Kingdom of Croatia

The medieval Kingdom of Croatia was the Adriatic realm of the Croat dukes raised to kingship, holding the coast and islands between the Frankish marches and Byzantium. Its first king, Tomislav, crowned around 925, united the Pannonian and Dalmatian Croats, fielded armies the Byzantines reckoned in the tens of thousands, and kept both the Bulgarians of Simeon and the Magyars at bay. The kings ruled from stone palaces at Nin and Biograd, endowed Benedictine abbeys, and balanced Latin bishops against the Slavonic liturgy of the Glagolitic priests. Under Petar Krešimir, called the Great, the kingdom reached its widest extent, taking Byzantine Dalmatia's cities under its protection and trading with Venice as an equal. His successor Zvonimir, crowned with a papal legate's blessing, tied the realm to Rome and to the reform papacy. But the native dynasty died out with Stephen II, and the magnates split between claimants; in 1102, after Coloman of Hungary defeated the last national king at Gvozd Mountain, the Croatian nobles accepted Coloman as their king under the Pacta Conventa, keeping their laws and their ban, or viceroy. Croatia would share Hungary's crown for eight centuries, its medieval kingdom surviving in title, sabor and the memory of Tomislav's field.