For the smaller landlords, especially those of Galicia and Hungary, who had not owned the capital to employ hired labour and had thus really depended on the robot, the land reform often proved a sheer disaster. They were given no advances on their compensation, for which they often had to wait many years. The peasants asked rates for working outside their land which were much higher than the landlords could afford to pay; in many places they could not be induced to work for any consideration whatever – they simply took enough out of their own holdings to satisfy their unexacting needs and then went to sleep. Private credit cost 30–40% a year. This class was largely ruined: in Hungary something like twenty thousand distraints took place in a single generation. Their difficulties were, indeed, the opportunity of the strong; the land which came on the market was bought by their richer neighbours, either directly or at second-hand, after the transaction had enriched a Jewish speculator en passant,76 so that one effect of the land reform was to increase the disproportionate share of the land, especially but by no means exclusively in Hungary, held in mammoth estates.
It is true that this, like the opening up of neglected woodlands to rational exploitation, of which Czoernig writes with appreciation, must indeed be counted, on balance, as a profit from the Mancunian point of view, in so far as it tended to place the national resources of the country in the hands of those able to exploit them most efficiently, but in this respect as in others, the conquerors’ chariot passed over the bodies of innumerable victims.
The effects on the other branches of the Austrian economy of the various economic measures of the time – the land reform, the fiscal unification of the Monarchy, the liberalization of the tariff policy, the development of communications, etc. – were, again, not uniform. It was a time of rapid modernization, and as always in such periods, the gains of the strong were made in part at the expense of the weak. The weak, it may be said at once, included both the small independent craftsmen and the factory workers. The Church did use its influence to prevent the abolition of the guilds, which thus did not take place until 1859,77 but otherwise, in spite of its strong position, did nothing to check the Mancunian ruthlessness of the Ministries and the employers. Cardinal Rauscher’s ultra-conservative philosophy rejected the principle of Christian brotherhood, and while it admitted that of Christian paternalism, it did little to enforce it.
Thus the small men were continually on the defensive; the complaints of the Viennese artisans against the competition of sweated factory labour were as bitter in the 1850s as they were to be in the 1880s. For the factory workers, the gains which some of them had achieved in 1848, which had never been statutory, disappeared when ‘order’ was restored, leaving hours and conditions of labour almost completely unregulated and wages dependent purely on the relation between supply and demand. The bright side of the picture for them was that demand was usually good and the acute crises of technological unemployment which had blackened the previous decade did not recur.
The new conditions brought the collapse of many of the smaller Hungarian industries, driven out of the field by Austrian competition, and even of some Austrian firms which had owed their previous survival to import prohibitions or near-prohibitive tariffs. On the other hand, entrepreneurs who possessed the resources, enterprise and intelligence to take advantage of the new freedom and the widened opportunities, profited substantially. The stronger Austrian industries gained more from the opening up of the Hungarian market than they lost from the weak Hungarian competition. Many of them also gained considerably from the freer trade with Prussia, for certain branches of Austrian industry, especially the textile, were at that time stronger than their Prussian counterparts. For several years, moreover, the discount on silver at which the gulden was quoted acted as an export premium. A large number of new industries were founded, especially in Bohemia and Moravia, and production in some fields rose very rapidly. Both textiles and woollens enjoyed a long boom. Heavy industry received a big stimulus from the expansion of the railways: the production of iron, pig and cast, in the Monarchy rose from 2,985,000 tons in 1849 to 5,269, 143 in 1854; that of coal, from 17,352,825 tons to 37,345,827.
It should be added that although the biggest gains were made by the Bohemian Lands and Lower Austria, the balance-sheet even of Hungary was not entirely passive. The absolutist era itself regarded the Monarchy as a unit from the point of view of planning, and, partly out of strategic considerations, did even more to improve Hungarian communications than those of the West, and in connection therewith, Hungary had her share in the expansion of mining and heavy industry. Furthermore, the economic unification of the Monarchy made Austrian capitalists and entrepreneurs, where not held back by considerations of national patriotism (and the wealthier a capitalist, the less, as a rule, did such considerations weigh with him) perfectly willing to invest capital in any Hungarian industry which promised to yield good returns. Thus the same years which witnessed the destruction of some Hungarian industries saw a rapid development of others for which natural conditions were favourable – flour-milling (this above all), brewing, etc.78
On balance, therefore, the period was one of prosperity and expansion for the industry of the Monarchy, and as a corollary thereof, also for its trade.
The net imports of the Monarchy (Dalmatia excluded) rose from 92,480,787 gulden in 1849 to 219, 165, 017 in 1854; exports even more largely from 62,428,820 to 228,924,871. There are no figures for internal trade, but it may be assumed to have increased at least as fast.
A feature of this development which was to prove very important for the future of the Monarchy was the active part which mobile capital now, for the first time, began to play in it. The Rothschilds passed through an eclipse after 1848, and were even for a while unrepresented in Vienna,79 but their Parisian rivals, the Pereires, saw money in the country and, sometimes in association with Baron Sina, financed a number of enterprises there. Besides this, a private Austrian bank, the Niederoesterreichische Eskomptegesellschaft, founded in 1853, did creditable business. Then in 1855 Bruck got together with the Rothschilds, who were now desirous of driving the Pereires and Sina out of the field (old Salomon Rothschild had just died and his son, Anselm, had succeeded to the Paris branch of the business). In November 1855 a great new private bank, the Creditanstalt, was opened in Vienna under Bruck’s auspices, and with Rothschild help. It was a grandiose enterprise, which numbered among its directors, besides the Rothschilds, persons bearing such historic names as Schwarzenberg, Fürstenberg, Auersperg and Chotek.80 Founded largely to enable the State to sell its railways, in the fashion described below, the new bank also did much general business, and the fortunes of many leading citizens of the Monarchy became bound up with it.
There were, however, two Departments of State which showed less satisfactory results. One was the unfortunate Ministry of Finance. Expenditure in 1848 closed with a deficit of 64 million gulden, and 1849 was worse still; in it, military expenditure rose to the unprecedented figure of 145 m.g. – and that although the campaign in Italy was largely financed through levies on the population,81 while the administrative services were already costing 56·6 m.g. and the judiciary, 4·99, and taxation brought in only 56·6 m.g.; the year closed with a deficit of 154 m.g. Krausz (who rejected Kübeck’s idea of applying again to the Rothschilds) helped himself through by various devices, including fresh borrowing from the National Bank, the flotation of more loans, and the issue of various forms of assignats, which, however, were quoted on foreign bourses at a discount of 8%. He also introduced a new income tax and raised existing taxes, and as these now applied to Hungary, revenue in 1850 showed an increase; receipts from taxation rose to 158 m.g. in 1850 and 184 m.g. in 1851, total ordinary revenue from those years being 180·3 and 205·8 m.g. The war indemnity from Piedmont brought in another 75 m.g. in silver, out of which the Government was able to repay about half its debt to the Bank. Ordinary military expenditure was also slightly lower, but still far above the pre-revolution level, and there were substan
tial items of ‘extraordinary’ military expenditure, including 15·2 m.g. on armaments, 2·4 on the dispatch of an army corps to Germany and 2·3 on payment to Russia for the cost of her intervention in Hungary. Ordinary civilian expenditure continued to rise: the cost of the administrative services was 72·8 m.g. in 1850 and 92·9 in 1851 and that of the judiciary, 10·99 and 17·53 respectively. In addition, large sums were being spent on the railways – a total of about 255 m.g. between 1849 and 1855. Thus there was still a deficit – met by further borrowing – of 80 m.g. in 1850 and of over 50 in 1851, and the premium on silver rose to 150 in November 1850 (on the eve of Olmütz) and was still 133 at the end of the month, and averaged 126 in 1851.
Baumgartner was, nevertheless, not entirely pessimistic when he took over the Ministry of Finance at the end of 1851. There would certainly be another deficit in 1852, but he hoped that the curve was flattening out. When political order was restored it would be possible to collect more of the taxes, the arrears of which were heavy in Hungary,82 and to reach equilibrium by 1858. By that time, however, another 150 m.g. deficit would have accumulated; furthermore, the bank must be put in a position in which it would be able to resume convertibility (for which purpose the State would have to repay it its debt of 75 m.g.) and the State paper money be withdrawn from circulation. For this purpose, another 175 m.g. would be necessary.83
Baumgartner had various suggestions for raising the wind, including the flotation of a new loan abroad, which was in fact successful, although the terms were onerous.84 In February 1854 (the interval seems to have been spent largely in argument between the different financial experts)85 an agreement was reached with the Bank, which took over all the governmental paper money, to the tune of 155 m.g. It was to exchange this gradually for its own notes, the Government pledging itself, once again, to issue no more paper money, and to pay back the 155 m.g. at the rate of 10 m.g. yearly.
But meanwhile the deficits had, as always, turned out larger than expected: not far short of 150 m.g. in the three years 1851–3 alone, making the State’s total deficit since 1848, on ordinary and extraordinary expenditure, something like 920 m.g.86 And 1854 brought, as we shall see, a further turn for the worse.
The other Department of State which entirely failed to keep pace with the demands of the new age was, curiously enough, that of defence. Both Grünne and Gyulai, who was Grünne’s favourite and nominee as Minister of War (later, and disastrously, as Commander-in-Chief in Italy), were guilty of many faults. Perhaps the worst of all was their favouritism: in particular, their assumption that high social rank entitled its possessor to high military command. The senior posts in the army, the number of which doubled, were distributed between members of great families, nearly all of whom were equally lacking in military knowledge, and capacity. Neither Grünne nor Gyulai had ever seen active service, and the training which was prescribed to the troops consisted almost exclusively of spit and polish. The equipment of the army was equally neglected, and it was widely and circumstantially alleged that under Grünne’s careless eye, gross extravagances were committed in the administration of the defence budgets and that unscrupulous contractors made fortunes at the expense of the troops.
In any case, all these measures, good or bad, had, as we have seen, been imposed by completely authoritarian decisions, and had been enforced by methods which permitted no contradiction. The military, where they were in charge of security – and this was often left in their hands even when the ordinary conduct of affairs had reverted to civilian authority – were entirely high-handed, laying down their own disciplinary rules, making their own arrests and conducting their own trials. They were assisted by a new force of gendarmerie which Bach had called into being as one of his first acts as Minister of the Interior;87 and while there was undoubtedly room for such a force – for before its creation, public security had, in most parts of the Monarchy, been left to the local authorities, whose efficacy in safeguarding it had left much to be desired,88 it had not been used only for its nominal purpose of maintaining public safety (in which, when it was extended to Hungary, it proved singularly ineffective, for the population combined against it, and banditry flourished as never before), but as a political instru ment. It was particularly unfortunate that a gendarme arresting a person who was then judicially sentenced received a graduated premium rising from four florins for a prison sentence of less than a year to sixty florins for a death sentence. The ordinary police had been largely reinforced, and under Kempen, also worked in the military spirit which took a real delight in showing the strong hand to civilians.
Spies and informers abounded, and a close watch was kept on all suspicious elements. The press was under strict censorship.
The severity of the regime relaxed only very gradually: in the first couple of years it rather increased as the security services got into their stride. The censorship was stricter in 1851 than it had been in 1850. An attempt made on Francis Joseph’s life, on 18 February 1853, by a Hungarian tailor named János Libényi, resulted in a new intensification of the police terror, not in Hungary alone.
It is true that martial law was lifted from Vienna and Prague on 1 September 1853, and that Francis Joseph’s marriage the next year was made the occasion for many acts of clemency. A large-scale amnesty was enacted, and on 1 May, martial law was lifted from Lombardy-Venetia, Galicia, Inner Hungary, Croatia and the Voivoidina, leaving only Transylvania under it89 (and this exception was removed on 15 December). But in general, the hand of authority grew little lighter. A new Press Law, enacted in 1854, was even severer than its predecessor, and another law proscribed almost every form of association. The changes enacted in the civilian law after the Sylvester Patent included the reintroduction of corporal punishment for ‘workmen and servants’, on the ground that this was traditional in Hungary, and indispensable there, and that it was unfair to make a distinction between Hungary and the rest of the Monarchy.
*
The ultimate question for the Monarchy was, of course, whether its peoples could be brought to accept absolutist rule, and – more fundamental still – the ideology of the a-national State. Up to 1854–5 the prospects had seemed not unfavourable in the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands. The embers of the revolution had smouldered on in Vienna for some weeks or months after the fall of the city. Survivors of the heroic October days met in cafés and wineshops which were regarded as safe, recognizing one another by codes and pass-words, to lament the past over their cups and even sometimes to indulge in pipe-dreams of the future. Since few of the rendezvous were in fact safe from the cocked ears of the innumerable police spies, the list of persons arrested for treasonable activities was a long one, and there were even some executions (although most of the unfortunates sentenced to death were reprieved). Prague, in these early months, was another centre of unrest, and here, too, a large number of victims suffered imprisonment or flogging (a punishment particularly favoured by the military courts, whose hand here was especially heavy). And in Prague, in April 1849, the authorities came on what they described as a serious ‘conspiracy’, the participants in which were punished barbarously.90
This ‘conspiracy’, however – a queer affair in which some students had struck up an underground alliance with the Left in Saxony – was almost the only seriously meant subversive move in the history of these Lands,91 and its participants were only a handful. The vast majority of the penalties inflicted were for minor acts of insolence, or more often, for mere expressions of opinion which a more humane regime would have disregarded. And nearly all the culprits were Left-wing social and political extremists. The bourgeoisie of Vienna, large and small, was only too happy to see the spectre of Red rule banished and its city restored to the position of capital of a great Monarchy and residence of its Monarch. Factories were restarted and shops reopened, with all practicable speed. The Court, with a young and lebensfroh Monarch as its central figure, in place of the ailing Ferdinand and before him, the thrifty and ageing Francis, was gayer than it had been s
ince the palmy days of Maria Theresa; the carnival of 1851 was celebrated as the most sumptuous and lighthearted that Vienna had ever known.
To the provincial bourgeois, the linked domination of Church and State was as congenial as it was familiar; while the peasants everywhere were concerned exclusively with consolidating their gains.
A few of the old Austrian Liberals produced a small oppositional literature (usually, owing to the restrictions on the Press, in pamphlet form). Most of these productions, however, came during the first months, when it was expected that the Stadion Constitution would really come into force, and were directed against features of that document of which the authors disapproved: most of them thought it too centralist. Some of them also expressed impatience at the delays in putting it into force. But as the prospects of a constitutional regime faded, interest in its nature died away, and so, to judge by the outward signs, did even interest in the institution itself. The issue of the Sylvester Patent evoked hardly a murmur;92 the middle classes seem to have minded the clerical legislation far more than they did the political dictatorship.
The open reactions to the new regime of disappointed national hopes were were quite astonishingly weak when it is considered that the most important of all the aspects of the regime was its refusal of any political expression to those hopes. We hear of no national unrest at all among the Slovenes. The central political organization of the Czechs protested strongly against the dissolution of the Reichstag, and after it Palacký for a while continued the struggle: at Christmas 1849, he again promulgated in the Press the idea which he had first put forward in the Reichstag, of federalizing the Monarchy on lines of nationality. When, however, the paper containing this article was suppressed, he withdrew from active politics for a decade. Rieger went into voluntary exile. Havliček, the most single-minded of them all, continued, under great difficulties, to issue another small paper, the Slava, until August 1851, but when that, too, was closed down,93 he found no successor. Palacký’s own party was defeated in the local elections of 1850 by moderates who favoured collaboration with the regime. Altogether, once the initial unrest in Prague had died down, Bohemia became one of the quietest areas of the Monarchy. For this, indeed, economic factors were largely responsible. Bohemia enjoyed the full benefit of the boom, which brought its business classes prosperity and its workers at least full employment, and outlets in plenty for its aspiring young men, for any of whom, if he could find no place at home, a job was waiting in Hungary, or in the gendarmerie, which was largely composed of Czechs. There is no indication that the youth of Bohemia showed any reluctance, during these years, to learn enough German to qualify for these jobs. When Havliček returned from his exile, his most painful impression was that ‘the reaction is in ourselves, and chiefly in ourselves’.
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