monastery and its estates on 14 May 1469. The order left a Renaissance knightly palace south of the monastery finished in 1499. It was meant to serve as a protector against the increasing attacks by Ottoman forces, however, the very few knights did not succeed and the area was devastated by the Turks several times between 1473 and 1483. After the death of Emperor Maximilian I in 1519 the disbandment of the order began until its final abolition in 1598.
Meanwhile the Reformation had spread throughout Carinthia and the majority of the population had turned Protestant. The Habsburg archduke Ferdinand II, regent of Inner Austria and later Holy Roman Emperor intended to exterminate Protestantism in his hereditary lands and therefore furnished the Jesuit College at Graz with the benefit of the Millstatt monastery. From 1598 onwards the Jesuits pushed the Counter-Reformation by convincing as well as forcing the local inhabitants to return to the Catholic belief. The history of the monastery came to an end, when the Jesuit order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773.
Afterwards Millstatt fell into meaninglessness. With Upper Carinthia it passed to the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces according to the 1809 Treaty of Schönbrunn, but was restored to the Austrian Empire by resolution of the Vienna Congress in 1815. The present-day municipality was established in the wake of the Revolutions of 1848. From about 1870 onwards it developed to a fashionable summer resort for the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, promoted by the opening of the Austrian Southern Railway branch to nearby Spittal an der Drau station in 1873 and the inauguration of the Tauern Railway in 1909
