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CHAPTER VII

Reaction 1849 — 1860

THE system inaugurated by Prince Felix Schwarzenberg was centralist in theory, but before all else it was absolutist in practice. For ten years the reaction held Francis Joseph in its power; the evil triumvirate of church, aris­tocracy and army hurried the state on to bankruptcy, and would have plunged it into utter ruin, but for the pliant and not incapable bureaucracy, with whose services the Govern­ment had been unable to dispense. Throughout this period, however, a corrosive force had been secretly at work; and strangely enough this was no other than Alexander Bach, with whose name this decade of Austrian history has come to be identified. This remarkable man, to whose great talents history has done scant justice, was a bureaucrat par excellence; and the distrust felt towards him by the higher aristocracy was based upon even truer instincts than the indignation of the democrats whom he had deserted. His opportunism may have been tainted by ambition, but at any rate he realized clearly that the time was not yet ripe in Austria for parlia­mentary government; and his failure to maintain a lost and impossible cause does not detract from his services in repair­ing and renewing the administrative machine, without which the constitutional reforms of the sixties could not have been peacefully executed. Moreover, to his influence is due the failure, on the part of the reactionaries, to modify or repeal the abolition of feudal rights; while the judicial reforms which he initiated, were adopted almost in their entirety by sub­sequent governments.[1]

On October 17, 1849, the central Government of Vienna issued a proclamation which reduced Hungary to the condition of a mere province of the Austrian Empire, like Tirol or Styria. In this document occur the ominous words: "the former constitution (Landesverfassung) of Hungary is annulled by the Revolution."[2] At first the country remained under military occupation, Haynau virtually filling the post of dictator, subject to certain instructions from Vienna. Transylvania and Croatia became Austrian provinces (Kron­länder); the Serb Voivody was revived, with the prospect of subsequent union with Croatia; the ancient county govern­ment was suppressed, and what remained of Hungary was divided for administrative purposes into five districts, each under an Imperial commissioner. Of these districts two were Slav (Kaschau and Pressburg), two mixed (Oedenburg and Pest), and only one pure Magyar, — the obvious aim of Schwarzen­berg's Government being to reduce Magyar influence to the territory between the Theiss and the Danube.[3] The chief merit in the new system — the introduction of competition for official vacancies — was precisely the most objectionable feature in the eyes of the Magyars, who were accustomed to the corrupt and tumultuous proceedings of sexennial elections (the so-called restauratio), to all administrative and judicial posts. The deadly mistake of the Government lay in throw­ing these offices open to natives of the whole Monarchy, instead of confining them to the lands of the Hungarian Crown; in effect most Magyars held sullenly aloof, and the vacant posts were mainly filled with officials from Bohemia and Galicia, who earned the contemptuous nickname of " Bach hussars."[4] Sviečeriy, a high Galician official, who assumed control of the Kassa district, openly favoured the idea of Slovak autonomy, and filled more than one post with Slavs who were known to entertain anti-Magyar sentiments. Not merely was an order issued threatening all officials of the northern counties with dismissal, unless they learnt Slovak within a certain period; but copies of the Slovansky Noviny were actually distributed gratis among the peasantry.[5] When, however, encouraged by the attitude of the authorities, the little Slovak town of Röcze (Revúca) decided to erect a Slovak secondary school, permission was only granted on condition that German should be made the language of instruction. Henceforth with every year Germanizing influences grew stronger, and though an Imperial Rescript of September, 1857, prescribed due regard for the cultivation of the mother tongue, practically no steps had been taken to enforce this provision before the Bach system collapsed two years later. Vienna had no real sympathy with the nationalities, but merely used them as a pawn in the game against Budapest; incapacity or lack of interest and knowledge blinded Austrian states­men to the real value which the pawn possessed, and led them at the critical moment to yield it up without an equivalent.

While the military occupation was still at its height, Haynau issued by arbitrary decree a new constitution for the Lutheran Church (Feb. 10, 1850). New superintendents were ap­pointed, and these were to share the direction of the Church with administrators nominated by the Government: the lay element in the various church assemblies was curtailed; and their meetings were only to be permitted in the presence of a royal commissioner. Strangely enough, Haynau had succeeded in a remarkably brief space of time in living down his butcher's reputation, and while he was soon on friendly terms with the aristocracy in Pest, he himself fell under the thrall of Magyar customs and traditions.[6] This, and the provisional nature of military rule, account for the contrast between the recep­tion of his Protestant Rescript and of the subsequent govern­mental policy towards the Hungarian Protestants. Count Leo Thun, the Minister of Education in Schwarzenberg's cabinet, was undoubtedly inspired by the most honourable and conscientious motives, and sought above all to advance what he regarded as the true interests of religion. But unfor­tunately he was a mere tool in the hands of Father Beckx, the all-powerful general of the Jesuit Order in Rome, and he had no conception of the meaning of constitutional guar­antees. Conscious of his own goodwill, he seemed to imagine that the suppression of the Hungarian constitution left him free to violate the liberties of the Protestant Churches in Hun­gary. The sturdy resistance offered to Thun by Calvinists and Lutherans alike, forms the first act in the new drama which culminated in Deák's constitutional triumph in 1867. Thun's antecedents naturally roused high hopes among the Slovaks, but his action in imposing the German language upon the Lycée in Pressburg was quite as alarming to the Slav as to the Magyar element in the Church. He then pro­ceeded to depose all the superintendents — including even Szeberenyi, a Slovak of pronounced Austrophil sentiments — and tainted the appointment of their successors by the well­meant but tactless grant of salaries from the state. Worst of all, he entrusted the supervision of Protestant schools to the Catholic inspectors,[7] thus reverting to one of the most keenly felt abuses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The weapon of passive resistance was called into play, and the condition of the Protestant Churches[8] grew every year more chaotic. In 1855 representatives of both Churches were summoned to Vienna to discuss matters of church and school organization, and were dismissed with the assurance that the final decision would be in accordance with the law of 1791.[9] None the less, in the spring of 1856 strict measures were taken to reduce the Protestant gymnasiums to submission; and as they still proved refractory, all but four[10] were deprived of the necessary recognition and threatened with immediate dissolution. Such was the moment which Thun regarded as favourable for launching his new church constitution for the Hungarian Protestants (Sept. 8, 1856). By it, it is true, the old presbyterial system was to a large extent restored; but a supreme Church Council (Oberkirchenrat) nominated by the Emperor, was created as a supervisory and judicial body. Even more objectionable than the substance of the constitu­tion was the manner in which it was imposed, which constituted a clear violation of the Act of 1791, and of the Treaties of Vienna and Linz upon which that Act was based. As the synod of Pressburg justly observed in its address to the Sovereign, " only the Church itself can help here, for it knows best its own needs and shortcomings. Every foreign remedy, especially when it infringes that autonomy which is essential to a free and healthy life, is bound sooner or later to prove worse than the evil itself."[11] In short, the constitution was received with almost universal disapproval, and the discontent was only increased by such slighting accompaniments as the prohibition issued to the Protestants to receive Jewish children into their schools, and by the brusque replies of Thun to the synodal petitions.

At length on September 1, 1859, Thun set a crown upon his ten years' administration of Hungarian education by his famous " Protestant Patent." . This decree restored the presbyterial system in its entirety, placed the schools once more under church control, created a special Protestant depart­ment in the Ministry of Education and Religion, ap­pointed regular Protestant army chaplains, and assigned a special annual grant from the Budget to the Protestant Churches, besides establishing a series of bursaries at the Ger­man universities for the benefit of Hungarian Protestant stud­ents. Far more questionable in the eyes of the Magyars was the increase in the number of superintendents from eight to twelve, and the redistribution of the Church synods in such a manner as to strengthen the position of the Slovaks and the Germans, who if united would have formed a majority in the Church. The real objection to the Patent, however, lies in the alto­gether unwarrantable interference on the part of the State with the dearly bought autonomy of the Protestant Churches. It contained many provisions which in themselves might fairly be regarded as an improvement upon the constitution of 1791, which was admitted on all sides to be out of date. But the arbitrary imposition of even the most ideal ecclesiastical system is a step which cannot be too severely condemned, and would justify the most determined resistance.

While, however, the Magyars were resolved to resist the Patent to the utmost, a very different feeling revealed itself among the Slovaks. The presbytery of Nyitra (which con­tained 21 parishes and 53,000 souls) led the way on December 8, by accepting the Patent and moving an address of thanks to the Emperor; and its example was shortly followed by the presbyteries of Szemered, Schemnitz, and Neusohl, while • others merely contented themselves with requesting its sus­pension until the meeting of a General Assembly.[12] Slovak support only accentuated the opposition of the Magyars, who were more than ever convinced that the religious pretext was merely a cunning contrivance to hide the " Pansláv " aims of Thun and his advisers ! Thun, on the other hand, was indignant at the hostility to his scheme, and a fresh re­script which he published early in October proves how com­pletely he failed to realize the illegality of his action. Through­out the winter a long array of legal proceedings was instituted against the recalcitrant clergy and laity. In more than one instance the minutes of presbytery were confiscated, and prominent members of the Church, like Zsedényi, were thrown into prison. Thun's well-meaning idealism degenerated into open persecution, and "it is hardly too much to say that the on­slaught on Protestant autonomy sealed the fate of Absolutism in Hungary.[13] The fact that the majority of the Slovaks accepted his scheme, does not in any way prove its excellence; it merely shows that they preferred an imperfect church organization to the far greater evil of Magyarization and national extinction.

Meanwhile the desperate state of Austrian finances and the disastrous issue of the war against France and Sardinia evoked a highly critical situation. The exiled Kossuth, who had already fixed his head quarters at Turin, pursued more actively than ever his intrigues with Napoleon III, Palmer­ston, and the Italian leaders. Not content with this, he con­ceived a plan of taking Austria in the rear, by organizing a rebellion on the Transylvanian frontier. To this end he sent emissaries to Belgrad and Bucarest; and in his name General Klapka concluded a convention with Alexander Couza, who was elected in 1859 Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia.[14] The main terms of this agreement were as follows: Couza agreed to permit the Hungarian patriots to organize their forces upon his territory, to supply them, on the outbreak of war in Italy, with 20,000 rifles procured from Napoleon III, and to place all possible means at the disposal of the Hungarian military commander. In return for this, Hungary was to support Couza in his design for the conquest of Bukowina. Kossuth, however, had learnt in exile the lesson of the racial war of 1848, and therefore laid great stress upon the reconcilia­tion of the non-Magyar races, without which he saw that a fresh insurrection was impossible. The convention therefore expressly declares the readiness of the Hungarian patriots to adopt the following principles into their constitution:

1.  Complete reconciliation between Serbs, Roumanians and Magyars.

2.  Equal rights and liberties for all citizens without distinc­tion of race or creed.

3.  Communal and county autonomy, with local right to determine the language of administration.

4.  In matters of religion and education, full independence for the various churches and nationalities.

5.  Special organization of the Serb and Roumanian troops, with their own language of command.

6.  The summons, at the close of the war, of a Transylvanian Assembly, upon whose vote shall depend the question of union with Hungary.

7.  " The principle of fraternity must guide tis all. This alone can bring us to the aim which we have all set before us. And this aim is the confederation of the three Danubian States — Hungary, Servia and Mol­davia-Wallachia." [15]

In the course of similar intrigues with Prince Michael Obrenovitch of Servia, Kossuth repeated these views, and expressed the hope that the Hungarian Serbs would this time be on his side,[16] since " we are ready in the question of the nationalities to go to the farthest limits which the integrity of the fatherland and its political unity permit." It is significant that in all these plots Kossuth ignores his own kinsmen, the Slovaks. The omission, which is doubtless to be explained by the fact that " Slovensko " offered no strategic advantages during Austria's war with Napoleon, revenged itself in 1866, when the war was on another front and when Klapka's Hungarian Legion in the service of Prussia utterly failed to gain support from the Slovak peasantry. It is possible that Kossuth in his ill-considered efforts to create a new Danubian state, may have regarded the Slovak districts as a needless encumbrance, whose cession to Bohemia would be more than compensated by access to the Black Sea. But it is far more probable that he restricted his concessions to the only two races whom he regarded as dangerous, and still dreamt of the Magyarization of all the rest. While it is improb­able that a man with the past history of Louis Kossuth could ever become a genuine supporter of racial equality and of the principle of nationality, it is certain that his offer of concessions to the nationalities alienated the sympathies of many of his Magyar adherents. Meanwhile the Peace of Villafranca, which appears to have come upon Kossuth like a bolt from the blue, naturally shattered all these fantastic plans; while the project of a Danubian Confederation alarmed public opinion in Hungary, and further strengthened Deák's influence at the expense of Kossuth.[17]

We have already indicated the only lines upon which it is possible to base a defence, or even a palliation of the Bach System in Austria: — namely that it formed the inevitable period of transition between the ancient feudal and the modern constitutional state. In Hungary no such justification existed, and the Bach system, instead of bridging over an abyss of revolution, must be regarded as an arbitrary break in the constitutional evolution of the country. The best that can be said for it, is that it introduced for the first time western ideas into the barbarous system of justice and ad­ministration which had hitherto prevailed in Hungary.

To the Slovaks also the centralist régime of the fifties brought nothing but disappointments. No doubt the brutal Szólga­biró of former days and the horde of corrupt and lazy county officials were superseded by humane and educated men, who showed sympathy instead of hatred towards the language of the people. But the Slovaks, like their former oppressors, were under the thrall of Absolutism, which applied to the nationalities the motto Divide et impem, and which naturally turned a deaf ear to aspirations whose fulfilment involved the grant of some measure of constitutional life. One of the many foreign brochures published under the ægis of Kossuth, remarks of the Slovaks: " In 1848 they were Pan-Slav, to-day (1860) they are Pan-Austrian."[18] The first half of this phrase is effectively disproved by the action of the Slovak leaders during the Revolution; the second half is understated. In reality, the Slovaks have always been Pan-Austrian, and Pan-Austrian they will doubtless remain so long as the Magyars not merely refuse them their place in the sun, but impose upon them the straight jacket of Magyar ization. Their consistent loyalty to a Pan-Austrian ideal, despite their cynical and thankless treatment by Vienna, gives the lie to those fanatics who seek to discredit them by the nickname of Pan-Slavs.