Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/32

 the most sweeping changes come easier to Austria than to other countries, because they are only “new names”, which leave the substance of things untouched. The reforms of Maria Theresa and her radical son, Joseph II, were, indeed, serious changes; but they had this much in common with almost all the internal changes made in Austria—they were wrought with the object of strengthening the hands of the dynasty. Two principles may be distinguished as guiding the Hapsburgs up to and including the year 1870; first, that their “home lands” were always regarded and treated by them as a military and economic base for their operations abroad; and second, that the changes and reforms introduced in their home lands were never made or sanctioned with a single eye to the welfare of the people, but almost always under the influence of disaster and with an eye to the interests of the dynasty. When I say “dynasty”, I mean not only the Emperor, but the Hapsburg family. It consists of some scores of archdukes and archduchesses, governed by the special laws of the Hapsburg House, and possessing, apart from their private fortunes, which may be large or small, a joint family fortune or family fund, of which the reigning Emperor is the warden. Its members enjoy many special privileges and exemptions, but are kept in order by a discipline of the most rigid, patriarchal type that entitles the reigning Emperor to banish, arrest, imprison, or even to inflict corporal punishment upon them.

This Hapsburg family, therefore, constitutes a close corporation that strives to “run” the State in the family interest. Around the Imperial family are grouped what are known as “the families”—two or three hundred families of courtiers, bureaucrats or adventurers, drawn from every race and nation, who have, within the last 300 yeas, been the agents and satellites of the reigning house. To quote one of the shrewdest contemporary Austrian writers:

With a State thus organized it is easy to understand that apparently drastic changes may be in reality little more than changes of political fashion. After Maria Theresa, in the middle of the 18th century, had curbed the feudal rights of the nobles and had begun to centralize dynastic control over the church, the police, the administration of justice, taxation, and military service; after Joseph II. had continued the work of centralization, not, indeed, in a “liberal” spirit, but in a spirit of Germanizing unification based on “enlightened despotism”; after the reaction that set in against the excesses of the French Revolutoin under his successors, Leopold I., Francis II., and the half-witted Ferdinand; and after the temporary interruption caused by the Revolution of 1848 in Austria and in Hungary, the youthful Francis Joseph, who came to the throne at the age of 18 on December 2, 1848, found the same materials and methods of government lying ready to his hand as those of which his predecessors had disposed. The oppressive “System” of Metternich—who had been Francis Joseph’s chief tutor—was revived and perfected by an ex-revolutionary plebeian, Alexander Bach, who brought the science of compressing the people with the help of the police, the church, the army, and the bureaucracy to a greater pitch of perfection than had ever before been attained, until the war of 1859 against France and Sardinia, and the defeats of Magenta and Solferino, reminded Francis Joseph, for a moment, that gallows and bayonets, crucifixes, and red tape, are poor materials with which to build a solid throne.

His education was long and painful, and was never really complete. Though not illiberally inclined when he came to the throne, the influence of the revolts in Vienna and Prague, and of the revolution in Hungary, rendered him more accessible to reactionary counsels than he might otherwise have been, and committed him to courses and to acts that weighed as a  upon the rest of his life. Let us take the struggle with Hungary. His predecessor, Ferdinand, had conceded to the Hungarians practical independence, and had sanctioned laws to that effect voted by the Hungarian Diet. These concession were then withdrawn, and the Hungarian leaders felt that the dynasty had broken faith with them. They rose in revolt, and war ensued—a bitter, pitiless war, in which little quarter was given on either side. Against the Hungarians, that is to say, the Magyars, were ranged, not only the Austrian army, but most of the non-Magyar peoples whom the Magyars had long oppressed. Kossuth and his associates dealt with these non-Magyar peoples as cruelly as the Austrians dealt with the Magyars themselves. The struggle lasted well in 1849, and was ended by the action of the Tsar of Russia, who sent an army into Hungary to succour the Emperor of Austria. The action of Russia was taken in a chivalrous spirit, but in homage to the idea of the solidarity between dynasties against revolutions. It was the last flicker