… had found at Charles’s Court an expression surpassed nowhere in Europe either for splendour or for delicate and curious grace; for that Court was not only the seat of what was already the most august dynasty of Europe, but also a unique meeting-place where influences from Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands met and mingled with those of the Danubian peoples to produce results which were not only magnificent, but also at once local and universal.
The Austria of 1780 had lost many things which the Austria of 1730 had possessed. It was not perhaps financially poorer, for against the losses of Silesia and some of Charles’s Italian possessions must be set the general economic recovery in most of its remaining territories, but the rigid financial probity of that austere Silesian, Haugwitz, and perhaps also of that excellent business man, Francis Stephen, from whom Joseph II and Francis must surely have derived the strain of direct parsimony for which both were notorious, had curbed that sublime indifference to days of reckoning which had allowed the spending spree of the earlier day. It had lost a perceptible amount of the religious faith which had inspired the great ecclesiastical buildings of the High Baroque. The Italian influences which dominated the architecture, music and theatre of that age had grown perceptibly weaker.
None of these things, of course, had gone altogether. Maria Theresa, for all her conscientious efforts at economy, was too truly her father’s daughter not to be a good spender; the Church was still mighty and wealthy; if few of Austria’s great buildings were now directly planned by Italian architects, very many of them were the work of pupils of Italian masters. And where the old forces were giving ground it was not only because of their own weakening vitality, but because they were being shouldered aside by new forces possessing their own vitality: a new spirit of nationalism, even new popular elements in drama and literature, as well as thought.
The Austria, especially the Vienna, of 1780 had its own special charm. If it was growing more German (signs of which were the popularity of popular farce in the Viennese dialect, as well as the adoption by the Empress herself of that dialect for habitual usage), it had not become repellantly Teutonic. The short-lived rococo into which the later baroque style had merged can show exquisite products, and the age was that in which that art of music which is Austria’s special gift to the world was bringing forth its finest flowers, with Gluck, Haydn and Mozart still in their prime and Beethoven nearing his. But the music apart, the age cannot be conscientiously described as culturally great. The buildings (although may God bless Maria Theresa for her addiction to the shade of yellow which bears her name!) were nearly always smaller, plainer and cheaper than they would have been fifty years earlier. In thought and most of the arts, what was new had not yet filled the hollows left by the decay of the old. Neither had the beginnings of popular art been powerful enough to shake the tradition that the Monarch and the Court were the founts not only of political power, but also of cultural life. The Empress’s long reign may even have strengthened, in this field also, the national Austrian repugnance towards true independence.
VII THE MONARCHY IN THE WORLD
The great treaties of partition between Maximilian’s grandchildren had given the cadet branch two things: on the one hand, the Crowns of Bohemia and Hungary; on the other, not only the family Hausmacht in Germany, but also (to come to it on the death of Charles) the leadership of the Holy Roman Empire. It was undoubtedly the latter position which had taken pride of place in the eyes of Ferdinand and his successors. While not only the natural desire to make valid de facto their de jure claim to the territories of the Hungarian Crown, but also the requirements of self-defence, had forced them to devote a proportion of their attention to repelling the Turkish threat in the south-east of their dominions, they had always regarded the consolidation of their position there chiefly in the light of the necessary pre-condition for the expansion of their power in civilized Europe – Germany and – although here they had more often given way to the elder branch of the family – Italy. Consequently, their policy in the East had been mainly a defensive one, while they struggled in the West against their great rival, France. It had been a struggle in which their position had, indeed, grown steadily weaker, not only in consequence of France’s successes, but with the growth of the resistance of the German princes themselves to Austria’s claim to dominate them. The Treaty of Westphalia had made their leadership little more than titular, but without diminishing its value in their eyes. Then had come the rise of Prussia, when Frederick had actually seized from Maria Theresa all except a fragment of the province of Silesia, ‘the brightest jewel of her Crown’. It was this that had led to Kaunitz’s famous renversement des alliances, the Treaty with France which was still in force in 1780.
The Seven Years War had failed to achieve its objective, the recovery of Silesia, and when she signed the Peace of Hubertsburg in 1763, Maria Theresa resigned herself to its loss, sweetened by the meagre compensation when first her husband, then her son, had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The renunciation was bitter to her, and when, in the last years of her life, she insisted on a peaceful settlement of the dispute over the Bavarian succession – whereas her son was prepared to face a full-scale war in order to add Bavaria to the family dominions – this was out of sheer abhorrence of war, especially war in a cause the justice of which was dubious. It did not mean that she, or still less her son, was willing to abdicate from Austria’s leading role in the Empire.
Meanwhile, at the end of the seventeenth century, the decay of the Turkish power, and the brilliant advantage taken thereof by Prince Eugen, had changed the situation in the south-east. Hungary had been recovered. But these successes had not brought about any fundamental change in the Habsburgs’ world outlook. True, Charles VI had twice carried his arms into the Balkans, but the first of these campaigns had aimed really at providing Hungary with a defensive glacis, while the second had been undertaken in fulfilment of an alliance with Russia, itself the price of Russia’s recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction, and when the Turks proved unexpectedly difficult to beat on their own ground, Maria Theresa had willingly renounced any idea of adding to her dominions what she drastically described as ‘a lot of barren mountains and feverish swamps, inhabited by unreliable Greeks’.274 From 1768 onward Austria was actively supporting the territorial integrity of Turkey.
This was against the designs of Russia, whose rise to power the Empress saw without any pleasure whatever. ‘The whole balance in the North,’ she wrote to Starhemberg in Paris in 1762, when Russia’s designs on East Prussia were revealed, ‘would be upset, and the Russian power become too formidable for us and other Courts to enjoy seeing it in our neighbourhood.’ And if, ten years later, she nevertheless expanded her territories on her north-eastern frontier by participating in the First Partition of Poland, this was out of no lust for conquest. The famous tears which she shed were not those of the crocodile. She took Galicia out of consideration of the Balance of Power, and to prevent Russia from reaching the Carpathians.
But the combined effect of these developments had been to leave the Monarchy in a paradoxical position. First the recovery of Hungary, second the acquisition of Galicia, had shifted the balance of her population strongly against the German element in its Hausmacht, and the hegemony in Germany which had doubled the strength of that element had already lost much of its real value. Yet it still retained so much of that value, and tradition was still so strong, that neither the Empress nor her son ever thought seriously of yielding the field to Prussia and moving out of the Empire.
Meanwhile, the immediate problem of Austria’s rulers was to fortify their position in Germany, and in the East, to discover the best way to deal with Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The latter problem was very acute in 1780, for Catherine of Russia was clearly a long way from being satisfied with the gains, large as they were, which the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji had brought her in 1774.
1 The revolt and surrender in the Netherlands had, of course, come a little earlier stil
l.
2 To be distinguished from the larger Margravate of Istria, which remained Venetian until 1797.
3 Austria Above the Enns was given a separate governor (Hauptman) in 1240 and its own Estates about 1400, but became a distinct Arch-Duchy only in the eighteenth century.
4 He had only one son, the unfortunate so-called Johann Parricida (although the person whom he murdered was not his father, but his uncle), who died childless in 1313.
5 The Privilegium had been devised by Duke Rudolph IV in 1358, but the then Emperor, Charles IV, had refused to ratify it on the ground that some of the documents on which it was based were not authentic. The effect of it was simply to take from the German King the right of disposing of the lordship of the Lands concerned. The Lands themselves, having (with few exceptions) begun their existences as fiefs of the Reich, had never had a voice in the question.
6 In fact, it was always applied in official use to any Lands as soon as the dynasty’s hereditary title to them became established, thus to the Bohemian group after the Vernewerte Landesordungen.
7 It is important to remember, in connection with the ‘elective’ character of both the Bohemian and the Hungarian Crowns, that election was for a dynasty, not an individual; a king’s undisputed heir succeeded him automatically, jure hereditario. Most disputes for the Crown in both countries were between rival candidates each of whom, while not his predecessor’s heir apparent, could yet produce a hereditary claim of some kind. Genuine free election took place only when there was no such candidate in the field at all.
8 Frederick Barbarossa made it an ‘immediate’ Margravate of the Reich in 1182, but it reverted to the status of a fief of the King of Bohemia in 1222.
9 So in 1437, when Albert of Habsburg died, the Nebenländer recognized his widow and posthumous son as their lawful sovereigns; Bohemia ‘elected’ the boy only in 1457. After this Moravia and Silesia were for a time ruled by Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. In 1490 Wladislaw Jagiellon was first elected King of Bohemia; Moravia and Silesia followed suit later.
10 Both the two anti-Kings of the period, Charles of Durazzo and Ladislas of Naples, drew many of their followers from the South, but neither claimed the throne of Croatia apart from that of Hungary.
11 Under this Charles also acquired considerable territories in the Northern Balkans, but had to re-cede these under the Treaty of Belgrade (1739).
12 It was promoted by Maria Theresa in 1765 to the rank of ‘Grand Principality’. Kaunitz had then wanted the Queen to separate it from the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, but she had been dissuaded by the representations of the Hungarian Court Chancellery.
13 The Counties of Közép-Szolnok, Kraszna and Zarand and the District of Kövár.
14 It had not been thought necessary to extend the system to Transylvania, since the organization of the Szekel and, in part, the Saxon districts was already para-military. Joseph n afterwards formed two new ‘Frontier Districts’ in Transylvania, but the control of the Hofkriegsrat there was never so systematic as in Croatia or Inner Hungary.
15 For these institutions, see below, p. 19.
16 The Counties in question were those of Szrem, Valkó (later amalgamated with Szrem), Pozsega and Veröcze. They comprised only the northern part of the area, for its southern half belonged to the Frontier, a salient of which cut them off from Croatia. The arrangement had been made in order to compensate Croatia for the non-recovery of the southern portion of its old territory, but the Hungarians had protested on the grounds that the area had never formed part of Croatia in historic times. They therefore stipulated that the three Counties should continue to send their delegates direct to the Hungarian Diet, and pay the full rate of taxation, which was twice as high in Hungary as in Croatia.
The population was, incidentally, almost entirely Serb.
17 The bulk of it had been lost to the Swiss at the battles of Morgarten (1315) and Sempach (1384).
18 The Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) had also given Charles Sardinia, which was exchanged for Naples and Sicily in 1720. These were lost in 1735, when Charles received in compensation Parma and Piacenza, but these, again, were lost in 1748.
19 Almost the only exceptions had been the small sixteenth-century acquisitions made by Maximilian I at the expense of Venice, and the Bukovina. Maria Theresa’s share of Poland was converted retro-actively into a ‘historic-political unit’ by identifying it with the mediaeval Kingdom of Halics-Vladimir, whereupon the annexation was justified by evocation of a claim derived from mediaeval Hungarian history. The Bukovina was made into a historico-political unit in 1849 (see below, p. 424).
20 The Hungarian legislation was necessitated by the fact that Hungary, unlike all Charles’s other dominions, had not previously been bound to accept the Habsburg succession in the female line, and her consent was legally necessary for any change in the law of succession. On this occasion, also, Croatia had spoken without waiting for Hungary: in 1712 a Croat Diet had declared itself ready to accept any Habsburg, male or female, who was also ruler of Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia and Carniola) and could thus defend Croatia against the Turks.
21 The Hungarian law further stipulated that the King of Hungary must be legitimate, an Archduke or Archduchess of Austria (i.e., of the Archduchy of Austria Above and Below the Enns), and a member of the Roman Catholic Church. As, however, Hungarian public law did not recognize the principle of Ebenbürtigkeit, any legitimate issue of an Archduke ranked under it as Archducal.
22 So long as the Habsburgs were themselves subject to the German King, or Emperor, the supreme prerogatives in these fields were, of course, his and not theirs. We need not enter here into the complexities of this question.
23 Moravia and Silesia were treated as ‘immediate’. Croatia was addressed through Hungary. The Crown, while acknowledging that its title to Transylvania derived from the Hungarian Crown, yet corresponded with it directly. It was possible for Joseph to give orders to the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands qua Emperor.
24 Under the rule of the weak Wladislas Jagiello both the Hungarian and the Bohemian Estates had forced the King to allow them a voice in foreign policy, but this right had lapsed under the Habsburgs. Some forced concessions made by the Archduke Matthias in 1609 had lasted only a few years.
25 Before that year they had been looked after by the Oesterreichische Hofkanzlei, from which the Geheime Kanzlei was then hived off.
26 After Kaunitz, it was conferred only on Metternich.
27 Milan-Mantua and the Netherlands had their separate services, which need not be described here.
28 The system here described had been introduced in the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands in 1771 and extended to Galicia and the Bukovina when those territories were annexed.
29 The order was issued by the Palatine, who commanded the force.
30 Raised from 108,000 after the annexation of Galicia.
31 The famous Hungarian Diet of 1741 had agreed to contribute this number to the standing army, but had refused to accept conscription.
32 The exempted categories included all nobles and priests, burghers and most skilled workers, including miners and chimney-sweeps and workers in ‘privileged’ (licensed) factories, and all peasants technically so ranking, and their heirs at law. It was thus in practice only the peasants’ sons, other than his heirs, and the rural and urban proletariats, that were liable for conscription, and there were barely enough of these to make up the numbers. The quotas were largely made up by the method known as Abstellung ex officio, i.e., by the authorities seizing certain unwanted persons, including rogues and vagabonds, persons without papers, and renegades from Catholicism, and delivering them to the barracks (a court was not, however, allowed to condemn an offender to military service as part of a penal sentence). The remainder were selected by the lord of the manor, or his agent, to the number allotted to his manor. The ‘volunteers’ in Hungary were also largely produced by Abstellung ex officio, or by Shanghaiing.
33 When, i
n 1712–15, Hungary had agreed that the Pragmatic Sanction applied et contra vim externam, she had demanded her own Hofkriegsrat, but this had never come into being and the central Hofkriegsrat had even since exercised de facto control over the Hungarian regiments. Hungary had then asked that at least one Hungarian should always be a member of the Hofkriegsrat proper, i.e., the small ‘Council’ at the head of the organization. This, again, had never been granted.
34 The economic affairs of the Frontier were administered through the Hofkammer.
35 Its claim to this perquisite was, however, contested by the Hungarian Diet. Where the gold and silver mines were not directly owned by the Crown, it took a royalty on their production.
36 The Staatsrat in this form had been established by Kaunitz in 1760, but its predecessor dated back to the reign of Maximilian I.
37 Where a Monarch owned land in his private capacity, his relationship to its population was that of any other landowner.
38 It should be emphasized that by no means all towns possessing municipal charters were Royal Free Boroughs. Even of those belonging to the Crown, a considerable number were administered by the Hofkammer, and their inhabitants ranked as Kammerknechte: this category included even such important communities as the sixteen mining towns of the Szepes area in north Hungary. Half a dozen towns in Bohemia (the so-called Leibgeding towns) were the appanage of the Monarch’s widow. Some towns were owned by archiepiscopal or episcopal sees, many of which enjoyed the right of granting municipal charters, as did certain individuals, especially in Galicia. The inhabitants of such places were the ‘subjects’ of their respective lords.
39 While there were certain bizarre exceptions, the general rule was that a landtäflich estate could be acquired only by a person already possessing a title of nobility and indigenat in the Land (i.e., citizenship of it); a person buying such an estate had to prove his qualifications within a year or he lost it. In practice the indigenat was usually granted automatically to a ‘foreign’ noble of sufficient status, and in some Lands there was no legal ban to forbid an unqualified person from buying a landtäflich estate, but the acquisition was so difficult and expensive that most ambitious commoners found it easier to get their patent of nobility first. In some Lands the more considerable estates could be acquired only by members of the higher nobility.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 16