The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Two days later, came the publication of the Government’s programme, showing where Francis Joseph was prepared to yield ground, and where not. Drafted by Hübner, it contained a few verbal concessions to Thun, but these were safeguarded by reservations. By and large, it constituted a notable victory for Bruck and his postulated fellow-Liberals (for his cannot have been the only Liberal representations to reach the Emperor) which was, perhaps, partly due to the ingenious way in which Bruck had put his case, representing the purpose of all his suggested reforms as that of strengthening Austria’s international position in general, and her hegemony in Germany in particular (his own King Charles’s head and one which at that juncture made a special appeal to Francis Joseph), through the direct accretions to her intrinsic strength which they would bring, and the increased influence which they would give her abroad.12 The word ‘Constitution’ was studiously avoided, nor was there any reference to the Reichsrat, but many of Bruck’s other recommendations, including the creation of a number of what the ordinary mind would regard as constitutional institutions, appeared (in each case, indeed, with certain dilutions and reservations) as promises. There was to be ‘effective control’ of all expenditure, both civilian and military (although how, or by whom, this was to be carried out was not stated). The legally recognized non-Catholic Churches were to be assured autonomy and the free practice of their religion, and further (a point not mentioned by Bruck, at least on paper) ‘the position of the Israelites regulated along modern lines, account being taken of local and provincial conditions’. The Communal Autonomy Law was to be revised to make it appropriate to the particular conditions in each Crownland; a ‘substantial part’ of the duties hitherto carried out by officials was to be transferred to local bodies, ‘if possible autonomous’; and after completion of these ‘first and most urgent tasks’, bodies representing the Estates (ständische Vertretungen) were to be called into being in the various Crownlands.13

  Very different was the fate of the Hungarian representations. Hungary had not in fact risen, for Francis Joseph’s acceptance of the peace overtures had been so quick that – it must have been one of the brightest features for him in the whole situation – there had been no time before the armistice for France to make any serious moves in the Adriatic14 and after it, Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel had cheerfully thrown their Hungarian protégés overboard.15 But the damage Kossuth had done had been deep enough to fill the Emperor with a strong resentment against the whole ‘rebel’ nation, impartially. At that juncture he, like Schwarzenberg before (and Francis Ferdinand after) him, was not prepared to regard one Hungarian as any better than another, and the Emperor refused to listen either to Rechberg, or to any Hungarians. There was no hint in the programme of any modification of the unitary structure of the Monarchy, or, indeed of any concession whatever to Hungary.16

  A few days later, Hungarian opinion was even provoked further still by a ‘Protestant Patent’, issued by Thun on 1–2 September, nominally in fulfilment of the Government’s pledge to the non-Catholics. This did in fact bring the Hungarian Calvinists and Lutherans some material advantages, but its character of an octroi violated the autonomy which both Churches felt to be essential to their existences. Hübner, to whom Rechberg had entrusted the further conduct of the conversations with the Old Conservatives, and who had sponsored their cause too warmly, paid for his intervention with his post. ‘Nothing,’ Francis Joseph told him, ‘would satisfy the Hungarians. If we announced a Constitution now, we should have a republic within a year.’17

  In consequence, the autumn passed with the deadlock in Hungary unbroken, and the situation there dangerous in the extreme. The police reported a state of disaffection which could at any moment erupt into revolution. Resistance to the tax-collectors was almost universal among those respectable enough to dare defy the law;18 the local authorities refused to distrain on defaulters, and the soldiers sent down to do it met with a resistance which they were simply powerless to overcome.

  In the West, meanwhile, many weeks passed with little sign that any real concessions were coming. Goluchowski made no perceptible motions to introduce any self-governing institutions, or, indeed, to do anything much except again to rearrange the Crownlands so as to make Galicia once more into an administrative unit.19 The only noteworthy internal enactment of the period, outside the purely financial field, was the ‘industrial regulation’ (Gewerbeordnung) of 10 December, which satisfied the economic doctrines of its inspirer, Bruck, by instituting near-complete freedom in the labour market.20

  There was, however, one problem which admitted of no temporization: that of the national finances. The outbreak of war had sent the course of Austrian papers plunging again, the confusion being accentuated by one of its effects, the bankruptcy of the house of Arnstein and Eskeles. On 2 July Bruck had proposed floating another large loan (500 m.g. inside the Monarchy and 100 abroad), but failed to get the proposal through the Ministerial Council. The Government had perforce borrowed again from the National Bank, which had made a new issue of paper money, promptly quoted at a heavy discount. The war had ended with a note circulation of 600 m.g., the national debt at 2,265 m.g. and the premium on silver at 140. The army was demobilized almost precipitately at the end of hostilities, but the estimated expenditure for 1860 was still 541 m.g. and the estimated revenue only 261.

  Finally, at this inauspicious moment, the news leaked out that whereas the amount actually subscribed for the 1854 loan had been 508 m.g., it had overspent by 111 million, the fact having been concealed from the public.

  A few steps were taken in this field. A committee to study the reform of taxation was set up in September, and late in October – not, it seems, before – the question of the promised control of expenditure was taken up. Prolonged and very obscure arguments went on in the Ministerial Council,21 where Bruck fought bitter verbal wars against the Army leaders and against Thun, who was his envenomed enemy, while he himself was being attacked by the public for his part in faking the figures of the 1854 loan. Finally it was agreed that a Committee should be set up to investigate the State debt, and on 11 November the Emperor announced his intention, firstly of getting the 1860–1 Budget balanced,22 and secondly, of setting up a Committee ‘to examine the State credit in all respects and to work for the realization of this objective’. Meanwhile, as Redlich writes,23 ‘the view had gained ground that only a Committee which was independent of the Government and not composed of officials could to some extent restore the confidence of capitalist circles, and of the population in general, in the financial administration’, and on 23 December the appointment was announced of a ‘State Debt Committee’, to report direct to the Emperor, who was its own nominal president, and to consist of seven persons: a Vice-President and two others nominated by the Emperor, two chosen by the National Bank, one by the Lower Austrian Chamber of Commerce and one by the Bourse of Vienna.

  This was followed by a series of Orders lifting, in one Crownland or another, one or another restriction to which its Jews had been subjected.24

  These half measures were, however, received almost with derision, and when the Government issued a new loan of 200 m.g., out of the proceeds of which it hoped to repay its debt to the National Bank, only 76 m.g. were taken up. If, then, the financiers were to be reassured – and the necessity for this seems to have been generally accepted – some further concession to their susceptibilities seemed inescapable. This recognition led to the next step, which was an important one. It had been suggested from various quarters25 that the desired objective could be achieved by enlarging and giving more importance to the Reichsrat, and the friends of the idea in the Ministerial Council (who were headed by Rechberg and Bruck) advised that that body should be given a quasi-representative character by including in it representatives of the Landtage. This meant not only that the Landtage would – unlike those promised by Stadion and Bach – really come into being, but that they would have a genuine voice in public affairs, if only in the one aspect of them whic
h related to finance. It was a step towards Constitutionalism, and opposed on that ground by Thun. This time, however, Francis Joseph agreed with the progressives,26 and on 5 March a Rescript was issued to the effect that the Reichsrat was to be enlarged by the addition to its existing members of a further ten nominated by the Emperor, and thirty-eight more who were to be elected for six years by the Landtage, pending the constitution whereof they, too, would be nominated by the Crown. It was to meet on 31 May, and its first purpose was to be to consider and advise upon (for it was only an advisory body) ‘the determination of the Budget, examination of the closed accounts and of the data of the State Debt Committee’.

  Six of the thirty-eight elected members were to come from Inner Hungary, three each from Transylvania, Bohemia and Galicia, two each from Lombardy-Venetia, Lower Austria, Croatia, the Voivody and the Tirol, and one from each of the other Crownlands.

  And these proposals, in their turn, raised, in acute form, the problem of Hungary, at that time still divided into five provinces. Several of the Ministers advocated convoking a separate Landtag for each of the five; Nádasdy, the only born Hungarian in the Ministerial Council, warned it most solemnly that to convoke a single Diet for Inner Hungary would at once lead to very strong pressure for further concessions. This, however, would undoubtedly have raised a fearful storm, and Francis Joseph shrank from it, taking instead the fateful decision to experiment – for the first time in twelve years – with conciliation towards Hungary on a point of principle. On 19 April, therefore, a further Rescript abolished the Provinces and centralized the administration of Inner Hungary in the capital. It was explicitly stated that Inner Hungary would have only one Diet, and further, that the lower autonomous units would be the old Counties, with their traditional Congregationes and Committees. In addition, the Archduke Albrecht was replaced as Governor by General L. Benedek, himself a Hungarian, although of modest parentage, and, incidentally, a Protestant.27

  On 15 May, Thun’s Protestant Patent was revoked, and another amnesty enacted. Shortly after, certain analogous concessions to Venice were announced.

  On 1 May the proposed membership of the ‘Reinforced Reichsrat’ was announced. The selection had been made by Francis Joseph himself.28 It was, as it was meant to be, an assembly of notables. The original core included three Archdukes, one of whom (the Archduke Rainer) was designated President,29 and various Elder Statesmen (many of these survivors of the original body) such as Krausz and Gehringer; the life-members, Cardinal Rauscher, several Generals and more civilian Privy Councillors. For the nominees, Francis Joseph seems honestly to have tried to pick men who could speak authoritatively for every sectional interest as he understood the term. Thus the list included some bourgeois (by definition, Germans) from Lower Austria and Styria, one (Dr Hain) from Bohemia, and a Transylvanian Saxon, Maager. There were two Roumanians: Şaguna, the Uniate Bishop from Transylvania, and Mocsonyi, a landowner from the Bánát, a Serb (Masirevics, the Orthodox Bishop of Temesvár), two Ruthenes (the Uniate Bishop of Lemberg and a lawyer), and a couple of Italians from Venice and Dalmatia. But most of the nominees, including the two Poles, the two other men from Bohemia and all six Hungarians, belonged to what was in fact the most important class in those Crownlands, the great feudal nobility. All six gentlemen who eventually turned up from Hungary (the wording must be used, because all of them made a point of stating that they were there in their individual capacities, not as representing Hungary) were Old Conservatives; this not altogether of Francis Joseph’s fault, since he had tried to throw his net wider, but three of the men first invited by him (Barons Eötvös, Vay and Pál Somssich) had refused the invitation, as had Bánffy from Transylvania. The six who did appear were Counts Apponyi, Barcocsy, Majláth, György Andrássy and Szécsen, and Bishop Korizmics.30

  *

  With the opening of the sessions of the Reinforced Reichsrat, on 31 May, there began the second stage of the Monarchy’s progress towards constitutional life – a stage which proved to be much longer than Francis Joseph had expected, and to end at a different stopping place. The Reichsrat’s terms of reference were, as we have seen, modest: it had to advise on certain financial questions, nothing more. In fact, its first action was to appoint a Committee which did go into the financial condition of the Monarchy, and on 19 July elicited from Francis Joseph a concession of quite prime importance in the shape of a promise that no new taxes should be imposed, nor existing ones raised, or loans floated, without its consent. But meanwhile, the Hungarians, who were easily the most skilful and experienced politicians of all those present, had blandly taken charge of the Reichsrat to turn it into a sort of Constituent. This being so, the fact that all the Hungarians were Old Conservatives was very important for the direction taken by the proceedings; for the Old Conservative philosophy regarded Vienna, whether under its autocratic, its centralist, its bureaucratic, its reformist or its Germanic aspect, as the enemy in chief, whereas it was ready to see Bohemia and Galicia enjoy as wide a federal status as it was asking for Hungary; while at the same time conceding the need for some common institutions for them all.31 These weeks were the Old Conservatives’ hey-day, and during them they achieved an astonishing success story. Clam had now got together a group of adherents and they had already been petitioning the Emperor to restore them their ‘historic rights’.32 The Hungarians welded them, and their remaining opposite numbers from the other Crownlands, into a ‘Party of the Federal Nobility’, led by themselves, and produced a report, which was actually after it Constitution, of strongly federalist tendencies. It laid down ‘the equality in principle, of all Lands of the Monarchy’, and while admitting, in principle, in a phrase so obscure as to be practically unintelligible,33 the need for some institutions, possibly representative, common to the entire Monarchy, it declared the necessity of reconstructing the Monarchy on a basis which took into account ‘the historic-political individualities of its various components’ and ‘linked up with the formerly existing historic institutions’. Hungary’s former self-governing institutions should be reactivated, and similar bodies created in the other Lands, and the Diets convoked.

  In view of these proposals, a group of the non-Federalist members of the Reichsrat – this party was headed by its German bourgeois members, but some of the smaller nationalities associated themselves with it34 – plucked up courage also to recommend constitutional institutions, but with a larger Reichsrat which assured ‘the complete maintenance of the unity of the Monarchy and of the legislative and executive authority of the Government’.

  The two drafts were presented to the Monarch on 27 September in the form of a majority and a minority report, the former signed by thirty-four members of the Reichsrat, the latter by sixteen. Two Councillors were absent, and six, including the Archdukes Wilhelm and Leopold, and Cardinal Rauscher, had voted against both reports.

  Both sets of proposals were undoubtedly highly objectionable to the Emperor, and he hesitated for a fortnight before taking his decision. But the Hungarian Old Conservatives, who were now regular visitors to him, pressed their proposals on him strongly, warning him that revolution would break out in Hungary if they were rejected and assuring him (and this was the decisive argument) that the country would be pacified if they were accepted. Francis Joseph was due to meet the Czar and the King of Prussia in Warsaw on 21 October in the hope (Rechberg’s idea) of reconstituting the Holy Alliance, and did not want to arrive at the meeting with half his dominions on the brink of revolution. In the end, he made his decision suddenly (Szécsen is reported to have convinced him finally on a train journey), and when he had done so, acted on it with the precipitancy characteristic of him at this stage of his life. Szécsen was actually told to prepare a draft of the document in which the New Order was to be announced, and was present, with Apponyi, at the discussions on it which were held with Rechberg. The results were thus mainly (although not entirely, for they had to make a few concessions) the Old Conservatives’ work. They were embodied in a ‘Diploma’
(known in history as the ‘October Diploma’, and announced as a ‘permanent and irrevocable instrument’) and a number of subsidiary Rescripts, all issued on 20 October. They did indeed represent a big step forward from absolutism, although not such a large one as might have appeared to those unacquainted with Austrian political terminology, for the words ‘legislature’ and ‘legislative’ appearing in them were operative, since the Emperor continued to maintain that foreign affairs, and the conduct, command and organization of the armed forces, were prerogatives of the Crown, and not subject to legislative control, and without stating in so many words the exclusion of these questions from the competence of the Reichsrat, the Diploma assumed it ex silentio. The Crown accepted, however, considerable restrictions on its authority in the internal field, for it promised that it would thereafter exercise its right to enact, alter or rescind legislation only with the co-operation of the Landtage and of the Reichsrat. The latter was to be competent (in conjunction with the Crown) for legislation on questions affecting the entire Monarchy, these being defined (and here the exclusion ex silentio of foreign affairs and defence became operative) as weights and measures, customs and trade, central communications, the modalities and organization of liability for military service (although not the number of recruits to be supplied), taxation and credit operations. Taxation – and herein lay the most important concession in the whole document – required the ‘consent’ of the Reichsrat; other questions, only its ‘co-operation’. Legislation on all other questions fell within the competence of the Diets: in the Kingdoms and Lands belonging to the Hungarian Crown, ‘in the sense’ of their previous Constitutions, in the other Lands, constitutionally, in conformity with their Statutes. An important provision, a presage of the later Dualism, enacted that the Reichsrats of the non-Hungarian Lands could be convoked without the Hungarians when questions were under discussion which had long been ‘handled and decided’ for them as a unit.