One of the participants in the long-lasting struggles for the vacant Hungarian throne was the Serbian nobleman Stefan Balentić, a descendant of the prominent Serb Toma Balint and a relative of despot Radič Božić – all of whom served the Hungarian nobility. This nobility was partly aligned with Ferdinand of Habsburg, and partly with John Zapolya, or, depending on the situation, would shift its loyalty entirely or partially – sometimes to one, sometimes to the other claimant.
For example, Stefan Balentić eventually broke away from John Zapolya and joined Ferdinand, and on his behalf, using cannons, attacked and captured the Novi Bečej estate and fortress, which until then had belonged to one of Zapolya's main supporters, the renowned Stefan Verbeci.
The formal surrender of the Novi Bečej estate and fortress to Austrian King Ferdinand of Habsburg was executed – based on an agreement with compensation – by the widow of Duke John Zapolya, Queen Isabella, along with her son John Sigismund, one year later – on July 19, 1551.
At the end of the summer, or the beginning of autumn in 1551, the beylerbey (who was also the sandjakbey of Rumelia) and later Grand Vizier at the Ottoman court, Mehmed Paša Sokolović (a Serb from Herzegovina by origin), set out from Petrovaradin with around 80,000 soldiers, intending to capture Novi Bečej Fortress, along with other Banat fortresses.
In order to win over the Serbs of Banat, who were at that time inclined toward the Turks due to the Hungarian nobility's stance toward them, Mehmed Paša Sokolović promised them freedom and privileges, which he confirmed with a proclamation addressed to these Serbs, written in the Serbian language. These events are particularly detailed by the then Arab castle commander (of Arad) Mihailo Harašti. In response to Mehmed Paša's call, a large number of Banat Serbs, especially from our area, who were subjected to harsh exploitation by the Hungarian nobility and the Catholic Church, joined the Turks.
While the Turks were besieging Novi Bečej Fortress, the Serbs from Arad (Vranjevo) informed Mehmed Paša Sokolović through their envoy, a certain Đorđe Radovanov, that they would surrender their fortress without a fight. The Turks immediately accepted this offer and entered Arad on September 18, 1551.
On the same day that the Turks entered Arad, the Arad church was burned down and never rebuilt.
The siege of Novi Bečej Fortress, commanded by Toma Sentanai and Gavrilo Figedi, began on September 16, 1551, with bombardments and siege devices designed to break down the walls. The fortress's defenders put up a strong resistance for four days. At one point, the defenders left the fortress, launched a charge on the Turks, killed many of them, decapitated their heads, and carried them back to the fortress. One Turk was captured alive and was impaled in front of the city gate.
Before dawn on September 20, 1551 (Saturday), the Turks finally breached the fortress and killed the entire garrison, which numbered around 300-400 soldiers, mostly Hungarians.
The promises made by Mehmed Paša Sokolović in his proclamation were not fulfilled, and soon after the Turks occupied Banat, frequent uprisings by Serbs against the Turkish rule began, the largest of which was the uprising in southern Banat (in Vršac), led by Petar Majzoš. The uprising quickly spread throughout Banat, so that by 1594, the rebels had besieged Novi Bečej Fortress, which then housed around 50-60 Turkish soldiers. The garrison offered to surrender the fortress, but the rebels refused to accept the Turkish conditions. Specifically, the Turks demanded that they be allowed to take a vast amount of looted treasure hidden within the fortress. Eventually, the rebels broke into the fortress, killed the entire garrison, and took all the treasure.
However, this uprising of the Banat Serbs was suppressed at the beginning of 1595 by the Turkish army, commanded by the Pasha of Belgrade, Sinan Paša.
Under Turkish occupation, our town (and the entire Banat – including the Čanad, Timișoara, Bečkerec, Lipova, and Moldavian sanjaks, all together as the Timișoara vilayet) remained until the end of the Austro-Turkish War of 1716-1718, which ended with the signing of the peace treaty in Požarevac on July 21, 1718.
With a brief interruption, our town was liberated from Turkish rule during the great Austro-Turkish War of 1683-1699. Following the provisions of the peace treaty signed in Karlowitz on January 26, 1699 (according to the Julian calendar), a decision was made regarding the final demolition of the Novi Bečej Fortress, which was carried out in 1701.
This provision of the peace treaty, which mandated the demolition of all fortresses in Banat located on the left bank of the Morava and Tisa rivers, including Novi Bečej Fortress, was of little significance, as fortresses of this type had already lost their former strategic importance by that time. This was due to significant changes in warfare methods, with the increasing use of firearms in military tactics.
During the great Austro-Turkish War in 1690, there was a massive migration of Serbs, led by Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević, with about 70,000 people (a huge number for that time) moving into these regions. They retreated alongside the Austrian army, taking some of their movable property with them. The majority of these settlers came from Kosovo.
Facing defeats and retreats by his armies in the Austro-Turkish War, Austrian Emperor Leopold sought to gain the support of the Serbs in the fight against the Turks by issuing:
- Proclamations on April 6 and 26, and May 31, 1690,
- A privilege on August 21, 1690,
- A protection diploma on December 11, 1690,
- A privilege on August 20, 1691, and
- A privilege on March 3, 1695.
Based on these documents, the Serb settlers under Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević, along with the indigenous Serbs of the region, were granted an autonomous territory called Vojvodina, with the subvoivode Jovan Monasterlija at its head.
This marked the first time the term "Vojvodina" was used in official documents of the Austrian court as a distinct territory within the Habsburg monarchy. The name "Vojvodina" has remained in use ever since, although its political, national, cultural, economic, and territorial meaning has continually changed throughout history, depending on the social, economic, and political changes in the region. Its final value and essence were established in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The privileges outlined in these documents from Austrian Emperor Leopold were applied to the Serbs in Banat only after the region was finally captured from the Turks in the new Austro-Turkish War of 1716-1718.
The official extension of these privileges to the Serbs in Banat was carried out through a special imperial decree on January 16, 1720.
Although initially quite broad, the Austrian authorities consistently attempted to reduce, narrow, and limit these privileges. This was especially evident in the implementation of the provision "without infringing upon the rights of others," which was issued by Empress Maria Theresa on April 24, 1743, and supplemented on May 18 of the same year. This provision meant that certain privileges could be granted to the Serbs, but only as long as they did not jeopardize the privileged position of the sizable Hungarian population within the empire. In other words, when Austria faced a greater threat of Turkish invasion, the Serbs were granted greater rights and privileges to secure their participation in the defense of the Austrian borders, but once the threat subsided, these rights and privileges were reduced or revoked.
The final consolidation of all the privileges granted to the Serbs upon their settlement in Austrian territories was formalized with the issuance of a special Declaration in 1779 and the Consistorial System in 1782 (during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa and her son and successor, Emperor Joseph II).
The issuance of these documents actually marked a very rapid and significant narrowing, limiting, and even the abolition of a large part of the privileges that the Serbs had received from earlier acts of the Austrian court, especially in relation to the promise once made by Austrian Emperor Leopold I. This was primarily done because the actual threat from the Turks had already largely subsided, and the need for support from the Serbs had, if not completely disappeared, at least significantly diminished.
Immediately after the conclusion of the previously mentioned Great Austro-Turkish War, Austria began forming and organizing a defensive line against the Turks on the left banks of the Tisa and Morava rivers during 1702-1703, known as the Potiško-Pomoriška border. The Serb settlers and indigenous Serbs were included as frontier soldiers.
With the expulsion of the Turks from Banat during the subsequent war between Austria and Turkey, the Potiško-Pomoriška border was abolished, and the Serb frontier soldiers were relocated to the left bank of the Danube River—downstream from the mouth of the Tisa. In this area, a new military border was formed under the name Banat Land Militia. Since then, the nickname "militari-milicija" (military-militia) has been preserved for the current inhabitants of southern Banat.
The organization and regulation of the Banat Land Militia were governed by the imperial Convention of October 28, 1790, and the imperial Edict-Decree of October 23, 1753. At that time, some of the soldiers and their families from the disbanded Potiško-Pomoriška military border settled in Matej, Borđoš, and most notably in the so-called Turkish Bečej (present-day Novi Bečej-Vranjevo), which, according to an order from the Provincial Court Office dated March 31, 1753, was named Francisdorf (Franzisdorf). Over time, this name gradually became more Serbianized and eventually took the form of Vranjevo.
The population of the Banat Land Militia (and thus, today's Vranjevo) was primarily settled from the destroyed Arača and from Bačka (especially from the Potišje region), as many Serbs were moving south from northern Hungary, which is the area where we live today.
The northernmost part of the Banat Land Militia extended up to Kikinda, and this area consisted of only one battalion, which was divided into six companies (or units), with the company in Vranjevo being the most significant, followed closely by the second-largest (just behind Kikinda) with 578 soldiers.
The company in Vranjevo was commanded by Viceober-Captain Lazar Popović, who was also the deputy commander of the entire Banat Land Militia, overseen by Ober-Captain Gavrilo Novaković.
The Bečej estate was purchased by the Sisanji family at one of the auctions held in Vienna in 1781 and 1782.
With the transfer of this estate to the Sisanji family, the intensified colonization of foreign ethnic groups in Banat began—primarily Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians, and others—and thus, also in this estate. The Sisanji family settled about 60 Hungarian families on their estate, marking the first significant foreign ethnic group in the area of our town, excluding the period of Turkish rule.
Until then, meaning until the second half of the 18th century, the area of what is now Novi Bečej had been exclusively settled by Serbs.
At the time when the Sisanji family (from which today's name for Šušanj originates) purchased the Bečej estate, the head of the family was Pavle Sisanji, married to Agnes Konstantin. The title of nobility was granted to his son Jovan, with the addition "of Turkish Bečej" around 1798. Jovan was married to Klara Papoliza. Their children were Pavle, Nikola, Agnesa, Jelisaveta, Konstantina, Marija, Anastasija, and Jelena.
In 1824, the hereditary lord and proprietor of Turkish Bečej became Pavle's grandson, Nikola, the son of Jovan. One of Nikola's daughters married Captain Leopold Rohonci, who, in 1847 (at the age of around 40), settled permanently in Turkish Bečej.
Another of Nikola's daughters, Jelisaveta, married General Lajnineg-Vesterburg, and the third married a man named Đorđe Urban.
According to current information, the Sisanji family is of Greek-Armenian-Cincar origin, although they always considered themselves Hungarian in terms of nationality. They were originally part of the "Greek rite" (Eastern Orthodox) church, before converting to Catholicism in the mid-18th century.
From the Revolutionary Year of 1848
The February Revolution in France, which had a strong impact on the Habsburg Monarchy, as the Vienna Uprising and Hungarian revolt, also resonated in our region. On April 24th of that year, unrest broke out in Vranjevo and several surrounding towns (Kikinda, Melenci, and others), where the rebels "tore up all Hungarian written protocols into small pieces and scattered them. In Melenci, they threw a green flag from the town house into a ravine and trampled on it, replacing it with our flag, white, red, and blue."
In Kikinda, a summary court operated, and according to its verdict, five people were executed, around three hundred were put in chains, and "in Turkish Bečej, merchant Jovan Rajković from Vranjevo was hanged."
Therefore, it is no surprise that one of the main Hungarian military expeditionary camps was located in Turkish Bečej.
In such a revolutionary atmosphere, the famous May Assembly was held in Sremski Karlovci, where Turkish Bečej was represented by someone named Lazar Marković.
The demands of the May Assembly were never fully realized, and instead, with the Imperial Manifesto of December 15, 1848, "lands located in the current counties of Bodroš, Torontal, Tamiš, and Krašov, and in the districts of Rumak and Ilok in the Srem county, are to be organized as land... independent from the administration of Hungary... which will be governed by the provincial authorities of our ministry, and this land will be called the Duchy of Serbia and Tamiš Banat."
Thus, the settlement known today as Novi Bečej became part of the newly formed Vojvodina, while Vranjevo remained a part of the Kikinda district.
Undoubtedly, the formation of such a Vojvodina served exclusively the interests of the Habsburg Monarchy and the upper classes of the ruling nations in it (Germans and Hungarians), and its existence coincided with the absolutism of Alexander Bach, when, with the issuance of the October Diploma in 1860, this Vojvodina was finally abolished.
The fact that the Vojvodina at that time was Serbian only in name is evidenced by the population census conducted in 1851. Of the total population of 1,438,751, only 321,110 were Serbs, and the total number of people of Slavic origin (including Serbs) was 449,600.
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