Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 403, May, 1849

MOONLIGHT MEMORIES

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY

We have been so much accustomed to regard the Austrian empire as one German nation, that we sometimes forget of how many separate kingdoms and principalities it consists, and of how many different and disunited races its population is composed. It may not, therefore, be unnecessary to recall attention to the fact that the Austrian dominions of the last three hundred years – the Austrian empire of our times – consists of three kingdoms and many minor principalities, inhabited by five distinct races, whose native tongues are unintelligible to each other, and who have no common language in which they can communicate; who are divided by religious differences; who preserve their distinctive characteristics, customs, and feelings; whose sentiments are mutually unfriendly, and who are, to this day, unmixed in blood. The Germans, the Italians, the Majjars or Hungarians, the Sclaves, and the Wallacks, are distinct and alien races – without community of origin, of language, of religion, or of sentiments. Except the memory of triumphs and disasters common to them all, their allegiance to one sovereign is now, as it was three centuries ago, the only bond that unites them. Yet, in all the vicissitudes of fortune – some of them disastrous – which this empire has survived, these nations and races have held together. The inference is inevitable – whatever may have been its defects, that form of government could not have been altogether unfit for its purposes, which so many different kingdoms and races united to support and maintain.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these various states were under one form of government. There were almost as many forms of government as there were principalities; but they were all monarchical, and one sovereign happened to become the monarch of the whole. The house of Hapsburg, in which the imperial crown of Germany, the regal crowns of Hungary, Bohemia, and Lombardy, and the ducal crowns of Austria, Styria, the Tyrol, and nearly a dozen other principalities, became hereditary, acquired their possessions, not by conquest, but by election, succession, or other legitimate titles30 recognised by the people. The descendants of Rodolph thus became the sovereigns of many separate states, each of which retained, as a matter of right, its own constitution. The sovereign, his chief advisers, and the principal officers of state at his court, were usually Germans by birth, or by education and predilection; but the constitution of each state – the internal administration, and those parts of the machinery of government with which the people came more immediately into contact – were their own. In some we find the monarchy elective, as in Hungary, Bohemia, and Styria; in all we find diets of representatives or delegates, chosen by certain classes of the people, without whose concurrence taxes could not be imposed, troops levied, or legislative measures enacted; and we find municipal institutions founded on a broad basis of representation. In none of them was the form of government originally despotic.

To the unquestionable titles by which they acquired their crowns – titles by which the pride of nation or of race was not wounded – and to the more or less perfect preservation, in each state, of its national institutions and privileges – to the enjoyment by each people of their laws, their language, customs, and prejudices – the princes of the house of Hapsburg owed the allegiance of subjects who had little else in common. There, as elsewhere in continental Europe, the sovereign long continued to encroach upon the rights of his subjects, and at length usurped an authority not recognised by the laws of his different possessions, or consistent with the conditions on which he had received their crowns. These usurpations were frequently resisted, and not unfrequently by force of arms. Belgium asserted her independence, and was permanently separated from Austria. But, in such contests, the sovereign of many separate states had obvious advantages. His subjects, divided by differences of race, language, religion, and sentiment, were incapable of combining against him; and however solicitous each people might be to preserve their own liberties and privileges, they were not prepared to resist encroachments on those of a neighbouring people, for whom they had no friendly feeling. The Austrians and Italians were ready to assert the emperor's authority in Hungary or Bohemia, the Hungarians and Bohemians to put down resistance in Lombardy. Even in the same kingdom the races were not united. In Hungary, the Sclave was sometimes ready to aid the emperor against the Majjar, the German against the Sclave. The disunion which was a source of weakness to the empire was a source of strength to the emperor.

Partly by compulsory changes, effected according to constitutional forms, partly by undisguised usurpations, in which these forms were disregarded, the emperors were thus enabled to extend the prerogative of the crown, to abridge the liberties of their subjects in each of their possessions, and, in some of them, to subvert the national institutions.

In the Hereditary States of Austria, the power of the emperor has long been absolute. The strength of Bohemia was broken, and her spirit subdued, by the confiscations and proscriptions that followed upon the defeat of the Protestants, near Prague, in the religious wars of Frederick II.; and for many years her diet has been subservient. Lombardy, the prize of contending armies – German, Spanish, and French – passing from hand to hand, has been regarded as a conquered country; and, with the forms of a popular representation, has been governed as an Austrian province. Hungary alone has preserved her independence and her constitution. But these usurpations were not always injurious to the great body of the people; on the contrary, they were often beneficial. In most of these states, a great part of the population was subject to a dominant class, or nobles, who alone had a share in the government, or possessed constitutional rights, and who exercised an arbitrary jurisdiction over the peasants. The crown, jealous of the power of the aristocracy, afforded the peasants some protection against the oppressions of their immediate superiors. A large body of the people in each state, therefore, saw with satisfaction, or without resentment, the increasing power of the crown, the abridgment of rights and privileges which armed their masters with the power to oppress them, and the subversion of a constitution from which they derived no advantage. If the usurpations of the crown threatened to alienate the nobles, they promised to conciliate the humbler classes.

On the other hand, every noble was a soldier. The wars in which the emperor was engaged, while they forced him occasionally to cultivate the good-will of the aristocracy, on which he was chiefly dependent for his military resources, fostered military habits of submission, and feelings of feudal allegiance to the sovereign. Military service was the road to distinction – military glory the ruling passion. The crown was the fountain of honour, to which all who sought it repaired. A splendid court had its usual attractions; and the nobles of the different races and nations, rivals for the favour of the prince, sought to outdo each other in proofs of devotion to his person and service. Thus it was, that, notwithstanding the usurpations of the emperor, and the resistance they excited, his foreign enemies generally found all classes of his subjects united to defend the dignity of his crown, and the integrity of his dominions.

Still there was nothing to bind together the various parts of this curious fabric, except the accident of allegiance to one sovereign. This was but a precarious bond of union; and the imperial government has, therefore, been unremitting in its efforts to amalgamate the different parts into one whole. The Germans were but a small minority of the emperor's subjects, but the imperial government, the growth of their soil, reflected their mind; and it does not appear to have entered the Austrian mind to conceive that a more intimate union could be accomplished in any other way than by extending the institutions of the Hereditary States to all parts of the empire, and thus ultimately converting the Italians, the Majjars, and the Sclaves, into Austrian Germans.

This policy has been eminently unsuccessful in Hungary, where it has frequently been resisted by force of arms; but its failure is not to be attributed solely to the freedom of the institutions of that country, or to the love of independence, and the feelings of nationality which have been conspicuous in her history. The imperial government, while it resisted the usurpations of the see of Rome in secular matters, asserted its spiritual supremacy with unscrupulous zeal. Every one is acquainted with the history of the Reformation in Bohemia – its early manifestations, its progress, its unsuccessful contests, and its suppression by military force, by confiscations and proscriptions, extending to half the property and the proprietors in that kingdom; but perhaps it is not so generally known, or remembered, that the Majjars early embraced the Reformed doctrines of the school of Calvin, which, even now, when more than half their numbers have become Roman Catholics, is known in Hungary as "the Majjar faith." The history of religious persecution, everywhere a chronicle of misery and crime, has few pages so revolting as that which tells of the persecutions of the Protestants of Hungary, under her Roman Catholic kings of the house of Austria. It was in the name of persecuted Protestantism that resistance to Austrian autocracy was organised; it was not less in defence of their religion than of their liberties that the nation took up arms. Yet there was a time when the Majjars, at least as tenacious of their nationality as any other people in the empire, might perhaps have been Germanised – had certainly made considerable advances towards a more intimate union with Austria. Maria Theresa, assailed without provocation by Prussia – in violation of justice and of the faith of treaties, by France, Bavaria, Saxony, Sardinia, and Spain, and aided only by England and the United Provinces – was in imminent danger of losing the greater part of her dominions. Guided by the instinct of a woman's heart, and yielding to its impulse, she set at naught the remonstrances of her Austrian counsellors, and relied on the loyalty of the Hungarians. Proceeding to Presburg, she appeared at the meeting of the diet, told the assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all Hungary to arms. The tide of invasion was rolled back beyond the Alps and the Rhine, and the empire was saved.

"On avait vu," says Montesquieu, "la maison d'Autriche travailler sans reláche à opprimer la noblesse Hongroise; elle ignorait de quel prix elle lui serait un jour. Elle cherchait chez ces peuples de l'argent, qui n'y était pas; elle ne voyait pas les hommes, qui y étaient. Lorsque tant de princes partagaient entre eux ces états, toutes les pièces de la monarchie, immobiles et sans action, tombaient, pour ainsi dire, les unes sur les autres. Il n'y avait de vie que dans cette noblesse, qui s'indigna, oublia tout pour combattre, et cru qu'il était de sa gloire de périr et de pardonner."

The nobles of Hungary had fallen by thousands; many families had been ruined; all had been impoverished by a war of seven years, which they had prosecuted at their private charge; but their queen had not forgotten how much she owed them. She treated them with a kindness more gratifying than the highest distinction; acquired their confidence by confiding in them; taught them to speak the language of her court; made their residence in her capital agreeable to them; promoted alliances between the noble families of Hungary and Austria; obtained from their devotion concessions which her predecessors had failed to extort by force; and prepared the way for a more intimate union between two nations which had hitherto regarded each other with aversion.

M. A. de Gerando has discovered, in the portrait-galleries of the Hungarian magnates, amusing traces of some of the means by which the clever empress-queen extended Austrian influence and authority into Hungary.

"Il est curieux," (he says,) "de voir, dans les châteaux de Hongrie, les galeries de portraits de famille. Aussi haut que l'on remonte, ce ne sont d'abord que de graves figures orientales. Les hommes out la mine heroïque, comme on se représente ces hardis cavaliers, qui invariablement finissaient par se faire tuer dans quelque action contre les Turcs; les femmes sont austères et tristes ainsi qu'elles devaient l'être en effet. A partir de Marie-Therèse, tout change et la physionomie et l'expression des personnages. On voit bien que ceux-là ont paru à la cour de Vienne, et y ont appris les belles manières. Le contraste est frappant dans le portrait du magnat qui le premier épousa une Allemande. Le Hongrois, seul, occupe un coin de la toile. Il est debout, digne, la main gauche sur la poignée de son sabre recourbée; la droite tient une masse d'armes. De formidables éperons sont cloués à ses bottines jaunes. Il porte un long dolman galonné, et une culotte de hussard brodée d'or. Sur son épaule est attachée une riche pelisse, ou une peau de tigre. Sa moustache noire pend à la turque, et de grands cheveux tombent en boucles sur son cou. Il y a du barbare dans cet homme-là. Sa femme, assise, en robe de cour, est au milieu du tableau. Elle règne et elle domine. Près de son fauteuil se tiennent les enfants, qui ont déjà les yeux bleus et les lèvres Autrichiennes. Les enfants sont à elle, à elle seule. Ils sont poudrés comme elle, lui ressemblent, l'entourent, et lui parlent. Ils parlent l'Allemand, bien entendu." – (Pp. 17-18.)

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.