The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany / With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years

by C. Edmund Maurice

The reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II., while modifying the evils of the position of the serf, had taught him to look to the Court of Vienna, rather than to the Diet of Presburg, for help in his troubles.

The Edict of Maria Theresa, called the Urbarium, had granted the peasant the right of leaving the land when he pleased, or of remaining if he liked, while he complied with certain conditions; and by this act he was allowed to bequeath the use of his land to his descendants. Further, a right of appeal had been granted from his landlord's decision to the official court at Buda, known as the Statthalterei. By the same law the labour to be performed by the peasantry had been fixed, instead of being left to the will of the lord, as heretofore.

The reforms of Joseph II. had, like most of his attempts, been too vigorous to be lasting; but he had done enough to strengthen in the minds of the oppressed peasantry of Hungary the desire to look to the Emperor as their liberator. Thus the satisfaction of the claims of humanity had tended to weaken Constitutional freedom.

The bitter feeling between noble and peasant was illustrated most painfully in the year 1831, when an outbreak of cholera in Hungary was attributed by the peasantry to the poisoning of the wells by the nobles. Agrarian risings had followed, and more than fifty peasants had been hung without trial.

Such was the state of feeling when the Diet of 1832 met at Presburg. Had the leader of the movement for agrarian reform been a mere champion of Constitutionalism, the work of drawing together the peasant and noble might have been more difficult. But fortunately the work fell into the hands of a man who, though not deficient in powers of oratory, was far less a popular leader than a thoughtful and humane student of affairs. This was Francis Deak, then thirty years of age, trained, like so many leaders of the time, for the bar, and already known as a speaker in the County Assembly of Zala. He was not a man of the delicate, cultured type of Szechenyi; nor did he possess the commanding figure and lion voice of Wesselenyi. He was broad and sturdy in figure, his face was round and humorous, and his eye twinkled with fun. Yet he was not without a deep shade of melancholy. He was a man who inspired in all who came near him a sense of entire trust in his honesty and steadiness of purpose; and this feeling, though unlike the enthusiasm which is roused alike by the highest genius and by merely popular gifts, was yet exactly the form of confidence needed to enable Deak to do the special work which lay before him.

The question of the reform of the Urbarium he at once made his own. Besides the miseries of the peasantry above mentioned, they were continually exposed to all kinds of petty tyrannies. Their horses were liable to be seized by tourists through the country, and soldiers were billeted upon them. Deak demanded the extension to the peasant of the right of buying land, and better security for person and property.

But it soon became evident that, whatever exceptions there might be to the rule, the Magnates of Hungary were not prepared to surrender their privileges. The point which the reformers specially insisted on in the new Urbarium was a clause enabling the peasant to free himself from his feudal dues by a legal arrangement with the landlord. Thirteen times the Lower House of the Diet passed the clause; thirteen times the House of Magnates rejected it; and when at last that House consented to pass it, the Emperor vetoed it.

The reformers were now clearly justified in calling on the people to recognize them as their champions against both nobles and sovereign. But in order to prevent this recognition the Government had forbidden any publication of the debates.

Wesselenyi had met this difficulty in the Transylvanian Diet by introducing a private press of his own, with the help of which he circulated a report of the proceedings. This so alarmed the Government that they dissolved the Transylvanian Diet and established an absolute ruler in that province. Wesselenyi then transferred his eloquence to the House of Magnates in Presburg, where he thundered against the Government for opposing the liberties of the peasantry, denouncing them in the following words: "The Government sucks out the marrow of nine million of men (i.e., the peasantry); it will not allow us nobles to better their condition by legislative means; but, retaining them in their present state, it only waits its own time to exasperate them against us. Then it will come forward to rescue us. But woe to us! From freemen we shall be degraded to the state of slaves."

But the work which Wesselenyi had half done for Transylvania was to be carried out for Hungary more thoroughly by a man who had been gradually rising into note. This was Louis Kossuth, of whom it may be said that, more than any other man in Europe, he was the author of the Revolution of 1848. He was a few years older than Francis Deak, and, like him, was trained as a lawyer. He had been appointed, in the exercise of his profession, arbitrator between several wealthy proprietors and their dependants. In this position he gained the confidence of many of the peasantry, and he was also able to give them help in the time of the cholera.