In 1848 a revolutionary tide swept across Europe. It was a veritable Spring of Nations that saw first a culmination of liberal nationalism and then its collapse amidst internal contradictions. Beginning in Palermo in January, demands for constitutional and national freedom spread to central and northern Italy; in Paris the February Revolution took place, and in March Prussia and most of Germany and Austria were aflame. Bohemia and the Polish provinces of Prussia found themselves caught in a current for a united greater Germany. If successful it would have meant the end of the Habsburg monarchy. Polish hopes arose that Austrian Galicia and Prussian Poznania might be free to join a reconstituted Poland, which German liberals wanted to be a buffer separating them from tsarist Russia.
Portentous events were simultaneously occurring on the all-German level, in Austria, Bohemia, the Polish lands, and Hungary. They interconnected and influenced each other. On March 11, in Prague, a meeting of the radical Czech society “Repeal” prepared an address to Vienna spelling out the major national demands: autonomy of all the lands of the Crown of St Wenceslas united with a common, modern parliament; guaranteed German-Czech equality and civic freedoms; emancipation of the peasantry, etc. Somewhat reformulated these demands were accepted partially and with a delay by Vienna, where the revolution had swept away Prince Metternich and instituted a somewhat shaky government. But these reforms were to be linked with the calling of a parliament in Prague, which did not occur. Nor was Vienna prepared to grant a unification of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia; to this the Germans were strongly objecting. “The time has come for us to take our stand in Bohemia as Germans,” wrote a poet to his friend.41
Meanwhile, the Vorparlament (a preparatory body) in Frankfurt, seeking to transform the Germanic Confederation into a liberal constitutional German state, invited Palacky, as a representative of Bohemia, to join its deliberations. His famous reply made two telling points. First, while Bohemia had had feudal ties with the Holy Roman Empire and then with its successor the Germanic Confederation, it was not and could not become part of a modern unified Germany. Second, Austria, according to Palacky, was performing a crucial task of protecting the smaller nations of the Danubian area, and its destruction was out of the question. Indeed, as he put it, if Austria did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. We see here the first fully articulate formulations of Austro-Slavism, which found its political expression at the Slav Congress that met in Prague in June. The congress, in fact, transcended the limits of the monarchy for the Poles who attended it represented not only Galicia but also Prussian Poland.
The events in the latter province had taken the form of a Polish movement for national separation of Poznania. It had at first the backing of German liberals and even of the Prussian state, which permitted the formation of a Polish militia. The reason was fear of Russia, for the tsar had menaced the rising nations in no uncertain terms on March 27. The Vorparlament treated the Polish statement that their land could not be incorporated in a German state with an understanding which it did not show to Palacky. The Czech leader was viewed as a secessionist. But as the danger of a Russian intervention receded, and local clashes between Poles and Germans in Poznania multiplied, even limited concessions to the Poles were withdrawn. The Polish militia was ordered to disband and its armed resistance was broken by force. As a liberal deputy at Frankfurt put it, having to choose between German and Polish interests, he opted for “healthy national egoism.” This was symptomatic and it applied also to Austro-Polish relations.
Galician demands that Austria champion the cause of a reborn Poland had at first received a sympathetic hearing in Vienna. Liberal papers condemned the partitions and calmly envisaged a possible secession of Galicia from the monarchy. Encouragement came from Hungary where the diet called for the recreation of an independent Poland. From Paris Czartoryski was advising the leaders in Poznania and Galicia to await international developments, which were likely to make their provinces part of an anti-Russian Poland. St Petersburg, however, cleverly adopted a wait-and-see policy, and not only the Prussian but also the Austrian grip on the Poles tightened. Forestalling Polish preparations to emancipate the peasantry in Galicia the Austrian governor issued an emancipation decree himself. To weaken the Polish position he supported the Ruthenians, who began to insist that, after all, the Poles were not the only hosts in the province and could not speak on behalf of all. Finally, when under the influence of emigres the radical elements in Cracow tried to seize the city, the Austrian artillery bombarded it into submission.
Hence, when the Poles met with Czechs, Slovaks, Ruthenians, and Southern Slavs at the Prague Slav Congress, they operated from a position of relative weakness. Nor was Polish sympathy for the Hungarian cause, then becoming endangered by the counter-revolution, shared by the other fellow Slavs. The congress took a stand on the right of free development of nationalities and a reconstruction of Austria along national lines. It censured the Hungarian treatment of Slavs and denounced the partitions of Poland. The congress was careful not to be accused of Panslavism, but it did not escape the ridicule that the Germans (Marx and Engels included) heaped on the ambitions of the “nonhistoric” nations. To Engels Palacky was a “learned German run mad” who could not even speak proper Czech. The loyalty of the Czechs received a shock when the Whit Sunday riot in Prague was brutally subdued by Austrian troops and the city bombarded on the orders of Marshal Windisch Graetz. Palacky viewed the Whit Sunday riot as a provocation meant to put an end to the Slav Congress. The latter’s achievements were modest. However, in its manifesto to the nations of Europe it did go on record as favoring international cooperation, and it recalled the rights of Slavs “among whom liberty was ever cherished.”
Everything else apart the chances of Czechs and Poles were severely limited by their respective confrontations with Germans and Ruthenians. The souvenirs of the 1846 Galician peasant jacquerie were also a restricting factor. Yet 1848 transformed the Czechs into a political force in the monarchy. That year was also, as a historian put it, “a year of many ‘firsts’ in modern Czech history”:42 first political program, first political parties, first constitutions and elections.
Hungary occupied a stronger position in the monarchy than either Bohemia or Galicia and in that sense its “lawful revolution” began as a far-reaching success. Demands voiced by Kossuth at the diet in early March and reinforced by the radical platform adopted in Pest, aimed at a transformation of Hungary, including Transylvania, into a modern constitutional kingdom with its own government responsible to a parliament elected on a broad franchise. People were to be given civic and political rights, and the peasantry emancipated. The upper house was dragging its feet, but the outbreak of the revolution in Vienna and revolutionary manifestations in Budapest on March 15 enabled Kossuth to exert pressure on the conservatives and virtually dictate terms to Austria. In the second week of April the Hungarian constitution was approved and a cabinet appointed, headed by L. Batthyany and comprising top political figures from Szechenyi to Kossuth. This victory of freedom was welcomed by the non-Magyar liberals, but soon their own national demands conflicted with the policies of Budapest.
Croatia, which from the late eighteenth century had been more closely subordinated to Hungarian central authorities, sought its own administration, greater powers for the sabor (diet), and the emancipation of the peasantry. It insisted on the use of the Croat language. In late March a Habsburg loyalist, Josip Jelacic, was named ban and commander of the Military Border. His choice was endorsed by the sabor acting in the spirit of the Illyrian program (unification of all of Croatia) and aiming at an independent Croatia linked only through a personal union with the St Stephen’s Crown. “The nations will group according to their language,” the sabor declared. Budapest reacted violently. Under its pressure the king dismissed Jelacic in June, but the latter, certain that this was a passing concession, remained in control. Indeed, as confusion increased Jelacic eventually became indispensable again. Batthyany’s attempts to reach compromise with Vienna failed and the Austrian-appointed commander of the Hungarian army, General Lamberg, was killed in September by a Budapest mob. Even before Jelacic was named commander of the Hungarian army he launched his Croat troops against Budapest, but was stopped at the battle of Pakozd. The legal situation was most peculiar. The king of Croatia was battling the king of Hungary while the emperor of Austria stood aside. Of course all three rulers were one and the same person.
The September crisis marked a new phase in the Hungarian revolution, but before examining it, more must be said about the non-Magyar nationalities. The Slovaks in their “Demands of the Slovak Nation” petitioned for federalization of Hungary within which Slovakia would enjoy local autonomy. Kossuth rejected the very idea of a Slovak nation, and Slovak leaders, Stur among them, sought refuge in Prague. There they participated in the Slav Congress. The Austrians regarded them at first as dangerous firebrands.
The Serbs, also stressing their nationality, demanded territorial autonomy, and their strivings found support across the border, in the Principality of Serbia. No wonder the Hungarians, who felt threatened by Illyrianism and Austro-Slavism, were pleased with the dissolution of the Prague Congress, and looked favorably on plans of a greater Germany, a potential ally.
While the Serbs rose in late May, and hostilities punctuated by massacres took a heavy toll, the Romanians in Transylvania demanded recognition as a nation and full religious equality. Social and political motives affected their opposition to a union of Transylvania with Hungary; Hungarian contempt for the Romanians and the vested interests of the gentry prevented a meaningful dialogue. In mid-July the diet of Transylvania voted for union, and armed clashes began. Again casualties were heavy. Kossuth appointed the Polish emigre general, Jozef Bem, commander in this area, and he won victories in the field. But he also attempted, in accord with Czartoryski’s policy, to mediate between Magyars and Romanians. He was not successful. As for the Germans they split: the historically autonomous Saxons opposing the Magyars, and the more recently arrived Swabian colonists siding with them. Thus, the April constitution, which in effect reconstituted a dual sovereignty of the king and the nation, provided no solution to the nationality problems. The Hungarian liberals could not see why collective privileges need be bestowed on ethnic groups. The Slavs and Romanians could not accept the territorial concept of the Hungarian nation reinforced by linguistic criteria. It was only in 1849, in the last stage of the revolution, that the parliament enacted a nationality law, on July 28, that granted equality to all nations (although not federalization) and proceeded to a complete emancipation of the Jews.
The nationality problem was connected with the liberation of the peasantry, which the mainly peasant non-Magyars regarded as the first, and the Hungarians as the final revolutionary step. Only the radicals, who included the poet S. Petofi, advocated a sweeping reform without compensation to the landlords. Some of them spoke even of distribution of the nobles’ land. Yet the criticism, particularly by Marxist historians, that the revolution did not go far enough seems rather unfair. After all, it was the old “feudal” diet that passed the constitution, and the parliament did not seek protection from the ruler against domestic radicals or foreign invaders.
From the start the relationship between Budapest and Vienna hinged on the resolution of the problem of the army and finances. Already in July the mounting crisis led to Kossuth’s “fatherland in danger” speech and the appeal for raising a
Hungarian army and collecting taxes. By September a turning point was reached, and the Batthyany government resigned. Regular war ensued, and while many exministers withdrew, left the country, or broke down (as did Szechenyi), Kossuth rose to a position of supreme leadership. His main rival was General Gorgey, a brilliant soldier, but a cool and difficult personality, who believed in war for limited goals. He often behaved in an insubordinate and resentful fashion toward Kossuth who in turn denied him the formal supreme command.
The Hungarians refused to assist the October Revolution in Vienna, thus wasting a unique chance of linking forces with Austrian radicals. But they clung to the dogma of the legality of their regime, which was most important to many, especially those bound by the military oath. They observed the principle of noninterference in the other part of the monarchy. In the spring of 1849, and after a series of defeats and withdrawals, the Hungarians regained most of the country. But tendencies to reach a compromise with Vienna conflicted with the insistence on Hungarian rights. The abdication of Emperor-King Ferdinand and the ascension to the throne of Francis Joseph in December 1848 had been viewed by the Hungarians as an illegal act. They naturally rejected the March 1849 centralist constitution which the new monarch proclaimed and which restored Hungary to its pre-1848 position. As for a federalist structure that had been prepared by the Austrian parliament transferred from Vienna to Kromefir after the October Revolution, the government did not permit its completion.
On April 14 1849 the Hungarian parliament voted to dethrone the Habsburgs; Hungary, it said, was “returning to the European family as a free and independent state.” Kossuth became governor-general, or regent. This was a radical departure, but neither this nor the involvement of Poles in the Hungarian revolution constituted the decisive reasons for Russia’s military intervention, which now took place. As was Rakoczi a century and a half earlier, Kossuth was out of the country when Gorgey capitulated at Vilagos on August 13. But there was no repetition of the compromise peace of 1711. The Austrian commander General Haynau, nicknamed the hyena of Brescia for the atrocities committed in Lombardy, presided over a regime of harsh reprisals. It included the execution of Batthyany and of thirteen generals at Arad. The heavy war casualties were now augmented by Hungarians who were shot, hanged, or imprisoned.
A decade of neo-absolutism descended on the Habsburg monarchy. It rested, as a wit put it, on four armies: the standing army of soldiers, the sitting army of bureaucrats, the kneeling army of priests, and the creeping army of informers. The lands of the Crown of St Stephen were split again, with new districts set up under military governors. Self-governing institutions in Croatia were abolished as was Saxon autonomy in Transylvania. In Hungary passive political resistance prevailed, with a large collaborationist wing on one extreme and the secret pro-Kossuth faction on the other. In essence all that remained of the Spring of Nations was the emancipation of the peasantry. It was finalized in Hungary in the 1850s, with loose ends remaining in the Czech lands and Galicia. The Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and all the other nationalities had learned important
If bitter lessons; as for the Habsburg monarchy, despite the reaction to the events of 1848-9, the clock could not be turned back.
After a decade, Austria’s military defeats in the 1859 war against France and Sardinia forced the government to experiment with constitutional change. A “federalist” October Diploma of 1860 restored the Hungarian diet and the diets in Transylvania and Croatia. They were to be represented, together with other provincial bodies, in the all-Austrian Reichsrat in Vienna. German liberals opposed this conservative-dominated organ that hardly encroached on imperial power. The Hungarians demanded to be treated as a separate entity. The February Patent that followed in 1861 was a mixture of absolutism and constitutionalism, centralism and federalism. In the Czech lands it favored the Germans, in others the dominant nationality. Still, it did provide a quasi-federal parliamentary regime. The Hungarians refused, however, to send delegates to the Reichsrat and so did the Croatian sabor. From exile Kossuth appealed for a new Danubian Confederation that would reconcile the nations of the Hungarian kingdom, but was not taken seriously. In 1861 the Slovaks demanded, in a Memorandum of the Slovak Nation, a recognition of their national individuality and rather modest autonomy. This was refused in Budapest, and indeed there was no progress on other fronts. At best the Hungarians formulated general principles, but refused to discuss concrete demands.
In 1863-4 the Hungarians, together with other nations of the monarchy, watched Russia crush—in political collaboration with Bismarck’s Prussia—the Polish January uprising. This had a sobering effect on many and demonstrated the high price one paid for an armed confrontation with the state.
The Spring of Nations had not affected the Congress Kingdom. Nor did the Crimean War of 1854-6, during which the Polish emigration was only partly successful in bringing the Polish question to the international agenda. At the Paris Peace Congress the Russians assured the West that the Poles would be offered amnesty, some linguistic and religious concessions, and a limited restoration of local administration, as part of reforms prepared by Alexander II. These included the all-important abolition of serfdom that finally took place in 1861.
The kingdom stood on the threshold of the Industrial Revolution. The szlachta was undergoing further decomposition; an intelligentsia was growing; town people were assuming a bigger role in society. The abolition of the customs barrier between the empire and the kingdom opened possibilities for economic expansion. In agriculture a process of transforming the peasant into a rent-paying farmer was proceeding, but the peasantry, supported by liberal and radical circles, wanted full emancipation and ownership of the land. A group of reformist landowners, allowed by Russia to form the Agricultural Society, gathered around the popular Count Andrzej Zamoyski, whose economic initiatives resembled those of Szechenyi. Although the leaders wanted the society to stay clear of politics, it became a platform for general discussion and a point of attraction for moderates in the country. Zamoyski collaborated with the rising bourgeoisie of
Warsaw, who were led by the great financier of Jewish descent, Leopold Kronenberg. These circles came to constitute the nucleus of the movement known as the Whites.
At the other end of the political spectrum there formed a radical current composed largely of students, younger army officers, artisans, and lesser gentry. It would eventually crystallize as the Reds. Far from avoiding politics, the Reds combined it with a social program that included the emancipation of peasants and equality of Jews. This second issue did not cause much dissent, for this period was one of the closest in Polish-Jewish cooperation. The emancipation of Jews, seen as Poland’s third estate, also figured in the program of a man who was a party in himself, the Margrave Aleksander Wielopolski. A magnate like Zamoyski, Wielopolski scorned popularity and pursued his own ideas in which a low opinion of his countrymen, disenchantment with the West, and an aristocratic outlook harking back to the ancien regime, combined and were colored by a strong and despotic temperament. It was Wielopolski to whom the Russians turned when a mounting tension in the years 1861-2 resulted in bloody confrontation between Russian troops and the people, and the subsequent “moral revolution.” Wielopolski seemed the only choice, for Zamoyski and his groups, afraid of being stigmatized as collaborationists, adhered to their demands for a restoration of the 1815 constitution.
Wielopolski, who believed that a return to 1815 was impossible and therefore stood for only limited reforms, was authorized to offer concessions in the educational sphere (the re-establishment of the university, renamed the Main School), in polonizing the administration, in emancipating the Jews, and in decreeing a rather ill-defined transformation of labor obligations into tenantry. Determined to exert full power he dissolved the Agricultural Society, warned the church hierarchy not to interfere in politics, and refused proffered help from his countrymen. As he allegedly said, one could do something for the Poles, but nothing with the Poles. Intending to break the Reds, Wielopolski decided on a particularly galling measure, namely a military conscription, so arranged that it would affect mostly townspeople, the backbone of the Red movement. Military service at that time lasted some twenty-five years, which meant an effective elimination of these people from the homeland for most of their life.
The Red Central Committee was forced into a position in which it had to oppose the draft by proclaiming an armed uprising. This it did on January 22, 1863; the longest and in many ways the most dramatic of Polish risings began. Appealing to the nations of the Old Commonwealth to take up their arms, and launching a special address to “brother Poles of the Mosaic faith,” the insurgents fought for more than a year. In the spring the Whites reluctantly joined; their vast resources made it possible for the uprising to continue and expand. Still, the insurgents had to fight a hit-and-run guerrilla war without ever controlling a larger territory or a town. This prevented the National Government (as it was named) from coming into the open or enforcing its decree emancipating the peasantry. The government led the rising from its clandestine quarters in Warsaw, its seal being the only mark of recognition. The underground network was large and effective, and it says something for the patriotism and the solidarity of Poles that they obeyed the orders of an anonymous government which changed its composition several times.
The Prussia of Bismarck sided with St Petersburg; France, Britain, and Austria made several diplomatic demarches on Polish behalf but without any practical results. In the United States, where the Civil War coincided with the January uprising, the Northerners sympathized with Russia, making somewhat farfetched comparisons between Southern secession and Polish attempts to free themselves of Russia. In Paris, words of encouragement (durez!) were proffered that included the remark that the blood of the insurgents would mark the future boundaries of Poland. Indeed the uprising spread over much of the old Commonwealth. This was the last time that the Lithuanian and Belorussian peasantry would fight alongside the Poles under the common historic banner. This was no longer true for the Ukraine, which opposed the insurgents. A wave of nationalism passed over Russia, discrediting such defenders of Poland as the popular Alexander Herzen. But the number of Russian (and even Ukrainian) volunteers in the insurgent ranks was larger than that of any other foreigners who came to struggle for Poland and freedom.
Virtually all social classes were represented in the rising, the lower clergy being more involved than the hierarchy. Although in many areas the peasants were indifferent or even actively inimical to the “noble” uprising, there were more peasant insurgents than at any previous time since the Kosciuszko insurrection of 1794. The struggle was terribly uneven and militarily hopeless from the beginning. The partisans lacked arms, munitions, even experienced commanders. The last leader of the uprising, Romuald Traugutt, succeeded in prolonging the struggle until April 1864 when he was arrested and hanged, with five companions. Sporadic fighting went even beyond that date, till the autumn. The tsarist government which could not appear to be less generous to the peasants than the insurgent government, had already improved the terms of emancipation in the Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian provinces. In 1864 it emancipated the peasantry in the Congress Kingdom. The political dimensions of this decree will be dealt with in the next chapter. Let us just recall here that the move completed peasant emancipation in East Central Europe.
The age-long dispute about the sense of the uprising and the existing alternatives is not quite resolved, but some consensus has been reached. It appears that Wielopolski, whom the Russians in fact made use of, never stood a chance of shaping the course of events. He could hardly have taken the wind out of the Red program by pushing through the emancipation of the peasantry himself, if only because St Petersburg would not have allowed it. Russian policy had been a consistent one of divide and rule. Wielopolski and the Russians forced both the Whites and the Reds into a position that left them no alternatives. In a sense the Whites had already made a choice when they refused collaboration except on their terms, in the spring of 1862. They had to join the insurrection to escape public condemnation and in the hope of giving it a moderate direction. The Reds challenged by Wielopolski’s draft could only respond by resistance, even though they were badly prepared. The possibility of making free and rational calculations was illusory.
The collapse of the uprising marked the end of national revolutions in East Central Europe. A new era began. The Habsburg monarchy, having lost a war against Prussia in 1866, had to engage in drastic reconstruction. It took the form of the Compromise (Ausgleich) between the dynasty and the Hungarians. Austro-Hungary emerged; Galicia received an autonomy; the Czechs felt betrayed. Was compromise a real political option for the Slavs? The next decades were to bring an answer.
World History
