The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  But unhappily for the ‘party of order’, its defenders went too far. The Government had posters pasted up threatening the proclamation of martial law, should this prove necessary. This threat, coming on the intemperate language of the message from Innsbruck, set rumours buzzing that Windisch-Graetz was ante portas. Then, on 24 May, the Ministry of Education declared the University closed, and the next day Colloredo invited the Academic Legion to dissolve itself. The students refused. Next morning a proclamation by Auersperg and an order by Montecuccoli declared the Legion ‘in its present form, as an independent component of the National Guard’ dissolved; its members were simply to be incorporated in the National Guard. By an unfortunate accident, the proclamation contained some wounding phrases. The students barricaded themselves in the Aula. Once again many workmen flocked to their help, and many other members of the Guard took their side. The Government called out troops, and as on 13 March, this only inflamed spirits. The Government, having no alternative, yielded all along the line. It recalled the troops, retracted the dissolution of the Legion, reaffirmed the concessions of 15 May, and sanctioned the formation of a new ‘Committee of Security’ (by its full name, ‘Committee of the Burghers, National Guard, and Students of Vienna for the maintenance of peace, security and order and the preservation of the people’s rights’) to which it delegated official responsibility for the maintenance of public order and security.

  New men took charge of the National Guard and the Academic Legion.77 The Committee of Security, or rather, the Executive Committee which it in its turn elected, now became the real ruler of Vienna. The Executive Committee numbered among its eleven members several sober and responsible figures, not least its President, Fischof, and in many respects it exercised its powers wisely and well. But the full Committee contained many extremists and the first days after 25 May were another period of turbulence. Warrants were issued for enemies of the people, including Montecuccoli and even Hye and Endlicher, to be called to account for their reactionary activities. Bands of hooligans, besides molesting members of the aristocracy against whom they bore personal grudges, raised a hue and cry against the class as a whole, and many of its members fled the capital.

  To the Committee’s difficulties were added new ones arising out of an economic situation which, even before this, had been growing steadily more critical. Foreign suppliers of raw materials needed by the Austrian factories had become nervous, and the gulden was now being quoted at a discount of 20–25%. Where shipments from abroad did reach frontiers, their movement across the country, especially from Trieste, was impeded by the claims made by the military on communications. Factories were having to close down for lack of supplies. Revenue was slow in coming in; exchequer receipts for March–May were nearly 14 million gulden below estimate, and the quarter ended with a deficit of nearly 16 million gulden. By June the silver reserves of the National Bank were down to about 20 million gulden, while the note issue was round 160 million gulden. Prices were rising, this in itself causing a fall off in demand, which was aggravated by the flight of the Court and of so many members of the bourgeoisie. This hit, not only the factories, but at least as heavily, the small artisans and shopkeepers. This brought back the threat from the dreaded proletariat. When unemployment grew serious again, a radical student named Willner78 whom a self-constituted Workers’ Committee had made its president, persuaded the Committee to adopt the principle of work or maintenance, that is, that the State was obliged to provide work for any person unable to find private employment. He further got the rate for public works fixed at 25 kreuzer daily for men, 20 for women or 12 for juveniles, this being equal to the top rate paid by private enterprise for unskilled labour. The effect was disastrous. The local unemployed were reinforced by a great influx of masterless men from Bohemia, and many of them simply went each morning to the site of the works in the suburbs,79 drew their 25 kreuzer (sometimes from several stations) and disappeared, the officials in charge being afraid to protest. Many of the Czechs among these men, incidentally, preached national disaffection. Even some factory workers found it easier to go and draw the dole (which was what the payment amounted to) than to earn the 40 kreuzer or so which they could get for a day’s work in a factory. The ‘navvies’ now numbered some 50,000, a formidable force, especially since it was largely composed of very rough elements, and one which was a constant source of apprehension to the rest of the population. This situation, in its turn, further increased the unpopularity of the Committee of Security and its supporters, and even discredited the whole idea of democracy, for many who had sympathized with the constitutional movement in its early stages, were horrified and disgusted at a regime dominated by ‘students who played at politics instead of studying’ and ‘Lumpenproletariat’. Thus while the Left triumphed for the moment in Vienna, its victory even there cost it a heavy price. Outside the capital, the flight of the Court both created the psychological pre-conditions for a counter-offensive by the Right and put its supporters in a far more favourable position to act. In the Alpine provinces it had the simple and predictable effect of evoking in full measure that chronic antipathy of the Austrian provincial to the capital which is so constant a feature in Austria’s history, and one so constantly underestimated by its historians. It produced a great surge of affection for the Emperor and of resentment against his alleged persecutors.

  It had also legitimized opposition to the recent trend of events. The first manifesto setting out the Emperor’s reasons for his flight – drawn up in Salzburg by Franz Joseph’s old tutor, Bombelles – had been so intemperate that the Imperial family itself – presumably Franz Karl – had rejected it. It had been first watered down, then, at the insistence of messengers sent post-haste after the fugitives by the Government, withdrawn,80 and the Innsbruck manifesto had at least promised to respect popular feeling and had refrained from abusing the Government, But the Empress and the Archduchess Sophie were now making no secret of their hatred of everything that had been done since March, including the April Constitution, nor were they concealing their view that the Ministers themselves were simply the tools of subversion.81 The ill-concealed rift between the Crown and the Ministry raised issues which went far beyond approval and disapproval of 15 May; it was now respectable to question 25 April, and even 15 March. The flight had also suddenly smoothed the path in one important respect for those who wished to do so. In spite of the ladies’ fears, the person of Ferdinand had never been in the slightest danger from the honest citizens of Vienna. But there had been, from the point of view of the Camarilla, as the Court circle and its close supporters were now beginning to be called, a real danger residing not in the alleged ill-nature of the Viennese, but in Ferdinand’s own good nature, which had already led him into sanctioning so many concessions, and might lead him into sanctioning more, so long as he was within reach of petitioners for them. It was on this ground that Windisch-Graetz had told the Archduchess Sophie, as early as 19 April, that he would have liked to see Ferdinand out of Vienna, and viewed from this angle, the importance of the move to Innsbruck was enormous. It was, of course, completely unjust to identify the unfortunate Government with the forces which were in reality its captors.82 They themselves had sanctioned the concessions of 15 May only with great reluctance, and under force majeur, and after it they had resigned en bloc and were carrying on only ‘provisionally’ until a new Minister President could be found. But pending a successful outcome of this search, which was proving difficult,83 they were perforce remaining in office, and they were also pledged, and determined, to make the April Constitution work. And now the boot was on the other foot, for Ferdinand in Innsbruck was within reach of anyone who cared to make the journey there, but out of reach of his Ministers. Wessenberg, who had been delayed by sickness on his journey from Freiburg, had, when able to resume it, gone straight to Innsbruck, where he arrived on 2 June. But the Ministry as a whole clearly could not leave Vienna. All Pillersdorf could do was to send Doblhoff down to Innsbruck to act as the Govern
ment’s representative there.

  His services were soon in demand, for no sooner had the fugitives arrived in Innsbruck than the attempts to play them off against the Government began. Everybody who objected on any ground to the present position turned to Innsbruck in hope of remedy. The partisans of complete absolutism, with whom the ultimate victory was to lie, were not yet in a position to raise their voices openly; their strength would be with the army, which was then still engaged in Italy. But there were plenty of demands for a different kind of constitutional institution. Even some of the Alpine Provinces sent in far-reaching demands for provincial rights.84 These could be, and were, refused, as was an invitation from Hungary that Ferdinand should come there.85 But one initiative of the days was more important. This was a move from Bohemia, which ended, indeed, to the profit of the ultimate victors, the absolutists, but only after a bizarre series of happenings which sent the graph of the Czech national movement rising to a peak before the abrupt fall with which it ended.

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  Rudolph Stadion had resigned the Presidency of the Bohemian Gubernium on 5 April, and to succeed him the Government had appointed Count Leo Thun-Hohenstein, one of those high Czech aristocrats who were prepared to ally themselves with the Czech middle-class intellectuals in the cause of a federal reorganization of the Monarchy based on its Slav elements. Thun had been unable to leave his post (in the Lemberg Gubernium) immediately, and during most of April Prague had in practise been governed by the Wenzelsbad Committee; for when, as one of his last acts, Stadion had called into being a ‘Governmental Committee’86 and had ordered the Wenzelsbad Committee to dissolve itself, that body had refused, instead, after some negotiation, combining with the Governmental Committee in a new ‘National Committee’87 in which the Wenzelsbad element was, in fact, much the stronger.

  Thun arrived in Prague on 1 May, where he was soon in touch with the Czech national leaders, then elaborating the plans described below. The events in Vienna seemed to the Czechs to play into their hands. When the news of them reached Prague, Thun announced that he would recognize no concessions extracted from the Emperor by force, and ordered the Bohemian Diet to meet on 7 June, before the Reichstag met in Vienna; the object of realizing the Czech national programme was hardly concealed. On 29 May Thun announced the establishment of a ‘Provisional Responsible Council of Government’, composed of two members of the high Bohemian aristocracy, four Czech national leaders, and two Germans. This body was to organize the ‘responsible central administration’ promised in the Rescript of 8 April, and meanwhile, to act in its lieu, ‘if necessary, taking measures far exceeding the competence of Land Authorities’. He then sent two emissaries (Count Nostič and Palacký’s son-in-law, Rieger) to Innsbruck to obtain authorization for these steps and convey a message of loyalty to Ferdinand, saying that Bohemia would remain true to the Dynasty, but could not ‘submit to the rule of the rebellious Viennese people’. They were also to ask that Francis Joseph, then still in Italy,88 should do so without further delay, as representative of the King of Bohemia.

  This request was strongly backed by Windisch-Graetz, who, his holiday over, had returned to Prague, where Thun had made him privy to his plans. He now wrote to the Court assuring it in eloquent language of the ‘absolute purity’ of Thun’s motives, and taking the opportunity to ask for himself authority to assemble under his command a force sufficiently strong to enable him ‘to fulfil the functions of acting to preserve the safety of the Emperor’s Throne and the welfare of the Monarchy as a whole’. He wanted plenipotentiary powers to take such action when he thought fit, without reference to the Ministry.

  On this occasion the Government succeeded in asserting itself. Thun had published his intentions, and his arguments, a week before, and Pillersdorf had protested to him vigorously against the falsity of his picture of conditions in Vienna and his allegation that the Government there was not in charge of the situation. He had also written to Innsbruck urgently begging the Emperor not to sanction any illegal action by Thun. Doblhoff pleaded personally with the Emperor in the same sense, and was successful. The convocation of the Diet was sanctioned, although with a caution that it was not to exceed its competences – the Constituent would be deciding on the constitutional question – but not the appointment of the Council of Government, which Thun was ordered to dissolve.89 And shortly after, other events occurred which brought further disaster to Czechs’ national hopes.

  Palacký, after rejecting the invitation to Frankfurt, had conceived the idea of countering Frankfurt by a Slav congress, to open in Prague on 1 June. Invitations to send representatives to this meeting had gone out on 1 May to all the Slav peoples of Austria, and also to non-Austrian Slavs.

  The Congress was a parallel move to Thun’s, with which it was intimately connected (Palacký himself and Rieger were two of the four Czech members of the Council of Government), and to which it should have lent force and persuasiveness – a bid to the Crown to rest its authority on a basis of ‘Austro-Slavism’, which the Congress was meant to organize, as well as demonstrate its existing strength. It did not, however, work out according to plan. To begin with, the membership proved much more radical than had been expected, for the respectable aristocrats who had first agreed to attend it (the names had included two Princes Schwarzenberg, two Counts Czernin, etc.) had taken fright and cancelled their acceptances. In the event, a Prince Lubomirski appeared as leader of the delegation of Poles from Galicia, and a Prince Sapieha of the Ruthenes, but nearly all the participants were intellectuals, such as Palacký himself and Safařik (who played a big part in the proceedings), while several Polish extremists arrived from Poznania and elsewhere, and the anarchist, Bakunin, from Russia.

  The Austrian Slavs, after a great deal of often violent debate (for their respective programmes often proved to be mutually competitive, if not mutually incompatible), succeeded in drawing up an Address to the Emperor which asked inter alia for a status for Galicia similar to that which the Rescript of 8 April had given to Bohemia, with equality for the Polish and Ruthene languages, but no partition of the Province;90 the union of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; the union in one body of all the Serb territories of Hungary; the Triune Kingdom for Croatia; and a single administration for all the Slovenes. But the non-Austrian Slavs, of whom, indeed, only the Serbs had sent a delegation worthy of the name (Bakunin was the only Russian to appear) had seemed to consider that the purpose of the Congress was not at all to consolidate Austria, but to realize Slavonic ambitions which might prove highly dangerous to Austria itself. Under the direction of Libelt, a former member of the Polish National Committee and now one of the delegates from Prussian Poland,91 they persuaded the Congress to adopt a manifesto protesting against the Partitions of Poland and attacking in succession the Governments of Prussia, Saxony, Hungary and Turkey; and, in general, they indulged in much radical language highly alarming to the Court.

  Furthermore, as it happened, the week of the Congress coincided with the climax of a long-drawn-out crisis in the Prague cotton mills, which were suffering from very severe unemployment.92 There were street demonstrations in which the workmen were supported by sympathetic students.

  This gave Windisch-Graetz the opportunity for which he had been panting. He, too, had been disappointed in Innsbruck, having been told that he must obey his constitutional superiors, and a suggestion made by him on 23 May that he should march on Vienna had been rejected; but the rebuff had not lessened his conviction of his own mission to stamp out revolution wherever it raised its head, and he chose to regard the activities of Libelt and his colleagues, and the students’ and workers’ processions, as symptoms of a deep-laid revolutionary plot.93 On 6 June he began taking ‘precautionary measures’. The demonstrations were in fact largely directed against the Prince himself, as the recognized spiritus rector of the reaction, and might not have been so vigorous but for his ‘precautions’, which were taken as provocations. But they in their turn were seized by him as excuse for further troop
movements, and soon the inevitable occurred. On Whit Monday, 12 June, demonstrators came into collision with the military. Street fighting developed;94 barricades were thrown up. The Government sent two commissions to Prague to mediate; Windisch-Graetz ignored them. On the 15th he threatened to bombard the city unless it surrendered unconditionally, and the next day in fact had a few shots fired. The city surrendered. A state of siege was proclaimed in Bohemia, and tribunals set up to try disturbers of the peace, which they did with great severity. The meeting of the Bohemian Diet was postponed indefinitely (the Council of Government had already been dissolved).

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  With the fall of Prague, the teeth of another national movement were drawn. The short-lived alliance between blood and brains disappeared for a decade and a half. The aristocrats drew back for the rest of 1848, and indeed, until their re-emergence in 1860,95 they confined their political activities to leading the reaction in matters of social policy, but left both federalism and Czech nationalism alone. The intellectuals prepared to send their representatives to Vienna, whither, as Havliček admitted, ‘they would never have gone but for Windisch-Graetz’. All this was pure gain for the Crown, for any attempt to realize the extremist Czech programme would certainly have produced elemental reactions among the Austrian-Germans, who had watched all that went on in Prague with undisguised hostility.96 As it was, the question of the future structure of Austria was back in the safe channels of the Constituent. And while it was true that the leadership of the Czech movement was now again in the hands of men who stood fairly far to the Left on social and purely internal political issues, they were so much more interested in the national question than the social that there was no danger that they would ally themselves with the Austrian Left. It was rather to be expected that they would adopt the course which in the event they followed, of supporting the Government in the hope of being rewarded by it with national concessions.