The Hapsburgs became Kings of Hungary not by conquest or marriage but by election. The Diet, for diplomatic reasons, offered the crown to the Hapsburgs in the 17th century and with one exception, the “enlightened” Joseph II, Hapsburg emperors went through the motions of accepting the crown of St. Stephen after election by the Diet. For the Hapsburgs this was a legal fiction. The Hungarians looked at it differently.
To complicate matters, there was a large Slavic peasant population and a significant German and German-Jewish bourgeoisie in Hungary. There were also German and Wallachian (modern Roumanian) peasants. To these large minorities the traditional “liberties” of the ethnic Hungarians were a source of resentment and envy. For a modern observer it is hard to overlook the resemblance of the Hungarian “nation” to a semi-independent military caste like the Cossacks in the Russian Empire. The latter also enjoyed certain “liberties,” that is to say privileges, vis-à-vis the absolute monarchy. The social structure of the Cossack “nation” was also relatively egalitarian compared to the Empire as a whole. In the Hapsburg Empire similar privileges were also enjoyed by the Croats who were to become the most bitter opponents of Hungarian independence.
All this broke down in 1848. The conflict between the centralizing tendencies of the Hapsburg monarchy and the claims of the Hungarian Diet, especially over the always awkward question of taxation, had long been a source of tension even in peaceful times. With demands for constitutional liberties and representative government—even for democracy!—threatening the existence of the Hapsburg monarchy and the old regime throughout Europe, the “liberties” of the Hungarians were a dangerous example despite their originally feudal content. As in France in 1789-91, the liberal-minded, “improving,” nobility—the noble corn dealers Engels had referred to earlier—were forced to take extreme measures to defend their traditional privileges. In Hungary in 1848 they also had to defend their national independence. As in France in 1789, the resistance to the absolute monarchy initiated from above in response to a crisis provoked a revolution from below.
Democratic opinion in Germany was overwhelmingly in support of the Hungarian rising. Even the Frankfurt Assembly, which had hesitated when it came to opposing Prussian occupation of Poland, supported the Hungarians against Austria. There were, of course, those who feared the defeat of the Austrians by a popular uprising. One of the journalistic adherents of this point of view was the main rival of the NRZ, the Kölnische Zeitung. At the height of the rebellion the paper ridiculed the democratic supporters of Hungarian independence
The so-called democratic press in Germany has sided with the Magyars in the Austro-Hungarian conflict. . . . Certainly strange enough! The German democrats siding with that aristocratic caste, for which, in spite of the nineteenth century, its own nation has never ceased to be misera contribuens plebs [a pitiful tax-burdened plebian mass]; the German democrats siding with the most arrogant oppressors of the people!37
Engels polemic against this editorial, “The Kölnische Zeitung on the Magyar Struggle,” begins by arguing that even if the Kölnische Zeitung were right, even if this were an uprising of an “aristocratic caste,” the fact would be irrelevant. The Austrian troops and their Croatian allies were not fighting for an end to feudalism. They were not aiming at the suppression of the “aristocratic caste.” Engels then compares the Hungarian revolt to the 1830 uprising in Poland, an uprising whose defeat Engels himself had argued little more than a year before was a direct result of the domination of that revolt by an “aristocratic caste.”
In 1830, when the Poles rose against Russia, was it then a question whether merely an “aristocratic caste” was at their head? At that time it was in the first place a question of driving out the foreigners. The whole of Europe sympathized with the “aristocratic caste,” which certainly started the movement, for the Polish Republic of the nobility was at any rate a huge advance compared with Russian despotism.38
Engels goes on to point out that the suffrage in France after the revolution of 1830 was restricted to some 250,000 voters and the rule of the French bourgeoisie was also based on the exploitation of the misera contribuens plebs. He does not argue that the bourgeois constitutional monarchy of Louis Philippe was a step forward as compared to the Bourbon restoration. He simply assumes that his audience, including the Kölnische Zeitung, takes that for granted.
But Engels does not leave it there. He is not content to defend national independence and representative institutions as progressive vis à vis absolutism and desirable ends to be fought for in their own right. In defending these basic democratic rights the Hungarian revolution has had to go farther:
The great Schwanbeck, [Eugen Alexis Schwanbeck, the Vienna correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung] of course, is even less obliged to know that Hungary is the only country in which since the March revolution feudal burdens on the peasants have legally and in fact totally ceased to exist. The great Schwanbeck declares the Magyars to be an “aristocratic caste,” “most arrogant oppressors of the people,” . . . Schwanbeck does not know, or does not want to know, that the Magyar magnates, the Esterházys etc., deserted at the very beginning of the war and came to Olmütz [Austrian headquarters] to pay homage, and that it is precisely the “aristocratic” officers of the Magyar army who from the beginning of the struggle until now have every day carried out a fresh betrayal of their national cause! Otherwise, how is it that today the majority of the Chamber of Deputies is still with Kossuth in Debreczin, whereas only eleven magnates are to be found there?39
In another article, “Croats and Slovaks in Hungary,” Engels, discussing the fate of the “loyal” Slavic troops on the Imperial side, reports that the victorious Austrian authorities were restoring traditional Hungarian privileges despite their previous promises to the Slavs.
It is obvious that the aristocrat Windischgrätz knows full well that he can only achieve his goal of maintaining the power of the nobility in Hungary by maintaining the Magyar nobility in power. . . . having finished the business of subduing Hungary and restoring the rule of the aristocracy there, he will manage to deal with the Slavs . . .40
There is a great deal of material like this in Engels’ articles during 1849 dealing with disaffection within the ranks of the Imperial forces, which is largely ignored by most commentators. The whole issue of the disruptive effect of the social program of the Hungarian revolution within the non-Hungarian population is best dealt with in another section. Here, it is Engels’ stress on the disruptive effect of this program within Hungary that is relevant. In practically his last article on the subject he referred to the Polish example and emphasized that in Hungary too social revolution and national liberation are inextricably linked.
The Magyar war of 1849 has strong points of resemblance with the Polish war of 1830-31. But the great difference is that the factors which were against the Poles at the time now act in favor of the Magyars. Lelewel, as we know, unsuccessfully urged . . . that the mass of the population be bound to the revolution by emancipating the peasants and the Jews. . . . The Magyars started at the point which the Poles only achieved when it was too late. The Hungarians’ first measure was to carry out a social revolution in their country, to abolish feudalism . . .41
Again, as in the case of the insurrections in Cracow in 1846 and Prague in 1848, it was only the advanced minority that advocated this complete program of democratic revolution. And in this instance Engels appears to have been ignorant of the real political line-up. Kossuth was not the democrat portrayed in the columns of the NRZ. Alexander Petöfi and the radical students and workers in Budapest occupied that particular point on the political spectrum. Kossuth was the man in the middle. He was the man whose job it