Surgeons (Wunderärzte) outnumbered doctors of medicine by two or even three to one in many country districts, but this was because they were also the official barbers; they were obliged by law to hang out a barber’s pole and to shave customers on request (hairdressers were not allowed to perform this operation). It is one of the curiosities of the Austrian system that this obligation was imposed by law on men who were entitled to perform the operation of trepanning. Bleeding and the treatment of flesh wounds were also surgeon’s work.
These conditions went on until long after the date of which we are now writing. According to J. Springer, there were when he wrote (1845) still only 7 doctors and surgeons per 10,000 head of the population in Transylvania, 9 in the Military Frontier, and 10 in Galicia. The highest figure was for Lombardy (91), followed by Lower Austria (80). Styria had 46, Bohemia 34.
*
The term ‘peasant’, generically used for any non-noble cultivator of the land, actually covered as many variations of legal, social and economic status as the word ‘noble’. One distinct category was formed by the free peasants, whose numbers were considerable in some parts of the Monarchy. In the Western Alpine Lands, the old Germanic tradition of the free community had maintained itself with some obstinacy; in the Tirol, almost all the peasants were free, as were a proportion of those in Upper Austria (and in the intervening Salzburg). At the other geographical extreme were the areas which had been settled with immigrant colonists who had had to be granted freedom as the inducement to venture into distant and often perilous lands. The Hungarian Lands, especially Transylvania and the newly-recovered south of the country, contained several such communities,121 besides a number more, of slightly different origin, whose inhabitants could be described as free peasants with more or less exactitude.122 Galicia contained some analogous classes,123 and also some free peasants, as did the Bukovina. The class in both Hungary and Galicia would have been much more numerous if the political terminology of both Hungary and Poland had not equated the status of freedom with that of nobiliity. Many men who in the West would have counted as free peasants ranked in Hungary and Galicia as ‘sandalled nobles’.
The free peasants’ communities governed themselves on the lowest level; above that, they came under the authority of the State apparatus.124 They paid the State taxation due from any citizen, and were subject to tithe to the Church, where this was exacted, as well as to contributions in cash or kind towards the necessary services of their commune: the upkeep of its roads and bridges, the maintenance of its Church and school, night-watchman, etc.
The big majority of the Monarchy’s peasants were, however, still unfree men, the subjects of their manorial lords. The subject’s position did not, indeed (except perhaps in Galicia, where the Polish legislation had not by 1780 been entirely superseded by the Austrian, although the supersession was on its way), involve bondage ad personam. He was not a chattel, could not be bought or sold, could own personal property, and was competent to bring an action at law in his own name. His personal freedom was, according to the writers of the day, complete in the German-Austrian Lands, and elsewhere incomplete only in the sense that he could not, even if he had fulfilled all his obligations, leave his holding, marry, or engage in, or put his sons to, a craft or profession without his lord’s permission. These restrictions, if they still existed in law, had fallen into desuetude in the German-Austrian Lands, where the lord was entitled to demand a fee on such occasions (as he did elsewhere if he granted the permission), but could not refuse his consent. It was this distinction which Joseph II later invoked125 to describe the condition of the peasants in the German-Austrian Lands as one of ‘hereditary subjection’ (Erbuntertänigkeit) and elsewhere in Austria, of ‘serfdom’ (Leibeigenschaft). Many writers have, indeed, objected to the latter term as an exaggeration.
The ‘nexus’ did, however, put the peasant in a position of legal inferiority and impose on him a number of material obligations. He was his lord’s ‘subject’ in law, and legally bound to render him ‘loyalty, obedience and deference’ and to obey his orders and submit to the judgments of his Court; even when entitled to appeal against such orders or judgments, he had to obey them first, and appeal afterwards. The other side of this relationship was that the lord had to protect his subjects against unlawful exactions from any other quarter.
Of the unfree peasant’s material obligations to his lord, some were due from all unfree inhabitants of a commune, whatever their economic category, being, in theory, his reward for protecting them and administering their affairs. The other payments depended on the legal quality of the land on which a peasant’s home was situated, for all manorial land in the Monarchy was divided into two categories, known respectively in Austria as ‘dominical’ and ‘rustical’, in Hungary, as ‘allodial’ and ‘urbarial’.126 Dominical land was at the lord’s free disposal: he could farm it directly through the labour of others (or his own), lease it, or leave it uncultivated or nearly so, perhaps simply preserving it for sporting purposes. Rustical land, while still owned by the lord in dominium directum, was divided into peasant holdings, the occupants of which enjoyed the usufruct (dominium utile) of them, in return for a rent paid in cash, kind or services, or a combination of the three.
The rustical peasants were also the tax-payers in chief of the State, for under the system described above, the contributio, which was the largest direct tax, and most of the local expenditure by Kreise, Counties, etc., came out of the land tax, the whole of which in Hungary, and the greater part of it in Austria, was levied on rustical land. The occupant of a rustical holding also had to pay his quota of expenditure on communal services, and in places, tithe to the Church. He was therefore subject to taxation under five headings:
(a) to the State
(b) to the Church
(c) to the commune
(d) to his lord qua manorial lord
(e) to his lord qua landlord.
His payments under (b) and (c) need not detain us here. They were similar to those levied on the free communes, and not exorbitant by modern standards. The Church tithe was not even exacted everywhere, although sometimes, where the Church renounced it, it was added to the seigneural dues. On the other hand, the peasants’ obligations under (d) and (e) had, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, been growing steadily more onerous, as their lords’ tastes grew more luxurious, and in particular, as they found it possible to make a cash profit out of farming their demesne lands. For this purpose, and others,127 they had taken to exacting more and more of the robot, as this service was currently known as most parts of the Monarchy128 which was one of the traditional forms in which the peasants worked out their rent. Moreover, the robot, especially the field labour, was often exacted without any regard for the peasant’s interest. Thus he might be required to spend his entire week at harvest time on his lord’s land, with only his nights to get in his own crops. Where they did not exact the robot the landlords increased the peasants’ dues in cash or kind, and they found means of increasing the yield from their other privileges. In many parts of the Monarchy they claimed the right to mill their peasants’ corn (at a price), to distill strong liquors and to brew beer and to retail these beverages at the local tavern – this sometimes with dire results,129 to retail their own wine throughout the year130 and often, in practice, to force their peasants to buy practically all their requirements from them, and conversely, to sell them their produce, often making a large profit on both transactions.131 They were entitled to call on their peasants’ children for domestic service, usually for a limited period. They made their sporting rights extensive and exclusive, and often exercised them in a manner extremely detrimental to the peasants’ interests.
A service often exacted in the most burdensome fashion was the ‘long haulage’, under which a peasant had to supply long-distance transport for a certain number of days in the year.
Another practice to which many lords resorted was to find some pretext to evict a peasant from his holding
, and to convert this into allodial, and tax-free, land.
Meanwhile, the State, too, had been increasing its demands, sometimes in even larger measure than the lords;132 and it should be remarked that these were not exhausted by the simple exaction of direct taxation; for when the standing army was instituted, the peasant was obliged in many districts to have soldiers quartered on him, to keep the local garrisons supplied, and to provide them with transport as required. He was paid for these services, but at a rate which seldom covered his expenditure.
It was a cumulative evil which to some extent had brought about its own partial remedy, or at least, alleviation. For eventually a point had been reached at which it was inescapably clear that the peasants could not fulfil the demands made on them from both sides, and exist. The attempts to make them do so were provoking unrest which was, indeed, regularly put down by force: but the inquiries instituted by her after some of these outbreaks convinced Maria Theresa that the degraded condition of the peasantry was humanly intolerable, and also a source of weakness to the body politic. Whether the stronger among her motives was the purely utilitarian, or the humanitarian, need not be discussed here: both considerations were certainly present in her mind, and it would be as misleading to ignore the former, as was done by most historians writing while her descendants were still on the throne, as unjust to deny the latter, as became the fashion when dialectic materialism succeeded to the throne. At all events, she stepped in, and issued a series of Patents laying down maxima for the peasants’ obligations to their lords, Land by Land.133 At the same time, surveys (where such did not already exist) were carried out and registers drawn up showing what land in each Land was, at that date, dominical and what rustical,134 and further conversion of rustical or common land to dominical forbidden except under special permit, for which cause had to be shown.135
When issuing her instructions for this work, Maria Theresa laid down the principle that whatever the lords’ previous legal rights had been, the peasant must always be able ‘to support himself and his family, and also to cover the general national expenditure in times of peace or war.’ This would have seemed to foreshadow large changes in the legal position, but not only did the Estates, and also the Empress’s advisers, oppose such changes obstinately, but the peasants themselves seem to have complained less against the law, than against the lords’ disregard of it. At all events, the Patents, when they appeared (which, in the case of the Bohemian, was only after years of argument) were surprisingly unrevolutionary documents. They did away with a mass of illegalities and usurpations, including, in some Lands, many of the banalités and some other services for which no legal justification could be shown (written law or usage undisputed for thirty years being normally taken as constituting justification) and went into detail in regulating the legal length of a working robot day, the maximum number of days in any week when it could be required, etc., but except in relatively few cases, did not alter the existing law, confining themselves to codifying the local status quo and providing safeguards for its observance. In respect of the division of land, again, the status quo was registered; only proven recent usurpations were corrected. The main results of this, from our point of view, were two. Firstly although the Patents beyond doubt improved the situation of many of the peasants very greatly, especially in the Lands where abuses had been rife, they yet left the peasant position in the Monarchy incompletely solved, so that one of the first things Joseph did when his mother’s eyes were closed was, as we shall see, to take up the question again. Secondly, since the situation quo ante had developed very differently in different Lands, according to the outcomes of earlier struggles in each between lords and peasants, so the obligations laid down in the Patents were almost equally various, both in their sums and in their distribution between the various forms of payment. Thus in Upper Austria an Interim Relatio issued in 1597, at the close of a peasant war in which the peasants had given almost as good as they had got, had laid down fourteen days in the year as the maximum haulage robot (performed with two yoke of oxen) to which a Vollbauer (viz., one occupying a full peasant holding, as legally defined136) was subject137 and the Upper Austrian Patent of 1772 kept that figure. In the Bukovina, where the inhabitants were protected by a Patent issued by the Moldavian Prince Ghika, the initial figure was only twelve.138 In Hungary, where fifty-two days had been laid down after the great peasant revolt of 1514, (again, as a penalty), this figure, again, was retained under the Urbarium, and it was also that legalized for Croatia, Slavonia and the Bánát. In Bohemia the figure had been fixed at 156 in the Robot Patent of 1738, which itself reproduced a figure laid down in 1570 by a particularly savage Diet, with which the then Emperor, Leopold I, had joined forces.139 This, again, was retained and was made a sort of standard for the West, being adopted also for Moravia, Silesia, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Galicia (where, indeed, it constituted an improvement on the previous practice) and Transylvania. Lower Austria, however, got off with 102. For hand robot, performed without the use of draught animals, the figure was usually twice the above (so for Hungary, 104). A peasant holding a fractional holding did proportionately less, and a landless man less still, usually thirteen days, although sometimes as little as six to eight.140 The landlord was entitled everywhere to call on his peasants for some additional robot, but the amount of this, the seasons at which it could be demanded, etc., were now carefully regulated, and such ‘overtime work’ had to be paid.
A landlord did not, of course, exact robot where he had no use for it, taking out his rent in other forms. Thus, apart from the Tirol, where the peasants were free, and the Italian districts, where they usually held their lands on a perpetual tenure payable in cash, little robot figured in the peasants’ contracts in Upper Austria, Carinthia or the German parts of Styria. It, or its equivalent, was, however, regularly exacted in the Hungarian and Slavonic parts of the Monarchy, and also in Lower Austria.141
The payments in cash and kind which were, or might be, due from the peasant to his lord under headings (d) and (e)142 constitute an almost endless list, many of them being rooted in antiquity, and some existing only on paper.143 They, too, varied very greatly from Land to Land. Broadly, we may sum up the dues in kind as consisting first and foremost of the seigneural tithe, which usually amounted to about one-sixth of the peasant’s produce,144 plus, in most communes, extra dues on special days and occasions, such as a goose at Christmas, a ‘present’ when a wedding took place in the castle, etc. There were also taxes payable in cash: in most places a relatively small house or chimney tax, and other dues payable in connection with certain transactions, the heaviest of which were the mortuarium, levied on a change of tenancy following death, and the laudemium, levied on a transfer between living persons. Either of these could amount to as much as ten per cent of the value of the property transferred, although the former, in particular, was usually lower. The Bergrecht, an institution which was particularly resented, entitled the landlord to levy a special tax on all land suitable for use as vineyards, whether so used or not.
When the value of all these were added together, plus the indirect tribute paid by the peasant to his lord under the latter’s economic monopolies, it is clear that the peasant’s payments to his lord were still considerable, even under the Patents. In return, he received, indeed, certain counter-services from his lord, whose function in the mutual relationship was not by any means that of always receiving and never giving. Besides his duties in administering his commune and dealing out justice in it (which were not usually received by the peasants with gratitude, but involved him in considerable expense where, as nearly always, he exercised them through paid employees), the lord often bore the lion’s share of the expenditure on the local schools and health services.145 He was obliged to provide at least his uneingekauft peasants146 with the material for keeping their houses, outbuildings and fences in repair, to provide them with firewood and to see them through harvest failures, if necessary advancing them seed for the next harvest. He som
etimes enjoyed easements over their land, such as the right to graze his cattle on the village stubble after harvest, but they in return often enjoyed large easements over his land, particularly his forests.
In most Lands it was open to the subject, if his lord agreed, to commute (reluiren) his dues in labour, kind, or both, for a cash payment. The commutation of dues in kind seems to have been very general in the Vorlande and Lower Austria.147 Commutation of robot was much rarer, except in Lower Austria, where it is common even now.148 Elsewhere the peasant had not the cash, and the landlord could not be sure of finding hired labour. Since the robot was the obligation most hated by the peasants, and most easily abused by the lords, the Lands which were the strongholds of robot were also usually the chief foci of peasant unrest.
A rustical peasant’s tenure, before the reforms, could be one of two main types.149 In the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands, and also in Galicia, he had the right to ‘buy in’ (einkaufen) his holding.150 If he did so, he could not be evicted from it except for negligent farming (liederliche Wirtschaft), and that only after inquiry by the Kreisamt, or if he was convicted of a criminal offence, or ran into heavy debt. He could borrow on it, up to two-thirds of its value, sell it (provided that his lord approved the purchaser) and bequeath it as he would on death or retirement,151 subject again to his lord’s approval of his successor.
The holder of an uneingekauft holding enjoyed no legal security whatever. His lord could, at his own pleasure, force him to exchange his holding for another, transfer part of it to another holding, or subdivide it, leaving him with only a fraction of it, or even reducing him to the position of a cottar.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 9
