The year of revolutions that overtook the Habsburg Monarchy in 1848—9 can appear bewildering, given the multiplicity and complexity of events in all corners of the realm. Although some sort of storm was expected, the revolutions caught many contemporaries off guard, including the imperial government, and the rapidity with which events unfolded had much to do with the regime's loss of nerve and momentary collapse. Yet the success of the revolutions was illusory. Not only were the forces for change weaker than they seemed, but once the individuals in charge of the Monarchy recovered their nerve, or were replaced by more determined personalities, the reimposition of order, however arduous, was relatively straightforward. The fact that the Monarchy weathered this crisis enabled it to survive another 69 years.
The events themselves are easiest to comprehend if seen, geographically, in four main compartments. There was a revolution in the imperial capital, Vienna, which toppled the Metternich regime and went through several phases before being extinguished in October 1848, while the constitutional 'spin-off' from this continued into the next year. There was a revolution in Hungary, in that a genuinely autonomous Hungarian government, within the Empire, was created; this Hungarian revolution, however, subsumed a variety of revolts against the new Hungarian government and led to a war between Hungary on the one side and the imperial government and the non-Magyar nationalities on the other. There was a revolution of sorts in Bohemia, or to be more precise in Prague, which saw a brief but ultimately self-defeating tug-of-war between Czechs and Germans over what sort of country Bohemia was, and who should run it, before this interesting episode was brought to an end by the imposition of martial law. And there were revolutions, or rather revolts, against Habsburg rule in the north Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, which tempted the neighbouring Kingdom of Piedmont to invade the Monarchy not just once but twice.
There were different types of revolution. Some disturbances had socioeconomic causes such as the agrarian problem and the strains occasioned by the beginnings of industrialisation. All four main areas of revolution had obvious political origins or soon developed political foci, such as demands for constitutional government or even independence. And all revolutions except the Viennese were to a greater or lesser extent nationalist in nature, in that the demands for change were inextricably bound up with the national aspirations of one people, which in many cases provoked the nationalism of other peoples.
The Monarchy was inescapably affected by revolutionary events in the rest of Europe, especially the German Confederation and the rest of the Italian Peninsula. Not only did the convening of a German National Assembly at Frankfurt and the debate on the possible unification of all Germans in one state have implications for the Austrian Germans and the very existence of the multinational Monarchy, but retrieving the Monarchy's position in both Germany and Italy was crucial to its survival as a great power.
A succession of poor harvests, in 1846 and 1847, drove food prices upward; inflation in turn forced government to raise consumer taxes, which fell with especial harshness on the poor in both countryside and town. The economic recession afflicting most of Europe in the late 1840s meant that urban factories were laying off workers instead of hiring more. The government's financial problems forced the decision to call a meeting of the Estates or Diet of Lower Austria for 13 March 1848. It was in this situation that the news arrived in Vienna, on 29 February, of a revolution in Paris the week before.
The initial gains of the revolutions were spectacular, in part because of the domino effect produced by news of revolutions elsewhere. In Vienna there was a run on the banks and a general heightening of economic uncertainty because it was suspected, quite rightly, that Metternich intended going to war, if he could find the allies, to nullify the French Revolution. In Pressburg, where the Hungarian Diet was in session, Kossuth in a speech on 3 March demanded the creation of an autonomous Hungarian government, responsible to the Diet, as well as the emancipation of the peasantry, the taxation of nobles and the limited extension of the suffrage among the urban middle class and the better-off peasantry. Crucially, Kossuth also demanded a proper constitution for the non-Hungarian lands of the Monarchy, as a safeguard against further interference by Vienna in Hungary's traditional liberties. Kossuth's speech was being distributed on the streets of Vienna within days and caused intense excitement. By the time the Estates of Lower Austria convened, its deputies found themselves besieged by thousands of students from the University of Vienna, who invaded the proceedings and forced a delegation to carry a petition to the imperial palace, echoing the Hungarian demands and calling for Metternich's dismissal. When the troops guarding the imperial palace fired on the crowd, killing 45 people, mayhem ensued. Artisans from the suburbs joined the students and started burning the factories, which they saw as the cause of their destitution. The imperial family, intimidated by the violence, rejected Metternich's advice to use brute force to suppress the disturbances and instead sacked him. On 15 March, in response to continuing unrest, the emperor issued a rescript promising to convene an imperial Diet or Reichstag for the purpose of drafting a constitution for the non-Hungarian 'half' of the Monarchy. At the same time the citizens of Vienna were granted permission to form a National Guard and the censorship was lifted. Kolowrat, Metternich's hated rival, formed a government of fellow aristocrats, some with a vague reputation for liberalism. Although Kolowrat himself stepped down a month later, his ministry made another epochal announcement before the end of March: it would legislate for the abolition of all peasant labour services, with due compensation for landowners, by the end of March 1849.
Once started, revolutionary change spread outwards. The Hungarian Diet sent a delegation to Vienna, which found the imperial government in no condition to resist. A Hungarian government was formed under Count Lajos Batthyany, with Kossuth as finance minister and Szechenyi and other prominent liberals included. In the meantime a popular revolution had broken out in Buda-Pest, where a coalition of intellectuals, professionals and artisans demanded the transfer of government to Buda-Pest, complete civil and legal equality, the reunion of Transylvania with Inner Hungary and the withdrawal of all imperial troops from the kingdom.
The Batthyany cabinet, its hand strengthened and to some extent forced by this radicalisation, passed a series of acts known as the April Laws'. These formalised Hungary's autonomous status, with its own government, responsible to a Diet henceforth elected every three years and meeting annually in Buda-Pest. The suffrage was extended to all males aged 21 or over who met certain property qualifications, with the significant exception of nobles, all of whom, however poor, had the vote. The principles of legal equality, religious freedom and general taxation were made law; the peasants' forced labour and all manorial obligations were abolished, with compensation for landowners; and Transylvania was invited to rejoin Hungary, which it soon did. Apart from the recognition of Croatia's separate status within Hungary, there was no acknowledgement of group rights for non-Magyars; instead, a knowledge of Hungarian was made compulsory for all parliamentary deputies, and the language of legislation was to be 'exclusively Hungarian'.17 Fatefully, the April Laws also asserted Hungary's right to its own army and militia, including a say in how and where they were used, as well as appointing a minister a latere or 'by the side of' the monarch, in effect a 'foreign minister' for relations with Vienna. This placed a huge question mark over what Hungarian autonomy meant in practice and how it affected the Monarchy's ability to function as a great power. Whose troops was the Hungarian minister for war in charge of? Could Hungary really withhold its consent to their deployment outside the kingdom? Could Hungary pursue its own foreign policy? The ambiguity led to a breakdown of relations and war within months.
In the meantime there had been a revolution of sorts in Prague, where a group of liberal, middle-class intellectuals, both Czech and German, called for constitutional government, freedom of the press, abolition of serfdom and equal rights to the use of Czech and German in education and public administration. A National Committee, again Czech and German to begin with, was formed to draft a petition, which became progressively more wide-ranging but also more dominated by the Czechs. The core Czech demands were the joining of the three provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in a single unit with its own Diet and responsible ministry, comparable to Hungary's, and equality of Czech and German.
The 'Czechification' of the National Committee, which by mid-April was the de facto government of Bohemia, provoked a German backlash. Most Germans left the Committee, the German-dominated Diets of Moravia and Silesia both protested at the prospect of union, and counter-demonstrations and petitions expressed the fears of Germans for their position within Bohemia. Relations were not improved when the German National Assembly at Frankfurt invited the Czech historian Palacky to stand as a deputy for Bohemia, which after all was one of the member states of the German Confederation. Palacky's famous reply, on 11 April, stated baldly that as 'a Bohemian of Slav race [stock]' he could hardly participate in a German assembly and that Bohemia in any case could not be considered a 'German' land.18 This 'moment when the ethnic worm turned' was an unwelcome surprise to Germans within and without the Monarchy.19 Their indignation only intensified when Palacky also issued a counter-call for deputies to a 'Slav Congress' at Prague in June, to debate a general reorganisation of the Monarchy to take account of its Slav peoples.
A comparable situation developed in Galicia, where initially Polish noble nationalists demonstrated in Lemberg and Krakow for constitutional government, Galician autonomy and the abolition of serfdom; in Lemberg a National Committee was formed, which claimed the right to govern Galicia. The governor of the province, however, gave a cool answer to these demands; his hand was strengthened by the peasants who ostentatiously offered their services to the governor, in a potential reprise of 1846. Krakow was surrounded with troops and the Lemberg National Committee summarily dissolved. Before this, however, the province's Ruthenes had made their presence felt. Having asked to make common cause with the Poles and been rebuffed, the Ruthenes' leaders appealed to the governor, asking for recognition as a nation and the right to form their own 'Supreme Ruthenian Council' (Holovna Rus'ka Rada). In a classic exercise of divide and rule, the governor was pleased to oblige. The Rada duly met on 2 May and declared that the Ruthenes were a distinct people, neither Polish nor Russian. The result was that both Poles and Ruthenes were neutralised by fear of what might be conceded to the other side.
The Monarchy's north Italian provinces lie outside the purposes of a history of Eastern Europe. Nevertheless the revolts in Lombardy and Venetia merit some mention because of the impact they had on events elsewhere. The fact that the imperial government temporarily lost control of both provinces encouraged even greater pressure for change in the rest of the Monarchy. The question of how to deal with the revolts, and in particular which troops to use, led to confrontation with Hungary. Finally, the Monarchy's recovery of Lombardy, if not Venice, by August 1848 helped to ensure its survival by restoring the morale of the imperial government and releasing forces for the showdown with Hungary. The Italian campaigns demonstrated an important truth: in its peasant conscript army, largely untouched by nationalism or indeed any revolutionary ideology, the Habsburg Monarchy possessed the ideal instrument for reimposing its will on rebellious provinces, once its leaders dared to use it.
Wherever they had occurred in the Monarchy, the revolutions seemed at first triumphant; yet their ostensible successes concealed weaknesses and divisions. In Vienna the imperial government was driven before a tide of popular demonstrations, orchestrated by students and artisans, into one concession after another. In May it announced elections for a constituent Reichstag, to be elected by something close to universal manhood suffrage.
Thereafter the tide began to turn. Upper - and middle-class opinion in and out of Vienna was probably satisfied with the modest constitutional gains promised, and alarmed at the domination of the capital by students and workers. In addition, most German Austrians, however liberal, assumed the superiority of German culture and found the claims of other nationalities to separate status disturbing. Most sensationally, on 17 May the imperial family took fright and spirited the Emperor Ferdinand away to Innsbruck. Although this prompted a further radicalisation of the situation in Vienna, the physical separation of court and capital henceforth emboldened those opposed to recent developments to envisage some sort of counter-revolution. Given that the ministerial council remained in Vienna, at the mercy of the radicals, the conservatives and outright reactionaries grouped around the court gradually evolved their own separate strategy, aimed as much at regaining control of provinces like Hungary as at containing revolution in Vienna. The ultimate goal was to preserve the Monarchy as a great power.
Neither the gathering reaction nor the continuing instability in Vienna prevented elections for the Austrian constituent Reichstag going ahead, and on 22 July the 383 deputies convened in the capital. It was a reasonably representative assembly. Nearly half the deputies were Slavs and a quarter were peasants. Some nationalities like the Czechs were ably represented by leading intellectuals such as Palacky; others were scarcely able to follow the deliberations, which were in German. One of the Reichstag's most revolutionary achievements was to formalise the abolition of serfdom in September. It also went on to produce one of the most remarkable documents of the nineteenth century, the draft constitution of March 1849. Long before then, however, the Monarchy had begun to claw back the concessions it had made.
The rollback started in Bohemia. Palacky's Slav Congress convened on 2 June. The majority of the 385 delegates to the Slav Congress were Habsburg subjects, although there was a handful of delegates from outside, which aroused the suspicions of Germans generally and of the imperial government, not to mention the Hungarian government, which forbade some Hungarian Slavs from attending. The Congress's main achievement was to issue a 'Manifesto to the European Nations', which assured the world of the peacefulness of the Slavs, deplored German aggression and argued for a federal reorganisation of the Monarchy.
The proceedings were brought to an abrupt halt on 12 June, however, by the outbreak of violence on the streets of Prague, possibly provoked by the military governor, Prince Windisch-Graetz. This was all the excuse Windisch-Graetz needed to bombard the town centre, proclaim martial law and round up large numbers of Czech nationalists. It was the end of any effective movement for change in Bohemia. Revealingly, the crushing of the Czech revolution was greeted with rejoicing among Germans throughout the Monarchy and with loud applause by the German National Assembly.
It was the disintegration of the peace in Hungary, however, which gave the final impetus to reaction. The fatal weakness of Hungary's revolution was that it did not speak for all Hungarian subjects. No sooner had the Hungarians won the right to autonomy than the kingdom's national minorities voiced demands for a similar autonomy within Hungary. These demands were initially quite modest, but to all of them the new Hungarian government returned dusty answers. The Slovak petition was denounced as Pan-Slavism. The Romanians were ignored. On 8 April Kossuth informed the Serb deputation, with disastrous frankness, that there could be no question of bestowing collective rights or autonomy on nationalities within what he considered to be a free, liberal Hungary and that 'the unity of the country makes it indispensable for the language of public affairs to be the Magyar language'.20
In response the national minorities' mood rapidly turned rebellious. The Slovaks, led by Stur, called a mass rally in May, calling for a federal reorganisation of Hungary, a Slovak militia and a Slovak-language university. The Serbs also held a mass meeting and proclaimed an autonomous province of the Vojvodina, taking in much of southern Hungary and parts of Croatia—Slavonia as well as large numbers of non-Serbs. In Transylvania, 40,000 Romanians put together a 'National Petition', insisting on full civil rights, peasant emancipation, Romanian-language schools and a Romanian militia.
In response to these manifestations of discontent the Hungarian government reacted with uncomprehending rigour. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Stur and his associates, who promptly fled to Bohemia. The Transylvanian Diet, dominated as it was by Hungarian nobles, voted overwhelmingly on 30 May for union with Hungary. Early in June, when the Serbs with the help of volunteers from neighbouring Serbia had formally proclaimed a rebellion against Hungarian rule, the Batthyany government ordered local army units to suppress it. In a situation rapidly becoming bewildering for all sides, southern Hungary descended into a vortex of racial war, with village turning against village, neighbour against neighbour.
Only in Croatia, whose separate status within Hungary was acknowledged even by Hungarian nationalists, did the Hungarian government from the start promise to respect Croatian rights. Yet it was precisely in Croatia that nationalist opposition to Hungary was most obdurate and where a common interest with elements of the court and the imperial government first emerged. Croatia's own revolution occurred in March, when a 'National Congress' dominated by the Illyrian Party assembled in Zagreb. This National Congress announced the abolition of serfdom and demanded the reincorporation of the Military Border into Croatia—Slavonia, formal autonomy comparable to Hungary's and even the right of Croatia to conduct its own 'foreign affairs'. In the meantime, in an attempt to retain some form of conservative control over Croatia, the Vienna government appointed Colonel Josip Jelacic as Ban (governor) of Croatia. This was a fateful appointment, since Jelacic, although no Illyrian, was a fierce Croatian nationalist, not only loyal to the Habsburgs but also animated by an abiding hatred of Hungary. His popularity enabled Jelacic to assume command of the Border Guard regiments and whip up hostility to Hungary, and it is clear that some imperial officials at least encouraged him.
In these circumstances the Batthyany government, which was in any case dominated by the ultra-nationalist Kossuth, could probably do nothing right. Certainly its reaction to Jelacic's open defiance of Hungarian authority was unequivocal. The Hungarians banned any elections for a new Sabor; Jelacic held the elections on 5 June, and the Sabor when it met promptly handed over supreme power to him. Despite Batthyany's attempts throughout the summer to resolve the situation, JelaCiC continued to defy the Hungarians and to gather troops with an obviously belligerent intent.
By 5 July it was clear that in addition to the spread of conflict with the nationalists, relations with the imperial government were breaking down. At the heart of the rift was the unresolved paradox of the April Laws and what Hungarian autonomy meant in practice. Already Hungary had spurned a plea from Vienna that it shoulder a quarter of the interest on the state debt and, even more alarmingly, started creating a national militia or honved as well as appealing to soldiers of imperial regiments to join this new Hungarian army. On the issue that mattered most to the imperial government, Italy, the Diet in effect refused to send troops there. The court, in response, accused the Hungarians on 31 August of violating the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723, in other words of destroying the unity of the Monarchy itself.
Matters were tipped over the edge by Jelacic, who invaded Hungary on 11 September with an army of 40,000 men. With the Batthyany cabinet breaking up under the strain, the Hungarian Diet voted to create a National Defence Committee, comprising Kossuth and five others. Jelacic was met by forces loyal to the Hungarian government, defeated, and driven back towards Vienna. In the interval a loyalist Hungarian general, sent by the court to reimpose control over Hungary, was attacked and murdered by an angry mob. In despair, Batthyany and other moderates resigned on 1 October, leaving Kossuth in charge as president of the National Defence Committee and symbol of national resistance.
The news of the war with Hungary, and more particularly of Jelacic's defeat, sparked the final flare-up of revolution in Vienna. When the capital's garrison was ordered to march to Jelacic's assistance, the students and artisans rose in revolt, physically attempting to prevent the troops' departure. The imperial war minister was murdered and the government fled to Olmutz in Moravia, while the Reichstag relocated to the nearby town of Kremsier. Windisch-Graetz, with the enthusiastic assistance of Jelacic, stormed Vienna on 31 October with considerable brutality. The Viennese revolution was over.
Windisch-Graetz, defacto ruler of Austria but the ultimate loyalist, proposed his brother-in-law Prince Felix Schwarzenberg to the imperial family as minister-president and the best man to regain control of the Monarchy. Schwarzenberg was a conservative anxious to resume the modernisation of the Empire and not averse to using the ideals and talents of the new breed of constitutional liberals to this end. He was also determined to restore the centralised structure attempted by Joseph II, as the precondition of maintaining the Monarchy's position as a great power.
In a final signal of the Monarchy's renewed sense of purpose, the monarch himself was changed. The weak-minded Ferdinand was persuaded by his family, Windisch-Graetz and Schwarzenberg to abdicate on 2 December in favour of his 18-year-old nephew Francis Joseph. The latter was the ideal instrument for this project: uncompromised by his uncle's pledges to the forces of revolution, Francis Joseph was himself a conscientious, stubborn and ultimately unimaginative conservative who believed in his mission to rule and accepted wholeheartedly Schwarzenberg's precepts on the need to so with as little reference as possible to popular institutions.
The first priority of this new team was to subdue Hungary, a task easier said than done. Throughout the autumn a vicious guerrilla war raged in southern Hungary and especially Transylvania, where the Romanians, both Orthodox and Uniate, the Saxons and imperial forces made common cause against the Hungarian authorities. The Hungarian government was forced to relocate to Debrecen and Buda-Pest fell to Windisch-Graetz in January 1849. The Hungarians made a final rebound, driving the imperial forces out of the country and retaking Buda-Pest in May. By this point, however, the political tide had turned against the Hungarians.
Schwarzenberg on taking office had left the Kremsier Reichstag in session, hopefully working on a draft constitution, in part to convince public opinion that the Monarchy was an acceptable leader of the German Confederation. The draft completed by Kremsier in March 1849 was arguably one of the Monarchy's great missed opportunities. Although it scrupulously avoided making provision for either Hungary or Lombardy—Venetia, its proposals for the rest of the Monarchy constitute one of the first attempts in history specifically to address the problems of running a multinational state. Ministers were to be responsible to parliament as well as to the monarch. Only in foreign affairs would the crown retain virtually unfettered control. With regard to nationality, the constitution announced, All peoples of the Empire are equal in rights. Each people has an inviolable right to preserve its nationality in general and its language in particular.'21 This included equal rights to the use of one's language in local matters such as education, public administration and the courts. The bicameral legislature provided for a directly elected lower house on a fairly wide franchise and, most innovatively, for an upper house representing each province, and the 'circles' or districts within those provinces, on what was in effect an ethnic basis. This was a genuine compromise between popularly elected deputies of multiple ethnicities, who 'hoped that by devolving as much power as possible to these largely homogeneous districts and even further to the municipal level they would defuse the struggle among the nationalities'.22
The Kremsier constitution was never adopted, largely it seems because its first draft, later withdrawn, also insisted on the principle of popular sovereignty, which neither Francis Joseph nor Schwarzenberg would accept. Instead, the Reichstag was dissolved on 4 March, at which point interior minister Count Franz Stadion issued an alternative constitution which made clear the new regime's centralising drive. The Stadion constitution guaranteed civil liberties and self-government at the municipal level and reiterated the principle of the equality of nationalities. In other respects it concentrated power far more obviously in the hands of the monarch. Ministers were responsible to the crown alone and not to the Reichstag. Hungary was reduced to a relatively small province, in a position of parity with all other territories of the Monarchy.
Stadion's constitution was never formally implemented, ostensibly on the ground that control over Hungary was not yet re-established. In Hungary, however, the damage was done and in response to this proposed centralisation Kossuth's government on 14 April deposed Francis Joseph and five days later defiantly proclaimed Hungary's independence. Hungarian independence was nevertheless an illusion. Not only was no great power willing to intervene on Hungary's behalf, but on the contrary Russia's Nicholas I was increasingly anxious to help the Habsburgs suppress this hearth of revolution on his doorstep. The additional pressure put on the Hungarian war effort by Russia's 200,000-man invasion helped tip the balance. Despite desperate appeals by Kossuth's agents abroad for intervention, numbers prevailed. The Hungarian army capitulated to the Russians at Vilagos on 13 August, while Kossuth and a host of others fled into exile.
World History
