The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  The Austrian arms began by winning important successes, including the capture of Belgrade, but then everything went wrong. The other European Powers combined against Russia and Austria. Prussia, whose foreign policy was then directed by the ambitious and anti-Austrian Herzberg, negotiated with the Porte, with which it actually signed a treaty in January 1790. This was, indeed, afterwards disavowed, but Prussia also negotiated with the Poles for an understanding which was to include the restoration to Poland of part of Austrian Galicia, and mobilized on the Austrian frontier. There seemed every possibility that she would shortly actually attack the Monarchy. Prussia, England and Holland were allied, and Sweden attacked Russia in Finland. Thus threatened in her rear, Russia, which should have borne the brunt of the fighting against Turkey, was forced to leave this to Austria, whose troops, very incompetently led, were driven back into the marish plains of South Hungary. Here the army proved too large to be deployed effectively, and much too large to be supplied adequately, and was ravaged by the ague. Joseph himself went down to take command, but his own health was affected: he fell victim to a sickness which soon threatened to be fatal.

  Meanwhile, he had chosen this precise juncture to threaten crass violence to the historic liberties of the Austrian Netherlands, where unrest had shown itself as early as May 1787 and had grown formidable in 1788. The situation was equally dangerous in Hungary, where the nobles were bitterly resentful of Joseph’s ordinances, and now even the peasants were disaffected, for they were being forced to furnish the army with recruits and supplies, for which they were paid at half price, or in paper assignats. Discontent was rife in Vienna itself, where vulgar lampoons were hawked in the streets, almost within earshot of the dying Emperor.

  In face of all this, Joseph showed incredible obstinacy, or courage. He brusquely refused any concessions whatever in the Netherlands until November 1789, when the Statthalter had already been forced to leave Brussels. Then he yielded there, revoked his ordinances and promised to agree with the Estates on their Constitution. It was too late: on 25 November the Estates of Flanders declared Joseph forfeit of the throne, and on 10 January 1790, Belgium – openly enough encouraged by Prussia – proclaimed its independence.

  The turning-point in Hungary came in 1788 when, his own reorganization not having got beyond the blue-print stage, Joseph was forced himself to convoke the old County Congregationes and to appeal to them to produce for him the recruits and supplies which he needed. This gave the nobles their opportunity. They answered the request with protests and passive resistance. The Consilium and even the Chancellery supported them, advising Joseph that recruits and supplies could not lawfully be obtained without a vote of the Diet, and urging him to repeal his unlawful enactments, convoke the Diet, submit to coronation and swear to the Constitution.

  This was the attitude of Joseph’s most loyal Hungarian subjects. Others planned true rebellion, and emissaries of this group approached the King of Prussia (some directly, some through the Prussian Minister in Vienna, Baron Jacobi), asking him to propose a candidate for the throne of Hungary (Prince Karl August of Weimar was suggested for the post, although he hesitated to accept it), and to guarantee its Constitution.

  Driven against the wall, Joseph yielded. On 28 January 1790, in a letter which emphasized how good his intentions had been, he revoked all his enactments relating to Hungary except the Toleration Patent, the Livings Patent, and the Peasant Patents. He acknowledged the right of the Diet to participate in legislation, but hoped that the Estates would not press for an early Diet, which would be difficult in view of the situation and of his own ill-health. In the same document he ordered the return of the Holy Crown to Hungary, whither it was escorted back amid scenes of indescribable jubilation. But he was not destined ever to be crowned King of Hungary. On 20 February he died.

  1 This Patent was not promulgated in the Tirol or Vorarlberg.

  2 This important step, which the Hungarians themselves had not expected, and against which several of Joseph’s councillors protested vigorously, meant that the dualist principle was now applied to the State finances.

  3 The seeds of this change had, indeed, been sown by Maria Theresa when she founded the famous Theresianum, which was eventually a training college for bureaucracy. Its products were, however, only beginning to enter public life towards the end of her reign.

  4 A Kreishauptmann in Styria got only twelve hundred florins a year, out of which he had to pay three hundred to a secretary and a smaller sum to a clerk. A primary schoolmaster got one hundred florins.

  5 The head of the secret police, Count Pergen, was head also of the public ‘Polizey’, and in 1789 the entire force was withdrawn from the control of the Hofkanzlei and made into an independent Hofstelle.

  6 Even the death penalty was abolished only because Joseph thought that ‘it was never so effective a deterrent as a sentence of hard labour. The former was quickly over and forgotten, the latter remained longer in the public mind.’

  7 The obligation of every parish to provide relief for its own poor was laid down in 1783. A law of 1789 laid down that any person resident in a parish for ten years was entitled to relief in it; persons not so qualified were sent back to the parish of their birth.

  8 Kerner, op. cit., p. 225.

  9 It was first promulgated for Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia on 1 December 1781, then extended unaltered to Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Littoral, and Tirol, Vorarlberg and the Vorlande in 1782, and with modifications (usually in the direction of extension) to Transylvania in 1783, Hungary in 1785 and Galicia in 1786. It was held unnecessary to promulgate it in the Austrias, and in the other Western Lands it was promulgated only for safety’s sake, and because it contained a provision, not already on all their statute books, that a peasant leaving his holding had to notify the military authorities.

  10 The Galician landlords, however, resisted the abolition of the propinatio so strongly that Joseph left it untouched, only forbidding the farming of the right to Jews. The right was not, in the event, abolished until 1882, when the Galician landlords were granted 1,000,000 fl. a year for twenty-two years as compensation.

  11 This provision, known as the Bestiftungszwang, was not introduced into the Tirol, Lombardy or the Netherlands.

  12 In 1789 Joseph allowed peasants who had not bought in their holdings practically the same testamentary, etc., rights over them as were enjoyed by the other class. This, however, was one of the concessions which vanished immediately after his death. In a memorandum submitted by him to Franz Joseph in 1849 (reproduced by Friedjung, Historische Aufsätze, pp. 58 ff.), Prince Windisch-Graetz wrote that 100,000 peasants in Bohemia were holding their land on Raab and other emphyteutic tenures, but most of these were probably Crown tenants, or had made the change later. In any case, many people find it difficult to distinguish between an emphyteutic tenure and one which had been bought in and its services commuted.

  13 In Galicia, 8·53%.

  14 That is, with no deductions for seed or working expenses.

  15 The orders to this effect were raised in April 1781. The force was now to be composed as follows:

  57 infantry regiments of 3,061 men each 174,777

  3 garrison regiments 6,995

  17 Frontier regiments of 3,040 men each 51,680

  Artillery 13,560

  Sappers and miners 1,219

  34 cavalry regiments of 1,252 men each 42,568

  1 csaikist (river patrol) and 13 military cordon detachments 5,184.

  ________

  295,711

  16 See Mitranov, I. 358 ff. Gorizia, for example, pleaded not only that its vineyards could not spare the labour, but that the Gorizian peasant was ‘molle, timido, nullo meno que guerriero’, and would make a ‘cattivo soldato’.

  17 Among other provisions of this remarkable ‘Greek Project’, Austria was also to have received Dalmatia, then in possession of Venice, which was to be compensated with the Morea, Cyprus and Crete. Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia wer
e to be constituted an independent State of ‘Dacia’, and France, Britain and Spain to receive other fragments of Turkey in Asia.

  3

  Leopold II

  When Joseph knew himself to be dying, he had sent for his brother and prospective successor, Leopold, whose previous portion had been the family secundo-geniture of Tuscany. The call was not welcome to Leopold. He was used to Tuscany, and attached to it, and he had been ruling it with a wise moderation, to his own satisfaction and that of his subjects. His somewhat timid and domestic nature could not but shrink from the prospect of being thrown into a maelstrom of huge conflicts, particularly as he thought that they had been misguidedly conjured up. Perhaps alone of all the Habsburgs who ever reigned, he was a genuine constitutionalist. He approved Montesquieux’s doctrine of the division of powers, believed in the right of the people to fix taxation and to be protected against arbitrary rule, and even in a ‘contract between sovereign and people’, the latter no longer being bound to obey the former if he violated it, held it to be ‘useless to try to impose even good on the people if they are not convinced of its utility’ – force only ‘estranged hearts and spirits without altering views’ and even welcomed the first news of the French Revolution. ‘The regeneration of France,’ he had written to his sister Marie Christine on 14 June 1789, ‘will be an example which all sovereigns and governments of Europe will be forced, willy-nilly, to copy. Infinite happiness will result from this everywhere, the end of injustice, wars, conflicts and unrests, and it will be one of the most useful fashions introduced by France into Europe.’ He was absolutely unwilling to share the Government with his brother, as Joseph wished, for if he did so, both foreign Courts and the peoples of the Monarchy would believe that he endorsed Joseph’s principles and systems, so that his credit would be irretrievably and uselessly compromised; besides which, he could ‘get into conflicts with the Emperor every minute, and tie his hands for the future’.

  He therefore delayed his coming, and was still in Tuscany when the news of Joseph’s death reached him. Then, perforce, he started north. He reached Vienna on 12 March, and at once set himself to clearing up the mess which his brother had made.

  The problems confronting him were both international and domestic, and he had, of course, to move simultaneously in both fields, particularly since the problems were to a large extent mutually inter-dependent, but it will make for simplicity if we describe first his handling of the international situation. The key to this lay, as he rightly saw, with Prussia, for although the only hostilities in which Austria was then formally engaged were those with the Porte, on the Danube, the operations there had reached something of a stalemate, with Austria holding a slight advantage through her possession of Belgrade, and she thus had no reason to fear the outcome of their continuance so long as Prussia did not intervene. But they still held down a part of her troops, leaving her with far too few to repel a Prussian invasion of Bohemia or Galicia. If, moreover, Prussia’s privy negotiations (of which Leopold was fully informed) with the Hungarian malcontents prospered, there was an acute danger of a full-fledged Hungarian rebellion, supported by Prussia. This danger loomed so large in Leopold’s eyes that historians have written that ‘he looked at his relations with Prussia from the point of view of his Hungarian policy, not vice-versa’.1 ‘The King of Hungary concluded a Convention at Reichenberg with the King of Prussia, to enable him to remain King of Hungary at all, and to get that Kingdom secured to himself through coronation.’2

  Only a fortnight after his arrival in Vienna, Leopold wrote his momentous letter – perhaps the most important of his reign – to Frederick William, protesting his own pacific intentions and his innocence of any wish to upset the status quo. Difficulties followed, bred of mutual suspicion and of frustrated ambitions in both camps, but on 26 June formal negotiations were opened in Reichenbach, and these led to the signature, on 27 July, of the Convention of that name. Under this, Leopold agreed to conclude an armistice with the Porte and to open negotiations for a definitive peace on the basis, subject to minor rectifications, of the status quo ante bellum. If the frontier was altered, Prussia was to receive equivalent compensation. Austria was not to help Russia if she tried to carry on the war; Prussia and her allies were to undertake the further mediation and guarantee the future peace. Leopold had already assured Prussia that he was not trying to upset the balance in Germany; now Prussia agreed that Austria’s authority should be restored in Belgium, subject to an amnesty and the restoration of the former Constitution, which would be jointly guaranteed by Prussia and the Maritime Powers. Most important of all for Leopold was the King of Prussia’s jettisoning of his Hungarian clients. He had suggested that he should be made a guarantor of the Hungarian Constitution, but when Leopold rejected this suggestion strongly, the Prussian dropped it, and therewith tacitly disinterested himself in Hungary.

  On 23 September Austria duly concluded an armistice with the Porte at Giurgevo, and the definitive peace, which brought Austria one or two small frontier rectifications, but lost her Belgrade, was signed at Sistovo on 4 August 1791. Peace between Russia and Turkey followed under the Treaty of Jassy (9 January 1792), which advanced Russia’s frontier to the Dniester.

  Kaunitz, and others, denounced the Convention for a diplomatic retreat by Leopold before Prussia’s pressure (and he himself so represented it to Catherine of Russia), but it was rather a signal success for him. It marked, indeed, a retreat from forward positions which Joseph had tried to occupy, but most of those had been entirely untenable. If it entailed the end of Austria’s alliance with Russia, it brought her far more elsewhere. It did not, of course, eliminate the old rivalry between her and Prussia, but it put it into cold storage. Prussia dropped her intrigues in Galicia and Hungary, and for the next two or three years accepted Austria’s leadership in Germany (this, inter alia, making possible Leopold’s coronation as Emperor, which took place, after an unopposed election, on 9 October 1790). It even made it possible, as an immediate result, for Austria to recover Belgium. When Leopold offered the Belgians the restoration of the constitutional status quo ante Joseph’s innovations, they rejected it out of hand, but he in his turn rejected the proposals made (on 10 December) by the mediating Powers and sent troops into the country, which, now that Prussia was standing aside, they reoccupied without difficulty.

  This success proved, indeed, short-lived, for it was only two years later that Dumouriez’ victories ended for ever Austria’s rule in the Netherlands. But in his other dominions, Leopold was able to turn to the work of internal pacification unhampered either by Prussian intrigues or by the expensive and exhausting war with the Porte – no small gain from the financial point of view alone, for Leopold had been at his wits’ end to finance his armies, which were now quickly brought down to a more tolerable figure.

  *

  Even when in Tuscany, Leopold had kept himself well informed on events and conditions in the countries over which he might one day have to rule, and had probably reached fairly clear conclusions on the line he would follow. He might not have been abreast of every local problem, but he had been made acquainted with many of them before reaching Vienna, for in every Land through which he passed – the Tirol, Carinthia, Styria, Lower Austria, not to mention Mantua – deputations from the Estates, and in a few cases, also from local peasants, had waited on him, nominally to pay their respects, but in nearly all cases, also to present their grievances. He had returned non-committal answers to most of them, and on reaching Vienna, had made himself incommunicado for several weeks, studying documents and conferring with advisers. Then, on 1 May, invitations were sent out to the Estates to assemble at their several headquarters for discussion of their requests. The Hungarian Diet, which was to meet in Buda, was especially invited to consider the questions of Leopold’s coronation, and of the election of a Palatine.

  Hungary’s was the only case in which any important negotiations behind the scenes had preceded the invitation, for even if only a minority of Hungarian
s had been privy to the intrigues with Prussia, a considerable number held the view that Joseph’s unconstitutional rule had rendered invalid the contracts between the Crown and the nation concluded in 1687, 1715 and 1741, and were demanding a new election, accompanied by a re-statement of the relationship. Leopold had been adamant on the right of himself, and after him, his heirs-in-law to succeed to the throne, but he had been prepared to strengthen his supporters’ hand by such concessions as he himself thought justifiable. The designation of Buda for the Diet’s venue was one of these, the promise to fill the office of Palatine another, and he had already made one or two other popular moves, including the official reinstatement of Latin as the language of business of the Counties.

  Thanks to these concessions, and even more to the news, which had soon filtered through, of Leopold’s negotiations with Prussia, the extremists who had denied even his right to convoke a Diet had been overruled, so that it could be taken as certain that the Diet would meet. Nevertheless, its proceedings were bound to be turbulent. It would, indeed, be wrong to regard Joseph’s reforms as having been universally unpopular in Hungary. By what he had done, and still more, by what he might do in the future, he had made himself the hope of the burghers and peasants, and the younger intellectuals were enthusiastic for him. As we have said, even the pioneers of the new Magyar linguistic movement, such as Kazinczy and, indeed, many others, took no exception to the Germanization of the schools, for they argued that this would bring enlightenment into the country, and enlightenment would bring reform. But precisely the County nobles, who would dominate the Diet, had had reason to object to practically everything that Joseph had done. For them the substitution of German for Latin meant that they would have to learn a new language, or if they were salaried, lose their incomes. The proposed new land tax would have swept away the most treasured of all their privileges (only recently reaffirmed ‘for all time’ by Maria Theresa) and the peasant legislation bore really hard on the Hungarian landlords, with their primitive, and largely still pre-monetary, economy. The discrimination against Hungary’s trade and industry was another acute grievance.