The First Battle of the Next Hundred Years

In the 15th Century the Ottomans were racing through Europe, conquering everything in their path.  By 1493 they had reached Croatia and the last bastion of strong defense before Vienna.

On 9 September 1493, the Battle of Krbava Field in Croatia began one hundred years of war between the Ottomans and what would become the Habsburg Kingdom of Croatia.

It was on this Croatian borderland, eventually called the Croatian Military Frontier, that the ebb and flow of power between Christian Europe and the Muslim Ottomans would carry out over the next several centuries.  

The effects of this military frontier, where settlers were given land grants and freedom of religion in exchange for fighting for the Habsburg Empire, would prove to be even longer lasting that the Empires it was created to defend and fight against.  The consequences of a settlement area created after a war that started in 1493 would still be reverberating strongly at the end of the twentieth century.

For more information about the Battle of Krbava Field and the twilight of  Balkan dynasties in the fifteenth centuries, see The End of Dynasties.