*
The fall of Vienna marked the real end of the revolutionary movement in the Western half of the Monarchy. It was not merely that the counter-revolutionaries were now everywhere in control; their vigilance and their arms were hardly needed. The Viennese bourgeoisie was now ninety-nine per cent on the side of ‘order’; ‘everyone’, wrote a historian from the other camp, ‘who was or appeared to be even half tarred with the brush because he belonged to the Reichstag, the Legion or the Press, found any door on which he knocked closed against him, or met embarrassed faces which clearly betrayed the wish to see him gone’.183 On 29 November a deputation of Aldermen waited on Windisch-Graetz to express to him their thanks and their admiration; the next day, all the trading and industrial corporations of the city presented him with a grovelling address of gratitude for having ‘liberated all men of good will out of the night of anarchy, the chains of a terror-rule of a party which had sworn the destruction of all good citizens’.
In general, it could be said that social revolutionary feeling had ceased to be an active force among the German-Austrians. With it ‘Pan-German’ feeling breathed its last gasp. The German-Austrians followed the Czechs into the paths of ‘Austrianism’, anxious only to secure the best terms for themselves in an Austrian State which most of them, indeed (but by no means all), still wanted to be constitutional.
The last, belated outbreak of political revolt184 came in Galicia, and it was short-lived. Here the situation had developed along rather peculiar lines during the summer. Stadion had not returned to Galicia after his summons to Vienna, but had gone on to Innsbruck, whence he allowed himself to be elected to the Reichstag as member for an East Galician constituency, finally resigning his post as Statthalter on 30 July. He had left the civilian government of Galicia temporarily in the hands of Count Agenor Goluchowski, the senior of the few officials of Polish nationality then in Lemberg; a little later, Hofrat Freiherr von Zaleski, Referent for Polish affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, had been definitively appointed to succeed Stadion, with Goluchowski as his second-in-command. Both these men were unquestionably loyal to the Crown, but they were also Poles. Zaleski had quietly cancelled an order which Stadion had secured just before leaving Galicia, but had taken no steps to put into effect, for the partition of Galicia into two administratively separate halves, had got Polish introduced as the language of instruction in Lemberg University and all but one of the gymnasia of East Galicia,185 and most important of all, had relaxed Stadion’s restrictions on the formation of National Guards. The guard in Lemberg, the core of which was composed of students, had expanded into a considerable force, and other bodies formed in the smaller centres.
This policy had seemed to justify itself during the summer. The elections to the Reichstag had passed off with no more disorder than is customary in Galicia,186 and both Poles and Ruthenes had taken part in the proceedings of the Reichstag on the assumption that their task was to make the best terms possible for their peoples within the Monarchy.
Meanwhile, however, the Polish hot-heads were using the greater freedom which they now enjoyed to plan a new rising, and thought the occasion for this come when Vienna rose and Windisch-Graetz withdrew part of the garrison of Galicia for his operations against the capital. The revolt, however, was belated: it did not come until 2 November, and then was confined to Lemberg. The Austrian Commanding General, von Hammerstein, put it down easily enough – the bombardment of the city which he carried through was almost superfluous – and proclaimed a state of rigorous siege (verschärfter Belagerungszustand) throughout Galicia which trod out the last embers of active revolt. The compromised extremists fled the country, while a few enthusiasts crossed into Hungary to help the Hungarian armies.187 The rest of the population settled down.
The centre of Austria’s political life now lay partly in Kremsier, where the members of the Reichstag were gathering, but much more in Olmütz, where preparations were going on, in deep secrecy, for the formation of a new Government. Among the promises which Windisch-Graetz had extracted from the Court was one that he should be consulted on all important business of State, and he had insisted that the Wessenberg Ministry must be replaced by a new one, for the Presidency of which he had nominated his brother-in-law, Schwarzenberg. Schwarzenberg accepted the post, more reluctantly than Wessenberg ceded it, and also took for himself the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. The rest of the list, which was completed and approved by Ferdinand on 21 November, ran: Stadion (Interior); Bach (Justice); Krausz (Finance); Freiherr Karl von Bruck (Commerce and Communications); von Thinnfeld (Agriculture and Forests); von Csorich (War).188
It was an able team. Schwarzenberg himself had great weaknesses.189 His conception of the task of foreign policy was simply to exalt his own Monarch above all others, and he had little understanding of what were the real forces at work in the Europe of his day. He was, for example, totally unable to realize that the national feeling of the peoples constituted a force with which Governments need reckon. He himself lamented that he had not worked harder in his youth. But he had qualities which served him well in this field: a gambler’s hardihood in taking risks, and an arrogance so limitless as to make him incapable of imagining that his will would ever be opposed, and accordingly, it seldom was. He was quite unfamiliar with domestic problems, but here again his defects helped him. Windisch-Graetz abhorred only the middle and lower classes; he conceded to Counts and Barons a right to exist, and wished to base the new political structure of the Monarchy on an oligarchy of these classes. Schwarzenberg despised even his fellow-nobles; it would indeed be desirable, he wrote to his brother-in-law in January 1849, to see the aristocracy governing the Monarchy, were they capable of doing so, but there were not among them a dozen men of sufficient political insight or experience to justify entrusting them with real authority. It was, moreover, no small asset in him that he was not afraid of Windisch-Graetz, who on his side was unable to treat with complete contempt a man who was his fellow-Prince, as well as his own brother-in-law.
Class prejudice had thus not blinded Schwarzenberg in his selection of his assistants, of whom Stadion and Bach were two of the best administrators in the country, Bruck an extremely able business man,190 von Thinnfeld, a Styrian, experienced in his field, while Krausz had served his country with courage and ability during the previous months.
The cardinal question was what attitude the Government would take up on the question of constitutionalism versus absolutism. There is no mystery about the views of most of its members. Stadion was a convinced and almost fanatical believer in free institutions (he accepted office only on condition that the new State should be based on the principle of the ‘free commune’).191 Krausz, Bruck and at that time, Bach seem to have been, in their own ways, sincere constitutionalists; Thinning was a Liberal of the Hornbostel-Doblhoff type. The enigma is Schwarzenberg, of whom all historians until recently, have assumed, in view of his connections, his character and his later conduct, that he was always in favour of absolutism, and that any professions made by him in another sense were pure hypocrisy. Recent researches have thrown doubt on this, for they show him stoutly defending constitutions and popular liberties, in letters not meant for the public, on grounds, not of expediency but of principle.192 In view of his cynical and self-confessed indifference to truth, the question must remain undecided.
In any case when, on 27th November, he presented his Ministry to those members of the Reichstag, some two hundred and fifty in all, who had by that time reached Kremsier, they were gratified (as well as surprised) to hear him open his address with an almost lyrical profession of faith in those things. ‘The Ministry,’ he declared, ‘does not want to lag behind in the attempt to realize liberal and popular institutions; it rather regards it as its duty to place itself at the head of this movement. We want constitutional Monarchy, sincerely and unreservedly.’193 He also pledged the Ministry to the equality of all citizens before the law, equality of rights for all peoples, publicity in all branches of
the administration, and the principle that the free commune is the basis of the free State.
It was, however, only towards Austria proper that Schwarzenberg used such conciliatory words. In his references to German, Italian and Hungarian affairs, he let the menacing undertones be heard. The Frankfurt Parliament, which just a month before had nerved itself to pass a resolution excluding any non-German land from the new Germany (if such a land had the same Monarch as a German one, the link between the two must be only personal), was told that
… the continued existence of Austria as a political unit is a German as well as a European necessity. Permeated by this conviction, we look to the natural development of the still incomplete process of transformation. Not until rejuvenated Austria and rejuvenated Germany have achieved new and definitive forms will it be possible to regulate their mutual relations on State level. Until then, Austria will continue loyally to carry out her duties as member of the Bund.
The Italian provinces were informed that the organic connection between Lombardy and constitutional Austria afforded the Italians the best guarantee for the preservation of their nationality. The reference to Hungary was brief: the war [sic] was not against liberty, but against those who would deprive the peoples of their liberty, and the Government would support those peoples in their struggle, the end of which was to be ‘the unification of the Lands and races of the Monarchy in one great body politic’.
Before this political programme could be put into effect, one more step had to be taken: Ferdinand had to be got out of the way. This was a step which had actually been delayed, rather than precipitated, by the revolution, for Ferdinand’s wife had herself long been anxious that her husband should be relieved of a position for which he was clearly unfitted and which taxed his frail energies so sorely. In November 1847 she had agreed with Metternich that Ferdinand should abdicate, not in favour of his brother, whose capacities Metternich mistrusted, but of his nephew, Francis Joseph, when the latter should have reached his eighteenth birthday, i.e. on 18 August 1848.194 On 13 March she had wanted her husband to abdicate at once, but Metternich dissuaded her: Franz Karl was not strong enough to cope with the situation, and his son was still too young. Afterwards the situation passed into the hands of Windisch-Graetz, who entirely agreed that Ferdinand would have to abdicate. This was not because of the inadequacies of the poor Emperor’s intellect. It might be more convenient for Austria to have a sensible Monarch on her throne in this her hour of crisis, but it was not essential: indeed, Windisch-Graetz might himself well have preferred a rubber stamp. But apart from his concessions to revolution in Austria (a point which came up later), Ferdinand had given his sanction to Hungary’s April Laws, and showed an inconvenient disposition to regard himself as bound by his word, and Windisch-Graetz wanted a Monarch who was at least not personally so bound.
When, therefore, the Empress approached him again (in July), he replied: ‘Impossible; the time is not yet ripe for the Emperor to abdicate.’ But he reached an understanding with her that the abdication should take place when he gave the word, and that it should be in favour of Francis Joseph. He put her off again in August. But by the time of the Court’s retreat to Olmütz he (and Schwarzenberg, who agreed with him) felt that the time had arrived, and pressure was accordingly put on Ferdinand to renounce his throne, and on Franz Karl to give up his own rights. Neither objective was reached quite easily, for poor Ferdinand clung with unanticipated tenacity to the shadow of power which was his, and Franz Karl, too, showed himself unexpectedly reluctant to stand down in favour of his own son; allegedly, it had been necessary for Francis to appear to him in a vision and to lay his hand in blessing on his grandson’s head before the representative of the intervening generation would give way. Eventually, however, the persuasion prevailed, and on 2 December the fateful change was accomplished. At a small gathering, convoked without indication of its purpose, Ferdinand renounced his thrones.195 Then Franz Karl’s renunciation of his claims was read out, then a declaration that Francis Joseph had attained his majority. Then the boy knelt before his uncle, who stroked his hair, raised him, and said: ‘God bless you, Franzl. Be good. God will protect you. I don’t mind.’ The change of dynasty was proclaimed, to a flourish of trumpets, before the City Hall of Olmütz and outside the doors of the Cathedral.
*
The boy who knelt that day at his uncle’s feet was assuming a charge which was destined to rest on his shoulders for the unexampled span of well-nigh seventy years. The personality of the wearer of the Austrian Crown affected the lives of all his peoples so enormously as to make every detail of it a matter of legitimate interest to history, but so much has appeared on Francis Joseph’s private life from pens qualified to describe it (as well as others) that it would be otiose to go over this well-gleaned field again; nor, in view of the almost superhuman ability shown by Francis Joseph in keeping his public and his private lives in separate compartments, is it necessary for a history such as ours. Our plan makes it, however, necessary to say some words on his conception of his public duties, and on the qualities which he brought to the performance of them.
His chief mentors, direct or indirect, in respect of politics and Weltanschauung had been his mother, his ajo, Count Bombelles, his military tutor, Count Coronini, his tutor in philosophy, Mgr. Rauscher, and Metternich. All of these had been much of a mind – Rauscher had been the Empress-mother’s choice, while Bombelles had been the selection of Metternich, who afterwards described him as ‘one of the few men who thought as I thought, saw as I saw, and wished as I wished’. Coronini was a stiff soldier, ‘dynastic to the marrow’. From these instructors the boy had absorbed a political philosophy which did not differ greatly from that of his grandfather, whom, indeed, he resembled in many ways. Kingship was a gift of God, which placed the families born to it apart from the rest of humanity and made them masters of their subjects in the fullest sense. The end of all policy was, in the last resort, the preservation and consolidation of the Monarch’s rule, and he was entitled, and even bound in duty, to take any steps conducive to this end, nor had his subjects any right to question either the end or the means. This did not mean that he wanted to be a despot, for his nature was un-despotic, and again like his grandfather, he recognized that kingship carried duties with it. But in those fields in which he saw the essentials of his position, he insisted that his will must be absolute.
It was this feeling of the majesty and omnipotence of kingship that made him insist most rigorously on punctilious observance of the elaborate Court ceremonial,196 and prevented him from establishing a truly human relationship with any one of his subjects. His punctilio in these respects is the more remarkable because there is no doubt that his nature was unpretentious and even kleinbürgerlich; but – to his loss – he was never able to assume the appropriate allures which brought his grandfather so much (undeserved) popularity; he always remained a figure apart.
He was, however, ready enough to delegate authority, and even to allow his subjects to order their own affairs within prescribed limits, for he had none of his great-great-uncle’s itch to poke his finger into every pie. In any case, he had, of course, to have his agents, and his choice of them was largely governed by his assessment of their efficiency and reliability as his servants. But it was affected also by certain temperamental predispositions. Among the strongest of these was his predilection for military advisers, to whom he listened all his life more readily than to civilians; he also outgrew only slowly a liking for military solutions of problems, and a faith in his own ability as a military leader. The big political role which the army came to assume under him, especially during the first years of his reign, was, as we shall see, a factor of major importance in the earlier social and political development of the Monarchy. He attached extraordinary importance to his position of supreme Head of the armed forces of his Monarchy, and was almost pathologically sensitive to any attempt to question this or to weaken his authority here.197 A large part was obviously played here b
y the undoubted fact that it was the army, and the army alone, that had saved his Crown in 1848, but this probably did no more than turn a taste of temperament into a principle of policy, for from early youth he had shown an interest, rare in his family, in military matters, and had shown a preference, which afterwards became a habit seldom broken, except when he went shooting, for wearing military uniform.
By contrast, Francis Joseph seems to have been remarkably uninterested in police methods. Under him, we hear little of the censorship, police espionage, etc., which had been so notorious a feature of his grandfather’s reign.
He looked on all his subjects from a pedestal too high above them to reject any of them for being of humble origin. In the first years of his reign he leant heavily on Bach, the peasant’s son, and Kübeck, the provincial tailor’s; later he perforce worked much with Ministers and civil servants of bourgeois origin. But he never outgrew his family’s traditional habit of seeking its immediate servants chiefly in the aulic aristocracy, which, according to a close observer of his character, ‘was always nearer to him than his other subjects’, held by him to be ‘something superior’.198 We shall see how, when forced to retreat from absolutism, he turned first to the great aristocrats, and when absolutely compelled to appoint a bourgeois cabinet in Austria, still picked a high aristocrat to preside over it.
The Catholic Church was more to him than a servant, for he was a good enough Catholic, especially in his youth, when the teachings of his mother and of Rauscher were fresh in his mind. When in the first years of his reign he took a large personal part in reinstating the Church in a power-position such as it had not enjoyed for many decades, he was probably moved by a sincere wish to increase the glory of God, and religious conviction hardened his hostility to the undoing of the work fifteen years later. But he was no bigot or fanatic – for that his nature was too pedestrian – and was Josephinian enough in his view of the Church’s relationship to the Crown, demanding (and receiving) from it service which made it another of the main props of his rule. How far he was actuated by religious feeling in fighting his duel with Prussia, and how far he made use of it, perhaps no man could say.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 63