44 How reluctantly, may be seen from the fact that two days after the issue of the Patent, he told his Ministers that ‘the extreme limit had been reached of such limitations on his sovereign power as he was prepared to recognize as admissible’ and he demanded of them ‘a solemn promise that they would use all their energy and the combined application of all their forces to defend the throne against the forcing from it of further concessions, either by pressure from the Reichsrat or the Landtage, or through revolutionary attempts by the masses’ (cit. Redlich, Problem, I. 808).
45 The full list was: Hungary, 85; Bohemia, 54; Galicia, 38; Transylvania, 26; Moravia, 22; Venice, 20; Lower Austria, 18; Styria, 13; Tirol and Upper Austria, 10 each; Croatia, 9; Carniola and Silesia, 6 each; Dalmatia, Carinthia and the Bukovina, 5 each; Salzburg, 3; Gorizia, Istria, Trieste and Vorarlberg, 2 each. Now (and again in 1867) Dalmatia was assumed to lie in the Western half of the Monarchy, its Italian-controlled Diet having taken no steps to initiate the consultations with Croatia.
46 Thus Dalmatia, Trieste and Vorarlberg had no great landlords’ Curia, the first Curia here being composed of the biggest tax-payers, and in some of the smaller Crownlands the Chambers of Commerce were included with the towns. There were several local variations in the composition of the first Curias. In Bohemia, this was divided into two Colleges; the owners of fideicommissa, with 76 electors, and the remainder, with 541.
47 In Vienna, exceptionally, the qualification was twenty gulden – the city’s penalty for having so sinned in 1848.
48 It was abolished in 1868 after having proved itself as ineffectual as all its predecessors. Its President, Frh. von Lichtenfels, was, however, one of the important figures behind the scenes of the regime.
49 Redlich, Franz Joseph, p. 270, records that before accepting office, Schmerling had elicited from the Emperor an assurance that his work in the Western Lands, above all, the Landtag Statutes, ‘must secure for the bourgeoisie and the German element a power-position appropriate to its importance for the Monarchy’.
50 These figures include the virilists.
51 Each Landtag voted as a whole on what representatives to send to the Reichsrat. A Party with a fifty-one per cent majority in the Landtag thus nevertheless provided all its representatives in the Reichsrat.
52 Another means of influencing the voting in this Curia was provided by the fact that ownership of a landtäflich estate was now no longer tied to a birth or local qualification, so that it was possible to make sure of a vote by simply buying up an estate of sufficient taxable value, if necessary, through a man of straw. As we shall see (below, p. 640, n. 2), not infrequent use was made of this device, which was, indeed, restricted in many Lands by the fact that so many of the large estates belong to fidei commissa.
The Crown had another shot in its locker: the Constitution placed no limit on the numbers either of the hereditary magnates, or of the life members, of the Herrenhaus, so that the Crown could alter the balance in that body at will. Francis Joseph exercised this power on a number of occasions, often to get through legislation towards which he was personally unsympathetic.
53 Tietze, op. cit., p. 44.
54 Fischof, Goldmark, Goldner. Fischof was a doctor, a profession open to Jews, and one in which they were already numerous, the other two, medical students.
55 For the names of very many other Jews who played important parts in the Viennese Revolution, see Violand, Soziale Geschichte, a work not at all written in an anti-Semitic spirit.
56 The Kremsier draft had removed all these restrictions and disabilities, and Stadion’s Constitution had taken over the paragraph. Bach had specifically affirmed that this entitled Jews to acquire real property. When the Sylvester Patent cancelled the Constitution, no one quite knew whether this meant the re-imposition of the restrictions, and the provision forbidding them to acquire real property was treated as having lapsed until it was specifically re-enacted in 1853. But the Concordat and its attendant legislation undoubtedly denied them equality in other fields.
57 The true numbers were of course substantially higher than an average of five to a family would give. Tolerated Jews got numbers of protégés entered as members of their families. Others bought Turkish passports, or lived unmolested under various pretexts, or even (by bribing the officials) under none at all.
58 Railway communication between Vienna and Galicia had been established in 1856.
59 In Galicia, where they assimilated at all, it was usually to the Poles.
60 See below, p. 654.
61 Tietze, op. cit., p. 159. The Austrian census, which listed the population by its ‘mother-tongue’ (which was then almost invariably taken as the criterion of ‘nationality’), counted Yiddish as German.
62 Molisch, op. cit., p. 15.
63 The Polish Landtag passed a Resolution to this effect in April, also demanding the exclusive use of Polish in all official transactions in Galicia.
64 The Emperor had nominated Palacký to membership of the Herrenhaus.
65 See on this Denis, p. 444, Eisenmann, pp. 339 ff. One factor in bringing about the alliance was undoubtedly a snobbishness from which neither Palacký nor Rieger was free It appears to have been mediated by Thun.
66 ‘Carlos’ was actually a nickname: he had been baptized the ordinary Germanic Karl. But he was so commonly called Carlos that the name has passed even into the history books.
67 The Bukovinian Roumanians adopted in 1860 the principle of always voting with whatever Government was in power. They remained faithful to this principle up to 1918, even though, of the two main parties among them which held the field up to 1892, the ‘Federalists or ‘Autonomists’ and the ‘Centralists’ (the names explain themselves), one might be in the majority in the Diet in Czernowitz and sending its Deputies to Vienna when the Government there was of the opposite complexion. For example, the Centralists, after gaining the majority in 1871, held it until 1892, but always voted for Taaffe. For the rest, both Parties were merely the followers of rival cliques of landed proprietors, and equally reactionary on social issues.
68 Excluding the Venetians. All works of reference, in counting numbers, ignore the Venetians altogether and reckon the full nominal membership of the Narrower Reichsrat at 203, but the text of the Patent (para. II) excludes only the Lands of the Hungarian Crown from that body.
69 At this stage the Constitutional Landowners did not form a separate Club. Most of them associated themselves with the Unionists.
70 Kaiserfeld himself came, as he never denied, of Slovene stock: his full name was Moritz Blagintscheff, Ritter von Kaiserfeld.
71 This meeting, the so-called ‘országbiroi érteklezet’, was an important one in many respects, for it gave a general ruling that the April Laws were legally valid and that Hungary was not legally bound by any enactments of the absolutist regime. Its immediate effect was to strengthen Deák’s hand. Later, Hungary invoked it to declare herself not bound by the Concordat (see below, p. 690).
72 The qualification that a Deputy must command the Magyar language was, however, dropped.
73 In 1608 a Hungarian Diet had negotiated with the Hungarian King Mátyás II (the Emperor Matthias) before his coronation certain laws which were afterwards recognized as valid.
74 Count László Teleki committed suicide, owing to a conflict of conscience, just before the voting. The shock caused several Resolutionists to waver and absent themselves from the decisive meeting.
75 This was composed by Perthaler.
76 Replaced in his turn in April 1864 by Count Imre Zichy. Incidentally, Forgách was a good enough Hungarian, who often mediated usefully between his countrymen and Vienna.
77 Drei Jahre Verfassungsstreit, p. 146.
78 Eisenmann, p. 351.
79 i.e. of constitutional or historic right, not of ‘Right’ as opposed to ‘Left’.
80 Totally unpractical as he was, Starčević, like the equally unpractical Radić after him, possessed an extraordinary power over the Croat
masses. To them he appealed as no other Croat politician had ever done, and the democratization of Croat political life was largely his work.
81 According to Czedik (I. 17–18) even this result was achieved only ‘through the strong influence of a person who carried great weight at Court’. I have not been able to identify this individual.
82 It certainly did not mean that the Crown bound itself to accept all Croatia’s claims.
83 It is often written that only the Saxons went to Vienna. This is not the case: the 26 were composed of 13 Roumanians, 10 Saxons and 3 Magyars. All the 3 Magyars, and 13 of the other 23, were, however, Regalists nominated by the Government.
84 Shortly before, indeed, Hurban had sent in a petition to Vienna asking for the constitution of an autonomous ‘Slovakia’ which, he promised, would send its representatives to the Reichsrat. The man behind the Thurócz Szent Martón petition was the Slovak Bishop, Moyses.
85 The Transylvanian Roumanians themselves had not approached the Diet, which they regarded as not competent for Transylvania. The Diet, however, regarded the Union of 1848 as valid, and therefore took steps to ascertain their wishes.
86 The ‘Jurisdictions’ (törvényhatoságok) were the Counties and autonomous municipal boroughs.
87 Fournier, op. cit., p. 131.
88 Strictly, this had taken place in two stages. The Reichsrat had pressed strongly for legal affirmation of the principle, to which Francis Joseph was equally strongly opposed. ‘I am in no way prepared’, he told his Ministers on 24 June, ‘to dismiss a Minister simply because the Reichsrat is displeased with him and he gets outvoted. Ministerial responsibility is an impossibility in Austria and I will never sanction it’ (Corti, op. cit., p. 272). He was, indeed, equally uncompromising with his Ministers. When Rechberg disapproved of the idea of the 1863 Fürstentag and wanted to resign over it, Francis Joseph refused his resignation with the remarkable words: ‘I cannot accept that a Minister should walk out on me if he disagrees with some measure’ (Bibl, Tragödie, p. 311). On 2 July 1861, Schmerling had produced a ‘Declaration’, which, while affirming strongly that the executive power rested exclusively with the Crown, yet conceded that Ministers recognized themselves as ‘also responsible to the representatives of the Reich for the maintenance of the Constitution and the exact execution of the laws’. As this still did not satisfy the Reichsrat, Schmerling, on 1 May 1862, read out a message from the Emperor confirming that the previous declaration had been made with his authority and announcing that the enactment of August 1851, relieving Ministers of all responsibility except to the Crown, was now to be considered as no longer valid in so far as it conflicted with the Declaration of 1861.
89 This Bill was brought in very early, but passed the Herrenhaus only on 30 September 1861.
90 The date of this important enactment was 8 April 1861. A ‘Presbyterial and Synodal Constitution’ was issued the next day. Amongst other things, the Protestants received under it extremely wide autonomy in the ordering of their own affairs, complete freedom of conscience and the right of public worship ‘for all time’, the right to employ foreigners in their Churches and schools and disciplinary powers for their clergy. To this, too, Francis Joseph consented only with very great reluctance. It was not applicable to the Tirol or Dalmatia.
91 The Poles, except for the inevitable minority of hotheads, had not attempted to extend the revolt of 1863 to Galicia; they had rather hoped that Austria would help them and that in the end the Archduke Maximilian would assume the Crown of Poland. The Committee which they established in Galicia (headed by Smolka, Ziemalkowski and Count Alexander Dzjedniszycki) had therefore told their countrymen to ‘wait’, and had confined themselves to supplying arms, medical equipment, etc., to their countrymen fighting in Russian Poland. The Austrian Government, however, were not satisfied that the trouble would not spread into Galicia and therefore dissolved the Landtag and put the province under martial law.
92 The Germans, incidentally, were just as rude to the Slovenes.
94 As reward for this, Anselm Rothschild was made a member of the State Debt Committee, and afterwards, of the Herrenhaus.
95 Expenditure for this year was swollen by the bill for the Danish war and by an advance of 20 m.g. to Hungary, where the harvest had failed disastrously.
96 Exports rose from 251 m.g. in 1860 to 345 in 1865. Imports also went up, but not nearly so fast (from 224 to 253 m.g.).
97 That is, up to the issue of the October Diploma, the Army High Command; thereafter, the Minister of War.
98 See Regele, op. cit., p. 341. Regele’s chapters VII and IX are the most convenient source known to me for the history of the struggle between the financiers and the soldiers.
99 ‘Streichquartett’, a play on the word ‘streichen’, meaning either to play a stringed instrument, or to cancel a word.
100 See the article by O. Regele, Oesterreichs Armee und Flotte im Kriegsjahr 1866, Donauraum, 1966, II. 3, p. 127.
102 The quotation is from Werner, 100 Jahre, p. 383. For a detailed account of the negotiations, see Benedikt, Wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, pp. 57 ff. In 1862 Prussia agreed with France on the draft of a commercial treaty on the m. f. n. basis, which would exclude the special preferences which Prussia, and with her, the other members of the Zollverein, allowed Austria under the Treaty of 1853, which was due to expire in 1865, in which year the Zollverein also was due to come up for revision. Austria made a counter-proposal to institute complete free trade between herself and the Zollverein, except only that the fiscal and excise duties were to be retained. Prussia retorted on 2 August by signing the treaty with France, leaving the other States with the alternative of following suit or letting the Zollverein break up. In the event they accepted Prussia’s conditions, while Prussia agreed to negotiate a new treaty with Austria. This was concluded in April 1865, the tariffs being (at Austria’s wish) made substantially higher than those of 1853. Austria then negotiated her own treaties, both on the m. f. n. basis, with France and Britain. Both were concluded in December 1865, to enter into force on 1 January 1867.
103 The plan seems to have originated with Fröbel, who succeeded in interesting Francis Joseph’s brother-in-law, Prince Thurn und Taxis, in it, and the Prince fired the Emperor with the idea.
104 ‘The Emperor is and remains a scoundrel’, he wrote to his mother on 1 September 1859 from Italy, where he was negotiating the armistice terms.
105 See his letter to Albert of Saxony, cit. Corti, op. cit., p. 307.
106 There was no technical ‘alliance’ with Prussia at that date; the negotiations for one had broken down in April 1861.
107 The remarkable negotiations in Schönbrunn, when Rechberg’s hope of agreeing with Bismarck on a policy which should direct the Austro-Prussian partnership against France were frustrated by Biegeleben, are excellently described in Friedjung, Vorherrschaft, I. 101 ff.
108 Regele, p. 318.
109 Id., p. 319.
110 Id., p. 320.
111 Id., p. 321.
112 On this occasion the Liberals were, indeed, guiltless: the cuts were volunteered by the Belcredi Government.
113 E. von Plener in his Erinnerungen, I. 18, testifies that this was his father’s view, and that of the great majority of his contemporaries.
114 Id., p. 16.
115 It is probable that it was he who was responsible for the replacement of Rechberg by Mensdorff-Pouilly.
116 Redlich, Franz Joseph, p. 280.
117 Freiherr von Auguss, Vice-President of the Buda Gubernium.
118 S. Pethö writes that ‘at one blow, it altered the psychological dominance of Kossuth’s influence, and greatly helped forward the possibility of a reconciliation with the Crown, even if this should cost sacrifices’ (Világostól Trianonig, p. 74).
119 Patzelt, op. cit., p. 15.
120 Although Deák never adopted the Old Conservatives’ political theories, he was at this time, as his biographer (Ferenczy, op. cit., III. 4) writes, ‘convinced that o
nly they could bring about the overthrow of Schmerling’, and was therefore in close touch with them.
121 Deák afterwards dropped this item from his list.
122 Deák had maintained that since the Union of 1848 had been legally valid, no rediscussion of its terms was constitutional. ‘Revision’ therefore could really mean no more than ‘re-enactment’ (Ferenczy, op. cit., III. 25).
123 Um ihren gleichgewichtigen Ausspruch zu vernehmen und zu würdigen.
124 The most important of these in Bohemia was the sanctioning of a by-law (which had been passed by the Bohemian Landtag in 1864 but not then sanctioned) making instruction in both local languages compulsory in all secondary schools. This law, popularly known as the Sprachenzwanggesetz (Linguistic Compulsion Law) was repealed as soon as the Germans returned to power; see below, p. 563, n. 2.
125 129 Regalists were nominated, of whom ninety were Magyars.
126 ‘The people in Vienna’, he wrote to his mother on 17 February 1866, ‘are, as usual, terribly nervous and think that I might make concessions – for instance, appoint a Ministry. I have naturally no intention of doing anything of the sort’ (Schnürer, p. 350).
127 The sub-Committee’s report, in fact, figured in the later Law almost textually.
128 The miscalculations were not confined to Austria: Richard Metternich, the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, reported that the whole French Army, ‘from the Minister of War to the most junior subaltern, was convinced that Austria would be victorious’.
129 He had persuaded himself that the war would not be expensive, since it would end in a speedy victory, after which Austria would receive an indemnity, and then be able to disarm. ‘We must in any case come to a result’, he wrote to his mother on 11 May 1866, ‘after spending so much money and making so many sacrifices … Better war than prolongation of the present situation’ (Schnürer, p. 355).
130 It is true that under a secret clause, Italy was also to have been promised the eventual acquisition of the Trentino.
131 This was to be in compensation for the territorial acquisitions which France proposed, in that event, to make in Germany. Napoleon was further to attempt to persuade Italy to remain neutral. The Treaty also contained numerous provisions governing the cession of Venice and many more limiting Austria’s gains after she had defeated Prussia.
The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918) Page 90
