Page:Bohemia An Historical Sketch.djvu/351

 of the frontiers of Bohemia. The country which gave to the empire its best and most numerous soldiers none the less suffered grievously, and the hopeless state of the Austrian finances caused the complete ruin of a considerable part of the population of Bohemia.

During the whole revolutionary period absolute internal tranquillity prevailed in Bohemia, as in other parts of the Habsburg empire. The reactionary ministers of other countries regarded with envy the conditions of these countries where all expressions of liberal opinion could be entirely and successfully suppressed. Austrian ministers also, as Baron Helfert has well said, never even appear to have taken into consideration the possibility that the desire for liberal laws and institutions which showed itself so strongly in neighbouring countries might finally manifest itself in a very vehement manner in the Habsburg dominions also. Two important constitutional changes in Bohemia belong to this period. In 1804 Francis I assumed the hereditary title of Emperor of Austria. It was however declared that he would continue to bear the titles of King of Bohemia and Hungary, and that his successors would as heretofore continue to be crowned as kings of those countries. In 1815 the Germanic confederacy began its inglorious career which ended only in 1866. Not only the German hereditary lands of the house of Habsburg, but also Bohemia with Moravia and (Austrian) Silesia were included in this confederacy. It was not considered necessary to submit this important constitutional innovation to the Diet or meeting of the Estates of Bohemia. There was indeed no danger that that body, then entirely lacking independence and initiative, would venture to criticize, far less reject, any measure brought before it by the government, but it was in accordance with the policy then pursued at Vienna to suppress all semblance of representative government.

The administration of the Habsburg dominions—with the exception of Hungary—was founded on a system of severest absolutism during the years that followed the general pacification of 1815. The liberty of the subject became entirely dependent on the arbitrariness of an omnipotent police. Countless government spies watched over even the most