The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Many of these measures, moreover, were not only wounding to the national pride, but constituted direct breaches of the national Constitution, and the natural consequence was that the resentment took the form, in the first instance, of a vociferous demand for the restoration of the Constitution and reparation for Joseph’s violations of it. But many of the ‘Congregationes’ wanted more than mere restoration. By this time not only the doctrines of the Enlightenment, but also those of the French Revolution had reached Hungary. It was characteristic of the immutable national outlook that it still regarded the ‘nation’ as identical with the body of ‘nobles’ to whom Hungarian constitutional tradition still confined that term; there were very few suggestions for extending it to include the non-privileged classes. But many now interpreted the new doctrines as conferring greatly increased rights on the ‘nation’ vis-à-vis the King.

  Thus when, in June, the Diet did meet, although Leopold’s succession was no longer openly challenged, speeches were made on the ‘independentia et majestas’ of the nation and on its rights vis-à-vis the Crown which would not have sounded outlandish in the Paris of the day. Speakers put forward the most far-reaching demands: for a separate Hungarian army and separate Hungarian representation at foreign Courts; for purely Hungarian central authorities in charge of the central services, including those concerned with the country’s military and financial obligations. A ‘treaty’ was to be concluded with the Austrian and Bohemian Lands, respecting their shared obligations. The King was not to govern by Patents or Decrees; his proposals were to be submitted to a Council, which should be entitled to pronounce on their legality and suspend their operation if the decision were unfavourable (the jus resistendi was to be restored); all legislation was to be based on the joint deliberations of the King and the Diet, which was to meet annually. Provisions regarding the peasants were to be the concern of the Diet. The integrity of Hungary’s old frontiers was to be restored, Transylvania, the Military Frontier and Galicia-Lodomeria being incorporated in them. In addition, the administration of the mines and the posts was to be restored to Hungarian hands; only Hungarians – as far as possible, nobles – to be employed in public office; the restrictions on Hungarian exports to Austria lifted. The King was to swear to all this in an Inaugural Diploma, which was to be regarded as a ‘fundamental law’.

  In addition, there was strong agitation for the repeal of Joseph’s aggravations of the Austro-Hungarian economic relationship,3 and finally, for the elimination of German from the administration and education; this last being accompanied by the new demand, which had quite suddenly caught the Diet’s fancy, that the official language of the future should be, not Latin, but Magyar.4

  Fortunately for Leopold, he had allies in Hungary itself. The Diet saw the first emergence, in modern terms, of a problem which was to haunt Hungarian politics for the next century. The Croat Sabor which met before the Buda Diet had decided that the surest safeguard for Croat liberty against Habsburg absolutism lay in close co-operation with Hungary, and had instructed its delegates to work in harmony with the Hungarians and to submit themselves to the will of the majority in matters of common interest. But this attitude had made the assumption, which the leading Croat delegate, Skerlecz, expounded at Buda, that Hungary and Croatia were regna socia, whose union in AD 1106 had come about by mutual agreement, and that neither party was competent to enact laws binding on the other without its consent.

  The Serbs, too, were astir, and in September Leopold allowed them to call a Congress, to which he himself allowed the name of a ‘Diet’. At this assemblage, which met under the Presidency of the Serbian Archbishop, Stratimirovics, and of a bellicose General named Serujac, tumultuous speeches were made, speakers claiming to represent four million [sic] ‘Illyrians’ of Hungary against only two million [sic] Magyars, and describing the latter as ‘orang-utans whom Vienna had turned into men’; the concrete demands were for a separate ‘national’ organization with a territory based on the Bánát,5 with its own Government, lay and ecclesiastical, and its own representation in Vienna.

  Finally, the Transylvanian Diet did not endorse the demand for union with Hungary, but asked for restoration of its own Constitution. And here, too, there was a cross-current. The two Roumanian Bishops6 presented Leopold with a petition entitled the Supplex Libellus Valachorum. Much of this consisted of a historical exposé (Sinkay’s work) setting out the thesis of Roumanian priority in Transylvania. Its positive demands were for recognition of the Roumanian nobles, as such, as a fourth ‘nation’ and of the Uniate and Orthodox Churches as ‘received’ religions. Roumanians should be represented proportionately in the Diet and public office, and in the Counties and Districts in which they formed a majority, Roumanian place-names should be ‘restored’. A National Congress should meet to discuss details.

  The sympathetic reception which Leopold gave to the Serbs, in particular, but also other devices employed by him,7 cooled heads in Buda, and when the news of the Convention of Reichenbach reached the Diet, its members finally realized that they could not hope for satisfaction of any very extreme demands. Leopold himself let it be known that many of the proposals which had been mooted were unacceptable, but that he was prepared to reach an honourable compromise. Accordingly, the coronation duly took place on 15 November, Leopold having, as he had stipulated, signed a diploma in the same terms as Maria Theresa’s. The Diet then elected Leopold’s fourth son, the young Archduke Alexander, Palatine, and then settled down in comparatively chastened mood to discuss the further re-statement of the legal and constitutional position.

  The laws which emerged from these deliberations in fact secured the Diet most of the rights to which Hungary was historically entitled. The Diet expressly recognized Leopold’s hereditary right, and that of his heirs, to the throne, and the King’s right to ‘govern’ the country, but Leopold gave it a renewed and solemn pledge, which in substance did little more than repeat Charles III’s declarations of 1715 and 1723 and Maria Theresa’s of 1741, but was now embodied in a law, treated thereafter by the Hungarians as ‘fundamental’,8 that although the succession united Hungary inseparabiliter ac indivisibiliter with the Habsburgs’ other lands, yet Hungary, with its partes adnexae constituted a free realm, independent in all the forms of its Government, including the entire administration, not subject to any other land or people and possessed of its own forms of State and Constitution (propriam habens consistentiam et constitutionem). It could therefore be ruled and governed only by its own lawfully crowned hereditary King, and only in accordance with its own laws and customs, and not ‘after the pattern of other provinces’.

  Leopold agreed that the right to enact, interpret and repeal legislation resided jointly with the King and the Estates in session. Neither he nor his successors would rule by Patents or Rescripts, and the Courts were not obliged to recognize the validity of any such pronouncements. The Vice-Regal Council was entitled to query the validity of any executive act. Two loopholes by which Leopold’s predecessors had evaded these obligations were stopped: the successor to the Crown was bound to submit himself to coronation within six months of accession, and the Diet had to be convoked triennially. The Palatine had to reside, and the Holy Crown had to be kept, in the country. The consent of the Diet was required for any demand for taxes or recruits and in a number of other fields. Foreign Affairs and Defence remained, however, Monarchic services, and no modification was made in the central structure of the Government, including the Staatsrat and Hofkriegsrat, and the Hungarian Court Chancellery.

  For the rest, Joseph’s retraction of the bulk of his work in Hungary had automatically restored the status quo of 1780 in a number of respects, which new legislation would be required to alter. Leopold refused to support the union of Transylvania, which was thus reinstated within its 1780 frontiers, as were Croatia (the ambiguous position of the Slavonian Counties was not cleared up) and the Military Frontier. The Bánát, however, was duly ‘provincialized’, except for that part of it which rema
ined assigned to the Military Frontier. Similarly, the administrative system recovered its old shape and competencies. The Serbs did not receive their separate territory, nor their ‘national’ organization, but in January 1791 Leopold did establish for them an independent ‘Illyrian Court Chancellery’. Later, indeed, he was induced to state that this would be ‘no different from the old Hofdeputatio’, and thus not incompatible with the Hungarian Constitution.

  The fact that Joseph had not retracted three of his Patents had not, in Hungarian eyes, left them legally valid, since they had not been enacted by agreement with the Diet, but Leopold insisted that the Diet should now enact legislation in the appropriate sense.

  The Law passed in lieu of the Toleration Patent (which had in the end to be dictated by Leopold himself) gave Protestants freedom of worship both in Inner Hungary and Croatia, and in Inner Hungary, full equality with Catholics, but in Croatia their legal position remained that laid down by Law XLVI of 1741, under which they were unable to own land or hold public office, although allowed to settle in the country, lease land or practise a trade.9 The Greek Orthodox Church became established and was admitted to full equality in Inner Hungary and the ‘partes adnexae’. Jews received permission to settle in towns, except the ‘privileged’ mining districts of North Hungary, and to practise trades or industry in them.

  The Diet, like the Estates of most of the Lands, was as obstructionist as it could manage on the peasant question, but eventually passed a law provisionally legalizing Maria Theresa’s urbarium, instructing the County Courts to administer swift and impartial justice, and restoring the peasant’s right to leave his land at will,10 provided he had paid all his dues. The effect was, broadly, to legalize the substance, although not the wording, of Joseph’s main Patents of 1781, but not that of his later enactments.

  The nobles automatically recovered their exemption from taxation, and the proposed land survey was cancelled (in celebration whereof, even the completed surveys were ceremonially burned in all Counties except three). Otherwise, economic legislation reverted to the 1780 position, except that the price of salt was not to be raised without consultation with the Diet. On the important linguistic issue, Leopold consented to a law proscribing the use of a ‘foreign language’ (sc. German) as an official medium, but rejected a request (against which the Croats also protested) that Magyar should replace Latin in the public services. ‘For the time being’ Latin was to be used, but the Magyar language might be taught in the University and gymnasia with a view to the training up of a future supply of Magyar-speaking officials.

  Many of these decisions were recognized by both sides as being provisional, and the Diet was to set up six Committees to work out proposals in a large number of fields. Leopold promised to consider their reports when the Diet met next.

  In Transylvania, Leopold declared the Constitution restored and convoked the Diet, to which he submitted the Supplex Libellus Valachorum for its consideration. It is unlikely that the Diet would ever easily have admitted any request for equality from the Roumanians, and in 1791 it was in a particularly unyielding mood, for in 1784 the Roumanian peasants had risen under three leaders named Hora, Cloşka and Crişan, and had committed a frightful jacquerie in which many Hungarians, men and women, had been bestially slaughtered and their homes burned. The Diet rejected the petition out of hand and all that the Roumanians, as such, got out of it was the equality to which the Orthodox Church was promoted, here also. They were also allowed to elect their own Bishop, although he remained the subordinate of the Serb Metropolitan of Karlóca. The Roumanian (and other) peasants also received the benefit of Joseph II’s Patent, which received legal validity here, as in Inner Hungary.

  For the rest, the old Constitution was restored, and with it the independence of the Transylvanian Court Chancellery from the Hungarian, although in the economical form that the same body of men did the work of both offices, calling themselves the Hungarian or the Transylvanian Chancellery, according to their agenda. Transylvania, like Hungary, further received an assurance that it should not be governed after the pattern of other provinces.

  The demands put forward by the Estates of most of the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands had not differed greatly in kind, mutatis mutandis, from the Hungarians’. Nearly all of them had asked for the restoration of historic rights, and the Bohemian extremists had been hardly less extravagant than the Hungarian. They wanted to revive the electoral character of the Bohemian Crown and to go back to the status quo ante the Vernewerte Landesordnung. There was to be a Constitution in the form of ‘a contract between the Monarch and the nation’, under which the legislative power should be divided between the King and the Diet, which was to meet annually. The King should swear to this instrument in an inaugural diploma. The Hereditary Lands of course asked for less, since they had never enjoyed so much in the past, but generally speaking, demanded restoration of the status quo ante Maria Theresa’s administrative reforms, together with the restoration of such noble privileges as their monopoly of the higher posts in the State service. Nearly all the Estates asked for the revocation of Joseph’s measures in favour of the peasants, particularly the new land tax. Most of the non-German Lands asked for concessions in favour of their ‘national languages’.

  Here, too, Leopold was willing to meet some demands, but not to compromise on the hereditary character of his throne, nor to set the clock back indefinitely. He accepted coronation in Prague (which took place on 12 August 1791), but ended by declaring 1764 the ‘normal year’ for the constitutional position, and treating as invalid only those changes which had been introduced after that date. As all Maria Theresa’s essential administrative reforms had been completed by 1764, this meant that the regime of de facto centralization and absolutism was maintained, although the administrative and financial services were re-separated. The same datum year was taken for the other Lands, which meant, indeed, that Styria, Carinthia, Gorizia, etc. recovered their Gubernia, but the competence and composition of the Estates was extended only in minor respects: the burghers of Styria got more representation, the Tirol recovered some of its special privileges, especially in the field of taxation. All the Estates were, however, assured that their views would be heard before new general laws were introduced, or old ones amended; but they were not conceded the right to veto, or even delay application of, such measures.

  Leopold refused to repeal Joseph’s main Peasant Patents of 1781, in spite of the landlords’ representations that they were seducing the peasants into idleness, drunkenness and contumacy, and in the Western Lands, unlike Hungary, he also left in force most of Joseph’s later, minor concessions in favour of the peasants.11 He did, however, duly withdraw the far-reaching Patent of 1789, with its proposed unified land tax, while reserving his right to reintroduce it after it had been reconsidered and subjected to any amendments which commended themselves. This meant that the system of direct taxation was back on its pre-1789 footing, and with it the rustical peasants’ obligation to pay taxation, in its various forms, to their lords. It seems fairly certain that Leopold would have liked to see the Raab system, or something akin to it, generalized, or at least, cash rents substituted for the robot and dues in kind; but the Estates, who in 1789 had, at least in some Lands, not been entirely against this,12 had now swung round completely and declared themselves strongly in favour of robot, so that Leopold contented himself with a Rescript affirming the legality of commutation in its various forms, if both parties agreed, and recommending it, but applying no compulsion.

  Leopold allowed a Chair of Czech to be established in Prague, and when he died, was reported to be intending to restore instruction in Czech in the grammar schools and gymnasia of Bohemia. Knowledge of German ceased to be compulsory in the administrative services of Galicia and the Italian Lands.

  He carried through, or at least began on (much of his work was left unfinished owing to his premature death) changes in many other fields, nearly all of them having the effect of rubbing the rough edges of
f Joseph’s enactments, while keeping such core of good as they contained. He suspended the extremely harsh punishments in Joseph’s penal code and set up a new Commission (to which no member of its predecessor was allowed to belong) to work out a new code. Another Commission was to establish a new educational system, leaving much more initiative and self-government to the teachers. This body had only half-completed its work when he died, but the State control had already been relaxed, and some gymnasia restored. Leopold refused to repeal the Toleration Patent or the dissolution of the monasteries (although some of these were reinstated),13 or even to give the Bishops charge of the ‘Religion Fund’. He liquidated the General Seminaries and dropped some of Joseph’s interferences with ritual, but he maintained the Placetum Regium and the principle that the clergy were servants of the State and not entitled to speak except on purely religious questions.14 He promised to consider changing Joseph’s marriage law, but never had time for the consideration. The censorship was, indeed, made more stringent, all works being forbidden which ‘criticized and blamed’ the Government, and the reproduction forbidden of foreign writings, or parts of them, calculated ‘to disturb public tranquillity by spreading dangerous doctrines’. This measure, however, had been impending when Joseph died.