The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  The ‘Jurisdictions’ suffered only a minor change at this stage: only half the membership of their organs was to be elective, the other half being composed of virilists, usually the highest tax-payers.

  Another big complex of problems was that relating to Church-State and inter-Confessional relations. Here the position in Hungary differed from that in Austria inasmuch as Hungary declared herself not to be bound by the Concordat, or any legislation deriving therefrom, but to be bound by her own earlier legislation, including that of 1848, which had not yet been fully implemented. The separation of the Roumanian Orthodox Church from the Serbian having now been sanctioned, the Roumanian Church received, in 1868, a Statute of Autonomy which placed it on a complete level with all other established Churches, with the same extensive self-government in its internal affairs (including its schools) and right to financial assistance, if required.4 The principle of equality and reciprocity between established Churches brought with it the corollary that the legality of mixed marriages was confirmed, with the rule that the male issue of such marriages should follow the father’s religion and the female, the mother’s.5

  Another Law of 1868 placed Jews on a footing of complete civic and legal equality with Christians. This was as far as legal changes in the confessional field went at the time, for the Roman Catholic Church was unable to agree on a statute of autonomy for itself acceptable to the Government, or, indeed, to all its own members, and presently gave up the attempt to do so (with the result that it was still without any such statute when our history ends, and indeed, also so after the Second World War).6

  Again in 1868, Parliament adopted an Elementary Education Law (the work of Eötvös) which made education compulsory between the ages of six and twelve and obliged every commune in which there were thirty or more children of school age, to establish a school, unless it already contained a confessional or other school. Instruction was to be in the pupil’s mother-tongue. The law did not touch existing confessional schools, except to impose on them a minimum of State supervision, which was, however, strictly limited by the Churches’ autonomy.

  In 1869 justice was separated from administration, on all levels (this, again, only after a hard struggle) and a beginning made with a complete renovation of Hungary’s judicial system.

  1868 and 1869 were thus genuinely constructive years. Nevertheless, when elections were held in 1869, the Government, although it applied considerable pressure, lost sixty seats to the Left Centre and the Extreme Left, which now had thirty-two Deputies, and took the name of ‘Party of 1848’. This still left the Deák Party with a comfortable majority, but clouds were gathering round it. The harvests were no longer good, and the new State apparatus cost a lot of money.7 The railway programme proved to have been over-ambitious; by 1871 the State had already paid out 20 m.g. in interest, while in one case a foreign entrepreneur’s capital gave out and the State was left to meet the loss; in another, a speculator simply decamped with the funds, leaving the investors ruined. The utility of some of the lines was dubious, and it was notorious that some members of the Party and their friends were making fortunes out of rigged contracts.

  The Government lost its personal prestige. Andrássy moved to the Ball-hausplatz; Eötvös died;8 Deák retired into private life, himself to die not long after.9 To succeed Andrássy, Francis Joseph, on Andrássy’s advice, appointed Menyhért Lónyay, the Common Finance Minister, who was a competent financier, but unpopular in the Party and with Deák personally (also, as was not unimportant, with Francis Joseph).

  The Opposition succeeded in talking out a Bill which the Government had introduced to alter the franchise (to its own advantage). In the elections of July 1872, the Government, by exerting strong pressure, nevertheless increased its majority slightly, securing 245 mandates against 116 of the Left Centre and 38 of the Party of 1848. But the Party was divided internally and unsure of itself, and immediately after, a series of catastrophes overtook it. Lónyay was attacked for having observed insufficiently the distinction between the public financial interest and his own; he resigned the Minister Presidency, but put himself at the head of a group of sympathetic malcontents in the Party. His successor, József Slávy, was admittedly an honest man, but lacking in energy and in ability to hold the Party together. Then came the Krach of 1873, which was as damaging to personal reputations of Hungarian politicians, as of Austrian, brought financial ruin to many thousands of individuals,10 and also produced an acutely critical situation in the State finances.

  To finance her programme of railway construction, etc., Hungary had followed the traditional course of borrowing, and had boasted, and believed, that her ‘virgin credit’ would fare better than the speckled hide of Vienna. On the contrary, the bankers had shown themselves notably cautious. A first loan, issued in 1868, had been floated at 81 (the underwriters also taking a large commission) and 6%, and a second, in 1870, at 75, so that Hungary had been paying 8–9% for her accommodation. Now the budget closed with a deficit again, and when the unfortunate Finance Minister, Kerkapoly, applied to the Rothschilds for an emergency loan to tide him over, he was, indeed, given a loan to the face value of 153 m.g. (although much less in practice, since the subscription rate was 85), but repayment had to be within five years, and the entire State properties had to be pledged as security. Kerkapoly had to help himself out with an issue of State bonds, issued at 85½. He resigned. Szlávy was literally unable to find anyone to take his place, and had to take over the finances himself.

  Meanwhile, the Croats were, as described elsewhere, agitating against the Nagodba, and trouble was threatening with the Nationalities. Most of these had let their national organizations fall into hibernation when the Nationalities Law was passed, but a foolish outburst of Magyar chauvinism in 1872 had revived their fears, and they were girding themselves for defence again.11

  The Party which had made the maintenance and fulfilment of the Compromise its raison d’être looked, and indeed was, on the verge of collapse, but the remarkable sequel was that while the Party indeed collapsed, the Compromise survived. The truth was that all this time, the politicians of the Left Centre had simply been shadow-boxing – for prize-money. They knew perfectly well, although they did not dare tell their electors so, that their programme was quite unrealistic. As things stood, there was no possibility of altering the Compromise to Hungary’s advantage; the only conceivable change might be that if goaded too far, Francis Joseph might alter its terms in the other direction – a threat which his recent flirtation with the Czechs had made appear very real. Tisza in particular, who was emerging as the leader of the Left Centre, took very seriously the threat that the Crown might ally itself with the Croats and the Nationalities, and he was convinced that if it did so at that juncture, Hungary would be defeated. On the other hand, he thought the unfavourable balance of forces to be not immutable. He believed that a sufficiently energetic and systematic policy of assimilation would Magyarize a sufficient number of the Nationalities to tilt the national balance in Hungary decisively in favour of the Magyars.12 The correct tactics for Hungary were therefore to conclude an armistice with the Crown by dropping those points in the Bihar Programme which were totally unacceptable to the Monarch, at least until the national position had been consolidated.

  It was also by now quite clear that the Rothschilds (it was they who, in practice, had the say) would not advance money on acceptable terms to any Hungary which threatened the smooth functioning of the financial structure of the Monarchy.

  The Party accordingly quietly decided to take over its former opponents’ positions on what amounted, in all essential points, to their opponents’ programme.

  The process took place in stages. As early as 1872 Ghyczy had advised his followers to accept the provisions of the Compromise relating to foreign policy and finance, and to stand out only over the army. In 1873 he and some others founded a Coalition Party with a programme of fusion with the Deák Party. In March 1874, Tisza agreed to the fusion in principle, while st
ill holding out on certain formal points. Next, Szlávy resigned in favour of István Bittó, whose contribution to the problem was to get through a revision of the franchise, which, by raising the property qualifications, reduced the voters to 5·9% of the population. Ghyczy now actually took over the Ministry of Finance, and Tisza consented to say that revision of the Compromise was not, at that juncture, a burning problem; it would be better to concentrate on other questions. The two big Parties agreed to fuse. In March 1875, a caretaker Government was formed under Baron Wenkheim, with Tisza in charge of the Interior. The two Parties fused under the name of ‘Liberal Party’. Then elections were held. The Liberals secured 333 seats, the Extreme Left 33,13 a party of Conservatives who had refused to accept the fusion 18, and various representatives of the Nationalities, 24. On 20 October the King appointed Tisza Minister President.

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  This appointment marked the opening of thirty years’ rule in Hungary of the Liberal Party, the first fifteen of them under Tisza’s own guidance. During them the central theme of Parliamentary life continued to be what it had been from 1867 (one might say, since our narrative opened, or indeed, almost since Hungarian history began), the ‘issue of public law’; the struggle differed from that of earlier decades only in the respect that between Vienna and the Hungarian nationalists there now stood the link, or buffer, of a responsible Government which was indisputably Hungarian. That Government’s position was far from easy, for if the nationalists looked on it as Vienna’s front line, its own politicians by no means took that view of themselves. Most of them regarded the Compromise as unduly unfavourable to Hungary in detail; nearly all of them, in any case, looked on the decennial revision of its economic and financial clauses as an opportunity to press for every advantage which they could secure for their country at the expense of Austria (whose representatives took exactly the same view, mutatis mutandis), and all of them were alert to repel any infringement by ‘Vienna’ of Hungarian rights. They were thus under fire from both sides, and this inevitably thinned their ranks until the line could no longer be held.

  The deterioration was gradual, for at first Tisza’s regime was more broadly based than Deák’s had been: most of his adherents had followed him when he changed sides, and when to these were added the remnants of the Deákists, his following constituted a substantial proportion of Hungary’s then politically active class. Tisza, who was a superb organizer, and as unscrupulous as he was capable, constructed a complex party machine whose components, popularly known as the Mameluks, were dependent on him in every way, and consolidated his position by carrying through, in 1877, a redistribution of constituencies, the effect of which was that the Magyar constituencies of the Alföld, which were difficult to dragoon, elected one Deputy to 7–8,000 voters or more, while in the non-Magyar districts the educational qualification confined the number of voters to what was sometimes a mere handful14 and one which, the voting being opened, could often be coerced into returning the Government candidate. If the Government put out its whole strength, it could always be sure of obtaining a safe majority.

  The Liberal Party had thus little to fear from most sides within Hungary. The limited franchise excluded the poorer classes from representation and kept the Nationalities in check. The Conservatives, although their leader, Sennyey, was one of the most upright and capable of Hungary’s politicians, and socially by no means the least progressive, were too heavily tarred with the brush of their predecessors’ association with ‘Vienna’ to be popular in the country, and the Crown did not need their support while it had the Liberals.15 And so long as the Liberals kept (in his eyes) their side of the bargain, Francis Joseph stood loyally by his. He guarded Tisza against the intrigues (which were numerous) spun against him at Court and repelled all attempts from oppositional quarters, notably the nationalities, to appeal to him over the Government’s head.

  The strongest threat to Tisza’s regime still came from the ‘national opposition’. The Extreme Left (which had reunited under the name of ‘Party of Independence and 1848’) secured eighty-eight seats in 1881, seventy-five in 1884 and eighty in 1887. This was still manageable; but the Left Centre re-emerged as early as 1877, after Tisza had failed to secure the concessions (which, it may be remarked, were not desired by those Hungarian circles who took a more realistic view of their country’s financial strength) demanded by them in respect of the National Bank. Several notable members of the Party, including Dezsö Szilágyi, left it, and in 1878 these malcontents joined up with others, the most prominent of whom were E. Simonyi and the ex-Chancellor’s son, Count Albert Apponyi, in an ‘United Opposition’, which before the 1881 elections changed its name to that of ‘Moderate Opposition’ (Mérsékelt Ellenzék). Simonyi’s death soon left Apponyi leader of this group.

  Their numbers, too, were fairly modest – eighty-four representatives in 1881, sixty in 1884, forty-eight in 1887, and they professed themselves to accept the Compromise in principle, only demanding more satisfaction for ‘legitimate Hungarian wishes’ within its framework; and so long as those wishes were confined to the financial and economic field, they did little harm beyond aggravating the chronic irritation between the Austrian and Hungarian halves of the Monarchy. With time, however, they strayed into the far more dangerous field of army affairs. This was, indeed, strewn with ample tinder. The military clique in Vienna were themselves entirely unreconciled to the Compromise. They still regarded all Hungarians as undesirable rebels, and the Cis-Leithanian forces quartered in Hungary took their cue from them.16 There were many provocative incidents, including one committed on the very highest level, which stirred deep passions in Hungary.17 But Francis Joseph felt instinctively with his Field-Marshals on this point. Any hint of tampering with the army touched him on the raw, and although the ‘Moderate Opposition’ was not at this time asking for anything even remotely subversive,18 nothing, in fact, which the Monarch did not end by granting – their demands engendered in him an acute and mounting irritation.

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  His own expertise, and the Monarch’s support, enabled Tisza to weather these Parliamentary storms without too much difficulty, and his reign, like that of Taaffe in Austria, with which it coincided for so many years, brought few innovations which call for record here. It may be mentioned that during it Hungary, like Austria and in step with her, achieved financial solvency. Kálmán Széll, Tisza’s able Minister of Finance from 1875 to 1878, succeeded, like Dunajewski in Austria, in emancipating his country from dependence on foreign bankers, and in floating a series of internal loans on reasonable terms. Under Wekerle, another most competent Minister, the budget achieved balance in the same year (1889) as Austria’s, and that although Hungary, like Austria, was spending large sums on her railway system.

  The development of Budapest’s relations with Croatia, and with the Nationalities, is described elsewhere; here we will say only that although the event proved the undercurrents to have been setting against Budapest, the surface movements were favourable enough for many years.

  A series of measures carried further the rather tentative moves towards political centralization made by the Government of 1867–72. In 1876 the coup de grâce was given to Saxon autonomy: the functions of the Sachsengraf were abolished altogether, the title becoming merely a decorative appendage to that of the Föispán of Nagyvárad, and those of the Saxon University reduced to the administration of its funds, which were to be used exclusively for cultural purposes. Later in the same year, a grand tidying up of the administrative pattern was carried through. The Sachsenboden, as well as other districts which had previously stood outside the County system – the Cumanian, Jazyge and Haiduk ‘Privileged Districts’ – were taken into it. A number of dwarf Counties and rotten boroughs were abolished, and boundaries rationalized – the Sachsenboden had consisted of several widely separated districts, and the County of Fejer, in Transylvania, of no less than fourteen enclaves, scattered clean across Transylvania. There were left a total of seventy-three Counties and tw
enty-four boroughs of County status, besides Budapest and Fiume, which remained under a separate dispensation. With these two exceptions, the pattern was now uniform throughout Hungary.

  The defenders of County autonomy fought for their cause as stubbornly as ever, and a second law on the subject, put through Parliament by Tisza against strong opposition, produced another half-way solution. The autonomy of the ‘Jurisdictions’ was reaffirmed. They retained the right to administer their own affairs autonomously, within the limits of the law of the land, and also to protest against, and provisionally to refuse to execute, Governmental enactments which seemed to them illegal, or ill-advised in the light of local conditions. If the Government insisted, they had to submit, but they retained the cardinal right of refusing to execute demands for taxes or recruits which had not been duly sanctioned by Parliament. They further retained their right to discuss any question of general political interest, to adopt Resolutions and petitions, to submit these to the Government and communicate them to other Jurisdictions.

  At the same time, the powers of the Föispán, who was now the political representative of the Government – he was appointed on the proposal of the Minister of the Interior – were strengthened. He was the head of the administration, could enact, if necessary, emergency measures, and could in his turn veto, pending report to the Government, any measure taken by the Jurisdiction which he regarded as illegal or as prejudicial to the public security.