(Servians, Bulgarians, Croatians, &c.), and the E.
According to the language in common use, 95% of the population was German, 4.66% was Czech, and the remainder was composed of Poles, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Italians.
From 1465 the pick of the Magyars and Croatians were enlisted in the same way every year, till, towards the end of his reign, Matthias could count upon 20,000 horse and 8000 foot, besides 6000 black brigaders.
In 1900 the population included 1,386,115 persons of German nationality, 102,974 Czechs and Slovaks, 4346 Poles, 805 Ruthenians, 1329 Slovenes, 271 Serbo-Croatians, and 1368 Italians, all Austrian subjects.
(Poles 27.4, Magyars 36.4, Rumanians 60.4, Ruthenians 61.o, Serbo-Croatians 63.7).
He entered the Austrian army (1819), fought against the Bosnians in 1845, was made ban of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia in 1848 on the petition of the Croatians, and was simultaneously raised to the rank of lieutenant-general by the emperor.
Politically, the principle underlying the agreement was that the empire should be divided into two portions; in one of these the Magyars were to rule, in the other the Germans; in either section the Slav races - the Serbs and Croatians, the Czechs, Poles and Slovenes - were to be placed in a position of political inferiority.
In this case the concessions to the Servo-Croatians lrad been made by the Liberal ministry; they required the parliamentary support of the Dalmatian representatives, who were more numerous than the Italian, and it was also necessary to cultivate the loyalty of the Slav races in this part so as to gain a support for Austria against the Russian party, which was very active in the Balkan Peninsula.
Of the total population, civil and military, 578,458 were Magyars, 104,520 were Germans, 25,168 were Slovaks, and the remainder was composed of Croatians, Servians, Rumanians, Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Gypsies, &c. According to religion, there were 445,023 Roman Catholics, 5806 Greek Catholics, 4422 Greek Orthodox; 67,319 were Protestants of the Helvetic, and 38,811 were Protestants of the Augsburg Confessions; 168,985 were Jews, and the remainder belonged to various other creeds.
The experiment failed, chiefly because of the opposition of the Croatians and Magyars, whom he bitterly offended by his celebrated saying that "Hungary could wait."
To Germanize while he liberalized the whole of the empire, and to compel Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Croatians to accept a system in which the government of the whole should be carried on by a German-speaking parliament and bureaucracy, failed.