Rome, when the French revolution of February 1848 sent him post-haste back into his own country. When he got to Vienna, he found there a delegation of the St. Václav committee of Prague, the first political organ of the Bohemian people in more than two centuries. They came to Vienna to negotiate with the new cabinet for the recognition of the historical rights of the Bohemian crown and the granting of constitutional government. Right here began the great task to which Rieger dedicated all the remaining years of his life, the task of obtaining such concessions from the emperor as would make of Bohemia a national state under the constitutional rule of the Hapsburgs. Rieger failed, but not because he was not a leader big enough; he failed, because the word of the Hapsburgs could not be trusted, and because the problem could be solved only by a general European reconstruction in which the Austrian empire would disappear.
Fr. Lad. Rieger.
In those great days of 1848, when all things seemed possible, and when the hitherto little-noticed literary revival of Bohemia burst out suddenly into a full national and political life, Rieger joined Palacký, the historian of Bohemia, in opposing the Frankfurt parliament. The German Bund, the loose federation of the princes, had gone to pieces, and a parliamentary government was to be created for all the German territories, including the possessions of Prussia and Austria. In the German lands of the Hapsburgs elections were actually carried out for representatives to the Frankfurt parliament, but when the emissaries from Frankfurt came to Bohemia, as one of the German lands, they received the answer that Bohemia would have nothing to do with the affairs of Germany. In the meantime great concessions were secured from Emperor Ferdinand. There was to be a separate Bohemian executive and a Bohemian parliament. But riots broke out in Prague, and Prince Windischgraetz, the military commander, took advantage of them to bombard the city and hold up the execution of the imperial concessions. The scene of the political fight moved from Prague to Vienna to the new Austrian parliament, and later to Kroměříž in Moravia, where the parliament had to flee before the violence of the Vienna mobs. Rieger was elected by seven districts to the imperial parliament. There his remarkable gift of oratory and debate made him at once a prominent figure. The most famous of his speeches was the one pronounced on January 8, 1849, in justification of Section One of the proposed fundamental laws: “All power proceeds from the people.” But while the deputies were debating, the armies of the new emperor Francis Joseph gained first a great victory in Italy, then with the help of Czar Nicholas I. crushed the Hungarian rebellion, and the first Austrian parliament was sent home. Again for more than ten years the old absolutist regime returned, and Rieger became a political suspect who was not allowed to lecture at the university or publish a newspaper.
During these days of political reaction Rieger married. His wife Marie was the daughter of that still greater figure in modern Bohemia, František Palacký, who had taught the people to love their history, and to be proud of the name Czech. Palacký is the only man to whom the Bohemians give the title of “father of his nation”, while his son-in-law Rieger bears the proud title, also alone of all the Czech statesmen, of “leader of his nation.” During the days of 1848 Rieger was only one of the leaders, Palacký and Havlíček taking precedence of him. But in the new constitutional era which opened with the defeat of Austria in 1859 he was for thirty years the one great leader of his people in their political fight for selfdetermination.
In October 1860 Francis Joseph published a so-called “diploma” by which he bound himself irrevocably to share the government with the representatives of the people. The principal legislative power was to be vested in the diets of the several kingdoms and lands subject to his sceptre, while certain specified affairs common to the empire were to be handled in an imperial council (Reichsrat) to which the diets sent their representatives. This was a constitutional program which coincided to a large extent with the desires of the Czech people. But one of the many somersaults for which the politics of Francis Joseph came to be famous, occurred only a few months afterward. In the following February the emperor issued a patent which was declared to be supplementary to the constitutional principles of the diploma, but which in reality changed the whole foundation of the Austrian constitutional structure. There was to be a twofold imperial parliament, wider and narrower, one to legislate in affairs common to all of the
