The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  Both the Serb and the Croat petitions were rejected, but Jellačić personally had much better fortune. Received in audience on the 19th, he protested his loyalty so eloquently that his audience, according to a witness, was moved to tears. This touching scene might still have left history unaltered (although it was important for the future that Jellačić won the hearts of the ladies of the Court);151 but this was the very evening when Prince Schwarzenberg arrived from Italy with Radetzky’s letter.152 This put the trumps back into the Croat’s hand. The Court decided to leave him, for the time, in the position of de facto Ban, and the Archduke John was asked to mediate between him and the Hungarians. Jellačić for his part issued a proclamation to the Frontier troops in Italy, exhorting them to stand fast and do their duty.153 Then he set out on his return journey.

  Meanwhile, fighting had broken out in South Hungary. Stratimirovics had collected a considerable force, which included some ten to twelve thousand partisans from the Balkans. On 10 June he ordered the Serbs of the Voivody to arm and take up battle-stations. By the 12th fairly widespread, although local, fighting was going on. This ‘little war’, as it was called, went on intermittently throughout the summer.

  Under the impact of this news, the Hungarians resorted to the desperate and dubious expedient of publishing the two Rescripts of 10 June, the missing counter-signature being supplied by Szemere. It was not a successful venture. Hrabowski refused to act on the documents, as having no legal validity in the absence of Esterházy’s signature. Jellačić, whom the news reached on his return journey, was naturally infuriated, but then said cheerfully: ‘Now I will act on my own, and will get better results than I could with my hands tied.’

  He could not yet take much positive action, his troops being away in Italy, but he could afford to wait, for whatever the technical constitutional position, he had by now reached a clear understanding with Latour and with the centralists in the Austrian Government, who in the last days of June sent Buda-Pest two extraordinary Notes: one demanding that Hungary reconcile herself at all costs with Jellačić, ‘otherwise it would be obliged to renounce its neutrality towards Hungary’; the other, requiring it to pay 150,000 gulden in silver for Jellačić’s forces. A third Note protested against Kossuth’s issue of paper money, as infringing the monopoly of the Austrian National Bank.

  In remarkable contrast with this stood the first proceedings of the Hungarian Diet, which duly opened on 4 July and heard the Palatine read it two Rescripts, both dated 26 June, the one enjoining him to inform the Diet of Ferdinand’s fixed determination to preserve the integrity of the Hungarian Crown and to maintain the April Laws, the second investing the Palatine himself with quite unlimited plenipotentiary powers and enjoining all ecclesiastical, civil and military authorities in Hungary, Transylvania and the Partes Adnexae, including the Military Frontier, to obey him implicitly. There appeared to be one more hope of reconciliation with the Crown, on the basis of Batthyány’s offer to reinforce Radetzky’s army; but here, too, things went wrong, largely owing to Kossuth, who had become increasingly impatient with ‘Vienna’. For weeks past he had been absenting himself from the Ministerial Councils (partly on genuine grounds of ill-health) and on 1 July had begun issuing a paper of his own, ‘Kossuth’s Journal’, the radical nationalist tone of which was extraordinarily embarrassing to his fellow-Ministers. Nevertheless, he was so popular in the Parliament that his colleagues decided to let him be the Government’s spokesman when it asked the House for the men and money; and when he did so, on 11 July, he put the request purely in terms of Hungary’s own needs. Announcing that ‘the Fatherland was in danger’ from attacks by Serbs, Croats and Czechs (inspired, he hinted plainly enough, from Vienna) he asked the Diet to vote two hundred thousand men, forty thousand of them immediately, and forty-two million florins, ten million of them immediately, these to be raised either by a loan, or by the issue of paper money. The smaller figures might still have constituted a move to honour Batthyány’s promise, but the larger ones could only mean an intention to raise and equip a national army; especially when the Government decided that most of the recruits should be enrolled in Honvéd formations, where they would be safe from ‘Imperial’ influences.

  Worse followed. The Government wanted to include in the reply to the Address from the Throne a passage pledging itself to send the promised troops to Italy, and Kossuth again was entrusted with sponsoring this passage to the House – his colleagues dared not pass him over, and felt that probably no one else could get the promise out of the reluctant House. But Kossuth again let his feelings run away with him. He put the motion, on 20 July, but himself proposed that it should be made conditional on Austria’s ceding Lombardy. His horrified fellow-Ministers forced him to go back on this, but he still asked the House to stipulate that Lombardy-Venetia should be given a status so independent as to amount to a personal union.

  The day before this, the Government had instructed Szalay, in Frankfurt,154 to seek to conclude with Germany an alliance of mutual defence against attack from ‘a Slav element, or other Powers allied with a Slav element’.155 On 3 August the House passed with acclamation a Resolution (again supported by Kossuth from the Government benches) that ‘should the Viennese Government become involved with the ‘German’ Central Executive over the question of German unity, it can in no wise count on Hungary’s support’.

  No one in Vienna now doubted that Hungary was simply preparing to create her own army and her own fiscal system, and to separate herself entirely from the Monarchy.

  *

  This was the situation as between Hungary and the rest of the Monarchy when the news of Radetzky’s triumph in Italy arrived. As we have said, this completely altered the balance of the military forces, for not only was there now no further need for Hungarian troops in Italy, but Croat and other units could be brought back from Italy and used against Hungary.

  But we should be falsifying the picture if we represented what followed simply as a drive against Hungary by the reinforced military arm of the ‘Camarilla’. The protagonists on the Austrian side were, indeed, the Court and the three Generals, Windisch-Graetz, Latour and Jellačić, with Radetzky helping where he was needed. But it is important to emphasize the full, and in the case of most of them, willing support which the Generals received from the Austrian Ministry. The Ministry’s position vis-à-vis Hungary had always been somewhat ambiguous, for, as we have seen, the definition of the ‘common’ subjects under the April Laws had been unclear, and none of the three Ministers in Vienna holding the Portfolios concerned had ever fully accepted the Hungarian interpretation of them; Latour, in particular, had opposed it with all his resources. The other Ministers, however, had regarded themselves as competent solely for Austrian ‘interna’. But a change had come in July, with the appointment of Bach, who was a convinced and even a fanatical centralist for the Gesammtmonarchie, and in the following weeks, by appropriating for himself the role of interpreter of the constitutional position in relation to the Gesammtmonarchie, firmly turned the Austrian Ministry into an instrument of the Camarilla’s Hungarian policy, overriding the doubts of his more hesitant colleagues, among whom neither Wessenberg nor Doblhoff seems to have been quite happy about the way things were shaping.156

  Neither should we be justified in drawing any sharp contrast between the policy of the Ministry and Austrian public opinion in general, inside the Reichstag or outside it. This was divided. The convinced and doctrinaire Left, conveniently forgetting their rejoicings over the Czechs’ disaster in Prague, and as conveniently ignoring the national element in Jellačić’s case, and regarding him simply as a tool of the reaction, stood for national freedom all round, both on grounds of principle and because they saw that the defeat of one opponent of the gathering reaction would further weaken the position of all the others. For them, the Hungarian Government was leading the battle for national and political freedom in the Monarchy.

  But these views were now practically confined to the Viennese Left
and the Polish radicals. The Czechs were not going to lift a finger to help the Hungarians, especially in view of the latters’ activities in Frankfurt. And many even of those Austrian Germans who a few months before had called themselves Liberals, had rejoiced sincerely in March in the overthrow of the ‘system’, and perhaps still genuinely believed (as Bach himself did) in constitutionalism for themselves, had since been finding it increasingly hard not to be unregenerate where other peoples were concerned. Every student of Austrian history is familiar with Grillparzer’s apostrophe to Radetzky after his victory at Santa Lucia:157

  ‘Glück auf, mein Feldherr, führe den Streich,

  Nicht bloss um des Ruhmes Schimmer;

  In deinem Lager ist Oesterreich,

  Wir andre sind einzelne Trummer.’

  Grillparzer had been a vigorous and sincere critic of the Metternich system. Yet he was able to rejoice in these glowing verses over an event which not only dealt a heavy blow to what everyone regarded as the cause of popular liberty in Italy, but marked a signal success for the forces of reaction in the Inner Monarchy.

  Radetzky’s second victory, which was celebrated no less memorably by another Muse (in Strauss’s famous march), brought an extension and intensification of these feelings. Black and yellow was advancing, red retreating, all along the line. Increasing numbers now wanted only to see Austria consolidated and powerful, no matter whether she was free or not, and consequently sympathized wholeheartedly with the known objectives of the impending action against Hungary.

  Incidentally, opposition to the Government based on German national feeling was going the same way as Liberal opposition. It had flared up in May at the time of the Slav Congress, and when there had seemed to be a danger that the Court might go over to Austro-Slavism. Now, however, that this threat had passed over, those who looked to Frankfurt were only the same group who pinned their hopes on Hungary, and both feelings were becoming increasingly identified with social radicalism, and objectionable to the Court on both social and national grounds.

  This development was, of course, important for the evolution of events in both halves of the Monarchy, since the anti-Hungarians hesitated ever to

  embarrass the forces which were preparing to move against Hungary. More and more, the Right of the Reichstag developed into a solid force on which the regime could call in all its actions. The hostility of the Czechs, in particular, to Hungary – whether it was justified or not is another question – was undoubtedly one of the factors which facilitated the triumph of the reaction also in Austria.

  *

  The first move in the new parti was played by Jellačić. The conversations à trois under the Archduke John’s chairmanship had never taken place, for first Jellačić made excuses not to appear, then the Archduke had to go to Frankfurt, and contented himself with calling Batthyány and Jellačić to him, on 25 July, and exhorting them to agree. They met the next day, with their advisers158 and then the Croat not only demanded fulfilment of both the Croats’ and the Serbs’ national programmes, but also, as though he were the very mouthpiece of the Camarilla, demanded that Hungary should give up her separate Ministries of War and Finance and take over a share of the national debt. Oddly, he seems at the end to have been overtaken by a fit of Slavonic sentimentality and to have held out prospects of concessions if Hungary would make further proposals, and Batthyány returned from the interview not altogether despondent. But in the next days, the civilians went into action. Batthyány committed the curious tactical error of asking the Austrian Ministry whether it stood by the Pragmatic Sanction or not, and whether or not it would support Hungary against Croat separatism. The Austrians replied that it was they, and the Croats, who were standing loyally by the Pragmatic Sanction, but before giving a definitive answer, they must study the question.

  The Court’s next step, which came on 22 August, was to withdraw the Palatine’s plenipotentiary powers, which meant that sanction for any law now had to come from Vienna. A week later Batthyány and Deák came to Vienna to ask sanction for the bills for putting the Army vote into effect, and it was refused – the Court no longer wanted a Hungarian army.

  Neither did it want Buda and Zagreb reconciled. Latour, having obtained a credit for the purpose, was now sending down arms, supplies and money to the considerable, if motley, force which Jellačić was assembling on the Drave. The second-in-command of this force, General Neustädter, told the troops that they would shortly be marching into Hungary in the name of the Emperor.

  This situation determined the fate of the new proposals for a Hungaro-Croat settlement which the two Hungarians had brought with them. These had been worked out by Deák and Szemere, and went to the very limit of concession. The Ban was to be head of both the civilian and the military apparatus in all Croatia-Slavonia, including the Frontier Districts. A Minister for Croatia was to sit in the Hungarian Ministry, and a Croat Secretary of State to be attached to the Minister a latere. Croat was to be the sole official language in Croatia-Slavonia. The Hungarian Ministry, when it approved this draft, had decided that if the Croats did not accept it, they would be satisfied if Croatia simply concluded an alliance with Hungary. Only Fiume and the Hungarian Littoral must remain with Hungary, as essential to her economically.

  The Hungarians did not even get as far as the Crown with this offer. They were referred to Latour, who told them that nothing short of cancellation of the April Laws would suffice. On 31 August they were presented with a letter from Ferdinand to the Palatine saying that he had received a memorandum ‘from his Viennese Ministers’, warning him that the April Laws were themselves illegal, since Austria had not consented to them, and that Hungary’s course since the spring had been such as to endanger the unity of the Monarchy. The Palatine was invited to send members of the Hungarian Cabinet to negotiate with the Austrian Ministerial Council on the basis of the memorandum, the conditions for the conversation including:

  That Jellačić, reinstated in his offices and dignities, should take part in them.

  That the Military Frontier should be placed provisionally under the Viennese Ministry of War.

  That all attacks by Hungary on Croatia-Slavonia and the Frontier should cease.

  The memorandum was attached to the letter. The fruit of the ‘studies’ initiated by the Austrian Government, it was an extensive piece of legal argumentation, which, however, ended in the purely political conclusion that ‘the existence of a Kingdom of Hungary separate from the Austrian Empire must be described as politically impossible’.159

  Thus not only was the Court now openly taking Jellačić’s side against Hungary, and openly repudiating Ferdinand’s signature to the April Laws, but the ‘Viennese Ministry’ as a whole was identified with the Government of the entire Monarchy, and the proposition (for which there was no shadow of legal or historical justification) laid down that the representatives of the Austrian Lands had, and had even possessed in March 1848, a right to be consulted on the Monarch’s transactions with Hungary.

  The same day, Croat troops occupied Fiume and proclaimed its incorporation in Croatia.

  The Hungarians, naturally, denied absolutely that ‘Austria’ had any right to intervene in their relations with the Crown, and took hurried measures of self-defence. New Honvéd formations were authorized and appeals issued for recruits for these units, to which Hungarian officers and men from the regular forces were invited to transfer. The Diet, however, on Kossuth’s proposal, resolved to make one more appeal to the Crown, and to send a deputation with it to Vienna. It is true that the memorandum, reflecting as it did the extreme anger of the nation, was more defiant than suppliant in tone. It asked Ferdinand to come immediately to Hungary, to free his entourage of members of the Camarilla, to remind the troops in Hungary of their duty and to order them to take up arms against the rebels, and to secure the evacuation by the Croats of Fiume and Slavonia.

  The deputation, one hundred members of the Diet, led by its President, reached Vienna (where Batthyány had been wait
ing for them) on the 6th. They were not received at all until the 9th, because their demands were considered ‘impertinent’,160 and when at last they were admitted to the Presence, they were given only a completely non-committal answer. Their real answer came in a communication which, to their stupefaction, they read that same morning – in a copy of the Agramer Zeitung. This was a Rescript, dated the 4th, from Ferdinand to Jellačić, which revoked the Innsbruck Rescripts, reinstated Jellačić in all his offices and dignities, and expressed the Emperor’s confidence in him.

  On the 11th, Jellačić led his troops across the Drave.

  The constitutional position in Hungary now fluctuated wildly for some days. The Government had already lost several of its members. Széchenyi’s reason had given way; on the 5th he threw himself into the Danube, and on being rescued, was taken to an asylum outside Vienna. Esterházy had resigned in protest against the Austrian memorandum, and Eötvös had taken refuge in Germany. When the Archduke Franz Karl confirmed to Batthyány that the report in the Agramer Zeitung was authentic, Batthyány himself resigned, his resignation entailing that of the Ministry as a whole. The Court charged the Palatine with the conduct of affairs ad interim, but when the Rescript to this effect was read out in the Diet on the 11th, Szemere and Kossuth declared that since the Rescript was not counter-signed, they refused to resign their portfolios.161 Kossuth asked the House to let him put the Army vote into effect, and when this was agreed, at once set about raising the recruits and printing new money. The Palatine begged Batthyány to form a new Government, and Batthyány got together a list of names which excluded Kossuth, Szemere, and even Deák, but he stipulated that the Court must order Jellačić to leave Hungary. The Court delayed with its answer, and Jellačić continued his advance, which so far had been unopposed.162 At the same time the Serbs opened a new offensive in the South, and Hurban led a troop of partisans which had been organized in Moravia, into North Hungary, where, on 19 October, they proclaimed an ‘independent Slovakia’.