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# The Conservative Counter-attack

As the 1841–43 session of the diet drew to a close, it became clear that the rejoicing in opposition ranks over the social reform bills had been premature. The hope that Vienna would back reform turned out to be an illusion. The central government's conservative allies in the diet recognized the power of the liberals' arguments, and some of them wisely chose to remain silent; yet Vienna refused to be moved.

{3-188.} The elderly Miklós Cserey, a passionate and cultured conservative, was given material inducements to defend the government and the feudal order, but his speeches only aroused derision in the diet. Meanwhile, the barbed witticisms of the liberal press often struck home. When, at a meeting of the Doboka County assembly, Lajos Bethlen marshalled a band of lesser nobles garbed in fancy felt cloaks to oppose the liberals, Zsigmond Kemény made the count look ridiculous by hailing him as the heroic leader of Eskimos.

The newspaper Múlt és Jelen (Past and Present) and its supplement, Hon és Külföld (Home and Abroad), launched in 1840 at the government's expense, were unable to generate a conservative platform. Its editor, Ferenc Szilágyi, was a college teacher who, in the 1830s, had published the popular Klio series of pocketbooks; this new venture cost him much of his prestige. In his paper, which had some subscribers in Hungary as well, Szilágyi tried to make the case for 'moderate' liberalism and cooperation with the government. Hampered by the lack of positive elements in Vienna's policies, he resorted to ad hominem attacks on the liberals and charged that in their 'headlong rush,' they overlooked the possibility of evolutionary change. His repeated attempts to discredit the Transylvanian aristocracy by accusing it of radical-oppositionist liberalism rebounded against him, for the tactic alienated most of his earlier patrons among Kolozsvár's elite.

The failure of the liberals' social reform initiatives owed less to their tactical errors than to the weakness and disunity of their supporters at large and to the inflexibility of the government. In most of Hungary's counties, the liberals had managed to rally the lesser nobility, though sometimes only after violent clashes and expensive canvassing. Their similar efforts in Transylvania brought diminishing returns. When, in order to focus on social reform, the opposition ceased to champion grievances over the curtailment of the nobility's privileges, the lesser nobles felt betrayed. The collapse {3-189.} of the efforts at reform owed not only to Vienna's obduracy but also, as Zsigmond Kemény aptly observed, to the fact that support for the liberals waned at a moment when 'the old approach had already failed and the new one had not yet taken root;' he was referring to the earlier tactic of raising grievances and the subsequent pursuit of social reform.[184]184. Zs. Kemény, 'Érintések,' Erdélyi Híradó, 28 January 1845, no. 8. Miklós Wesselényi was still hailed as 'the Székelys' hero,' but approaching blindness compelled him to withdraw from the political arena. His onetime followers had bought an estate for him in the Marosszék, at Mákfalva, so that he could attend district assemblies; he reciprocated the gesture by founding a primary school that soon earned wide renown. By coincidence, Marosszék would be the base from which reactionary forces launched their counterattack.

Wesselényi had resorted to what the conservative press termed 'O'Conellian propaganda' to obtain that, along with county magistrates, landed nobles, and the occasional village delegate, free Székelys be allowed to attend and vote at district assemblies. In an ironic twist of fate, the very forces that he thus unleashed turned against the liberal reformers. The grievances of these Székelyföld nobles were formulated by Elek Dósa, a college professor from Marosvásárhely, and a popular member of the opposition movement in the 1830s; somewhat reluctantly, he assumed responsibility for an initiative that would bring dire results. Fearing that serfs might emerge as a new 'class' and become a willing tool in the monarch's hands, Dósa invoked the Székely constitution to argue that there could be no authentic serfdom in the Székelyföld. The serfs, he said, were actually tenants, and thus could not be said to have urbarial plots granted by landowners in exchange for labour; consequently, there was no need for socage reform in the Székelyföld. In a circular letter, Marosszék's assembly urged the assemblies of other districts and counties to have their diet delegates demand the withdrawal of all legislative proposals touching on this issue. The opposition managed, not without difficulty, to {3-190.} overcome this threat, but in the end, the monarch endorsed only one legislative proposal, dealing with the standing committee of the diet. The early successes of the opposition were overshadowed by this outcome.

The atmosphere of political uncertainty hung heavily over the standing committee's working groups when they convened to review the proposals made by their predecessors in the 1790s and to complete the reform legislation outlined in the proposals of the diet. With regard to the extension of civil rights, the drafting began of proposals to regularize the status of Gypsies and Jews, grant full rights to the Orthodox Church, and update the administration of justice. However, in some cases, the preparatory work ground to a halt, and of the reports that were completed, most did not get circulated to the local councils for discussion. The subcommittee on culture and education merely assembled some basic information. On the other hand, the one dealing with commerce, industry, and public administration developed a comprehensive proposal that encompassed regulations for the industrial sector; the creation of a mortgage bank designed to remedy the shortage of investment capital; the introduction of accelerated, 'oral' judicial proceedings; and direct consultations with the Hungarian diet to settle the matter of customs tariffs. With regard to taxation, the subcommittee emulated the tactical compromise of liberals in Hungary by proposing that the nobility assume responsibility for the 'house tax,' which was designed to cover the expenses of local government.

Meanwhile, in Hungary, the shortage of money and the proliferation of imports induced a protectionist backlash. The opposition forces founded an association dedicated to defending domestic industry and to boycotting Austrian and other foreign products. The backwardness of Hungarian industry limited the prospects of such a campaign, but the protectionist movement did succeed in alerting the public to the need for modernization. In Transylvania, the lack of political unity and the government's prompt reaction prevented {3-191.} the emergence of a similarly broad protectionist movement. Judging from reports in Brassó's German and Romanian papers, local craftsmen favoured some form of protectionism, but, on the whole, the Saxons avoided taking a position on the issue. In Kolozsvár, on the other hand, a few aristocrats and burghers proceeded to establish a local branch of the protectionist association. In Belső-Szolnok County, an enterprising aristocrat set up a weaving operation in his backyard and popularized the coarse cloth among the local social elite. Legal apprentices at Marosvásárhely's court of appeal campaigned on behalf of locally-produced textiles; meanwhile, in the same town, women formed an association to combat profligacy and awarded a prize to those who were most economical in the management of their household.

The political doldrums were momentarily relieved in Kolozsvár by the visit of two emblematic figures of the Hungarian reform movement, Ferenc Deák and Mihály Vörösmarty. In celebration, the townsfolk organized a parade, lit by 101 torches in evocation of the obligatory greeting of 101 cannon-shots on the sovereign's birthday.

The need for progress was a recurrent theme at county assemblies, and, indeed, some minor progress was made on issues that did not touch on the rights of the lesser nobility. Associations were formed for mutual insurance against fire loss, publicly-funded hospitals were planned, and, partly in response to urgings circulated by counties in Hungary, nursery and primary schools were established. The Hungarian example also inspired several counties to give voting rights in the assembly to members of the intelligentsia who were commoners with honoratior status, although, given the decline in political activity, this innovation had little practical consequence. In Küküllő County, where the opposition gradually lost much of its influence, the assembly enthusiastically endorsed Austria's adherence to a European convention banning slavery but also criticized the government for failing to consult Transylvania's {3-192.} diet in the matter. It was hard to keep alive an interest in politics at the county level, although the need was there: a committee proposal for socage reform had been submitted to Vienna, and everyone anticipated that the next diet would have to take a decision.

However, amidst these local preparations for a new phase of reform, it became clear that the imperial government was not ready to take initiatives concerning Transylvania. In dealing with Hungary, the government did not feel strong enough to resist all the pressures for change, and made some concessions, but it felt no such compulsion with regard to Transylvania. On the contrary, Vienna wanted to refute a common belief, known as the Gleich-stellungstheorie, that if it satisfied some demands of the opposition in Hungary, it was bound to do the same in Transylvania; for it was aware that parallel reforms in the two countries would only improve the chances of their reunification.

The Viennese government was concerned that the admixture of the liberal campaign for national and linguistic emancipation and the efforts at reunification of Transylvania with Hungary would rip apart the imperial edifice. There were also fears, expressed notably by Vienna's police minister, that if the union came about, 'the monarchy's centre of gravity would inexorably shift towards Hungary.'[185]185. HHStA, Kabinettsarchiv, Staatsconferenz-Akten, 1846: 1055. Yet the imperial régime appeared incapable of devising a positive plan of action. Its long-term strategy was to consolidate a centralized, absolutist system of government, based on the most reliable, 'German element' in the population, and with the hope that others could eventually be Germanized; for the moment, Vienna did not feel strong enough to openly promote this strategy, and, in any case, it had reason to fear the negative effects of German nationalism. Thus the imperial government chose to follow the principle of the lesser evil and applied its traditional divide-and-rule tactic in rising to the defence of the non-Hungarian national groups, which were less infected by liberalism. The régime had a morbid fear of liberalism and considered that it represented the {3-193.} greatest threat to the survival of the empire. To be sure, Metternich often remarked that encouragement of local patriotism in the provinces and support for the cultural development of different ethnic groups could help to keep contending forces in balance. But even in this respect, the government merely kept a close watch over developments and took no immediate initiatives, for it was more or less confident that when push came to shove, it could always steer its subjects in the desirable direction.

The task of 'settling the Hungarian question' — upon which depended the internal consolidation of the empire — was taken on by a group of young and conservative Hungarians. Their leaders, Count György Apponyi and Baron Samu Jósika, were vice-chancellors of, respectively, Hungary and Transylvania, and enjoyed the trust and support of Chancellor Metternich. Prior to their emergence on the political scene, the Viennese government had tended to rely on legitimist and conservative aristocrats, who were more willing to defend the status quo than to take political initiatives, and on members of the traditional feudal opposition. However, it was an uncomfortable alliance; within the first group, there were some, including József Teleki, Transylvania's governor, who had made concessions to the liberals and occasionally cooperated with the latter, while the second group proved to be totally ineffectual.

The young conservative aristocrats were distinguished from the older factions by their combativeness and capacity for action. They understood that a liberal transformation was in the cards but wanted to steer it in a different direction. They focused their efforts on consolidating traditional, feudal institutions in a way that would enable them to exploit the advantages of royal absolutism and provide them with a strong base from which to resist the centralizing forces in Vienna. In order to undermine the power of the opposition in the counties, they replaced the lords lieutenant with administrators who were given broad powers. To seduce the public at large, the young conservatives exploited the press in pretending that they {3-194.} had adopted some of the liberals' demands and could — in some unspecified way — secure the monarch's assent. In 1846, they girded for the decisive confrontation by founding, in Hungary, a Conservative Party. As these events unfolded, the Viennese government seemed to gain in confidence. In 1844, Metternich had concluded that Hungary was teetering on the edge of anarchy and revolution. Two years later, he noted that conditions in Transylvania were 'close to anarchy,' and that the situation could improve only if Hungary's government was consolidated.[186]186. HHStA, Minister Kolowrat Akten, 1846: 1285. In the meantime, he was counting on the continued impotence of Transylvania's diet, but events would show that his confidence was misplaced.

The social and ethnic circumstances of Transylvania proved to be more helpful to the conservatives than they had been to the liberals. For the progressive opposition movement, it was a particularly tragic stroke of fate that one of their new opponents was none other than Samu Jósika, the son of former governor János Jósika. Most of his contemporaries had a high regard for his intellectual capacity, but he seemed to hunger mainly for power and wanted change to bring not minimal losses but maximum gains for the aristocracy. Ever since he had become active in politics, in his twenties, he had acted in keeping with his motto Et si omnes ego non.[187]187. Samu Jósika's ex libris, OSzK Kézirattár, Fol. Hung. 2184. Unlike his fellow conservatives in Hungary, he saw little value in exploiting the press for propaganda purposes; and, out of tactics as well as principle, he laid little stress on the slogan 'progress with deliberation.' He was concerned that the opposition might spread the word that his ideas on change had the backing of the government in Vienna; the Erdélyi Híradó had already hinted that if diet delegates received anti-liberal instructions from their constituents, the regalists could swing the vote against reform. When Governor József Teleki, who sympathized with the liberals, sought to fill seats vacated by regalists with a group that included thirteen supporters of the opposition, eight waverers, and only five conservatives, {3-195.} Jósika made sure that his nominees would be rejected. For the leading county posts, Samu Jósika promoted candidates who, coming from the less affluent reaches of the nobility, were hostile to liberal aristocrats and more dependent on the government's favour; as well carefully selected regalists who would be susceptible to material inducements and follow blindly the vice-chancellor's brother, Lajos Jósika. The latter, who served as lord lieutenant of Doboka County, was the main organizer of the conservatives' counter-offensive. Samu Jósika also warned Saxons that the Viennese court would be displeased if they chose to back the liberals. He could not prevent the Saxons from breaking custom and electing as delegates a couple of teachers and a lawyer as well as the usual group of officials; but he did keep them from forming a centrist party with Hungarian liberal delegates from the towns and counties.

The man who undertook the task of mustering Transylvania's conservatives, Lajos Jósika, was flexible enough to adopt liberal phraseology when the occasion warranted. At county assemblies, he would stress the importance of winning the support of the broader public. He even secured the endorsement of such highly respected patrons of culture as Count József Kemény and Count Imre Mikó.

Amidst the preparations for the next diet, Samu Jósika became embroiled in a conflict — one more serious than those that marked routine political manoeuvres — with the authorities in Vienna. Deliberately 'misunderstanding' one of the monarch's orders, he submitted the report, on taxation and socage, that the diet committee had finally completed in 1845, to the local authorities in Transylvania, inviting the latter to give relevant instructions to their delegates. The Staatskonferenz was outraged: for one thing, this manifestation of feudal constitutionalism clashed with the practice of bureaucratic absolutism, and for another, Jósika was obviously courting local political support to strengthen his hand vis-à-vis the central government. Vienna feared, and with good reason, that he {3-196.} would be unduly partial to the nobility's interests; it was also alarmed at the prospect of a fall in tax revenues, for the arrears in taxes owed by Transylvania to the central treasury had quadrupled since 1830.

Since the outcome of the next diet depended largely on Jósika, the imperial government dared not rebuke him. The young conservatives exploited not only the government's apparent impotence but also its dread of reunification. When a member of the Staats-konferenz suggested that Transylvania follow Hungary's lead in socage reform (noting that in Hungary, the average serf's plot was twice as large, and the socage obligations considerably lighter than in Transylvania), the head of the Hungarian chancellery, György Apponyi, argued that this would be 'inadvisable because of overriding interests.' In Apponyi's contention, 'anything that reduces or eliminates the legal and tangible differences between the two provinces, anything that brings the two systems of public administration into closer harmony, and, above all, any measure that, ignoring the Transylvanian nobility's political circumstances, aims to increase their burdens to the level prevailing in Hungary, will have the effect of mitigating their resistance to reunification; in such circumstances, Transylvania's nobles will no longer see financial drawbacks, but only anticipate political advantages in a prospective union.'[188]188. HHStA, Kabinettsarchiv, Staatsconferenz-Akten, 1846: 970. Vienna thus decided to give free rein to the conservative leaders in Transylvania.

Storm clouds were gathering over the Habsburgs' domain. In early 1846, when the Transylvanian diet had yet to convene, Polish nobles in Galicia took up arms against the Austrians and invited the peasantry to join the revolt; instead, the peasants launched a counter-revolt against the emperor's enemies. Thanks to the efforts of Polish émigrés, the Austrians came to be blamed across Europe for the bloody suppression of the national independence movement. The Galician episode had a powerful, multiple impact. On the one hand, it bolstered the self-confidence of the Viennese court; on the {3-197.} other hand, it served as a warning to Hungarian reformers that if they failed to emancipate the serfs, they could end up like the Polish nobles. Kolozsvár's nobles also came to fear that the spirit of revolt would spread to Transylvania's peasantry, and they were much relieved when reports reaching the Gubernium indicated that calm reigned in the countryside. Indeed, even the elder János Bethlen, a liberal, considered that the peasants would revolt only if they were incited by the government: 'Today, the overwhelming majority of Transylvania's peasant are no different from those who, in 1817, would rather starve than lay their hands on another man's property.'[189]189. Bethlen's letter to Wesselényi, Kolozsvár, 31 July 1846, OL, Filmtár, 8367.

The debates at the local level and in the diet gave conservatives an opportunity to discredit the committee recommendations, inspired by liberals, for socage reform; the report called for gradual implementation, over a period of close to twenty-five years, of a socage reform that encompassed the consolidation of holdings and the regulation of property rights. Consolidation of holdings posed a threat to the financial survival of the comparatively large class of lesser nobles. Many of them had estates of no more than a few hectares, and consisting of dozens of scattered plots; and many owned more cattle than they would be allowed to graze on the common pasture if, as proposed, the number of livestock was linked to the amount of landed property. In practice, entailment had served to keep land within the family or clan, and its abolition would only dim their already bleak economic prospects.

Thus liberals lost the support of the same lesser nobles whom they had earlier managed to mobilize in favour of reform. Although they still enjoyed enough prestige to get elected to the diet, the liberals failed to take a united stand; several among them had been burdened by their constituents with essentially conservative mandates. A further complicating circumstance was that a number of municipalities urged the introduction of voluntary commutation; it could be anticipated that most noble landowners would exploit this {3-198.} to reduce the amount of land available for peasant cultivation. Press censorship hampered the ability of the public to form a clear idea of the political issues: Samu Jósika had banned analytical articles on the question of socage.

It was around this time that Dénes Kemény completed his massive study of conditions in Transylvania, Érdekegység (Unity of Interests), most of which remained unpublished. The shift to liberalism, argued Kemény, demanded a reconciliation of interests around the common goals of equal burden-sharing, commutation, and a constitutional system of representation. Kossuth, too, urged the Transylvanians to enact commutation, a goal that Hungary's own reformers were still fighting to reach. In fact, the first priority was socage reform and the delineation of nobiliary and urbarial land; for one thing, this would prevent landowners from retaining part of the peasants' land when the latter were granted their 'freedom.'

However, the liberals were gradually compelled to give way. To begin with, the majority of the diet agreed to adopt Cziráky's register as a basis for delineating nobiliary and urbarial property. When discussion turned to correction of the obvious deficiencies of this register, Lajos Jósika proposed that serfs be allotted land in proportion to the socage obligations; thus, those who gave two days of labour, with oxen, each week would be entitled to a full plot. However, the diet reduced by about a quarter the committee's proposed measure of a full plot.

The liberals tried to apply principles of justice and fairness in the regulation of the relationship between landowners and serfs. They rejected Cziráky's register, claiming that it failed to account for a third of the urbarial lands. When the conservatives pointed out — correctly — that in Transylvania, unlike in Hungary proper, there was no generally accepted criterion for distinguishing the two different categories of land, the liberals responded that 'the requisites had evolved' over time and proposed that all land cultivated {3-199.} by serfs for their own purpose should be classified as urbarial. However, liberals were divided over whether, in contentious cases, the delineation of urbarial and allodial lands should be based on the situation in 1820, in 1843, or in the present day.

The bill adopted by the conservative majority charged higher state authority with the task of setting the boundaries. In retrospect, it can be argued that the conservatives' refusal to provide a clear legal definition of urbarial land potentially favoured the opponents of social progress. According to the prescriptions of the new bill, implementation would begin with an assessment, based on the Cziráky register, of the total area of urbarial land (that is, all land that was shown to be cultivated by serfs, serfs, and cotters, and on which serfs and cotters paid state taxes and owed services to their landlord). This area would be divided by the number of urbarial stock and taxpaying households to produce the measure of an average plot. Plots, or fractions of plots, would then be allocated in proportion to the serf's socage obligations. As noted, two days a week of labour, with oxen, would entitle the serf to a full plot. If that serf previously disposed of no more than a half plot, the shortfall would have to be made up at the expense of another serf whose socage obligations were lighter — say, one day a week — and who, by the new criteria, had too much land. Land left over after this redistribution would revert to the landowner. The bill also proposed to lighten the burdens of the peasantry by reducing the labour due for one full plot to a single day's labour, with oxen, per week. In sum, the reform would impose changes in the stratification of the peasantry, benefiting some serfs at the expense of others. This approach had already been successfully applied on a few estates, and some of its proponents may well have anticipated that, by creating new divisions among the peasants, it would attenuate the tensions between the peasantry as a whole and the landowners.

In any case, the liberals let conservatives bear full responsibility for this historic change. They protested 'in the holy name of the {3-200.} people' against a measure that they believed to be a national and social catastrophe. Governor József Teleki submitted a dissenting petition to Vienna, but Jósika managed to fend off even this most dangerous of attacks. (It is not likely that members of the Staats-konferenz all understood the full import of the conservatives' bill; later, even Zsigmond Kemény failed to make sense of it.) However, the fact that the liberals had lost the initiative made a deep impression in Vienna, where the unexpected success overshadowed any lingering apprehensions. The central government's satisfaction was all the greater because the diet had finally passed a much-delayed bill on conscription, and one that provided for more recruits than had been requested.

Meanwhile, in a quid pro quo, Vienna endorsed the Hungarian language bill. The empire's leaders had been very reluctant to give up on Latin as the language of legislation. Although some of them acknowledged that Hungarian had once played an important role in state administration, they considered that Latin helped to preserve the cohesion of the 'great entirety' of the empire and, at the same time, to hold back the extension of the Hungarian language. All-imperial considerations also made them anxious about the fate of the Saxons, 'the German element.' Their deepest wish was to make the language of legislation German, but they feared that if they took this course, the Croats, who tactically favoured Latin over Hungarian, would also demand that legislation be drafted in their mother tongue. Since a series of bills had already been enacted in Hungary making Hungarian the official language in all spheres of administration, the central government could no longer delay taking a decision.

The Transylvanian language bill was somewhat better adapted to a multi-ethnic society than the Hungarian one. For instance, it imposed Hungarian as the language of registration only in parishes where the priests preached in that language, whereas the Hungarian bill made the language mandatory for all church registries. To be {3-201.} sure, the two countries differed greatly in their ethnic makeup. Samu Jósika, whom the diet had named chancellor, showed a good practical sense of politics in acknowledging that since the Saxons had the same rights as the other feudal 'nations,' any change in the status of languages had to win their approval. His proposed bill therefore provided that while Hungarian would be the official language of legislation, laws would also be published in German translation, and that German would remain the official language in Saxon districts. The conservatives were jubilant about this artful compromise. Meanwhile, Jósika reprimanded the censor at Nagyszeben for allowing the Siebenbürger Bote to report that, at the opposition group's farewell dinner, a Saxon delegate had proposed a toast to the spiritual strength of the opposition, which, he said, strove to reduce social tensions and 'promote the emergence free citizens within the two sister-nations.'[190]190. OL, EKPr 1847: 421.

If the measure of productivity is the number of acts to which the monarch gives his royal assent, then the diet of 1846–47 was the most successful of Transylvanian diets in the era of reform. If, on the other hand, the objective need for change is taken into account, then it has to be said that the diet's regulation of landowner-serf relations fell short of what could have been done even within the political constraints of the times. History would soon punish those who had resorted to power politics in the 'resolution' of crucial social problems.