The Governments of Europe

by Frederic Austin Ogg

492. Institutional Growth Under Stephen I., 997-1038.—The principal formative period in the history of the Hungarian nation is the long reign of Stephen I., or, as he is more commonly known, St. Stephen. In this reign were established firmly both the Hungarian state and the Hungarian church; and in the organization of both Stephen exhibited a measure of capacity which entitles him to high rank among the constructive statesmen of mediæval Europe. Under his predecessor the court had accepted Roman Christianity, but during his reign the nation itself was Christianized and the machinery of the Church was for the first time put effectively in operation. In the year 1001 Pope Sylvester II. accorded formal recognition to Magyar nationality by bestowing upon Prince Stephen a kingly crown, and to this day the joint sovereign of Austria-Hungary is inducted into office as Hungarian monarch with the identical crown which Pope Sylvester transmitted to the missionary-king nine centuries ago. In the elaboration of a governmental system King Stephen and the advisers whom he gathered from foreign lands had virtually a free field. The nation possessed a traditional right to elect its sovereign and to gather in public assembly, and these privileges were left untouched. None the less, the system that was set up was based upon a conception of royal power unimpaired by those feudal relationships by which in western countries monarchy was being reduced to its lowest estate. The old Magyar tribal system was abolished and as a basis of administration there was adopted the Frankish system of counties. The central and western portions of the country, being more settled, were divided into forty-six counties, at the head of each of which was placed a count, or lord-lieutenant (föispán), appointed by the crown and authorized in turn to designate his subordinates, the castellan (várnagy), the chief captain (hadnagy), and the hundredor (százados). This transplantation of institutions is a matter of permanent importance, for, as will appear, the county is still the basal unit of the Hungarian administrative system.

493. The Golden Bull, 1222.—During the century and a half which followed the reign of Stephen the consolidation of the kingdom, despite frequent conflicts with the Eastern Empire, was continued. The court took on something of the brilliancy of the Byzantine model, and in the later twelfth century King Béla III. inaugurated a policy—that of crowning as successor the sovereign's eldest son while yet the sovereign lived—by which were introduced in effect the twin principles of heredity and primogeniture. In 1222 King Andrew II. (1204-1235) promulgated a famous instrument, the Bulla Aurea, or Golden Bull, which has been likened many times to the Great Charter conceded to his barons by King John of England seven years earlier. The precise purport of the Golden Bull is somewhat doubtful. By some the instrument has been understood to have comprised a virtual surrender on the part of the crown in the interest of a class of insolent and self-seeking nobles with which the country was cursed. By others it has been interpreted as a measure designed to strengthen the crown by winning the support of the mass of the lesser nobles against the few greater ones.[647] The exemption of all nobles from taxation was confirmed; all were exempted likewise from arbitrary arrest and punishment. On the other hand, it was forbidden expressly that the titles and holdings of lords-lieutenant should become hereditary. The most reasonable conclusion is that the instrument represents a compromise designed to afford a working arrangement in a period of unusual stress between crown and nobility. Although the document was amplified in 1231 and its guarantees were placed under the special guardianship of the Church, it does not appear that its positive effects in the period immediately following were pronounced. The Golden Bull, none the less, has ever been regarded as the foundation of Hungarian constitutional liberty. As such, it was confirmed specifically in the coronation oath of every Hapsburg sovereign from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

494. Three Centuries of Constitutional Unsettlement.—The last century of the Árpád dynasty, which was ended in 1308, was a period of depression and of revolution. The weakness of the later Árpáds, the ruin wrought by the Tatar invasion of 1241-1242, the infiltration of feudalism, and perennial civil discord subverted the splendid monarchical establishment of King Stephen and brought the country into virtual subjection to a small body of avaricious nobles. The Árpáds were succeeded by two Angevin princes from the kingdom of Naples—Charles I. (1310-1342) and Louis I. (1342-1382)—under whom notable progress was made toward the rehabilitation of the royal power. Yet in the midst of their reforms appeared the first foreshadowings of that great Turkish onslaught by which eventually the independent Hungarian monarchy was destined to be annihilated completely. The long reign of Sigismund (1387-1437) was occupied almost wholly in resistance to the Ottoman advance. So urgent did this sovereign deem the pushing of military preparations that he fell into the custom of summoning the Diet once, and not infrequently twice, a year, and this body acquired rapidly a bulk of legislative and fiscal authority which never before had been accorded it. Persons entitled to membership were regularly the nobles and higher clergy. But in 1397 the free and royal towns were invited to send deputies, and this privilege seems to have been given statutory confirmation. By the ripening of the Hungarian feudal system, however, and the struggles for the throne which followed the death of King Albert V. (1439), much that was accomplished by Sigismund and his diets was undone. Ultimately, measures of vigilance were renewed under John Hunyadi,—by voice of the Diet "governor" of Hungary, 1446-1456,—and, under his son King Matthias I. (1458-1490). During the last-mentioned reign fifteen diets are known to have been held, and no fewer than 450 statutes to have been enacted. The Hungarian common law was codified afresh and the entire governmental system overhauled. But again succeeded a period, from the accession of Wladislaus II. to the battle of Mohács, during which turbulence reigned supreme and national spirit all but disappeared.

496. The Establishment of Austrian Dominion.—In 1526 the long expected blow fell. Under the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks invaded the Hungarian kingdom and at the battle of Mohács, August 28, put to rout the entire Hungarian army. The invading hosts chose to return almost instantly to Constantinople, but when they withdrew they left one-quarter of the Hungarian dominion in utter desolation. It was at this point, as has been stated, that the Hapsburg rulers of Austria first acquired the throne of Hungary. The death of King Louis at Mohács was followed by the election of John Zapolya as king. But the archduke Ferdinand, whose wife, Anne, was a sister of Louis, laid claim to the throne and, in November, 1527, contrived to procure an election thereto at the hand of the Diet. In 1529 the deposed Zapolya was reinstated at Buda by the Sultan. The upshot was civil war, which was terminated in 1538 by a treaty under whose terms the kingdom was divided between the two claimants. Zapolya retained approximately two-thirds of the country, while to Ferdinand was conceded the remaining portion, comprising Croatia-Slavonia and the five westernmost counties. The government which Zapolya maintained at Buda had rather the better claim to be considered the continuation of the old Hungarian monarchy; but from 1527 onwards some portion of Hungary, and eventually the whole, was attached regularly to the Hapsburg crown.

In 1540 Zapolya died and the Diet at Buda elected as king his infant son John Sigismund. On the basis of earlier pledges Ferdinand laid claim to Zapolya's possessions, but the Sultan intervened and in 1547 there was worked out a three-fold division of the kingdom, on the principle of uti possedetis, under which thirty-five counties (including Croatia and Slavonia) were assigned to Ferdinand, Transylvania and sixteen adjacent counties were retained by John Sigismund, while the remaining portions of the kingdom were annexed to the dominions of the Sultan. With frequent modifications in detail, this three-fold division persisted through the next century and a half. The period was marked by frequent wars, by political confusion, and by the assumption on the part of the Hapsburg sovereigns of an increasingly autocratic attitude in relation to their Hungarian dependencies. It was brought to a close by the Peace of Karlowitz, January 26, 1699, whereby the Hapsburg dynasty acquired dominion over the whole of Hungary, except the banat of Tamesvár, which was acquired nineteen years later.

496. Austrian Encroachment: the Pragmatic Sanction.—The immediate effect of the termination of the Turkish wars was to enhance yet further the despotism of the Hapsburgs in Hungary. In 1687 the Emperor Leopold I. induced a rump diet at Pressburg to abrogate that clause of the Golden Bull which authorized armed resistance to unconstitutional acts of the sovereign, and likewise to declare the Hungarian crown hereditary in the house of Hapsburg. After upwards of seven hundred years of existence, the elective Hungarian monarchy was brought thus to an end. In 1715 King Charles III.[648] persuaded the Diet to consent to the establishment of a standing army, recruited and supported under regulation of the Diet but controlled by the Austrian council of war. By the diet of 1722 there was established a Hungarian court of chancery at Vienna and the government of Hungary was committed to a stadtholder at Pressburg who was made independent of the Diet and responsible to the sovereign alone. The diet of 1722 likewise accepted formally the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 by which the Emperor Charles settled the succession to his hereditary dominions, in default of male heirs, upon his daughter Maria Theresa and her heirs;[649] and in measures promulgated during the succeeding year the Emperor entered into a fresh compact with his Hungarian subjects which continued the basis of Hapsburg-Hungarian relations until 1848. On the one hand, Hungary was declared inseparable from the Hapsburg dominions, so long as there should be a legal heir; on the other, the crown was sworn to preserve the Hungarian constitution intact, with all the rights, privileges, laws, and customs of the kingdom. The net result of all of these measures, none the less, was to impair perceptibly the original autonomy of the Hungarian state.

497. The Later Eighteenth Century.—Maria Theresa cherished a genuine interest in Hungarian affairs and was deeply solicitous concerning the welfare of her Hungarian subjects. It was never her intent, however, to encourage Hungarian self-government. The constitution of the kingdom was not subverted; it was simply ignored. The Diet was summoned but seldom, and after 1764 not at all. Reforms were introduced, especially in connection with education, but through the medium of royal decrees alone. Joseph II. continued nominally the policy of enlightened despotism, but in so tactless a manner that most of his projects were brought to nought. Approaching the problem of Hungarian administration with his accustomed idealism, he undertook deliberately to sweep away not only the constitution of the kingdom but the whole body of Hungarian institutions and traditions. He refused even to be crowned king of Hungary or to recognize in any manner the established status of the country. His purpose was clearly to build of Austria and Hungary one consolidated and absolute state—a purpose which, it need hardly be remarked, failed of realization. The statesmanship of Leopold II. averted the impending revolt. The constitution was restored, the ancient liberties of the kingdom were confirmed, and it was agreed that the Diet should be assembled regularly every three years. Through a quarter of a century the principal interest of Leopold's successor, Francis II. (1792-1835),[650] was the waging of war upon revolutionary France and upon Napoleon, and during this period circumstances conspired to cement more firmly the relations between the Hapsburg monarchy and the Hungarian people. In Hungary, as in Austria, the time was one of political stagnation. Prior to 1811 the Diet was several times convened, but never for any purpose other than that of obtaining war subsidies.

III. The Era of Metternich

In the thoroughgoing reaction which set in with the Congress of Vienna it fell to Austria to play the principal rôle. This was in part because the dominions of the Hapsburgs had emerged from the revolutionary epoch virtually unscathed, but rather more by reason of the remarkable position occupied during the period 1815-1848 by Emperor Francis I.'s minister and mentor, Prince Metternich. Easily the most commanding personality in Europe, Metternich was at the same time the moving spirit in international affairs and the autocrat of Austro-Hungarian politics. Within both spheres he was, as he declared himself to be, "the man of the status quo." Innovation he abhorred; immobility he glorified. The settlement at Vienna he regarded as essentially his own handiwork, and all that that settlement involved he proposed to safeguard relentlessly. Throughout a full generation he contrived, with consummate skill, to dam the stream of liberalism in more than half of Europe.

498. Condition of the Monarchy in 1815.—In the dominions of the Hapsburgs the situation was peculiarly such as to render all change, from the point of view of Metternich, revolutionary and ruinous. In respect to territory and prestige Austria emerged from the Napoleonic wars with a distinctly improved status. But the internal condition of the monarchy, now as ever, imparted a forbidding aspect to any policy or movement which should give promise of unsettling in the minutest degree the delicate, haphazard balance that had been arrived at among the multiplicity of races, religions, and interests represented in the Emperor's dominions. In the west were the duchies, essentially German, which comprised the ancestral possessions of the Hapsburg dynasty; in the north was Bohemia, comprising, besides Bohemia proper, Silesia, and Moravia, and containing a population largely Czech; to the south lay the lately acquired Italian kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia; to the east lay the kingdom of Hungary, including the kingdom of Croatia and the principality of Transylvania, with a population preponderantly Slavic but dominated politically by the Magyars. Several of these component states retained privileges which were peculiar to themselves and were bound to the Hapsburg monarchy by ties that were at best precarious. And the differences everywhere of race, religion, language, tradition, and interest were such as to create for the Vienna Government a seemingly impossible task.