As Monarch of a polyglot State which depended for its cohesiveness largely on keeping the national feelings of its inhabitants a-political, Francis Joseph clearly stood himself, in some sense, above nationality. Being human, he could not do so altogether. German was the language which he spoke in his home, and in which he thought; his home was in Vienna, and his favourite summer resort, in the Austrian Alps. He could hardly help feeling himself ‘a German’ as he could never have felt himself a Czech, a Magyar or a Pole, and feeling a certain human affinity between himself and his German subjects which did not exist between him and those of other nationalities. But the political importance of these feelings was very small. If, in internal politics, he leant more naturally on his German subjects, this was because they were the largest and in most respects the most advanced of his peoples, and the traditional ‘cement’ of his Monarchy. The partnership seemed to him the natural, as it was the traditional, one; Margutti has recorded of him that he never really succeeded in realizing, psychologically, any other.199 But he never tried to mould his State internally as a German national one, nor was his foreign policy ever ‘national’ in the modern sense of the term. If he clung with especial tenacity to his House’s leadership in Germany, this was because the title which implied that leadership was more august than any other to which he could aspire, and also more rewarding. He demanded of his German subjects that they, on their side, should serve him in the old a-national spirit. When they thwarted him he unhesitatingly used other peoples in pursuit of his aims, and he probably even resented disaffection from his Germans more bitterly than when it came from any other of his peoples, because it seemed to him unfilial.
He brought to the performance of his duties diligence, conscientiousness, and a fair mental equipment. His intellect was always pedestrian and unimaginative. He was, for example, totally blind towards the arts in any form, lacking even that pleasure in music that watered the aridity of Francis I’s personality. Although not obscurantist of policy, like his grandfather, he had little interest in abstract thought, or use for its adepts; we have not included ‘intellectuals’ among the props of his rule. But he was not stupid, being quick enough to size up a situation or a personality. He was gifted with a fabulous memory, and with the family gift of tongues; besides his native German, he spoke Hungarian fluently, as well as all the major West European languages, and had a fair understanding of Czech and Serbo-Croat.
His seventy years of rule probably never modified Francis Joseph’s innermost convictions, but it made him less quick to assert them. After domestic tragedy had sobered him and repeated defeats in war, diplomacy, and even at the hands of his own subjects had shown him the weaknesses, international and internal, of his position, he, as we shall see, resigned himself to accepting the situation. He renounced foreign adventure, renounced even complete internal authority, and contented himself with preserving what could be preserved, as best it could be done. In this, although always unimaginative and insensitive, he developed, thanks to his diligence, his memory, his gift of tongues and an experience of men and affairs which had become unrivalled, an expertise which served his purpose sufficiently. He was, indeed, incapable by now (if he would ever have been capable) of appreciating those new and spacious ideas which, according to their authors, might have saved the Monarchy by a drastic reshaping of its whole structure and philosophy.
But the worldly wisdom which he acquired in those later years was the fruit of painful experience. He had none of his grandfather’s deep internal diffidence, rather resembling his great-great-uncle in his impatience and dogmatism. Now, at his accession, his eagerness to restore the order which alone seemed to him right was equalled by his confidence in his ability to do it. His accession thus ushered in a new period of intense activity, although not, immediately, in every direction.
We must leave it undecided whether Schwarzenberg’s influence over him, which is always said to have been very strong at this time, was enough to make him a temporary convert to constitutionalism, or whether – the other possibilities – he did not know what words were being put into his mouth, did not appreciate their significance, or appreciating it, permitted a deliberate deception. In any case, after breaking – this much is certain – a definite promise to the Archduchess Sophie and to Windisch-Graetz that Ferdinand’s Act of Abdication should contain a meaty denunciation (which Kübeck had composed) of the sins of the Austrians which had driven Ferdinand from the throne,200 Schwarzenberg next day read out to the Reichstag, in the new Monarch’s name, an address which affirmed if possible even more strongly that faith in popular liberties and in constitutional institutions which Schwarzenberg had professed in his own name a few days earlier, and wished the Reichstag speedy success in its labours.201 But it also repeated Schwarzenberg’s words about ‘uniting all Lands and peoples of the Monarchy in one great body politic’. This was practically a declaration of war on Hungary, and the point was emphasized by the fact that the only two outsiders among the handful of persons invited to attend the abdication ceremony – all the rest had been members of the Imperial family, Ministers, or Court officials – had been Windisch-Graetz and – Jellačić;202 and by a second Rescript, read out on 3 December, which appointed Baron Kulmer to the post of Minister without Portfolio in special charge of Croat affairs.
The Hungarians naturally did not miss the significance of the change of dynasty. There was a group in the Diet (the nucleus of the later ‘Peace Party’) which held resistance to be hopeless and favoured making the best terms which could be got; but Kossuth’s bolder view prevailed, and under his influence, the Diet on 7 January adopted a Resolution which declared the change of throne to be ‘a purely family affair’ of the Habsburgs’, by which Hungary, not having been previously consulted, was not bound. Hungary would recognize no King other than Ferdinand until he had been legally crowned and had taken the oath to the Constitution. This was represented by the April Laws, in the defence of which Hungary would continue to fight.
The gauntlet had thus been thrown down and taken up, and both sides nerved themselves for the decisive struggle.
Both had been utilizing as best they could the pause in active operations which had followed Jellačić’s retreat. The Hungarians were now securely in command of the centre and north of their country. They had driven back Austrian troops which had entered Hungary from Galicia and had stamped out the rising among the Slovaks which had followed Hurban’s enterprise, brutally but effectively; the Slovaks long remembered, under the name of ‘Kossuth gallows’, the trees from which itinerant Commissioners had hanged the leading insurgents. It was here, in the north-west, that the Hungarians’ main military dispositions were being made. The operations had thrown up a young soldier of outstanding military genius, Arthur Görgey, whom (Moga having resigned after the failure of the Schwechat operation), Kossuth had appointed Commander-in-Chief of the main Hungarian force, the ‘Army of the Upper Danube’, and Görgey had been turning this into a serviceable army, some thirty thousand strong, with great energy and efficiency. In doing so he had, unfortunately, given considerable offence to the local National Guards by simply sending them home, as useless; he had also offended Kossuth himself, although not yet to the point of awakening mistrust in his loyalty or capacities, by his realistic appreciation of the facts of the situation.
*
In Transylvania and the South the position was different. Many of the Saxons had disagreed with their representatives’ decision to vote the Union, and their discontent grew as Hungary drifted into war with the Crown, while practically none of the representations which they had made to the Hungarian Diet were favourably received. While opinion among them was still divided, most of them announced in September that they regarded the Union as annulled, and most of their villages raised defence forces of their own, although primarily as Home Guards. The Roumanians went the same way, but further; a guerilla leader named Avram Jancu raised a force of fifteen ‘Legions’, each officered by ‘tribunes’ and ‘centurions
’; it is true that its numbers were more imposing than its discipline.
On 18 October Field-Marshal Puchner, the officer commanding the Imperial forces in Transylvania, had assumed the ‘provisional supreme authority’ there and called on the population to obey him. Most of the Saxons and Roumanians had recognized his authority, and Puchner had set up a ‘Committee of Pacification’, consisting of representatives of these two nations, to function as a local Government under him. Vay had replied protesting against Puchner’s action and calling on all officials, and the population in general, to obey him, as Royal Commissioner. The Magyar and Szekel districts did so in the main, so that there were two Governments, each supported by a very small number of regular troops and a much larger one of irregulars. The irregulars on both sides committed grievous atrocities on the populations belonging to the other camp, while the regulars engaged in smaller operations. The result of these was to leave Puchner in possession of most of the fortresses and key positions, but with only a few thousand men available for operations outside these. Each rural district was really caring for itself.
The position in the south was equally obscure. The Austrian military authorities had taken alarm at Stratimirovics’s Pan-Slav and Pan-Serb enthusiasms, and had asked Radetzky to give the Voivode-elect, Suplyikać, whose loyalty was above suspicion, leave of absence to come home and take over his duties. Suplyikać reached Karlóca on 7 October, and was acclaimed Voivode by a second National Congress, which Rajačić had convoked to welcome him. The Serb forces were now combined with the regular units in the vicinity in an ‘Austro-Serb Army Corps’, of which Suplyikać was given the command. It had, indeed, now to do without the help of the Balkan volunteers, many of whom had already returned home, while shortly after, Prince Alexander, on whom some diplomatic pressure was being put, officially recalled the remainder; but even so the Corps constituted the considerable force of twenty-one thousand men with a hundred and eight guns, and it could be trusted to carry out Vienna’s orders. It was, however, not of an order to take the offensive, and something of a stalemate had developed on this front. Local skirmishing, particularly atrocious in its details, went on, but neither side was able to gain much advantage.
Meanwhile Suplyikać, a singularly modest man as well as an entirely correct one, had refused to assume the title of Voivode unless and until so appointed by the Crown. He confined himself to military duties, leaving Rajačić, assisted by a new Odbor, to act as the political, as well as ecclesiastical, head of the nation. Rajačić had by now worked himself up into a state of high excitement. He suspected, not without reason, that some at least of the leading Croats, and also some members of the Government itself, were hostile to him (in fact, Stadion had reported to the Emperor that it would be wiser to defer the creation of the Voivodina, or at least the delimitation of its frontiers, to a later date) and besieged Olmütz, Kremsier and Vienna with deputations, petitions and single emissaries. At the end of November the Hungarians offered him peace terms. He rejected these contemptuously, but this did not prevent him from hinting, in his next communication to the Austrian Government, that if the Serbs did not get satisfaction in Vienna, they might change sides and find it in Buda. It was only the Hungarian Diet’s announcement of 7 December that finally resolved the Court’s hesitations. On the 14th and 15th Francis Joseph, in a series of Rescripts, nominated Suplyikać Voivode and Rajačić Patriarch203 and promised the Serbs a ‘national internal organization’, on the basis of the equality of rights of all peoples, when the hostilities should have ended. On the 16th Windisch-Graetz led an army of fifty-two thousand men across the Hungarian frontier, while other detachments advanced from Styria and Galicia. Suplyikać and Puchner undertook diversionary attacks, and another force of Slovak volunteers which had been assembling in Moravia re-entered North-West Hungary.
The Court had hoped to carry through, quickly and almost simultaneously, the military operation of crushing Hungary and the political one of imposing its own system on Austria (following which, it would dictate its own terms to Germany). Both were delayed, the one by Windisch-Graetz’ incompetence, the other by his obstinacy. At first his advance went easily enough. Görgey, whose forces were far weaker than the Imperial ones opposite him, withdrew his troops north of the Danube, and Windisch-Graetz reached Buda-Pest almost unopposed on 5 January, the Hungarian Diet – after trying to parley and receiving the usual demand for unconditional surrender – retiring to Debrecen.204
Windisch-Graetz believed his military task accomplished, and reported to that effect to Vienna. But he had not confined himself to military operations. The Hungarian aulic magnates, whose leaders had come together in a group calling themselves the ‘Old Conservatives’, had for weeks past been bombarding the Court with memoranda maintaining that the revolution had been the work only of a handful of Protestants who had seized the power, against the will of the people. They went further than this: they repudiated the April Laws themselves, although admitting the need to confirm the liberation of the peasants and the abolition (against compensation for the landlords) of all dues and payments, including the tithe, arising out of the nexus subditelae. If, they maintained, the status quo ante 1848 was restored, with this modification (and they also wanted the internal customs line between Hungary and the West abolished), and no territorial mutilations inflicted on Hungary, it would be possible to re-establish in that country a loyal regime resting on the Catholic Church, the aristocracy, and a contented peasantry.
The Old Conservatives had received short shrift from Schwarzenberg, but Windisch-Graetz, who had many friends among them and was even in a sense one of them (he owned large estates in Hungary and possessed Hungarian Indigenat listened to them willingly enough. He promised them, on his own responsibility, to get the Voivody abolished, to have the Muraköz left with Hungary, and even to have Magyar retained as the official language. He then began establishing a civilian administration in West Hungary, on this basis.
Neither was his optimism entirely unfounded. The population of Buda had welcomed his armies enthusiastically when they entered the city. Much more serious, the Hungarian officers were themselves divided; a considerable number of them had left Görgey’s army, saying that their oath to Ferdinand bound them to obey his designated successor.
Nevertheless, Hungary remained unconquered. On 6 January Görgey issued a proclamation to his troops announcing that ‘the Army remains loyal to the 1848 Constitution and takes its orders only from the Royal Hungarian Minister of War or his deputy’. Most of his officers accepted this, particularly since the Proclamation added that the Army ‘also opposes Republican tendencies’. Görgey’s force remained intact, a constant source of apprehension to Windisch-Graetz’s troops. That Kossuth gave the supreme command of the armies to a Polish General named Dembinski, who failed to gain the confidence of his Hungarian subordinates, was a retarding factor, but not a fatal one. His countryman, Bem (who had made his way into Hungary after escaping from Vienna) had been given the command in Transylvania, where he won a series of victories over the local Imperial forces. New troops were raised, and Damjanics was equally successful against the new commander of the Austro-Serb Corps, Thodorovics.205 Windisch-Graetz ventured out of Pest, lost heart and withdrew again.206 It was not until 27–28 February that his armies met the Hungarians in force, at Kápolna, and won a technical victory, for after the encounter the Hungarians withdrew behind the Tisza.
Meanwhile, the Deputies in Kremsier, much heartened by Schwarzenberg’s comfortable words, had settled down in earnest to the engrossing and psychologically revealing, although, as the event was to prove, politically fruitless207 task for which they had originally been called together, of framing an Austrian Constitution. The Constitutional Committee’s Sub-Committee on fundamental rights (which included the definition of the powers of the Crown) had got through its work fairly quickly (most often, it had simply written out extracts which pleased it from other Constitutions), and its proposals had been circulated to all members of
the Reichstag, which was to begin its general debate on them on 4 January 1849. That debate, however, at once brought a head-on collision with the Government. The draft opened with the words: ‘All sovereignty proceeds from the people, and is exercised in the manner prescribed in the Constitution.’ Before the debate could open, Stadion rose to declare solemnly, in the name of the Ministry, that this dictum was absolutely unacceptable to it: the inalienable source of sovereignty in Austria was not the people, but the hereditary Monarchy. A large number of the Deputies were, for their part, greatly incensed by this intervention, and a prolonged storm followed, which ended, indeed, with the offending words being dropped. The rest of the Committee’s proposals were, however, adopted, so far as time allowed. They retained the institution of the Monarchy, and left the Crown almost complete control over foreign policy: the Monarch took the decisions for peace or war and concluded treaties, with the single reservation that any treaty involving the citizen in financial or other obligations had to be approved by Parliament. His domestic powers were less extensive. He appointed and dismissed Ministers, but they were responsible to Parliament, as well as to him, and his powers vis-à-vis Parliament were limited by a number of safeguards. He could not prorogue Parliament for more than a month, and although he could dissolve it, he was bound to convoke its successor within three months. His sanction was required for legislation, but if Parliament repeated its decision twice, it was valid even without his consent. For the rest, the Reichstag’s proposals were radical enough. All titles of nobility were abolished. The Roman Catholic Church was deposed from its position of ‘ruling religion’. Civil marriage was introduced. All citizens were equal before the law, and there was a long list of guaranteed civil freedoms: freedom of the Press, of speech, of association, of instruction, etc.
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