thern Slavs. The Serbs had not forgotten that brothers
of theirs were living in the north-west. If in the days of the Turkish
oppression they had been inclined to be oblivious of the Croats, yet
they could not but remember that Du[vs]an's sister had married the
Croatian prince, Mladen III. There is no incident connected with
Du[vs]an that is not treasured in the memory of the Serbs.

HER NORTHERN KINSMEN AND THE MILITARY FRONTIERS

For a long time the Habsburgs had been planning to employ the Croats,
who were excellent troops, as a bulwark against the Turks. And
although Ferdinand of Habsburg, on being elected to the throne of
Croatia on the 1st of January 1527, had sworn to respect the ancient
rights and traditions of the realm, his heirs favoured more and more a
policy of centralization; and in 1578, taking advantage of a serious
agrarian conflict between nobles and peasants in Croatia, the
Habsburgs instituted the Military Frontiers, the famous Vojna Krajina,
one for Croatia proper, with Karlovac as capital, the other for the
adjacent Slavonia, with the capital at Varazdin. Croatia's autonomy
was ignored.

This method of guarding the frontiers had been employed by the Romans,
who made over lands to non-commissioned officers and men on condition
that their male descendants rendered military service. Those men who
had no children received no lands. Alexander Severus, who introduced
this arrangement, used to say that a man would fight better if at the
same time he were defending his own hearth. Under Diocletian the
"miles castellani" or "limitanei," as they were termed, had slaves and
cattle allotted to them, so that the land's development should not be
hindered through lack of labour or on account of the owners losing the
physical capacity for work.

The Habsburgs were assisted in their scheme by various causes, one of
which was the poverty of the soil in certain parts of Croatia, so that
it came as a relief to many of the struggling inhabitants that for the
future they would be provided for. The greatest misery was also
prevalent at this time in consequence of the plague which desolated
parts of Croatia and Istria. The distress was particularly acute in
Istria, where between the years 1300 and 1600 the plague was rampant on
thirty-nine occasions, the town of Triest being visited in ten
different years between 1502 and 1558; and in the year 1600 the port
of Pola was reduced to four hundred inhabitants. Venice att