The End of the Concert
To make up for my lateness, a slightly larger update. Sorry for the delay, I realized there were some important points in the vast Austrian empire I needed to cover before publishing.
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"A united Germany now became the watch-word of the day and every House in Vienna was surmounted by a German national flag.
The students not only marched under German banners, but paraded the streets decorated with German cockades and ribbons.
It was remarkable how all, with one consent, gave up at once their own national standard."
- William Stiles, the US chargé d'affaires to Austria,
remarking to a friend about German nationalism
3 April 1848
Dawles, Richard. Trans. William McKnight.
The Victorian Era. Brussels: Writer's Guild, 2007.
If the February revolution in Paris toppled the first pillar of the Concert of Europe, the second, equally fundamental blow for the old regime was the fall of Metternich. The aging Chancellor, himself the mastermind behind the congress system, received news of the French revolution days before many other Austrian notables - including the imperial family itself - via telegram on 29 February. Though never one to play-down the risk of 'subversion', the Viennese chief of Police, Count Josef von Sedlnitzky, assured Metternich that there was nothing to fear in Vienna. However, on the same night the news of Paris also reached Bohemia. The Prague intelligentsias, already holding a masquerade ball, meet in clusters of two or three to avoid the ever-present notice of the imperial police. Whispering the word amongst the revelers, they quietly toasted the revolution...
... News of Pairs disseminated rapidly throughout Europe by the ubiquitous new technologies; rail, steamboat and the telegraph. By the next day word reached Pozsony, where the Hungarian Diet had been meeting since November debating the issue of serfdom; by the end of the day the parliament agreed to open a new debate - reform...
Rapport, Mike.
1848: Year of Revolution New York: Basic Books, 2008.
... On 3 March the fiery Lajos Kossuth (
1) rose in the lower house and gave the speech that would prove to be 'the inaugural address of the revolution.' Habsburg absolutism, he declared, was 'the pestilential air which dulls our nerves and paralyses our spirit.' Hungary should be 'independent, national and free from foreign interference,' tied to Austria only through the dynastic link of having the Emperor continue as King of Hungary. Kossuth went further and remarked that a political overhaul which benefited Hungary would not be safe for as long as the rest of the empire remained unreformed, so fundamental change was needed for all the subjects of the Emperor. 'The dynasty,' he thundered, 'must choose between its own welfare and the preservation of a rotten system.'
... The hopes and expectations grew when word of Kossuth’s speech reached Prague. On 8 March the liberal organisation
Repeal posted up placards calling a public meeting at the Saint Václav’s Baths on 11 March. The venue was perilously close to the working-class quarter of Podskalí, and the time of 6 p.m. on a Saturday gave the district’s workers ample opportunity to draw their wages and down some alcohol before attending. The destructive power of the workers had been brutally demonstrated (and then equally brutally repressed) only four years previously, and the social fear among the propertied classes was now reignited. Even the leading liberal lights of Bohemia, the historian František Palacký (
2) and journalist Karel Havlíček, stood aloof from the political activities, because they were reluctant to stray from the path of 'legality.' The mayor (or burgermeister) Josef Müller called out the respectably bourgeois civic guard, but he turned down the request of Prague’s wealthiest citizens, who were mostly Germanspeaking industrialists, to allow all
burghers to bear arms. The manufacturers also demanded that the authorities ban the meeting altogether. This the governor of Bohemia, Rudolf Stadion, would not do, for fear of sparking a confrontation; but he put the garrison on alert.
Several thousand people turned out on the appointed day. Eight hundred of the more 'respectable' demonstrators – young intellectuals, officials, burghers, artisans, almost all of them Czech – were allowed into the baths by
Repeal’s ushers. The excluded workers huddled together in the street, battered by a heavy rain. The almost complete absence of Germans at the meeting suggested that it attracted those who had been aroused by the Czech national movement and felt frozen out of Bohemian political structures. A petition was read out, demanding a constitution, press freedom and trial by jury, and, more radically, the 'organisation of work and wages' for the workers and the abolition of both labour obligations (the
robot) and manorial courts for the peasants. Nationalism was expressed in the demand for a union of all the lands of the ancient Czech crown: Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, collectively represented by a single assembly of the Estates, the official equality of Czech with the German language, the reduction of the standing army and a bar on 'foreigners' – the meaning was ambiguous – from holding office. The meeting ended with the election of a committee of twenty to prepare the petition for signature. It was only now that Palacký lent his considerable intellectual weight to the demands...
Dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire
... on 12 March at an early morning Mass service at the University of Vienna popular liberal theologian Anton Füster galvanized the reform movement, declaring that Lent was a time of hope (for Germany). After service the students occupied the Aula, the university's great hall, and soon a petition circled demanding freedom of press, speech, religion and teaching, improvements in education, popular representation in government and the participation of all German-speaking parts of the empire (
3) in a new Germany. By the end of the night the petition was covered by thousands of signatures; conservative’s estimates place almost the entire student body and a significant among of the staff in ultimately signed the document. The students further agreed to march the following day. Learning from the Parisian Revolution, radical-leaning students filtered through the city gates throughout the night into the poorer suburbs, rousing Viennese workers to join the cause.
The next day four thousand students walked out of their lectures and marched on the
Landhaus, which happened to be just around the corner from Metternich's Chancellery on the Ballhauspltaz. Soon middle-class Viennese - doctors, lawyers, artisans and bourgeoisie business-owners - joined the throng in expectation of the Estates opening. Under such pressure the Lower Austrian Estates, led by liberal reformist Alexander Bach, gathered several thousand signatures of their own on a petition demanding parliamentary government and Austrian participation in the restoration of the German empire. However, as the day wore on the protest started to run out of steam, with many students and middle-class Austrians returning to their average routine, until a young Jewish doctor named Adolf Fischhof silenced the crowd and, standing on the shoulders of four compatriots, urged the people to present the Estates with their liberal demands. Soon speaker after speaker - 'pale with terror at their own daring,' Stiles noted - climbed onto the railings and balconies to harangue those within, to the cheers of those without. Count Albert Mountecuccoli tried to pacify the crowd by allowing a delegation to present the petition to the Landhaus. However, just as the delegates entered the building Tyrolean journalist Franz Putz arrived on the square, carrying copies of Kossuth's speech (translated into German), which he read aloud from the central fountain. As Putz worked the crowd into a frenzy with his quoted cries of 'liberty,' 'rights,' and 'constitution' a window of the Landhaus opened to admit copies of the Estates' own petition as they were thrown out to the crowd. However the Estates' plan is disappointingly meek by comparison, and is openly mocked by the mob. Soon cries of 'Constitution!' rippled through the aggregated masses...
Rapport, Mike.
1848: Year of Revolution New York: Basic Books, 2008.
... The mood was beginning to turn ugly, but a minor blunder now tipped it into violence. With commendable but, in the circumstances, tactless efficiency, the porter performed his noonday duty of locking the side door of the Landhaus. For the people unaware of the routine, this was a sign that their twelve delegates were being arrested. A crowd of students and, as Baron Carl von Hügel put it curiously, 'intruders of the better class' battered down the doors and invaded the meeting chamber. To calm tempers, Montecuccoli agreed to adopt the liberal programme and to proceed to the royal residence in the Hofburg to present the demands to the Emperor...
Viennese upheaval and provincial repercussions
... Finally the
Staatskonferenz - the inner circle of family and ministers that acted as a regency council on behalf of Emperor Ferdinand (
4) - made its move. Paralyzed until now between those that advocated some (highly limited) reforms to appease the crowds and conservatives (such as Metternich) who urged no concessions, the authorities attempted to stem the ever-growing flow of the crowds by closing all of Vienna's gates. The industrial workers locked outside in the suburbs, prevented from joining the middle-class revolution within, took their frustration out by smashing up factory machinery, attacking landlord's property and plundering bakeries and groceries. (
5) Independent of the events within the imperial capital, these working-class riots would continue for weeks...
... Imperial soldiers were ordered into the streets under the command of Archduke Albert; although his commands were to disperse the crowds he was also ordered to avoid loss of life. However, the Staatskonferenz had acted too late; the massive crowds now steamed from the Landhaus through the Ballhausplatz and spilled towards the Hofburg where they were confronted by Albert's forces. Faced with cannon and fixed bayonets the crowds rained a hail of stones upon the soldiers; Albert was struck by one, and a regimental commander whose name was lost to history ordered the troops to advance and fire. Dozens died within minutes, and soon fighting broke out across the city, with the workers breaking through the Schottentor gate using ripped-up lamp posts as battering rams. By mid-afternoon imperial troops controlled the main thoroughfare and squares but the insurgents hold the side-streets behind barricades.
At five o'clock a truce was negotiated in which the military withdrew from the city, while in return the bourgeois militia, the
Bürgergarde, maintained order. As well the students were allowed to form their own militia (the 'Academic Legion'). Bridging the gap between liberals and radicals in the Legion, Bürgergarde and the National Guard a Central Committee was formed, led by leaders within each group. By the night's end on the committee’s orders some forty thousand arms had been cleared from the royal armories...
... Under increasing pressure, by nine o'clock Metternich was dismissed by the imperial government, and the authorities gave in to all demands. Metternich's last act as Chancellor was to persuade the Staatskonferenz to give Prince Alfred Windischgrätz (
6) full civil and military powers to restore imperial authority in Vienna. Leaving Vienna with his wife, Melanie that very night by a series of carriages, Metternich spent nearly two weeks in The Hague before arriving in London via steamer...
... Receiving word of Metternich's fall the next day Archduke Stephen, the Palatine of Hungary summoned an emergency meeting of the Upper House of the Hungarian Diet. Capitalizing on the upheaval in the imperial capital the meeting unanimously agreed the Diet must demand a separate Hungarian government, with reform of the counties, wider representation of the people, and full union of Transylvania with Hungary. (
7) The upper house also agreed that delegates from both houses would travel to Vienna to present this petition personally to Emperor Ferdinand...
... hailed as a national hero by a procession of students in Budapest, in a widely publicized move, Kossuth nominates his liberal ally and personal friend Count Lajos Batthyány as (the first) Hungarian Prime Minister...
... on 15 March, arriving in the early afternoon, the 150-member Hungarian delegation, including Kossuth and the moderate Count Istvan Széchenyi, emerged from steamers on the Danube to cheering crowds. Just hours later the imperial government sent heralds throughout Vienna reading an imperial proclamation that all of Austria would send delegates to an assembly that would discuss an imperial constitution to be granted by Emperor Ferdinand. Celebrations throughout the city, first erupting following Metternich's fall, now double in scope...
... However the same day further north news of the imperial promise of a constitution reached Prague via train. As in Vienna a National Guard and an Academic Legion were swiftly arranged in Bohemia and Moravia to keep order. These organizations recruited from both Germans and Czechs, but in Prague the Saint Václav committee also established the
Svornost, an exclusively Czech militia. (
8) As well students, both within and without of the new Legion, form a political society, the
Slavie, or Slavic Linden...
Rapport, Mike.
1848: Year of Revolution New York: Basic Books, 2008.
... On the morning of 16 March Kossuth was carried to the Hofburg on the shoulders of cheering Austrians. At the palace the Hungarians found that the Emperor – drained, pale, and his head lolling – had already been persuaded by the Staatskonferenz to concede all that the Magyars asked. Overnight, in fact, Széchenyi and Batthyány had quietly persuaded Archduke Stephen to stand up to the arch-conservatives at court by arguing that it was better to yield than to provoke a rebellion for full Hungarian independence. Now the Hungarians pushed even further, also demanding that Batthyány be called to form a government and that all legislation passed by the Hungarian Diet be automatically ratified. This was going too far for the Emperor’s inner circle, which rejected these new demands outright. Stephen rushed straight to the Emperor himself – bypassing the Staatskonferenz altogether – and extracted the feeble-minded Ferdinand’s personal agreement that Batthyány be made Hungarian Prime Minister. The Imperial Rescript that emerged on 17 March therefore gave Hungary its own government, responsible to the Diet, and appointed Stephen as the Emperor’s plenipotentiary, with full powers to implement the reforms. Stephen immediately officially appointed Batthyány as his premier. The new cabinet included a kaleidoscope of views from the gradual reformist Széchenyi to the radical Kossuth. The former bristled at the thought of serving alongside the latter: 'I have just signed my death sentence!' he wrote, adding later that 'I shall be hanged with Kossuth.'
The Staatskonferenz had been so pliable because Habsburg authority appeared to be collapsing in every corner of the empire – in Budapest, Prague, Milan and Venice. Concessions were made out of the grim necessity for survival...
Hungarian radicalization
... following his famous speech, Kossuth, anticipating conservation opposition, urged the radicals of Budapest - including students and journalists - to back his speech with the weight of a popular petition. The unenviable task of writing such a document fell to the Society of Ten, a circle of 'Young Hungarian' democratic writers led by the poet Sándor Petőfi; however the petition itself was penned by the young journalist József Irinyi, who’s Twelve Points became Hungary's revolutionary program. The list included free speech, 'responsible government' (meaning a ministry answerable to parliament), regular parliaments, civic equality and religious freedom, a national guard, equality of taxes, trial by jury and a release of all political prisoners, and an end to all feudal burdens for peasants. As well all non-Hungarian troops were to be evacuated from Hungarian soil, and Transylvania was to become part of Hungary.
On the same day Kossuth was carried through the Viennese streets to meet Emperor Ferdinand, the Budapest radicals gathered at the Café Pilvax, where Kossuth's petition was read aloud to great applause. Following the petition, Petőfi then recited a poem, written only two days previously, the 'National Song,' the refrain of which brought a roar of approval: "We swear by the God of the Magyars, we swear, we shall not be slaves any more!" (
9) Later that afternoon Petőfi addressed a 10,000-man crowd in front of the National Museum; reciting his poem once again, he then led them into Budapest's city chambers where, with little alternative, the council president signed the Twelve Points and a new municipal government - the Committee of Public Safety - was appointed. The Committee's membership included such radicals as Petőfi himself, pro-Kossuth nobles, and liberals from the old Council. Petőfi's Committee also formed a National Guard. The revolutionizes then marched across the Danube via pontoon bridge (since Széchenyi’s now-famous chain bridge was still under construction) to Buda Castle, where the Vice Regal Council met. Confronted with a crowd now over 20,000 strong and with no direction from Vienna, Stephen's councilors yielded within minutes of being presented the Twelve Points.
However, not all was well within young revolutionary Hungary. On 18 March a petition circled through Budapest, garnishing nearly as many votes as the Twelve Points, demanding that the city's Jews be expelled from the city militia. Though the Committee of Public Safety rejected the bill, anti-Semitism would remain high throughout the revolution. On 21 March, in response to a proposal put forward in the Diet granting the franchise in municipal elections to anyone of sufficient self-independence (wealth), anti-Semitic violence erupts once again in Budapest and in Pozsony, with the cities' Jews beaten and their businesses smashed. Within days the violence spread across the Hungarian countryside as the new government was slow to react; these protests and pogroms would continue throughout Hungary until early April. Anti-Semitic violence broke once again however on 19 April, when a mob of proletariat workers of Budapest fell upon the city's Jews. Armed with knives, axes and poles the mob lynched ten people, and another forty were beaten, before the municipal guards were able to disperse the crowds. As such six days later, trying to stem the tide of anti-Semitic violence the Diet 'excused' Jews from military service, disallowing them from serving National Guard duty. However the next day, led by Petőfi, the radicals formed a special battalion for Jewish Hungarian patriots. (
10) Petőfi himself accused the Germans ('the blind tools of the over-thrown regime') and the 'dregs' of the working class embarrassing the national revolution by 'throwing mud at the virgin flag of 15 March.' Consequently the enfranchisement of the Jews was delayed until...
... As well, there was stiff resistance to the Magyar ideal of reunited the Crown lands of Saint Stephen. In Transylvania on 24 March radical lawyer Simion Bărnuøiu called for a Romanian national program - including representation of the peasantry - and to reject union with Hungary. Scarcely a month later Bărnuøiu convened a 'preliminary' assembly of six thousand people on Blaj. The meeting was attended by ethnic-Romanian students, teachers, priests, peasants - and notably, delegates from Moldavia and Wallachia, across the Romanian border. Arguing for slow and deliberate constitutional reform, while rejecting union with Hungary, Bărnuøiu called for a committee to draft a Romanian 'National Petition,' urging those who would attend not to trust Hungarian promises and to reject transforming Romanians into simply citizens of a 'Greater Hungary.' Just days after the assembly, Daniel Roth, a Banat priest, published a tract that envisioned a new Romanian kingdom based on Dacia, a province of the Roman Empire. By 15 May the Romanian Congress was held on the Field of Liberty outside of Blaj. Lasting for two days, it was attended by over 40,000 people, mostly peasants. The National Petition that was drafted there demanded the abolition of serfdom, civil rights, Romanian representation in the imperial diet, a separate Romanian parliament, militia, and an education system for Romanians. A permanent committee, led by Bărnuøiu, was also formed, which then went on to form a National Guard. The Petition was intended for both the aristocratic Transylvanian Diet and Emperor Ferdinand, but pointedly not for the Hungarian government. However the Magyar governor of Transylvania, József Teleki, charged the committee with subversion and disbanded it...
... in the northern Hungarian lands on 28 March the nascent Slovak national movement held its first meeting, led by writer L’udovít Štúr, who had previously worked throughout his lifetime to promote Slovak as a literary language in its own right. The meeting created a list of modest demands; that Slovak be taught in schools and used as an official language alongside Magyar in Slovakia, and that the Slovak colors be displayed alongside the Hungarian within Slovak lands. However the petition was rejected out of hand by the Hungarian government as a 'manifestation of pan-Slavic unity.' In response, at the beginning of May Štúr organized a larger meeting at Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš, in which a more comprehensive program, the 'Requirements of the Slovak Nation' was drafted, including the right for peasants to own land and greater political autonomy within the Kingdom of Hungary. In response on 12 May the Hungarian government issued arrest warrants for prominent Slovak leaders, particularly Štúr...
... attempting to further their revolutionary goals, the Circle of Ten scheduled an enormous 'French-style' banquet beginning on the 19th, consigning with a large, traditional, trade fair at which Kossuth's petition may be signed by thousands. Throughout the day the lack of paper and pen became a real threat as a significant portion of the city and surrounding countryside poured out for the petition. As events continued to advance beyond Hungarian or Austrian control, a crowd of 20,000 protested in Budapest on 27 March, led by the city's Committee of Public Safety. The crowds soon were out of the committee's control however, and began to chant 'We don't want a German government,' and even the more radical, 'Long live the republic.' However by 11 April Emperor Ferdinand signed the April Laws. Four days later the Committee of Public Safety voluntarily disbanded; many members immediately began to work on campaigns for the upcoming Hungarian parliamentary election...
Urban, Aladar. "April Laws, Hungarian."
Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions. 2005 Ed.
... With the consent of the court and the state conference the April Laws were worked out by the diet and approved by the king at Pozsony on April 11. The April Laws abolished the feudal dependence of peasants and emancipated serfs and the general sharing of taxation. They created the first Hungarian constitutional government and sanctioned Batthyany's government, whose ministers of finances and defence, called into question the concept that the Habsburg lands constituted a single (
Gesamtmonarchie). The April Laws reformed suffrage laws and allowed the election of the Hungarian national assembly in Budapest in the summer of 1848. The April Laws called for liberty of press and regulated the administration of counties and cities. It defined the national colors of the red-white-green tricolor and re-established the usage of the old Hungarian arms of nation. The April Laws enacted the legal existence of the national guard, which the Budapest revolution spontaneously organized. The thirty-one articles of the April Laws were the constitutional basis of a modern Hungarian state, calling for a government responsible to the parliament, independent in internal affairs within the Habsburg monarchy, including a separate civil administration, armed forces and judiciary. But the famous Law III, establishing the sphere of authority of the new Hungarian government and abolishing the vice-regal council, the Viennese direction of the Hungarian treasury and the royal Hungarian court chancellery, was silent about the unity of the imperial royal army, although allowing the Hungarian government control over "all military affairs."
Bohemia within revolutionary Austria
... On 22 March the Staatskonferenz received a Czech delegation that presented the Saint Václav Petition; however the Viennese court could sense the reluctance among both Moravian and Bohemian Germans to submit to a Czech state and the Emperor only made vague promises of concessions. Returning to Prague by 28 March the delegation immediately scheduled an emergency meeting. Planned celebrations had been canceled, and popular anger at the committee was high. At the meeting delegates struggled to make themselves heard over cries of 'Republic!' and chants against the Bohemia nobility. In response the committee drafted a more strident petition, demanding the unity of all Czech lands, represented in a single parliament elected on a wide franchise; the Estates were effectively jettisoned as an archaic institution. The committee also demanded a separate, unified kingdom retaining only a dynastic link with the Hapsburg crown. Finally, the committee abolished the
robot - the forced labor obligation of the peasantry. An armed militia carried the petition to the Governor's office, where Stadion was forced (some reports say at musket-point) to sign the document. However shortly after he resigned; his last act to write a warning to Baron Pillersdorf, the Minister of the Interior, that he 'could not answer for nothing if it was all not granted.' Four days later he appointed his own commission as an alternative, conservative, seat of power to the Saint Václav Committee. The Stadion Commission was made up of the great conservative worthies of Prague, both Czech and German, including Palacký and some dissatisfied members of the Saint Václav Committee. As well, with Stadion's encouragement, German minorities throughout the Czech lands formed a German League 'for the Preservation of Their Nationality.'
By 8 April an imperial reply to the second Saint Václav Petition was issued, which promised only Bohemian and Moravian Estates, elected on a franchise limited to property owners, salaries employees and taxpayers, but excluding the urban workers, domestic servants and rural laborers. The Czech language was to be taught in all schools and used in every level of administration in the Czech lands - alongside German. The government response leads to outraged protests across the Czech lands, and within two days conservative opposition in Prague crumbled, and Stadion's Commission was subsumed by the resurgent Saint Václav Committee. On the following day Palacký stunned the Frankfurt Committee of Fifty when he rejected their invitation in a published letter. Insulting the German parliament, the letter began with a statement of Czech national identity; "I am a Czech of Slavonic blood... that nation is a small one, it is true, but from time immemorial been a nation of itself and based upon its own strength." However Palacký did not seek Czech independence, explaining that the unity of the entire German people would tear apart the Hapsburg Empire, leaving the small nations of Eastern and Central Europe vulnerable to the 'leviathan to the east' - Russia - which "has become, and has for a long time been, a menace to its neighbors," adding "Assuredly, if the Austrian State had not existed for ages, it would have been in the interests of Europe and indeed humanity to endeavor to create it as soon as possible." With the conservative counter-movement in Bohemia in full-swing by 13 April Stadion was made chair of the new National Committee, which was effectively the new government as both Czechs and Germans prepared for the elections of the Bohemian Diet.
However, much like elsewhere in the Austrian empire, the lifting of censorship had led to a flood of anti-Semitic propaganda, stirring two days of rioting starting in May in Prague, in which Jewish shopkeepers were charged of over-pricing their wares, beaten or killed, and their stores destroyed...
... on 6 May the continued slow pace of reforms, and the lack of a united parliament, lead to both worker strikes and protest demonstrations in Prague, Ostrava and Brno...
Himka, John-Paul. "Non-historic peoples."
Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions. 2005 Ed.
This term frequently appeared in the German revolutionary Friedrich Engels' discussions of the nationality problem in the Habsburg monarchy during the revolution of 1848-49. Writing in the newspaper he co-edited with Karl Marx, the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Engels divided the nationalities of the empire into "historic" (Germans, Poles, Magyars) and "non-historic" (Czechs, South Slavs, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Transylvanian Romanians and Saxons). He considered the historic nations to be supporters of the all-European revolution, while the non-historic peoples were counter-revolutionary by their very nature and doomed to national extinction.
Engels borrowed the concept of non-historical peoples from Hegel, who had identified nationhood with a tradition of statehood: "A nation with no state formation... has, strictly speaking, no history - like the nations which existed before the rise of states and others with still exist in a condition of savagery" (Philosophy of Mind). As a sociological distinction, the concept had some validity, since the nations Engels characterized as historical did have a strong tradition of statehood and active participation in politics relative to the non-historic peoples; more to the point, the historic nations had preserved a traditional elite (particularly the Polish and Magyar gentry) into the mid-nineteenth century, while the non-historic peoples were predominantly peasant peoples. Engels' distinction was also, in the main, descriptively accurate, since the German, Polish and Hungarian national movements were ranged on the side of revolution, while the national movements of the non-historic peoples tended to support the emperor against the revolutionaries (the most notable case may be that of the Croatian political and military leader, Josip Jelacic)...
Illyrian Developments
... On 23 March Baron Josip Jelačić (
11), a Croat who had attended the Zagreb Congress but also a loyal monarchist, was appointed the Ban (Viceroy) over the provinces of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia. Jelačić had been spotted as a shrewd and determined operator by an Austrian military commissioner in Zagreb during the Congress. Immediately Jelačić sent out orders declaring that until the Croatian parliament reconvened, all districts should accept orders from no one except himself, as the Emperor's representative. Two days later this meeting was commenced amidst peasant uprisings against the Magyar gentry throughout the Military Frontier region. The parliament abolished serfdom and wrote a petition, demanding the same rights the Hungarians were demanding; specifically full autonomy within the Hapsburg monarchy. However, the Croatian gentry declared that only the
Sabor (Croatian Diet) could abolish serfdom in Croatia, rejecting both the Hungarian National Assembly's and the Croatian National Congress' abolishment of such...
... On 8 April Kossuth admonished a Serb delegation that petitioned for Serbian autonomy within the new Hungary. The delegation returned to the Serbian Vojvodina, and made contact with Jelačić...
... by 4 May, Jelačić, claiming a Turkish threat, put most of the military units under his command on war footing, while refusing to recognize the legality of the Hungarian government in Budapest (specifically, its power over the Military Frontier). Writing to the new conservative Austrian War Minister, Count Theodor von Latour, Jelačić requests the transfer of key supplies from Austria to Croatia; Latour willingly obliges. However a scant three days later the Austrian government yields to Hungarian demands once again, placing all troops in Hungary, including the Military Frontier, under the command of the new War Ministry in Budapest. The Hungarian government swiftly appointed Baron János Hrabovszky to lead the imperial forces in 'restoring order' along the southern border.
On 13 May, with the backing of the independent Serbian principality centered in Belgrade, 8,000 Hungarian Serbs met at Sremski Karlovci (Karlóca in Hungarian) and proclaimed an autonomous province (
Voivodina) under an elected executive committee, the
Glavni Odbor, and a prince (
voivoda) Stevan Šupljikac, a colonel from the border regiments. The Voivodina recognized the ultimate sovereignty of the Hapsburg Emperor, but not the authority of the Hungarian government. Further, the Glavni Odbor incited Serbian peasants to rise up against their Magyar landlords, leading to low-level guerilla warfare between Voivodina Serbs and Hungarians, with both sides claiming loyalty to the Hapsburg Emperor. However, when the Serbs also restored the Orthodox See of Karlovci and proclaimed Metropolitan Josip Rajačić to be its Patriarch, the imperial government refused to recognize both.
Proclamation of Serbian Vojvodina in Sremski Karlovci
Austrian Constitution
... As early as 25 April the promised imperial constitution was issued. The document featured a system of indirect elections for a parliament due to meet on 26 June. The emperor kept most of his powers, including an absolute veto, control over war & peace and the power to make official appointments. Moreover the constitution lacked universal male suffrage, and left the manner of the elections to parliament vague. While liberals were happy with the new constitution, it was rejected by both conservatives for going too far and radicals for not going far enough; including the Academic Legion. Student protests once again sprang up across Vienna. On 2 May the Emperor's new Prime Minister, Count Ficquelmont, the former Foreign Minister, was 'serenaded' by a crowd of Academic Legionaries, National Guards and workers who 'sang' loudly outside of his home, demanding his resignation. By the next morning the crowds had in fact invaded the Foreign Ministry building where Ficquelmont had retreated to, forcing him to promise to resign within twenty-four hours, a promise he kept within twelve by handing over the office to Baron Franz Pillersdorf.
The conservative regime did not back down this time however, and on 11 May new decrees were issued, which denied the vote to servants and those who earned a daily or weekly wage - effectively all workers. The Central Committee quickly organized a 'Storm Petition,' demanding a single-body chamber legislature elected by universal male suffrage, backed by threat of force. The government responded by banning the National Guard from participating in the Central Committee. Thinking themselves prepared for a second round of violence, the Staatskonferenz closed the city gates, and a strong guard of regular military was stationed in every direction around the palace, with cannons loaded with grape-shot and torches ready lighted. However by the 15th the government once again yielded to the protestor’s demands as National Guardsman and Academic Legionaries took positions on all sides around the royal palace, while workers in the thousands attempted to break through the locked and reinforced city gates. Only the feeble pleading of Emperor Ferdinand prevented his ministry from resigning en masse. During the night, for his continued work and dedication 'to the cause,' Adolf Fischhof was elected President of the Central Committee. However, even as the radicals celebrated, the royal family retreated from the city in the dead of the night, fleeing to Innsbruck. (
12) Further echoing the earlier flight of Louis XVI during the 1789 French Revolution, the imperial families left a proclamation of their passing to be read aloud the next morning.
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1) A Hungarian nationalist lawyer, journalist and politician, Kossuth entered politics in 1825 after being appointed as deputy to Count Hunyady at the National Diet. However only the upper aristocracy could vote, and Kossuth took little part in the debates. It was only in 1840, following five years of arrest for liberal publications, that Kossuth became a national icon following the Diet's demand of his release, among other political prisoners, and refusal to pass government measures until Metternich caved. Immediately Kossuth become editor of
Pesti Hírlap, the liberals newspaper, a post which he lost in 1844; however in late 1847 he was elected to the new Diet due to the support of Lajos Batthyány. IOTL and ITTL he played a critical role in 1848 Hungary...
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2) A patriotic
Slav and historian by trade, Palacký mastered eleven Slavonic languages as a child under Pavel Šafárik while attending the lyceum in Pozsony. Settling in Prague in 1823 he was shielded from imperial hostility against his open enthusiasm for Slavic history by his friendship with the brothers Count Sternberg and Francis, the latter of which founded the Society of the Bohemian Museum in 1825 under Palacký, who then spent the years until 1848 writing his capital work, "The History of the Czech Nation in Bohemia and Moravia". OTL an (
the) early advocate of 'austroslavism,' Palacký toed a dangerous line during the 1848 period as a supporter of both the Hapsburgs and of Slavic nationalism.
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3) I.e., the forty-two year defunct Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. German nationalism was still alive and strong n the post-Napoleonic period.
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4) Depicted as feeble-minded and incapable of ruling from a young age, Ferdinand, although an epileptic and not very intelligent (historians generally are charitable when describing him as 'mentally retarded'), kept a coherent and legible diary and was said to have a sharp wit. However his condition (sometimes as many as twenty seizures a day) prevented him from ruling in anything but name.
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5) A scene that would repeat elsewhere throughout the 1848 period. By-and-large skilled artisans, fearful of losing their livelihood to the new industrial processes and unskilled proletariat workers, worked to limit or destroy any industrial development.
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6) Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz, a Styrian noble who had distinguished himself in the imperial army during the Napoleonic period. Named a Field Marshal in 1833, he was made military commander of Bohemia in 1840. A notorious reactionary, he was both widely feared and admired by segments of the Austrian aristocracy.
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7) Formally apart of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom, however ethnically Romanian, Transylvania was captured by the Austrian Hapsburgs shortly after the Battle of Vienna in 1683 from the Ottoman Turks. The Hapsburgs originally recognized Hungarian sovereignty over Transylvania, however the Transylvanians themselves recognized the suzerainty of the Hapsburg Emperor Leopold I, and the region was officially attached to the Austrian Empire as a separate administrative unit in the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz. From 1711 on the territory as ruled as an imperial governorship, and following 1765 declared a Grand Principality.
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8) An OTL occurrence, however ITTL historians will largely attribute it to Ochsenbein's Swiss Legion.
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9) Lyrics can be found
here.
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10) See citation #8.
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11) A regimental colonel for seven years along the Croatian Military Frontier, described by his contemporaries as poetic and humane, Jelačić was a consummate professional military office. Though a Croatian nationalist favoring the early Illyrian movement, he was a fierce supporter of the Hapsburg monarchy. IOTL after leading Hapsburg armies to defeat the Hungarian revolution his office was largely made a ceremonial one, with all meaningful power in Croatia centralized in Vienna; he died in 1859 after maintaining his neutered role in Croatian politics.
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12) This is exactly one day earlier than IOTL due to butterflies from the slightly larger Jewish and Czech Legions in Hungary and Bohemia, respectively, thanks to Ochsenbein's instigation, resulting in more imperial troops required in those regions.