Serbian national song: "Sva se butum zemlja pobunila, Šest stotina podiglo se sela, Svak na cara pušku podigao!" ("The whole land has rebelled, a six hundred villages arose, everybody pointed his gun against the emperor").

The rebellion has the character of a holy war, the Serb rebels carrying flags with the image of Saint Sava.

Sinan Pasha, who leads the Ottoman army, orders the green flag of Muhammad brought from Damascus to counter the Serbian flag, and burns the mortal remains of Saint Sava in Belgrade in May.

The uprising is eventually crushed, and most of the Serbs from this region, fearing Ottoman retaliation, flee to Transylvania, leaving the Banat region deserted.

The Ottoman authorities, who need population in this fertile land, promise clemency to all who returned.

The Serb population does come back, but the authorities' mercy does not extend to the leader of the rebellion, Bishop Teodor Nestorović, who is flayed alive as a punishment.

Ottoman forces capture Győr (Raab; Turkish: Yanıkkale) and ...

The Ottomans’ war against Austria is soon accelerated by an alliance between Austria and the Danubian principalities.