Jelacic, Josip

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JELAČIĆ, JOSIP

JELAČIĆ, JOSIP (1801–1859), Croatian military leader.

Josip Jelačić served as Ban (governor) of Croatia and head of the armies of Croatia and the Croatian-Slavonian sections of the Habsburg military frontier during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–1849. In his military capacity, he led Habsburg forces against the revolutionary Hungarian government. He enjoys a mixed legacy as a Croatian patriot, archconservative, and rabid Hungarophobe.

Jelačić was born on 16 October 1801, in the town of Petrovaradin. He was educated in Vienna at the Theresianum. In 1819 he was commissioned an officer in the Habsburg army. In 1830 he was named commander of the 7th Regiment in Ogulin (in the military frontier). He later served under Joseph Radetzky in northern Italy, in Dalmatia, and finally as the commander of the 1st Banal Regiment in Glina. He is said to have only been truly at home among his frontiersmen. During the years before 1848, he developed a profound Croatian patriotism and a no less profound loyalty to his Habsburg emperors. Jelačić was an enthusiastic supporter of the Illyrian movement, which had many adherents among the frontier military class.

Jelačić was named Ban of Croatia by the Croatian Sabor (diet) on 23 March 1848. He was confirmed in this position by the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand a week later. The Sabor and the emperor (more likely, his advisers) supported Jelačić for different reasons. The Illyrians in Zagreb saw him as a person whose loyalty to the monarch could not be questioned, but whose Croatian patriotism might allow Croatia to emerge from the revolutionary period with some gains. Vienna saw Jelačić as a popular but conservative Croat whose appointment would satisfy Croatian nationalism and serve to nip in the bud any Croatian independence movement, should one develop. Jelačić's appointment served to heighten antagonism between Croatia and Hungary. Ultimately, Vienna was more right than Zagreb.

The Hungarian government was displeased by the appointment of Jelačić as ban, not least because it was ignored in the process. As a constituent part of the kingdom of Hungary, it was normal practice for the Hungarian government to appoint and confirm bans of Croatia. On 12 April 1848, Jelačić was called to Buda by the palatine (emperor's representative) of Hungary, but Jelačić, exhibiting a tendency that he would develop further, simply refused to go. At this point, he took the position that he understood the needs of the empire better than the imperial government. The new Hungarian government continued to insist that Jelačić was an unconstitutional ban whose behavior was treasonous; Vienna's position would waver over time.

One of Jelačić's first acts as ban of Croatia was to deny Hungarian sovereignty over Croatia/Slavonia. He also enacted some of the changes that the Illyrians had demanded earlier, including incrementally expanding the franchise. On 5 June 1848, he was installed as ban with the oath given by Josip Rajačić, the metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox church. This event had mixed meanings. Rajačić had come to Zagreb at the head of a delegation that demanded an end to Hungarian control of Serbian regions of southern Hungary and the elevation of the metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox church to the position of patriarch. He also hoped to forge a Croato-Serbian alliance against revolutionary Hungary. The bishop of Zagreb had left the city, which left Rajačić to administer the oath of office (to preserve their emperor and the triune kingdom) to Jelačić. The event has thus been described as an example of Yugoslavism in action. Jelačić, who probably felt the pull of brotherhood with the Serbs, was primarily interested in freeing Croatia from Hungarian tutelage, while Rajačić's own goals were more determinedly Serbian. As long as the goals demanded united action, united the Croats and Serbs could be.

Jelačić's most memorable and lasting acts came as a military leader. In June, the revolutionary Hungarian government of Lajos Kossuth and Lajos Batthyány demanded once again that the imperial government remove Jelačić from his positions; Emperor Ferdinand signed off on this proposal, but Jelačić simply ignored him. On 11 September 1848, Jelačić led his troops into Hungary, where they discovered that Hungarian troops wished to avoid any real fight. Jelačić's troops acted in accord with frontier tradition, which, in battle with the Ottomans, called for looting and generally bad behavior. Jelačić thus contributed to the radicalization of the Hungarian peasantry and the loss of the propaganda war between Austria and Hungary. On 29 September, Croatian troops lost the Battle of Pakozd, southwest of Budapest, to Hungarian forces. A day before that battle, the imperial commissioner to Hungary, Ferenc Lamberg, was murdered in Budapest. The murder served to fully sever relations between Hungary's revolutionary government and Vienna. From that point, Vienna backed Jelačić. On 3 October Jelačić was named commander in chief of imperial forces in Hungary.

During action in Hungary, revolution broke out in Vienna. Jelačić decided at that point to split his forces and take the main body to Vienna in support of the emperor. This he did in late October 1848, his forces contributing to the bombardment of Vienna and the collapse of the revolution there. In April 1849, Jelačić's forces were back in the field in Hungary, but they were exhausted and ineffective. When the Hungarian revolution was crushed, it was crushed by Russian intervention, not a crusading Croatian frontiersman and ban. By the time Jelačić could return to Vienna and then Zagreb, the absolutist regime of Alexander von Bach had tightened its grip on imperial political life. The Croatian Sabor was suspended. Jelačić's dream of an autonomous Croatia within a restructured federal empire died. Jelačić himself died an unhappy man in 1859.