The Habsburg Empire (1790-1918)

by C A Macartney

  But Francis Joseph would not hear of any tampering with the position of Dalmatia, and after the Hungarian Coalition came into power it soon got across its friends in Croatia. In May 1907 Kossuth introduced a Bill53 making knowledge of Magyar compulsory for all employees on the Hungarian State railway system, including the lines in Croatia, where, however, those employees who had to deal with the public, or with the local authorities, should also know Croat. The Croat Deputies declared this rule to constitute a violation of the Nagodba, and resorted to obstruction in the Pest Parliament, taking advantage (for the first time) of the provision of the Nagodba which allowed them to use their own language there. Meetings were held up and down Croatia, calling for complete separation from Hungary.

  The Ban resigned, his successor (appointed on 6 January 1908) being Baron Pál Rausch, son of the midwife of the Nagodba. Rausch, whose suitability for the appointment Wekerle himself (who proposed it officially to the King) seems to have doubted,54 promptly dissolved the Sabor and held new elections, but feeling was so inflamed that he could not get the Unionist Party together at all. 57 of the 88 seats went to the Serbo-Croat Coalition, 22 to the Party of Pure Right, and the remaining 9 to splinter Parties. Rausch opened the Sabor on 12 March, but, after its members had spent two days abusing Hungary, and one another, in unprintable terms, he prorogued it indefinitely.

  After this there came another small improvement. When Khuen Héderváry again became Minister President of Hungary, the leaders of the Serbo-Croat Coalition asked a certain Professor Tomasics to mediate a modus vivendi between Croatia and Hungary. Eventually, Khuen had Rausch replaced by Tomasics himself, who re-convoked the Sabor, got it to accept a franchise reform which increased the number of electors from 45,000 to 222,000, then, having meanwhile organized a new Unionist Party called the ‘Party of Progress’, dissolved the Sabor and held new elections in October. Those, however, gave only 18 mandates to the Party of Progress, 36 to the Serbo-Croat Coalition, 9 to the Party of Right, 14 to a new Christian Social Party, 9 to a Peasant Party founded by the brothers Anton and Stjepan Radics, and one to a Serb Radical, and when the new Sabor met after the elections, all the Opposition Parties insisted with such violence that the Railway Law must be repealed before anything else could be discussed, that Tomasics was obliged, after all, to adjourn the Sabor. He held new elections in November, but again failed to secure a majority, and resigned. His successor, Cuvaj, again suspended the Constitution (31 March 1912), whereupon someone threw a bomb at him, injuring him severely.

  It must be said that when Tisza got the reins again firmly in his hands, the curve of trouble in the Hungarian Lands flattened out a little. In particular, Tisza achieved an important modus vivendi, the effects of which were perceptible in the Croats’ attitude in 1914, with the Croats. In November 1913 he replaced Cuvaj as Ban by a personal friend of his own, Baron Skerlecz, who elicited from all the Croat Deputies, except those of the Pure Right, a declaration that they accepted the Nagodba in principle, although condemning the violations of it which had been committed by Hungary. Tisza in return remedied the Croats’ most loudly voiced grievances, the use of Magyar place-names and the linguistic regulations on the railways.

  On the other hand, negotiations which he initiated with the Roumanians proved unsuccessful. He offered to lift the ban on the National Party, to extend public facilities to their business enterprises and to make certain concessions to the use of their language in education, administration and justice; but their counter-claims went so far beyond these that he handed the list of them back to Maniu with the comment: ‘A Magyar stomach can’t digest that’.

  The deadlock remained unbroken in essentials, and Tisza was not the man to break it. He could only hold the fort, and with so many hostile forces gathered against it, it is difficult to believe that the synthesis of national and social domination of a minority which he was defending could have survived indefinitely, even given the continued support from outside which had thitherto been at once its strength and its raison e’être. And it could not count on enjoying this for much longer. In a sense, it had been taken away already, when Francis Joseph had ordered the franchise to be extended, for Tisza was certainly right in his view of the inevitable effects of any real democratization of the Hungarian franchise.

  Francis Joseph may not even have meant this threat seriously, except as a means of putting pressure on the Independence politicians;55 at any rate, he had contented himself with the travesty of a compliance with it to which Lukács’ Act had amounted. In any case, it was to be assumed that so long as he lived, he would do no more than insist on exact compliance with the Compromise. But in the nature of things, the Crown must soon pass to Francis Ferdinand, whose dislike of the Magyars had been fanned into a sort of permanent, pathological rage by what he regarded as their attempts to destroy the efficiency of the army – a fury which he used to vent to his confidants in terms which an English printer would hesitate to reproduce even after 1951, and one which drew no distinction between one Hungarian and another: Tisza, he used to maintain, was no better than the rest of them.

  *

  There had been only one small group among the enfranchised classes in Hungary which had envisaged the possibility of following any policy towards the factors outside the ring other than one of simple repression. This was that wing – or a part of it – of the Party of Independence which had followed Justh when the Party split. Justh, as we have said, had been sincerely attached to the idea of suffrage reform, and in its interest, had initiated a certain co-operation in the 1910 elections with the Social Democrats and, in some places, with the Nationalities. Soon after this Justh fell ill (he died in 1913), but meanwhile, his Party had received an unexpected recruit in the person of Count Mihály Károlyi, a young scion of one of Hungary’s most historic and wealthiest families, who, after beginning his public career as an extreme reactionary, had undergone a change of heart. As the new leader of the Party when it reunited after Justh’s death, Károlyi had renewed the contact with the Social Democrats, established relations with Jászi and his group, and evolved a theory that if Hungary introduced political and social justice and initiated a new policy (described by himself as ‘federalization’)56 towards the Nationalities, she would not merely be righting what was wrong with herself, but also be establishing her own internal solidarity.

  While, however, Károlyi’s ideas agreed with Francis Ferdinand’s on the desirability of suffrage reform, it was a case of extremes meeting at one point which on all others remained poles apart. Károlyi advocated the reform as (he thought) a way of solidifying Hungary; the Archduke meant it as a step towards breaking the country up. Looked at from the point of view of the Gesammtmonarchie, the picture was reversed. The Archduke meant to consolidate the Monarchy, while Károlyi was an extreme ‘Independence’ man. At this date he does not, indeed, seem to have envisaged complete separation of Hungary from Austria; instead, he adopted the thesis that for his ideas to be realized, the Monarchy would have to break entirely with the Triple Alliance and ‘join the alliance of anti-German States’, and in the autumn of 1913 he went to Paris on a journey to popularize this idea in France and the U.S.A.

  Here, again, he was taking a diametrically opposite view from that of Francis Ferdinand, of whom he writes in his memoirs with extreme hatred.57

  For the rest, Károlyi’s ideas were regarded by all the conventional politicians of Hungary with as much horror as Francis Ferdinand’s own. They became popular only in 1917, when the international situation had changed, and the German alliance had really become a debit for Hungary, instead of an asset.

  *

  On 29 May 1903, the young King of Serbia, Milan Obrenović, and his wife, were murdered in the Konak by conspirators belonging to a secret nationalist association of officers, who then promptly called to the throne the senior representative of the rival dynasty, Peter Karageorgević.

  Austria at first smelt no danger and extended prompt recognition to the new King.58 It is also
possible that Peter himself was not at the time anxious for trouble. But he was the prisoner of the officers who had put him in power, and of the Radical Party, now become the strongest in Serbia and transformed from a Left-wing peasant party into an almost purely nationalist one, the patron and inspirer of a nation-wide campaign for the unification of all Serbs in one State under the new dynasty. The effects of the change thus quickly made themselves felt. Nationalist societies, open or secret, sprang into being in the service of the national aim, and were very soon extending their activities, on the one hand, into Macedonia, and on the other, into both Croatia-Slavonia and Bosnia. The most prominent of these societies operating in the territory of the Monarchy was the Slovenska Jug (Slavonic South) founded in 1905.

  Almost at the same time an economic issue arose, the origin of which did not lie in Austro-Serbian relations and its effects were not confined to them, but happened to be very important for them, in an unfavourable sense. The Caprivi treaties were due to expire in February 1904. The protectionist opposition to them had won much ground in the slump of 1900, which, as has been said, had been badly aggravated by German dumping, and it was important that the movement for protection was now being supported by the Hungarian agrarians, whose position and interests had changed during the preceding decades: the non-agrarian population of the Monarchy was now large enough to consume most of what Hungarian agriculture could produce, while on the other hand, Hungary’s products were being challenged by overseas competition, especially on the German market – thitherto their chief outlet – and even at home. Hungarian industry, too, was reaching a stage at which it could, and did, ask for protection.

  Strong pressure for agrarian protection was coming also from the Polish landlords in Galicia.

  In 1902 Germany introduced a new tariff which included high duties on agricultural imports, Pending the negotiation of a new agreement, Austria also introduced a provisional regime with relatively high duties, both industrial and agricultural; although these could be reduced by negotiation with trading partners.

  The Austro-Serb Commercial Treaty was also due to expire shortly, and the negotiations for its renewal, which opened in 1903, promised to be difficult. Under the existing treaty, Austria was taking 80–90% of Serbia’s exports, and supplying her with 50–60% of her imports. Serbia wanted, on political grounds, to reduce her dependence on imports from Austria, but would have liked to keep up her exports. On the other hand, the Hungarian agriculturalists59 had long been complaining of the cheap Serbian competition. This had been growing increasingly burdensome for some time past, as Germany reduced her purchases from the Monarchy, and it had become, as a Hungarian expert has written,60 ‘a dogma in Hungary that she could allow exports from the East only in the measure to which Germany opened her doors to Hungary’s exports’.

  The Austrian negotiators insisted that Serbia must at least pledge herself not to reduce her industrial imports from Austria.61 Far from doing this, Serbia, in January 1904, placed a large order for munitions, not with the Austrian Skoda, but with its French rival, Schneider-Creuzot – a move the implications of which were obviously not purely economic. Summoned by Austria to cancel the contract, she refused, and concluded, in the same year, a Secret Treaty of Alliance with Bulgaria, which envisaged the later conclusion of a Customs Union. The existence of the Treaty leaked out through an indiscretion in the Bulgarian Sobranje, and Austria vetoed the Customs Union as incompatible with the treaty of either State with the Monarchy, both of which were based on the most favoured nation clause.62 As Serbia still refused to accept the Monarchy’s terms for the renewal of her commercial treaty with it, a ‘treatyless condition’ came into existence on 1 March 1906, which lasted, with minor interruptions, until June 1909, when a ‘provisional’ treaty relationship was restored.

  In the event, Serbia emerged almost unscathed from the ‘pig war’, as it was generally nicknamed. She got more credits from France, with which she built her own slaughter-houses and canning plants, and found outlets for her produce in this form. She supplied herself with imports chiefly from Germany.63 But her antagonism to the Monarchy had deepened, and she had now an economic as well as a national ground for coveting Bosnia, possession of which would bring her nearer to her greatly desired outlet to the sea. Her agitation in that province redoubled, and found its path smoothed for it by good intentions on the part of the Austrians themselves.

  Kállay had died in harness on 13 July 1903, and Francis Joseph had given his succession to Baron Burian (later to become Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister). Burian took the view64 that it was not possible to go on governing the Provinces, in effect, against the Serb population, which constituted not only numerically the largest but also the most active and vital element in them. He believed that their demands for cultural liberty and for some measure of self-government could not, at this stage, be resisted, and took the optimistic view that if their legitimate wishes were satisfied, they would not ‘gravitate outwards’. In 1905 he agreed with the leaders of the Orthodox community on a Statute65 which gave the Orthodox Eparchies complete autonomy (subject to the ultimate control of the Crown) in the conduct and administration of their own Churches and schools, and of the properties and funds appertaining thereto. Preparations were also set on foot for the introduction of a measure of local, and eventually District and Provincial, self-government, the first statutes for which were published in 1907. The censorship was eased, and in general, the grip of authority relaxed.66

  The result of this was, however, not at all to make the Serbs of Bosnia gravitate inward. Liberty under Austrian rule was not what they wanted, still less, what Serbia wanted for them. Her agitation now became exceedingly vigorous. Bands of Serb agents roamed the provinces unrestricted. The printing presses of Belgrade (and also of Cettinje) poured out denunciations of the bloody tyranny of Austrian rule, and these were echoed in the Serbian Press of the Provinces. The Srbska Rijeć of Sarajevo (which was certainly in the pay of Belgrade) was confiscated some seventy times, and if what was not allowed to appear was worse than what did pass the censor, it must have been subversive indeed, for many articles and poems saw the light which openly called upon the people to rise against the tyrannous foreign rule.

  The agitation took a peculiar shape, for while its real object was to bring about the unification of Bosnia with Serbia, yet whether as a tactical move to gain the support of the local Moslems, or because the device was thought less dangerous, the procedure most usually followed was to exploit the fact that the legal sovereignty over the Provinces was still the Sultan’s. In 1907 the Serbs actually carried through elections of their own to a kind of mock Parliament. Seventy-one delegates met in Sarajevo, assumed the role of a sort of Constituent, and adopted a resolution which, invoking the principle of self-determination, announced the establishment of an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the Ottoman Empire. A little later (in May 1908) a labour movement constituted itself in Sarajevo which promptly identified itself with the Serb national cause and for some days ‘practically eliminated the authority of the State’67 in that city.

  Some of the Moslems showed a certain sympathy with this agitation, although more of them, not being blind to its true purpose, retreated into an uneasy and non-committal silence. Most of the loyal Catholics, under the leadership of their bellicose Archbishop, Mgr Stadler, felt the need to defend themselves, and in the spring of 1908 obtained permission to found a nominally non-political organization, the Hrvatska Narodna Zajednica (Croat National Union) which, needless to say, promptly adopted an essentially political programme for the annexation of the Provinces by the Monarchy and their unification with the ‘Croat Lands’ of Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia in a new sub-State on an equal footing with Cis- and Trans-Leithania. Even the Croats, however, were not quite unanimous, for some of the younger men wanted a Yugoslav solution, rather than a purely Croat one, and one group, led by some Franciscan Friars, sought contact with the Slovene Catholic Populists.

  Serbia’s
activities in Croatia-Slavonia were necessarily carried on more discreetly, and also less wholeheartedly, for most Serb nationalists were at that time still uninterested in the Croats. But it is highly improbable that the Fiume Resolutions owed nothing to the inspiration of Belgrade, and in retrospect it is completely clear that the important declaration here was not that of 4 October, offering the Coalition’s support to Hungary,68 but its sequel which proclaimed the ethnic unity of Serbs and Croats.

  It is easy to over-estimate the number of those who really believed this to be true in the deepest sense: probably very few indeed of the Serbs, and not a very much higher proportion of the Croats, the majority of whom, to the last, would have preferred in their hearts an ‘Austro-Croat’ solution for their people. But it was fairly certain that most of the politically conscious Serbs of Croatia-Slavonia were now Serbian irredentists, and a growing proportion of the Croats prepared at least to toy with the idea of joining a federal Southern Slav State.69

  Since the Serbian agitation was always slaveringly anti-Austrian, and the reports of the Austrian and Hungarian Press fully as vicious, the relations between the two countries, at least as expressed unofficially, were by now envenomed to a degree.