The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  While no other Land of the Monarchy actually rose against Austrian rule, Galicia seemed for a few days on the verge of doing so. When the news from Vienna reached the province, which was not until 18 March, there were excited demonstrations in Lemberg, and a deputation of Poles appeared before Stadion with a list of demands, which besides the usual ones for constitutional liberties, social reforms (including abolition of the robot) and a national guard, included a political amnesty and a number of highly nationalist postulates: Ferdinand to be proclaimed King of Poland; the introduction of Polish as the language of administration, the Courts and education; only native Galicians to be employed in the public offices; convocation of a national Diet on a broad basis, and a separate Provincial administration and ‘national’ military force; the ‘foreign’ troops were to leave the country. Stadion agreed to release any prisoners held locally;47 and to let the burghers and students form a guard in Lemberg (but not elsewhere),48 but said that the other demands must be presented to the Emperor. A large deputation, mainly composed of Polish noblemen, but including some artisans and five Jews, but no Ruthenes (whom the Poles had ignored completely), then set out for Vienna. On the 21st a ‘Central National Council’ (Rada Narodna Centralna), under a seven-man directorate, was constituted in the city.

  Very similar scenes took place in Cracow, whose citizens, again, extracted from the local Austrian authorities release of the political prisoners and permission to form a ‘Burghers’ Committee’. Here, too, a petition (containing substantially the same demands as the other), was drawn up and a deputation appointed to carry it to the Emperor. The two deputations met in Vienna and conflated their demands into one even stronger one, which asked inter alia for the establishment of a Polish Provisional National Committee ‘to undertake the internal reorganization of Galicia on a purely national basis’.

  Now, however, they met with a check, if only because the Government was frightened of incurring Russia’s resentment if it showed too much sympathy with Polish nationalism. The Poles were kept hanging about for their answer, which, when it came at last, amounted to no more than a non-committal assurance that Ferdinand ‘would consider carefully all measures conducive to the welfare of his loyal subjects’.

  Meanwhile, various circumstances had worked together in Galicia to subdue the effervescence of the first days. One was that Stadion was personally a man of great common-sense, energy and courage; the second, that he found local allies to his hand. The peasants assembled in many villages and sent emissaries to Lemberg and Tarnow to ask hopefully whether their help was required, and although they were not called on, their attitude strongly damped the enthusiasm of the Poles. Further, the attitude of the Ruthenes, although not yet defined, was disquieting to them.

  With this backing, and that of the local military, Stadion was able to take a strong line. He forbade the Lemberg National Guard to carry arms and vetoed the formation of any guards at all in the local centres, where they would have been purely Polish, so that for the time, authority was reestablished. Things did not go so easily in Cracow, where the Burghers’ Committee paid little attention to the Austrian authorities. The Committee, however, regarded itself as the local representative of the Polish émigré ‘Government’, whose interest was at this time concentrated almost entirely on Poznán, where the local Poles were trying to extract from Prussia an independent territory which could then be made into a base for an attack on Russia. So long as this possibility existed, the Polish leaders themselves did not want a premature move in Galicia, which therefore relapsed, for the time, into a condition of suspended animation.

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  The Roumanians of the Bukovina (to conclude the list of relatively peripheral movements) had followed the general pattern in establishing a National Guard in Czernowitz and a National Committee, which in due course drew up a twelve-point petition,49 the main demand of which was for the separation of the Bukovina from Galicia and its constitution, within its existing frontiers, as a separate and autonomous province. It also asked for a ‘national’ education system, Roumanian-speaking officials, inter-confessional equality, financial autonomy for the Greek Orthodox Church, and certain other local reforms. The petition appears not to have been sent in until June, when it was accompanied (or followed) by another, which some Roumanian leaders had drafted in consultation with colleagues from Transylvania, asking for the unification of all Roumanian-speaking territories (including Moldavia and Wallachia) in a single ‘Roumania’ under Habsburg sovereignty.

  No notice appears to have been taken of either of these documents, and in January 1849, a deputation took the former, or a re-draft of it, to the Court. It was passed to the Kremsier Reichstag, with the results described below.50

  Meantime the National Guard had been disbanded for disorderly conduct, and Czernowitz put under martial law, but the reverberations of the unrest in the province, such as it was, were not audible outside its boundaries.

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  The demographical and geographical situation of the Czechs forbade them to think of separation from Austria, or even to threaten force in support of their claims; but they, too, put forward their demands, which, lying as their homes did at the very heart of the Monarchy, raised problems which were even more fundamental for its future than those of Lombardy-Venetia or Galicia, possibly even than those of Hungary.

  The Czechs had begun staking out their claim very early, and it was important for the development of this chapter of our history that, in their case, it was the intellectuals and radicals who took the initiative. The Estates were not in session in March, but on the 8th posters appeared in Prague, signed by a certain Dr Kampelik, a Left-wing member of the Repeal Association (which was certainly behind his action, although the fact was concealed), inviting all interested to attend a meeting at the ‘Wenzelsbad’, a hostelry frequented by local politicians, on the 11th. The meeting, which was attended by both Czechs and Germans, chiefly men who at that time were little known, adopted a twelve-point programme dictated to it by a friend of Palacký’s, a Czech lawyer named Brauner. This contained the usual Liberal postulates – freedom of the Press, abolition of the robot, etc. – including – in this respect it was unique among all the documents of the period – regulation of the labour market and wages (there had been fairly severe workers’ riots in Prague) – and further: ‘maintenance and assurance of the constitutional link between the Lands of the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia)’ and representation of them on a reformed Diet to sit annually, alternately in Prague and Brunn; a central administration for these lands, in Prague; complete equality for the Czech and German nationalities in all Czech Lands, schools and offices; all appointments to be restricted to natives, who must have complete command of both languages.

  The petition was remitted for drafting to a Committee of Twenty, under the presidency of another lawyer, a certain Adolf Pinkas. The Committee intensified its Czech national tone by inserting a verbose preamble on the inequality under which the Czechs had long been suffering; on the other hand, it watered down the social side of it; thus the demand for the abolition of the robot was changed to one for ‘humane improvement of the peasants’ conditions’.

  This ‘revision’ was submitted to another meeting, which took place only on the 15th, by which time the news of Metternich’s fall had reached Prague, and the Oberstburggraf, Count Rudolph Stadion, had announced that the Monarch had consented to grant a Constitution, freedom of the Press and permission (of which the students were already availing themselves) to form a National Guard. Appetites were increasing, and Pinkas’s draft was much criticized, not for its additions but for its omissions. Finally it was decided to take both drafts to Vienna, together with a separate petition from the students, who had objected that the other petitions took too little account of them. A deputation set off, amid scenes of great enthusiasm, on the 19th. They arrived in Vienna on the 20th, and were at once received by Kolowrat, who was benign but fairly ineffectual, except that he arranged for them to be re
ceived by Ferdinand on the 22nd. That evening or the next morning they seem to have seen Pillersdorf, or possibly one of his assistants, who went through the petition with them point by point, agreeing with them, or at least informing them of, his answers.51 These appeared that day in the form of a Rescript from Ferdinand to Pillersdorf.52 Most of the demands, this document said, had already been fulfilled; satisfaction of others was on its way. The complete equality of the two languages was already laid down by the Vernewerte Landesordnung, and if this was not always observed in practice, the failures should be put right. The reform of the Bohemian Constitution, and any revision of the relationship between Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia could be effected only through the Estates, for the convocation of which the Patent of 15 March had provided.

  The petitioners’ audience of Ferdinand was, of course, a formality, although the Emperor was his usual kindly self. A second Rescript issued on the 23rd, went a little further than its predecessor, saying that ‘modernizations of the Landesordnung would be welcomed’, although the channel of the Estates would still have to be followed, as laid down in the Patent of 15 March.53

  When, on 27 March, the deputation returned to Prague with this answer, there was consternation. Reports had gone round that ‘everything had been granted’, and a festal illumination of Prague had been planned. Now this was cancelled, and the deputation roundly abused for half-heartedness and reactionary sentiments which had brought the Czechs results so meagre in comparison with those meanwhile achieved by the Hungarians. The ‘Wenzelsbad Committee’, which had by now swollen into a large and confident body, on which the radical element was strongly represented, while the Germans had disappeared from it almost completely, decided to draft a new petition. In view of the Hungarians’ success, it was now thought possible to put the constitutional demands more strongly, and the new draft, which was drawn up by the 29th, demanded inter alia, equality in every respect for the Czech and German nationalities, guaranteed by a new Fundamental Law – the Vernewerte Landesordnung was no sufficient guarantee – and the ‘indissoluble unification’ of all Lands belonging to the Bohemian Crown in respect of their internal autonomy, with a single Diet elected on the broadest basis and representative of all classes, a responsible Ministry for the internal affairs of the three Lands, and the requisite central administrative authorities – these concessions were to be enacted by the King of Bohemia, jure majestatis. Further the Citizens’ Guard must be armed, and the social reforms introduced without delay.

  As it had been argued that the signatures to the previous petitions had not carried enough weight, the leading figures in Prague were now pressed to add their names, and a number did so, including Stadion himself, who then went to Vienna to prepare the Government for the reception of the new document.

  The new petition, accompanied by an address in the same sense, signed by thirteen members of the highest Bohemian nobility, was handed in on 1 April, and this time, important results were achieved.54 The Ministers, at their wits’ end to deal with the flood of problems which threatened to overwhelm them, were not anxious to commit themselves to any more constitutional concessions, and spent some time in devising other ways by which they hoped the Czechs could be placated, these including the appointment, which was actually announced on the 6th, of the young Archduke Francis Joseph to be Statthalter of Bohemia. Pillersdorf told Hofrat Kletzansky, formerly head of the Bohemian section in the Vereinigte Hofkanzlei, to work something out with the deputation, and after this had (obviously) been scrutinized by Pillersdorf himself, and apparently (although no one afterwards remembered anything about it55) shown to the Ministerial Council, the end product was published on the 8th in the form of yet another Rescript from Ferdinand to Pillersdorf.56

  This repeated that the question of the ‘unification of the Lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia under a central administration in Prague and with a common Diet’ was one which must be negotiated ‘at the next Reichtag’. But it authorized a number of immediate concessions, including the establishment in Prague of ‘a responsible central administration for the Kingdom of Bohemia, with extended competence’. Elected representatives from the towns and rural communes were to be added to the Estates, which were to meet shortly, with the right to debate and resolve on all Land questions. The German and Czech languages were to be, in principle, on a footing of complete equality in public life and education, and all persons occupying administrative or judicial posts in Bohemia would have in the future to be conversant with both languages. The Rescript further acknowledged the Vernewerte Landesordnung to be the basis of Bohemia’s relationship to the Crown: in other words, the Vereinigte Hofkanzlei was repudiated.

  Pillersdorf afterwards maintained that everything in this Rescript ‘simply recognized the individual rights which were to be sanctioned in the forthcoming fundamental law, and could, like everything done up to the convocation of the Reichstag, acquire permanent validity only subject to the condition of its confirmation’ (by that body).57 But while the Reichstag would, presumably, be able to repeal any earlier legislation, none of these far-reaching concessions were described as ‘provisional’, and the ‘Bohemian Charter’, as the Czechs dubbed the Rescript, naturally awakened enormous jubilation among the Czech nationalists, and corresponding consternation elsewhere. The Diet of Moravia, when it met on 24 April, sent in a caveat that ‘the Margravate of Moravia was an independent Land, linked only with the Constitutional Empire of Austria’,58 while the Silesian Diet repudiated the idea of unification with Bohemia without a single dissentient voice.59 The local Germans, too, were getting seriously anxious. They had begun by fraternizing with the Czechs in the joint cause of liberty; many of them had signed all the earlier petitions, and they had accepted the principle of equality between the two nationalities almost universally. But the word ‘equality’, as applied where there is a majority and a minority, is capable of diverse interpretations and the Germans had soon taken fright at some of the Czech interpretations of it, which amounted to the proposition that either party was equally entitled to impose its will totally if it was in a majority. Various disorderly anti-German demonstrations had also been taking place in the streets of Prague. No Germans had signed the petition of 29 March. The Germans began hurriedly to organize60 and soon counter-petitions were pouring in on Vienna asking that at least the use of the Czech language should not be extended to schools and administrative offices in German districts and also, to quote one of them, protesting against ‘any separation of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia from the other German Austrian Lands’.

  With this the Bohemian question became a part – and a particularly intractable part – of Austria’s German problem, now in full spate.

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  This question was one completely sui generis. The new element in it, the epidemic of acute nationalism, impregnated with liberalism and sometimes republicanism, which had been ravaging Germany since late February, had caught the Austrian Government entirely unawares. Metternich, as we have said, saw in it nothing but revolutionary feeling, to be suppressed, and no remedy but concerted repressive action by governments. The Austrian Germans had been practically unrepresented on the Heidelberg Committee which had organized the Frankfurt Vorparlament. Later, however, both government and people had been forced to take cognisance of the new situation by the further spread of the popular movement for German unity and in particular, by the antics with the help of which the King of Prussia was trying to jump a claim and to put himself at the head of united Germany.

  The new Austrian Government’s reaction to Prussia’s move was the obvious one. On 24 March, almost as his first action on taking office, Ficquelmont circularized the appropriate quarters with a statement, which was also published, that while Austria was willing to co-operate in negotiations, carried out in the right place and by competent organs (i.e. the headquarters of the Bund in Frankfurt) for the reform of the Federal Constitution, she could not accept any modification of it made without her consent. In fact, Schmerling, one o
f the most competent and most German-minded of Austria’s public servants, was sent to Frankfurt to sit on the Committee of seventeen sages which the Federal Diet appointed to elaborate a reformed Federal Constitution.61

  But already by this time popular opinion in Central and Western Germany had almost lost interest in the Diet, in favour of the Vorparlament, which, totally unofficial as it was, had somehow succeeded in becoming the incarnation of the German people’s hopes. On this body, too, which held its first formal session on 31 March, Austria was as good as unrepresented: 141 interested persons had come to it from Prussia, 84 from Hesse-Darmstadt, 72 from Baden, while a single Austrian had attended its opening session, and he, a certain Wiesner, was a political émigré of the Left; later, another (Count Bissingen) looked in.

  This, however, was a little misleading: more would have been there but they had (typically) taken too long preparing for the journey. By now, Austrian opinion had awakened to the German question, but saw it, naturally, through Austrian spectacles.

  There were some quarters which had caught the national-liberal infection in its pure, south-west Germanic, form. Chief of these were the students of Vienna and Graz; it was characteristic that the first organization to start wearing the German colours in their button-holes was the Academic Legion.62 And from the day of the appearance of this phenomenon, it spread very rapidly, until the old black and yellow was almost lost in the new multitude of black, red and gold cockades and button-holes. It was not only the students who were fired by the vision of the progressive and enlightened united Germany which was to emerge from the deliberations of the Vorparlament: all the Austrian German progressives looked forward to seeing Austria take her place in this new Germany, introducing its ideas and its reforms into her own body politic. On 2 April, Ferdinand had to follow the example of his Brother of Prussia in allowing the new colours to be hoisted on the tower of St Stephen’s Cathedral, in Vienna, on the University and finally, on the Palace itself. The crowd gathered outside the Palace sang Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland.