Zemun

The town was conquered by the Kingdom of Hungary in the 12th century and in the 15th century it was given as a personal possession to the Serbian despot Đurađ Branković. After the Serbian Despotate fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1459, Zemun became an important military outpost. Its strategic location near the confluence of the Sava and the Danube placed it in the center of the continued border wars between the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires. The Treaty of Passarowitz of 1718 finally placed the town into Habsburg possession, the Military Frontier was organized in the region in 1746, and the town of Zemun was granted the rights of a military commune in 1749. In 1777, Zemun had 6,800 residents, half of which were ethnic Serbs, while another half of the population was composed of Germans, Hungarians and Jews. With the abolishment of the Military Frontier in 1881, Zemun and the rest of the eastern Srem was included into Syrmia County of Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, part of Austria-Hungary.