His realistic assessment of strengths and weaknesses of Croatia's position between Austrian bureaucracy and Hungarian expansionist nationalism proved invaluable to his home country during the wider political turmoil in mid and late 19th century Europe.

[2] Mažuranić became a man of many abilities; he spoke 9 languages (Croatian, Latin, Italian, German, Hungarian, French, English, Czech, and Polish) and was well versed in astronomy and mathematics.

[citation needed] He accomplished the Croatian transition from a semi-feudal legal and economic system to a modern civil society similar to those emerging in other countries in central Europe.

[3] The latter was one of the issues that led to his later resignation as ban in 1880[3] and a process criticized by the Catholic Church at the time, as well as by ethnic Serb politicians in the Parliament of Croatia-Slavonia.

The main goal of his reforms was to form foundations of the organization of autonomous Croatian government and establishment of a modern and efficient political-administrative system.

The tale is based on an assault in Montenegro, when a petty local Muslim tyrant was killed, as an act of vendetta, in an ambush set by Montenegrins.

Mažuranić's poetry transformed a rather prosaic act of tribal revenge into a hymn celebrating the struggle for freedom—acted out under the hostile forces of fatality.