and the soldiers of the line were invited to join this, with the promise of higher pay; on the 1st of June the garrison of Pest took the oath to the Constitution. On the 10th Jellachich issued a proclamation to the Croatian regiments in Italy, bidding them remain and fight for the emperor and the common Fatherland. His loyalty to the tradition of the imperial army was thus announced, and the alliance was cemented between the army and the southern Slavs.
Jellachich, who had gone to Innsbruck to lay the Slav view before the emperor, was allowed to return to Agram, though not as yet formally reinstated. Here the diet passed a resolution denouncing the dual system and demanding the restoration of the union of the empire. Thus was proclaimed the identity of the Slav and the conservative points of view; the radical “Illyrian” assembly had done its work, and on the 9th of July Jellachich, while declaring it “permanent,” prorogued it indefinitely “with a paternal greeting,” on the ground that the safety of the Fatherland depended now “more upon physical than upon moral force.” The diet thus prorogued never met again. Absolute master of the forces of the banat, Jellachich now waited until the intractable politicians of Pest should give him the occasion and the excuse for setting the imperial army in motion against them.
The occasion was not to be long postponed. Every day the rift between the dominant radical element in the Hungarian parliament and imperial court was widened. Kossuth and his followers were evidently aiming at the complete separation of Hungary from Austria; they were in sympathy, Hungary.if not in alliance, with the German radicals in Vienna and Frankfort; they were less than half-hearted in their support of the imperial arms in Italy. The imperial government, pressed by the Magyar nationalists to renounce Jellachich and all his works, equivocated and procrastinated, while within its councils the idea of a centralized state, to replace the loose federalism of the old empire, slowly took shape under the pressure of the military party. It was encouraged by the news from Italy, where, on the 25th of July, Radetzky had won the battle of Custozza, and on the 6th of August the Austrian standard once more floated over the towers of Milan. At Custozza Magyar hussars, Croats from the Military Frontier, and Tirolese sharpshooters had fought side by side. The possibility was obvious of combating the radical and nationalist revolution by means of the army, with its spirit of comradeship in arms and its imperialist tradition.
So early as the beginning of July, Austrian officers, with the permission of the minister of war, had joined the Serb insurgents who, under Stratemirović, were defying the Magyar power in the banat. By the end of August the breach between the Austrian and Hungarian governments was open and complete; on the 4th of September Jellachich was reinstated in all his honours, and on the 11th he crossed the Drave to the invasion of Hungary. The die was thus cast; and, though efforts continued to be made to arrange matters, the time for moderate counsels was passed. The conservative leaders of the Hungarian nationalists, Eötvös and Deák, retired from public life; and, though Batthyáni consented to remain in office, the slender hope that this gave of peace was ruined by the flight of the palatine (September 24) and the murder of Count Lamberg, the newly appointed commissioner and commander-in-chief in Hungary, by the mob at Pest (September 27). The appeal was now to arms; and the fortunes of the Habsburg monarchy were bound up with the fate of the war in Hungary (see Hungary: History).
Meanwhile, renewed trouble had broken out in Vienna, where the radical populace was in conflict alike with the government and with the Slav majority of the Reichsrath. The German democrats appealed for aid to the Hungarian government; but the Magyar passion for constitutional legality led to delay, and before the Hungarian advance could be made effective, it was too late. On the 7th of October the emperor Ferdinand had fled from Schönbrunn to Olmütz, a Slav district, whence he issued a proclamation inviting whoever loved “Austria and freedom” to rally round the throne. On the 11th Windischgrätz proclaimed his intention of marching against rebellious Vienna, and on the 16th an imperial rescript appointed him a field-marshal and commander-in-chief of all the Austrian armies except that of Italy. Meanwhile, of the Reichsrath, the members of the Right and the Slav majority had left Vienna and announced a meeting of the diet at Brünn for the 20th of October; all that remained in the capital was a rump of German radicals, impotent in the hands of the proletariat and the students. The defence of the city was hastily organized under Bern, an ex-officer of Napoleon; but in the absence of help from Hungary it was futile. On the 28th of October Windischgrätz began his attack; on the 1st of November he was master of the city.
The fall of revolutionary Vienna practically involved that of the revolution in Frankfort and in Pest. From Italy the congratulations of Radetzky’s victorious army came to Windischgrätz, from Russia the even more significant commendations of the emperor Nicholas. The moral of the victory was painted for all the world by the military execution of Robert Blum, whose person, as a deputy of the German parliament, should have been sacrosanct. The time had, indeed, not yet come to attempt any conspicuous breach with the constitutional principle; but the new ministry was such as the imperial sentiment would approve, inimical to the German ideals of Frankfort, devoted to the traditions of the Habsburg monarchy. At its head was Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (q.v.), the “army-diplomat,” a statesman at once strong and unscrupulous. On the 27th of November a proclamation announced that the continuation of Austria as a united state was necessary both for Germany and for Europe. Accession of Francis Joseph, 1848. On the 2nd of December the emperor Ferdinand, bound by too many personal obligations to the revolutionary parties to serve as a useful instrument for the new policy, abdicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph ascended the throne. The proclamation of the new emperor was a gage of defiance thrown down to Magyars and German unionists alike: “Firmly determined to preserve undimmed the lustre of our crown,” it ran, “but prepared to share our rights with the representatives of our peoples, we trust that with God’s aid and in common with our peoples we shall succeed in uniting all the countries and races of the monarchy in one great body politic.”
While the Reichsrath, transferred to Kremsier, was discussing “fundamental rights” and the difficult question of how to reconcile the theoretical unity with the actual dualism of the empire, the knot was being cut by the sword on the plains of Hungary. The Hungarian retreat after the bloody battle of Kapolna (February 26–27, 1849) was followed by the dissolution of the Kremsier assembly, and a proclamation in which the emperor announced his intention of granting a constitution to the whole monarchy “one and indivisible.” On the 4th of March the constitution was published; but it proved all but as distasteful to Czechs and Croats as to the Magyars, and the speedy successes of the Hungarian arms made it, for the while, a dead letter. It needed the intervention of the emperor Nicholas, in the loftiest spirit of the Holy Alliance, before even an experimental unity of the Habsburg dominions could be established (see Hungary: History).
The capitulation of Világos, which ended the Hungarian insurrection, gave Schwarzenberg a free hand for completing the work of restoring the status quo ante and the influence of Austria in Germany. The account of the process by which this was accomplished belongs to the history of Germany (q.v.). Here it will suffice to say that the terms of the Convention of Olmütz (November 29, 1850) seemed at the time a complete triumph for Austria over Prussia. As a matter of fact, however, the convention was, in the words of Count Beust, “not a Prussian humiliation, but an Austrian weakness.” It was in the power of Austria to crush Prussia and to put an end to the dual influence in the Confederation which experience had proved to be unworkable; she preferred to re-establish a discredited system, and to leave to Prussia time and opportunity to gather strength for the inevitable conflict.
In 1851 Austria had apparently triumphed over all its
