And meanwhile things had been taking what were, from the point of view of the Court, pronounced turns for the better alike in Galicia, in Italy and in Germany.
In March, German Liberal opinion, including that of Prussia, had been sympathetic enough to the Poles, and had actually advocated the restoration of Poland. The Poles of the Grand Duchy were claiming full independence, and for a time Prussia had been near granting it. The Polish émigrés were being allowed to return from Western Europe across Germany to their homes, where it was hoped that they would prove themselves the advance-guard of the armies of liberty. But very soon the Prussians took fright at the possibility of war with Russia, and also at the exaggerated demands of the Poles, who claimed for their future State many areas which were purely, or largely, German. On 10 April actual fighting broke out between Prussian and Polish troops. Prussia refused to allow any more émigrés to enter her territory, and the trains were diverted to Cracow.
Stimulated by these new arrivals, the Poles of Cracow formed a Rada, or National Committee, which turned itself into a sort of government in exile and behaved as though it were the real government of Galicia. The threads with Lemberg were taken up again, and a plan hatched for a new coup. The Councils in Cracow and Lemberg were to proclaim simultaneously that they had taken over the government of Galicia from the Austrian authorities; and the proclamation was to be accompanied (as had been planned in 1846) by an announcement to the peasants abolishing the robot and all other servitudes as from 3 May. The proclamation was to be made at the great national Easter festivity of Świecone, which fell that year on 25 April (Easter Monday). Posters appeared announcing that this particular day would be made the occasion for especial celebration.
The Austrian authorities, however, suspecting the real motives of the proclamation, set a cordon round Cracow, refusing entry to any except Austrian subjects. Further, an order was issued prohibiting the manufacture or carrying of unauthorized arms (i.e. the scythes which had achieved such dire prominence in 1846). On the 25th, then, street fighting really broke out, and lasted that day and the next, on a scale so considerable that the garrison had to use artillery before it was quelled. But at 7 p.m. on the 26th the Poles capitulated. They were granted an amnesty, but the National Committee was dissolved, all arms had to be surrendered, and all émigrés who were not Austrian citizens had to leave the city.
Meanwhile, the Galician Diet had met in Lemberg (apparently self-convoked) on the 25th, had announced that it no longer represented authority in Galicia, delegated one member from each Kreis to join the Rada, and prorogued itself. But here, too, the Government succeeded in reasserting itself. On 15 April, Stadion had learned of the Poles’ intention to emancipate the peasants and had sent an urgent message to Vienna to say that he would be unable to hold Galicia much longer in its existing relationship to Austria.97 The Ministerial Council received this message on the 17th, and acting with unusual promptitude, sent him back permission (or orders) to forestall the Poles’ move, by himself announcing the liberation of the peasants, as from the Government. On the 26th accordingly, Stadion announced in the Emperor’s name that all dues and servitudes arising out of the nexus subditelae would cease in Galicia as from 15 May.98 Compensation for the landlords was to be paid by the State, at a rate determined later through constitutional channels. At the same time he had the Rada’s premises closed and forbade it to meet again.
Now, too, the Ruthenes went into action. When one of them had asked the meeting which constituted the National Council to include in its demands equality for his people, he had been physically maltreated. The Ruthenes had therefore been forced to seek their own salvation. After consultations conducted under the auspices of the St Georgites, they sent a message to Stadion assuring him that all they asked was ‘to be freed from the yoke of the Polish overlordship, to be recognized as a nation99 and to be allowed to live as one nation among the others in Austria, as an integral factor in Monarchy, with their own institutions’. They asked to be allowed to form their own Rada.
With great relief, Stadion granted their request. The Rada constituted itself, made an official announcement that it wished to remain loyal to Austria and would never seek adherence to Russia, and drew up a petition which, compiled as it had been in consultation with Stadion, was an extremely modest one: it did not even ask for what was afterwards the Ruthenes’ main desideratum, the constitution of East Galicia as a separate Land, but only for adequate instruction in its own language where the population was wholly or mainly Ruthene; that officials in those areas should understand Ruthene and laws, etc., be published in that language; that the Uniate Church should be treated on an equality with the Roman Catholic, and that Ruthenes should be eligible for the public services.100
On 3 May, Stadion wrote to Vienna, enclosing the petition and reporting the formation of the Rada, in which body, he said, ‘he at last saw a means of paralysing the Polish influence and getting a backing for Austrian rule in Galicia’. The Ministerial Council, with equal relief, returned the Ruthenes a friendly answer, granting most of their requests. At the same time the Poles were at last given the definitive answer to their petition, and to their complaints against the Constitution: some of the points in the petition had already been fulfilled, others, including the request for the formation of a national army, were incompatible with the Constitution, and must be rejected.
These moves took the sting out of the Polish agitation (Prussia, too, was getting the situation in Poznania under control), and the situation in Galicia went for a while off the boil, but continued to simmer.
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The turn of events in Lombardy was even more encouraging. Latour, a stalwart defender of the old order, had been sending all available troops down to Radetzky. At San Lucia, outside Verona, Radetzky on 5–6 May had won a victory over the Piedmontese which, although the forces involved were small101 was so important strategically that one of his biographers has described it as the turning-point in the whole history of Austria in 1848.102 It marked an unmistakable turning of the tide, and had an enormous effect in heartening Austria’s defenders and intimidating her enemies. It still, indeed, left Radetzky’s position extremely hazardous, for the Austrian armies were still confined to the Quadrilateral, where Peschiera itself fell on 30 May. Negotiations for fusion were going on between Turin, Milan and Venice; they were not going easily, but it seemed clear that Turin and Milan, at least, would soon reach agreement. The Austrian Government was still in favour of cutting its losses in the south, and on 24 May sent an emissary, Hofrat Hummerlauer, to London to ask the British Government to mediate peace on the basis that Lombardy should be ceded, while Venetia remained part of the Monarchy with full administrative and national autonomy. But Palmerston refused to mediate except on the basis of total cession by Austria both of Lombardy-Venetia and of the Italian Tirol, and when Wessenberg then repeated the Austrian offer to Count Casati, head of the Provisional Government in Milan, telling Radetzky to offer Charles Albert an armistice during the negotiations, Casati, too, rejected the offer, on 17 June. The prospects of a political compromise had vanished the more completely because in the preceding week first Lombardy, then Venetia, had announced its adherence to Savoy.
But meanwhile larger reinforcements, from Moravia and Galicia, had been reaching Radetzky,103 and on 11 June he had won another important success, when he re-took Vicenza. He now thought himself able to foresee complete victory if he could have another 20,000–25,000 men. When he received the instructions to offer Charles Albert an armistice, he put them in his pocket,104 and instead sent an urgent message to the Court asking for the reinforcements (also insisting that the Frontier Regiments must not be recalled)105 and begging the Court not to conclude an armistice. The messenger bearing this letter, Windisch-Graetz’s brother-in-law, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg arrived in Innsbruck on the 19th.106 He persuaded the Court, in principle, to suspend the armistice negotiations, and then went on to Vienna, where he convinced a Ministerial Council, met under
the presidency of the Archduke John,107 that Lombardy could be saved if Radetzky’s army was reinforced. On 1 July the Government issued an official declaration that it had resolved to prosecute the war in Italy and to leave its outcome to be decided in the field.
A few rather hot-headed speeches had been made in Frankfurt when the proceedings opened there on 18 May, and the Vorparlament’s decision to create its own central authority, obtaining the consent of the Government’s ex post facto, was alarming, but the danger that anything might really be done diminished steadily as the talking got into its stride, and almost vanished for Austria when, on 29 June, the assemblage elected the Archduke John ‘Imperial Vicar’ (Reichsverweser) of the New Germany, and on 18 July chose the Austrian, Schmerling, to be Minister of the Interior in the new ‘Reich Ministry’.108 Finally, Hungary was more than preoccupied with her own internal problems, which had created a situation in which her Government also thought it worth while to bid for the favour of the Crown; it, too, sent messages to Innsbruck condemning the violence of the Viennese mob and inviting Ferdinand to come to Buda, where he would be safe.
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In this situation, the Court consented to a move towards reconciliation with Vienna. The Government had repeatedly begged Ferdinand to return, or if he would not do so, to send the Archduke John to represent him.109 Hitherto, Ferdinand had withstood all pleas, but after Wessenberg and Doblhoff had repeated their representations most earnestly, on 14 June,110 he (or his mentors) relented and agreed that the Archduke should go. This, in the event, proved to lead on to another period which brought the Right further advantages, for during it they increased and consolidated their forces while the Left further dissipated theirs; but it is by no means certain that the move was the mere piece of time-saving hypocrisy as which Left-wing historians commonly represent it, for John himself was a sincere friend of constitutional reform and there can be little doubt that he hoped that his presence in Vienna would help the moderate reformers to consolidate their position.111 At all events, when he arrived in the capital on 24 June, he promised the crowds which welcomed him to respect all popular rights and liberties; and no one doubted his sincerity.
The Committee of Security and its allies, for their part, were far from regarding their battle as lost. They continued to besiege the Government with imperious demands, two of which they pressed with especial vigour: that the franchise for the Reichstag should be to their liking, and that Windisch-Graetz and Thun should be called to account for their doings in Prague. Pillersdorf had given them partial, but incomplete, satisfaction on the former point: the revised franchise issued by him on 30 May gave the vote to independent workers domiciled in their constituencies, but still excluded other categories of workers, and retained the system of indirect voting. But he would not, or dared not, touch Windisch-Graetz, nor, for that matter, Thun.112 Consequently, the Committee, which only six weeks before had begged Pillersdorff to remain in office, now decided that he was a reactionary, and on 8 July, demanded that he should be replaced by Doblhoff. The Archduke, without resistance, let him make an unreluctant exit from public life.113 John then had to go to Frankfurt to be invested as Imperial Vicar, but he came back on 17 July, and the new Ministry was announced the next day. It was not altogether what the Liberals had asked for, for they had demanded a clean sweep of the old men, and the Court had insisted on keeping its own men in the three Gesammtmonarchie posts, and Wessenberg now became Minister President, since Doblhoff did not want that post, preferring the Interior for himself,114 while Latour and Krausz retained their portfolios. But the others were new men, and all with political reputations satisfactory to the Committee: Dr Theodor Hornbostel (Trade, Industry and Agriculture) was a prominent Liberal; Bach (Justice), the ‘Minister of the barricades’ and himself a member of the Committee of Security; von Schwarzer, a journalist (State enterprises), was one of the five men nominated by the Legion for seats in the Reichstag.
With feeling running as it already was in Vienna against the Slavs, the Committee was probably no less pleased at the Germanic and centralist complexion of the new Government, which was far more pronounced than that of its predecessors. Since Kolowrat’s resignation, most of the previous Ministers would, if pressed, probably have called themselves Germans, but nearly all of them had been really of the a-national mentality of the old Austrian civil servant.115 Most of the new men were quite consciously Germans, and political centralists. Evidence of this was given when, a week after his appointment, Doblhoff dismissed Thun.116
In any case, the Left accepted the new Government with reasonable satisfaction, and the next weeks passed in an atmosphere of general cordiality, for which the Archduke’s tact and his personal popularity were largely responsible.117 Meanwhile, the elections for the Reichstag had been held (at various dates over the turn of June/July), with results which history was to prove to have been characteristic for the course of such events in Austria. The astute Czechs, once they had decided to go to Vienna, had picked their best men to go there, these including Palacký, Rieger, Havliček, Breuner, Pinkas and Trojan. The Italians of the Littoral and the Slovenes had also sent national leaders. The ‘elections’ in Galicia, which had been held under the pressure of two factors operating in opposite directions – Polish landowners and Austrian officials – had produced an incongruous assemblage of Polish nobles and Polish, Ruthene and Roumanian peasants.118 The lists of the Germans, many of whose best men were in any case away in Frankfurt, and who had made no attempt to organize their representation (they had also taken conspicuously little interest in the elections)119 contained representatives of every imaginable social stratification and local interest, from Tirolean ultra-clericals to Viennese pinks. Neither of the social extremes was strongly represented; there were few Deputies with titles, except from Galicia, and no industrial workers. 94 of the 303 Deputies were peasants, but most of them from well-to-do families; middle-class intellectuals provided the next largest occupational group.120 There were very few real reactionaries, and only a handful of true radicals;121 most of the Deputies were a little to the right, or a little to the left, of the centre. 160 of them were Germans, 225 Slavs, Italians or Roumanians.
In fact, the Reichstag’s activities while it was in Vienna were to prove barren enough, except for one achievement. The Government’s Rescript on the peasant question had not had the desired effect of bringing about an agreed and equitable solution of the problem. According to the chief authority on the subject,122 it had even ‘awakened the most lively mistrust’ among the peasants, who saw in it an indication that their servitude was going to be prolonged over another harvest, and they boycotted the negotiations on the compensation problem in the hope that if they delayed matters long enough, the State would pay any compensation to which the landlords managed to make good a claim. They simply stopped doing the robot, and the Estates of most Lands, themselves anxious not to negotiate from a position of disadvantage, accepted this, formally renouncing the robot with an expression of hope that they would be given equitable compensation. It was in any case difficult for them to make any binding agreements while their own future was so uncertain.
At the third session of the Constituent, its youngest Deputy, a Silesian peasant’s son named Kudlich, proposed a motion that ‘the subject-nexus, with all rights and duties deriving therefrom, be immediately abolished, without prejudice to the question whether and how compensation is to be paid’. Many objections to this vague wording were raised from the landlords’ side, while the peasants and their friends opposed any compensation being paid at all. After this point had been decided in the landlords’ favour by a small majority,123 the question ‘how’ was referred to a Committee, which discussed it for weeks. Finally, on 9 September, the Reichstag accepted a revised motion that the nexus subditelae, whether on rustical or dominical land, with all laws, etc., deriving from it, was abolished in all Lands for which the Reichstag was competent. The landlords’ rights were divided into three categories, according to which they wer
e to receive: (a) no compensation at all; (b) ‘equitable compensation, to be supplied in part from public funds’; (c) the full value, to be paid by the beneficiary.124 The details were to be worked out in the form of a law.125 The Patrimonial Courts were abolished.
With this exception, the Reichstag’s history in Vienna was one of frustration. The Deputies began to trickle in early in July, but so slowly that the original opening day had to be postponed, and it was only on 10 July that a quorum could be reached, even for preliminary business. Early on during this, the Deputies came up against the problem which neither they nor their successors ever completely solved, of how to reconcile the principle of national equality with the practical requirement of getting any effective work done at all. While all the Ministers were German-speakers, as were more than half the Deputies, most of the Polish, Ruthene and Roumanian peasant Deputies understood not a word of that language, while the Czechs and Italians, although able to speak it, would not consent to its being adopted as a ‘language of State’, nor even as the language for the proceedings of the Reichstag. The immediate problem was solved empirically; those who could speak German did so ‘without prejudice to the question of principle’, while the rest got through as best they could, sometimes simply obeying a leader’s signal when it came to voting. Then came the question how the Reichstag should organize itself for its proper task, the preparation of a Constitution, for the results would probably depend largely on the machinery devised to achieve them. Eventually, on 31 July, a ‘Constitutional Committee’ was formed, composed of three members from each Gubernium (this was a victory for the Germans), and this in turn appointed a Committee of Three126 to draw up a charter of ‘fundamental rights’ and a Committee of Five127 to cope with the structural problem.
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