The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  76 Sophie wrote in her diary: ‘we are like a mouse in a trap here’ (Corti, p. 209), and Ferdinand himself wrote, in a little diary which he kept of his journey: ‘We were told that the people and the students meant to storm the Palace, set it alight, and murder us; that was the reason that forced us to leave Vienna.’ See also Walter, pp. 94 f.

  77 Hoyos, after being arrested and kept prisoner for some days, had been deposed from the command of the former body; Colloredo resigned from that of the latter. Their successors (a retired Colonel named Pannasch and a retired Captain named Koller) were respectable nonentities.

  78 On him, and the ‘navvies’ crisis in general, see Violand, op. cit., pp. 125 ff., Zenker, pp. 24 ff.

  79 It had been proposed at first to use the labour for carrying on the construction of the Südbahn from Gloggnitz to the Semmering, but the plan had to be dropped, and the ‘works’ consisted almost entirely of shifting earth on various sites on the periphery of Vienna.

  80 On this see Helfert, II. 233; Walter, op. cit., p. 107.

  81 This view was shared by Francis Joseph. ‘The Ministers’, he wrote to his mother on 23 May, ‘are really to blame for everything’ (Schnürer, p. 100). He warmly approved both the flight and the Innsbruck Manifesto, which was multiplied and circulated to the troops in Italy (Id., p. 107).

  82 As Pillersdorf writes, they asked the National Guard on 15 May whether it had enough troops to restore order; the answer was in the negative. They then tendered their own resignations, these were refused. They had no other choice but to yield (Rückblicke, p. 43).

  83 The first man approached was Wessenberg, who declined on the plea of his advanced years and unfamiliarity with domestic problems. Then Stadion, who had come to Vienna for consultations; he, according to Helfert (II. 269), ‘felt that his time had not yet come’, Montecuccoli also declined.

  84 The Estates of Styria, for example, asked that Styrian soldiers should not be sent on active service without their (the Estates’) consent.

  85 See below, p. 388.

  86 Gubernialkommision.

  87 Nationalausschuss, Narodni Zbor.

  88 He was sent back from the front, where he had displayed considerable dash, soon after, at Radetzky’s earnest request. He arrived in Innsbruck on 9 June.

  89 The account given here of the absolute rejection of Thun’s principal proposals rests on the incontrovertible documentary evidence quoted by Walter, op. cit., pp. 145 ff. It is thus certain that the version which, according to Denis, op. cit., pp. 280–1, was still being maintained in his day by some Czech historians, that Ferdinand had agreed to the emissaries’ proposal, was erroneous.

  90 The conflict between Poles and Ruthenes (who, according to Fischel, Panslavismus, p. 268, had arrived in Prague in large numbers, ‘firmly determined’, as they told the Military Commandant of Cracow, ‘to oppose anything suggested by the Poles’) had been the most difficult inter-Austrian problem facing the Congress. The Ruthenes had been developing their ideas quickly since March and now asked that Galicia be partitioned into a Polish and a Ruthene Crownland. Thanks largely to the mediation of the Czechs, they dropped this demand; on the other hand, the Poles agreed that the two languages should be on a complete equality in public life and education, the decision which should be used in each District being left to the local majority to take. This agreement was submitted to the Crown, with the Address.

  91 Libelt had been sentenced by a Prussian Court in 1847 to twenty years imprisonment but had been released in March 1848 and then elected to the Frankfurt Vorparlament.

  92 The chronic technological crisis due to the introduction of machinery had been aggravated by the failure to arrive of supplies of American cotton, owing to the difficulty (of itself caused by the military operations in Italy) of getting them up from Trieste (Endres, op. cit., p. 107).

  93 Thun likewise maintained strongly, in a later letter, that the revolt in Prague ‘was not started by the ultra-Czech party from nationalist motives; it had been organized by French, Polish and Viennese extremist agitators in the interests of their republican ideas’. Other authorities, including Sacher-Masoch, testify to the part played in it by Polish émigrés.

  94 Among the dead (who ultimately numbered four hundred) was Windisch-Graetz’s own wife, who was killed by a stray bullet as she stood at her window.

  95 See below, p. 497 f.

  96 The Volksfreund of 24 June registered the utmost pleasure at the catastrophic fate of what it called ‘the Slavic association of lunatics in Prague’. ‘The victory over the Czech party in Prague’, it wrote, ‘is and remains an occasion for rejoicing’ (the article is quoted in full in Rath, op. cit., pp. 262–3). ‘The Prince’, writes Bibl (Tragödie, p. 155), ‘received enthusiastic addresses of thanks from numerous associations in Germany.’

  97 Helfert, II. 1–2; Walter, op. cit., pp. 62 ff. The usual tradition attributes the suggestion of liberating the peasants to Stadion; Till in his biographical note on Stadion in Gestalter, p. 382, even writes that he acted without consulting Vienna at all. The documents quoted by Walter do not bear this out; according to them, Stadion wrote in despair saying that he saw only two possible courses, either to give Galicia up altogether, or to hand it over to ‘a national Government under Austrian protection’, for the head of which he suggested Goluchowski. The proposal to forestall the Poles with the peasants came from Pillersdorf himself, and was supported by Krausz, whose earlier career had been passed in Galicia. It is of course, possible that the messenger by whom Stadion sent his letter made the suggestion verbally.

  98 The order was extended to the Bukovina on 1 July.

  99 ‘Nation’ is obviously used in the technical sense of a corporate autonomous body.

  100 The text of the petition, which is signed by Jachimowicz and two others from ‘the Institute of the Lemberg Stauropygia, as representatives of the Ruthene people’, is given in Fischel, Sprachenrecht, pp. 285 ff. It is dated there 19 April. I cannot account for the date, unless the Ruthenes were using the Old Style calendar. The documents in general show that Stadion did not take the initiative towards the Ruthenes nearly so decidedly as is generally believed; he seems to have been very nervous about their possible Pan-Slav tendencies. The often-quoted quip that he ‘invented’ the Ruthenes was first launched by the well-known journalist Moritz Gottlieb Saphir.

  101 The total Austrian losses in dead, wounded and missing, were only eighteen officers and 318 O.R., but it was a victory won over what seemed to be great odds, and it meant the failure of the Piedmontese attempt to take Verona, which would have meant the collapse of the entire Austrian positions. See the description in Kiszling, op. cit., I. 116–24.

  102 Frh. von A. Wolf-Schneider, Der Feldherr Radetzky, cit. Kiszling, op. cit., p. 123.

  103 The first of these under Nugent arrived on 29 May, having defeated a force of papal troops en route.

  104 It used afterwards to be said, with a good deal of truth, that the Monarchy owed its survival in 1848 to the disobedience to their orders of three Generals: Radetzky, on this occasion; Windisch-Graetz, who several times overrode orders from Latour; and Jellacic, whose defiances of authority are too numerous to be listed.

  105 For the conflict then in progress between Hungary and Croatia over the Frontier regiments, see below, p. 379 f.

  106 A laudatory account of Schwarzenberg’s part in these transactions will be found in Kiszling, op. cit., pp. 34 ff.

  107 The Archduke had just arrived in Vienna to act as the Emperor’s homo regius there (see below, p. 372).

  108 He was promoted Minister President when the first holder of that office, Prince Leiningen, resigned it.

  109 The Archduke Franz Karl was out of favour with the people, who regarded him as tarred with the Metternich brush. They probably also believed him to be entirely under the thumb of his wife, the legend of whose democratic sympathies had by this time been thoroughly exploded. John had arrived in Innsbruck at the end of May.

  110 Walter, p.
199.

  111 It is interesting that Sophie disapproved of the choice, because, she said, John was ‘too thick with other people’ (Corti, op. cit., p. 299).

  112 Perhaps out of timidity, Pillersdorf had not even rebuked Thun for his constitutional extratour, merely sending him the Emperor’s decision. After the Whitsun fighting, the Government had decided that the situation was too explosive to disavow either man publicly. Windisch-Graetz had received an effusive letter of thanks from Ferdinand, and a high decoration from the Czar, for his achievement.

  113 He allowed himself to be elected to the Reichstag, but took no part in its proceedings, and never held another public office.

  114 He also took over provisionally the Ministry of Education.

  115 When, early in May, Sommaruga had asked to be relieved of his post, his colleagues had thought it important that the post should go to a Slav, and had offered it to Palacký, who, however, had declined it.

  116 His successor was Frh. von Mecséry, an official of the Prague Gubernium.

  117 He was also sagacious enough to parade round with him his agreeable morganatic wife, who had a considerable success.

  118 Seven of the eight Deputies from the Bukovina were peasants. The Galicians divided about equally into Poles, and Ruthenes or Government nominees.

  119 In no constituency were more than 100 of the possible 2,500 primary votes cast; in one, only 20.

  120 The full occupational list, according to the Oesterreichischer Kalender for 1849, was: priests, 20; higher nobles, 19; lesser nobles, 27; industrialists, 18; merchants, 9; advocates, 48; officials (this title probably includes private black-coated workers), 74; doctors, 22; professors, 13; journalists, 9; ‘miscellaneous bourgeois occupations’, 22; peasants, 94; unknown, 9.

  121 Five of the fifteen Deputies for Vienna had been nominated by the Academic Legion, and passed for Left-wing, but not all of them proved to be so. The other ten Viennese Deputies were sober bourgeois.

  122 Grünberg, Grundentlastung, I. 378.

  123 174 in favour, 144 against, 36 abstentions. It is alleged by some Left-wing writers (e.g. Fischer, op. cit., pp. 82, 86) that the Galician peasants, who had to have everything explained to them through interpreters, voted for the compensation under a misapprehension.

  124 For details, see below, p. 461 f.

  125 As we say below, the Reichstag wanted its conclusions to be adopted immediately as a law, and had to be told by Bach that it could not adopt a valid law without the Emperor’s sanction.

  126 Rieger (Czech), Violand (German Left), Hein (German Centre).

  127 Mayer (German Centre), Smolka (Pole), Palacký (Czech), Gobbi (Italian), Goldmark (German Left).

  128 It did, however, adopt motions guaranteeing the immunity of the Reichstag as a whole, and of its members individually.

  129 This was the Reitschule opposite the Hofburg.

  130 Some of the Germans refused to the last to join any grouping, but the bulk of them ended by dividing into three groups: the Verband der Deutsch-Oesterreicher, who were really schwarzgelb, opposed to any closer link with Germany and strongly centralist for Austria; the Zentral-club, led by Lasser, also ‘Austrian’, but prepared to allow the Landtage a fair measure of autonomy; and the Democratic Left, left-wing on social issues, and still hankering after co-operation with the left in Frankfurt.

  131 The Committee had sent it an eloquent address (reproduced by Hartig, pp. 324 ff.) which opened with the words ‘Sovereign Assembly of our Reich’.

  132 See Walter, pp. 191 ff. The powers were ante-dated for form’s sake for 25 May, so that he appeared to have been in possession of them at the time of the June outbreak in Prague.

  133 The date of this letter was 28 August.

  134 In the elections of 1870, which were held on the 1848 franchise, there were 890,000 persons qualified to vote, this being 6·7% of the total population.

  135 For figures on land distribution, see above, p. 269. 634, 134 heads of families, occupying in all 254, 629 whole sessions (thirty-seven per cent of the arable land and leys under cultivation), received their land in freehold.

  136 When Pulszky went to Vienna in late April, he was struck by the disorderly conditions still prevailing there, whereas in Pest already ‘the city had hardly any revolutionary character any more, the flags and cockades had vanished, the noise of the popular assemblies had died away, the intoxication of fraternization was over’ (op. cit., II. 117).

  137 Spira, op. cit., p. 208.

  138 Pulszky (II. 159) adds another to the list which I give below: the Bourse. This is probably fair enough, when we consider the later attitude of Viennese financial circles, but these influences operated too far below the surface to be recorded.

  139 Lest these sentences should give a misleading impression, it should be emphasized that the Old Conservative programme accepted the emancipation of the peasants.

  140 Rückblicke, pp. 31–2.

  141 Pulszky, II. 145.

  142 Id., p. 115.

  143 The instructions for the Hungarian emissaries to Frankfurt (see above, p. 354) were shown to Pillersdorf, who found nothing to object to in them. The emissaries were received in Frankfurt by the Archduke, although boycotted by Schmerling. The instructions had been very carefully worded.

  144 All Hungarians called up during this period were being sent straight down to Italy.

  145 It has seemed convenient to take these movements in inverse order to their importance, thus getting the minor figures off the stage before the dénouement.

  146 The leaders of this group were the pronounced nationalists, Štur and Hurban, but even their attitude was ill-defined. Štur, in a speech at Špere on 2 April, called for Czech help against the Magyars, and again asked for help when he went to Prague for the Slav Congress, but he objected when some Czechs wanted the Slovak areas attached to Bohemia-Moravia, and Hurban, who was with him, said that the Slovaks ‘were only seeking protection against the Magyars: they did not want to destroy the historic bonds linking them with Hungary’, the Slovaks’ programme at Prague (with which the Hungarian Ruthenes associated themselves) asked for the transformation of Hungary into a multi-national State of equal ‘nations’, with appropriate facilities for the language of each in administration and education. Incidentally, not all the Czechs at the Conference wanted Czecho-Slovak union, although Havliček wrote a series of articles in favour of it in Národny Noviny.

  For the rest, the Slovaks’ attitude in general was completely quot homines. While, later, some of them joined the bands raised by Hurban to invade Hungary, others enlisted in the Hungarian Honvédség; one of the Slovak battalions of that force was reported to be one of the two finest units in the Hungarian army. The later so-called Polish Legion was composed largely of Slovaks passing themselves off as Poles (see Leiningen, op. cit., pp. 193–200).

  147 See above, p. 25. This constitutional rule, or usage, would have enabled a negative vote by the Saxons to veto the Union even in the face of a much larger vote in favour of it from the two other Nations.

  148 He also advised the dispatch of a Royal Commission to Transylvania to prevent the Union.

  149 Gaj, too, was in Vienna and seems to have given the same advice, which was passed to Kolowrat by Windisch-Graetz.

  150 See the letter by Leininger (op. cit., p. 80): ‘Nobody wants the National Guard, the rich because they are too indolent, the poor, because they believe that it is intended to make “Grenzer” of them. And the mere thought that they might be wanted for the protection of their country is sufficient to turn these men into rebels.’ The letter was, indeed, written on 11 April (in connection with local recruiting in South Hungary), but seems to have summed up general feeling fairly enough. Many contemporary accounts and reminiscenses testify to the widespread indifference to, or ignorance of, the national cause shown by the peasants.

  151 The Archduchess Sophie was thereafter a fervent admirer of his: she used to speak of him as ‘the admirable Jellačić’ (Corti, p. 307).r />
  152 See above, p. 370.

  153 This, as it happened, marked a very favourable contrast with something that had occurred in Hungary. A Hungarian squadron in Galicia had left its station to come back to Hungary, where the Ministry of War had admitted its conduct to be an offence but had excused it as an ‘excess of patriotism’.

  154 Pázmándy had returned to Hungary to assume the Presidency of the Lower House.

  155 For the fate of this offer, see Horváth, op. cit., pp. 341–7. At first there was considerable enthusiasm for the proposal in Frankfurt, but it gradually petered out as the difficulties became apparent.

  156 Bach set out his views on the Hungarian question in a memorandum (printed in Friedjung op. cit., I. 489 f.; cf. id., pp. 65 ff.) which he addressed to Doblhoff some time in the summer or early autumn (it is undated, but certainly written before the October revolution). There is little difference between the proposals set out here and the measures actually adopted six months later.

  On these developments see also Friedjung, op. cit., pp. 67–8, Redlich, Staats-und Reichsproblem, I. 190. Walter, unfortunately, does not regard the subject as relevant to his theme.

  157 These famous verses were published in the Donauzeitung of 8 June.

  158 One of these (on the Hungarian side) was Pulszky, who has left an account of the meeting in his memoirs, II. 134 ff.

  159 This document was printed by Helfert in his Revision des ungarischen Ausgleiches (Vienna, 1876), pp. 157 ff. It is analysed at length in Springer, II. 496 ff. and Redlich, op. cit., I. 191 ff. It was the work of Hofrath Pipitz, an Austrian Referent for Hungarian affairs, and had been approved by the Austrian Ministerial Council on 27 August.

  160 Corti, op. cit., p. 308.

  161 Deák himself had objected to the Rescript as illegal. Kossuth had taken his seat on the Opposition benches, but returned to the Government bench after Szemere had given the lead.

  162 Batthyány and Jellačić had agreed at their meeting to withdraw their respective troops from the Drave. Batthyány had honoured his word, so that West Hungary had been left undefended. Jellačić had broken his.