Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/31

 murderer” it has been called by the greatest German poet of Austria.

The Emperor Francis, absolutist and legitimist to the core, was convinced that the time was ripe for transforming Austria, Bohemia and Hungary into a united and centralised State. In 1804 the Austrian Empire was proclaimed; in 1806 the new Austrian Emperor resigned the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. Yet this resignation was only formal, and when, at the Vienna Congress the German Confederation was created, the Emperor of Austria was proclaimed its head. Indeed, the Pope and England urged him to resume the abandoned dignity.

5. The Metternich regime was not able to supress that literary revival of the Bohemian nation which was the forerunner of the political revival of 1848. Dobrovsky, the founder of Slavistic studies—the science and philosophy of the Slavs—threw a bridge from the Golden Age of the Reformation across the dark epoch of the Habsburg Counter-Reformation to the Age of Reason and Humanity; he was the first among the Czech “awakeners” who guided his nation towards Russia, and rekindled those Slav sentiments which have characterised Bohemia ever since. Patriot and Slav—that was the general national programme.

After Dobrovsky, Kollar, the true disciple of Herder, conceived a fascinating philosophy of history; the Teutonic and Latin nations, he argued, having accomplished their historical task, will be followed by the Slavs. To strengthen the Slavs not only geographically but culturally, he demanded that every Slav, in the cause of “reciprocity”, should learn at least one Slav language besides his own. Meanwhile Safarik, the well-known archaeologist, revived Slav antiquity and history, Palacky wrote the first scientific universal meaning of the Bohemian Reformation.

The remarkable character of the Czech national revival is shown by the philosophic and religious attitude of its leaders. Dobrovsky, the follower of Josephinism, though a Catholic priest and even a Jesuit, became a freethinker; Kollar and Palacky were both Protestants—the first a follower of Herder, the latter of Kant; Jungmann, the great philologist, was a Voltairian. Kollar and Safarik were Slovaks; Slovakia, having received the Hussite emigrants and adopted the Hussite Reformation, became the natural supporter of the Bohemian revival.

In sympathy with the general European movement the Bohemian nation passed in 1848 from national literature to national politics. The revolution of Paris broke out on 21 February. On the 29th the news reached Prague; and on 11 March the first popular meeting was held, after two centuries of political extinction, and formulated the national demands.

As early as 1812 the Bohemian Diet, then a close aristocratic body, demanded the restitution of the rights of the kingdom of Bohemia, though of course in vain. But the rising in 1848 had the desired effect. On 8 April the Emperor, as King of Bohemia, issued the “Bohemian Charter,” according national rights and promising future political independence. But the constitutional innovations of 1848 proved but a very brief interlude; the revolution was suppressed alike in Vienna, Prague and Budapest. Absolutism, Centralism and Germanisation resumed their sway. Meanwhile Ferdinand was superseded by Francis Joseph, whose long and sinister regime has already been outlined in (No. 7). The only lasting result of the revolution was the liberation of the peasants; otherwise Francis Joseph returned to the old system. Only the name of Bach replaced the name of Metternich. The true spirit of this reaction was revealed in the Concordat with Rome. Austria was and is the land of the Counter-Reformation.

But defeat on the battlefields of Italy in 1859 taught Francis Joseph at last that absolutism, even on a military basis, was impotent and dangerous. The following year (1860) an advisory state council was summoned, and on 20 October the new constitution—the so-called “October Diploma”—was proclaimed as the “permanent and irrevocable constitutional fundamental law of the Empire.” But already, in February 1861, this “permanent and irrevocable” law was superseded by a new centralist constitution and as this was firmly opposed by the Czechs and all the non-German nations of Austria, absolutism was restored in 1865, this time in a slightly veiled form. At last, in 1867, yet another constitution was established in Austria, but both it and Parliament have, by their inherent conditions, proved to be far rather the helpmate of absolutism than a democratic check upon it. Austria up to the present day has really been ruled