After news of the Paris revolution of 1848 reached the Austrian Empire, the absolutist reign of Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich was weakened. At this time the regions of Banat, Bačka and Syrmia were administratively divided between the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary (in the north) and the Habsburg Military Frontier (in the south). A sizeable percent of the Austrian soldiers serving on the Military Frontier were ethnic Serbs, who protected Austrian borders in exchange for certain political freedoms that they were able to enjoy within the frontier, whose administration functioned independently from the county-system of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.