1848 (46 page)

One of the central issues exercising the deputies was the question of whether German-speaking Austria should be included in the united German Reich. As the moderate Friedrich Dahlmann put it succinctly, there were two choices: dissolving the Habsburg Empire and binding its German parts to the united German state; and keeping the empire intact, which meant excluding Austria from Germany. The parliament debated this issue in October, as news was filtering through of the fighting in Vienna. The deputies were split between two different German visions, which cut across the political divisions of left and right. In the early, heady days of the revolution those who supported the inclusion of Austria (the ‘Greater German' or
Grossdeutsch
) solution were in the majority. They included Catholics who feared that, without Austria, the northern German Protestants would predominate, since they would make up two-thirds of the population. Democrats, who saw no sense in a German nation-state without the German-speaking Austrians, wanted a unitary, centralised and democratic Germany: to leave the Austrians out of it would mean that a substantial proportion of the German people would be left vulnerable to the other non-German peoples of the Habsburg Empire. As Tübingen radical Ludwig Uhland put it, the Austrian parliament already showed that the Slavs, with their mass of population, would dominate politically, so where would that leave the Austro-German minority? Austria's mission was to be ‘a beating artery in the heart of Germany'.
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The
Kleindeutsch
(or ‘Smaller German') solution opposed the inclusion of Austria. Its proponents included moderate liberals like Heinrich von Gagern, who could see no other practical way of creating a united German state. Alongside the parliament's mandate to give the ‘whole German nation' a constitution, Gagern argued, the deputies had to ‘take account of the circumstances, the facts . . . if we intend to create a viable constitution'. The
Grossdeutsch
idea would effectively dismember the Austrian Empire, which for Gagern was neither morally right (‘we have an obligation . . . when civil war has broken out in a federal state, when the fire is blazing, not to add more fuel to the conflagration') nor in the interests of the new Germany, as it would leave the future stability and security of all Central Europe in doubt.
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Since they had no desire to assail the dynastic rights of the Habsburgs, such moderates believed that the simplest solution was to forge a smaller German state in the north, but loosely tied in a confederation with Austria and its non-German nationalities. As the
Kleindeutsch
solution excluded conservative, Catholic and protectionist Austria, its supporters tended to be northern, Protestant liberals who admired constitutional and free-trading Prussia. Wilhelm Wichmann spoke for many when he blasted:

 

By excluding Austria, the
Kleindeutsch
solution would also have preempted the problem over how far the non-German nationalities in the Habsburg Empire were to be included. For Wichmann, to include those peoples would be downright dangerous: Germany could stand as the equal of others ‘only if we keep our nationality as pure as possible, if we emerge from the great crystallization of nations about to take place in Europe as an unblemished crystal excluding as many foreign elements as at all possible'.
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By contrast, at its extremes, the
Grossdeutsch
solution envisaged an enormous state that included all of Germany and the entire Habsburg Empire. This was a view proposed strongly by those deputies who represented the more beleaguered German populations in non-German Habsburg territories. ‘Our aim', declared Count Friedrich von Deym from Bohemia, ‘is to establish a giant state of 70, or even if possible of 80 or 100 millions.' This idea, which would become known as the
Mitteleuropäisch
(Middle European) solution, would ensure that German influence would reach all the way into south-eastern Europe, while acting as a massive bulwark against other empires, particularly the Russian. This huge state would ‘stand in arms against east and west, against the Slav and Latin peoples, to wrest control of the sea from the English, to become the greatest most powerful nation on the globe - that is Germany's future!'
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This vision of
Mitteleuropa
would lead - though by no means intentionally in 1848 - to Europe's darkest years in the twentieth century. It should be said that the
Kleindeutsch
proponents were no shrinking violets when it came to the idea of ‘colonising' south-eastern Europe, either. Together, according to Gagern, Germany and Austria had a mission to spread ‘German culture, language, and way of life along the Danube to the Black Sea'.
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The parliament was still debating this thorny issue and all its prickly ramifications when the counter-revolution struck in Austria. Days before Windischgrätz's troops battered their way into Vienna, the parliament agreed on the first three articles of the German constitution, which declared that the German Empire would consist of the entire territory of the old confederation (though leaving the problems of Poznan and Schleswig-Holstein to future debate); that no part of the empire may form a state with non-German lands; and that any German country that shares a head of state with a non-German one should have a purely personal, dynastic union with the latter.
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In other words the Constitution proclaimed the
Grossdeutsch
solution just as it was becoming practically impossible. The Habsburg court and the imperial government had never been enthusiastic about German unification, since it would reduce Austria to being a mere ‘province' in the Greater Germany. Symbolic of this reluctance was the fact that the ill-fated Latour had permitted the Austrian armed forces to fly the black-red-gold colours for only a single day, before ordering a return to the imperial black-yellow. While Vienna was still being hammered into submission, Baron Wessenberg, the Austrian minister-president, wrote to all Austrian diplomats in Germany that ‘the revolution has covered itself with a German mantle; the German colours have become the ensign of the party of overthrow'.
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When Robert Blum and Julius Fröbel were sentenced to death, some conservatives worried that, since they were members of the Frankfurt parliament, there would be repercussions in Germany. Schwarzenberg was unimpressed, bluntly telling Windischgrätz that their parliamentary privileges ‘have no legal force in Austria. The only privilege they can claim is that of martial law.'
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There cannot have been many more decisive ways of expressing the Austrian rejection of German unification than by shooting two of its representatives. On 27 November, Schwarzenberg declared that the Habsburg monarchy was a unitary state, a statement that was reinforced by the imperial constitution imposed by the Emperor in March 1849. The Greater German solution was therefore an impossibility, as it would mean tearing the German organs out of the body of the Habsburg monarchy. On 9 March, Schwarzenberg facetiously made a counter-proposal: a ‘Greater Austrian' solution in which the entire Habsburg Empire would join Germany in a huge Central European confederation. As this would include a vast array of non-German peoples, it was clearly unacceptable to the majority in the Frankfurt parliament. Still, the advocates of neither the
Kleindeutsch
nor the
Grossdeutsch
solution had a majority in Frankfurt. Even with the unequivocal Austrian rejection of German unification, the
Kleindeutsch
idea would win the final vote only after some parliamentary horse-trading. The Austrian government's uncompromising position was a statement of its new-found strength, now that it had destroyed the revolution in Prague in June 1848, crushed the Italians at Custozza in July and defeated the Viennese radicals in October. Yet, even in the spring of 1849, the empire still faced two major challenges: the first was finding a way to defeat the Hungarians; the second was to bring Italy well and truly to heel.

Prodded by some of the Habsburg court, Jelačić had crossed the Drava with his forces and invaded Hungary on 11 September 1848: his declaration promised to deliver Hungary ‘from the yoke of an incapable, odious, and rebel Government'.
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Against his enormous army of some fifty thousand men, the Hungarians had a skeletal force of five thousand, mostly raw recruits and National Guards commanded by Count Ádám Teleki, an aristocratic career soldier who was squeamish about fighting a fellow commander who had sworn an oath to the Emperor. He pulled his forces back towards Budapest, declaring on 15 September that he felt morally bound not to fight the Croats. In response the Hungarian government (still clinging to its desire for legality) asked - more in hope than expectation - the palatine, Archduke Stephen, to command Hungary's forces, but he refused, since Emperor Ferdinand had ordered him not to resist Jelačić. So the Croats advanced on to Budapest virtually unopposed, visiting the horrors of war on the countryside. One of Jelačić's officers wrote:

 

The invasion provoked a political crisis in Budapest, but its outcome was quite remarkable. Radical unease with Batthyány's government and the ‘treachery' of Palatine Stephen had been rumbling since the summer. By early September, the newspaper
March Fifteenth
and the Society for Equality were talking openly about a second revolution. Following the French example, the club organised a massive banquet, scheduled for 8 September, to put pressure on the government and force the resignation of the ministers, excluding Kossuth and Minister of the Interior Szemere. Yet Kossuth himself rose in parliament on 2 September and persuaded the radicals to postpone the gathering. The great and popular orator explained that the government was currently engaged in delicate negotiations in Vienna, trying hard to avert open war. There was also the fear that a second revolution in Budapest would provide the pretext for Palatine Stephen to bring in imperial forces and crush the entire liberal order. This, as it turned out, was not idle speculation, for on 29 August Stephen had written to the Austrian garrison commander in the fortress of Komárom upstream from Budapest and told him to be ready to move on the capital against ‘the planned machinations of the unruly party'. Yet such troops could also have been used in a counter-revolutionary coup against the government itself.
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Fortunately, the radicals - albeit after some heated debate - agreed to Kossuth's request. Their press even accepted that the last-ditch negotiations with the Emperor were a valid attempt at ‘saving our country'. The government itself, explained the
Radical Democrat
, was raising ‘the holy standard of the principles of the revolution', so it called on everyone to support its efforts to ward off the crisis.
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The Society of Equality had also organised a thousand-strong ‘national defence' force, aimed ostensibly at defending the country when diplomacy failed, but in reality forming a revolutionary militia that could seize power should Batthyány's government fall on the outbreak of war. But even this paramilitary organisation voluntarily disbanded on 12 September.

By then, the Croats had invaded and, as expected, the Hungarian government - its efforts at diplomacy in ruins - stood down. So, for two crucial weeks, Hungary had no central government. Although Palatine Stephen asked Batthyány to form a new cabinet, the dogged prime minister's nominations were repeatedly knocked back by the imperial court, even though the candidates were men with impeccably moderate credentials. In these days it was parliament that effectively governed Hungary, and there Kossuth pushed through a bill that urgently organised the new army decreed in August. The volunteers were mustered into Honvéd battalions and all soldiers in the regular units of the imperial army were urged to join these new units. Those who obeyed tore off their black-yellow flashes and assumed the Hungarian tricolour instead; some went so far as to trim their long coats in order to differentiate themselves from the Austrians, who were known as ‘swallow-tails' for the shape of their long, white coats. Siding with the radicals, who were now calling for him to be appointed prime minister or even dictator for the duration of the crisis, Kossuth began to show his revolutionary colours, having adhered for so long to the constitution. What was the point, he asked, of following legality if Ferdinand did not feel bound by it himself? There was no greater form of tyranny, he declared, than that which used the very principle of legality to destroy the constitution.
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Kossuth's lifelong opponent Count István Széchenyi disagreed, but it was also clear that the imperial court regarded
everything
achieved in Hungary since the March revolution as null and void. The moderate (and hypersensitive) count was therefore confronted with the theoretical possibility that all his work in 1848 had been ‘illegal' and that, in the process, he had brought his beloved country to the brink of disaster. Emotionally drained, Széchenyi slid towards psychological collapse. Until now, he had blamed Kossuth's intransigence for provoking the crisis with Austria; now it seemed that even his own, most conservative style of reformism had also angered the imperial court. He passed sleepless night after sleepless night, attending cabinet meetings during the day in a silence of despair. After one such session on 3 September, he burst into a friend's home and released his torment in a flood: ‘Blood and blood everywhere! Brother will slay brother and nation nation, in a frenzy. Houses will be marked with crosses of blood for burning. Pest is lost.' He heaped most of the blame on his own tired shoulders, scratching his pen deeply into the pages of his diary: ‘I am to be blamed for it all!'
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The final personal crisis came the following day, when Széchenyi's doctor urged him to retire to his country estate to recuperate. After saying a tearful farewell to his chain bridge, he set out for his home in Cenk. Two suicide attempts were foiled and he voluntarily committed himself to the asylum in Döbling, where he closed himself off from the world behind its great gates, living the life of a penitent.
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