The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  40 See below, p. 64 ff.

  41 In her earlier years, she had defended the institution on principle. ‘It can never be practicable’, she had written in 1742, ‘to abolish the subjection altogether, for there is no country which does not make a distinction between lords and subjects; to free the peasant from his obligation towards the former would make the one party presumptuous and the other discontented, and would conflict with justice in every way.’ Later in her life, when her inquiries had revealed to her the extreme misery in which the peasants were living outside the German-Austrian Lands, she had favoured cutting the Gordian knot at least in the Bohemian Lands by abolishing the nexus subditelae altogether in those Lands, but had been opposed so strongly, not only by the Estates concerned, but her own advisers (the entire Staatsrat had been against her, and so, to her extreme embitterment, had been her son) that she had given up the idea. Her hands had in any case been tied in Hungary by her Coronation oath, and she does not seem to have thought the measure necessary in the Hereditary Lands.

  42 Earlier Bohemian Diets (before the arrival of the Habsburgs) had, for example, at one time excluded the Lords Spiritual, while allowing relatively generous representation to the towns. Ferdinand II had brought the Diet into line with those of the Hereditary Lands under the Vernewerte Landesordnung.

  43 Silesia was largely composed of tiny principalities, formerly the appanages of the very prolific ruling house of the Piasts. The Habsburgs had refused to recognize these rulers as immediate, but had left them quasi-sovereign status within their own dominions.

  44 The permanent staffs consisted of a few permanent clerks, etc., but most of them also contained a small number of doctors and surgeons, and many of the lists also show one or two more exotic figures: a dancing-master and a fencing-master, often a teacher of French and sometimes one of Italian.

  45 But see below, p. 57.

  46 At the end of the eighteenth century there were 108 Hungarian families bearing hereditary titles: 2 Princely, 82 of Counts, 24 Baronial.

  47 These were certain districts originally settled by immigrants (Cumanians, Jazyges, etc.) who had received the privilege of freedom and self-government (under the Palatine or some other royal official).

  48 This number had been reached after a series of reductions. It had formerly been much higher.

  49 For these, see below, p. 78, n. 1.

  50 See below, p. 94.

  51 The Viceroy of Milan at this time was Maria Theresa’s third son, Ferdinand; her second surviving daughter, Maria Christina, was ‘Governor-General’ of the Netherlands, assisted by her husband, Albert of Saxony-Teschen.

  52 This was the generic term, and the official one in most Lands, but the office was known as Regierung in Lower Austria, and Landeshauptmannschaft in Upper Austria, Carinthia and Carniola. Hungary had a Consilium Locumtenentiale, which was, strictly, an advisory body to the Palatine, but maintained a permanent staff which corresponded to a Gubernium.

  53 Ferdinand I had established a single Court Chancellery for all the Lands of the Hungarian Crown, but his effective rule had, as we have seen, never extended into Transylvania. When Leopold II actually took possession of Transylvania, its Estates had themselves asked for a Chancellery of their own.

  54 These instruments also entitled the Crown to ‘add to, alter and improve the Ordinances, and to take any other measures deriving from the Royal Prerogative’. The Estates were entitled ‘to make suggestions and representations, but not to insist on them’.

  55 See her most outspoken comments on this point in her ‘Political Testament’, ed. Kallbrunner, Vienna, 1952, pp. 42 ff.

  56 Galicia had been given its own Hofkanzlei on its annexation, but the experiment had been abandoned a year or two later.

  57 Under the first reorganization the former body had also been given the financial business previously handled by the Austrian and Bohemian sections of the Camera. It had then been known as the Directorium in Publicis et Cameralibus. The Hofkammer had, however, recovered its functions in 1762, and the Directorium had then reverted to the title of Hofkanzlei. The Camera officials in each Land were, however, attached to its Gubernium.

  58 It is extraordinary, but true, that this all-important right gradually faded out of existence without any constitutional enactment abolishing it. The Tirol put up a fight to assert it in 1759–63, but ended by giving way almost completely. When the Styrian nobles tried to do the same, Maria Theresa called them to Vienna and threatened to place their private estates under sequester. Carinthia fared similarly. For a long time after this no Western Land ever even tried to appeal against its assessment. In 1847 the Bohemian Estates called their ancient right to mind and tried to assert it. The Hofkanzlei then argued that the Estates had never possessed a right to refuse the Contributio demanded of them – only supplementary demands – and appealed to the usus that since the days of Leopold II the Estates of all Austrian Lands had always accepted the State’s assessment. The Bohemian Estates denied, indeed, that this long usage had caused their right to lapse, but the Chancellery retorted that the Crown could, if forced to do so, abolish the right (if such still existed) in virtue of its ‘jus legis ferendae’. The point was still being argued when revolution broke out in March, 1848. How little the will of the Estates counted may be seen from para. 17 of the Patent establishing the Galician Diet, which ran: ‘As regards the proceedings of the Diet, the assembled Estates, on receiving intimation of Her Majesty’s commands, will never have to dwell on the question ‘whether’, but only to debate the question ‘how?’. They are, however, permitted to make representations and most humble suggestions, which, however, like everything else which the Estates wish to reach the ears of the Court, must always be sent to the Landestelle and forwarded by it, with opinion attached, to the Galician Court Chancellery’ (this body, as has been mentioned, itself only survived a year or two, after which Galicia was put under the Vereinigte Hofkanzlei).

  59 There was one exception to this rule: the Estates of Bohemia had the right to elect their own President (known as the Oberstburggraf of Prague), and he automatically became the ‘Gouverneur’ of Bohemia.

  60 So Bisinger (Staatsverfassung der oesterreichischen Monarchie, Vienna, 1809, p. 17) and Rottinger (Staatslexicon, 1840, vol. X, pp. 331, 338).

  61 Galicia formed, in 1780, an exception to this rule. Here, partly owing to Austria’s mistrust of the Poles, partly to the Poles’ own reluctance to enter Austrian service, the officials came from other parts of the Monarchy, in practice, nearly all from Lower Austria or Bohemia. In the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands an official served only in his own Land unless he was appointed to a central Ministry.

  62 Thus the robot Patents’ described below (pp. 65 ff.) differed largely from Land to Land.

  63 Another effect of this was to increase further the weight of the Magyar element against the Saxons, whose representatives in 1791 numbered only 25 out of a total of 419.

  64 A legal stipulation to this effect was introduced only in the fourteenth century, but in practice many earlier Kings had been forced to accept the limitation. St Stephen and his successors had claimed the jus legis ferendae, but had in practice exercised it only in consultation with representatives of the ‘nation’.

  65 The original clause in Andrew II’s Golden Bull of 1222 entitled the ‘bishops and dignitaries and nobles of the realm’ to resist and refuse obedience to an order by any king violating the provisions of the Bull. This had been modified in 1231 to a declaration by the king that he and his successors would submit themselves to excommunication if they acted unconstitutionally, but this amendment had never been invoked, and had fallen into oblivion.

  66 For examples, see B. Grünwald, op. cit., pp. 421 ff.

  67 The figures were: 2,100,000 fl. in 1724; 2,500,000 in 1728; 3,200,000 in 1751; 3,900,000 in 1765, plus certain further sums from newly re-incorporated territories.

  68 One striking example of this was the abolition of a large number of holidays. Maria Theresa
officially abolished twenty-two of these. It is true that it never proved possible to enforce the veto. Even the Viennese had revolted when ordered to work on Easter Monday. Others were the abolition of traditional folk-plays, games and amusements, restrictions on travel, etc., etc. A long list is given in Beidtel, op. cit., I. 46 ff.

  69 This was estimated at two million in AD 1500.

  70 Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 243.

  71 According to contemporary sources, 14,933 ‘places’ were burnt down in this campaign and 88,209 human beings carried off into slavery. Even if these figures are exaggerated, it is true that twenty years later nearly half the total population of many villages, etc., near Vienna was composed of new settlers (Zöllner, p. 275).

  72 Contemporary estimates put the losses by plague in Vienna and its suburbs in 1679 at 90,000. This is probably a big exaggeration, but the municipal records themselves listed about 8,000 victims (Zöllner, op. cit., p. 267).

  73 It is true that comparison of figures on this point might easily prove misleading. Because the Czechs, like all Slavs, were ill-adapted to urban life and pursuits, various Kings of Bohemia invited Germans into the country, and protected their settlements by granting them urban charters which inter alia allowed them to live under their own law. An Alpine settlement of the same size and performing the same social function would probably have grown out of the native soil and neither needed nor claimed urban status. The same remark applies to most of the German-inhabited ‘Free Towns’ of Hungary, many of which were smaller in population than many Magyar conurbations which ranked only as ‘market centres’, as much as to the Bohemian. Another area in which there were a large number of ‘towns’ was East Galicia, but few of these would have been recognized as such by a Western traveller (see below, pp. 46–7).

  74 It is true that the century before the invasion had already seen a big decline from the economic zenith of the fourteenth century.

  75 Feigl, op. cit., p. 35, estimates that the population of Lower Austria probably remained approximately static from the fifteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth.

  76 The history of the introduction of the potato into the Monarchy would furnish material for an epic. In Galicia the peasants refused so obstinately to grow their own crops, or to eat the new-fangled thing, that Joseph had to have them cultivated by soldiers, who then ‘carelessly’ left them unguarded at night. The peasants stole them, and thus acquired the taste. Francis had similar difficulties in Dalmatia.

  77 Maria Theresa’s husband, however, was an excellent business man who, besides advising the Monarchy, accumulated a large personal fortune, on the later fate of which see below, p. 49.

  78 See on this G. Otruba, Wirtschaftspolitik, passim. It is, as Otruba says and shows, astounding how attentive the Empress was to the smallest detail, and usually, how sensible.

  79 Until Charles’s reign all Austrian tariffs had been low, and almost purely fiscal. Heavy duties had then been placed on a few specific articles, in the interests of his experiments, but there had still been no general rise in the level of tariffs.

  80 At first Galicia had been exempted, in order to allow its trade with the west to continue. When, however, Prussia (in order to damage Danzig) placed a tariff on exports from the province, the concession became valueless, and was withdrawn.

  81 In an alarming number of cases the State advanced money to a private individual, and was then forced in the end to take over the enterprise from him.

  82 See Hoffman, op. cit., p. 283.

  83 Riesbeck, Travels through Germany, English tr., 3 vols, 1787, I, 207.

  84 Otruba, op. cit., p. 46.

  85 Maria Theresa had herself founded several such establishments, including the famous Herend pottery works, still today (1968) in production.

  86 Under this ancient Hungarian law, noble land was entailed in the family, and could be claimed on the owner’s death by his nearest relative in the male line, however remote the degree of kinship. On the complete extinction of the line, it passed to the Crown. The system was open to endless evasions, and in practice, land was bought and sold extensively, but a transaction was always in danger of being upset by the intervention of some distant cousin.

  87 G. Berziviczy, De Commercio et Industria Hungariae (Löcse, 1797), p. 64.

  88 The latest investigation of the statistics had calculated that in 1783–4 Hungary contained only 125 ‘factories’, 24 of them founded since 1781. Twelve of these were one-man enterprises (called ‘factories’ because they were exempt from guild restrictions); 62 employed less than 10 hands, 17, 10–29; 12, 20–49; 6, 50–99; and only 7, over 100. Far the largest was the spinnery of Sasvár, which employed 6,000 hands, nearly all of them outworkers (M. Futó, op. cit., p. 91).

  89 ‘You can travel here for leagues’, wrote Damian, ‘without seeing a garden or a fruit tree.’

  90 ‘No better’, wrote Damian, ‘than an ordinary peasant’s house in Austria, and sometimes

  91 Under Leopold I the Court spent 50,000 fl. a year on buying precious stones, and the Court operas, ballets and feasts cost enormous sums, as they did under Charles (M.K.P. II. 231.)

  92 The list of these can be found conveniently in Arneth, op. cit., vol. III, c. 3.

  93 Otruba, op. cit., p. 21.

  94 She presented Count Chotek with 300,000 fl. for a house, and Prince Khevenhüller with 250,000. Frh. von Bartenstein got 100,000 fl.; Count Uhlfeld had debts amounting to over 100,000 fl. paid; etc.

  95 This amounted to 22 million fl. in cash, besides estates in Bohemia, Hungary, Silesia, etc.

  96 Some notes of a different series had been issued earlier, but all these had been called in safely.

  97 A ‘honoratior’ was officially defined in the censuses of the 1780s as ‘any non-noble in the State services, regular employees of municipal councils, also all persons who, in virtue of the knowledge and learning acquired by them, exercise, under the public protection and toleration of the Landesfürst, callings serving the public (officia publica), such as doctors of medicine and law, procurators, notaries, etc.; also the superior employees of private persons (head bailiffs, head foresters, etc.).’ The title was in practice generally conceded to any graduate in law, medicine or philosophy, and to any non-noble member of a profession. It carried with it personal freedom and exemption from military service, but none of the political rights or social prerogatives of nobility.

  98 The scion of a well-to-do noble family often escaped the earlier stages of his service by the simple device of renouncing the salary, when he was not required to perform the duties. He was then quickly promoted as a ‘supernumerary’ until he reached a grade appropriate to his social standing, when he exchanged his supernumerary rank for a substantive one.

  99 In Hungary, admission to Holy Orders in the Catholic (Roman or Greek) Church carried with it the rank of common nobility.

  100 For the distinction, see below, p. 62. Strictly, all categories of land were taxed at the same rate, 18.45%., but the noble was allowed to deduct expenses (labour, seed, etc.) while the peasant had to pay on his gross yield.

  101 Charles VI’s Court numbered no less than 40,000 persons. This figure includes servants, but also a vast number of titular office-holders. Under Maria Theresa there were 1,500 Court Chamberlains. Many of these were, indeed, unsalaried and had even paid for the title. The sale of offices, ranks and titles was a considerable source of revenue to both Maria Theresa and Joseph II.

  102 Twenty-one families (15 of them bearing the title of Prince and 6 that of Count) might even marry into the Imperial family without the union’s ranking as morganatic. These were families which had formerly been reichsständisch, although now mediatized.

  103 The colonization of South Hungary with free peasants was the chief apparent exception, and it was only apparent, for here the title-deeds had disappeared so completely that the land was really masterless. The considerations behind the settlement were in any case military.

  104 The entail could also be in ma
jorat, when the estate was inherited by the eldest male among those of the same degree of kinship to the creator of the entail, or in seniorat, when it went to the eldest living male of the blood, regardless of the degree of kinship. The holder had only a life interest. He could borrow on the estate up to one-third of its value, but had to amortize the loan at five per cent annually. Creditors could not seize the land for debt. The holder could exchange land, lease the property, or even exchange into other forms of capital (which then remained entailed), but for this he had to have the permission of all known possible heirs, and of the Court.

  105 Agoston, A magyar világi nagybirtok története (Bp. 1913, p. 209), cit. E. Szabó, op. cit., p. 38.

  106 The Prince-Archbishop of Olmütz had to show his sixty-four quarterings. The Cardinal-Primates of Hungary were, at this time, almost always members of the very highest Hungarian families. It was practically unknown for a titled nobleman to be a parish priest; he passed straight to a bishopric or prelacy via some fashionable monastery.

  107 Except the special cases, noted elsewhere, of the Greek Orthodox Serbs and Roumanians.

  108 The Hungarian freemen who in the thirteenth century had taken the appellation of ‘nobles’ had always jealously maintained the principle that every noble was equal in status to every other. In 1351 Louis the Great had confirmed that all the nobles of Hungary enjoyed una atque eadem libertas. The innovations (hereditary titles, division of the Diet into two ‘tables’, etc.) later introduced by the Habsburgs had conferred on the magnates a higher status than that enjoyed by the rest of the nobles, but left all those who were not magnates undifferentiated. Certain documents confined some privileges or duties to ‘leading men’, ‘men of substance’, etc., but without ever defining those terms; in any case the status conferred by them was not hereditary.