“Navik on živi ki zgine pošteno”
Zrinski-frankopan conspiracy is a legendary attempt by members of two of the most powerful Croatian noble families, Šubić - Zrinskih and Frankopan, to prevent the Viennese court in the plan of complete subjugation and Germanization of Croatian lands.
In 1664, the Emperor's army bravely broke the Turks at St. Gotthard in Gornje Pomurje, however, Leopold I. Habsburg does not use this victory for further liberation of occupied territories from the Ottomans, but concludes the Varšavski or (as he was called by Croats and Hungarians) Disgraceful peace, with conditions as if the Turks were victorious.
Croatia and Hungary have not agreed to this agreement with incredibly bad and negative conditions for them.
It was set so that the Turks can keep everything that they conquered from Croatia and Hungary in war, and Vienna's sub-policy that prevented them from legitimately exercising their rights was nothing other than reason for Croatian and Hungarian leaders to join eachother, and realize their rights and need to rebellion.
At the same time, the centralist and Germanist aspirations of the Habsburgs grew stronger, at the expense of the status of the Croatian and Hungarian nobility.
Faction was led by ban Nikola VII. Zrinski - Čakovečki in Croatia, and Palatinate Ferencz Wesseleny and archbishop of György Lippay in Hungary.
The conscripts had to look for help outside the country: in France, Venice, Poland, and even the Ottoman Sultan, who were in despair of nominating nominal authority over Croatia, which would still have de facto independence.
But despite the original promises, the traditional Austrian opponents did not help them, moreover, the Venetians and the Ottomans had told Leopold about the existence of a conspiracy.
How then the French "King of the Sun" Louis XIV. was in open conflict with the Vienna court, there was also a negotiation of cooperation from which there was nothing at the end. After the unfortunate death of Nicholas VII. Zrinskog in the hunt on November 18, 1664 (which happened under somewhat strange and suspicious circumstances), his place is taken over by his younger brother Petar.
Petar IV. Šubić - Zrinski, along with his brother-in-law Franko Krsto Frankopan-Vinodolski continued the struggle for Croatia's rights that his brother and former Croatian ban Nikola started, so they were linked with the main Hungarian leaders. When Lippay died in 1666, In 1667 and the Hungarian palace Franjo Wesseleny, the Croatian-Hungarian Alliance will be completely destroyed due to the different ideas and ways of keeping the conspiracy as well as the wishes of the relatives of Zrinski Ferencza Rákóczy to be the absolute leader of the conspiracy.
Soon the Viennese absolutist court, not caring for the rights of the Croat people and obligations of signed treaty of "Pacta Conventa" from the year 1102 and "Cetingrad Charter" from 1527, also learned the names of the conspirators, thanks to traitors from faction. An unbelievably prepared conspiracy was revealed at the time Frank Krsto Frankopan began to arm an armed uprising.
Emperor Leopold I. brought the Croatian nobles at the beginning of April 1670 to Vienna under the pretense of reconciliation, but immediately ordered them to arrest and detain them in one of the towers of the notorious dungeon in Vienna's New Site. The accusation was so cleverly inscribed that the sentence could only be said - death.
Zrinski and Frankopan on April 18, 1671 were convicted for the offense of king and country, and have been sentenced to terrible death by cutting off the right hand and head. The night before the executions, the two men met and said farewell for the last time.
Before exactly 348 years on April 30, 1671, all the city gates in Vienna's New Town were closed, and the site was surrounded by an armed army. Prior to the execution of two nobles, them and their families where striped of nobility, and their possessions seized and plundered by the state. Thus, after lengthy investigations Petar Zrinski and Fran - Krsto Frankopan and Ferencz Nadasdy and Ernest Tattenbach were executed, to the horror and astonishment of Croatia, Hungary and all of Europe.