Triune Kingdom and the Serb Vojvodina. The dynasty and
the monarchy survived, but Jugo-Slav hopes and the promises they
had received were unfulfilled or soon withdrawn, as for instance the
Vojvodina in 1861. Absolutism reigned supreme from 1849 to 1860.

This disappointment led the Croats and Serbs to try cooperation with the
Magyars, who under Deak and Eoetvoes appeared to be anxious to conciliate
the non-Magyars in those uncertain years which began in 1859 and ended
in dualism. Austria lacked a great statesman, and the Prusso-Austrian
rivalry led the fearful and impatient Francis Joseph into the Compromise
(Ausgleich) of 1867. It was a work of haste and expediency and bound
with it the fate of the dynasty. Thereafter, the German minority in
Austria and the Magyar minority in Hungary were the decisive factors
in the problems confronting the Jugo-Slavs. Dalmatia was handed over to
Austria; Croatia, by a compromise, which it has never really accepted,
to Hungary.

The Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary and Hungary and Croatia opened
in 1868 a period which ended in 1905--it was a period, on the one hand
of the greatest decay and decomposition in the political life of the
Jugo-Slavs, and, on the other, of the greatest literary and intellectual
unity as shaped by Bishop Strossmayer and Peter II and Nicholas of
Montenegro.

Bishop Strossmayer and the Slovene, Croat, and Serb academies, matica,
and learned societies, as well as men of literature, spoke, wrote, and
pleaded for unity in this period, in vain. But they and the universities
of Prague and Zagreb produced a younger generation which later took up
the fight for national unity and which abandoned individual political
foibles and looked over the boundaries of their provinces for
inspiration.

Among the Slovenes, politics degenerated into the struggle for minor
concessions from the court at Vienna in regard to the Slovene language
and schools, while political parties multiplied freely through personal
and social differences. The lines which bound them to their kinsmen in
the south were weakest during this period.

The Croats found themselves no match for the astute Magyars who resorted
to packed diets, gerrymandering, bribery, and forgery. The Compromise
(Nagoda) of 1868 was as decisive as the murder of the farsighted Prince
Michael of Serbia in that year. It will be remembered that, in spite
of his many faults, he had made an agreement with Montenegro for
the u