The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

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  The exclusion of Austria from Germany brought with it far-reaching changes in the balance of political forces inside the Monarchy, most of these being indirect, and deriving from its direct effect, that which it had on the position of her Germans. For those of them who were very strongly nationally minded the event came as a grievous spiritual shock: no longer able to feel sincerely that in serving Austria, they were also serving Germany, they became prey to a painful conflict of loyalties. For such men the natural policy for the Germans of Austria would henceforward be ‘to work for the separation of its German districts from Austria and their return to the mother-land’.135

  Even for those who drew no such conclusions a new situation had in fact been created by the loss by Austria of her membership and nominal leadership of the German Bund. Austria’s authority over the other German States had long been a mere shadow, while theirs over her internal affairs had been non-existent. Nevertheless, the connection had, in a way which was perhaps irrational but none the less real, given the Austrian-Germans courage and confidence, and had made them feel that their claim to leadership within the Monarchy was natural and even unquestionable. If the Treaty of Prague was to be final, this backing was lost to them for ever. Austria, no longer even titularly a German State, must adjust itself to becoming a multi-national one, and in that its Germans must fight their own battle, as one national group among the many. They were still the largest of those groups, and still socially, economically and culturally the most advanced of them, but their numerical superiority was only relative – the non-Germans outnumbered them by three to one and the Slavs, taken together, by two to one – and their other advantages were bound to dwindle as education spread among the non-Germans and wealth accumulated in their hands. Whatever shape the Monarchy took in the future, it could not, on any reasonable calculation, be that either of Bach’s absolutism, or of the February Patent. It would have to allow some further concessions, either to the Slavs, or the Magyars, or both.

  Actually, very few of the Germans appreciated all this in 1866–7. As Kleinwächter says bitterly of the change in their policy which, in his view, ought to have come, ‘nothing of the sort occurred’. The only immediate reactions of a nature to influence immedate political developments in the Monarchy came from a small group in Graz, connected with Kaiserfeld’s Autonomists, which very early after the Peace of Prague136 began to ventilate ideas some of which were later to become popular. For an immediate policy, they began to advocate going further even than the Dualism which the Autonomists were already supporting, and giving Galicia-Bukovina a similar status. With Dalmatia attached to Hungary, this would leave a unit consisting only of the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands, in which the Germans would be in a safe majority. They also held that history would end by bringing about the break-up of the Monarchy and the adherence of its German parts (including the Bohemian Lands) to the new Germany, and this should be prepared for by economic and cultural assimilation. A German national party should be founded to realize this programme.

  The Autonomists’ Party Conference at Aussee in 1868 later formulated the new ideas more precisely. Not only 1848 and 1861, but also 1867 had been too ambitious, for the predominance of the Germans in 1867 Reichsrat was founded on an undemocratic franchise, which could not (and ought not to) last long. ‘We must give up the untenable Cis-Leithania, and put in its place German-Austria, which once belonged to the German Reich’. The link with Galicia and the Bukovina should be reduced to a personal union, Dalmatia attached to Hungary. Then the Germans could stand up to the Czechs and Slovenes in the Reichsrat, and negotiate with them, ‘for the strong can safely grant what the weak must refuse’. ‘Today we cannot and may not seek the Anschluss with Germany, but we must form a national body in Austria.’137

  A ‘German-national Association’, with this programme, was founded in Graz in 1869, and similar bodies in Vienna and Klagenfurt.

  But at this crucial juncture (1866), none of the Germans outside Styria seemed to realize that their position had changed at all. Those who grieved at Austria’s catastrophe told themselves comfortably that it would soon be reversed. The Liberal leaders actually believed that the defeat had strengthened their position by the discredit it cast on the war party, whom ‘it just served right’.138 There was no need for any concessions to anybody: rather the contrary.

  But others were not so blind. The non-Germans saw clearly that the balance of forces had changed, and were preparing to make their dispositions accordingly. In this situation it was important that the Hungarians were the only nation among them which offered the Government a firm foundation on which it could build.

  The Poles had, indeed, just carried through a very important readjustment of their political line. Finally disillusioned by the failure of the 1863 revolt as to the possibility to which they had thitherto clung,139 of an early restoration of Polish independence through help from the West, they had decided (a group of Conservatives taking the lead) that the best long-term hope for Poland lay in a strong Austria, no longer a threat to their national existence now that Austria was excluded from Germany. The Austrian Government had met them more than half-way, if only because their good will would strengthen Austria’s international position. Martial law had already been lifted in April 1865; an amnesty for political prisoners had followed in the same November, and in the following September Belcredi had reappointed Goluchowski Statthalter, accepting his conditions: that the administrative partition of Galicia should be definitively abandoned, Polish made the exclusive language of administration and education above the primary level, and the services purged of their remaining non-local elements. Meanwhile, a meeting of Polish leaders had agreed on a programme of loyalty to the Crown in return for far-reaching autonomy for Galicia, and in December the Galician Diet voted an Address to the Crown which expressed this policy in gratifyingly lyrical terms.

  This, however, was a purely self-regarding policy which was not even necessarily hostile to Centralism in the rest of the Monarchy, provided it did not extend to Galicia. The Czechs saw that they could not realize their ambitions except in the framework of a general federalization, and in August, called a ‘Federalists’ Conference’ in Vienna, to which they invited Goluchowski, and also Strossmayer from Croatia, and to which they submitted a plan for reorganizing the Monarchy into a ‘Pentarchy’ of five federal units, ‘Old Austria’, ‘Inner Austria’, the Bohemian Lands, Hungary-Croatia and Galicia. But this failed to satisfy Goluchowski, who thought he could make better terms for Galicia alone, nor Strossmayer, who wanted Croatia released from the link with Hungary. Still less, of course, did it satisfy the Slovenes, who had not even been invited to the Conference which disposed of them so cavalierly,140 and who now produced their own programme for a Great Slovenia. Belcredi himself asked how he was expected to realize a programme the authors of which were not agreed between themselves. Meanwhile, both Czechs and Slovenes indulged in demonstrations of hostility against the Germans which made the latter determined to maintain the maximum of centralism in the Hereditary and Bohemian Lands, even if it meant letting Galicia and Hungary go their own ways.

  To all this, the attitude of the Hungarians presented a refreshing contrast. There had, of course, been voices enough in Hungary, when the war broke out, that Austria’s difficulty was Hungary’s opportunity, and a Hungarian legion had been enlisted to serve with the Prussian arms. This enterprise, however, had proved a fiasco141 which had done the extremists more harm than good, while when the peace came to be signed, Bismarck had forgotten his Hungarian tools as completely as Napoleon III had done seven years before. Deák had – not without difficulty – kept the country behind him, and when, after Königgrätz, Francis Joseph asked him, in a personal interview, what his terms were now, he had replied that they were exactly the same as before Austria’ defeat.

  It was also very important that the man now figuring as Deák’s right-hand man and negotiator-in-chief was none other than Count Gyula Andrássy, re
cently returned home, under an amnesty, from an exile in the course of which his name had been nailed to a gallows-tree for his services to Kossuth. Benevolent fairies had blessed Andrássy with exceptional personal charm, a most persuasive tongue, and a lineage which made him hoffähig. Further, although far shallower in mind than Deák, he had more appreciation of non-legal, political considerations. And one element in his political creed strongly influenced the direction in which the further negotiations developed. As a native of North Hungary, Andrássy was by his very environment keenly alive to the Slav danger, and the movements among the Slovaks, coupled with certain indiscreet utterances by Palacký, had bred in him a conviction, which afterwards determined his whole policy, including his foreign policy, when he became Foreign Minister of the Monarchy, not only that Hungary would not be safe unless she formed part of a Great Power – that is to say, her safety lay in a close connection with Austria – but that that Power must not be dominated by Slavs. He therefore disagreed with the Hungarian Feudalists even to the extent of not allowing the realization of the Böhmisches Staatsrecht. In a memorandum which he submitted to Francis Joseph in 1866 he argued that ‘an artificial reconstruction of the Bohemian Crown and a grouping of the Slav provinces round it would only begin in Austria a work which would necessarily end outside it’,142 and in private audience he is said to have summed up the principle of Dualism (of which he may almost be called the main author) in the words: ‘You look after your Slavs and we will look after ours.’

  He could not, of course, dictate what the structural arrangement of the Monarchy outside Hungary should be, but he did make it clear to the world that the hopes of a settlement with Hungary would be the brighter if his views were met, with the consequence that not only Kaiserfeld’s Autonomists but the German-Austrian politicians in general (except the hard core of Greater Austrian centralists) began to look on the Hungarian Liberals as their natural allies against the Austrian-Slavs.

  The Hungarian demands still seemed to Francis Joseph excessive, and his personal sympathies were strongly with Belcredi and his circle in Austria, and with the Old Conservatives in Hungary. But the balance was tipped by two individuals. One was the Empress, who had fallen victim to the insidious Hungarian charm and used all her influence with her husband to persuade him to meet the Hungarians’ wishes.143 The other was a new-comer to Austrian politics in the person of Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Saxony, whom, on 30 October, Francis Joseph suddenly appointed his own Foreign Minister, vice Mensdorf.

  The primary object of the appointment was foreign political. Francis Joseph was still unreconciled to his defeat at the hands of Prussia, and Beust’s mission was to organize an anti-Prussian front among the lesser German States (the existence of the secret treaties which Bismarck had concluded with Bavaria, Württemberg and Hesse was not yet known in Vienna and could hardly have been suspected, seeing that after their conclusion Bismarck promised to leave those States the possibility of joining a South German League), and beyond that, among other States jealous or frightened of Prussia. He had, as yet, no mandate to intervene in the internal affairs of the Monarchy, of which he had, as his enemies did not tire of pointing out, little knowledge. But it was, after all, obvious that the Monarchy could not hope to stand up against Prussia, much less wage a successful war against her, without internal political appeasement. The appointment of Beust would certainly help appease the German-Austrian Liberals – he was himself a Liberal and a Protestant, as well as something of an anti-Slav,144 and the very fact that he was a foreigner was an advantage where Hungary was concerned, for it would have been difficult to find an ‘Austrian’ with whom the Hungarians could agree (poor Elisabeth wanted Andrássy made Foreign Minister, but this would have outraged the Austrians in their turn, besides being unacceptable to Francis Joseph, at that stage, on many other grounds). At all events, Beust wasted little time. On 20 December he made a surprise visit to Buda-Pest, where he established personal contact with the Deákists, and thereafter strongly urged Francis Joseph to come to terms with the Hungarians, himself assuming the role of intermediary.

  There were still obstacles to be got over, for although, when the Hungarian Diet met in November, Francis Joseph now declared himself willing to appoint a responsible Hungarian Ministry (for the Presidency of which Andrássy was designated,145 he still asked for more central control and more ‘common’ institutions146 than Deák was willing to concede. Deák, on his side, had to fight against continuous pressure from the Left Centre in the Hungarian Diet, who regarded what Deák was prepared to grant as unnecessarily generous, and even as treachery to the Hungarian cause,147 while Croatia contributed its mite when the Sabor met by again appealing to Vienna, restating the majority’s thesis of Croatia’s complete independence and asking for direct negotiations with the Monarch, as King of the Triune Kingdom, on the relations of that Kingdom with the Gesammtmonarchie.

  Nor were the difficulties confined to the Lands of the Hungarian Crown. Belcredi, as we saw, had promised the Cis-Leithanian Diets that any agreement reached with Hungary should be laid before them, and Beust, too, was at that juncture of the view that the agreements would have to be laid before the Narrower Reichsrat.148 It seemed, however, highly unlikely that that body would agree to anything which the Hungarians, for their part, would accept; it certainly would not if Belcredi could help it. On 2 January 1867, he procured the issue of a Patent dissolving the Cis-Leithanian Landtage and ordering preliminary elections for an ‘Extraordinary Reichsrat’, which was to meet on 17 February for the promised consideration of the outcome of the Hungarian negotiations. The Landtage were to be free to elect their representatives to the Reichstag either by Curia or from their plenums. The result, which was that intended by Belcredi, was that Bohemia, Moravia and Carniola, with the Tirol, returned federalist majorities large enough to dominate the House. These were certain to reject any Dualist settlement, and would presumably try to substitute for it some federalist system agreeable to themselves. The Centralists among the German Liberals were themselves hostile to Dualism, although from a different angle to the Slavs, and they made the deadlock complete by announcing that they would not attend the House manufactured by Belcredi, nor, indeed, any ‘Extraordinary’ Reichsrat at all.

  There were, however, two quarters whose attitude was not entirely negative. Among the Poles, Smolka’s ‘Federalists’ favoured an alliance with the Czechs, but the other Poles intimated their readiness to support Beust in return for an assurance of some measure of autonomy for Galicia. On 10 September 1866, Kaiserfeld had convoked his followers to a meeting which was also attended by some sympathizers from the other German groups, and persuaded it to adopt a resolution in favour of Dualism.149This gave Beust enough to go on with. He demanded a show-down, and on 7 February the Emperor, with great personal reluctance,150 decided in his favour. Belcredi resigned, and Beust took over his portfolio. The German Liberals as a whole consented to attend the Reichsrat on condition that it was an ‘ordinary’ one, although the centralists said that they would not take their decision on the settlement with Hungary until they saw what its terms were. The Poles were not agreed between themselves just how much self-government they wanted, but Beust gave them general sympathetic assurances which they agreed to accept, and they decided by a majority to attend the Reichsrat and support the Government. Since the Czechs and Slovenes were not open to similar transactions, Beust dissolved the Landtage of Bohemia, Moravia and Carniola151 and ordered new elections in those three Lands. The Reichsrat was to meet in May. Meanwhile, he got together a non-Parliamentary administration to carry on current business.152

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  The negotiations with Hungary were now taken in hand seriously. The Croats were told that their request was incompatible with the Pragmatic Sanction and ordered to send representatives to Pest to negotiate a settlement with Hungary within the framework of that instrument. On 18 February Andrássy was entrusted with the formation of a responsible Hungarian Govern
ment, and this body153 took the oath on 13 March. The report of the sub-Committee of Fifteen was taken as a basis for the further negotiations, which were, indeed, carried on under continuous pressure against them from both sides, especially the Hungarian Left. On 26 May, on the very eve of the conclusion of the negotiations, a Hungarian paper published a ‘Cassandra Letter’ addressed by the exiled Kossuth to Deák, prophesying woe to the Compromise and accusing its author of having sacrificed the honour and vital interests of the country to a short-lived and illusory expediency. ‘The existence of the Habsburgs,’ Kossuth wrote, ‘is incompatible with the independence of Hungary.’ Reprinted as a pamphlet, this letter had an enormous circulation in the country, where it reinforced the already widespread belief that Hungary was making a bad bargain.

  This, however, actually helped Deák and his supporters to resist the counter-pressure which was coming from the Viennese centralists and the Hungarian Old Conservatives, and if in the final negotiations on details the Hungarians gave way on a few points, the Crown conceded many more; while in the haste many points, some of them of great importance, were (to the great detriment of later relations between the Crown and Hungary) left without any proper definition at all. But to both sides, speed seemed more important than scholarship, and on 29 May the Diet accepted the results of the discussions as ‘Law XII of 1867’, voting it in the end by the comfortable majority of 257 to 110. On 8 June, Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary, with all the traditional pomp. On 28 July he gave his Royal sanction to Law XII.

  The Law satisfied Hungary’s basic demand in that it explicitly recognized the principle of legal continuity, the changes, as compared with the April Laws, being described as amendments to the earlier instruments. Those amendments were, however, fairly extensive in practice. Foreign Affairs, Defence, and the financing of those two items, were recognized to be ‘common subjects’ – i.e., common to Hungary and to the rest of the Monarch’s dominions, and each of them was to be conducted by a ‘common’ Minister. These three Ministers were the executants of the Monarch’s old regia potestas, which, as we know, had formerly been unlimited in these fields, but the Hungarian Law now limited the Monarch’s treaty-making powers by the stipulation that the foreign representation of the Monarchy ‘as well as the requisite dispositions with regard to international treaties’ fell within the sphere of the common Foreign Minister, ‘acting in accordance with the Ministries of both parts [of the Monarchy] and with their consent’.