Šajkaši

During that period, the rivers were natural borders of the Kingdom of Hungary and Habsburg monarchy with the Ottoman Empire, part of the Military Frontier.

[1] In 1475, King Matthias had in his Danube Flotilla around 330 chaika with 10,000 men, among which were 1,700 lancers, 1,200 men-at-arms, while "the rest were catapultists and crossbowers".

[1] Pavle Bakić commanded the Šajkaši in the service of Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria and King of Hungary and Croatia.

[3] Bakić once again turned to Ferdinand, alerting him that the nonpayment to the Šajkaši would cause estrangement of the Serbs in his lands, and those of Zapolya and the Ottoman Empire.

[3] From all the writings in Serbian and German by the estimable Archimandrite Jovan Rajić (Johann Raics, 1726–1801), it has been established that the old Šajkaš Corps had their staff in the city of Komárno (Comorn, Hungarian: Komorom) which is along the upper Danube and that the personnel were under the Hungarian and Polish King Ladislaus III (1424-1444) and those following him until they were included under the rule of Leopold I (1640-1705).

As Ottoman conquest continued throughout the 1500s, thousands fled north across the Danube into lands vacated by the Serbs, also moving away from the Turks.

In addition, thousands of refugees, generally of the Orthodox faith, had entered the largely deserted lands of northern Medieval Serbia where few of the original natives had survived the brutal wars.

These Serbs formed the nucleus of the military frontiersmen, beginning in the early 1500s, and of the river fleet, the Šajkaši formations.

Some 30,000 families from Kosovo sought refuge across the Sava and Danube rivers among their kin folk after the Austrian supported revolt failed and left them defenceless in the face of Ottoman reprisals.

The Šajkaši battalion's first lower Danube villages were: Titel, Lok, Mošorin (Moschorin), Vilovo (Willova), Gardinovci (Gardinovatz) and Žabalj (Zsablia, formerly Josefdorf).

This battalion, along the model of the other regiments of the Military Frontier, was organized according to the standing order of the Austrian military-civil administration.

The original Trumić manuscript and other documents about the Šajkaši were brought to light in 2004 by Slavko Gavrilović, a Serbian scholar who specialized in the Šajkaš Battalion.

The dates and places correspond not only to assignments within the Military Frontier but also to postings in far-away wars waged by the Habsburg crown.

According to the list, Lieutenant Michael Stanisavljević was transferred to Mantua in 1784 and Captain Marcus Rajčević was killed in the Battle of Solferino in 1859.

[4] Colonel Aron Stanisavljević, in 1813 after 35 years with the Battalion, was promoted to Brigadier General and Major-General and transferred to Banat.

[7] In 1835, Colonel Franz Jankovic was appointed Major General and Commander of the Supreme Shipping Office in Vienna.

The Serb colonising community which was employed into the battalion (the šajkaši) was given the Šajkaška region, which initially included six villages, eventually increased by eight.

Šajkaši families, Serbs, settled in Esztergom during the rule of Matthias Corvinus, a settlement in the lower town developed from the community, called Srpska varoš.

Whenever there was a threat to Hungary, the Šajkaši were the main support of the territorial defence and the most reliable aid to the Royal Army.