The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Not all of these professed to reject the Compromise, but the elections were a clear defeat for those who supported it unreservedly. Francis Joseph, however, refused to be intimidated. When Andrássy, in the name of the Coalition, refused to form a Government unless further ‘national’ concessions were made over the Army, the Monarch for the first time exercised in Hungary the right which had become habitual to him in Austria. He made Genera) Fejérváry, the Minister of Defence in the previous Governments, an old soldier on whose loyalty he could depend,32 Minister President, at the head of a Cabinet of permanent officials, with instructions to negotiate with the Coalition leaders for a basis on which he could entrust the Government to them. The first conversations having proved fruitless, he relieved Fejérváry of his commission, and on 23 September summoned the Coalition leaders to him and curtly informed them of his conditions, which were: (1) the question of the languages of service and command, on which any concessions were and remained excluded, to be dropped from the programme; (2) no tampering with the common institutions in respect either of the Army or the foreign service; (3) any revision of the economic clauses of the Compromise to be duly negotiated with the representatives of Austria, through the regular channels; (4) and (5) guarantees that the Budget and the new Army Act, which was now ready in draft, would be voted. They were to discuss details with Goluchowski.

  The whole audience had lasted only five minutes.

  The conversations began and, of course, immediately ended in deadlock, and Francis Joseph then reappointed Fejérváry. The Coalition tried to organize resistance through the Counties, but Francis Joseph again stood firm. He sent a Royal Commissioner to close Parliament, and ‘administrators’ were sent to take charge of the Counties. Then Fejérváry’s Minister of the Interior, Kristóffy, played a trump card: he published the text of a Bill for franchise reform, which he said that he proposed to introduce into the next Parliament. This would have increased the number of voters in Hungary from 1·0 millions to 2·6, a substantial number of the new voters being non-Magyars.

  Before this threat, what courage the Coalition leaders had left collapsed. Ferenc Kossuth, at heart a conciliatory man, had already come round to the view that it would be necessary to accept the Crown’s terms. He told Fejérváry so, and when informed that the Coalition would be required, in addition, to enact a suffrage reform on at least as broad a basis as that envisaged by Kristóffy, he still did not object, having been persuaded, in curious fashion, that a reform of the sort was inevitable.33 Andrássy and Apponyi objected very strongly, but sniffing the possibility that Kossuth might come to terms with the Crown without them, they joined him in accepting the Crown’s conditions, to which was added yet another, that the Minister President was not to be a member of the Coalition, but the old Liberal utility man, Wekerle. The bargain having been struck, in deep secrecy, Francis Joseph, on 7 April 1906, appointed Wekerle Minister President, and he then formed a Cabinet in which Andrássy received the Ministry of the Interior, Kossuth that of Commerce and Communications, Apponyi that of Cults and Education, and Zichy, that of Minister a latere to the Crown. Wekerle kept finance in his own hands. Parliament was now dissolved, and new elections held in May. As Tisza had dissolved the Liberal Party, which did not contest the elections, the Coalition Parties, whose candidates did not oppose one another, won an overwhelming victory, the Party of Independence returning 253 Deputies, the Constitutional Party, 89,34 the People’s Party 23 and the New Party 3. The only real opposition was composed of 25 representatives of the Nationalities other than the Saxons,35 4 Democrats,3 Agrarian Socialists or Democrats and 5 Independents.

  It is hardly surprising that the years which followed this transaction proved to be among the most ignominious in Hungarian political history. Their promise to the Crown, which was kept a close secret between the Coalition leaders, precluded them from fulfilling practically any of the promises in faith whereof their constituents had elected them to office. In the new decennial economic negotiations with Austria, which took place in 1907,36 they extracted the barren change in nomenclature that the relationship between the two countries was to be called a ‘Customs Treaty’, the terms of which were to come up for revision in 1917; but they paid for this with a number of material concessions, including another change of two per cent in the quota, to Hungary’s disadvantage. It is true that in the course of the negotiations Andrássy extracted from the Crown (in the face of very strong opposition from the Heir to the Throne) certain ‘constitutional guarantees’ against further arbitrary action by the Crown;37 but the practical effect of these was not great. At home, the Minister of Agriculture, Ignácz Darányi, did a little (against much opposition) to improve the conditions of the agricultural labourers, and the Secretary of State for Commerce, József Szterényi, who was in fact the real holder of the Portfolio (ill-health kept Kossuth away from his duties for long periods) introduced another law for the protection of domestic industry. But the Coalition’s biggest ‘national’ achievement was a law devised by Apponyi, and enacted in 1907, which surpassed all records in national chauvinism. Inter alia, it made teachers in Church schools State employees, requiring of them ability to read, write and teach Magyar adequately, and of non-Magyar pupils, that they should, by the end of their fourth school year, be able to express themselves in Magyar, orally and in writing. Something like eighteen of the twenty-two hours of instruction in non-Magyar primary schools was devoted to the language.

  Meanwhile, there were two questions on which the Coalition itself was deeply divided. One was that of suffrage reform. One fraction of the Independence Party, led by Gyula Justh, genuinely wanted the reform, as a postulate of democracy; it believed that a democratized Hungary would be able to come to terms with the Nationalities.38 On the other hand, the ’67 members of the Coalition entirely agreed on this point with Tisza, that true franchise reform would mean the end of that Magyar Hungary which, as they and he saw it, was the only kind of Hungary which could exist at all. Kossuth seems to have been undecided on the point. As the Crown insisted, Andrássy, after over two years of rearguard action, produced a Bill set about with the most elaborate devices for safeguarding the supremacy of the Magyar element. Justh’s group refused to accept this, and it was withdrawn.

  The second bone of contention was the National Bank. Here, again, it was Justh’s followers who insisted absolutely that Hungary must have her own Bank by the end of 1911. The ’67 Parties in the Coalition opposed this, partly on principle and partly because they thought the retention of the common Bank to be advantageous to Hungary, as the economically weaker half of the Monarchy. It was on this rock that the Coalition finally split, the Party of Independence having divided into two wings, one led by Kossuth and Apponyi, the other by Justh. The Coalition had become unworkable, and on 27 April 1909, Wekerle resigned.

  Interminable conversations followed, one suggested combination after another breaking down on Francis Joseph’s insistence that he would make no ‘national’ concession to any Hungarian Government which did not first introduce the suffrage reform. At last Khuen Héderváry said that he would be able to form an administration on these terms with the old Liberals. He was appointed Minister President on 17 January 1910, dissolved Parliament, and held new elections in May. In preparation for these, Tisza had reconstituted the Liberals under the name of ‘Party of Work’, and this time no holds were barred. The Party of Work secured 258 mandates; Kossuth’s wing of the Party of Independence, 55; Justh’s fraction, although heavily supported by Kristóffy (acting for Francis Ferdinand), only 41;39 Andrássy’s followers, 21, and the People’s Party, 13. The Saxons had voted with the Party of Work, which had also allowed 8 Serbs to get in on its list; 8 other representatives of the nationalities (5 Roumanians and 3 Slovaks) got in under their own colours and there were also 3 Smallholders, 2 Democrats, one Christian Social and a handful of independents.

  The situation was back in the main to the turbulentia qua ante 1903, with a Government pledged to the Compromi
se and the ‘Independence’ Parties in the Opposition; seasoned, however, with an element more reminiscent of the Coalition period in that the Government was pledged to introduce suffrage reform, whereas Tisza was fixedly determined not to do so. In fact, Khuen, who remained Minister President, did not hurry himself to introduce the reform, and for a while, history repeated itself with uncanny accuracy, for as as soon the House opened, it was presented with another Bill for raising the strength of the armed forces40 and again the Opposition resorted to wild filibustering and to extravagant counter-demands which they pressed with such vigour that Khuen, caught between the hammer of them and the anvil of Francis Joseph’s resistance, resigned in April 1912. He was succeeded as Minister President by László Lukácz, while Tisza took over the Presidency of the House, in which capacity he forced through not only – at last – the long-disputed Army Bill, but also a reform of the Standing Orders which really made Parliament workable – an achievement which came near costing him his life.41 In return for this, Francis Joseph seems to have been prepared to disinterest himself in the question of electoral reform. Lukács did pass a Bill through Parliament, but it was so excessively cautious that after its enactment the agitation for or against reform went on as though it had never existed. Francis Joseph, however, did not ask for anything more.

  Then, in June 1913, Lukács resigned in consequence of attacks on his financial probity.42 Now Tisza himself took over the Minister Presidency, making the apparent reversion complete.

  The reversion, however, was only apparent. The leaders of the ‘national opposition’ had discredited themselves deeply, but this did not mean that the ideas for which they professed to stand had lost their popularity among their traditional adherents. On the contrary, it was now plainer than ever that ‘’48’ was far more popular than ‘’67’ in the circles within which the political struggle in Hungary was traditionally waged. But far more important than this was the increased growth and determination of the forces which had previously been excluded from that struggle altogether. In 1903 the Social Democrat Party had reorganized, adopting new statutes, but still keeping its intimate association with the Trade Unions, whose numbers had increased rapidly, reaching 70,000 in 1905 and over 130,000 in 1907, the peak year. Meanwhile, the developments in Russia and Austria, and the possibility that franchise reform might come also to Hungary, had given the movement a fresh impetus. In 1905 the workers had organized great demonstrations in favour of the reform, and the dashing of the cup from their lips had not lessened their desire to drink of it. The demonstrations were repeated in subsequent years. In 1912 the Party proclaimed a General Strike. There were mass demonstrations in front of Parliament which cost the participants six dead and 182 wounded after the gendarmerie had opened fire on them.

  Still unrepresented in Parliament and still looked on with distrust by most of the country, largely on account of their international tenets and their Jewish leadership, the Socialists now constituted a very real force in the country, and one which might prove a dangerous enemy to the ‘system’.

  There had been continued unrest on the land. In 1905, when the Counties had proclaimed resistance to the tax-collector and the recruiting officer, Socialist agitators, mostly from among the ‘Reorganized Socialists’, appeared, claiming the merit for themselves.43 That year, and again in 1906, there were more harvest strikes, some of them in protest against the new ‘labour reserve’44 and widespread demands among both the agricultural labourers and the dwarf-holders, not only for better wages and conditions, but also for land-reform.

  The middle-class ‘radical’ movement, too, had grown more extreme. By 1906 the more conservative members of the Huszadik Század had withdrawn from it,45 leaving the movement in the hands of a group of radicals, almost exclusively Jewish (a fact of importance, since it widened the gulf between the group and the more traditionally-minded Hungarians). The editor of the periodical, to whom his disciples looked up with almost idolatrous veneration, was Oszkar Jászi (Jakubovics), an acute and fluent sociologist whose mind was, however, essentially destructive.

  Further, both the international and the domestic developments of the period had stirred the nationalities into renewed activity. In 1904 the learned and ultra-patriotic Professor Jorga of Bucharest revived the Liga Culturale, and when the 1905 elections were announced, the Roumanians of Transylvania decided to abandon passivity and reopen the Parliamentary struggle on their old programme. At the same time the Slovaks decided to break with the People’s Party, with whose attitude on the ‘issue of public law’ they disagreed, and formed their own ‘Slovak National Party’.46 Neither decision had been unanimous and not many candidates stood, with the meagre result recorded above.47 But for the 1906 elections the Nationalities stood in force, and the twenty-five successful candidates included several men destined to play an important role in the next years – the Roumanians Maniu and Vajda-Voevod, the Slovaks Juriga and Hodža, not to mention the veteran Serb, Polit.

  The Coalition showed itself even more intolerant than the Liberals towards the Nationalities. Broadly speaking, its answer towards their demands was more Magyarization, more abuse, more administrative pressure. Apponyi’s egregious Education Act has been mentioned. Besides this, precisely the Coalition’s years of office witnessed an unparalleled number of proceedings against the Nationalities. Seventeen Roumanians were sentenced for agitation against the State in 1906 and thirteen in 1907; eleven Slovaks in 1906, thirty-three in 1907 and twenty in 1908, both the Roumanian and the Slovak victims including Deputies, whose Parliamentary immunity was suspended so that they could be sentenced, besides such figures as the Slovak leader, Mgr Hlinka. 1907, moreover, saw the notorious ‘massacre of Csernova’, when gendarmes fired into a crowd of Slovak peasants, killing fifteen and wounding many more48 – a deplorable incident which, moreover, did Hungary much harm, for the Slovaks’ case, publicised by Seton-Watson, was taken up by a number of well-known figures in several countries, including Björnsen and Leo Tolstoy.

  The 1910 elections made things no better, for although the representation of the Nationalities was down again, their spirit, and their hostility to the Hungarian State, were even greater than before.

  By 1912 relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia, too, were back to the pessimum, after a curious series of fluctuations. They had reached a first nadir in 1903, when a refusal by the Hungarian Government to revise in Croatia’s favour the financial clauses of the Nagodba had led to violent rioting in Croatia. This had spread to Istria and Dalmatia, and had generated what one of its warmest sympathizers has himself described as ‘one of those strange furies which at rare intervals seize upon a whole nation’.49 Wild rumours spread that some of the demonstrators in Croatia were to be hanged, and a deputation from the Istrian and Dalmatian Landtags went to Budapest to beg the Monarch to intercede for their persecuted fellow-countrymen. He refused to receive them.

  The incident was very important, for it gave rise to a feeling among many Croats that they had nothing to hope from Vienna, a feeling which was ultimately to develop into a ‘Yugoslav’ movement looking outside the Monarchy.50 But the immediate effects seemed to point in a different direction, for the next important political development was that, on the initiative of one of Masaryk’s pupils, a Dalmatian journalist named František Supilo, and of a colleague of his, Anton Trumbić, forty Deputies from Croatia, Dalmatia and Istria met in Fiume on 4 October 1905, and adopted a Resolution offering the support of the signatories to the Hungarian Coalition in return for loyal observance of the Nagodba, democratic reform inside Croatia, and Hungarian support for the re-attachment of Dalmatia to the Triune Kingdom. On 16 October twenty-six Serb Deputies adhered to this Resolution, declaring themselves in favour of joint political action with the Croats, and a little later representatives of both peoples signed a declaration that they were parts of one people.51

  The Independence Party in Hungary received the Croato-Serb overtures with empressement, as strengthening its own hand
against Vienna. Ferenc Kossuth sent an open telegram to the signatories of the Fiume Resolution, ending with the words ‘May God lead Dalmatia back, via Croatia, to the Crown of St Stephen. We await you with love and hope’. The new Ban who had replaced Khuen Héderváry, Count Todor Pejačević, did not attempt to influence the elections which took place in the autumn of 1906, and these accordingly brought the National Party heavy losses; it secured only thirty-seven mandates, while twenty-eight went to a ‘coalition’ of Croats and Serbs who accepted the Fiume Resolutions52 and the Serbo-Croat identity, and twenty-three to the ‘Party of Pure Right’.