King Tomislav

Tomislav united Dalmatia with Pannonia and upgraded his title to King with permission of the pope.  As a result he became lord of a substantial state and was crowned on the Field of Duvno (Tomislavgrad now called Mostar).  Political independence established state order and a rich cultural life, which were the prerequisites for the proclamation of Croatia as a Kingdom. Tomislav, founder of the Croatian royal power, fulfilled these prerequisites.  Under Tomislav's rule the Croatian state reached its zenith which roughly covered modern Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the coast of Montenegro.

The Magyars could not help but notice with a greedy eye the large and newly formed kingdom of Croatia.  Tomislav repulsed the invasion of the Magyars into Croatian lands and made the frontier between Croatia and Hungary the rivers Drava and Danube.  To this very day the frontier has remained unchanged.  

The archdeacon Thomas speaks in his Chronicles of the power of this prince who was crowned king in the year 925.  The imperial chronicler, Constantine Porfirogenet, compared Tomislav's Croatia as a great military power, which was capable of fielding more than 100,000 foot soldiers and a fleet little smaller than that of Venice.  The same emperor informs us that Croatia at that time had a population of about two million.  The Byzantine emperor nominated Tomislav as a consul and gave him the Dalmatian cities administer.  Pope John X called Tomislav "Our dear and King of the Croatians" which was confirmed by the German historians Dummler and Budinger.

Tomislav prevented the Magyars from realizing their goal of invading Rome.  A few decades later, the German Emperor Otto I, at Augsburg, defeated the Magyars and thereby the door was closed on their expansionist ambitions.  

Tomislav gave refuge to the Serbian pretender Zacharia when he was forced to flee form Simeon, the emperor of the Bulgars.  This noted Bulgarian ruler even dictated peace to powerful Byzantium.  He transgressed Serbian lands in order to attack Tomislav, but the latter defeated him twice, and therefore, French historian Rambuad correctly writes that Croatia was more able to resist Bulgarian invasion than Serbia an Byzantium.  There is no doubt that Croatia, in that period, was the leader of civilization in that region.