The Habsburgs- The History of a Dynasty

by Benjamin Curtis

  The economic and social reforms were in many cases inspired by Joseph’s familiarity with mercantilist ideas. Measures were enacted to boost manufactures, encourage exports, and protect the development of small industries in his lands. He continued to promote agricultural productivity by further improving conditions in the countryside. In the early 1780s serfdom was legally abolished in most parts of the monarchy. Peasants were freed from their ties to a particular plot of land, from the landlord’s authority over their marriages and occupations, and in many cases even from the lord’s judicial jurisdiction. The robot was not fully eliminated, but peasants’ options for commuting labor with cash were expanded. The nobility typically resisted this reduction of their power over the agricultural labor force, with the outcome that peasants in more westward parts of the monarchy enjoyed better conditions than they did in Galicia. Joseph also continued Maria Theresia’s reforms by bringing many more rural people into primary education. The expansion of education during Joseph’s years is a valuable window on the purpose of his reforms. His vision was that education should instill subjects with useful, practical skills, and the values of loyalty and responsibility. Education at any level was thus supposed to produce people useful to the state. Like his mother, he did not favor higher education for purely intellectual purposes. He discouraged the kind of research or free flow of ideas that might question the bases of the monarchy’s authority and stability. Instead, higher education’s purpose was to turn out neither scientists nor other kinds of scholars, but functionaries who would serve the state.

  One of Joseph’s most enlightened reforms, his Edict of Tolerance of 1781, also marked one of his biggest breaks with the policy of his dynasty over the previous several generations. Per this edict, the Protestant and Orthodox sects saw a major expansion of their rights throughout the Habsburg domains. Though some restrictions remained, henceforth it was possible to convert into Protestantism or Orthodoxy and to build new churches and parochial schools. Joseph’s religious reforms built upon some trends in Maria Theresia’s reign, but went further. For example, in 1782 restrictions on Jews were significantly relaxed, freeing them from restrictions on their dress, enabling them to practice new trades, and to attend university. The goal of these reforms was to reduce the institutional and political control of the Church and make it better serve the state and the populace. Joseph closed down some 700 monasteries—over half of the monarchy’s total—out of a desire to rationalize Church institutions and promote productive rather than contemplative occupations. He wanted to modernize the Church’s teachings and attitudes as well, instituting a system whereby state officials would supervise priests’ sermons. He also brought a number of high Church officials such as bishops into state pay and made them swear obedience to the crown. Joseph remained committed to Catholicism, but in contrast to his predecessors in the seventeenth century (or even his mother), religious uniformity was no longer a precondition for societal stability and state power.

  This flood of reforms met with increasing hostility after 1784. In that year a rural revolt broke out in Transylvania. Even the peasants objected to Joseph’s changes, though in this case their objection was that the reforms did not go far enough. Protesting high taxes and the price of monetary commutation of labor obligations, they rebelled against their landlords. Though Joseph was sympathetic to some of their claims, and dismayed that his attempts to better rural conditions provoked not so much gratitude as unrest, he had to protect the existing power relationships. He therefore suppressed the revolt, ordering that the ringleaders be killed and quartered, their body parts displayed publicly. Joseph did not slow the pace of his edicts after this incident, but in many ways accelerated them, ignoring warnings about possible resistance. He thereby stirred up the nobility and the bourgeoisie in addition to the peasants. The nobles were predictably incensed by the curtailment of their special legal and economic status. As part of a new land survey that would reorganize taxation, Joseph proposed a sharing of peasants’ taxes between the state and the landlord. In practice this would have meant a significant reduction in landlords’ incomes. Some of Joseph’s top advisors such as Karl von Zinzendorf, the president of his tax regulation commission, warned sternly of potential negative consequences—but Joseph then just removed Zinzendorf from his post.

  In addition to these grievances, nobles in Hungary protested Joseph’s dismissive treatment of the Hungarian and Croatian diets, and his refusal to have himself crowned in that kingdom. Joseph’s application of his reform plans to the Austrian Netherlands kindled intense anger across the classes, including the nobility, clergy, and burghers. The nobility and the burghers protested his administrative reorganization that would restrict their privileges, while the clergy objected to initiatives such as his suppression of monasteries. In 1787 the Estates of Brabant angrily accused Joseph of violating their legal rights, and refused to pay taxes. This resistance across many of the Habsburg realms, though very serious, was almost completely uncoordinated. This shows that despite some integration as a result of the state-building of Joseph and his predecessors, these realms remained loosely connected to each other apart from the commonality of the ruling dynasty.

  Joseph was so concerned with reform in the Danubian domains that he consistently neglected the Empire, a trend that had been visible under his mother. The Holy Roman Empire had relatively little meaning for Joseph, since he saw his Danubian territories as his real power base where he could rule more effectively. The German princes were all too aware of Joseph’s favoring Austrian over German interests. Schemes such as the acquisition of Bavaria aroused alarm about his intentions, and so the Empire became fertile ground for Friedrich’s jockeying influence. Friedrich was able to portray himself as more loyal to common German interests than was Joseph, and so helped form the Fürstenbund (a league of princes) in 1785 that expressly excluded Joseph. It was formed in part to thwart Joseph’s renewed attempts to trade the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria. He bungled this plan by reneging on his initial promise to give Luxembourg to the French as payment for their acquiescence to the trade, and so it never came about. Joseph also gained a detrimental reputation as an aggressor after he made war threats—which proved empty—against the Dutch to get them to lift their blockade of commerce on the Scheldt river. His foreign policy disappointments mounted because of the military alliance he signed in 1781 with Ekaterina of Russia as a counterweight to Prussia. This alliance ensnared his monarchy in a pointless war with the Turks in 1788, in which Austria had almost nothing at stake.

  In this war, the Austrian military performed well despite a lack of good commanders, testament to the successes of previous decades’ reform. Nonetheless, in the very last years of his reign troubles abroad and unrest at home threatened to ruin everything that Joseph had achieved. In 1789 the monarchy entered a crisis perhaps as severe as that of 1740 when Maria Theresia ascended to the throne. Joseph had to scramble to avert disaster. Belgium exploded in revolt and rebels took Brussels. In 1790 they declared independence. Hungary also rose up, and even Tyrol seethed in annoyance against military conscription. Prussia covertly aided the monarchy’s rebels, and gave the impression that it might attack directly after making an alliance with Turkey. Joseph’s response to the incipient fragmentation was to roll back many of his reforms. He promised to call the Hungarian diet and be crowned there, and he restored the Croatian diet as well. He enlisted the British to mediate diplomatically with Prussia. Joseph recognized that he had overreached and that his actions had provoked much of the upset. He declared to his brother Leopold, “I no longer dare to have an opinion and put it into effect.”6 In 1788 Joseph had traveled to the Balkans to assume (ineffectual) personal command of the military, but there he fatefully contracted tuberculosis. His body weakened by sickness, he died in February 1790, only 48 years old. He requested as his epitaph, “Here lies a prince whose intentions were pure, but who had the misfortune to see all his plans collapse.”7

  In the end, not all of Joseph’
s reforms were undone. The tolerance edict, the improvement in peasants’ conditions, the advances in public health and general education all remained. The most judicious evaluation of Joseph’s reforms has to acknowledge that he achieved much and yet also committed many errors. He furthered the growth of a state that would survive some very serious existential crises in the 128 years remaining to it. His attempt to create a more modern, centralized state was not wrong in principle, but was not carried out in an optimal way. Part of Joseph’s problem was that despite his maxim of equality, he still believed in the sovereign power of the dynasty above all. This led him to ignore the fact that power in society did not belong just to the dynasty, but was in fact shared with other institutions such as the nobility. Joseph’s neglect of this fact goes back to his distaste for political compromise and his infatuation with the idea of reason. He failed to politick in a way that would build widespread support for the vision of the monarchy he wished to impose. In this regard he was a major contrast to his mother, who worked incrementally to make the improvements she identified as necessary. Joseph’s reforms provoked resistance to centralization, and that resistance eventually came to be embodied by nationalist movements. However, it cannot be justifiably alleged that his policies were so Germanizing that they ignited the nationalisms that convulsed the monarchy in the subsequent century. There were many other causes of nationalism’s growth. In any case, Joseph was not entirely doctrinaire; he actually approved the use of local languages such as Czech or Hungarian in local administration. Finally, the failures of Joseph’s reforms cannot all be laid at his feet alone. Though he always took highest responsibility for his ideas and pushed them the hardest, often they were shared by a small circle of his advisors. Hence the term “Josephinism” for this monarch’s ideology of reform belongs not just to one man but to several.

  Leopold II (1747–92)

  The Josephinist ideology, in its most basic ethos of reform, was shared also by his brother. Leopold became head of the family in 1790 under the worst possible circumstances. Many parts of the monarchy from Belgium to Hungary were aflame with rebellion, yet his main tool of coercion, the Austrian military, was bogged down in the Balkans. His chief ally, France, fell into the initial throes of revolution. That Leopold managed quite artfully to put the pieces back together again was due to his sharp political instincts, which resembled those of his mother rather than his brother, and to his long ruling experience. Over 25 years as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold amassed a very respectable record of reform—and he achieved it without Joseph’s absolutist tendencies. Leopold collaborated closely with other ruling institutions in the duchy, in some areas pursuing a decentralization of power. In 1784, for example, he drew up a constitution that would have created a representative assembly. Joseph forbade this step, however, much to Leopold’s anger. Leopold succeeded in introducing other reforms such as a new penal code in 1786 which was the first in Europe to abolish capital punishment. In his economic policies, he was the first ruler in Europe to proclaim free trade in grains. He also undertook measures to relax censorship, improve the peasants’ lot, and provide for public health. Leopold was an intelligent, well-educated man who understood the value of compromise. He sincerely disliked Joseph for his domineering attitudes and vetoes of the Tuscan reforms.

  Once he took over the throne, Leopold undid some of Joseph’s most inflammatory policies, but continued with other reforms. He sought to defuse the anger over new tax regulations by revoking them and letting the estates continue to collect taxes. He ended the military conscription in Tyrol that had antagonized people there. He retreated from the agricultural reforms that had upset landlords, though he preserved most protections for peasants. He set about mollifying the various provincial diets. He promised to respect Hungary’s traditional constitution, and wisely had himself crowned king in both Hungary and Bohemia, with the official ceremonies Joseph had always refused. He also reversed Joseph’s orders making German the sole administrative language, and he restored a number of monasteries to appease the irate clergy. These strategic retreats were accompanied by several advances, such as doing away with Joseph’s restrictions on free speech, releasing political prisoners, and making plans to increase towns’ representation in the provincial diets. As a result of all this astute maneuvering, Leopold managed to quell the most dangerous revolts in Belgium and Hungary already in 1790.

  In foreign policy, too, Leopold trod carefully, working to extricate the monarchy from the mounting threats against it. One reason why he was able to end the Belgian revolt so swiftly was that negotiations with Prussia and Turkey freed up his armies. Leopold signed an armistice with the Ottomans, and he agreed to give up the most recent territorial gains. He also agreed to the Convention of Reichenbach with Prussia in 1790 by which Prussia agreed not to aid revolts within his monarchy. While these potential conflicts were thereby pacified, Leopold still had to keep his eye on the growing revolution in France. Since the escalation of events in Paris in July 1789, neither Joseph nor Leopold had particularly feared the revolutionary implications for the rest of Europe. Joseph’s troubles cannot be equated with Louis XVI’s since the latter’s involved a mass uprising of the populace, while most of the resistance to Joseph’s policies came from the elite. Moreover, Joseph maintained that he had already implemented many of the reforms now being proposed in France. He declared that the Habsburg monarchy would remain neutral. Leopold even commented favorably on the early days of the revolution, seeing it as a model for cooperation between the sovereign and the populace that would result in a more just, peaceful, and beneficent order for all states that followed France’s example.

  What complicated Joseph’s and Leopold’s response to the nascent revolution was the fact that their sister Marie Antoinette was queen of France. Leopold advised that she encourage her husband to accept the new proposed constitution. Louis XVI refused and fled Paris in June 1791. Leopold then began modifying his position out of solidarity with his sister. Together with Prussia’s king Friedrich Wilhelm II, he issued the Declaration of Pillnitz in August 1791 which called for Louis to be returned to the throne. This document was motivated by Leopold’s cognizance that a France in upheaval would no longer be a strong ally for his monarchy. The declaration did not call for immediate war; it was a defensive alliance, and symbolized Leopold’s prudent, cautious policy toward the revolution. Unfortunately, that prudence dissipated quickly once Leopold was gone. He died quite suddenly, of natural causes, in March 1792. His son and successor Franz would decisively halt the monarchy’s reformist trajectory of the preceding decades.

  Dynastic strategies

  Maria Theresia was staggeringly successful at dynastic reproduction: over 19 years she gave birth to 16 children, 10 of whom lived into adulthood. One of the most remarkable things about her as a ruler was that she helped raise all these children yet wisely governed a huge monarchy at the same time. Her splendid marriage helps explain both her fecundity and how she was able to manage motherhood and rulership. Her husband Franz Stephan was from an old but not especially powerful dynasty, which meant that the other German princes were not worried about his house uniting with the Habsburgs. As the price for recognizing Karl VI’s Pragmatic Sanction, France made Franz Stephan give up his family’s traditional possession of Lorraine, and instead he got the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He then became the Holy Roman Emperor after Karl Albrecht of Bavaria died, but in practice it was really Maria Theresia who ruled. Franz Stephan acted instead as the paterfamilias for the couple’s ever-increasing brood, and he also successfully managed the family’s finances, accumulating a large fortune. As testament of Maria Theresia’s and Franz Stephan’s genuine affection for one another, they shared a bedroom, which was unusual for royal couples of the day.

  Maria Theresia used her profusion of offspring very smartly. To solidify the new alliance with France, she married five of her children to Bourbons, most famously of course Marie Antoinette to Louis XVI. Maria Theresia kept up a regular corre
spondence with Marie Antoinette so that the latter would work for Habsburg interests within the French court. Several other daughters took on important political roles as well. As but two examples, Maria Carolina as queen of Naples largely ran the government there, and Maria Christina was coruler of the Austrian Netherlands. Her children regarded Maria Theresia as a stern but loving mother. She expected strict obedience (personally administering lashes once to Joseph when he was young), and Joseph’s first wife admitted that she was afraid of her mother-in-law. At the same time, however, there was an unmistakable maternal warmth about Maria Theresia that has made her the best-loved of all Habsburg rulers. An example of her personal touch was when she rushed to Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1768 to announce (with a grandmother’s joy and pride), “der Poldl hat an Buam!”—Viennese dialect for “Leopold has a son!” Leopold was equally prolific (his marriage also produced 16 children), and it was his line that guaranteed the Habsburg continuance, since Joseph had no sons or daughters who survived to adulthood.

  One of the profoundest changes that took place in the dynasty’s rule during this period was with its claims to legitimacy and loyalty. There was a distinct and very of-its-time evolution away from a religious-based legitimation toward a state-based one. The trends within the dynasty mirrored those in intellectual and cultural life across Europe generally, since during the Enlightenment religion came increasingly to be seen as a personal matter, devotion expressed inwardly rather than in outward, Baroque flamboyance. The influence of Jansenism was important, though never totally dominant. Jansenist ideas were associated with rationalist Cartesian philosophy, inner devotion, and the decline of religious politics. Even from the Church itself grew the idea that reason had to govern religion, and the more superstitious forms of worship diminished. Maria Theresia was the pivot in the dynasty’s evolution: though she was raised in the Baroque culture of Karl VI and continued to exemplify aspects of that world, she also exhibited traits more in common with Enlightenment ideas. Her traditional attitudes can be seen in her continuing belief in divine right and in the Catholic character of her monarchy. She was an unrepentant anti-Semite, and still quite vigorously distrusted Protestants, forbidding them from taking degrees at universities. She even rejected a plan for a scientific academy because she feared it might open the door to heresy.