to keep every one of the different nations subjected to the Austrian
rule, in check, by all other nations similarly conditioned; secondly,
and this always has been the fundamental principle of absolute
monarchies, to rely for support upon two classes, the feudal landlords
and the large stock-jobbing capitalists; and to balance, at the same
time, the influence and power of either of these classes by that of
the other, so as to leave full independence of action to the
Government. The landed nobility, whose entire income consisted in
feudal revenues of all sorts, could not but support a Government which
proved their only protection against that down-trodden class of serfs
upon whose spoils they lived; and whenever the less wealthy portion of
them, as in Galicia, in 1846, rose in opposition against the
Government, Metternich in an instant let loose upon them these very
serfs, who at any rate profited by the occasion to wreak a terrible
vengeance upon their more immediate oppressors. On the other hand, the
large capitalists of the Exchange were chained to Metternich's
Government by the vast share they had in the public funds of the
country. Austria, restored to her full power in 1815 restoring and
maintaining in Italy Absolute Monarchy ever since 1820, freed from
part of her liabilities by the bankruptcy of 1810, had, after the
peace, very soon re-established her credit in the great European money
markets; and in proportion as her credit grew, she had drawn against
it. Thus all the large European money-dealers had engaged considerable
portions of their capital in the Austrian funds; they all of them were
interested in upholding the credit of that country, and as Austrian
public credit, in order to be upheld, ever required new loans, they
were obliged from time to time to advance new capital in order to keep
up the credit of the securities for that which they already had
advanced. The long peace after 1815, and the apparent impossibility of
a thousand years old empire, like Austria, being upset, increased the
credit of Metternich's Government in a wonderful ratio, and made it
even independent of the good will of the Vienna bankers and
stock-jobbers; for as long as Metternich could obtain plenty of money
at Frankfort and Amsterdam, he had, of course, the satisfaction of
seeing the Austrian capitalists at his feet. They were, besides, in
every other respect at his mercy; the large profits which bankers,
stock-jobbers, and Government contractors always contrive to draw out
of an absolute monarchy, were compensated for by the almost unlimited
power which the Government possessed over their persons and fortunes;
and not the smallest shadow of an opposition was, therefore, to be
expected from this quarter. Thus Metternich was sure of the support of
the two most powerful and influential classes of the empire, and he
possessed besides an army and a bureaucracy, which for all purposes of
absolutism could not be better constituted. The civil and military
officers in the Austrian service form a race of their own; their
fathers have been in the service of the Kaiser, and so will their sons
be; they belong to none of the multifarious nationalities congregated
under the wing of the double-headed eagle; they are, and ever have
been, removed from one end of the empire to the other, from Poland to
Italy, from Germany to Transylvania; Hungarian, Pole, German,
Roumanian, Italian, Croat, every individual not stamped with "imperial
and royal authority," etc., bearing a separate national character, is
equally despised by them; they have no nationality, or rather, they
alone make up the really Austrian nation. It is evident what a
pliable, and at the same time powerful instrument, in the hands of an
intelligent and energetic chief, such a civil and military hierarchy
must be.
As to the other classes of the population, Metternich, in the true
spirit of a statesman of the _ancien regime_, cared little for their
support. He had, with regard to them, but one policy: to draw as much
as possible out of them in the shape of taxation, and at the same
time, to keep them quiet. The trading and manufacturing middle class
was but of slow growth in Austria. The trade of the Danube was
comparatively unimportant; the country possessed but one port,
Trieste, and the trade of the port was very limited. As to the
manufacturers, they enjoyed considerable protection, amounting even in
most cases to the complete exclusion of all foreign competition; but
this advantage had been granted to them principally with a view to
increase their tax-paying capabilities, and was in a high degree
counterpoised by internal restrictions on manufactures, privileges on
guilds, and other feudal corporations, which were scrupulously upheld
as long as they did not impede the purposes and views of the
Government. The petty tradesmen were encased in the narrow bounds of
these Mediaeval guilds, which kept the different trades in a perpetual
war of privilege against each other, and at the same time, by all but
excluding individuals of the working class from the possibility of
raising themselves in the social scale, gave a sort of hereditary
stability to the members of those involuntary associations. Lastly,
the peasant and the working man were treated as mere taxable matter,
and the only care that was taken of them was to keep them as much as
possible in the same conditions of life in which they then existed,
and in which their fathers had existed before them. For this purpose
every old, established, hereditary authority was upheld in the same
manner as that of the State; the authority of the landlord over the
petty tenant farmer, that of the manufacturer over the operative, of
the small master over the journeyman and apprentice, of the father
over the son, was everywhere rigidly maintained by the Government, and
every branch of disobedience punished the same as a transgression of
the law, by that universal instrument of Austrian justice--the stick.
Finally, to wind up into one comprehensive system all these attempts
at creating an artificial stability, the intellectual food allowed to
the nation was selected with the minutest caution, and dealt out as
sparingly as possible. Education was everywhere in the hands of the
Catholic priesthood, whose chiefs, in the same manner as the large
feudal landowners, were deeply interested in the conservation of the
existing system. The universities were organized in a manner which
allowed them to produce nothing but special men, that might or might
not obtain great proficiency in sundry particular branches of
knowledge, but which, at all events, excluded that universal liberal
education which other universities are expected to impart. There was
absolutely no newspaper press, except in Hungary, and the Hungarian
papers were prohibited in all other parts of the monarchy. As to
general literature, its range had not widened for a century; it had
narrowed again after the death of Joseph II. And all around the
frontier, wherever the Austrian States touched upon a civilized
country, a cordon of literary censors was established in connection
with the cordon of customhouse officials, preventing any foreign book
or newspaper from passing into Austria before its contents had been
twice or three times thoroughly sifted, and found pure of even the
slightest contamination of the malignant spirit of the age.
For about thirty years after 1815 this system worked with wonderful
success. Austria remained almost unknown to Europe, and Europe was
quite as little known in Austria. The social state of every class of
the population, and of the population as a whole, appeared not to have
undergone the slightest change. Whatever rancour there might exist
from class to class--and the existence of this rancour was for
Metternich a principal condition of government, which he even fostered
by making the higher classes the instruments of all Government
exactions, and thus throwing the odium upon them--whatever hatred the
people might bear to the inferior officials of the State, there
existed, upon the whole, little or no dissatisfaction with the Central
Government. The Emperor was adored, and old Francis I. seemed to be
borne out by facts when, doubting of the durability of this system, he
complacently added: "And yet it will hold while I live, and
Metternich."
But there was a slow underground movement going on which baffled all
Metternich's efforts. The wealth and influence of the manufacturing
and trading middle class increased. The introduction of machinery
and steam-power in manufactures upset in Austria, as it had done
everywhere else, the old relations and vital conditions of whole
classes of society; it changed serfs into free men, small farmers
into manufacturing operatives; it undermined the old feudal
trades-corporations, and destroyed the means of existence of many of
them. The new commercial and manufacturing population came everywhere
into collision with the old feudal institutions. The middle classes,
more and more induced by their business to travel abroad, introduced
some mythical knowledge of the civilized countries situated beyond the
Imperial line of customs; the introduction of railways finally
accelerated both the industrial and intellectual movement. There was,
too, a dangerous part in the Austrian State establishment, _viz._, the
Hungarian feudal Constitution, with its parliamentary proceedings, and
its struggles of the impoverished and oppositional mass of the
nobility against the Government and its allies, the magnates.
Presburg, the seat of the Diet, was at the very gates of Vienna. All
the elements contributed to create among the middle classes of the
towns a spirit, not exactly of opposition, for opposition was as yet
impossible, but of discontent; a general wish for reforms, more of an
administrative than of a constitutional nature. And in the same manner
as in Prussia, a portion of the bureaucracy joined the bourgeoisie.
Among this hereditary caste of officials the traditions of Joseph II.
were not forgotten; the more educated functionaries of the Government,
who themselves sometimes meddled with imaginary possible reforms, by
far preferred the progressive and intellectual despotism of that
Emperor to the "paternal" despotism of Metternich. A portion of the
poorer nobility equally sided with the middle class, and as to the
lower classes of the population, who always had found plenty of
grounds to complain of their superiors, if not of the Government, they
in most cases could not but adhere to the reformatory wishes of the
bourgeoisie.
It was about this time, say 1843 or 1844, that a particular branch of
literature, agreeable to this change, was established in Germany. A
few Austrian writers, novelists, literary critics, bad poets, the
whole of them of very indifferent ability, but gifted with that
peculiar industrialism proper to the Jewish race, established
themselves in Leipsic and other German towns out of Austria, and
there, out of the reach of Metternich, published a number of books and
pamphlets on Austrian affairs. They and their publishers made "a
roaring trade" of it. All Germany was eager to become initiated into
the secrets of the policy of European China; and the Austrians
themselves, who obtained these publications by the wholesale
smuggling carried on upon the Bohemian frontier, were still more
curious. Of course, the secrets let out in these publications were of
no great importance, and the reform plans schemed out by their
well-wishing authors bore the stamp of an innocuousness almost
amounting to political virginity. A Constitution and a free press for
Austria were things considered unattainable; administrative reforms,
extension of the rights of the Provincial Diets, admission of foreign
books and newspapers, and a less severe censorship--the loyal and
humble desires of these good Austrians did hardly go any farther.
At all events the growing impossibility of preventing the literary
intercourse of Austria with the rest of Germany, and through Germany
with the rest of the world, contributed much toward the formation of
an anti-Governmental public opinion, and brought at least some little
political information within the reach of part of the Austrian
population. Thus, by the end of 1847, Austria was seized, although in
an inferior degree, by that political and politico-religious agitation
which then prevailed in all Germany; and if its progress in Austria
was more silent, it did, nevertheless, find revolutionary elements
enough to work upon. There was the peasant, serf, or feudal tenant,
ground down into the dust by lordly or Government exactions; then the
factory operative, forced by the stick of the policeman to work upon
any terms the manufacturer chose to grant; then the journeyman,
debarred by the corporative laws from any chance of gaining an
independence in his trade; then the merchant, stumbling at every step
in business over absurd regulations; then the manufacturer, in
uninterrupted conflict with trade-guilds, jealous of their privileges,
or with greedy and meddling officials; then the school-master, the
_savant_, the better educated functionary, vainly struggling against
an ignorant and presumptuous clergy, or a stupid and dictating
superior. In short, there was not a single class satisfied, for the
small concessions Government was obliged now and then to make were not
made at its own expense, for the treasury could not afford that, but
at the expense of the high aristocracy and clergy; and as to the great
bankers, and fundholders, the late events in Italy, the increasing
opposition of the Hungarian Diet, and the unwonted spirit of
discontent and cry for reform, manifesting themselves all over the
Empire, were not of a nature to strengthen their faith in the solidity
and solvency of the Austrian Empire.
Thus Austria, too, was marching slowly but surely toward a mighty
change, when, of a sudden, an event broke out in France, which at once
brought down the impending storm, and gave the lie to old Francis's
assertion, that the building would hold out both during his and
Metternich's lifetime.
LONDON, September, 1851.
V.
THE VIENNA INSURRECTION.
NOVEMBER 12, 1851.
On the 24th of February, 1848, Louis Philippe was driven out of Paris,
and the French Republic was proclaimed. On the 13th of March
following, the people of Vienna broke the power of Prince Metternich,
and made him flee shamefully out of the country. On the 18th of March
the people of Berlin rose in arms, and, after an obstinate struggle of
eighteen hours, had the satisfaction of seeing the King surrender
himself into their hands. Simultaneous outbreaks of a more or less
violent nature, but all with the same success, occurred in the
capitals of the smaller States of Germany. The German people, if they
had not accomplished their first revolution, were at least fairly
launched into the revolutionary career.
As to the incidents of these various insurrections, we cannot enter
here into the details of them: what we have to explain is their
character, and the position which the different classes of the
population took up with regard to them.
The Revolution of Vienna may be said to have been made by an almost
unanimous population. The bourgeoisie (with the exception of the
bankers and stock-jobbers), the petty trading class, the working
people, one and all arose at once against a Government detested by
all, a Government so universally hated, that the small minority of
nobles and money lords which had supported it made itself invisible on
the very first attack. The middle classes had been kept in such a
degree of political ignorance by Metternich that to them the news from
Paris about the reign of Anarchy, Socialism, and terror, and about
impending struggles between the class of capitalists and the class of
laborers, proved quite unintelligible. They, in their political
innocence, either could attach no meaning to these news, or they
believed them to be fiendish inventions of Metternich, to frighten
them into obedience. They, besides, had never seen working men acting
as a class, or stand up for their own distinct class interests. They
had, from their past experience, no idea of the possibility of any
differences springing up between classes that now were so heartily
united in upsetting a Government hated by all. They saw the working
people agree with themselves upon all points: a Constitution, Trial by
Jury, Liberty of the Press, etc. Thus they were, in March, 1848, at
least, heart and soul with the movement, and the movement, on the
other hand, at once constituted them the (at least in theory)
predominant class of the State.
But it is the fate of all revolutions that this union of different
classes, which in some degree is always the necessary condition of
any revolution, cannot subsist long. No sooner is the victory gained
against the common enemy than the victors become divided among
themselves into different camps, and turn their weapons against each
other. It is this rapid and passionate development of class antagonism
which, in old and complicated social organisms, makes a revolution
such a powerful agent of social and political progress; it is this
incessantly quick upshooting of new parties succeeding each other in
power, which, during those violent commotions, makes a nation pass in
five years over more ground than it would have done in a century under
ordinary circumstances.
The Revolution in Vienna made the middle class the theoretically
predominant class; that is to say, the concessions wrung from the
Government were such as, once carried out practically and adhered to
for a time, would inevitably have secured the supremacy of the middle
class. But practically the supremacy of that class was far from being
established. It is true that by the establishment of a national guard,
which gave arms to the bourgeoisie and petty tradesmen, that class
obtained both force and importance; it is true that by the
installation of a "Committee of Safety," a sort of revolutionary,
irresponsible Government in which the bourgeoisie predominated, it was
placed at the head of power. But, at the same time, the working
classes were partially armed too; they and the students had borne the
brunt of the fight, as far as fight there had been; and the students,
about 4,000 strong, well-armed, and far better disciplined than the
national guard, formed the nucleus, the real strength of the
revolutionary force, and were no ways willing to act as a mere
instrument in the hands of the Committee of Safety. Though they
recognized it, and were even its most enthusiastic supporters, they
yet formed a sort of independent and rather turbulent body,
deliberating for themselves in the "Aula," keeping an intermediate
position between the bourgeoisie and the working-classes, preventing
by constant agitation things from settling down to the old every-day
tranquillity, and very often forcing their resolutions upon the
Committee of Safety. The working men, on the other hand, almost
entirely thrown out of employment, had to be employed in public works
at the expense of the State, and the money for this purpose had, of
course, to be taken out of the purse of the tax-payers or out of the
chest of the city of Vienna. All this could not but become very
unpleasant to the tradesmen of Vienna. The manufactures of the city,
calculated for the consumption of the rich and aristocratic courts of
a large country, were as a matter of course entirely stopped by the
Revolution, by the flight of the aristocracy and Court; trade was at a
standstill, and the continuous agitation and excitement kept up by the
students and working people was certainly not the means to "restore
confidence," as the phrase went. Thus a certain coolness very soon
sprung up between the middle classes on the one side and the
turbulent students and working people on the other; and if for a long
time this coolness was not ripened into open hostility, it was because
the Ministry, and particularly the Court, in their impatience to
restore the old order of things, constantly justified the suspicions
and the turbulent activity of the more revolutionary parties, and
constantly made arise, even before the eyes of the middle classes, the
spectre of old Metternichian despotism. Thus on the 15th of May, and
again on the 16th, there were fresh risings of all classes in Vienna,
on account of the Government having tried to attack, or to undermine
some of the newly-conquered liberties, and on each occasion the
alliance between the national guard or armed middle class, the
students, and the workingmen, was again cemented for a time.
As to the other classes of the population, the aristocracy and the
money lords had disappeared, and the peasantry were busily engaged
everywhere in removing, down to the very last vestiges of feudalism.
Thanks to the war in Italy, and the occupation which Vienna and
Hungary gave to the Court, they were left at full liberty, and
succeeded in their work of liberation, in Austria, better than in any
other part of Germany. The Austrian Diet had very shortly after only
to confirm the steps already practically taken by the peasantry, and
whatever else the Government of Prince Schwartzenberg may be enabled
to restore, it will never have the power of re-establishing the feudal
servitude of the peasantry. And if Austria at the present moment is
again comparatively tranquil, and even strong, it is principally
because the great majority of the people, the peasants, have been real
gainers by the Revolution, and because whatever else has been attacked
by the restored Government, those palpable, substantial advantages,
conquered by the peasantry, are as yet untouched.
LONDON, October, 1851.
VI.
THE BERLIN INSURRECTION.
NOVEMBER 28, 1851.
The second center of revolutionary action was Berlin, and from what
has been stated in the foregoing papers, it may be guessed that there
this action was far from having that unanimous support of almost all
classes by which it was accompanied in Vienna. In Prussia, the
bourgeoisie had been already involved in actual struggles with the
Government; a rupture had been file result of the "United Diet"; a
bourgeois revolution was impending, and that revolution might have
been, in its first outbreak, quite as unanimous as that of Vienna, had
it not been for the Paris Revolution of February. That event
precipitated everything, while at the same time it was carried out
under a banner totally different from that under which the Prussian
bourgeoisie was preparing to defy its Government. The Revolution of
February upset, in France, the very same sort of Government which the
Prussian bourgeoisie were going to set up in their own country. The
Revolution of February announced itself as a revolution of the
working classes against the middle classes; it proclaimed the downfall
of middle-class government and the emancipation of the workingman. Now
the Prussian bourgeoisie had, of late, had quite enough of
working-class agitation in their own country. After the first terror
of the Silesian riots had passed away, they had even tried to give
this agitation a turn in their own favor; but they always had retained
a salutary horror of revolutionary Socialism and Communism; and,
therefore, when they saw men at the head of the Government in Paris
whom they considered as the most dangerous enemies of property, order,
religion, family, and of the other _Penates_ of the modern bourgeois,
they at once experienced a considerable cooling down of their own
revolutionary ardor. They knew that the moment must be seized, and
that, without the aid of the working masses, they would be defeated;
and yet their courage failed them. Thus they sided with the Government
in the first partial and provincial outbreaks, tried to keep the
people quiet in Berlin, who, during five days, met in crowds before
the royal palace to discuss the news and ask for changes in the
Government; and when at last, after the news of the downfall of
Metternich, the King made some slight concessions, the bourgeoisie
considered the Revolution as completed, and went to thank His Majesty
for having fulfilled all the wishes of his people. But then followed
the attack of the military on the crowd, the barricades, the struggle,
and the defeat of royalty. Then everything was changed; the very
working classes, which it had been the tendency of the bourgeoisie to
keep in the background, had been pushed forward, had fought and
conquered, and all at once were conscious of their strength.
Restrictions of suffrage, of the liberty of the press, of the right to
sit on juries, of the right of meeting--restrictions that would have
been very agreeable to the bourgeoisie because they would have touched
upon such classes only as were beneath them--now were no longer
possible. The danger of a repetition of the Parisian scenes of
"anarchy" was imminent. Before this danger all former differences
disappeared. Against the victorious workingman, although he had not
yet uttered any specific demands for himself, the friends and the foes
of many years united, and the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the
supporters of the over-turned system was concluded upon the very
barricades of Berlin. The necessary concessions, but no more than was
unavoidable, were to be made, a ministry of the opposition leaders of
the United Diet was to be formed, and in return for its services in
saving the Crown, it was to have the support of all the props of the
old Government, the feudal aristocracy, the bureaucracy, the army.
These were the conditions upon which Messrs. Camphausen and Hansemann
undertook the formation of a cabinet.