areas of legislation and of public administration. The purely catholic Croatia also protested against the equality of other Christian churches, propagated by the Hungarian liberals, who were in the head of the reform, and revolutionary movements of 1848, which aggravated all the above issues. Finally, Croatia’s representatives at most of the reform parliamentary sessions supported the conservative government. After March of 1848 the Croat liberals had two essential demands: to unite Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, the Hungarian Littoral (Rijeka and Bakar), and the Hungarian and Slavonian Military Frontier into the Triune Kingdom and to establish the right to communicate in Croatian with the Hungarian authorities. The office of the Ban had been empty since 1845, but the Hungarian revolution of 15 March 1848 and the appointment as Hungarian prime minister of the liberal Lajos Batthyány forced the Austrian authorities to appoint a Croatian Ban loyal to them. Baron Franz (Franjo) Kulmer proposed to the newly appointed Austrian Prime Minister that Baron Josip Jelačić, colonel of the 1st Border Guard Regiment of the Ban, be commissioned to this post. Austrian Prime Minister Kollowrat himself considered it important that a forceful, popular person loyal to the Empire should be appointed to this post before the independent Hungarian government, responsible to the parliament, would be appointed. The Emperor appointed Jelačić as Croatian Ban on March 23. The following day the new Ban was promoted to major-general and head of Zágráb Generalkommando. On April 8 he was promoted to lieutenant general. Because of his paternal nature, Jelačić enjoyed great popularity among his subordinates. His excellent organizing ability and charisma soon won over a major part of the Croat public to his cause. On April 19 the Hungarian government called Jelačić to Pest to discuss the details of his inauguration and questions about the Croatian provincial assembly; Jelačić declined. What is more, after arriving in Zágráb he severed all the connections between Hungary and Croatia. On April 25 he declared martial law and announced that civilian administration in Croatia, Slavonia, and on the Hungarian Littoral were under his jurisdiction. He tried to turn Croatian public opinion against the ongoing Hungarian socio-political transformation by referring to Croatian national injustices and by using national slogans. He announced the abolition of serfdom under his jurisdiction as if the April Laws of 1848 were not valid in Croatia. The Ban did not respond to Hungarian initiatives to negotiate. When, on