On the eve of the 1848/49 revolution, the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia including Srem made up about 30% of the population. Their major part, about two thirds, lived in the Military March, and a smaller part in the districts under civil administration. Up until the emergence of the Illyrian movement in the 1830s, not one section of Serbian society - peasants, frontiersmen or burghers - participated in political life. Yet the Serbs had an important role in the economy of Croatia and Slavonia, particularly in commerce. A considerable part of trade in livestock, grains, timber and manufactured goods was in the hands of Serbian merchants, sometimes even exclusively. With the emergence of the Illyrian movement, the gradual abolition of feudal restraints and the active penetration of Croatian burghers into public life, the Serbian bourgeoisie began to "emerge from their communities and to show readiness for a cultural and political rapprochement with the Croatian communities, without putting major emphasis on their national identity but without neglecting their own religious separateness." A rapprochement became possible only after the advent of the Illyrian movement, as its protagonists propounded the principle of religious tolerance, particularly vis-r-vis the Orthodox community, and because they had "opted for a single South Slav language and the name 'Illyrian', which was intended to overcome the differences separating the Croats from the Serbs. Owing to these principles of the Illyrian policy, the Serbian bourgeoisie in Croatia and Slavonia, about ten years prior to the 1848 revolution, refused "to be kept out of any national-political manifestation designed to awaken national consciousness and promote the unity of the Serbs and Croats."¹ As for the national consciousness of the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia, their struggle to preserve their faith and nationality and their remarkable loyalty to the ancient and often brutally persecuted faith of their forefathers are recorded in the verses of a popular song sung in Kordun long before the 1848/49 revolution:

The Serbian faith shall never die,

Nor Serbian glory ever pale!

We shall never forget our Emperor Lazar,

And to Milos (Obilic), too, we shall ever be true .

Jug Bogdan the hero shall be remembered,

And so shall the disaster of Kosovo,

For as long as the sun and moon do shine!

And the name of Brankovic shall be accursed

For as long as there are Serbs in this world.

In a song which became popular during the revolution, the bard addressed the Serbian people thusly:

Lose not heart nor strength of arm!

Let us rather die as men,

Than live and see our name disappear.

There is a solid body of evidence suggesting that the Serbs, although for centuries living fragmented in different and far-flung geographic areas and in different states, were spiritually unified. The governments of Austria, the Venetian Republic, and the Ottoman Empire, by no means sympathetic to the Serbs, made considerable efforts to convert, denationalize and assimilate the Serbian Orthodox population. As the pressures to this effect were strong, well-organized and expertly planned, there were many cases of not only individual but even mass conversion and denationalization. Even though a portion of the Serbian people became assimilated into other nations, forsaking their Serbian Orthodox creed and switching to the one of their environment, the bulk of them were steadfast, both in their religious convictions and in national feelings. It was certainly the case with the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia.

Worthy of note here are a few examples from the time of the 1848/49 revolution which reveal the strong consciousness among the Serbs of their spiritual (national, religious, political and cultural) unity. One of these examples, which has not been given the attention it deserves by scholars, was the election of the frontier colonel of Petrinja, Stevan Supljikac, as the Serbian vojvoda, which took place at the May Assembly of 1848, held in Karlovci, when Serbian Vojvodina was founded and proclaimed. There were several candidates for the office of vojvoda. The newly elected Patriarch Josif Rajacic suggested several names: field marshal-lieutenant Zivkovic, generals Jovanovic and Todorovic, and colonels Jovic and Budisavljevic.⁴ Although the overwhelming majority of delegates to the Assembly were from Banat, Backa, and Srem, they did not vote for their own local candidates. They elected an officer who was born in the area of the Croatian Military Frontier (Vojna Krajina), and who then was serving as the commandant of the Ogulin Regiment. Thanks to the absence of narrow parochialism among the Serbs from Hungary, two Serbs from Croatia, Supljikac and Rajacic, were elected, one to administer the Serbian Vojvodina as vojvoda, and the other to head the Karlovci Archdiocese, as Metropolitan and Patriarch. The secretary of the Executive Committee, the steering body of the Serbian movement in Hungary, was also a Serb from Croatia, Jovan Stankovic. He was noted by Jakov Ignjatovic to be "fanatically loyal to the cause of the Vojvodina" and a loyal collaborator of Djordje Stratimirovic, the young leader of the Serbian movement.⁵ Because the national and political interests of Serbs from Croatia and Slavonia coincided in every way with the interests of the Serbs living in Hungary, early in 1849, Rajacic invited Mojsije Georgijevic, a Serb from Osijek, to join the group of Serbs formed to draft the constitution of Serbian Vojvodina.⁶

The highly developed awareness of spiritual unity was not limited only to the Serbs in Hungary. One should remember the vast military, financial, moral and political assistance which the Principality of Serbia during the revolution generously and selflessly extended to the Serbs in Vojvodina. Ilija Garasanin noted in this connection: "The Serbs, who are 'rajah' in Bosnia, and the Serbs in the Principality of Serbia or in Montenegro, the Serbs of the Croatian and Slavonian Military March and those living in Vojvodina, they all see themselves as a single people, and each part of them is interested in everything that concerns the whole. When the Serbs in Hungary took up arms against the Hungarians, they did so in the knowledge that their brethren would follow and help them, and it is known that they have met with the most wholehearted and strong support from the Serbs in the Principality and those from the Croatian Military March. This mutual feeling has endowed the Serbian aspirations with so much significance that the small handful of them in Hungary, where until 1848 they were officially described by the Hungarians as 'Greek-non-Uniate subjects' and thus regarded as nonexistent, did win for themselves, in the hardest possible circumstances, recognition of their national, political, and religious identity."⁷

Had it not been for this spiritual unity and feeling of solidarity, it is certain that the Orthodox Kosovo Community in Dalmatia would not have deemed it necessary to congratulate Josif Rajacic on his election as Patriarch, on the proclamation of the Patriarchate and on the newly established Serbian Vojvodina.⁸ The fact that it happened proves that very long distances and exceptionally poor communications, and different administrative, political, and social systems did not break up the Serbian national feeling of unity and did not create the particularist awareness and regional separation which, by a concurrence of historic circumstances, was at that time developed among the major part of Croats in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia.

No efforts were spared by Patriarch Josif Rajacic and the Executive Committee of the Serbian people, which administered the movement's affairs, to strengthen the consciousness of Serbian spiritual unity during the revolution of 1848/49. There can be no other explanation for the fact that after the attack on Karlovci mounted by general János Hrabovszky, commander of the Petrovaradin Regiment, on June 12, 1848, when fourteen persons of "the eastern and western confessions" were killed, both the Executive Committee and Ban Jelacic issued instructions to the Orthodox bishops in Croatian territory to arrange for memorial services to be held in all the parish churches. They ordered the parish priests to exhort their congregations to "stand firm in safeguarding and defending their nationhood, i.e., their language and religion." Thus the Serbian Orthodox clergy and the Serbian Orthodox Church, at that moment the only organized Serbian national institution in Croatian territory, gave support and encouragement to the Serbian people and, according to the Bishop of Plaski, Evgenije Jovanovic, strengthened them in the conviction that it was necessary to defend and preserve their nationhood, their language, and their religion.⁹

The Battle of Karlovci was only one among a number of events which at the time of the revolution served Patriarch Rajacic as a pretext for cultivating national and religious feelings and consciousness of common Serbian political interests and aspirations. Something similar happened on the occasion of the sudden death of Vojvoda Stevan Supljikac, who died at Pancevo on December 15th, 1848. The Patriarch communicated this sad news to all the bishops, asking them to see to it that their parishioners were properly informed by the tolling of the great bells, which were to be rung for six days in succession, three times a day, in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, and ordering that the vojvoda's name be entered in the commemoration diptych and mentioned at every mass for an entire year. At the same time, the bishops informed their presbyters and those in turn their priests and parishioners that the deceased vojvoda's remains would be brought to Srem and "buried in the monastery of Krusedol, in the Serbian Despotovina, next to the body of the Serbian vojvoda, Despot Georgije II Brankovic."¹⁰

There could have been no better way of spreading the Serbian idea and heightening public awareness of how important it was to have a Serbian vojvoda, and by the same token a Serbian Vojvodina, than the one selected by the Patriarch. The repeated tolling of the great bell must have reached the ears of every member of the Orthodox congregation, making him share the Serbian people's grief over the death of the vojvoda. By the mentioning of his name in every church service for an entire year, not only Vojvoda Supljikac's name but also the significance of his rank and his person for the Serbian people and their subsequent development were impressed upon the minds of the believers. There was certainly a definite purpose in interring Vojvoda Supljikac in Srem, in the monastery of Krusedol, next to Despot Georgije II Brankovic. It signified the historical continuity of Serbia's statehood and suggested the spiritual guidelines which Serbs should follow in their future work. Reliable records confirm that the Orthodox bishops, presbyters and priests, especially those of the Plaski and Pakrac eparchies, scrupulously followed out Patriarch Rajacic's instructions, which obviously did not fall on deaf ears.

The Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, owing to the strong and multifold links with their compatriots in Serbia and elsewhere in Hungary, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro, easily and quickly took up the national and political ideas whose fountainhead was in Belgrade, Novi Sad, or Cetinje. The Serbian political idea was not imported into Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia and propagated there by paid agitators, as it has often unreasonably and maliciously been claimed; it flourished as a natural consequence of an enduring cultural, historical, religious, national and political development of the Serbian people. The strong and wide-spread national feelings were so hardy and tenacious that the Serbs were able in the coming decades to withstand all the diverse and brazen pressures coming from Vienna, Budapest, and Zagreb. As subsequent events will show, the highly developed national and political consciousness of the Serbs in Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia made them immune to Croatian political conceptions, especially after the latter, following the 1848/49 revolution, turned against the interests and aspirations of the Serbian people as a whole, wherever they lived. All attempts to impose the Croatian political concept were to prove unsuccessful, but because of the high-handed Croatian policy, the Croats' relations with the Serbs would frequently be totally disrupted.

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