Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
Exactly, they revolted to establish this, they revolted before to defend this. But their final aim was full independence.
The opinion of people at the time and subsequent historians is that it was. It nearly collapsed every 7 years. It was not expected to survive the death of Franz-Joseph it did of course, but that was the perception and its death as a result of defeat in WW1 shows its weakness.
The opinion of many people at the time, maybe - but the same people had been predicting the impending disintigration of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. The opinion of historians is more mixed, and none of them really address what the effect of a war victory would have been.
The Hapsburg Empire certainly had many problems and tensions, and there was probably no question of it going on in the same form, but I think it's going to far to say it was doomed. It looked a lot more doomed in 1848...
I also think it's going to far to say that the Hungarians wanted total independence. Many probably did, but I don't think that was a universal goal, and it certainly wasn't for some of the subject regions of Hungary.
I think we have to avoid the danger of seeing things through the eyes of nationalist historiography, which can give us invented images like the "Ottoman yoke" over the Bulgarian nation or the clueless and senile Hapsburg prison of nations.