Independence from Venice (1358) In 1358, the
Treaty of Zadar forced Venice to yield all claims to Dalmatia. The city accepted the hegemony of King
Louis I of Hungary. On 27 May 1358, the final agreement was reached at
Visegrád between Louis and the
Archbishop Ivan Saraka. The city recognized
Hungarian sovereignty, but the local nobility continued to rule with little interference from the Hungarian court at
Buda. The Republic profited from the suzerainty of Louis of Hungary, whose kingdom was not a naval power, and with whom they would have little conflict of interest. The last Venetian
conte left, apparently in a hurry. Although under the Visegrád agreement Dubrovnik was formally under the jurisdiction of the
ban of Croatia, the city successfully resisted both the royal and ban authority. In 1372, the Ragusan Council passed drastic legislation barring all trade between foreigners within its territory, and further banning trade between Ragusans and foreigners. It seems these restrictions did not last long, given that such measures would have caused an economic collapse if enforced, and seem to have been no longer in effect by 1385 at the latest. In 1399, the city acquired the area between Ragusa and Pelješac, called the
Primorje (Dubrovačko primorje) with Slano (lat.
Terrae novae). It was purchased from Bosnian King
Stephen Ostoja. A brief
war with Bosnia in 1403 and 1404 ended with Bosnian withdrawal. Between 1419 and 1426, the
Konavle region, south of Astarea (Župa dubrovačka), including the city of Cavtat, was added to the Republic's possessions. In the first half of the 15th century Cardinal
Ivan Stojković (
Johannes de Carvatia) was active in Dubrovnik as a Church reformer and writer. During the peak of trade relations between the Bosnian kingdom and other neighboring regions, the largest caravan trade route was established between
Podvisoki and Ragusa. This trading activity culminated in the year 1428, on 9 August, when a group of
Vlachs pledged to the lord of Ragusa, Tomo Bunić, that they would provide a delivery of 600 horses along with 1500
modius of
salt. The intended recipient of the delivery was Dobrašin Veseoković, and in exchange the Vlachs agreed to receive payment equal to half the amount of salt delivered.
Ottoman suzerainty In 1430 and 1442, the Republic signed short-term arrangements with the
Ottoman Empire defining its status. In 1458, the Republic signed a treaty with the Ottomans which made it a tributary of the
sultan. Under the treaty, the Republic owed the sultan "fidelity", "truthfulness", and "submission", and an annual tribute, which was in 1481 defined at 12,500 gold coins. The sultan guaranteed to protect Ragusa and granted them extensive trading privileges. Under the agreement, the republic retained its autonomous status and was virtually independent, and usually allied with the
Maritime Republic of Ancona. It could enter into relations with foreign powers and make treaties with them (as long as not conflicting with Ottoman interests), and its ships sailed under its own flag. Ottoman vassalage also conferred special trade rights that extended within the Empire. Ragusa handled the Adriatic trade on behalf of the Ottomans, and its merchants received special
tax exemptions and trading benefits from the
Porte. It also operated colonies that enjoyed extraterritorial rights in major Ottoman cities. Merchants from Ragusa could enter the
Black Sea, which was otherwise closed to non-Ottoman shipping. The Ragusan merchants paid less in
customs duties than other foreign merchants, and the city-state enjoyed diplomatic support from multiple foreign powers, including from the Ottomans, in disputes with the Venetians. For their part, Ottomans regarded Ragusa as a port of major importance, since most of the traffic between
Florence and
Bursa (an Ottoman port in northwestern
Anatolia) was carried out via Ragusa. Florentine cargoes would leave the Italian ports of
Pesaro,
Fano or
Ancona to reach Ragusa. From that point on they would take the land route
Bosnasaray (Sarajevo)–
Novibazar–
Skopje–
Plovdiv–
Edirne. When, in the late 16th century, Ragusa placed its merchant marine at the disposal of the
Spanish Empire on condition that its participation in the Spanish military ventures would not affect the interest of the Ottoman Empire; the latter tolerated the situation as the trade of Ragusa permitted the importation of goods from states with which the Ottoman Empire was at war. Along with England, Spain and
Genoa, Ragusa was one of Venice's most damaging competitors in the 15th century on all seas, even in the Adriatic. Thanks to its proximity to the plentiful
oak forests of
Gargano, it was able to bid cargoes away from the Venetians. and
Nikola Bunić (ca. 1635–1678) arrived in
Constantinople in an attempt to avert an imminent threat to Ragusa: Kara-Mustafa's pretensions for the annexation of Ragusa to the Ottoman Empire. The Grand-Vizier, struck with the capacity Marin showed in the arts of persuasion and acquainted with his resources in active life, resolved to deprive his country of so able a diplomat, and on 13 December he was imprisoned, where he was to remain for several years. In 1683, Kara-Mustafa was killed in the attacks on
Vienna, and Marin was soon free to return to Ragusa. In 1683 the Ottomans were defeated in the
Battle of Kahlenberg outside Vienna. The field marshal of the Austrian army was Ragusan
Frano Đivo Gundulić. In 1684, the emissaries renewed an agreement contracted in
Visegrád in the year 1358 and accepted the sovereignty of Habsburg as Hungarian Kings over Ragusa, with an annual tax of 500 ducats. At the same time, Ragusa continued to recognize the sovereignty of the Ottomans, a common arrangement at the time. This opened up greater opportunities for Ragusa ships in ports all along the Dalmatian coast, in which they anchored frequently. After this, Venice captured a part of Ragusa's inland area and approached its borders. They presented the threat of completely surrounding and cutting off Ragusa's trade inland. In view of this danger and anticipating the defeat of the Ottomans in 1684 Ragusa sent emissaries to
Emperor Leopold in Vienna, hoping that the Austrian Army would capture Bosnia. Unfortunately for the Republic, the Ottomans retained control over their hinterland. In the
Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), the Ottomans ceded large territories to the victorious
Habsburgs, Venetians,
Poles, and
Russians, but retained
Herzegovina. The Republic of Ragusa ceded two patches of its coast to the Ottoman Empire so that the Republic of Venice would be unable to attack from land, only from the sea. One of them, the northwestern land border with the small town of Neum, is today the only outlet of present-day
Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Adriatic Sea. The southeastern border village of
Sutorina later became part of
Montenegro, which has a coastline to the south. After the treaty, Neum and Sutorina were attached to
Sanjak of Herzegovina of
Bosnia Eyalet. Ragusa continued its policy of strict neutrality in the
War of Austrian succession (1741–48) and in the
Seven Years' War (1756–63). '' In 1783, the Ragusan Council did not answer the proposition put forward by their diplomatic representative in Paris,
Frano Favi, that they should establish diplomatic relations with America, although the Americans agreed to allow Ragusan ships free passage in their ports. The first years of the French war were prosperous for Ragusa. The flag of Saint Blaise being neutral, the Republic became one of the chief carriers of the Mediterranean. The Continental Blockade was the life of Ragusa; and before the rise of
Lissa the manufacturers of England, excluded from the ports of France, Italy, Holland, and Germany, found their way to the center of Europe through Saloniki and Ragusa.
French occupation The
Battle of Austerlitz and the consequent
peace treaty, having compelled Austria to hand over Dalmatia to France, put Ragusa in a dilemma. The nearby
Bay of Kotor was a Venetian frontier against the Ottomans. But while France held the land, the United Kingdom and Russia held the sea; and while French troops marched from Austerlitz to Dalmatia, eleven Russian
ships of the line entered the Bay of Kotor, and landed 6,000 men, later supported by 16,000 Montenegrins under
Petar I Petrović-Njegoš. As 5,000 Frenchmen under General
Molitor marched southwards and peacefully took control of the fortresses of Dalmatia, the Russians pressed the senators of Ragusa to allow them to occupy the city, as it was an important fortress – thus anticipating that France might block further progress to Kotor. As there was no way from Dalmatia to Kotor but through Ragusa, General Molitor was equally ardent in trying to win Ragusa's support. The Republic was determined to maintain its strict neutrality, knowing that anything else would mean its destruction. The Senate dispatched two emissaries to Molitor to dissuade him from entering Ragusan territory. Despite his statement that he intended to respect and defend the independence of the Ragusan Republic, his words demonstrated that he had no qualms about violating the territory of a neutral nation on his way to take possession of Kotor, and he even said that he would cross the Ottoman territories of
Neum and
Sutorina (bordering the Republic to the north and south, respectively) without asking permission from the Ottoman Empire. To the emissaries' protestation he responded by promising to respect Ragusan neutrality and not enter its territory in exchange for a loan of 300,000 francs. It was clearly blackmail (a similar episode occurred in 1798, when a Revolutionary French fleet threatened invasion if the Republic did not pay a huge contribution). The Ragusan government instructed the emissaries to inform Molitor that the Russians told the Republic quite clearly that should any French troops enter Ragusan territory, the Russians and their Montenegrin allies would proceed to pillage and destroy every part of the Republic, and also to inform him that the Republic could neither afford to pay such an amount of money, nor could it raise such an amount from its population without the Russians being alerted, provoking an invasion. Even though the emissaries managed to persuade General Molitor not to violate Ragusan territory, Napoleon was not content with the stalemate between France and Russia concerning Ragusa and the Bay of Kotor and soon decided to order the occupation of the Republic. Upon entering Ragusan territory and approaching the capital, the French General
Jacques Lauriston demanded that his troops be allowed to rest and be provided with food and drink in the city before continuing on to Kotor. However, this was a deception because as soon as they entered the city, they proceeded to occupy it in the name of Napoleon. The next day, Lauriston demanded an impossible contribution of a million francs.
The Times in London reported these events in its edition of 24 June 1806: Almost immediately after the beginning of the French occupation, Russian and Montenegrin troops entered Ragusan territory and began fighting the French army, raiding and pillaging everything along the way and culminating in
a siege of the occupied city during which 3,000 cannonballs fell on the city. The environs, thick with villas, the results of a long prosperity, were plundered, including half a million
sterling. The city was in the utmost straits; General Molitor, who had advanced within a few days' march of Ragusa, made an appeal to the Dalmatians to rise and expel the Russian–Montenegrin force, which met with a feeble response. Only three hundred men joined him, but a stratagem made up for his deficiency of numbers. A letter, seemingly confidential, was dispatched to General Lauriston in Ragusa, announcing his proximate arrival to raise the siege with such a force of Dalmatians as must overwhelm the Russians and the vast Montenegrin army; which letter was, as intended by Molitor, intercepted and believed by the besieging Russians. With his force thinly scattered, to make up a show, Molitor now advanced towards Ragusa, and turning the Montenegrin position in the valley behind, threatened to surround the Russians who occupied the summit of the hill between him and the city; but seeing the risk of this, the Russians retreated back towards the Bay of Kotor, and the city was relieved. The Montenegrin army had followed the order of Admiral
Dmitry Senyavin who was in charge of the Russian troops, and retreated to
Cetinje.
End of the Republic , Duke of Ragusa, during French rule Around 1800, the Republic had a highly organized network of consulates and consular offices in more than eighty cities and ports around the world. In 1808,
Marshal Marmont issued a proclamation abolishing the Republic of Ragusa and amalgamating its territory into the
Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, himself claiming the newly created title of "Duke of Ragusa" (
Duc de Raguse). In 1810, Ragusa, together with Dalmatia and Istria, went to the newly created French
Illyrian Provinces. Later, in the 1814
Battle of Paris, Marmont abandoned Napoleon and was branded a traitor. Since he was known as the "Duke of Ragusa", the word
ragusade was coined in French to signify treason and
raguser meant a cheat. Article 44 of the 1811 decree abolished the centuries-old institution of
fideicommissum in inheritance law, by which the French enabled younger
noblemen to participate in that part of the family inheritance, which the former law had deprived them of. According to an 1813 inventory of the Ragusan district, 451 land proprietors were registered, including ecclesiastical institutions and the commune. Although there is no evidence of the size of their estates, the nobles, undoubtedly, were in possession of most of the land. Eleven members of the
Sorgo family, eight of
Gozze, six of
Ghetaldi, six of
Pozza, four of
Zamagna and three of the
Saraca family were among the greatest landowners. The citizens belonging to the confraternities of
St. Anthony and
St. Lazarus owned considerable land outside the city. After seven years of French occupation, encouraged by the desertion of French soldiers after the failed
invasion of Russia and the reentry of Austria in the
war, all the social classes of the Ragusan people rose up in a general insurrection, led by the patricians, against the Napoleonic invaders. On 18 June 1813, together with British forces they forced the surrender of the French garrison of the island of
Šipan, soon also the heavily fortified town of
Ston and the island of
Lopud, after which the insurrection spread throughout the mainland, starting with
Konavle. They
laid siege to the occupied city, helped by the British
Royal Navy, who had enjoyed
unopposed domination over the Adriatic sea, under the command of Captain
William Hoste, with his ships HMS
Bacchante and . Soon the population inside the city joined the insurrection. The
Austrian Empire sent a force under General Todor Milutinović offering to help their Ragusan allies. However, as was soon shown, their intention was to in fact replace the French occupation of Ragusa with their own. Seducing one of the temporary governors of the Republic,
Biagio Bernardo Caboga, with promises of power and influence (which were later cut short and who died in ignominy, branded as a traitor by his people), they managed to convince him that the gate to the east was to be kept closed to the Ragusan forces and to let the Austrian forces enter the city from the west, without any Ragusan soldiers, once the French garrison of 500 troops under General
Joseph de Montrichard had surrendered. The Major Council of the Ragusan nobility (as the assembly of 44 patricians who had been members of the Major Council before the Republic was occupied by France) met for the last time on 18 January 1814 in the Villa Giorgi in
Mokošica, Ombla, in an effort to restore the Republic of Ragusa. On 27 January, the French capitulation was signed in Gruž and ratified the same day. It was then that
Biagio Bernardo Caboga openly sided with the Austrians, dismissing the part of the rebel army which was from
Konavle. Meanwhile,
Đivo Natali and his men were still waiting outside the
Ploče Gates. After almost eight years of occupation, the French troops marched out of Dubrovnik on 27 and 28 January 1814. On the afternoon of 28 January 1814, the Austrian and British troops made their way into the city through the Pile Gates. With Caboga's support, General Milutinović ignored the agreement he had made with the nobility in Gruž. The events which followed can be best epitomized in the so-called flag episode. The Flag of Saint Blaise was flown alongside the Austrian and British colors, but only for two days because, on 30 January, General Milutinović ordered Mayor Sabo Giorgi to lower it. Overwhelmed by a feeling of deep patriotic pride, Giorgi, the last Rector of the Republic and a loyal francophile, refused to do so "for the masses had hoisted it". Subsequent events proved that Austria took every possible opportunity to invade the entire coast of the eastern Adriatic, from Venice to
Kotor. The Austrians did everything in their power to eliminate the Ragusa issue at the
Congress of Vienna. Ragusan representative
Miho Bona, elected at the last meeting of the Major Council, was denied participation in the Congress, while Milutinović, prior to the final agreement of the allies, assumed complete control of the city. Regardless of the fact that the government of the Ragusan Republic never signed any capitulation nor relinquished its sovereignty, which according to the rules of
Klemens von Metternich that Austria adopted for the Vienna Congress should have meant that the Republic would be restored, the Austrian Empire managed to convince the other allies to allow it to keep the territory of the Republic. While many smaller and less significant cities and former countries were permitted an audience, that right was refused to the representative of the Ragusan Republic. All of this was in blatant contradiction to the solemn treaties that the Austrian Emperors signed with the Republic: the first on 20 August 1684, in which
Leopold I promised and guaranteed inviolate liberty ("inviolatam libertatem") to the Republic, and the second in 1772, in which the Empress
Maria Theresa promised protection and respect of the inviolability of the freedom and territory of the Republic. At the Congress of Vienna, Ragusa and the territories of the former Republic were made part of the
crown land of the
Kingdom of Dalmatia, ruled by the
Habsburg monarchy, which became known as
Austria-Hungary in 1867, which it remained a part of until 1918. After the fall of the Republic, most of the aristocracy died out or emigrated overseas; around one fifth of the noble families were recognized by the Habsburg Monarchy. Some of the families that were recognized and survived were the Ghetaldi-Gundula, Gozze, Kaboga, Sorgo, Zlatarić, Zamagna, Pozza, Gradi and Bona. == Government ==