Part 21

The son and successor of Maria Theresa, Joseph II., attempted, in his summary way, by arbitrary edicts promising liberty and equality, to subvert the constitution of every country he governed, and to extend to them all one uniform despotic system, founded on that of Austria. To him Hungary is indebted for the first gleam of religious toleration; but his hasty and despotic attempts to suppress national distinctions, national institutions and languages, provoked a fierce and armed resistance in Hungary, and in other portions of his dominions, and more than revived all the old aversion to Austria. His more prudent successor made concessions to the spirit of independence, and the love of national institutions, which Joseph had so deeply wounded. Leopold regained the Hungarians; but Belgium, already alienated in spirit, never again gave her heart to the emperor; and he never lost sight of the uniformity of system that Maria Theresa had done so much to promote, and which Joseph, in his haste to accomplish it, had for the moment made unattainable. From the days of Ferdinand I. until now, the attempt to assimilate the forms and system of government, in every part of their possessions, to the more arbitrary Austrian model, has been steadily pursued throughout the reigns of all the princes of the house of Hapsburg. These persevering efforts to extend the power of the crown by subverting national institutions, and thus to obliterate so many separate nationalities, have aroused for their defence a spirit that promises to perpetuate them.

Feelings of community of race and language, which had slumbered for many generations, have been revived with singular intensity. Italy for the Italians--Germany for the Germans--a new Sclavonic empire for the western Sclaves--the union of all the Sclave nations under the empire of the Czar--are cries which have had power to shake thrones, and may hereafter dismember empires.

The separation between the different members of the Austrian empire, which the havoc of war could not effect in three centuries, a few years of peace and prosperity have threatened to accomplish. The energies that were so long concentrated on war, have now, for more than thirty years, been directed to the development of intellectual and material resources. The ambition that sought its gratification in the field, now seeks to acquire influence in the administration, and power to sway the opinions of men. The love of national independence, that repelled foreign aggression, has become a longing for personal liberty, that refuses to submit to arbitrary power. The road to distinction no longer leads to the court, but to the popular assembly; for the rewards conferred by the voice of the people have become more precious than any honours the sovereign can bestow. The duty of allegiance to the crown has become a question of reciprocal obligations, and has ceased to rest upon divine right. The only bond that held the Austrian empire together has thus been loosened, and the parts are in danger of falling asunder.

Lombardy, which was united to the German empire nine hundred years ago, renounced its allegiance, and refused to be Austrian. Bohemia, a part of the old German empire, inhabited chiefly by a Sclavonic race, has been dreaming of Pansclavism. Carried away by poetical rhapsodies, poured forth in profusion by a Lutheran preacher at Pesth, and calculated, if not designed, to promote foreign influence and ascendency, she has awoke from her dreams to find herself engaged in a sanguinary conflict, which was terminated by the bombardment and submission of her capital. Vienna, after having twice forced her emperor to fly from his capital, has been taken by storm, and is held in subjection by a garrison, whose stragglers are nightly thinned by assassins. Hungary, (to which we propose chiefly to direct our attention,) whose blood has been shed like water in defence of the house of Hapsburg--whose chivalry has more than once saved the empire--whom Napoleon, at the head of a victorious army in Vienna, was unable to scare, or to seduce from her allegiance to her fugitive king--whose population is more sincerely attached to monarchy than perhaps any other people in Europe, except ourselves, is in arms against the emperor of Austria. All the fierce tribes by which the Majjars are encircled have been let loose upon them, and, in the name of the emperor, the atrocities of Gallicia, which chilled Europe with horror, have been renewed in Pannonia. The army of the Emperor of Austria has invaded the territories of the King of Hungary, occupies the capital, ravages the towns and villages, expels and denounces the constituted authorities of the kingdom, abrogates the laws, and boasts of its victories over his faithful subjects, as if they had been anarchists who sought to overturn his throne.

The people of this country have long entertained towards Austria feelings of kindness and respect. We may smile at her proverbial slowness; we may marvel at the desperate efforts she has made to stand still, while every one else was pressing forward; the curiously graduated system of education, by which she metes out to each class the modicum of knowledge which all must accept, and none may exceed--her protective custom-houses, which destroy her commerce--her quarantines against political contagion, which they cannot exclude--her system of passports, with all its complications and vexations, and the tedious formalities of her tardy functionaries,--may sometimes be subjects of ridicule. But, though the young may have looked with scorn, the more thoughtful amongst us have looked with complacency on the social repose and general comfort--on the absence of continual jostling and struggling in all the roads of life--produced by a system, unsuited to our national tastes and tempers, no doubt, but which, till a few months ago, appeared to be in perfect harmony with the character of the Austrian German. We respect her courage, her constancy in adversity. We admire the sturdy obstinacy with which she has so often stood up to fight another round, and has finally triumphed after she appeared to be beaten. We call to mind the services she rendered to Christian civilisation in times past. We remember that her interests have generally concurred with our own--have rarely been opposed to them. We cannot forget the long and arduous struggles, in which England and Austria have stood side by side, in defence of the liberties of nations, or the glorious achievements by which those liberties were preserved. It is because we would retain unimpaired the feelings which these recollections inspire, because we consider the power and the character of Austria essential to the welfare of Europe, that we look with alarm on the course she has pursued towards Hungary.

The time has not yet come when the whole course of the events connected with this unnatural contest can be accurately known. The silence maintained and imposed by Austria may have withheld, or suppressed, explanations that would justify or palliate much of what wears a worse than doubtful aspect. But the authentic, information now accessible to the public cannot fail to cause deep anxiety to all who care for the reputation of the imperial government--to all who desire to see monarchy come pure out of the furnace in which it is now being tried. The desire to enforce its hereditary policy of a uniform patriarchal system would not justify, in the eyes of Englishmen, an alliance with anarchy to put down constitutional monarchy in Hungary, or an attempt to cover, with the blood and dust of civil war, the departure of the imperial government from solemn engagements entered into by the emperor.

The nature of the relations by which Hungary is connected with Austria--the origin and progress of their present quarrel, and the objects for which the Hungarians are contending--appear to have been very generally misunderstood, not in this country only, but in a great part of Europe. Men whom we might expect to find better informed, seem to imagine that Hungary is an Austrian province in rebellion against the emperor, and that the origin and tendency of the movement was republican. The reverse of all this is true. Hungary is not, and never was, a province of Austria; but has been and is, both _de jure_ and _de facto_, an independent kingdom. The Emperor of Austria is also King of Hungary, but, as Emperor of Austria, has neither sovereign right nor jurisdiction in Hungary. The Hungarians assert, and apparently with truth, that they took up arms to repel unprovoked aggression, and to defend their constitutional monarchy as by law established; that their objects are therefore purely conservative, and their principles monarchical; and that it is false and calumnious to accuse them of having contemplated or desired to found a republic--a form of government foreign to their sentiments, and incompatible with their social condition.

The kingdom of Hungary (Hungarey) founded by the Majjars in the tenth century, had for several generations been distinguished amongst the nations of Europe, when another pagan tribe from the same stock--issuing like them from the Mongolian plains, and turning the Black Sea by the south, as they had done by the north--crossed the Bosphorus, overturned the throne of the Cæsars, and established on its ruins an Asiatic empire, which became the terror of Christendom. The Majjars, converted to Christianity, encountered on the banks of the Danube this cognate race, converted to Islamism, and became the first bulwark of Christian Europe against the Turks. The deserts of Central Asia, which had sent forth the warlike tribe that threatened Eastern Europe with subjugation, had also furnished the prowess that was destined to arrest their progress. The court of Hungary had long been the resort of men of learning and science; the chivalry of Europe had flocked to her camps, where military ardour was never disappointed of a combat, or religious zeal of an opportunity to slaughter infidels. In 1526, Ludovic, King of Hungary and Bohemia, with the flower of the Hungarian chivalry, fell fighting with the Turks at the disastrous battle of Mohacs--the Flodden field of Hungary. The monarchy was then elective, but when the late king left heirs of his body the election was but a matter of form. When the monarch died without leaving an heir of his body, the nation freely exercised its right of election, and on more than one such occasion had chosen their king from amongst the members of princely houses in other parts of Europe. In this manner Charles Robert, of the Neapolitan branch of the house of Anjou and Ladislas, King of Bohemia, son of Casimir King of Poland, and father of Ludovic who fell at Mohacs, had been placed upon the throne. Ludovic died without issue, and he was the last male of his line--it therefore became necessary to choose a king from some other house. Ferdinand, brother of the Emperor Charles V., had married his cousin Anne, daughter of Ladislas, and sister of Ludovic the late King of Hungary and Bohemia. His personal character, his connexion with the royal family of Hungary, and the support he might expect from the emperor in the war against the Turks, prevailed over the national antipathy to Austria, and he was elected to the vacant throne, though not without a contest. He was crowned according to the ancient customs of Hungary, and at his coronation took the oath which had been administered on similar occasions to his predecessors. He thereby bound himself to govern according to the laws, and to maintain and defend the constitution and the territory of Hungary. He was likewise elected King of Bohemia, after subscribing a document, by which he renounced every other claim to the crown than that which he derived from his election. The emperor surrendered to him the crown of Austria, and these three crowns were thus, for the first time, united in a prince of the house of Hapsburg. These states were altogether independent one of another, had their separate laws, institutions, and customs, and had no other bond of connexion than the accidental union of the crowns in one person--a union which might at any time, on the demise of the crown, have been dissolved. It resembled, in this respect, the union of the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover in the persons of our own sovereigns, that it left the kingdoms both _de jure_ and _de facto_ independent of each other. In 1558, Ferdinand was elected Emperor of Germany; but as emperor he could claim no jurisdiction in Hungary, which was not then, and never was, included in the German empire. The monarchy of Hungary continued to be elective, and the nation continued to give a preference to the heirs of the late monarch. The princes of the house of Hapsburg, who succeeded to the throne of Austria, were thus successively elected to that of Hungary; were separately crowned in that kingdom, according to its ancient customs; and at their coronation took the same oath that Ferdinand had taken.

In 1687 the states of Hungary decreed that the throne, which had hitherto been filled by election, should thenceforward be hereditary in the male heirs of the house of Hapsburg; and in 1723, the diet, by agreeing to the Pragmatic sanction of Charles III. of Hungary, (the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany,) extended the right of succession to the female descendants of that prince. These two measures were intended, and calculated, to perpetuate the union of the two crowns in the same person. The order of succession to the crown of Hungary was thus definitively settled by statute, and could not legally be departed from, unless with the concurrence both of the diet and of the sovereign. So long, therefore, as the crown of Austria was transmitted in the same order of succession as that in which the crown of Hungary had been settled, the union would be preserved; but any deviation in Austria from the order fixed by law in Hungary would lead to a separation of the crowns, unless the Hungarian diet could be induced to consent to a new settlement. Thus we have seen the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover united for four generations, and separated in the fifth, because one was settled on heirs male or female, the other on heirs male only.

An attempt has been made, with reference to recent events, to found on the Pragmatic Sanction pretensions that might derogate from the absolute independence of Hungary; but the articles of the Hungarian diet[31] of 1790 appear to be fatal to any such pretensions. By Article 10 of that year it is declared, that "Hungary is a country free and independent in her entire system of legislation and of government; that she is not subject to any other people, or any other state, but that she shall have her own separate existence, and her own constitution, and shall consequently be governed by kings crowned according to her national laws and customs." By Article 12 of the same diet it was declared, that the power to enact, to interpret, and to abrogate the laws, was vested conjointly in the king, legitimately crowned, and the diet; and that no attempt should ever be made to govern by edicts or arbitrary acts. By Article 13 it was decreed, that the diet should be called together once every three years at the least. By Article 19 it was declared, that imposts could not be levied at the king's pleasure, but must be freely voted by the two tables (houses) from one diet to another. All these acts received the formal assent of Leopold II., and thus became statutes of the kingdom.

The successors of Leopold--Francis II., and Ferdinand, who has recently abdicated--received the crown of Hungary on the conditions implied in the coronation oath, which was administered to them in the usual manner, and by which they bound themselves to respect and maintain the constitution as by law established, and to govern according to the statutes. The question whether the late emperor should be addressed Ferdinand I. or Ferdinand V. was a subject of debate in the diet while Mr Paget was at Presburg, and he gives the following account of the proceedings:--

"The bill now brought up from the deputies, and to which the degree of importance attached by all parties appeared ridiculous to a stranger, had reference to the appellation of the new king.... The matter, however, was not so unimportant as it may appear; the fact is, he is Emperor Ferdinand I. of Austria, and King Ferdinand V. of Hungary; and unless Hungary had ceased to be an independent country, which the greatest courtier would not dare to insinuate, there could be no question as to his proper title. The magnates, however, thought otherwise: it was understood that the court desired that the style of Ferdinand I. should be used, and the magnates were too anxious to please not to desire the same thing. The deputies had now for the fourth time sent up the same bill, insisting on the title of Ferdinand V.; and for the fourth time the magnates were now about to reject it.... At the moment when the magnates were as firm as rocks on the wrong side, the court took the wise course of showing its contempt for such supporters, by sending down a proclamation 'We Ferdinand V., by the grace of God, King of Hungary, &c. &c.'"

It must not be supposed that these articles of 1790 conferred upon the diet any new powers, or implied any new concessions on the part of the king. They were declaratory acts, framed for the purpose of exacting from Leopold II. securities against a renewal of the arbitrary proceedings to which Joseph had resorted; and they merely reasserted what the Hungarian constitution had provided long before the election of Ferdinand I.--what had for several generations been the law of the land.

The Hungarians were not satisfied with having obtained from Leopold a formal renunciation of Joseph's illegal pretensions. They felt, and the cabinet admitted, that the ancient institutions of Hungary--which had with difficulty been preserved, and which for some generations had been deteriorating rather than improving under the influence of the Austrian government--were no longer suited to the altered circumstances of the country, to the growing intelligence and advancing civilisation of its inhabitants. But they desired to effect all necessary ameliorations cautiously and deliberately. They were neither enamoured of the republican doctrines of France, nor disposed to engage in destructive reforms for the purpose of framing a new constitution. They desired to improve, not to destroy, that which they possessed. They would probably have preferred to effect the necessary ameliorations in each department successively; but they feared the direction that might be given by the influence of the crown, to any gradual modification of the existing institutions that might be attempted. By the constitution of Hungary, the diet is precluded from discussing any measures that have not been brought before it in the royal propositions, or king's speech--unless cases of particular grievances which may be brought before the diet by individual members. To engage in a course of successive reforms would have exposed the diet to the danger of being arrested in its progress, as soon as it had passed such measures as were acceptable to the cabinet. They therefore named a commission, including the most enlightened and the ablest men in the country, to report on the whole legislation of Hungary in all its branches. This great national commission was formed of seven committees, or sub-commissions, each of which undertook to report on one department. The committees were--1st, That on the Urbarial code, or the condition of the peasants, and their relations to the proprietors: 2d, On the army, and all that related to it: 3d, On public policy, including the powers and jurisdiction of the diet, and of its different component parts: 4th, On matters ecclesiastical and literary, including education: 5th, On commerce: 6th, On the civil and criminal codes: and 7th, On contributions, including the whole system of taxation, and everything connected with the public revenue. The reports of this national commission, which are known as the "Operata systematica commissionis regnicolaris," recommended comprehensive ameliorations of the laws, and were creditable to the intelligence, science, statesmanship, and good sense of the commissions. The reports upon the commercial and the criminal codes, more especially, attracted the attention and the admiration of some of the ablest men in Germany.

From this time forward, each succeeding diet endeavoured to get the recommendations of the commission introduced into the royal propositions. The cabinet never refused--often promised to comply with this demand, but always deferred the discussion. Probably it was not averse to some of the measures proposed, or at least not unwilling to adopt them in part. The projected reform of the Urbarial code would have tended to increase the revenue, and to facilitate its collection; but it would at the same time have imposed upon the nobles new burdens, and required of them considerable sacrifices--and, before submitting to these, they were desirous to secure a more efficient control over the national expenditure, and ameliorations of the Austrian commercial system, which, by heavy duties, had depreciated the value of the agricultural produce that furnished their incomes. The diet, therefore, desired to get the _operata systematica_ considered as a whole; the cabinet, and the party in Hungary which supported it, sought to restrict the diet to the discussion of such changes only as were calculated to benefit Austria.

When Francis II., who had for some years been Palatine of Hungary, ascended the thrones of that kingdom and of Austria in 1792, there was no question as to the independence of Hungary, which had been so fully recognised by his father. The usual oath was administered to him at his coronation, which was conducted in the usual manner; and in his reply to the address of the Hungarian diet, on his accession, he showed no disposition to invade the constitutional rights of the Hungarians. "I affirm," he said, "with sincerity, that I will not allow myself to be surpassed in the affection we owe to each other. Tell your citizens that, faithful to my character, I shall be the guardian of the constitution: my will shall be no other than that of the law, and my efforts shall have no other guides than honour, good faith, and unalterable confidence in the magnanimous Hungarian nation." To these sentiments the diet responded by voting all the supplies, and the troops, demanded of them by the king.

In 1796, the diet was again called together, to be informed that, "attacked by the impious and iniquitous French nation, the king felt the necessity of consulting his faithful states of Hungary, remembering that, under Maria Theresa, Hungary had saved the monarchy." The diet voted a contingent of 50,000 men, and undertook to provision the Austrian army, amounting to 340,000 soldiers. It urged the government to propose the consideration of the _operata systematica_; but the cabinet replied that it must consult and reflect; and, in the mean time, the diet was dissolved after only nineteen sittings. These proceedings produced a general feeling of discontent in Hungary, which threatened to become embarrassing; but the success of the French armies aroused the military spirit and loyalty of the Hungarians, and the appointment, at the same time, of the amicable and enlightened Archduke Joseph to the dignity of Palatine of Hungary, in which he retained for fifty years the respect and affection of all parties, tended to preserve their attachment, though it did not silence their complaints.

When the diet met in 1802, the peace of Amiens had been concluded.