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The revolution of 1848
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The projected Pan-Slav Congress convened, as arranged, in
Prague in early June. The proceedings of this Congress were held in the Czech National Museum where they were
sub-divided into a section involving Poles and Ruthenes, one
involving Czechs and Slovaks, and one involving Croats, Serbs and
Slovenes. This Pan Slav Congress functioned as a more or less
conscious counter-blast to the German National Assembly stressing
support for the equality of nations and the continuation of
several Slav peoples existence within the Austrian Empire - its outlook was
in favour of Slavic Revival and of resistance to cultural assimilationism be it German or Hungarian.
The opening speech at this congress was delivered by Pavel Jozef Šafárik, a Slovak who had been living in Prague for a number of years, who was a friend of Palacký's and who earnt his living as an academic, as an editor, and as a librarian alongside having some notability for his studies into Slavic languages. In this well-received speech Šafárik claimed that in declining to become Germans, Italians or Magyars, the Slavs were not acting as barbarians, but simply refusing to betray their country or the cause of liberty. "The Slavs ask nothing but justice; they rest upon moral force only....It is only by struggle that we pass from slavery to liberty. Let us therefore be victors, and we shall be free in a free nation, or let us die with honour, and glory will follow us to the grave." The Congress held several sessions between 2-12 June 1848. A passage from the Manifesto issued by the Pan-Slav Congress reads:-On 12th June there was some rioting in Prague between radical and conservative interests that was followed several days later by the active deployment of the forces under the command of the local Austrian commander, General Windischgrätz, whose wife had been fatally wounded in the disturbances of the 12th, and a revival of Austrian administrative control after five days of conflict. In many cases moderate persons, seeing the behaviour of those involved in rioting in Prague as being excessive or alarmingly socialistic, tended away from support for unpredictable change and toward support for traditional authority.
These National Workshops included the provision of employment in novel public works schemes. In many cases those in employment in Paris felt able to agitate for higher wages from their existing employers in the belief that they could fall back upon the public purse via the National Workshops. Several tens of thousands of persons from outside Paris, also distressed by the scarcity of employment, migrated to Paris in the hope of learning some trade or of taking advantage of the new provisions. As those registered with the National Workshops increased in number the hours available per person became limited but those involved were able to draw a salary of inactivity for days on which there was no work available. A labour commission headed up by Louis Blanc and Albert sought to reduce the working day from fifteen to ten hours in Paris and from fifteen to eleven hours in the provinces. Direct taxation was actually raised significantly bringing further difficulties to persons who were already finding their incomes under pressure due to the ongoing weakness of the economy. Such developments as the National Workshops scheme and the reduction of the working day gave some scope for taxpayers, including many rural peasant proprietors, to feel that they were being squeezed to provide unreasonable levels of support to people who were not working as hard as might be expected towards earning their own living. French National Assembly elections of April 23rd based on universal suffrage produced a relatively conservative outcome where the small number of deputies in favour of Republicanism and Socialism were heavily outnumbered by a factor of five to one. In mid May some twenty thousand persons protested in the streets of Paris that not enough was being done by the new French administration to secure liberties in Poland. Some three thousand of these were able to access the chamber where the newly elected National Assembly was holding its processes of deliberation. Whilst in the Assembly chamber the protestors also condemned a recent forcible quelling of radicalism in the French city of Rouen - some voices were raised suggesting that the new government was betraying the people. After the National Guard subsequently cleared the protestors from the chamber radical elements decided that they should attempt to establish an alternative to the elected government that would pursue their preferred radical policies. Although several hundred protestors seized control of the City Hall, from which would-be "governmental" decrees were issued, the National Guard again intervened and several of the radicals leaders were arrested and detained. The events of this day in May tended to give rise to concern among many moderates, across France, about the potential for more instances of disruptive social revolution. In late May the authorities, with perhaps one hundred and twenty thousand persons enrolled in the work schemes, began to place restrictions on them. On 22nd June the assembly moved to close down the work schemes. People were in cases offered such deeply unattractive alternatives as joining the French army, participating in the draining of (notoriously unhealthy!!!) swamplands of the Sologne, or emigration to colonial north Africa. On 23rd June barricades were set up in Paris by workers made desperate by the closure of the National Workshops, (which had been their only means of subsistence), and the authorities ordered the army to intervene. Thousands of fatalities occurred during subsequent intense street fighting, with thousands more being sent into exile or being given terms of imprisonment. After these "June Days" Socialism was subjected to repression and press freedoms were curtailed. A General Cavignac, who had played a prominent role in combatting radicalism during the "June Days", was invited by the assembly to continue with the exercise of sweeping powers until a new constitution was in place. Over the ensuing months however General Cavignac showed limited capacity for government and for the winning of political support. In the event people increasingly began to be attracted by the personality and policies of one Louis Napoleon, who had been raised as a nephew of the former Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who had long lived in exile but had been given approval to return to France in June 1848 and who had actually been elected to the Assembly. French public opinion, long supportive of extensions of French political, cultural, and military, influence had recently been moved by the works of Thiers and others celebrating the achievements of the Napoleonic era. Louis Napoleon stood for election as President of the Republic - an office which, under the constitution of the republic, was to continue over a four year term. In this campaign Louis Napoleon espoused policies that offered strong support for order, for the rights of private property, and for the maintenance of the republic. His close family association with Napoleon Bonaparte also seemed to offer the promise of a more dynamic policy at home and abroad. At the election in December 1848 Louis Napoleon was returned with some five-and-a-half million votes out of the seven-and-a-half million cast. The now somewhat discredited General Cavignac being the closest runner up in the presidential campaign.
On 25 April 1848 the Emperor had authorised a "Pillersdorf" constitution, drawn up by Minister of the Interior Franz von Pillersdorf, applicable to Austria which envisaged its continuance as a centralised state under a politically powerful ruler. This was at odds with opinion then being popularly expressed by liberal elements. The constitution was of the “early constitutional” type, ignoring the concept of people’s sovereignty. The rights held by the “sacred and inviolable” emperor held included the right to initiate law, to sanction laws and summon the Constituent Imperial Diet (Reichstag), which was to be composed of two houses, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate was to be composed of princes of the Imperial House after the age of 24, life members appointed by the emperor, and 150 members elected by large landowners. The 383 members of the Chamber of Deputies were to be elected by the people. Both chambers were given equal rights, with bills requiring the consent of both chambers and the sanction of the emperor, who thus retained the absolute power of veto. The immunity of members of the chambers was incorporated, like the (legal) responsibilities of the ministers. The constitution also contained a Bill of Rights, which, however, left several delicate problems unresolved. This so-called Pillersdorf Constitution did not apply to Hungary, which had obtained its own constitution on 11 April.This constitution was partially intended by the Habsburg Austrian government of April, 1848, to place obstacles against the pan-Germanism it saw as potentially being embraced by many liberal Germans in Austria. The April 25 Constitution contained a vague phrase concerning the nationality issue:- "All the peoples of the Monarchy are guaranteed the inviolability of their nationality and language."One of the results of further disturbances in Vienna in mid-May, which prompted the Emperor to leave behind the turbulence of Vienna for the relative security of Innsbruck, was that the incoming political assembly (Reichstag) would have a role in the drafting of a new constitution. New electoral rules widened the franchise. Although the Pillersdorf Constitution was initially celebrated as a victory, public and publicised opinion soon criticised its enforced nature – i.e. the fact that it had been decreed by the emperor – increasing sharply... ...there was fierce opposition to the Pillersdorf Constitution, especially from the liberal middle classes, workers and students. This was due to the fact that the constitution was unilaterally imposed by the emperor, the aristocratic upper house was to be on an equal footing with the democratic lower house, and finally the majority of workers would have been excluded from elections... ...Following the uprising of 15 May (the so-called “Storm-Petition”), an amendment to the constitution adopted the following day expressly entrusted the Reichstag with the elaboration of a new constitution. However, the Reichstag had yet to be elected, and now consisted of only one chamber, the Senate having been dispensed with.The incoming legislature convened in Vienna on 22 June. The newly introduced wider franchise resulted in an unprecedentedly large number on peasant deputies, (92 out of 383), with very few deputies being aristocrats, and with more than half on the deputies being of Slavic origin. A wide range of languages, German, Czech, Polish, Rumanian, Ruthenian and Italian, were heard in the debates. By September 7 the legislature had agreed to the removal of feudal burdens on peasant-held lands in return for provincially and peasant funded compensations. An Act of Emancipation abolished the feudal system of land tenure and the resulting obligations of peasants towards landowners, and the jurisdiction and police powers held by the latter. These reforms went a long way to satisfying peasant grieviances. A gradual easing of the level of unrest in these weeks of debate had been accompanied by a return of the Emperor from Innsbruck to the Schonbrunn, one of his principal palaces, on the outskirts of Vienna. The gradual easing of tensions and this return of the royal court, together with many wealthy Viennese, to Vienna allowed an upturn in spending and trading confidence. There was a resulting increase in employment which also allowed people to feel more content with their lives.
Turbulent times can often give scope for the adoption of sweeping policies. If we look, in efforts to better understand The Human Condition, at revolutionary France in the years after 1789 we see that policies were adopted by the French Revolutionaries which also featured an official expectation of linguistic conformity. The France of 1789, with an overall population of some twenty-eight million persons, was the most populous state in western Europe by a wide margin. Territorially France was a result of a centuries long consolidation of provinces that had been brought under French royal sovereignty through dynastic marriages, dynastic inheritances, dynastic wars and other conflicts. Such processes had resulted in a high degree of regional linguistic diversity. The Revolutionary upheavals after 1789 occured in a French domestic situation where perhaps a million persons spoke Breton in their everyday lives, another million spoke German, an hundred thousand spoke Basque, there were another hundred thousand Catalan speakers, whilst Provence, in the south east, was the home of many historic dialects. Flemish and Italian were also spoken in certain border regions. In 1789 it is suggested that some forty per cent of the population of France as a whole could not communicate through the French language. Whilst only a sixth of the newly relevant administrative 'Departments' - (which the revolution had instituted in the place of the historic 'feudal' territiories of France), - all of which were located around Paris, were more or less exclusively French speaking. Ardent French Republicanism was largely an urban phenomenon. Its keenest supporters called each other "Citizen", demanded that "Careers be open to Talent" in a state supportive of "Liberty, Egality, and Fraternity." A Decree of 3 September 1791 anticipated the creation of a system public education for all citizens. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand (1754-1838), one of the political great men of the time, proposed that there should be a primary school in each municipality such that "The language of the Constitution and the laws will be taught there to all; and this crowd of corrupted dialects, the last remains of feudality, will be forced to disappear; the new order of things demands it". The Kings of France had been prepared to exercise sovereignty over a "superficially" feudally structured realm featuring many historic duchies (Dukes) and counties (Counts) but had often ensured that their realm was actually locally adminstered by Royally appointed officials. The French kingdom as a whole had featured a fair degree of historic and localised linguistic diversity. The newly powerful would-be architects of a French Republic increasingly associated the concepts of "language" and "nation" and, as they conceptually struggled with issues of "unity" and "nationhood," it become evident that the "progressive" forms of "unity" and "nationhood" they had in mind were difficult to promote against this background of linguistic diversity and provincial regionalism. Some resistance being shown by non-French speaking provinces to the aspirations of the French Revoutionaries probably contributed to the generation of a mindset amongst the leading French Republican circles that saw such historically arising minority languages as being associated with the "feudalism" the French republicans were determined to displace. A Republican Decree under Robespierre, the Decree of Thermidor 2 (under a new 'French Republican' Calendar - July 20, 1794, old style), provided that henceforth all contracts had to be written in French. By its terms any civil servant, public officer, or any government official who, in the performance of their duties, drew up, wrote or subscribed official reports, judgements, contracts or other generally unspecified documents in idioms or languages other than French could be condemned to six months imprisonment. One of the moving spirits behind its adoption, the Abbe Gregoire, had presented a report entitled "Why and How the Patois Must be Destroyed and French Made Universal" to the National Convention on 16 Prairal Year II (4 June 1794). This report suggested that standard French was the mother tongue of only 15% of the population and maintained that ‘the patois (Occitan, Provençal and all non-standard forms of French), together with Breton and Basque, represent the barbarism of centuries past and need to be obliterated and replaced by standard French’. Gregoires report called for the single and invariable use of "the language of freedom" in a "Republic one and indivisible". The Abbe, (a middle ranking cleric before the onset of Revolution), probably considered that he had liberal-progressive views. He had previously sought to promote the abolition of slavery and the abandonment of judicial powers to impose the death penalty. Similarly he had tried to save national treasures from destruction during revolutionary turmoils. Other aspirations to grant full citizenship to Frech jews were perhaps strongly tinged by hopes of their assimilation. The Abbe hoped that France would become a literate and progressive country graced with many schools and libraries and saw the pre-existing linguistic diversity as an obstacle to literacy and progress. As early as 8 Pluviôse Year II (January 27, 1794). Bertrand Barère (a member of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety) had stated: ‘Federalism and superstition speak Breton, emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German, counter-revolution speaks Italian and fanaticism speaks Basque. Let us break these instruments of injury and error. The language of a free people must be one and the same for all’. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period of French history came to an end circa 1815 - at which time a form of monarchy was re-adopted. In practice there was a subsequent tendency, by the French state, to support the French language in place of localised languages, nevertheless, in a state census of 1880 only some 20% of the population acknowledged standard French as being their everyday language. [Compulsory elementary education was introduced in France at the end of the nineteenth century. Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican school (l'école républicaine) by requiring all children under the age of 15, boys as well as girls, to attend. Under this newly universal system publicly funded instruction, through the medium of French, was to be free of charge and secular (laïque). Universal education, greater levels of literacy and of geographical and social mobility tended to compromise the vibrancy of the many dialects former spoken widely in across the regions of France.]
Magyar, on the other hand, had been brought west in association with a conquering Magyar mass migration several centuries previously and was regarded as being an extremely difficult language to learn. This difficulty arose in large measure from archaic differences in origin - Magyar having "Uralic" linguistic roots quite different to those of the "Indo-European" tongues of most of western Europe. Finnish and Estonian being the most prominent related branches of this "Uralic" Finno-Ugrian language family that have become established in western Europe and Scandinavia. Kossuth, and Magyar nationalism, also tended to see Transylvania and Croatia, southern and eastern territories recently included in a declaration defining the "lands of the Crown of St. Stephen", although they were not actually within the historic Kingdom of Hungary, as being self-evidently subject to the governmental power to be exercised by the Hungarian Diet. In the case of Croatia the long history of association with Hungary was based on the person of the monarch rather than any other binding political or cultural arrangements. In 1843 the Hungarian dominated Pressburg assembly had voted to make Magyar the official language of Hungary and Slavonia, and nominated Magyar as the future official language of Hungarian-Croatian relations. Such relations had hitherto been conducted through culturally and politically "neutral" Latin. Magyar was also nominated as the official language of public instruction, though this innovation was to be dealt with by a special law. The Croats regarded these new provisions as infringements on their traditional autonomy and saturated the Imperial authority at Vienna with petitions for political separation, within the Austrian Empire, from Hungary. As part of this scenario Croat officials returned to Budapest many documents that had been sent them in Magyar. In 1847 the linguistic chauvinism of the Magyars had run high at the Diet of Pressburg and Croat national enthusiasm ran no less high at the chief Croatian city - Agram (today's Zagreb). The pent-up feelings of the long linguistic struggle found expression when the Croatian Diet assembled on October 20, 1847; and three days later it resolved by acclamation that the Croatian language should be introduced in every office of the state and in every school. An evident breach naturally ensued between the Croat delegates and the linguistically intolerant Magyar majority at Pressburg. Fresh linguistic claims expressed by the Magyars were passionately opposed by the Croats as an outrage upon Croatian nationality, "I know no Croatian nationality," retorted Louis Kossuth. Following on from the turbulence in Vienna of mid-March, 1848, political representatives drawn from across the historic Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia spontaneously convened on 25th March in Agram, the historic capital of Croatia, and issued a declaration setting out an agreed future course for the lands and peoples the saw themselves as representing:- "The nations of the Triune Kingdom, animated by the desire of continuing, as heretofore, under the Hungarian crown, with which the free crown of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia was voluntarily united by their ancestors; animated by the desire of remaining true to the reigning dynasty, ...animated by the desire of maintaining the integrity of the Austrian monarchy, and that of the kingdom of Hungary, ...making the following demands on the king's sense of justice:"
In their subsequent private audience with Kossuth, the Serb deputation insisted that the Serb nation regarded the recognition of its language as essential. "What do you understand by ' nation ' ?" inquired Kossuth. "A race which possesses its own language, customs and culture," was the Serb reply, "and enough self-consciousness to preserve them." "A nation must also have its own government," objected Kossuth. "We do not go so far," Kostic explained ; "one nation can live under several different governments, and again several nations can form a single state." To this the minister replied that the government would not concern itself with the language of the home and would not even object to minor offices being held by non-Magyars, but that the Magyar interest demanded that no second race should be recognized as a nation and that only the Magyar language could bind the different nationalities together. Istvan Deak, in his work The Lawful Revolution, which considers these these unsettled times has Kossuth telling the Serb delegation that:- "The true meaning of freedom is that it recognizes the inhabitants of the fatherland only as a whole, and not as castes or privileged groups, and that it extends the blessings of collective liberty to all, without distinction of language or religion. The unity of the country makes it indispensible for the language of public affairs to be the Magyar language."Several of the deputation expressed the fear that open resistance might ensue if the southern Slavs should be disappointed in their hope that the new situation was to end all compulsion in the matter of language. "If the just claims of the Serb nation are not regarded by the Magyars," blurted out the young Stratimirovic, "we should be compelled to seek recognition elsewhere than at Pressburg." Kossuth's famous rejoinder, "In that case the sword will decide," put an end to the discussion and gave perhaps the first signal for the onset of an open racial and linguistic struggle where the nationalities opposed Magyarising centralism. On May 13, 1848, an autonomous Serbian Vojvodina, (a sort of Duchy and located in the south of the kingdom of Hungary), was self-proclaimed by local Serbian interests supported by the Serbian Orthodox church. The Serbian Congress which issued this proclamation declared undying loyalty to the Emperor but the government of that Emperor's Hungarian kingdom depicted this proclamation of autonomy as being treasonous. Magyar liberal nationalism seemed to offer a broad range of human and personal liberties, but nevertheless demonstrated an assimilationist state-nationalism that would deny many existential freedoms to any nation under the Hungarian Monarchy but the Hungarian. The fulfilment of Kossuth's aspirations would have involved national a marked degree of suppression for all the other races domiciled in the Hungarian kingdom; and it was directly due to his intolerance that the Magyars found themselves before the end of the summer ringed round by hostile nationalities in arms. The Hungarian kingdom's and Slovaks and Rumanians had come to emulate the national claims of the Croats and the Serbians and joined with them, with the tacit support of Vienna, against the centralising and Magyarising aspirations of the Hungarian interest led by Kossuth.
To say that in the spring of 1848 the Hungarians missed the chance to conciliate all their nationalities and therefore could not but lose everything, would be as wrong as to assert that there were no chances whatsoever. Newly triumphant Hungary could not be expected, voluntarily, to divide the realm into self-governing territories, with the whole inevitably coming under the control of the non-Magyar majority.Given the historic multi-ethnic, or multi-communal, nature of the Habsburg realms in 1848 it is possible to see this deeply unfortunate situation as being - an horrendous accident waiting to happen - in that whilst the Austrian Empire, and its Hungarian monarchical aspect, had both had a validity in that their many constituent peoples could, in earlier times, give the historic state's existence their assent, receiving a degree of justice and protection and with local elites participating in politics and administration, - it happened that the times, and with them human expectations, moved on such as to make former societal situations less tenable. Peoples began to aspire to constitutional governance, literacy, educational, and cultural levels were all rising and local ethnic groups became more aware of distinct linguistic and cultural heritages as things which they ought to greatly value. Where ethnic communities might continue to accept, (the constitutional governance of), ancient dynasties by whom their fore-fathers had been ruled, (and with whom "their own" princes may even have inter-married long, long, ago), and might continue to agree to participate in assemblies held through ancient languages such as Latin, (or largely held through the language of an ancient dynasty with some show of linguistic sensitivity to its loyal subjects), similar agreement to accept the novelty of the overall sovereignty of "another nation" - which expected the usage of its own language, in politics, in education, in administration - may not readily have seemed to offer justice or protection to potentially 'subject' nationalities - hence defiance, chaos, and harm.
This representative, Ljudevit Gaj, was perhaps the leading figure in the Illyrian movement. Like many romantic nationalists in these times, and later, across Europe and Scandinavia he was not native to the (in this case "Illyrian") nationality that was being championed. Gaj was the son of a German father and a Slovak mother and was born just north of Agram, in 1814, and developed an interest in Croatian history as he grew up. Whilst he was later being educated in German speaking universities he became influenced by a romanticisation of Pan-Slav cultural nationhood that held all Slavs to be brothers in the wider sense, but accepted the division of them into four main groups, one of which was the Southern Slav, or 'Illyrian', cornprising the Croats, Slovenes, Serbs and Bulgars. The lands Gaj sought to identify with, "Illyria", or "Croatia with Dalmatia and Slovenia and possibly also Bulgaria and Serbia", had long been under the sway of external powers and foreign cultural influences to the extent that little remained of what was thought of as Croat identity. Gaj, through his involvement with his Croat language Illyrian News journal had gained a certain celebrity particularly in those parts where people could think of themselves as being "Croats" as a would-be champion of an awakening of a cultural patriotism that hoped to see a recovery of a "Croat-Illyrian" language, and a renaissance of "Croat-Illyrian" culture. In his efforts to recover "Croatian" as a South Slavic literary language, Gaj had personally devised a Latin character based script through which to better express "Illyrian" literature, aspirations and nationalist sentiments. The Magyar authorities, meanwhile, were alarmed by the upsurge of "Illyrianism" and had even tried to ban public utterance of the word "Illyria." Baron Jellachic, formerly a colonel of a Croatian regiment in the Habsburg service and more recently (March 1848) endorsed by the local interests as the principal magistrate, officially recognised as Governor or Ban of Croatia by the Habsburg Emperor (March 1848), was a close friend of Ljudevit Gaj! Soon after his appointment he expelled Magyar officials from Croatia in the aftermath of Magyar insistence in state-linguistic matters, in May forbade correspondence with the Hungarian government, and in June moved to restore the Croatian Diet at Agram. Under Hungarian diplomatic lobbying most of these measures by Jellachic were successively officially condemned by the Emperor even to the point of suspending Jellachic from office in early June. Local interests in Agram refused to accept Jellachic's dismissal and even invested him with many administrative and governmental powers. After an interview with an emissary from Vienna Jellachic recognised that a powerful faction in the Viennese court was sympathetic to the Croats defiance of the Magyars - all be it principally because this would contribute to a recovery of Habsburg power. Jellachic, although dismissed from office had continued to give fulsome assurances of loyalty to the Habsburg state system and had published an address to the numerous Croat soldiers based under Radetzky's overall command in Lombardy to continue in the Habsburg service and "not to be diverted from their duty to the Emperor in the field by any report of danger to their rights and to the nationality nearer home." Such statements had won him the support of many important persons in the higher reaches of the Austrian military and court. Radetzky's victory at Custozza contributed to a resurgence in the fortunes of the Habsburg system. Given this resurgence the Emperor felt able to return to Vienna. In a letter to Jellachic of early September the Emperor himself expressed satisfaction with his proven loyalty - but did not restore him to the office of governor. Soon thereafter, September 11, Jellachic led a force of over fifty thousand men against the Hungarian interest. By this move Jellachic intended to support the restoration of the Habsburg Empire. The Hungarian Parliament was declared abolished by the Emperor on the 3rd of October, on the 6th arrangements for the sending of Austrian German regiments to the aid of Jellachic were followed by a serious revolt aimed at impeding this deployment by those in favour of continued radical reform in Vienna. The radical interest considered that should Jellachic and the Austrian regiments suppress the Hungarian separatism this would tend to also diminish the possibility of securing the formation of an administration that would be less under the sway of the dynasty and more responsive to the wishes for constitutional freedom of the Empire's "Peoples of State" or "Master Nations." Given the serious nature of this revolt the Emperor left Vienna for the Moravian cathedral-town of Olmutz where a manifesto was issued proclaiming that Imperial authority would be re-established by military action. During these weeks the Reichstag acting, in its efforts at framing a new constitution, as an Austrian Constituent Assembly was suffering from a withdrawal of its delegates due to the turbulence in Vienna and was re-located, at the Emperor's invitation, to the town of Kremsier, not far from Olmutz. The draft constitution drawn up there subsequently became known as the Kremsier Draft Constitution. The draft constitutional arrangements included a vauge phrase, originally proposed by a Czech delegate, holding that:- "All the peoples of the Empire have equal rights. Each of them has an inviolable right to the preservation and cultivation of its nationality in general and its language in particular. Legal equality of all languages customarily spoken in school, governmental agencies, and public life will be guaranteed by the state."
In the event the Windischgrätz forcibly captured Vienna repulsing the advances of an Hungarian relieving force which was in any case hesitant to cross the frontiers of Hungary into Austria without the express invitation of the radical-controlled rump of the assembly which continued to hold sessions in Vienna. Such nationalities as the Serbs, the Slovaks, and the Rumanians also tended to operate against the establishment of a definite Hungarian political power - not so much to restore the Habsburg system as to inhibit the unwelcome threat of Magyarisation. Thus a notable historical irony came about where those inclined to champion Slav and Rumanian nationality felt practically obliged to give their support to a reactionary dynasty which favoured absolutism largely because the would-be constitutionally and politically reforming Magyars, who would be politically dominant in an independent kingdom of Hungary which would contain Slav and Rumanian minorities, seemed to offer them full fruits of citizenship only after assimilation.
In late October, the Frankfurt Parliament, in its efforts to define a future relationship between the Habsburg lands and the German Polity the Franfurt Parliament was hoping to represent in the future, voted to accept a Grossdeutsch solution to this "German National Question" where Germanic and Czech lands traditionally ruled by the Habsburgs would be represented in Frankfurt but the other lands of the Habsburgs would enjoy other arrangements in some form of personal union with the Austrian Emperor. By the late autumn of 1848 was the Habsburg system was showing strong signs of recovery in many of its historic territories. That being the case on 27th November the Austrian minister Schwarzenberg insisted that the Austrian Empire must be preserved intact. Given this declaration the deputies at Frankfurt had little option other than to throw their weight behind a Kleindeutsch solution to the German National Question where none of the the Habsburg lands would be represented in Franfurt. In such an arrangement, that had already been sponsored by liberal nationalist deputies a preponderance of influence would inevitably fall to the powerful Prussian state. Austria was the traditionally the "leading power" in the German confederation, but of its thirty-six million inhabitants less than six million were German. Prussia was traditionally the "second power" in the German confederation, and of its sixteen million population some fourteen million were German. Alongside the power that Prussia tended to exercise as a quite extensive collection of populous territories it had also won prominence through being the organisational center of the Zollverein or Customs Union. The somewhat scattered existence of Prussian dynastic territories as gathered under one sceptre through dynastic inheritance or as a legacy of involvement in various political or dynastic turmoils had contributed to a desire to rationalise trading communications between Prussian territories. Customs duties, "internal" to the Prussian lands, that had initially put in place to facilitate the raising of revenues were increasingly abolished after 1818 to faciltate trading activity. Neighbouring german states were invited to join in a single customs area, the implicit "carrot" of freer trade being made more appealing by the also evident "stick" of high tariffs being levied on those neighbouring german states who did not co-operate. This approach had ultimately resulted in Bavaria, Würtemberg, Saxony, the Thuringian States, Baden, Nassau and the Free City of Frankfurt joining with the Prussian Customs Union by 1844. This widespread involvement of non-Prussian territories in the Zollverein tended to give Prussia some claims to leadership in other than economic matters also. In early December Schwarzenberg arranged the abdication of the incapable Emperor Ferdinand, whose authority had been tarnished by his concessions, in favour of an eighteen-year-old nephew the Archduke Francis. At the time of his accession Francis added Joseph to his name as Emperor in the hope of associating his rule with that of an earlier Emperor whose reforms were kindly remembered by many. A manifesto was issued in Francis Joseph's name which declared that he:- "firmly resolved to maintain untarnished the glory of the Crown, but ready to share Our rights with the representatives of Our people, We trust that We shall succeed .... in uniting all the lands and races of the Monarchy in one great organism."Alongside his German mother tongue Francis Joseph also spoke fluent Hungarian and had some facility in most of the dialects of his new subjects. The Hungarians were unwilling to consent to Francis Joseph being invested with the Crown of St. Stephen. On 4th March, 1849, Francis Joseph, having gained confidence in the recovery of Habsburg power, decided to discount the "Kremsier Draft Constitution" which had just been finalised by the representatives meeting at Kremsier, (the drafting of which by a constituent assembly had been consented to by the, recently deposed, previous Emperor), and issued, by decree, a new centralising Imperial Constitution, known to history as the “Forced March Constitution," or as the "Imposed March Constitution", devised by his own ministers, but largely based on the "Kremsier Draft Constitution," and moved to dissolve the Austrian Constituent Assembly on the 7th March, 1849. The "Decreed Constitution" was held to be applicable across the Habsburg Empire. The Hungarian kingdon was held to have invalidated pre-existing constitutional arrangements by its revolt against the Habsburg system. Meanwhile, work on the Kremsier Draft Constitution continued despite the increasing political isolation of the Reichstag, and the constitutional committee completed its work on 4 March, 1849. The Pillersdorf Constitution had applied only to Cisleithanien, i.e. the land on the western (Austrian) side of the River Leitha, excluding Hungary and Lombardy-Venetia, which were not represented in the Reichstag. For Cisleithanien, the Kremsier Draft Constitution certainly represented the first really promising attempt to solve the nationality problem, since it had come into existence with participation and consent of the deputies of all nationalities living in these crown lands. In fact, it was the nationality problem that finally caused the Habsburg monarchy to collapse. The constitution was an attempt to solve the problem of crown lands where several different languages were spoken by subdividing them into administrative districts. National courts of arbitration were also to be established, and the Bill of Rights embodied the principle of the equality of all nationalities and national languages.On 9th March Schwarzenberg threw his support behind a possible resolution to the question of the extent of the new German State by suggesting that the entire Austrian Empire should join with the Germanic Confederation in "an Empire of Seventy Millions". Schwarzenberg further suggested that the leadership of this Germanic Confederation with further, non-germanic, Habsburg ruled, territorial additions would alternate between Austria and Prussia. Those present as representatives in the Frankfurt Parliament had another option to consider than the Empire of Seventy Millions being suggested by Schwarzenburg in the form of Kleindeutschland. After further debate the Frankfurt Assembly responded to the ongoing constitutional stalemate by approving, on 28 March with some two-fifths of the representatives abstaining, a Kleindeutsch outcome and offering the throne as hereditary "Emperor of the Germans" to the King of Prussia. A thirty-two man delegation subsequently journeyed to Berlin to seek the consent of the King of Prussia. In the event King Frederick William, in polite and diplomatic terms told the delegation that he felt honoured but could accept the crown only with the consent "of the crowned heads, the princes, and the free cities of Germany." He nevertheless gave some consideration to the offer, over several weeks, before finally declining to become "Emperor of the Germans". King Frederick William was less polite about these developments in a letter to a relative in England in which he related that he felt deeply insulted by being offered "from the gutter" a crown, "disgraced by the stink of revolution, baked of dirt and mud." It appears that King Frederick William alongside his own romantic notions about kingship, (he had described Constitutions as "pieces of paper that stand between God, who appoints kings and rulers, and the people"), also thought of the House of Habsburg as being the naturally leading dynasty in the Germanies and as such was unwilling to attempt to challenge its leading role by accepting the Imperial title. In practical terms the Habsburg dynasty would have found such an acceptance to be intolerable and would probably have sought to undo it. The Tsar of Russia could also be presumed to be be strongly opposed to the replacement of the "dynastic" German Confederation by a liberal, constitutional, national, "Germany".
The struggle to subdue Hungary proving difficult the Austrian authority sought, in late April, the involvement of the Tsar and invited active Russian assistance in the name of "the holy struggle against anarchy." The Tsar of all the Russias was in principle supportive of divine-right dynastic governance and had also become somewhat concerned lest the Hungarian developments be copied in "his own" Polish Kingdom. He had already, and seriously, offered to assist in returning the Kingdom of Hungary to its earlier political position within the 'lands of the Habsburgs' and now sent, (although estimates vary), perhaps as many as some three hundred and sixty thousand of his soldiers to co-operate with Austrian forces in efforts to subdue Hungary. By late June, with Hungarian nationalism being hard pressed by Austrian, Russian, and local nationality opposition, a "Nationality Act" offering several significant concessions intended to promote reconciliation between the Magyar majority and the many significant minority ethnic groups in the Hungarian lands, was passed into law by the Hungarian Assembly at a time, late July 1849, when the would-be Hungarian parliament was obliged by the pressure of its many adversaries to hold it sessions away from Buda-Pest in the provincial town of Szeged. Law VIII of 1849, (the first such nationalities law in Europe), made some concessions guaranteeing "the free national development for all the nationalities living within the territory of Hungary". The nationalities could hope to see the use of their own languages in primary schools. Magyar would remain the language of the central governmental communication and legislation. Local political assemblies were made open to being addressed in any language, where any nationality was an absolute local majority at county level the minutes of their proceedings could be preserved in the local majority language as well as in Hungarian. Local National Guards were to be commanded through the medium of their local languages. Promotion within the public service was to be fully on the basis of ability and merit and there were guarantees that selection for public offices would be undertaken without regard to the mother tongue or the religion of the applicants. Other concessions offering emancipation to the Jews and legal favour to peasants involved in land disputes with landlords were, in part, intended to generate new support for Hungarian independence. This attempt to win support from the nationalities proved to be, however, at this time when overwhelming masses of Russian and Austrian troops were closing in on every side, (and when the Hungarian kingdom was still unhappily experiencing the grief stricken aftermath of an often furious conflict over language and communal rights), a case of too little and too late. This law was the last measure enacted by this Hungarian Assembly as the Russian and Austrian interventions, in alliance with re-assertions of Habsburg power, overwhelmed the movement towards the independence of the Hungarian Monarchy by mid August 1849.
In the circumstances what was left of the credibility of the Assembly largely evaporated - the Frankfurt Assembly was discontinued in May with a rump of mainly left-leaning delegates ineffectively reconvening at Stuttgart. During the early summer of 1849 such German states as Baden, Württemberg, the Bavarian Palatinate, the Prussian Rhineland and Saxony experienced turmoils that seemed to offer support to the Frankfurt Parliament but which also featured evident social revolutionary aspects. In early May Prussian forces intervened to suppress a serious radical rising in Dresden, the capital of the Kingdom of Saxony, without the encouragement or consent of the German National Assembly. Following on from leftist rioting in the Prussian Rhineland Karl Marx' Rheinische Zeitung was ordered to cease publication. Such social revolutionary turmoil was widely seen as a threat by many who were fairly content with the more modest reforms that was already deemed to have already been secured through the Frankfurt Assembly process. Wider society increasing looked to the authorities to maintain order against such perceived extremism. The foot soldiers involved, although often drawn from the same stratas of society that also produced radical insurrectionists, commonly saw themselves as acting in defence of the "March achievements" against dangerous radicalism. Prussia's leading role in these interventions in several historic states of the Germanies did not seem to bring with it unpopularity with the wider society of the German states affected or with the soldiers of other states who commonly aligned themselves with the Prussian drive against perceived extremism. After the recovery of reaction in the Germanies the Constitutions of many German states were rendered less liberal or suspended altogether.
On February 18th Pope Pius, believing this Declaration of a Roman Republic to be an intolerable revolutionary overthrow of what was not only an historically valid polity but which was also, and more importantly, the divinely ordained seat of the Papacy, called upon France, Austria, Naples and Spain to restore the States of the Church to Papal Sovereignty. In March at Novara the Austrians won an important victory over the forces led by Sardinia-Piedmont prompting King Charles Albert to abdicate. He was succeeded by a son, Victor Emmanuel who, in a personal interview with the Austrian commander Radetzky agreed to the continuance of the Sardinian Statuto constitutional arrangements as this continuance was seen, by the Austrians, to be likely to better reconcile potentially turbulent Piedmontese radicals to the post-conflict situation. Austrian intervention secured the restoration of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to his throne - it now seemed that Rome would similarly be returned to Papal authority before many weeks had passed. The Sicilian Parliament had pronounced Ferdinand, the Boubon dynast who ruled from Naples, to be deposed and had offered the throne to a younger brother of Victor Emmanuel. King Ferdinand responded by despatching a naval fleet which proceeded to bombard Messina over five days. Negotiations were entered into but agreement proved elusive. In the event Sicily was invested with King Ferdinand's soldiers such that the capital, Palermo, was captured on May 15. The government of Louis Napoleon in France preferred that Austrian arms should not themselves achieve the restoration of the Papal power in Rome as this could lead to the re-establishment of an Austrian hegemony in the peninsula that could well be harmful to the perceived interests of France. Louis Napoleon also hoped to gain favour with powerful Roman Catholic interests in France through a French intervention intended to win Rome back to the sovereignty of the papacy. Some ten thousand soldiers were duly sent from the French Republic with the minority republican element in the French assembly being assured of the good intentions of the assembly towards the Roman population and of a desire to avert possible Austrian domination. The large army sent by France landed on the coast near Rome on 25 April 1849 and was directly responsible for the militarily contested overthrow of the Roman Republic in early July 1849 despite a stout resistance led by several patriotric Italians including Mazzini and Garibaldi. This French intervention, was styled for French domestic consumption as being a necessary to overthrow unpopular "foreigners who had come from all parts of Italy." On August 25 an Austrian army overthrew the independence of Venice where resistance had been worn down by cholera and famine as well as by military siege and bombardment. The Papal authority, as restored to Rome on July 14, soon showed itself, in defiance of the wishes of France, as being interested in the re-imposition of a priestly absolutism. Pope Pius IX did not personally return to Rome from Gaeta until the following year and when he did so he returned with a head of hair that had become rapidly and prematurely grey due to the stresses of the time. He thereafter followed notably conservative policies in theology and in politics over the following two decades. The revolutions of 1848-9, this so-called "springtime of peoples" which had once seemed to sweep all before it, had revealed that there was a powerful groundswell of dissatisfaction with traditional dynastic governance but where it was set aside this usually led to the emergence of situations where deep rivalries centered on the forwarding of sectionally "popular" socialistic and sectionally "popular" nationalist aspirations by some interested groups that were deeply unwelcome to other interested groups. The resulting divisions and turmoils alienated many people from the course of the revolutions and facilitated the return of local dynastic authority as a broadly acceptable champion of order over chaos. Just as in the 1789-1815 era Russia again eventually intervened in support of the tradition of throne and altar governance.
This involved an elimination of the "robot" feudal services which the peasantry had previously to render to local magnates. This led to far-reaching transformations in society where agriculture became more commercial and less feudal and where many poorer peasants were unable to survive economically due to falling prices. A consequent increase in migration of (usually) Slav peasants to (often previously) Germanised urban areas sometimes tended to contribute further to the establishment of conditions for continued "local clashes of culture and language" between German and Slav over large tracts of the Austrian Empire. There was also an imparting of impetus to nationalism in the Italian Peninsula and in "the Germanies." Enduring change towards more inclusive representation or constitutional government occurred in Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland. Things had also changed in that Scwartzenberg's newly centralised Austrian Empire featured a lesser role for conservative and aristocratic influences over affairs. German was declared to be the official language across the empire and german-speaking middle class administrators were put in place as the administration became both more centralised and focused more locally on the nationalities - but with loyalty to the Emperor being expected of all. Such nationalities as had offered support to the continuance in being of the Habsburg system were treated in the same way as those nationalities which had sought constitutionalist, liberalist, or nationalist concessions. In said that "the Croats got as a reward what the Magyars got as a punishment". Austrian german speaking administrators and officials descended as noticably on Croatian and Rumanian lands as they did on Hungarian ones. The imposed constitution was short-lived and existed in theory for a mere three years only. When the power of the monarchy increased substantially, absolutism was formally re-instituted with the New Year’s Eve Decree, (the “Silvester Patent”), of 31 December, 1851. For about a decade, no more was heard about parliaments.
"France, in the midst of confusion, seeks for the hand, the will of him whom it elected on the 10th of December. The victory won on that day was the victory of a system, for the name of Napoleon is itself a programme. It signifies order, authority, religion, national prosperity within; national dignity without. It is this policy, inaugurated by my election, that I desire to carry to triumph with the support of the Assembly and of the people."On 2nd December 1851, an anniversary of a famous victory achieved at Austerlitz by Napoleon I, the Republican constitution was more completely overthrown:- "The present situation cannot continue. Each day that passes increases the country's danger. The Assembly, supposed to be the staunchest supporter of order, has become a hot-bed of sedition. The patriotism of three hundred members was not enough to curb its fatal tendencies. Instead of legislation for the public good, it is forging weapons for civil war. It is making a bid for the power that I wield directly by virtue of the people's will. It fosters every wicked passion. It is jeopardising the stability of France. I have dissoved the National Assembly and I invite the whole people to adjudicate between me and it."Proclamation of Louis Napoleon of 2nd December 1851Under the previous constitutional arrangements Louis Napoleon would have had to leave office in 1852 with there also being a law against the re-election of previous holders of the presidential office. Louis Napoleon, who had run up very heavy personal debts, knew that his political adversaries were waiting for an opportunity to move against him. The Proclamation of 2nd December was accompanied by the arrest of seventy-eight of such key political opponents. Each of these arrests being executed by a different police officer who was individually unaware of the other arrests taking place to facilitate Louis Napoleon's overall plans. France was now presented by Louis Napoleon with a scenario where he would stay in power for a further ten years provided that his takeover of power was endorsed in a national plebiscite. In a short lived period of protest some 500 persons lost their lives, some 27,000 were arrested, with some 10,000 of those being deported. In the subsequent National Plebiscite, held on 2nd December 1852, 7,400,000 persons voted for Louis Napoleon continuing to hold presidential powers with 600,000 voting against. "France has realized that I broke the law only to do what was right. The votes of over 7,000,000 have just granted me absolution."The French Republic was subsequently replaced by a form of Empire under Louis Napoleon who was to hold power as Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon I being Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon II being a title imputed to the son of the politically arranged marriage between Napoleon Bonaparte and an Austrian Archduchess. This son had been raised under Metternich's overall supervision as an Austrian Duke but had died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-one. As his life ebbed away this young Duke left the great ceremonial sword of honour he had inherited from his father not to any of his surviving Bonaparte uncles but to his cousin Louis Napoleon. The implication of this title being that "Napoleon III" sought to identify his empire with that of Napoleon Bonaparte and intended to pursue somewhat Bonapartist policies at home and abroad. Where the truly dynastic rulers of Europe respected the principle of dynastic sovereignty and were also usually supportive of church influence on society such was not the "Bonapartist outlook." In particular Napoleon III was somewhat prepared to take upon himself the promotion of states based on what was called the so-called "national principle." His uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte after defeat and in exile, had claimed to have been a champion of this "principle" but an examination of Bonaparte's policies suggests that such support as he offered to it was perhaps guided by considerations related to his own imperial framework and the winning of allies amongst peoples whilst avoiding the alienation of mighty adversaries such as the Tsar of Russia. Napoleon III saw the promotion of national statehood as being a necessary response to the existence of popular and national aspirations that might tend to overspill into turbulent challenges to the then existing system. He also hoped that France might gain diplomatically by being the sponsor of such states and thus winning friends and allies. The situation where Napoleon III, as the ruler of one of the most inherently powerful states of western Europe, was prepared to undermine historic traditions of dynastic rule in order to facilitate the emergence of states based moreso on ethnic nationhood was likely to bring with it a degree of constitutional and political turmoil in Europe. Napoleon III was also to some degree dismissive of the validity of the "Vienna Settlement" of 1815, which had attempted to restore dynastic rule after the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte. (Something of the nature of the potential constitutional and political turmoil that might tend to result from Napoleon III's adoption of such policies can be seen in a scenario, early in 1863, where the Empress Eugenie the wife of Napoleon III, spent some three hours showing the Austrian ambassador a projected "more rational" map of Europe. This proposed map envisioned dramatic and unprecedented changes to the sovereignty of several states. A Polish state was to be re-established - such re-establishment would be at the expense of Prussia, Austria and Russia but Russia was to make compensatory gains in Asia Minor and Prussia in a consolidated North Germany. The emergent Italian kingdom [that had been formed in 1861] would gain Venetia with the Austrian Empire being compensated with Silesia and some territories in the Balkans. Greece would gain Constantinople [Istanbul] whilst the Ottoman Empire's lands in Europe seemed to disappear into other existing european states. France herself was to gain the left bank of the Rhine at the expense of German princes who might hope for territorial compensation in South America.) Given his political outlook it happened that Napoleon III decided to interact diplomatically, and militarily, with dynastic ministers such as Cavour (prime minister to the House of Savoy) and Bismarck (prime minister to the House of Hohenzollern), in ways which culminated in the establishment of states - a Kingdom of Italy in 1861 (Cavour) and a second German Empire in 1871 (Bismarck) - that were simultaneously both dynastic and moreso in accordance with the "national principle". Powerful sections of the local populations in both these situations tending to support the replacement of the former patchworks of traditional dynastic states of the Italian peninsula and the German lands as a necessary route towards the establishment of more powerful and more progressive states that were also associated with shared feelings of nationality. Interestingly, in both of these cases Napoleon III got more than he bargained for in that the Italian Kingdom and the German Empire that eventually emerged were both more territorially extensive and more independent of French influence than he had anticipated. Similarly Cavour and Bismarck also got more than they bargained for in that the establishment of the Italian Kingdom and the German Empire were in practice associated with a lessening of the full acceptance of the personal sovereignty of dynastic rulers and a greater acceptance of popular national sovereignty. In 1879 Edward Augustus Freeman, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, wrote:- A hundred years ago man's political likes and dislikes seldom went beyond the range suggested by the place of his birth or immediate descent, Such birth or descent made him a member of this or that political community, a subject of this or that prince, a citizen - perhaps a subject - of this or that commonwealth. The political community of which he was a member had its traditional alliances and traditional enemies, and by those traditional alliances and traditional enemies the likes and dislikes of the members of that community were guided. But those traditional alliances and enemies were seldom determined by theories about language or race. The people of this or that place might be discontented under a foreign government; but, as a rule, they were discontented only if subjection to that foreign government brought with it personal supression or at least political degradation. Regard or disregard of some purely local priveledge or local feeling went for more than the fact of a government being native or foreign. What we now call the sentiment of nationality did not go for much; what we call the sentiment of race went for nothing at all. Only a few men here or there would have understood the feelings which have led to the two great events of our time, the political reunion of the German and Italian nations after their long political dissolution. Between circa 1850 and 1870 several territorially ambitious Dynasties tried to exploit or "ride the tiger" of populist nationalism. In the case of Count Camillo Cavour this facilitated a form of Italian unification. In the case of Count Otto von Bismarck this led to a form of German unification.
Other Popular European History pages
The preparation of these pages was influenced to some degree by a particular "Philosophy
of History" as suggested by this quote from the famous Essay "History" by Ralph Waldo Emerson:-
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Return to start of
The revolution of 1848
Aftermath - "Order" re-established
Several Dynasties recover power
