The sheer, long-term violence of the Military Frontier is astonishing. The Uskoks pinned down its furthest southern point, but irregularly, along swathes of modern Croatia and western Hungary, spasms of extraordinary ferocity laid waste to regions which, while always quite tough places to live, had before the disaster of Mohács been good farmland, with the usual accompaniment of small castles, mills and monasteries. The inhabitants were faced with impossible problems of loyalty. A powerful strand within the Hungarian lands found itself terrified of Muslim rule but also dubious about Habsburg
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