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 AUSTRIA 149 of lords, and a house of deputies numbering 343 members. Affairs common to the non- Hungarian provinces were to be acted upon by the non-Hungarian members as "limited Reichsrath " (Engerer ReichraiK). The first session of the new Reichsrath (May, 1861) was attended by deputies from all the Qerman and most of the Slavic provinces ; but Hungary, Croatia, Transylvania, and Venetia were not represented. All the efforts of the government to induce these crown lands to send deputies proved fruitless. In Hungary, in particular, all parties united for a "passive resistance." The Saxons and Roumans of Transylvania were prevailed upon in 1863 to take part in the Reichsrath ; but soon the Czechs of Bohe- mia and Moravia refused a further attendance. The proceedings of the Reichsrath did not make a favorable impression upon the public mind, and the annual deficits continued to swell the public debt to a fearful amount. Schmer- ling finally saw the impossibility of carrying through his plans, and resigned in June, 1865. The prominent feature of the foreign pol- icy of Austria during the administration of Scbmerling was the struggle for her contin- ued ascendancy in the German confederation, which appeared to be threatened by the growing power of Prussia. Schmerling en- deavored to secure the admission of all the dominions of Austria into the German confed- eration and the German Zollverein, but in vain. In order to gain the sympathy of the liberals throughout Germany, who it was thought had been alienated from Prussia by the policy of Bismarck, the Austrian government proposed a liberal reformation of the federal diet. An invitation from the emperor Francis Joseph to the German princes and the burgomasters of the free cities to assemble in Frankfort on Aug. 17, 1863, for the discussion of this question, was accepted by all those invited except the king of Prussia, whose opposition proved suffi- cient to foil the plan. Notwithstanding these repeated humiliations by Prussian diplomacy, the Austrian minister of foreign affairs, Count Rechberg, soon after accepted a proposition from Prussia that the Schleswig-Holstein diffi- culty be regulated by the two great German powers, and not, as the national party in Ger- many desired, by the federal diet. Austria ac- cordingly took part in the Schleswig-Holstein war, finally terminated on Oct. 30, 1864, by the peace of Vienna, in which Christian IX. of Denmark ceded the duchies of Schleswig, Hoi- stein, and Lauenburg to the emperor of Aus- tria and the king of Prussia. Soon, however, the Austrian court became suspicious of the Prussian alliance, which not only alienated the middle states from Austria, but threatened her with new diplomatic humiliations. A falling out of the two powers, and even the outbreak of hostilities, was seriously feared ; but it was for a time averted by the Gastein convention of Aug. 14, 1865, according to which Lauenburg was incorporated with Prussia, Holstein occu- pied by Austrian and Schleswig by Prussian troops. Meanwhile the liberal Schmerling cabinet had been succeeded by one consist- ing of a combination of feudal federalists and old conservative Hungarians, with Count Belcredi, a Czech, as president. One of the first acts of the new ministry was the sus- pension of the constitution of February, 1861, under the pretext that a new attempt was to be made to come to a full understanding with Hungary. When the diets of the German and Slavic provinces were convoked in November, those of Galicia and Bukowina, as well as the Czech majority of the Bohemian diet, voted addresses of thanks to the emperor ; while all the German diets, with the single exception of that of Tyrol, which was under the control of the "Catholic" party, demanded the recogni- tion of the continued legal existence of the constitution of February. The Slavs gener- ally rallied for the support of the new ministry, and the conflict between the Slavic and Ger- man nationalities assumed dimensions previous- ly unknown. The negotiations with Hungary did not have the desired effect. Although the emperor on Dec. 14, 1865, opened himself the Hungarian diet, and although the Hungarians received him and the empress, who soon came likewise to Pesth, with unbounded enthusiasm, the majority of the diet insisted on greater de- mands than the emperor thought it compatible with the interests of the dynasty to concede. Before an understanding had been arrived at, the complications with Prussia reached a crisis. The governments of both Austria and Prussia were fully aware of the grave dangers connect- ed with the solution of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Prussia meant to take the duchies herself; Austria supported the duke of Au- gustenburg. Early in 1866 both began to arm and to prepare for war. Austria endeavored to recover the sympathy of the middle states of Germany ; Prussia, on April 8, concluded a defensive and offensive alliance with Italy. A motion of Austria in the federal diet of Ger- many (June 1, 1866) to have the claim of the prince of Augustenburg to Schleswig-Holstein decided by the federal diet, was declared by Prussia to be a violation of the Gastein con- vention. Prussian troops were immediately marched into the duchy of Holstein, which the Austrian commander, Gen. von Gablenz, yield- ing to superior numbers, hastened to evacuate. The majority of the federal diet, regarding these steps as disloyal demonstrations against the authority of the confederation, ordered (June 14), on motion of Austria, the mobiliza- tion of the entire army of the confederation with the exception of the Prussian corps. Prussia declared that this decree was a radical subversion of the fundamental principle of the confederation, and that she now considered the original pact as broken. Regarding the resolu- tion as a declaration of war on the part of all the states which had voted for it, Prussia at once began its military operations. Feldzeugmeister