The Battle of Karlóca (now Sremski Karlovci, in the South Bačka District of the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia) was the first battle in the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-1849, fought on 12 June 1848 between the Hungarian Royal Army under the command of Lieutenant-General János Hrabovszky and Major Maximilian Eugen von Stein against the Serbian insurgents led by Lieutenant Đorđe Stratimirović. The Hungarians tried to suppress the movement by an attack against the main basis of the Serbians, Karlóca. After initial successes, the Hungarians, fearing of encirclement, retreated to Pétervárad. This action, instead of putting down the Serbian revolt, had the result of inciting it even more, causing its widening during the next months.
Background Following the civil transformation of March–April 1848 in Hungary, called the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, after a few months of peace, the Serbs, the Croats, the Transylvanian Romanians, and some of the Slovaks living in Hungary and Transylvania, made territorial and national demands and sought to ally themselves with the Habsburg emperor, hostile to the Hungarian state..
A common feature of the Croatian, Serbian and Romanian movements was that they also had substantial, well trained armed forces of their own. The population of the Military Frontier lands (Croatian Military Frontier, Slavonian Military Frontier and Transylvanian Military Frontier) established in the southern and eastern parts of the country in the 18th century, was predominantly Croatian, Serb and Romanian, and the Hungarian government had to promise not to change the military internal structure of the Border Region for the time being. These border guards (see Grenz infantry) constituted an armed force that could vigorously sustain these nationalities' demands. The leaders of the border guard regiments were committed to the person of the emperor and to the unity of the empire, and they were able to exploit the illusions of this peasant population about the good emperor..
However, the petition adopted at the 27 March meeting of the Serbian community in Újvidék (Novi Sad) did not reflect this sentiment. It demanded the recognition of Serbs as a nation and the abolition of the serfdom in the border regions. However, when their delegates appeared in Pozsony, proeminent Hungarian politician and the Minister of Finance of Hungary Lajos Kossuth made it quite clear to them on 9 April that they could not expect to be recognized as an independent nation because in political terms there was only one nation in Hungary, the Hungarian nation - that is, the "Hungarian" nation, which united the citizens of different languages. A member of the delegation, Đorđe Stratimirović, said that they would then look elsewhere for the fulfillment of their demands, to which Kossuth is said to have replied, Then the sword will decide between us. Kossuth later denied that the exchange had taken place, and the opinion of the Hungarian historians is that this dialogue could be later invented to serve as a Serbian propaganda ploy.
In the Border Region, there was already a rather anti-Hungarian sentiment, and the participants in the popular assemblies there demanded accession to the non-existent "Triune Kingdom" (formed by Croatia and Slavonia, which belonged to the Hungarian crown, and Dalmatia, governed from Vienna). At the meeting in Karlóca (Sremski Karlovci) on 14 April, the Serbs in the south of the region demanded the creation of the autonomous Serbian Vojvodina. But it is far from certain that the decisions of this meeting were influenced by the incident from Pozsony, in which, as seen above, Kossuth would have declared supposedly that the sword shall decide between the Serbs and Hungarians. All the more so, because this demand had already been made at one or other of the Serbian meetings held during the Serbian delegation's visit to Pozsony.. The participants in the Serbian national rally in Karlóca on 13–15 May have now called on the Serbian population to take up arms.. The demands were supported, not so secretly, by the Principality of Serbia's government in Belgrade, whose agents in southern Hungary and Bosnia were simultaneously trying to foment an uprising for the creation of a unified southern Slav state.
The situation in the South was exacerbated by the arrival of thousands of volunteers from the Principality of Serbia, called "Servians", to help their brothers. Their participation had a decisive influence on the mood of the Karlóca assembly and the genocidal ferocity of the armed struggle that began in mid-June. The main armed base of the struggle, however, was the military of the Serbian border regiments of the Slavonian Military Frontier.
In 1848 Karlóca became the center of the Serbian movement in May 1848. Karlóca was a free military town in 1848, in the border district of Pétervárad (Petrovaradin).Vásárhelyi Péter István: A karlócai ütközet. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 1980 (27. évf., 3 sz.), pp. 455 Until the end of the World War I, it was the seat of the Serbian head of the church, the patriarch (Josif Rajačić in 1848), and one of the intellectual centers of the Serbs in Southern Hungary (the first Serbian high school in Hungary was opened in Karlóca in 1791). Until 1848 - as a border town - it was outside the jurisdiction of the Hungarian civil authorities.
The Serbian Assembly in Karlóca on 13–15 May established the Serbian Main Committee (Odbor), followed by the formation of various district and local committees in late May and early June. In addition, the assembly in Karlóca decided that Syrmia with the border region, the counties of Baranya and Bács with the district of the Šajkaška (Csajkás), and the whole Temes County and its border region would be part of the Serbian voivodeship to be established, offered an alliance to Croatia, undertook to stand up for the rights of the Transylvanian Romanians, refused to hold the ecclesiastical assembly planned by the government at Temesvár, and sought to submit the demands of the Serbs directly to the Habsburg king by bypassing the Hungarian government.Bánlaky József: A szerbek mozgalma. A magyar nemzet hadtörténete XXI Arcanum Adatbázis Kft. 2001 In this way, they declared their secession from Hungary. First Archbishop Josip Rajačić was elected president of the Main Odbor, and after his resignation, Đorđe Stratimirović. Stratimirović had previously served as an officer in the imperial army, so he knew the way to organize an armed force. In early June, Rajačić himself traveled to Zagreb, where he concluded an alliance with the leader of the Croatian movement, Ban Josip Jellačić, who was also anti-Hungarian.
When the news of the events in Karlóca reached Pest, Archduke Stephen the Palatine of Hungary immediately sent a decree to Rajačić, in which he held him responsible for the consequences of the Karlóca meeting. In reply, Rajačić openly stated that he had no intention of holding the church meeting announced by the government in Temesvár, which was to support the agreement with the Hungarians. In the face of all this defiance and the activity of the Obdor, the royal commissioner Péter Csernovics did not show sufficient vigor, which is why the government, leaving only Bácska to him, appointed Sebő Vukovics, the deputy of Temes County, as the royal commissioner of Bánság. This measure, however, did not bring the desired success either; the Obdor, and especially its chairman, Stratimirović, who was its strongman, worked with untiring persistence to widen the military resistance. The main result of his work was that by mid-June three regular Serbian fortified camps had been established along the Danube and Tisza. One of these, under the command of Drakulić, a former lieutenant colonel appointed by the Main Obdor, and consisting of about 3,000 armed men, was assembled on the left bank of the Tisza, near Perlasz (Sr. Perlez). Another camp was founded by the Obdor's agents to secure the patriarch's seat on the right bank of the Danube between Karlóca and Újvidék. The number of armed men in the Karlóca camp in early June was 5,000–6,000. The third camp, under the command of Joannović, who had been appointed Colonel by the Obdor, was established at Temerin, the crossing point of the so-called Great Roman ramparts between Bácsföldvár and Ujvidék, and the Little Roman ramparts, which ran from Bácska to Titel for about 8 miles. The core of this was the battalion of the Šajkaši (Hung. Sajkások) of Titel, which joined the Main Obdor, and provided the necessary cannon and ammunition. On 6 June, the Šajkaši led by Zaria Jovanović, took 8 cannons from the armory in Titel and marched into the Roman trenches. The strength of these fortified military camps was multiplied day by day by the fugitives from the counties of Bács and Torontál, although Commissioners Csernovics and Vukovics set up a patrol line of national guards to prevent it.
Prelude On 24 May, Đorđe Stratimirovič (1822-1908), a former lieutenant in the imperial army and president of the Main Odbor, called on Serbs to arm themselves and collect donations, and shortly afterward (on 4 June) he ordered the troops of the border regiments to join the uprising. The number of armed men in this camp was initially 3,000, but later - with the fraternization of the regular border guard troops - it reached 15,000. The existence of the Serbian camp in Karlóca was a problem for the commander-in-chief of the army in Pétervárad, Baron Lieutenant General János Hrabovszky. Their fortified position was a threat to the fortress of Pétervárad, and their geo-strategic position could have been used to obstruct navigation on the Danube and postal traffic.Vásárhelyi Péter István: A karlócai ütközet. Hadtörténelmi Közlemények 1980 (27. évf., 3 sz.), pp. 456