The Southern Slavs had recently been shown that if they waited in the
hope that others would assist them to improve their fortunes they
would have to have a monumental patience. When Austria, after her
defeat at the hand of the Prussians, was flung out of the German
federation, she availed herself of the services of a German, Count
Frederick Beust, to put her house in order. His negotiations with
Hungary produced the compromise, the _Ausgleich_, of 1867. This
Constitution, which made them independent of each other as regards
internal matters, bade their Slavs prepare themselves to lose all
shreds of independence. The Serbs of the Banat and Ba[vc]ka, as well
as the Roumanians of Transylvania and the Slovaks, were delivered to
the Magyars without any guarantee that their language or their
nationality would be respected. "Look!" said the Magyars in after
years, when travellers came to see what they had done, "we have a
language law, evolved by Deak, which lays down that everybody in the
law courts has the right to use his mother-tongue." The traveller had
been wondering what unusual people lived in Hungary, for he had seen a
peasant choose precisely that time when a train was due to come and
quarrel about something with the booking clerk. How was the traveller
to learn that the non-Magyar peasant wished to buy a ticket for his
native village, whose name had just been Magyarized, and that the
clerk refused to sell a ticket except the peasant used a name he did
not know? And when the peasant had walked home he might see in the
village register that he who had been Saba was now Shebek and that his
friend Ziva, who could speak no word of Magyar, was now Vitaljos; and
that the children of poor Vitaljos, in order that they should not
suffer from their father's handicap, were not confining their
education to ordinary subjects, but were learning the Magyar language
for seventeen hours every week. Well, how was your traveller to know
that if a person used his own tongue in the law courts, which was very
probably the tongue of everyone who lived there save a handful of
officials, one of these officials who was accidentally in court would
say he was acquainted with that person's language? The judge would
take his word for it and he would start interpreting. When the
Hungarians came to deal with the Croats they were careful to give
them, for the world's eye, a great deal of autonomy. Strossmayer,
assisted by the historian Ra[vc]ki, had in April 1866 led a deputation
to Buda-Pest when it was clear that extreme divergencies existed
between the Croats and the Magyars. Among other Croatian demands was
one that Rieka should no longer be the scene of Magyar intrigues. As
yet the town's importance was not great: in 1869 she had only 17,884
inhabitants and the total of her exports and imports did not exceed
150,000 tons. But everybody knew that by the building of a direct line
to Croatia and to the valleys of the Save, the Drave and the Danube
there would come an era of prosperity. The Magyars had allied
themselves with the Autonomist party, showing them what great
advantages the town would reap if it were joined to Hungary. Would not
Hungary, for instance, be able to manipulate the railway freights?
There had been constant bickerings between the Croats and the
Autonomist party, so that Strossmayer's deputation asked that the
Magyars should refrain from giving to the latter their financial and
moral support. But the Magyars had no such intention. "One should try
to convince everyone," said Ra[vc]ki, "that in national politics the
Magyars and ourselves stand at the Antipodes. We see in the Slav and
Yugoslav solidarity the most powerful guarantee for our national
future, whereas the Magyars see in it the tomb of their nationality.
We consider the liberation of the East as a condition of a happier
future, while the Magyars regard it as the beginning of their absolute
ruin or at least as the end of their aspirations for the sole
dominion. The idea of a Yugoslav State, arising in Croatia or in
Bosnia or Serbia, would always find in Hungary a most determined foe."
It was thus improbable that any satisfactory arrangement would be
made, particularly as the Austrians, oblivious to all that
Jella[vc]i['c] had done for them, were quite prepared to give their
erstwhile enemies, the Magyars, a free hand. And what the Magyars did
was to confer upon Croatia this autonomy for educational and legal and
religious matters, while they reserved financial, railway, fiscal and
commercial questions, military legislation and the laws relating to
the roads and rivers in which both were interested--all these subjects
they reserved for the Parliament at Buda-Pest, in which, of course,
the Croats formed an impotent minority. Francis Joseph on May 1, 1867,
sent a message to Zagreb in which he stated that "the pourparlers with
the Kingdom of Hungary, which to him was always dear and faithful, had
led to the desired results." He trusted that the Croats would be
represented at his coronation at Buda-Pest. Strossmayer was ordered to
bring this about; he went instead to the Paris Exhibition. He and the
National party prepared themselves for a severe struggle. But now
Baron Levin Rauch, of infamous memory, was nominated as Ban. He at
once altered the electoral laws, so that the National party came back
with only fourteen deputies. If any one in Western Europe thought
about the Croats it was with the traditional aversion for the way in
which they had behaved to the most noble Kossuth. This was years
before the time when Dr. Seton-Watson, as it may interest him to hear,
defeated the Magyarophil candidate at an election in the town of
Ogulin. The bright idea occurred to somebody to whisper it abroad that
Dr. Seton-Watson would arrive that day in order to make notes of the
election for the British Press. With Rauch's obedient majority a
compromise, the _Nagodba_, was arranged with Hungary. The terms of
this, subordinating Croatia economically and financially to Buda-Pest,
are what one would expect; the chief novelty concerns Rieka, as to
which port no agreement had been reached.