The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  In Germany, Schwarzenberg’s messages forced the Frankfurt Parliament at last to draw the consequences. It now decided, by a majority, to exclude Austria and to form the rest of Germany into an Empire, the hereditary throne of which was to be offered to Prussia. Schwarzenberg withdrew Austria’s representatives from Frankfurt, but the sting of the declaration was drawn when, on 3 April, Frederick William refused the offer which a deputation from Frankfurt brought him. His refusal meant, in fact, the end of Frankfurt. The other important German States refused, or retracted their consent to, the Constitution and withdrew their representatives. Germany was its old multifarious self again, and the ‘German quesion’ reassumed its familiar form of a duel between Austria and Prussia, each trying to enlist so much support among the smaller rulers as would enable it to impose a Constitution which assured its own leadership. Endlessly complex diplomatic moves and counter-moves went on, out of which the fact indeed emerged that Germany was not going to accept Schwarzenberg’s terms easily; but neither were the medium and smaller rulers going easily to put Prussia into the dominant position which would be hers if the Austrian counterpoise was eliminated.

  Most of the Western Lands, including Vienna itself, Galicia and Prague, were under military regimes of varying degrees of severity which would have made it difficult for their inhabitants to revolt, even if the will to do so had been present; and of such will, it must be said, there were few perceptible signs.

  But Hungary was a different matter. As early as 5 March, Damjanics, coming up from the south, had defeated the Imperial troops outside Szolnok. The Austrians were thrown back beyond Pest, whereupon Görgey turned north and, after winning another engagement at Nagysalló, brought his troops round in a great semi-circle to Komárom. Meanwhile Bern had almost recovered Transylvania (although the Czar had sent twelve thousand men to help the Imperial forces there) and the Serbs had been pressed back in the south. A few days later the main Austrian army, now commanded by General Welden (on 12 April Schwarzenberg had found the courage to dismiss his brother-in-law) was back on the Austrian frontier. The Hungarians’ success would have been even greater if Kossuth had not insisted that Buda must be retaken, and a considerable force had been detached to invest the city, which fell only on 21 May. Meanwhile on 14 April the Diet, assembled in the great Calvinist Church of Debrecen, had answered the Proclamation of 4 March by declaring Hungary, with all its annexes (Transylvania, Croatia, etc.) a completely independent State, and deposing ‘the perjured House of Habsburg-Lorraine’ from its throne for ever. Pending the settlement of the future form of State, Kossuth was proclaimed President Regent;1 he now appointed a Government under Szemere.

  But this was the high-water mark of the successes of the Hungarian Left. Probably only a minority of the Diet had agreed with the deposition of the Habsburgs. A considerable number of Deputies had absented themselves from Debrecen altogether, and some of those present had formed themselves into a ‘Peace Party’. They were cowed into silence by the extremists, but they remained a powerful potential opposition.

  More serious than the qualms of the politicians were those of the army officers, very many of whom were entirely unable to stretch their oath to cover obedience to a regime which had deposed the Habsburgs. Relations between Görgey and Kossuth had already long been strained; Kossuth disapproved of Görgey’s Fabian tactics, which involved allowing so much of Hungary to pass into Austrian hands, while Görgey resented Kossuth’s frequent interferences with his strategic dispositions. The cleavage deepened still further after the Proclamation of 14 April, although Görgey swallowed it, called on the army to fight on against ‘the forsworn dynasty’ and even entered the new Government as Minister of War. But he was known to have disliked the dethronement, and now some of his officers began asking him to break off relations with Kossuth, proclaim himself military dictator, move his troops to the Western frontier and open negotiations with Vienna. Kossuth’s entourage, knowing this, suspected Görgey himself of ‘treachery’ to the national cause.

  Thus Hungary was divided internally at a time when she needed all her strength. The Debrecen Proclamation had broken down the bridges between Vienna and Hungary. Both sides prepared for a fight to the end, and both looked for support from abroad; but only one, with success. Liberal opinion everywhere in Western Europe sympathized with the Hungarians, in whom it saw the standard-bearers of its own ideals of liberty and democracy, but of the Chancelleries, only Piedmont and the U.S.A., if one does not count Venice, then still holding out in a state of siege, would even listen to them, and none of these could help. Kossuth sent Pulszky, who had taken over the Foreign Ministry when Esterházy resigned, to London, but he got nothing out of Palmerston, since the Foreign Office regarded Austria as ‘an European necessity’. France took up the same attitude. Much less, of course, could the Hungarians hope for help from the Conservative Powers, which were only too anxious to save Austria. Berlin, indeed, set a price on the help which it offered Francis Joseph – recognition of Prussia’s leadership in a Germany from which Austria was to be excluded – which the Austrian Government refused to consider. But ever since Francis Joseph’s accession, the Czar had been sending him reassuring messages that Russia would stand by him with ‘help and advice’ in the spirit of Münchengrätz; he had also stationed a considerable army on the frontiers of Galicia, under the command of Paskiewicz, Duke of Warsaw, as a precaution against any infections invading his own territories, so that the help could come quickly, and as we have seen, some Russian troops had actually been helping the Austrians in Transylvania since February 1849. The only condition which Nicholas laid down was that Austria should ask for the help, and this Schwarzenberg long hesitated to do, on grounds of prestige. By April, however, the Generals in Hungary were agreed that they could not win the campaign without the help, and at last Schwarzenberg, ‘subordinating his personal feelings to the needs of State’, withdrew his opposition.

  The official request went off on 1 May; the Czar sent his orders to his troops within two hours of receiving it. Plans were quickly co-ordinated, and in mid-June Russian armies, led by Paskiewicz, entered Hungary from Galicia. Meanwhile Welden in his turn had been replaced by Haynau, recalled from Italy, with a number of officers, competent like himself (Radetsky had said that he could not spare men, but could send able officers), and the Austrians began a new advance south of the Danube.

  The end could now only be a matter of weeks, which might have been days but for the daemonic energy of Kossuth and the great strategic ability shown by Görgey, Bem and some of their lieutenants, notably Klapka, who held out grimly in the key fortress of Komárom. But Dembinski was less successful, and in any case, the odds in men and metal – 152,000 men with 450 guns against 280,0002 with 12,000 – were too heavy. The Hungarians were driven relentlessly back into the south-eastern corner of the country. Dembinski’s army, the largest in the field, should have joined up with Görgey’s at Arad. Instead, without waiting for Görgey, Dembinski retreated on Temesvár, where his army was annihilated by Russian forces arrived from Transylvania. The appeals for further volunteers were now falling on deaf ears. When the Hungarian Parliament reassembled at Szeged on 21 July, for what was to prove its last meeting, only one magnate – the aged Baron Perényi – was there to represent the Upper House and many members of the Lower House absented themselves. Many of those who did appear did not conceal their hostility to Kossuth. A last attempt by Szemere to placate the Nationalities by offering them extended linguistic facilities brought no response from them whatever.3

  On 12 August Görgey told Kossuth that further resistance was useless, and arranged for the transference of the supreme authority to himself. Kossuth fled to Turkey after burying the Holy Crown under a mulberry tree outside Orsova.4 More than four thousand of his fellow-countrymen accompanied or followed him. At Világos, the next day, Görgey made both military and civic surrender to Paskievicz,5 who reported to the Czar: ‘Hungary lies at the feet of Your Majesty.’

  Thi
s was not, in fact, entirely accurate, for there were other Hungarian forces still operating in various parts of the country, and several fortresses still holding out, which Görgey’s capitulation did not affect. The troops in the field, however, now soon surrendered or dispersed, some of their leaders following Kossuth into exile in Turkey, and the fortresses capitulated one by one. The last of these was Komárom, which actually held out until 4 October, when it surrendered with the honours of war, but as early as 1 September Haynau had felt himself justified in issuing a proclamation which declared the ‘rebellion’ at an end.

  The Emperor’s authority was now re-established everywhere in his dominions, for Venice, the last surviving point, outside Hungary, to hold out against him, had capitulated on 22 August. But it will be appropriate to chronicle in this chapter one more episode, which was really an act rather of war than of peace, the vengeance taken on Hungary. In his proclamation, Haynau ordered all soldiers, officials and members of the Hungarian Parliament to appear before the authorities for screening. His pathological brutality was so notorious that Francis Joseph sent him down an order that no death sentence must be executed without sanction from Vienna; but he protested so vehemently that Francis Joseph, on Schwarzenberg’s advice, revoked the ban, although Haynau still had to report executions which had taken place. The principle on which he worked was, as he said, ‘to hang all chiefs, shoot the Austrian officers who have taken service with the enemy and have Hungarian officers who had formerly been civilians or N.C.O.s in our army conscripted as private soldiers’. His Courts began at the top. Görgey had to be spared, because the Czar intervened personally for him, but on 6 October, thirteen Imperial officers who had served as Generals in the Hungarian army were shot or hanged, and on the same day Batthyány, who had tried to cut his own throat in prison, was shot. Several other personalities shared his fate, including Baron Perényi, who had presided over the Upper House when it pronounced the deposition of the Habsburgs. Haynau’s courts-martial pronounced the death sentence further on 231 more officers and on many civilians, including almost everyone – Bishops not excepted – who had taken a prominent part in the ‘rebellion’, but on 28 October, Haynau was, to his annoyance, told that the executions must stop.6 In all, according to Hungarian sources, about five hundred death sentences were pronounced, 114 of which were carried out, and nearly two thousand persons sentenced to terms of imprisonment, often very long, in prisons or fortresses. There were seventy-five symbolic executions of persons who had fled the country. Persons who had served in the Honvédség as junior officers or other ranks were conscripted into the Imperial army and sent to serve outside Hungary; it is true that many of them had to be released, since the military authorities were unable to cope with the numbers.

  The unhappiest feature of these measures, from the point of view of future relations between Hungary and the Crown, was that they were known to be endorsed by both Schwarzenberg and Francis Joseph himself. There appears to be no documentary evidence for Schwarzenberg’s alleged remark when the question arose of withdrawing Haynau’s unlimited powers, ‘Yes, but first we’ll have a little hanging’, but it was he who, in fact, persuaded Francis Joseph to give way to Haynau.7 The ‘cold vampire’, as Széchenyi called him, notoriously detested all Hungarians (‘except for a few pretty women’) and repeatedly expressed the opinion that not one of them, not even the most aulic magnate, was any better, under his skin, than any other. His offensive snub to Palmerston when the British Foreign Secretary tried to intervene–that England should begin by sweeping her own doorstep–is, at any rate, well authenticated.

  Francis Joseph, too, must bear his share of the responsibility. If he had human scruples, he swallowed them. It is said that his vanity had been deeply wounded by Görgey’s choosing to surrender to the Russians instead of the Austrians, and that this was his way of salving the injury by proving himself the master.8

  It is characteristic of Haynau that he never at all appreciated what hatred he had incurred in Hungary. On his retirement he bought an estate there, and was surprised when his neighbours did not invite him to their parties. He died in 1853. His great-grandson, the last of the line, was found in an attic in Budapest in 1951, dead of cold and starvation.

  *

  The end of the fighting in Italy and Hungary left Austria in an international position which was precarious in the sense that it depended ultimately for its maintenance on force, and the Monarchy was perennially short of the sinews of war; but subject to this reservation, in most respects very favourable. The Czar Nicholas looked on the young Emperor with hope, affection and trust: not only had he no designs on his protégé’s territory, as he proved by withdrawing his armies from Hungary as soon as their task was accomplished, but he was prepared to protect and support him against others. He had not revealed – perhaps not yet begun to entertain in very clear form – those designs of his on the Balkans which were to trouble Austro-Russian relations so disastrously five years later.

  Palmerston was disapproving of Austria’s methods but (except in respect of Lombardy-Venetia) positive in his attitude towards the Austrian Power, as Britain’s official attitude showed when Kossuth landed on her shores. The danger that France would again become a focus of world revolution seemed over, and the new threat that was presently to emerge from Louis Napoleon’s restless ambition was still in the incubation stage. He had, indeed, beaten Austria in the race to occupy Rome, but as the Pope’s attitude proved when he did return to the Vatican, this brought Napoleon no political influence in Italy, and the links between him and Piedmont which in 1859 were to bring about Francis Joseph’s next great military defeat were still unforged. Piedmont herself was obviously not reconciled to her defeat, and it was to be presumed that she would try again to reverse it as soon as she was in a position to do so, but for the moment she was clearly too weak, and too fully preoccupied with internal troubles, to venture the attempt. In the rest of Italy, Austria’s power-position had been re-established firmly enough. The Bourbons were back in Naples. Austrian troops had brought the Grand Duke back to Florence and were stationed in the Duchies and Legations, but they did not need to do much more than walk about and show themselves; Parma and Modena, as well as Tuscany, were little more than Austrian dependencies.

  It was only in Germany that Austria had not yet re-established a position satisfactory to herself and it will be convenient, before turning to a description of the Monarchy’s internal affairs, to summarize the course taken by the ‘struggle for the leadership in Germany’ during the next eighteen months, after which this question, also, reached a temporary standstill.

  The diplomatic coming and going which had set in after Frederick William’s rejection of the German Crown9 went on during the summer of 1849 without producing any perceptible advantage to either Austria or Prussia. On 30 September the two Powers eliminated one factor in the equation by signing an ‘Interim Compact’, under which Frankfurt was to disappear (it was formally liquidated in the next months) and Austria and Prussia jointly to conduct ‘German’ affairs through the old Bund machinery until 1 May 1850, by which time it was hoped that a joint Austro-Prussian Commission, which the Compact established, would have worked out a definitive settlement. But the negotiations which followed brought no advance whatever. Schwarzenberg refused to depart from his terms that the entire Monarchy must be included in the new Reich, which he hoped thus to dominate both politically and economically, for in his and Bruck’s plans the next step was to have been the adherence of the Monarchy (entire) to the Zollverein, which was coming up for revision in 1853.10 Prussia steadily rejected this demand, which was, of course, abhorrent to all German national feeling (a factor to which, as we have said, Schwarzenberg was completely blind, as he was to all popular forces) and busied herself with attempts to establish a ‘Small Germany’, under her own leadership, from which Austria should be excluded altogether. The diplomatic manoeuvrings and counter-manoeuvrings went on, diversified by episodes in which one or both sides took
action appropriate to the position of leader of Germany. One such episode, in the autumn of 1850, which was essentially a question of prestige,11 brought the two States to the verge of war, which Schwarzenberg was prepared to risk. But Francis Joseph, for once, opposed him and the Czar threatened to march into Prussia unless she yielded. She had no choice but to do so, and on 29 November signed an agreement at Olmütz which marked a humiliating retreat from the position which she had taken up on this particular issue. This agreement, however, did not prejudice the larger question of the future organization of Germany, on which the parties could only agree to hold another meeting to devise a definitive replacement of the Interim. This, which took place at Dresden in April 1851, was the real trial of strength, and Schwarzenberg was within a hair’s-breadth of gaining his point, but at the last moment, and by the smallest margin, the fears of the smaller German Princes (and also of the non-German Powers) proved too strong, and the end of the Conference was that Schwarzenberg renounced his demand for including Austria’s non-German Lands in the new organization, while Prussia renounced her claim to revise the Bund Constitution in her own favour, and her efforts to create a rival political organization, dominated by herself, and excluding Austria. The old Bund was, after all, resuscitated in its earlier form. At the same time, Austria and Prussia signed a secret Treaty of Mutual Defence, valid in the first instance for three years, but renewable.

  Map 4