The pursuit of glory, p.39
The Pursuit of Glory, page 39
It was only when Joseph became sole ruler in 1780 that this alliance began to crack. He moved quickly to introduce toleration for Protestants and Greek Orthodox; to exclude any form of foreign jurisdiction over the Church in his territories, whether exercised by the Pope or imperial prince-bishops; to dissolve all religious orders that he deemed ‘completely and utterly useless’ (i.e. the majority); and to re-educate the clergy through new state-run ‘general seminaries’ in accordance with his fundamental principle that ‘the Church must be useful to the state’. He also introduced toleration for the Jews, while stressing that he did not wish to see their numbers increase and emphasizing that his main aim was to make them more useful for the state. Moreover, the language adopted by Joseph was so uncompromising as to suggest that he positively relished putting people’s backs up. Although he lived and died a devout Catholic, to his more conservative contemporaries he came to look like a destructive apostate. The desperate journey of Pius VI to Vienna in the spring of 1782 to remonstrate with Joseph both dramatized the possibility of a schism and allowed the plain people of the Monarchy to demonstrate their attachment to traditional forms of worship. They were encouraged by the increasingly noisy opposition of Cardinal Migazzi to Joseph’s reforms.
For all his influence on the priests and their parishioners, not even the most turbulent prelate could pose a real threat to the stability of the Monarchy. It was a different matter when Joseph turned his levelling attention to secular privilege. It should be remembered that privilege was not a monopoly of the nobility; on the contrary, it permeated every nook and cranny of society, especially in the towns. Nowhere was that more so than in the Austrian Netherlands, which for the sake of convenience will be referred to as ‘Belgium’. Joseph’s relations with his subjects in the Austrian Netherlands had always been unfortunate. His only visit, in 1781, had been marked by mutual incomprehension; his clumsy attempt to open the Scheldt to international trade, in 1784–5, had ended in failure, convincing Joseph that the Belgians were not worth helping and the Belgians that Joseph was incompetent; his simultaneous bid to use the province as a bargaining-counter in the equally ill-fated Bavarian exchange project completed the process of alienation. However, it was his radical reform programme which took the Belgians from hostility to revolt. The announcement on 1 January 1787 of a fundamental change in the political, administrative and judicial structure led, first to protests and then to a tax strike by the Estates of Brabant, the most important of the Belgian provinces.
Outright revolt was averted on that occasion by concessions made by the governors-general of the province. It was some measure of Joseph’s obstinacy and lack of political acumen that he furiously disowned their ‘weakness’ and then sought to claw back their concessions. Another tax strike in November 1788 by the Estates of Brabant and Hainaut was countered by Joseph’s declaration that he regarded their privileges as abolished, their constitutions null and void and their people outlaws. Inflamed by another singularly ill-timed burst of reforms in the spring and early summer of 1789, and encouraged by the revolutionary examples set by adjacent France and Liège, the dissidents took up arms. After a false start in October 1789, they returned in November, quickly expelled the remaining Austrian soldiers and took possession of all the provinces except Luxemburg by the end of the year. On 11 January 1790 the combined Estates proclaimed the independence of the ‘United States of Belgium’.
Paradoxically, what appeared to be a weakness of the Habsburg Monarchy–geographical fragmentation–now proved to be an asset, for the secession of Belgium did not imperil the main core of territories. What made the trouble simultaneously brewing in Hungary so much more dangerous was its central location. This latest confrontation in the long-running feud with Vienna was Joseph’s radical assault on the Magyar gentry’s social, economic and political power. In 1785–6 the kingdom was divided into ten new districts, without any regard for historical precedent, ethnic distribution or local opinion. The commissars to run them were, of course, appointed by the centre. With equal predictability, the administration of the counties was also nationalized. Their assemblies were forbidden to meet, unless choosing deputies for the national parliament (which meant never, as the parliament did not meet). Together with Joseph’s refusal to be crowned King of Hungary (thus evading an oath to observe the traditional constitution), his imposition of the German language as the sole lingua franca for administration, and his sympathetic treatment of the great peasant revolt of 1784, this clean sweep of traditional institutions threatened to turn the Magyar nobility’s world upside down. The last straw was the ‘Taxation and Urbarial Regulation’, discussed in Chapter 4.
As the Magyars’ ancestors had resorted to armed resistance for much less cause in the past, it was only a matter of time before insurrection was planned. The first conspiracy to be uncovered came in 1786, although the interrogators of the culprit ceased to take him seriously when he revealed under cross-examination that he had intended to publicize his revolt with the help of proclamations distributed by ‘100,000 trained dogs’. For the time being Joseph was safe. As the Prussian envoy in Vienna, Baron Jacobi, observed in 1787: despite all the angry noises made by the Magyars, the magnates were tamed, the resentment of the Protestant gentry had been blunted by religious toleration, the peasants worshipped Joseph as their emancipator and the massive military presence would nip any revolt in the bud. However, he added with chilling foresight that the situation would be very different if the Prussians could get an army into Hungary to support the insurgents before Joseph or his successor could strike a deal with them. That was exactly the scenario that threatened to develop after the outbreak of war against the Turks in 1787. As early as the autumn of 1788, Joseph knew from intelligence reports that the dissidents were conspiring to turn Hungary into an independent state, to be ruled by the Duke of Saxony-Weimar. He also knew that the Polish nobles in Galicia, the province torn from Poland in the first partition of 1772, were equally anxious to cast off the Habsburg yoke. Even in the normally docile German-speaking provinces at the heart of the Monarchy, rumblings of discontent had become too audible to ignore.
Even by the standards of the Habsburg Monarchy, this domestic crisis was severe. It assumed existential proportions when the threat of military intervention by Prussia became likely. Fresh from his triumphant intervention in the Dutch Republic in the autumn of 1787, the normally indecisive Frederick William II was sorely tempted to take advantage of the wonderfully favourable international situation that had developed. With France bankrupt and subsiding into revolution and the two eastern powers tied down by war in the Baltic and the Balkans, Prussia was presented with a golden opportunity to give the law to Europe. At some point in the late summer of 1789, Frederick William decided on an offensive alliance with the Turks and an invasion of the Habsburg Monarchy from the north in the following spring, to be accompanied by Prussian-sponsored revolts in Hungary and Galicia. Negotiations were also opened with Poland for an offensive alliance. As if that were not enough for the hapless Joseph II to contend with, the Spanish and the Sardinians were getting ready to seize the Habsburg possessions in Italy.
Not for the first or last time in the troubled history of the Habsburg Monarchy, salvation came in the shape of the army. Just as Joseph’s numerous enemies thought they could sniff the scent of carrion, there was a sudden surge of vitality. After the disappointments of 1788, the campaign of 1789 went very well for the Austrians. At the very time that the fall of the Bastille signalled the fall of the French absolute monarchy, one Austrian army was advancing into Serbia and another was conquering Moldavia. On 8 October came the climax of the campaign with the taking of Belgrade from the Turks by storm. So much territory was won during this triumphant autumn campaign that both the domestic and the foreign enemies of the Monarchy began to think twice about resorting to arms. Their decision to stay at home was helped by the death of Joseph II on 20 February 1790. He had already revoked many of the most unpopular policies and his successor, his brother Leopold II, hastened to complete the process and to pledge his attachment to the traditional order. Simultaneously, he launched a diplomatic offensive to avert war with Prussia. This he achieved by the Convention of Reichenbach on 27 July 1790. Although this obliged him to hand back to the Turks all the conquered territory, including Belgrade, it allowed him to restore order in Hungary and to reconquer Belgium. On 15 November 1790 Leopold was crowned King of Hungary, swearing ‘by the living God, and by His most holy mother the Virgin Mary, and by all the saints, to preserve the churches of God, the lord prelates, the barons, magnates, nobles, free cities and all inhabitants of the realm in their immunities, liberties, rights, laws, privileges and good and approved ancient customs; and to do justice to all’. On 6 September 1791 Leopold was crowned King of Bohemia at Prague. Hungary and Bohemia were to remain part of the Habsburg Empire until 1918.
At the other end of Europe–indeed, at the other end of western civilization–a similar conflict had occurred but with a very different outcome. Although the great victor of the Seven Years War, Great Britain had been left with a national debt that had almost doubled to £147,000,000 and appeared to be crippling. The unpopularity of the Peace of Paris of 1762 and the post-war economic depression made any increase in domestic taxation more than usually unpalatable. It was natural that the government should look to the American colonies for assistance, for it was they who had benefited most directly from the conquest of French Canada. Moreover, it was well known that their current level of taxation was many times lower: R. R. Palmer estimated that the annual tax burden per head in Britain was twenty-six shillings, as opposed to one shilling in Massachusetts, eight pence in New York (there were twelve pence to the pound) and five pence in Virginia. Collectively, the thirteen colonies were quite rightly thought to be populous, expanding and rich. In 1700 there were still only 225,000 English-speaking Americans, but fifty years later that number had raced to 2,000,000, with Philadelphia larger than any city in England bar London. More controversially, the American were also thought to be feckless and lackadaisical about their own defence, leaving it to the British to deal with the rising of Native Americans led by Pontiac in 1763.
The resulting attempt to make the Americans contribute to the costs of imperial defence, beginning with the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765 led to revolt and secession. For the colonists, the immediate principle at stake was summed up in the simple formula ‘no taxation without representation’. As they were not represented in the British Parliament, they did not regard its authority as legitimate: ‘A Parliament of Great Britain can have no more right to tax the colonies than a Parliament of Paris’ was John Adams’ conclusion. Paradoxically they could arrive at this conclusion only by ignoring everything that had happened in England since the 1640s, including the recognition that sovereignty resided in the King in Parliament. In November 1765, Sir Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts, told Lord Barrington, secretary of state for war, that: ‘In Britain, the American governments are considered as Corporations empowered to make by-laws, existing only during the pleasure of Parliament…In America they claim…to be perfect States, not otherwise dependent on Great Britain than by having the same King.’ Once the issue was one of sovereignty, the irresistible force had struck the immoveable object. That was demonstrated by the Declaratory Act of January 1766, which asserted parliamentary sovereignty in language just as uncompromising as Louis XV’s statement of royal sovereignty delivered just two months later and quoted earlier in this chapter:
The said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right, ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain…the King’s majesty by and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, had, hath, and of right, ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.
The last straw for both sides came in late 1773, when the British government sought to help the ailing East India Company by allowing it to sell ten million pounds of tea in the American colonies. The response was the ‘Boston Tea Party’, when a group of dissidents dressed as Native Americans boarded three ships at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston harbour and threw their cargo of tea over the side. In a fine illustration of the superiority of symbol over concept in politics, this essentially trivial episode polarized opinion on both sides. George III was in no doubt: ‘the die is now cast, the colonies must now submit or triumph’. In many ways, his attitude towards the Americans resembled that of Joseph II to the Belgians, for he knew that he was right: ‘I know I am doing my duty and therefore can never wish to retract’ he wrote in July 1775.
By that time the war was underway. Eight years were to pass before the British finally recognized American independence by the Treaty of Paris of 3 September 1783. It was an outcome predicted from the outset by the more far-sighted of British politicians, notably Lord Camden, who in the debates of 1775 argued: ‘To conquer a great continent of 1,800 miles, containing three millions of people, all indissolubly united on the great Whig bottom of liberty and justice, seems an undertaking not to be rashly engaged in…It is obvious, my lords, that you cannot furnish armies, or treasure, competent to the mighty purpose of subduing America…but whether France and Spain will be tame, inactive spectators of your efforts and distractions, is well worthy of the considerations of your lordships.’ Although public opinion was overwhelmingly anti-American when the war began, Camden was not the only Briton to view with distate a war against an English-speaking people whose ‘great Whig bottom’ he shared. The British were used to fighting wars against enemies who were Catholic by religion and absolutist by politics, so the libertarian rhetoric of the Americans was deeply disturbing. On the American side, there was some confusion, or at least disagreement, as to whether they were conservatives fighting to defend old liberties in the plural or revolutionaries fighting for liberty in the abstract. Sensibly, the Continental Congress put the two together in their Declaration of Rights of 1774, appealing to ‘the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters and compacts’.
The Americans had demonstrated that the sovereign state’s appetite for power and money could only be stopped by force supported by ideology operating in a favourable international context. They were able to go much further than the Hungarians, for example, in achieving outright independence rather than just the withdrawal of detested reforms, because their force was greater, their ideology was more inclusive and their international context was more favourable. In these respects, the other major problem for the British government–Ireland–was more like Hungary than America. The concentration of British military resources on the colonial struggle after 1775 left Ireland more than usually vulnerable to domestic unrest and foreign invasion. To guard against both, the Anglo-Irish elites, led by magnates such as the Duke of Leinster and the Earl of Charlemont, set about raising companies of volunteers. By the end of 1779 there were around 40,000 under arms, an impressive figure which doubled during the next three years. With the war in America going from bad to worse and with a Franco-Spanish invasion of the English mainland averted in 1779 only by bad weather, the political muscle of the Irish Volunteers grew in proportion. Henry Grattan told an attentive Irish lower house in 1780: ‘Never was there a parliament in Ireland so possessed of the confidence of the people; you are the greatest political assembly now sitting in the world; you are at the head of an immense army; nor do we only possess an unconquerable force, but a certain unquenchable public fire, which has touched all ranks of men like a visitation.’ British politicians could agree at least with Grattan’s boasting about the force at his command. The result was a series of economic and political concessions, which reduced if did not terminate Ireland’s colonial status. Symbolically, the most important was the repealing of ‘Poyning’s Laws’, dating from 1494, which had subjected all decisions taken by the Irish Parliament to English approval. More important materially was the lifting of restrictions on the export on Irish woollens and glassware and on direct trade with other British colonies.
Yet Ireland was to remain under British rule until 1922. The comparison with America and Hungary is instructive. America too was deeply divided, as at least 60,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 loyalists demonstrated when they preferred emigration to independence. The tumultuous early years of the new republic, leading to the introduction of a new constitution in 1789, also bore witness to deep divisions in both state and civil society. Yet these were but cracks compared with the fissures that prevented a united opposition in Ireland. Between the more than three million Catholics, almost one million Presbyterians and 450,000 Anglicans, there could never be anything more than a temporary marriage of convenience doomed to end speedily in acrimonious divorce. When the Grand National Convention of the Volunteers met in Dublin in November 1783, the deputies debated furiously the issue of Catholic enfranchisement–but decided against it. There was an automatic stop-valve at work here: only with the support of the Catholics could true independence be obtained, but whenever the Catholics began to assert themselves, the Protestants began to have second thoughts. Only when the Catholics had created an ideology and an organization for themselves–and only when the international situation was favourable–could success be achieved. For the time being, even the limited gains of the early 1780s had been won courtesy of the Americans: ‘it was on the plains of America that Ireland obtained her freedom’ conceded one Irish patriot in 1782. That freedom turned out to be a chimera, for Ireland was united with Great Britain in 1801 to form the United Kingdom.
