The History of the Batschka
The area
of the Batschka was a fresh-water lake in prehistoric times, as geologists have
proven. This lake evaporated very slowly. The oldest known sites of
inhabitants are from the 5th Century B.C.
In the 3rd Century B.C. the world conquering power of the Roman Empire
reached across to this region and the Romans found the nomadic people of
the Jazigen between the Danube and the Thiess Rivers. They moored
here on the left shore of the Danube around their marvelous province: Pannonien (present day Baranya and beyond that the Danube) and Syrmien.
The so-called Roman entrenchments came from that time.
In the 4th Century A.D. the
migration of people took place which pushed people farther west, or subjugated
it. The German known as the Goths, who we can thank for our writing, shook
the power of the great Roman Empire. These people lived in the Batschka
and the greatest part of our fatherland to the Adriatic and Italy. The
city of Belgrade, Nisch, etc. had already been settled by the Goths.
In the following century
our homeland was ruled by Huns. The empire of the Huns, at its
prime here in the year 450 A.D., got rid of the decaying empire of the
Romans. The rich culture of the place where the Romans first stood
fell into ruins because the people from the moral swamp in which it
found itself could not get out of it.
The authority of the Huns
did not last long. Then came the Germanic people of Gepiden (500
A.D.). Around the year 800 A.D. the Slavs appeared. After
them the Magyars (Hungarians)(896 A.D.)expelled or subjugated the
people they found here.
Villages already stood along the Danube
and Theiss Rivers in ancient times, but only very slowly did life come
to the interior of the Batschka. Around the year 1500 the Turkish
invasion began. After the Turks had conquered the whole Balkan
Peninsula they invaded here and inhabited our region for almost 200
years, plundering and devastating everything.
In the year 1590 there
were recorded 37 Christian inhabitants in Sekitsch, 36 in Vrbas, and 12
in Schowe. Prince Eugene, the noble knight, with a German army was
finally able to drive the Turks away with the great victory at Senta on
11 September 1697. Swabians in Prince Eugene's army helped to expel
the enemy who inhabited this land. Individuals who valiantly took
up the German sword already made themselves residents here at that time,
as they received their discharge from the military.