The combination of these two forces—a flawed Habsburg administrative system and new national movement claiming ethnicity as the founding block toward a community—posed a particularly perplexing problem: Dalmatia was a province ruled by the German-speaking Habsburg monarchy, with bilingual (Serbo-Croatian- and Italian-speaking) elites that dominated the general population consisting of a Slavic Catholic majority, as well as a Slavic Orthodox minority. Further complicating matters was the reality that increased emphases on ethnic identification in the nineteenth century did not break down along religious lines, as evident in the Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik.