For the rest, the Reichstag, after its formal opening on 22 July, spent most of its time,128 when not engaged on Kudlich’s motion, in nationalist squabbles which were often undignified enough. It was symptomatic that when the Deputies came to take their seats in the building allotted to the Reichstag for its meetings,129 nearly all of them did so in national blocs. The Bohemian Czechs sat in a solid phalanx on the right, the Moravian Czechs and Ruthenes in the centre, the Poles, Southern Slavs and Italians on the left; only the Germans distributed themselves, some in the centre, others on the left.130 Except in the case of the Germans, whose more radical members chose the left of the House to demonstrate their social views, while the more conservative among them sat in the centre to dissociate themselves from the left, these choices did not reflect any ‘left’ or ‘right’ wing feeling in the usual sense of the terms, for the Poles on the left were far more conservative on social issues than most of the Czechs. The grouping by nationalities did, however, express the truth that practically all the Deputies, except the peasants, regarded the national issue as being the prime one at stake. And it soon took that place: it was not long before the Czechs and most of the Germans were abusing one another with a virulence prophetic of the proceedings of later Reichsrats. The Czech Deputies were even assaulted in the street outside the Reitschule. This was, indeed, an outcome of the developments which we shall trace, which brought the Czechs into the position of supporters of the Court and the Government, in contrast to their opponents among the German left. With this, it was not long before a change, imperceptible in its stages but pronounced in their cumulative effect, took place in the relations between the Government and the Reichstag. At first, the latter had been treated with flattering deference. The Speech from the Throne, read by the Archduke, had addressed it by the title of ‘Constituent’, but this apart, had seemed to regard it as an ordinary legislative Parliament. It had been allowed to express opinions on any subject, and even, as in the case of Kudlich’s motion, to draft legislation in the social field. Some of its members had come to take the view, in which they were encouraged by the Committee of Security,131 that they were not only a regular legislature, but a sovereign assemblage.
But as time went by, the old tradition reasserted itself that decisions were the province of ‘authority’. Even those Ministers who were elected members of the Reichstag (Bach, Hornbostel, and until his resignation, Schwarzer) appeared in it more and more rarely, and when they did so, it was increasingly often as mouthpieces of a superior authority. Bach had a violent clash with the Reichstag on 2 September, when he denied its sovereign character and its right to publish as a ‘law’ the result of its labours on the land reform, pointing out that the measure had still to be sanctioned by the Emperor.
But the Reichstag was still a recognized part of the political structure of the new Austria, and the reconciliation between Parliament, Ministry and Crown, and between Vienna and the rest of Austria, seemed to be complete when, yielding at last to the repeated supplications which the Reichstag had added to those of the Ministry, Ferdinand returned to Vienna. He arrived in the capital on 12 August, and in his turn expressed the hope that co-operation between the free peoples and its constitutional Monarch would result in the creation of a new Austria.
The loyal Viennese welcomed their Emperor back with heartfelt rejoicings, which were marred only by a foolish and tactlessly facetious demonstration on the part of the students. And yet, the doom of constitutional life in Austria had by now been sealed, by the very event which had given the Imperial family the courage to venture back from Innsbruck.
*
On 25 July Radetzky had inflicted a resounding defeat on the Piedmontese armies at Custozza. By a few days later, he had driven them clean out of Lombardy. On 8 August, Charles Albert signed an armistice at Vigevano. Venice still held out, but since none of the Powers showed any disposition to intervene in its favour, its reduction could only be a matter of time, and, meanwhile, a small force was sufficient to contain it.
Radetzky’s victory did much more than crush Piedmont; it changed the whole balance of forces inside the Monarchy, for the units which had previously been engaged in Italy, or had had to be kept in reserve for possible use there, were now available for ‘restoring order’ in the interior of the Monarchy.
This was precisely what Windisch-Graetz was panting to do, and he was now chafing with strong impatience against any form of civilian authority. In July he had again appealed to the Court for plenipotentiary powers–again in vain. In mid-August he challenged the authority of the Government when it released the Czech leader, Breuner, now a Reichstag Deputy, from the durance in which Windisch-Graetz wanted him held. On this occasion the Government, headed by Bach, stood up to him and defeated him, but he now applied again to the Court and this time received, under a top-secret order of which Latour himself was not informed, the powers for which he had asked in vain six weeks earlier, viz.: authority to assume, in case of emergency, the supreme command of all the Monarchy’s armed forces outside Italy, with plenipotentiary powers also in the civilian field.132 The most elastic imagination could not, indeed, construe the situation in Vienna, at that juncture, as constituting an emergency, so that Windisch-Graetz could only hold his hand here. He did, however, get a friend of his, Prince Lobkowitz, appointed Adjutant-General to the Emperor, and instructed him that ‘if he observed that any further concessions were being demanded, or that the person of His Majesty was in any way endangered, he was to take Ferdinand and his family under armed escort to Olmütz’.133 ‘Then,’ he told the Empress, ‘I shall conquer Vienna, then His Majesty will abdicate in favour of His nephew, Francis Joseph, and then I shall take Buda.’
He again warned the Empress that the time for the abdication had not yet arrived. The time was, however, ripe to move against Hungary.
*
The achievement of the April Laws in the social and purely internal political fields had proved to be sufficiently solid. They could not be called radical. The franchise still excluded something like 93% of the total population.134 Nothing was done for industrial labour, nor for that very large fraction of the agrarian population which failed to qualify for the material side of the reform. But the class which did benefit was still a considerable one, over one quarter of the total population,135 and even the poorest enjoyed the relief of equality before the law. The franchise was broad, judged by the standards of the day, and the general civic liberties were among the most generous in Europe.
The situation during the first few weeks was, of course, characterized by the usual social turbulence. There was considerable unrest among the ‘contractual’ peasants, and still more, among the zsellers. There were a number of local demonstrations by the factory workers, and more by the artisans, these being directed chiefly against the Jews, and the German burghers of some towns joined in the anti-Jewish demonstrations with a zest which necessitated the intervention of the National Guard in some places. In the larger towns, especially Pest, there was the usual disorder, with various more or less self-constituted bodies of students and others putting themselves forward as the representatives of authority. On the whole, however, all this died away comparatively quickly (the national difference which prevented the German burghers and the Magyar students from joining forces may have had something to do with this), and the authorities were always able to ‘restore order’ without any excessive difficulty.136 When, in June, the elections for the new Diet took place, the power of habit reasserted itself. The extreme Left – using the word in its modern sense – came out almost empty-handed: almost the only genuine social radical to secure election was the devoted but eccentric ‘peasant Tribune’, Tancsics. Peasants, workers and tradesmen together secured a bare 2% of the mandates. There were 30–40 representatives of the radical intellectuals, including Perczel and the two Madarász (but not Petöfi, who was defeated at the polls), but no less than 72% of the elected Deputies were landlords, most of them indeed, but by no means all, Liberals and
‘Left-wing’ in the national sense, i.e., supporters of Kossuth on the national issue.137
Another satisfactory phenomenon, for the Magyars, was the virtual disappearance of separatist feeling among the Magyars (including the Szekels) of Transylvania, where the Diet voted the Union on 30 May without a single dissentient voice from that quarter.
But several other quarters were bitterly hostile to the new Hungary.138 Her own aulic magnates regarded the land reform as sheer spoliation, and from the outset adopted the attitude which soon hardened into the ‘Old Conservative’ policy of pulling every wire within their reach to have the bulk of the April Laws undone.139 To the centralist supporters in Vienna of the old regime the Rescript of 17 March, and still more, that of 31 March, had been mere concessions to panic, and they were resolved to re-establish at least control over foreign policy, defence and finance the very moment they were strong enough to do so. In this respect, the gaps and ambiguities in the hastily-drafted laws gave them ample opportunities. Pillersdorf writes frankly140 that since none of the Austrian Ministers had been officially informed of the transference of any of their powers, they decided to continue acting as though no such transference had taken place. They did, he writes, suggest to the Hungarians that they should consult together on agreed lines of co-operation, and never got any answer. The Hungarian sources do not mention the suggestion.
No trouble arose at first over foreign affairs, for Esterházy, who had not wanted the post and had accepted it only at the urgent request of the Court, was an old career diplomat who knew the ropes. He hardly seems to have regarded himself as concerned with ‘foreign affairs’, as such, at all, but only with mediating between Hungary and the Court,141 and in any case, took his duties remarkably lightly.142 Batthyány, as we have mentioned, made one or two moves in this field on his own initiative, but these seem, perhaps strangely, to have met with no opposition in Vienna.143
But innumerable difficulties soon arose in the two other fields. At first, the Viennese Hofkammer went on quietly pocketing the yields of the Cameral enterprises in Hungary and of the Customs. When he took over, Kossuth found only half a million gulden in the Treasury, and nothing coming in (the landlords had not yet begun paying the taxation to which they were now liable). Neither had he any recognized means of obtaining credit, and no Bank of Issue. All the emergency measures which he took to provide for current needs raised objections from the Hofkammer or the National Bank, which complained that its rights were being infringed; and it was obvious that Vienna proposed to maintain this attitude at least until Hungary yielded over the question of the national debt.
There was also much stuff for explosion in the military field. Little friction, indeed, arose at first over the Imperial units quartered in Inner Hungary, of whom there were about eighteen thousand (mostly Germans, Czechs or Italians, but a few Hungarians144). Zanini instructed them to swear loyalty to the new Hungarian Ministry, and to take their orders from the Hungarian Minister of Defence, and they did so; in any case, Batthyány, who was in charge of the Portfolio of Defence pending the arrival of Mészáros, left these forces pretty well to their own devices. But early trouble arose over the Military Frontier. During their negotiations with Vienna, the Hungarians had demanded formal re-incorporation of the Frontier, and the Minister President in Vienna had at first been inclined to concede the point. The new Ministry of War, on the other hand, claimed that the control of the Frontier was one of the Monarch’s ‘reserved rights’, and therefore remained with it (the Ministry) as the legal successor in respect of such rights of the Hofkriegsrat. The question was of great practical importance to both sides, especially as almost the entire front-line force of Frontiersmen (twenty-two regiments) was then serving in Italy, where it formed an important part of Radetzky’s army. In any case, neither party was willing to see this important military force under the control of the other. The April Laws did not specifically provide for the re-incorporation, but the new franchise law tacitly assumed it by providing for representation of the Frontier districts in the new Parliament.
On 12 April the Hungarian Government agreed to leave the military organization of the Frontier undisturbed pending a future legal settlement: the Austrian Ministry continued thereafter to claim complete control over the Frontier, and its commanding officers, to recognize only the Ministry as entitled to issue orders to them. We shall return to the later developments of this dispute.
The other malcontents were to be found in Croatia, and among the non-Magyars of Inner Hungary and Transylvania.
The spirit in which the Hungarians dealt with the Nationalities and with Croatia in the April Laws was much less that of the conscious national aggression as which it is so often described, than of naïve optimism. The laws in fact did not mention the Nationalities at all, nor the linguistic question, except only in the provisions (which themselves were not new) that the language of Parliament was Magyar, and knowledge of it a requisite for membership of that body. Neither did they modify the legal status of Croatia, as interpreted by Hungary: they recognized the existence of the Zagreb Diet; allowed the partes adnexae to hoist their own colours, side by side with the national ones; and specifically stated that their County Congregations were free to use ‘their own mother tongue’.
But it was also true that the new Hungarian constitutional laws allowed no place for devolution, except in purely ecclesiastical respects; that the central Parliament and Ministries were likely to be overwhelmingly Magyar; and that the preponderance of the Magyar element would clearly be increased by any weakening of the links with Austria. The non-Magyars of Transylvania had special reasons to fear the effects of the Union with Hungary, and the laws seemed to leave little space for the exercise of Croat autonomy (the competencies of the Croat Diet were not defined). Moreover, the franchise law recognized as ‘Croatia’ only the three Counties of ‘Zagrab, Várasd and Körös’, with the Free Towns and Districts lying within them, and the Croat Frontier districts, thus implicitly denying Croatia’s claim to either Fiume or Slavonia. And all this was voted by majority, overriding the objections of the handful of Croat Deputies and thus ignoring the Croats’ thesis that regnum regno non proscribit leges.
Many of the Hungarians seem genuinely to have believed that they were doing all that man could wish. Kossuth in particular had persuaded himself that the Nationalities wanted nothing more than the civic liberties and social reforms which the laws were now extending to all citizens of Hungary (especially as the Greek Orthodox Church was now being admitted to full equality). ‘The magic of liberty’, he cried enthusiastically, ‘is stronger than nationality, faith, affinity of blood and friendship.’ And why should the Nationalities mind Magyar being the official language ‘when the State sincerely accepts the principle that it respects the right of every people to have its own language and to use it freely in its internal affairs, or its Church questions’.
And it is fair to point out, and important to realize, that this was not a complete illusion. The first days which followed the fall of Metternich saw innumerable scenes of fraternization between Magyars and Germans, Magyars and Slovaks, even (in Inner Hungary) Magyars and Roumanians. To the very last, practically all the Swabians and Catholic Southern Slavs, the great majority of the Ruthenes and at least a large fraction of the Slovaks took the Hungarian side; so, on the whole, did the Roumanian Uniates of the Partium, and even the Orthodox Roumanians of that area tended to regard the Serbian leaders of their Church as worse enemies than the Hungarian officials.
But this attitude was very far from universal. There were early stirrings even among the Slovaks,145 a group of whom, as early as 28 March, put forward requests – modest ones enough – for the wider use of the Slovak language in the Courts and in public life. The Hungarians persisted in sniffing ‘Pan-Slav agitation’ behind any Slovak national movement, and rejected all these requests. Thereupon, on 10 May, a meeting of Slovak nationalists at Liptószentmiklós drew up a resolution which in substance asked for the transformation of
Hungary into a ‘Nationalities State’ on a federative basis, with, for themselves, an autonomous territory in which Slovak should be the sole official language.
A few other Slovaks were coquetting with the idea of Czecho-Slovak union, both national and political, and were finding alarming encouragement in certain Czech quarters.146
The Transylvanian Saxons were divided and dubious about the new course. Few of them regarded the prospect of the Union without misgivings, and in mid-May the Saxon ‘University’ sent a deputation to Vienna to try to get the Union postponed. The deputation missed the Court, which had just moved to Innsbruck, and when the Transylvanian Diet met on 29 May the Saxon Deputies were sharply divided. They eventually decided that it would be imprudent, as the situation stood, to exercise their veto against the Union147 and the next day voted unanimously for it, while declaring that they reserved their right to submit to the Hungarian Diet proposals for the safeguarding of their rights, their nationality and their language. Another deputation then went to Pest with proposals to this effect; but a petition bearing twenty thousand signatures was also sent to Ferdinand, asking him not to ratify the Union.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 59