By this time he had stepped well into the fore-ground of the political stage. In 1913 the Emperor made him Inspector General of the Armed Forces of the Monarchy. He still held no office entitling him to intervene in non-military affairs, but nothing could stop him from preparing for the future. That he was doing so was one of the certainties in the political picture; what were the changes that he would try to introduce, one of its major uncertainties.
*
With these new factors, international and domestic, in the picture, the whole atmosphere of the decade which opened in 1903 was, inevitably, quite different from that of its predecessors. The old feeling which had prevailed for so long that the essential ‘problems’ of the Monarchy, at home and abroad, had been ‘settled’ – that was gone. Change was in the air, and very likely, it would be violent change.
The historian must, however, beware of misrepresenting the mood of the day. The event was to prove that the struggles which the decade ushered in were the beginning of the Monarchy’s death-agony, and it is not difficult to find Cassandra cries enough in the diaries and correspondence of men in a position to see below the surface of things. But it would be quite erroneous to suppose the general life of the Monarchy during these years as overshadowed by a sense of impending and ineluctable doom. There were very many who believed that what the future held was, on the contrary, rejuvenation, consolidation on a new and firmer basis, perhaps even territorial expansion (and in fact, the period, like the Vormärz which it resembles so curiously in many ways, brought the Monarchy an extension of its frontiers). And there was, indeed, much in the picture to justify optimism. Materially, these were the most prosperous years that the Monarchy had ever known, at least since our history opened. While the population had increased again substantially, reaching in 1910 a figure of 28½ J millions for Cis-Leithania and nearly 21 for the Hungarian Lands (to which had now to be added, 1·8 for Bosnia-Herzegovina), this increase was no longer bringing with it the old unrelenting pressure of expanding demand on resources unable to keep up with it. Industrialization was now really gathering way in both halves of the Monarchy. In Austria, the percentage of the population employed in industry and mining had risen by 1910 to 26, while in Hungary, where a ‘third wave’ of economic development set in in 1906, helped by a new set of protective measures, the rapidity of the advance was astonishing. Here, the number of industrial plants increased by 84% between 1898 and 1913, and that of workers, by 76%,11 bringing the percentage of the population gaining its livelihood from industry and mining up to 17. The new factories, with the expanding communications and growing trading and professional circles, were now able to offer employment to a large proportion of those seeking it. There were still black areas of congestion, notably in Galicia and parts of Hungary, but for these the safety-valve of emigration was operating even more freely than before.12 If the combined processes of industrialization and emigration were not interrupted, it was reasonable to hope that the scourge of rural over-population from which the economy of the Monarchy had so long been sick would soon have vanished from all parts of it, as it had already from many.13
Industrial productivity was also rising rapidly. According to one Austrian expert, the increase per head of the production of ten categories of raw or half-finished materials in Austria ranged from 67·5% (pig-iron) and 43% (wool), downward, with an average of 31%. Taking into account the increased number of workers, the output of industries and building must, this writer calculates, ‘have increased by a percentage of between 90 and 100’.14 In Hungary, Hanak tells us that ‘the H.P. output of machines’ rose by 188% and the value of goods produced by 126%.15 On another page he puts the nett product of industry and mining at 860 million kronen in 1900 and 1,840 m.k. in 1911–13·16 In agriculture, the average yield per hectare of wheat in Austria rose by 16% between 1901 and 1913, of rye by 24%, of barley by 21·2% and of oats by 33·96%. As the amount of land left fallow each year also fell, the increase in total production was larger. For Hungary, Hanak tells us that the nett product of agriculture rose from 2,209 million kronen in 1900 to 4,549 in 1911–13. According to Gratz, the area under cultivation rose from 12 million ha. in 1890 to 14 m.h. in 1910; the percentage of fallow sank from 15 to 8·8. Total production (metric of tons of wheat) rose from 34·9 in 1898 to 41·2 in 1913; of maize, from 32·3 to 46·2; of potatoes, from 37·8 to 47·7; of sugar-beet, from 14·9 to 47·0; of fodder crops, from 35·8 to 56·2.17 Both quantity and quality of live-stock improved in both halves of the Monarchy.
The nett output of agriculture, forestry and fisheries rose from 2·236 million kr. in 1901–3 to 4,143 in 1911–13 (85%) and the output per head of the working population from 358 to 633 kr. (77%).
The total national incomes derived from production rose by about 86% in Austria and 92% in Hungary. As prices rose by about 20–25%, the growth of real income was somewhat smaller, and that of real income per capita smaller still, when we take account of the growth of the population, but still very substantial. All classes, moreover, had some share in it. The average increase in industrial wages (34%) exceeded that of the cost of living, and the higher prices for agricultural produce resulting from the increased agricultural protection introduced after 1904 seem, contrary to the general belief, to have benefited the small farmers and agricultural labourers almost equally with the larger producers.18
This prosperity extended to the State finances. In 1907 the Austrian budget closed with the biggest surplus in the national history (116 million kronen), eliciting from the Minister of Finance words which (so far as the records tell us) had never before fallen from the lips of any holder of his office: ‘We are doing well.’ The rise in prices (amongst other factors) also reduced the burden of the national debt, the service of which in 1914 called for only 14% of the national expenditure, and nearly all of it was held at home. Budgetary conditions in Hungary were similar. The currency was still stable, as it remained up to 1914.
It is true that the picture was far from being uniformly brilliant.19 Considerable as had been the increase in agricultural production, the figures pro hectare for almost every crop were still substantially below those being achieved in Germany. Peasant cultivation was still relatively primitive, and the big landlords more concerned to keep up prices than to increase production – a policy which their political weight enabled them to realize with results which often entailed considerable hardship for the consumers.20 In spite of the increases, the Monarchy had to import foodstuffs in bad years, of which 1907 was one: it could in fact easily have absorbed the Serbian swine excluded from its market during the ‘pig war’ of that year. The handworkers were still being pressed hard, as they had been for a century, by the competition of the factories, while the unhealthy concentration of so many of the latter in the hands of a few, often inter-linked, holding banks21 allowed prices in this field also to be kept high by cartels and rings.
Nevertheless, the general material condition of most of the Monarchy could be regarded as at least one of dawning well-being.
In the arts, the robust but sometimes crude productivity of Austria’s Victorian age had given way to new fashions, in which the eternally indispensable task of leavening the Teutonic lump, performed in the age of Baroque by Italians, had been taken over by the sons and grandsons of the Jews who had established themselves in the capitals of the Monarchy half a century before. There was a good deal of self-pitying Weltschmerz in some of the products of this new cross-fertilization, but at their best they achieved an almost heart-breaking loveliness which was not the less beautiful for the touch of over-ripeness sometimes perceptible in them. German poetry can show little more lovely than the lyrics of Hoffmannsthal and Rilke, nor German prose anything more limpidly graceful than that of Schnitzler.
The opening of the period found Mahler still directing the Court Opera, and if his experiences there were unhappy, Richard Strauss was entering on his years of glory (1911 saw the première of the Rosenkavalier), not to speak of Schönberg or of such lesser but sti
ll delightfully scintillating luminaries as Lehár. Klimt was still painting, and a vigorous school of art, not, indeed, admired by all, centred round the ‘Sezession’. Sigmund Freud was bringing Vienna renewed fame in other fields.
In Hungary some of the old lights were still burning brightly – Kálmán Mikszáth died only in 1910 – and here, too, there was plenty of frivolous brilliance and plenty of tasteless excess. But the decade saw also a truly remarkable reaction against the opulent materialism and sentimental romanticism of its predecessor, a revolt which was strongly tinged by political and social radicalism and by populist sympathies. The greatest figure here was Ady, perhaps the most brilliant lyric poet ever produced by Hungary, but the journal Nyugat which was his mouthpiece was also the forum for a number of other striking figures: Babits, Zsigmond Móricz, Deszö Szabó, and more. The ‘Thalia’ society adapted the plays of Ibsen and Hauptman for the Hungarian stage, Béla Bartok and Zoltán Kodály collected folk music, analysed its origin and structure and used its themes in their own work. There were several lively schools of painting, strongly influenced by French Impressionism, but like the writers and musicians, drawing much of their inspiration from Hungary’s native soil.
All these achievements, material and artistic, bathe the picture of these years in what seems to us today a beautiful but tragic sunset glow, but can more fairly be taken as proof of the substantial measure of vitality still present in the Monarchy. It is fair to record them before turning to less happy subjects.
*
In the previous sections in which we divided the narrative of a subject by periods, we began with foreign relations, as in general the dominant influence, then taking the internal developments in Cis-Leithania, as the larger half of the Monarchy; those of Hungary third, and of Bosnia last. For the period with which we are now concerned, another arrangement is more appropriate. The crisis in which Hungary wallowed during practically the whole period was magnificently self-regarding; its Hungarian authors initiated it on a purely national issue, and pursued their point with such complete disregard of any life extra Hungariam that as late as 1911 they were justifying their resistance to the increased Army estimates by the serenity of the international picture. In so far as there was any mutual interaction between the developments in Hungary and those of the international situation, the former influenced the latter more than the reverse, and may therefore conveniently be described first of the two. They form, also, a complete story, most comprehensible if it is taken through to its close without interruption. Next comes the foreign political narrative. Austria falls back to the third place, as almost purely recessive, affected by developments in Hungary and abroad, but exercising little influence on either. Finally, Bosnia as a separate heading disappears altogether for some years, swallowed up by the slough of the Southern Slav question, which had become primarily one of foreign politics. Its fortunes, when it reappears, call for little more than an extended footnote.
The eve of the war finds the threads again disastrously running together.
*
The crisis between the Crown and Hungary broke out over the old question of the Army. Owing to chaotic Parliamentary condition in Austria, it had been impossible in 1899 to fix the new ten-year figure for the annual intake of recruits, and in that year, in 1900 and in 1901 the Government had simply called up contingents of the size fixed in 188922 by the use of Para. 14 in Austria, and in Hungary, by annual Bills. But in 1902 the Reichsrat was functioning again, and meanwhile, the results of the 1900 census had been published, showing a large increase of the population on 1890, and a larger one on 1880. The Imperial and Royal Ministry of War therefore decided to raise the contingent, which in any case was far below that of most European Great Powers.23
At first the Ministry proposed leaving the nominal annual figure unaltered, but giving the authorities power to call up for actual service certain conscripts who, although registered, had for various reasons not been required to do their actual service. When these proposals, introduced into both Parliaments in October 1902, were resisted in both, the Minister withdrew them and introduced new Bills raising the contingent for the regular forces to 125,000 (71,562 from Austria, 53,438 from Hungary), for the Landwehr to 14,500 (plus the special contingents from the Tirol and Vorarlberg) and for the Honvédség to 15,000.
In Austria, Koerber eventually got the Reichsrat to vote its law, although only after a struggle which lasted nearly a year, and only conditionally on Hungary’s doing the same; but the Hungarian Parliament was more stubborn still. The ‘Independence’ politicians took the occasion to demand, as price for letting the Bill go through, or even voting the annual contingent of recruits, a whole series of ‘national’ concessions: the term of service to be reduced to two years,24 the language of command in all Hungarian units to be Magyar,25 Hungarian regiments to be quartered in Hungary and to be officered exclusively by Hungarians, their oath of loyalty to be taken to the Hungarian Constitution, and the Hungarian national coat of arms to be given a place in the insignia of the common army.
And the ‘Parties of ’48’ were not the only recalcitrants. The fusion which Széll had brought about between the Liberals and Apponyi’s party had never been more than skin-deep. Apponyi and his followers had always kept one foot in the opposition camp, and now Apponyi, although a member of the Government Party and President of the Lower House, openly encouraged the Opposition, and himself recommended making Parliament’s consent to the Bill conditional on a number of concessions which were less far-reaching than those required by the Party of Independence, but in the same direction of emphasizing the distinctive quality of the Hungarian Army. Obstruction now set in on such a scale that the Budget could not be passed, and in May 1903 the country entered on the state of constitutional vacuum known as ex lex.26 Széll resigned in despair, and after Kálmán Tisza’s son, István, had failed to form a Government, Francis Joseph appointed to the Minister Presidency Count Khuen Héderváry, who had kept Croatia in order for so long.
Khuen persuaded Francis Joseph to let him withdraw the Army Bill for further consideration, and Kossuth agreed to let the Budget go through, but the extremists of the Left redoubled their filibustering, which they combined with attacks on Khuen’s personal integrity. He resigned on 10 August, although perforce remaining in office pending the appointment of a successor to him. The military circles in Vienna judged the situation so serious that Field-Marshal Baron Beck, the Chief of the General Staff, drew up plans for ‘Case U’ – the occupation of Budapest by Austrian regiments from Vienna and Graz, while other forces were to be supplied by the Army Corps with headquarters in Zagreb, Premysl and Lemberg.27 The Emperor was unwilling to resort at once to such extreme measures, but on 17 September he issued an Army Order from the Galician village of Chlopy, where he was attending the autumn manoeuvres, declaring that he would tolerate no infringement of his rights as Supreme War Lord, nor any tampering with the unitary character of the army. The Order spoke of the ‘Volksstämme’ of the Monarchy, including the Hungarians among them – a phraseology evocative of the period of absolutism, and this increased the resentment with which it was received in Hungary.
A compromise was, after all, patched up. Francis Joseph sent a letter to Khuen which filed off the sharpest edges of the Army Order, while a Committee of nine members of the Liberal Party worked out a compromise formula for the Army question. It asked for the immediate grant of certain concessions: the alteration of the Army insignia, the use of Magyar in Courts Martial in Hungarian regiments, the transference of Hungarian officers to Hungarian regiments, more instruction in Magyar in the cadet schools of the Common Army, a ruling that correspondence between Hungarian offices and non-Hungarian units stationed in Hungary, and civilian authorities in Hungary should be conducted in Magyar, and one or two others. The questions of the two years’ service and of the intake of recruits were to be considered in connection with the revision of the Defence Law. The Committee’s report recognized the Crown’s right to decide t
he languages of service and command, although it maintained that ‘the political responsibility of the Cabinet and the lawful influence of Parliament applied on this question, as on any other’. It agreed, however, not to raise the question at that juncture.
Francis Joseph agreed to these demands, subject to several amendments to which the Committee of Nine agreed in its turn, and now he let Khuen go; Tisza took over on 31 October, and formed an administration of his own closest and most reliable associates. When the first concessions began to arrive from the Ministry of War,28 the Hungarian Parliament, in a sudden excess of mingled sentimentality and nervousness, sanctioned the regular intake of recruits (up to the 1889 figure29). But Tisza was the Independence politicians’ bugbear. He gratified them, indeed, over one notable incident: on 17 November, Koerber, in the course of the debate on the Army Bill in the Reichsrat, had put forward the idea that no reinterpretation by the Hungarian Parliament of the Monarch’s reserved rights (the Committee of Nine’s caveat was meant) was valid without the consent of the Reichsrat. Amid the cheers of the whole Hungarian Parliament, Tisza declared that Hungary had no need to take into account ‘dilettante remarks by a distinguished foreigner’ [sic] on her internal affairs. But for the rest, his appointment ushered in a condition of near-anarchy. Outside Parliament, the administration carried on from hand to mouth; inside it, the Opposition, now reinforced, for the incurably unadult Apponyi had refounded the ‘National Party’ and Bánffy had started a ‘New Party’ of his own, both joining the Opposition, did its successful best to paralyse the affairs of the country. This lasted nearly a year; then, in November 1904, having repeatedly, and always in vain, tried to persuade Parliament to reform itself, Tisza, like Badeni and Falkenhayn before him, put through a reform of its standing orders by dubious methods. A group of Liberals, headed by Count Gyula Andrássy, seceded from the Party in protest against these dictatorial methods, and Tisza now decided to see how the electorate really felt. He dissolved Parliament on 3 January 1905 and held new elections, which the officials were told not to influence. From these the Liberals emerged with only 159 mandates, while the Party of Independence, into which Apponyi had now taken his followers, secured 166, Andrássy’s ‘dissidents’, who had formed themselves into a ‘Constitutional Party’, 27, the People’s Party, 24, and Bánffy’s ‘New Party’, 17, the remainder being made up out of 11 representatives of the ‘Nationalities’ (8 Roumanians,2 Slovaks and 1 Serb),30 2 ‘Democrats’, 2 ‘Agrarian Socialists’31 and 8 Independents. Subsequent defections from the Liberals reduced their numbers to 102, most of the deserters joining the Party of Independence or the Constitutional Party. The Party of Independence, Constitutionalists, People’s Party and New Party founded a ‘Coalition of National Parties’.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 121