Cisleithania, the Habsburg lands of the Dual Monarchy that had been part of the Holy Roman Empire, along with Galicia and Dalmatia, lay to the west (on "this" side) of the Leitha River.

[3] The Compromise of 1867, which created the Dual Monarchy, gave the Hungarian government more control of its domestic affairs than it had possessed at any time since the Battle of Mohács (see fig.

The Hungarian government consisted of a prime minister and cabinet appointed by the emperor but responsible to the Diet of Hungary, a bicameral parliament elected by a narrow franchise.

The compromise designated that commercial and monetary policy, tariffs, the railroad, and indirect taxation were "common" concerns to be negotiated every ten years.

[5] When in 1915 a new small official coat of arms of Austria-Hungary was released, composed of the Austrian and Hungarian coats-of-arms only, the Croatian government protested, since it was a breach of the Nagodba.

Guilds were abolished, workers were permitted to bargain for wages, and the government attempted to improve education and construct roads and railroads.

Tisza assembled a bureaucratic political machine that maintained control through corruption and manipulation of a woefully unrepresentative electoral system.

Tisza's government raised taxes, balanced the budget within several years of coming to power, and completed large road, railroad, and waterway projects.

Rail and steamship transport gave North American farmers access to European markets, and Europe's grain prices fell by 50 percent.

Large landowners fought the downturn by seeking trade protection and other political remedies; the lesser nobles, whose farms failed in great numbers, sought positions in the still-burgeoning bureaucracy.

However, the magnates continued to wield great influence through several conservative parties because of their massive wealth and dominant position in the upper chamber of the diet.

They fought modernization and sought both closer ties with Vienna and a restoration of Hungary's traditional social structure and institutions, arguing that agriculture should remain the mission of the nobility.

They won protection from the market by reestablishment of a system of entail and also pushed for restriction of middle-class profiteering and restoration of corporal punishment.

In the mid-19th century, Hungary's middle class consisted of a small number of German and Jewish merchants and workshop owners who employed a few craftsmen.

[citation needed] The government favored low wages to keep Hungarian products competitive on foreign markets and to prevent impoverished peasants from flocking to the city to find work.

[citation needed] Literacy raised the expectations of workers in agriculture and industry and made them ripe for participation in movements for political and social change.

By 1900 almost half of the country's landowners were scratching out a living from plots too small to meet basic needs, and many farm workers had no land at all.

[citation needed] The countryside also was characterized by unrest, to which the government reacted by sending in troops, banning all farm-labor organizations, and passing other repressive legislation.

In the late 19th century, the Liberal Party passed laws that enhanced the government's power at the expense of the Roman Catholic Church.

The parliament won the right to veto clerical appointments, and it reduced the church's nearly total domination of Hungary's education institutions.

Most minorities never learned to speak Hungarian, but the education system made them aware of their political rights, and their discontent with Magyarization mounted.

Bureaucratic pressures and heightened fears of territorial claims against Hungary after the creation of new nation-states in the Balkans forced Tisza to outlaw "national agitation" and to use electoral legerdemain to deprive the minorities of representation.

Agricultural decline continued, and the bureaucracy could no longer absorb all of the pauperized lesser nobles and educated people who could not find work elsewhere.

Franz Joseph refused to appoint members of the coalition to the government until they renounced their demands for concessions from Austria concerning the military.

The Croats, with other South Slav nations, had wanted a separate state and status equal to the Austrians and the Hungarians in the monarchy since the beginning of the union in 1867 and 1868.

[7][8] Since it was too late to reform the Imperial and Royal monarchy, on 29 October 1918 the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) in Zagreb unified the Croatian lands and ended the union and all ties with Austria and Hungary (particularly Article 1 of the Nagodba of 1868) and decided to join the National Council of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs (on 1 December 1918 it united with the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes).