| Between the campaigns of the Napoleonic troops and the abolition of bondage |
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The beginning of the 19th century was marked by the Napoleonic wars. In 1805 following the Battle of Austerlitz (Slavkov), the French and Austrians signed the Treaty of Pressburg in the Mirror Hall of Primate’s Palace in Bratislava. The treaty did not last long, however, and just a few years later in 1809 Napoleon’s army bombarded the city with cannon fire from the right bank of the Danube. From the 1930’s the city experienced sharp growth in industrial production, supported by the arrival of modern transport. Fast transportation on a mass scale was made possible on the River Danube by the steamships, which were also capable of sailing upstream. From 1848 steam trains started to operate here. The last major political event in the city under the Kingdom of Hungary was the session of the Hungarian Diet in 1847-1848. In March 1848 the Diet voted in favour of abolishing bondage. Emperor Ferdinand V then visited Bratislava and on 11 April 1848 he signed and promulgated the so-called March Laws in the Mirror Hall of Primate’s Palace. After dissolving the last session of the Hungarian Diet and relocating the political seat of the Kingdom of Hungary to Pest, Bratislava definitively lost a lot of its political significance. The Official Website of the City of Bratislava |