The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Metternich still insisted that he would not resign unless released by the Imperial family from his oath to the Emperor Francis. He was released, and tendered his resignation, which, typically, he insisted on announcing (at great length) to the Civic Guards when they arrived for their answer. Windisch-Graetz tried to make him withdraw his resignation, but he refused. The following night, still completely unconvinced that he had ever been wrong and that his going was not a calamity, he left Vienna, first for Prince Alois Liechtenstein’s castle in Feldsberg, on the Moravian frontier, later to make his way, by laborious stages, to England. None of the Imperial family had troubled to ask him how he was going to make the journey or how he would fare after it; but Baron Rothschild had more decency and sent him sufficient cash to get him and his family to safety.14

  The two other personal victims of the evening of 13 March were Sedlnitzky and Apponyi, who voluntarily resigned his office of Hungarian Chancellor.

  Scenes of enormous jubilation greeted this popular victory. Streets were illuminated, torch-light processions marched through them, crowds assembled before the Palace to cheer the Emperor, who was reported to have said that the firing had taken place without his consent and that he would not allow it to be repeated.

  The Archduke Ludwig was, however, still determined to keep the concessions to the minimum. That night Windisch-Graetz was, after all, invested with his plenipotentiary powers, and he took over his functions next morning, although oddly enough, taking no action in virtue of them that morning. After much argument it was decided that the two promises of the previous day must be honoured. A proclamation was issued authorizing the establishment of a large-scale National Guard, with the duty of ensuring ‘the maintenance of lawful order and the protection of persons and property’ and an office opened for the registration of recruits. Another Rescript announced the abolition of the censorship. But there was no word of any other concession, and public unease mounted again when, in the afternoon, Windisch-Graetz’s appointment was made public. Rumours ran round that the notorious Field-Marshal was planning some bloody action, and in the evening he, in fact, drafted and sent to the Municipality, for printing and distribution, a proclamation placing Vienna in a state of siege. This extreme measure was, indeed, averted, for a compositor in the printing office leaked the news to a student, who persuaded Professor Hye to make representations in the Palace, and the proclamation was softened down into an austere exhortation to the people to preserve order; but the news sent the popular temperature rocketing up again.

  But then another change came. Some time in the evening the Archduke Ludwig must have been induced, by what family representations we do not know, to hand over the Presidency of the Staatskonferenz to his younger nephew,15 and at 11 p.m. Franz Karl convened a Conference of State to which the Archdukes Albrecht and Francis Joseph, and also Windisch-Graetz, Kolowrat, Kübeck and some others were invited. The Archduke said that in his view it would be wiser to volunteer a Constitution and then stand fast against further political demands. The laconic minutes of the Conference16 tell us that it agreed.

  It was, however, pointed out that Hungary and Transylvania already possessed Constitutions, and that it was impossible to volunteer a ‘Constitution’ for the Monarchy which did not take those institutions into account. It was therefore decided to make a separate promise for the rest of the Monarchy, and the Conference, for somewhat involved reasons, decided that it would be dangerous to use the word ‘Constitution’ in this connection.17 Accordingly, the wording was agreed that the Emperor had decided ‘to assemble round Our throne representatives of the Estates of Our German-Austrian and Slavonic Realms and of the Central Congregations of Our Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom’ – the phrase is interesting for it envisages, for the first time, an Austrian representative body, and may thus be regarded as a precursor of the later Dualism – ‘with the purpose of assuring Ourselves of their advice on legislative and administrative questions’. The meeting was to take place on 3 July, if not earlier.

  A Rescript to this effect was issued on the morning of the 15th. But this proved too little for any but the smallest appetites. The streets were emptier that day, out of fear of the soldiers, who had been reinforced by detachments hurriedly rushed in from outlying garrisons,18 but everyone was at some meeting or other, and the vast majority of the bourgeoisie, and the students to a man, condemned the Rescript as totally inadequate. In the early afternoon, the Emperor was persuaded to take a drive (in which he was accompanied by his brother and nephew) through the Innere Stadt, ‘to show that he was not afraid of the people’. This, like everything Ferdinand did, evoked outbursts of loyal enthusiasm, but it was still shrugged off as only a gesture. The National Guard refused to go into the workers’ quarters to restore order, because they were afraid to leave the Innere Stadt to the soldiers, so that disorder continued to reign in the suburbs, and the Innere Stadt, where a ‘Burghers’ Committee’ of twenty-four members, headed by Bach, had taken charge, forcing Czapka to resign,19 was itself little better. Menacing crowds gathered again round the Hofsburg.

  This time they were rewarded. Another change of councils – again one for the origin of which we have no unimpeachable evidence20 – had taken place in the Palace. At 5 p.m. a mounted herald appeared at the Palace gate leading out of the Michaelerplatz and read a proclamation to the assembled crowd. This began by confirming the abolition of the censorship and the establishment of the National Guard, and went on to say that the Emperor ‘had taken the necessary steps to convoke, as quickly as possible, representatives of all provincial Estates and of the Central Congregations of Lombardy-Venetia, with increased representation for the burghers, for the purpose of the Constitution which We have decided to grant’.

  This time it was enough. The jubilation which had greeted the fall of Metternich broke out again. Houses were illuminated, Ferdinand, when he showed himself, cheered to the echo.

  The first Viennese Revolution was over.

  *

  After this, it was Hungary’s turn again. Kossuth had already lost patience, and had been urging that the Lower Table should present its Address to the Crown, without waiting for the Magnates; but his colleagues had hesitated to make this unconstitutional move. In the early hours of the 14th a messenger sent by the Archduke Ludwig brought the news of Metternich’s fall, and now the Palatine, who had arrived in Pozsony the previous evening, decided to side with the national party. He convoked the Magnates for that afternoon. Everybody – the Archduke and Széchenyi not excepted – agreed that the original Address was no longer adequate to the new situation, and it was therefore revised and strengthened; it now demanded the abolition of the entire existing top-level administrative system, and the appointment of a ‘responsible and independent Ministry’, with its seat in Pest. Other points now specifically mentioned in it were popular representation, popular education, trial by jury and the ‘Union’ (sc. of Transylvania with Inner Hungary). The validity of the Pragmatic Sanction was not questioned. On Széchenyi’s suggestion, it was resolved that a deputation from the two Houses, led by the Palatine himself, who promised the Hungarians to get the demands accepted, should take the Address to Vienna the next day.21

  The Deputation, a large and tumultuous one, arrived in Vienna on the evening of the 15th, its appearance enhancing the intoxication of joy into which their own successes had plunged the Viennese. They were not able that evening to have audience of poor Ferdinand, who had passed out completely, but the next day they were received by him, and handed him the Address. It appears that Windisch-Graetz and the Archduchess Sophie wanted him to reject it, but the Palatine and the Vice-Chancellor, Szögyény, talked them over by representing to them the danger that if her demands were refused, Hungary might revolt and secede from the Monarchy (the Palatine was suspected, although probably unjustly, of readiness to accept the Crown), and Ferdinand declared himself, in general terms, willing to fulfil the Hungarians’ wishes. On the 17th the Palatine was handed a Rescript, the essential pass
age of which ran:

  I am prepared to consent to the wish of the loyal Estates for the formation of a responsible Ministry in the sense of the Laws of the Fatherland, subject to the preservation intact of the unity of the Crown and of the link with the Monarchy.

  The Palatine was appointed Plenipotentiary for the King, and empowered to propose to him a suitable Ministry.

  Meanwhile, on the same day, the Staatskonferenz had met again, again under the Presidency of Franz Karl, and had decided that the Western Lands, too, must have a ‘responsible Ministry’, to replace the old system of ‘collegial’ Hofstellen (this concession was announced in the Wiener Zeitung of the following morning). On the 20th the Conference met once more, and decided to recommend the appointment of Kolowrat as Minister President – an honour which he accepted only with reluctance, and stipulating that the appointment must be only ‘provisional’. The remaining Ministers selected that day were all heads, or near-heads, of existing Hofstellen, and almost all of them, like Kolowrat himself, men of advanced years: Freiherr von Kübeck, ex-President of the Hofkammer, became Minister of Finance; Count Ludwig Taaffe, head of the Oberste Justizstelle, Minister of Justice; Count Ludwig Ficquelmont, President of the Hofkriegsrat, ‘Director of the Imperial and Royal House, Court and State Chancellery’, i.e. Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Freiherr von Pillersdorf, Chancellor of the Vereinigte Hofkanzlei, Minister of the Interior. Two Ministries were added later: on the 27th, Freiherr von Sommaruga, one of the Archduke Franz Karl’s old tutors, was made Minister of Education, and on 2 April, F.M.L. Zanini, of the Hofkriegsrat, Minister of War. It may, however, be mentioned here that Kübeck stuck it out only until 3 April, when he was replaced by Freiherr Philipp von Krausz, of the Gubernium of Galicia. Kolowrat resigned definitively on 17 April; on the 19th, Ficquelmont took over the Minister Presidency, again ‘provisionally’. Taaffe resigned on 20 April, Sommaruga taking over his portfolio ‘provisionally’, and Zanini on the same day; the new Minister of War, appointed on 30 April, was General Count Baillet de Latour. Meanwhile, Pillersdorf, too, had tried to resign, but his resignation had not been accepted.

  On 3 April, Windisch-Graetz’s special commission was terminated. He departed, disgruntled, to resume his command in Bohemia, although on the way, he treated himself to a generous holiday. The Archduke Albrecht, whom the voice of the people somewhat unfairly made the scapegoat for the bloodshed of the 13th, was replaced in his command22 by the peaceable and popular F.M.L. Count Karl Auersperg. The Archduke now went down to join Radetzky’s army in Italy, where he took command of a division.

  *

  With the appointment of a ‘responsible Ministry’ the old Governmental apparatus disappeared. The Staatskonferenz and the Staats-und-Konferenzrat were, on Kolowrat’s earnest advice, abolished on 4 April, when the Archduke Ludwig finally retired into private life; the Emperor’s Privy Chancellery on the next day. The Emperor could now constitutionally listen to no other advice except that of his Ministers, although the Archduke Franz Karl was appointed as a sort of go-between between him and them. All minutes of the Ministerial Conference were to be sent first to him, and submitted by him to the Emperor; it was understood that if he objected to any Ministerial decision, it was to be reconsidered by the Ministry.23

  The student of the history of the next months should, however, remember that at least until a Parliament or other body had been created to which the Ministers in their turn could be made to answer, the change of the form of regime meant very little. The Government represented a certain concession to revolution, but was in no sense a product of it. Its members were all old and trusted servants of the Crown, the nominees, direct or at one remove, of the Staatskonferenz, and continuing their service under a new name, but in the same spirit as before and with the same object – old wine, even old bottles, only new labels.

  They were, moreover, entirely inexperienced in any form of government except the bureaucratic. Poor Pillersdorf remarks ruefully and with justice, that this was probably the first Ministry ever formed none of whose members had ever previously exchanged political ideas with any other.24

  Few of them were even at all liberal in their personal politics. Kolowrat’s liberalism, as we have seen, was simply anti-Metternichism; Kübeck’s, as we shall see, had by now given place to a fanatical worship of the purest reaction. Of the new men whose views are worth recording, Pillersdorf was liberalism’s best hope. He was a genuine constitutionalist, so much so that in 1852 he was deprived of his Privy Councillorship for his allegedly subversive conduct in 1848.25 He was experienced, intelligent and honourable, but his career had been that of a quiet civil servant, and neither his training nor his character fitted him to take quick decisions in emergencies, and to stand by them.

  Krausz seems to have believed in reform, and although he did not succeed in the impossible task of putting order into Austria’s finances, he behaved throughout with integrity and courage. Sommaruga, a very distinguished academic, was a moderate Liberal.26 Some of the others were pronounced anti-democrats. Ficquelmont was a career officer with some diplomatic experience. This had brought him into contact with Metternich, whose admirer and pupil he was reported to be. His appointment was unpopular, and especially resented by the Poles, for he had been serving in Petersburg during the 1830 revolution, and had shown demonstrative pleasure at its failure (his wife, too, was a Russian). As for Latour, who was to meet so dreadful an end, he was heart and soul a man of the old regime, and presently became an active partner with Windisch-Graetz and Jellačič in the moves which carried the counter-revolution into power. It must be said for him, that disliking his dual role, he accepted his portfolio only with reluctance and made many attempts to be relieved of it.

  The same words apply to the staffs of the old Chancelleries and Hofstellen, now become Ministries, not to mention the Corps of Officers.

  The real transfer of power to the people’s representatives had yet to come.

  *

  The new Ministry took some hurried steps to ease the social and political pressure. The tax on articles of prime necessity was abolished, as was the turn-over tax on very small transactions, and some other indirect taxes were reduced. A general amnesty for political offenders was enacted. Another measure of wide application was a Rescript dated 28 March, and addressed to Land authorities,27 establishing the principle of the abolition of the ‘Robot obligation’, against compensation for the landlords which was to be settled by the local Diets, as far as possible by agreement between the parties. This principle was to be completely realized ‘within a year, at the latest by 31 March 1849’, and the necessary measures to be worked out ‘by legal procedures, with all practicable speed’.

  But this was only one of the Ministry’s preoccupations. It was no longer responsible for Hungary’s ‘interna’, but the relationship of Hungary to the rest of the Monarchy – what institutions were required ‘to preserve the unity of the Crown and the link with the Monarchy’ – remained to be defined. In the western half of the Monarchy, the Ministry had to consider the wishes and demands, not of the Viennese alone, but of all its half-dozen peoples; one of these – the Italian – had already had its case taken up by an outside Power, Piedmont, with such verve that actual war was to be expected at any moment. Further, the situation in Germany was completely uncertain, but could well develop into a shape dangerous at least to Austria’s hegemony over the other members of the Bund, and conceivably even to her politicial integrity.

  All these problems rushed on the Ministers simultaneously, and each, of course, interacted on all the others, a fact which must not be forgotten, although the limitations of his craft compel the historian to describe them one by one. It will be simplest to begin with the question which was the first to achieve a legal settlement: that of the new status of Hungary.

  The Palatine had no sooner arrived back in Pozsony on the 17th, than he had appointed Batthyány ‘provisional’ Minister President, and ordered him to produce the names of a ‘provisional
’ Cabinet. In doing this, the Archduke had exceeded his powers, and had been told so when he reported his action to Vienna on the 18th. The appointment had, however, been confirmed, and on the 19th the Palatine convoked the two Houses in joint session, read the Royal Rescript to them, and presented Batthyány to them as Hungary’s Minister President. The Diet, without more ado, turned to its law-making business.