On the road to safety – part II. The experience of travel of Croatian refugees fleeing the ottomans, as described in letters of Francis Battahyán (1538-1548)

The Ottoman raids on Croatian historical areas were documented as early as the beginning of the 15th century; their frequency significantly increased after the Ottomans seized the medieval Bosnian Kingdom in 1463. One significant outcome of the Ottoman incursions was the prevailing sense of insecurity and the subsequent displacement of the indigenous populace to safer regions. In the Burgenland region, the first recorded Croatian refugees emerged in the middle of the second decade (c. 1515), with the peak of immigration to Burgenland transpiring in the mid-16th century. This study is the second part of a two-part study on the experience of Croatian population emigration from Croatia and Slavonia in the mid-16th century due to the growing Ottoman threat, migrating to the territories of southwestern Hungary at the time, i.e., present-day Burgenland. These areas were significantly safer and considerably less threatened by Ottoman raiders. This paper primarily concerns various aspects of the emigration process itself, such as who organized the migration, when, how, and why it occurred, the obstacles the refugees faced on their journey to safer areas, how they traveled, and which social groups they belonged to in their homeland. Additionally, many other questions are addressed. The letters sent between 1538 and 1548 to Christopher Batthyány, lord of the important Grebengrad castle and its associated manor in what was then Slavonia (modern-day northwestern Croatia), are particularly valuable.