Eighteenth-century Bohemia lived under the shadow cast by the White Mountain and all it stood for. Yet the notion of a dark age comparable to the Saxon period in Poland may be somewhat overdrawn. There was a steady population growth: 2.1 million in Bohemia and 900,000 in Moravia in 1754, and a total of 4 million forty years later. The population density of 40 per sq. km was similar to that of Western Europe. Towns, however, had declined, and even Prague appeared shabby to an English traveler who in 1716 noted only “some remains of its former splendour.”25
The peasantry felt oppressed when more than 70 percent of its income was taken by the state, the church, and the landowner. The length of corvee (Robot) obligation was much greater than in Hungary, but after the 1680 peasant revolt in Bohemia the nobles found it harder to exact it. There were still peasant outbursts, as in 1717 and 1738 in Bohemia and in 1735 in Hungary.
The transformation of the nobility continued. By 1757 the old (pre-White Mountain) families dwindled to 87 (a 71 percent loss) and those of the 1620-54 vintage fell to 53, an even greater drop. With a steady influx of newcomers a foreign and “new” nobility constituted a majority by the middle of the century. Although some families, for instance the Kinskys, were proud of their Czech descent, others regarded themselves merely as aristocrats of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Yet the fact that German and Italian speech prevailed did not necessarily mean denationalization, for patriotism was not really identified with language. Nor was there much to choose between the old and the new nobles regarding their social and political behavior; both groups displayed a good deal of indolence.
A certain political passivity on the part of the nobility could be gauged by its easy acquiescence in the most important document of the first half of the century, the Pragmatic Sanction, which provided for indivisibility of the Habsburg monarchy and extended hereditary rights to female descendants. The same nobility then elected Charles of Bavaria, who had challenged the Pragmatic Sanction, to Bohemia’s kingship in 1741 when he entered the country.
The diet could no longer bargain over taxes. A lump sum being decreed by the government, the diet merely determined how to collect it. The executive committee of the diet (Landesausschuss, Zemsky vybor) was a pliable instrument in the hands of the administration.
Important economic developments of the late eighteenth century will be discussed later, when we shall also touch on the origins of the national revival that belongs to the next chapter. At this point we may note the continuation of the culture of Counter-Reformation, the canonization of John Nepomuk marking the high point in 1729, and the steady progress of the German language. Among the few other developments one needs to stress the writings of Gelasius Dobner, in many ways the father of Bohemian historiography, and the paintings of Petr Brandl at home and Jan Kupecky aboard. As the ideas of Enlightenment entered the country, the Freemasons and Rosicrucians served as its propagators.
Hungary entered the second decade of the century under the sign of the Treaty of Szatmar, under which the Habsburgs promised to the Hungarians amnesty, religious freedom, respect of the constitution, and the calling of a diet. Yet the subsequent policies of reconstruction, which involved a transformation of the central government in the direction of greater efficiency and bureaucracy, and the repopulation of the country signally affected the course of events.
Szatmar carried full recognition of noble privileges and treated the political nation as a partner in control of the counties and the lower chamber of the diet. But already the resolutions of the diet in 1712-15 liquidated de facto the ineffective noble levy (insurrectio) and set up a standing Hungarian army, half of which was composed of foreigners and commanded by Austrian officers. Although the palatine was nominally the commander-in-chief, the army was subordinated to the War Council in Vienna, and financed by taxes paid by burghers and peasants.
In 1722-3 the central administration and judiciary were reorganized through the creation and transformation of main offices. The Lieutenancy Council (Consilium regium locumtenentiale) operated in Pozsony, and after 1785 in Buda. Although it was packed with loyal appointees the fact that its president was the elected palatine made it less submissive than its Bohemian counterpart. This changed toward the end of the century, with Habsburg archdukes becoming the last two palatines. The Hungarian Court Chancellery in Vienna was, unlike its Bohemian equivalent, an adjunct of the Lieutenancy Council. The third organ, the Hungarian Chamber (Camera) was in theory independent of the Hofkammer but its status was ambiguous. As mentioned, Transylvania, the Banat, and the Military Border retained their separate administrations; the diet’s attempts to promote greater centralization in the lands of the Crown of St Stephen were viewed askance by Vienna. In matters of education, royal authority was firmly established.
Provisions on paper mattered less than actual practices and in that sense the authorities were on the offensive. As for basic constitutional changes the high point was reached with the Pragmatic Sanction through which the emperor-king wanted to assure the succession of his daughter, Maria Theresa, to all the Habsburg hereditary lands. The diet of Hungary accepted it in 1722, that of Transylvania a year earlier. The diet of Croatia, emphasizing its separate status, had already consented to the Pragmatic Sanction in 1721. All the lands of the Crown of St Stephen now formally became part of an “indivisible and inseparable” entity, although Hungary’s special standing was confirmed.
The dominant position of aristocracy within the political nation continued, but the changes in its character and outlook became more pronounced. The enterprising and business-minded magnate of the preceding two centuries made room for the parasitic, often absentee landlord who ruined himself at the court in Vienna. Adopting French and German, he increasingly distanced himself from the gentry even in his speech. Ennobled high ranking officers and civilian officials joined the ranks of aristocracy. Most of the income of this group came now from seigneurial rights and monopolies, a great part of the manorial land being hired out to peasants. The commerce in oxen was in the hands of peasants or lesser nobles.
The gentry had passed the peak of their golden age, becoming more provincial and parochial. The exclusion of non-Catholics from public offices (1731) affected the largely Calvinist nobles. Although formally the Hungarian gentry was not banned from commerce and crafts like their Polish counterparts, the two groups had much in common. Both comprised the whole economic pyramid from landless and tax-paying gentleman to the wealthy nobleman, and both displayed a conservative and parochial mentality.
The position of the burghers whose most lucrative income came from winegrowing changed little, and if anything for the worse. The number of fairly small towns did not increase from pre-Mohacs days. Some eight towns had the status of free royal cities and a population of over 10,000. In 1720 Buda had only 12,000 inhabitants and Pozsony around 8,000, and although half a century later the respective figures were 22,000 and 28,000, this was not much by urban standards of Europe. The burghers were hardly affected by political ideas coming from the West, and in that respect too the gentry was a potential or real third estate in the French sense. The lot of the peasantry grew worse, and most of the haiduks and free peasants were reduced to serfdom. More than half of the arable land was by mid-century in the hands of the nobility. Increased taxes and military obligations weighed heavily on the peasantry, contributing to such uprisings as that of the Serb peasants in 1735.
Devastations of the countryside going back to the Turkish wars and the more recent Rakoczi struggle, which cost the lives of some 85,000 soldiers and many more civilians, required policies of reconstruction and repopulation. It was fortunate that Hungary was no longer a battlefield; in the eighteenth century wars with Turkey were fought largely on Serb, Bosnian, or Wallachian lands. But wars and peace treaties of Passarowitz (Pozarevac) and Belgrade affected population shifts, which were largely from the periphery toward the center of the country. Spontaneous migrations and government-sponsored settlements greatly changed the ethnic composition of Hungary. The numbers of Romanians and Serbs increased while settlements of Germans, the so-called Swabians, reached huge proportions (about 1 million people). It is estimated that the Magyars constituted only about 40 percent of the population toward the end of the century.
With the German language dominant in palaces and in the army, and with Latin at school, court, and the diet, Hungarian literature did not fare well during a good part of this period. A cultural and national revival began only in the second half of the century.
The developments in the Commonwealth showed both similarities and contrasts with Bohemia and Hungary. The ostentatious, vain, vulgar Polish and Lithuanian magnates with their huge clientele of impoverished gentry (an estimated 120,000 were landless) were ridiculed in Europe. But their power was incomparably greater than that of the Habsburg aristocrats. As for the political contest in the country, it was characterized, according to A. Kaminski, by three main trends: republicanism, constitutionalism, and monarchism. King Augustus II for his part pursued absolutist objectives.
Polish political culture of the early decades of the century had become an “exotic anachronism.” Not only did the country lack a sizeable standing army, sufficient taxes, and a bureaucracy (the three ingredients necessary for modernization), but the prevalent view among the szlachta was that they were not needed. The vision of an anarchic society based on “golden liberty” and left in peace by its neighbors because it represented no threat to anyone was epitomized by the famous dictum “nierzqdem Polska stoi.” It meant, loosely translated, that nongovernment was elevated to a system. The szlachta was not only losing civic virtues, but it was growing ever more bigoted and intolerant. In 1718 a Calvinist deputy was relegated from the sejm, and within the next twenty years nonCatholics lost the right to public offices and were permitted only a limited practice of their religion. A Catholic-Protestant riot in Toruh ended with death penalties for the Lutheran mayor and his associates; the “bloodbath” raised an outcry throughout Europe, the picture of an intolerant Poland being carefully cultivated by Berlin and St Petersburg.
These developments could hardly have been foreseen as the Commonwealth entered the eighteenth century. One could speak of its eclipse but not a collapse. Its throne was the object of ambition of both the French Prince de Conti and Augustus the elector of Saxony. The latter prevailed after a double election had taken place. A dynastic union of the Commonwealth and Saxony appeared at first glance a fortunate combination. Saxony could provide a power base for Augustus, who thought of further strengthening his position by gaining Livonia from Sweden. But Lutheran Saxony was incompatible with the huge amorphous and Catholic-ruled Commonwealth. The ambitions of the king, an alien monarch residing mainly in Dresden, aroused suspicions. His foreign policy plans courted disaster. In Rostworowski’s happy phrase “the higher he aimed the deeper he sank.”
Involving the unwilling Poland in the Northern War against Sweden in 1700 Augustus II miscalculated badly. Charles XII of Sweden not only defeated Peter the Great of Russia, Augustus’s chief ally, but invaded and devastated Poland, drove Augustus to Saxony and forced him to abdicate. Charles’s hand-picked candidate, the youthful Leszczyhski, was elected as King Stanislas. By 1709, however, the situation changed drastically, as the crushing Swedish defeat at Poltava allowed Augustus to return to Poland. But it also made him dependent on Peter the Great, a dependence he subsequently tried to shake. His chances were small, as the situation in the country turned from bad to worse.
The slow process of the Commonwealth’s recovery from the seventeenth-century devastations was not only halted but drastically reversed. Damages inflicted by Swedish, Saxon, and Russian troops were staggering, and the bubonic plague helped to devastate the population which sank perhaps to some 6 or 7 million inhabitants. The political picture was chaotic. The prestige of the king had plummeted and the warring pro-Saxon and pro-Swedish factions were out of hand. The hetmans (top military commanders), who had become an independent political factor in the state, were thwarting the king and engaging in negotiations with foreign courts. One could speak of the disintegration of sovereignty. During Augustus’s reign 10 out of 18 sessions of the sejm came to naught. The king’s plans to promote absolutism in the Commonwealth and to make the crown hereditary in his own House of Wettin were compromised by the defeats in the Northern War; his subsequent plans of a coup backed by Saxon troops produced a backlash. Peter the Great stepped between a powerful confederation —which to a large extent he manipulated—and the king. The “Silent Sejm” (deputies were forbidden to make speeches) held in the presence of Russian troops accepted a settlement. The Saxon troops had to go home, but a small standing army financed out of permanent taxes was set up, the power of the hetmans became somewhat limited and the local sejmiks weakened.
Thus it may be an exaggeration to speak of a final defeat of the king or of a turning point in Russo-Polish relations. Had Augustus succeeded in his new policy of mounting a coalition to curb the growing power of Petrine Russia, the position of the Commonwealth might have improved greatly. But his motives were suspected at home, and Prussia and Russia confirmed their joint policy of maintaining the Commonwealth in a state of anarchy. Defeated, Augustus concentrated his efforts on assuring the succession of his son. The issue became pressing with the king’s death in 1733.
Once again a double election took place and force decided the issue. The reelected King Stanislas Leszczynski had much of the country behind him, but he was driven out by Saxon and Russian armies. The subsequent War of the Polish Succession was fought on the Rhine and had no impact on Poland, where Augustus III was recognized king. Leszczynski, however, whose daughter married Louis XV, was compensated with the Duchy of Lorraine as a dowry to be passed eventually to France.
Unlike his father, Augustus III was indolent and uninterested in politics. During his absentee rule none of the sejms completed its sessions. Poland watched powerless the annexation of the once-Polish Silesia by Frederick II of Prussia. In spite of being neutral, the country had its territory violated by the marching armies of Russia and Prussia and was inundated by debased currency. Poland was turning into a “wayside inn” for unwanted and unpaying guests.
With absolutist designs discredited and “golden liberty” promoting chaos, a constitutional program of reform seemed to offer the only chance of strengthening the sejm, creating a central executive, putting order into fiscal and military affairs, developing commerce and industry, rebuilding towns, and taking the miserable and exploited peasant under the protection of the state.
Leszczynski’s re-election had momentarily brought some fresh air into Polish politics, and subsequently his court in Luneville became a center of early Enlightenment that radiated into Poland. The Free Voice, which he either wrote or inspired, attacked the Sarmatian mentality that regarded all progress as foreign. The Piarist Szymon Konarski, who was the first to use the word “Sarmatism” in a pejorative sense, contrasted Polish backwardness with the achievements of other republican regimes: Venice, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and, strange as it may seem to us, England. His Way of Effective Counsels even dared to denounce liberum veto itself. His writings apart, Konarski’s real contribution lay in the field of education, and the medal he later received inscribed “to him who dared to be wise” stressed his pioneering role. Konarski was convinced that the Commonwealth could not overcome its backwardness unless a new elite was trained in modern ideas and civic virtues. A member of the Piarist Order, Konarski reformed their network of schools by stressing foreign languages and sciences in their curricula. The schools were among the first to introduce the ideas of the Enlightenment into Poland. The elitist Collegium Nobilium, set up in Warsaw in 1740, served as a model. Soon Jesuit schools followed suit.
There were other indications of change. In Warsaw the magnificent Zaluski collection became the first public library in the country. Its manuscripts and books would eventually (after Poland’s partitions) be carried off by Russia to St Petersburg to become part of its budding university.
Changes in the economy might justifiably be called a first phase of a protoindustrial development. Peace, which came to the Commonwealth after the Northern War, lasted for several decades, creating favorable conditions for economic activity. The 1720-60 period was characterized by the rise of manufactories operated mainly by serf labor and situated on magnates’ estates, which produced glass, textiles, and metal objects for the internal market. Agriculture began to recover, with rising grain exports through Gdansk benefiting the landowning szlachta. Foreign workers and specialists were brought into the country, mainly from Saxony, but also from France and Italy. Clearly, progress was slow and the conservative and parochial outlook still prevailed. But it was obvious to the reformers that the political system demanded far-reaching changes and that the Commonwealth had to be strengthened to be able to face Russia, Prussia, or the Habsburg monarchy, then in the process of major transformations.
World History
