The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power Part 32

He had many n.o.ble traits of character, and innumerable anecdotes are related ill.u.s.trative of his energy and humanity. In war he was ambitious of taking his full share of hardship, sleeping on the bare ground and partaking of the soldiers' homely fare. He was exceedingly popular at the time of his accession to the throne, and great antic.i.p.ations were cherished of a golden age about to dawn upon Austria. "His toilet,"

writes one of his eulogists, "is that of a common soldier, his wardrobe that of a sergeant, business his recreation, and his life perpetual motion."

The Austrian monarchy now embraced one hundred and eighty thousand square miles, containing twenty-four millions of inhabitants. It was indeed a heterogeneous realm, composed of a vast number of distinct nations and provinces, differing in language, religion, government, laws, customs and civilization. In most of these countries the feudal system existed in all its direful oppression. Many of the provinces of the Austrian empire, like the Netherlands, Lombardy and Suabia, were separated by many leagues from the great central empire. The Roman Catholic religion was dominant in nearly all the States, and the clergy possessed enormous wealth and power. The ma.s.ses of the people were sunk in the lowest depths of poverty and ignorance. The aristocratic few rejoiced in luxury and splendor.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

JOSEPH II. AND LEOPOLD II.

From 1780 to 1792.

Accession of Joseph II.--His Plans of Reform.--Pius VI.--Emanc.i.p.ation of the Serfs.--Joseph's Visit to his Sister, Maria Antoinette.--Ambitions Designs.--The Imperial Sleigh Ride.--Barges on the Dneister.--Excursion to the Crimea.--War with Turkey.--Defeat of the Austrians.--Great Successes.--Death of Joseph.--His Character.--Accession of Leopold II.--His Efforts to confirm Despotism.--The French Revolution.--European Coalition.--Death of Leopold.--His Profligacy.--Accession of Francis II.--Present Extent and Power of Austria.--Its Army.--Policy of the Government.

When Joseph ascended the throne there were ten languages, besides several dialects, spoken in Austria--the German, Hungarian, Sclavonian, Latin, Wallachian, Turkish, modern Greek, Italian, Flemish and French.

The new king formed the desperate resolve to fuse the discordant kingdom into one h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s, obliterating all distinctions of laws, religion, language and manners. It was a benevolent design, but one which far surpa.s.sed the power of man to execute. He first attempted to obliterate all the old national landmarks, and divided the kingdom into thirteen States, in each of which he inst.i.tuted the same code of laws.

He ordered the German language alone to be used in public doc.u.ments and offices; declared the Roman Catholic religion to be dominant. There were two thousand convents in Austria. He reduced them to seven hundred, and cut down the number of thirty-two thousand idle monks to twenty-seven hundred; and n.o.bly issued an edict of toleration, granting to all members of Protestant churches the free exercise of their religion. All Christians, of every denomination, were declared to be equally eligible to any offices in the State.

These enlightened innovations roused the terror and rage of bigoted Rome. Pope Pius VI. was so much alarmed that he took a journey to Vienna, that he might personally remonstrate with the emperor. But Joseph was inflexible, and the Pope returned to Rome chagrined and humiliated that he had acted the part of a suppliant in vain.

The serfs were all emanc.i.p.ated from feudal va.s.salage, and thus, in an hour, the slavery under which the peasants had groaned for ages was abolished. He established universities, academies and public schools; encouraged literature and science in every way, and took from the priests their office of censorship of the press, an office which they had long held. To encourage domestic manufactures he imposed a very heavy duty upon all articles of foreign manufacture. New roads were constructed at what was called enormous expense, and yet at expense which was as nothing compared with the cost of a single battle.

Joseph, soon after his coronation, made a visit to his sister Maria Antoinette in France, where he was received with the most profuse hospitality, and the bonds of friendship between the two courts were much strengthened. The ambition for territorial aggrandizement seems to have been an hereditary disease of the Austrian monarchs. Joseph was very anxious to attach Bavaria to his realms. Proceeding with great caution he first secured, by diplomatic skill, the non-intervention of France and Russia. England was too much engaged in the war of the American Revolution to interfere. He raised an army of eighty thousand men to crush any opposition, and then informed the Duke of Bavaria that he must exchange his dominions for the Austrian Netherlands. He requested the duke to give him an answer in eight days, but declared peremptorily that in case he manifested any reluctance, the emperor would be under the painful necessity of compelling him to make the exchange.

The duke appealed to Russia, France and Prussia for aid. The emperor had bought over Russia and France. Frederic of Prussia, though seventy-four years of age, encouraged the duke to reject the proposal, and promised his support. The King of Prussia issued a remonstrance against this despotic act of Austria, which remonstrance was sent to all the courts of Europe. Joseph, on encountering this unexpected obstacle, and finding Europe combining against him, renounced his plan and published a declaration that he had never intended to effect the exchange by force.

This disavowal, however, deceived no one. A confederacy was soon formed, under the auspices of Frederic of Prussia, to check the encroachments of the house of Austria. This Germanic League was almost the last act of Frederic. He died August 17, 1786, after a reign of forty-seven years, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

The ambitious Empress of Russia, having already obtained the Crimea, was intent upon the subversion of the Ottoman empire, that she might acquire Constantinople as her maritime metropolis in the sunny south. Joseph was willing to allow her to proceed un.o.bstructed in the dismemberment of Turkey, if she would not interfere with his plans of reform and aggrandizement in Germany.

In January, 1787, the Empress of Russia set out on a pleasure excursion of two thousand miles to the Crimea; perhaps the most magnificent pleasure excursion that was ever attempted. She was accompanied by all the court, by the French, English and Austrian ministers, and by a very gorgeous retinue. It was mid-winter, when the imperial party, wrapped in furs, and in large sledges richly decorated, and prepared expressly for the journey, commenced their sleigh ride of a thousand miles. Music greeted them all along the way; bonfires blazed on every hill; palaces, brilliant with illuminations and profusely supplied with every luxury, welcomed them at each stage where they stopped for refreshment or repose. The roads were put in perfect order; and relays of fresh horses every few miles being harnessed to the sledges, they swept like the wind over the hills and through the valleys.

The drive of a few weeks, with many loiterings for pleasure in the cities on the way, took them to Kief on the Dnieper. This ancient city, the residence of the grand dukes of Russia, contained a population of about twenty-six thousand. Here the imperial court established itself in the ducal palaces, and with music, songs and dances beguiled the days until, with the returning spring, the river opened. In the meantime an immense flotilla of imperial barges had been prepared to drift down the stream, a thousand miles, to its mouth at Kherson, where the river flows into the Black sea. These barges were of magnificent dimensions, floating palaces, containing gorgeous saloons and s.p.a.cious sleeping apartments. As they were constructed merely to float upon the rapid current of the stream, impelled by sails when the breeze should favor, they could easily be provided with all the appliances of luxury. It is difficult to conceive of a jaunt which would present more of the attractions of pleasure, than thus to glide in saloons of elegance, with imperial resources and surrounded by youth, beauty, genius and rank, for a thousand miles down the current of one of the wildest and most romantic streams of Europe.

It was a beautiful sunny morning of May, when the regal party, accompanied by the music of military bands, and with floating banners, entered the barges. The river, broad and deep, rolls on with majestic flow, now through dense forests, black and gloomy, where the barking of the bear is heard and wolves hold their nightly carousals; now it winds through vast prairies hundreds of miles in extent; again it bursts through mountain barriers where cliffs and crags rise sublimely thousands of feet in the air; here with precipitous sides of granite, bleak and scathed by the storms of centuries, and there with gloomy firs and pines rising to the clouds, where eagles soar and scream and rear their young. Flocks and herds now graze upon the banks; here lies the scattered village, and its whole population, half civilized men, and matrons and maidens in antique, grotesque attire, crowd the sh.o.r.es. Now the pinnacles and the battlements of a great city rise to view. Armies were gathered at several points to entertain the imperial pleasure-party with all the pomp and pageantry of war. At Pultowa they witnessed the maneuverings of a battle, with its thunderings and uproar and apparent carnage--the exact representation of the celebrated battle of Pultowa, which Peter the Great gained on the spot over Charles XII. of Sweden.

The Emperor Joseph had been invited to join this party, and, with his court and retinue, was to meet them at Kherson, near the mouth of the Dneister, and accompany the empress to the Crimea. But, perhaps attracted by the splendor of the water excursion, he struck across the country in a north-east direction, by the way of Lemberg, some six hundred miles, to intercept the flotilla and join the party on the river. But the water of the river suddenly fell, and some hundred miles above Kherson, the flotilla ran upon a sand bar and could not be forced over. The empress, who was apprised of the approach of the emperor, too proud to be found in such a situation, hastily abandoned the flotilla, and taking the carriages which they had with them, drove to meet Joseph.

The two imperial suites were soon united, and they swept on, a glittering cavalcade, to Kherson. Joseph and Catharine rode in a carriage together, where they had ample opportunity of talking over all their plans of mutual aggrandizement. As no one was permitted to listen to their conversations, their decisions can only be guessed at.

They entered the city of Kherson, then containing about sixty thousand inhabitants, surrounded by all the magnificence which Russian and Austrian opulence could exhibit. A triumphal arch spanned the gate, upon which was inscribed in letters of gold, "The road to Byzantium." Four days were pa.s.sed here in revelry. The party then entered the Crimea, and continued their journey as far as Sevastopol, where the empress was delighted to find, within its capacious harbor, many Russian frigates at anchor. Immense sums were expended in furnishing entertainments by the way. At Batcheseria, where the two sovereigns occupied the ancient palace of the khans, they looked out upon a mountain in a blaze of illumination, and apparently pouring lava floods from its artificial volcanic crater.

Joseph returned to Vienna, and immediately there was war--Austria and Russia against Turkey. Joseph was anxious to secure the provinces of Bosnia, Servia, Moldavia and Wallachia, and to extend his empire to the Dneister. With great vigor he made his preparations, and an army of two hundred thousand men, with two thousand pieces of artillery, were speedily on the march down the Danube. Catharine was equally energetic in her preparations, and all the north of Europe seemed to be on the march for the overthrow of the Ottoman empire.

Proverbially fickle are the fortunes of war. Joseph commenced the siege of Belgrade with high hopes. He was ignominiously defeated, and his troops were driven, utterly routed, into Hungary, pursued by the Turks, who spread ruin and devastation widely around them. Disaster followed disaster. Disease entered the Austrian ranks, and the proud army melted away. The emperor himself, with about forty thousand men, was nearly surrounded by the enemy. He attempted a retreat by night. A false alarm threw the troops into confusion and terror. The soldiers, in their bewilderment fired upon each other, and an awful scene of tumult ensued.

The emperor, on horseback, endeavored to rally the fugitives, but he was swept away by the crowd, and in the midnight darkness was separated from his suite. Four thousand men perished in this defeat, and much of the baggage and several guns were lost. The emperor reproached his aides-de-camp with having deserted him. One of them sarcastically replied,

"We used our utmost endeavors to keep up with your imperial majesty, but our horses were not so fleet as yours."

Seventy thousand Austrians perished in this one campaign. The next year, 1789, was, however, as prosperous as this had been adverse. The Turks at Rimnik were routed with enormous slaughter, and their whole camp, with all its treasures, fell into the hands of the victors. Belgrade was fiercely a.s.sailed and was soon compelled to capitulate. But Joseph was now upon his dying bed. The tidings of these successes revived him for a few hours, and leaving his sick chamber he was conveyed to the church of St. Stephen, where thanksgivings were offered to G.o.d. A festival of three days in Vienna gave expression to the public rejoicing.

England was now alarmed in view of the rapid strides of Austria and Russia, and the cabinet of St. James formed a coalition with Holland and Prussia to a.s.sist the Turks. France, now in the midst of her revolutionary struggle, could take no part in these foreign questions.

These successes were, however, but a momentary gleam of sunshine which penetrated the chamber of the dying monarch. Griefs innumerable cl.u.s.tered around him. The inhabitants of the Netherlands rose in successful rebellion and threw off the Austrian yoke. Prussia was making immense preparations for the invasion of Austria. The Hungarians were rising and demanding emanc.i.p.ation from the court of Vienna. These calamities crushed the emperor. He moaned, and wept and died. In his last hours he found much solace in religious observances, devoutly receiving the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and pa.s.sing much of his time in prayer. He died on the 20th of February, 1790, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the tenth of his reign.

Joseph had been sincerely desirous of promoting the best interests of his realms; but had been bitterly disappointed in the result of most of his efforts at reform. Just before he died, he said, "I would have engraven on my tomb, 'Here lies the sovereign who, with the best intentions, never carried a single project into execution.'" He was married twice, but both of his wives, in the prime of youth, fell victims to the small-pox, that awful disease which seems to have been a special scourge in the Austrian royal family. As Joseph II. died without children, the crown pa.s.sed to his next brother, Leopold, who was then Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Leopold II., at his accession to the throne, was forty-three years of age. He hastened to Vienna, and a.s.sumed the government. By prudent acts of conciliation he succeeded in appeasing discontents, and soon accomplished the great object of his desire in securing the election to the imperial throne. He was crowned at Frankfort, October 9, 1790. With frankness very unusual in the diplomacy of kings, he sought friendly relations with all the neighboring powers. To Frederic William, who was now King of Prussia, he wrote:

"In future, I solemnly protest, no views of aggrandizement will ever enter into my political system. I shall doubtless employ all the means in my possession to defend my country, should I unfortunately be driven to such measures; but I will endeavor to give no umbrage. To your majesty in particular, I will act as you act towards me, and will spare no efforts to preserve perfect harmony."

To these friendly overtures, Frederic William responded in a similar spirit; but still there were unsettled points of dispute between the two kingdoms which threatened war, and large armies were gathered on their respective frontiers in preparation for the commencement of hostilities.

In 1790, after much correspondence, they came to terms, and articles of peace were signed. At the same time an armistice was concluded with the Turks.

The spirit of liberty which had emanc.i.p.ated the colonies of North America from the aristocratic sway of England, shivering the scepter of feudal tyranny in France, had penetrated Hungary. Leopold was endeavoring to rivet anew the shackles of despotism, when he received a manly remonstrance from an a.s.sembly of Hungarians which had been convened as Pest. In the following n.o.ble terms they addressed the king.

"The fame, august sovereign, which has preceded you, has declared you a just and gracious prince. It says that you forget not that you are a man; that you are sensible that the king was made for the people, not the people for the king. From the rights of nations and of man, and from that social compact whence states arose, it is incontestable that the sovereignty originates from the people. This axiom, our parent Nature has impressed on the hearts of all. It is one of those which a just prince (and such we trust your majesty ever will be) can not dispute. It is one of those inalienable imprescriptible rights which the people can not forfeit by neglect or disuse. Our const.i.tution places the sovereignty jointly in the king and people, in such a manner that the remedies necessary to be applied according to the ends of social life, for the security of persons and property, are in the power of the people.

"We are sure, therefore, that at the meeting of the ensuing diet, your majesty will not confine yourself to the objects mentioned in your rescript, but will also restore our freedom to us, in like manner as to the Belgians, who have conquered theirs with the sword. It would be an example big with danger, to teach the world that a people can only protect or regain their liberties by the sword and not by obedience."

But Leopold, trembling at the progress which freedom was making in France, determined to crush this spirit with an iron heel. Their pet.i.tion was rejected with scorn and menace.

With great splendor Leopold entered Presburg, and was crowned King of Hungary on the 10th of November, 1790. Having thus silenced the murmurs in Hungary, and established his authority there, he next turned his attention to the recovery of the Netherlands. The people there, breathing the spirit of French liberty, had, by a simultaneous rising, thrown off the detestable Austrian yoke. Forty-five thousand men were sent to effect their subjugation. On the 20th of November, the army appeared before Brussels. In less than one year all the provinces were again brought under subjection to the Austrian power.

Leopold, thus successful, now turned his attention to France. Maria Antoinette was his sister. He had another sister in the infamous Queen Caroline of Naples. The complaints which came incessantly from Versailles and the Tuilleries filled his ear, touched his affections, and roused his indignation. Twenty-five millions of people had ventured to a.s.sert their rights against the intolerable arrogance of the French court. Leopold now gathered his armies to trample those people down, and to replace the scepter of unlimited despotism in the hands of the Bourbons. With sleepless zeal Leopold cooperated with nearly all the monarchs in Europe, in combining a resistless force to crush out from the continent of Europe the spirit of popular liberty. An army of ninety thousand men was raised to cooperate with the French emigrants and all the royalists in France. The king was to escape from Paris, place himself at the head of the emigrants, amounting to more than twenty thousand, rally around his banners all the advocates of the old regime, and then, supported by all the powers of combined Europe, was to march upon Paris, and take a b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance upon a people who dared to wish to be free. The arrest of Louis XVI. at Varennes deranged this plan.

Leopold, alarmed not only by the impending fate of his sister, but lest the principles of popular liberty, extending from France, should undermine his own throne, wrote as follows to the King of England:

"I am persuaded that your majesty is not unacquainted with the unheard of outrage committed by the arrest of the King of France, the queen my sister and the royal family, and that your sentiments accord with mine on an event which, threatening more atrocious consequences, and fixing the seal of illegality on the preceding excesses, concerns the honor and safety of all governments. Resolved to fulfill what I owe to these considerations, and to my duty as chief of the German empire, and sovereign of the Austrian dominions, I propose to your majesty, in the same manner as I have proposed to the Kings of Spain, Prussia and Naples, as well as to the Empress of Russia, to unite with them, in a concert of measures for obtaining the liberty of the king and his family, and setting bounds to the dangerous excesses of the French Revolution."

The British _people_ n.o.bly sympathized with the French in their efforts at emanc.i.p.ation, and the British government dared not _then_ shock the public conscience by a.s.sailing the patriots in France. Leopold consequently turned to Frederic William of Prussia, and held a private conference with him at Pilnitz, near Dresden, in Saxony, on the 27th of August, 1791. The Count d'Artois, brother of Louis XVI., and who subsequently ascended the French throne as Charles X., joined them in this conference. In the midst of these agitations and schemes Leopold II. was seized with a malignant dysentery, which was aggravated by a life of shameless debauchery, and died on the 1st of March, 1792, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and after a reign of but two years.

Leopold has the reputation of having been, on the whole, a kind-hearted man, but his court was a harem of unblushing profligacy. His broken-hearted wife was compelled to submit to the degradation of daily intimacy with the mistress of her husband. Upon one only of these mistresses the king lavished two hundred thousand dollars in drafts on the bank of Vienna. The sums thus infamously squandered were wrested from the laboring poor. His son, Francis II., who succeeded him upon the throne, was twenty-two years of age. In most affecting terms the widowed queen entreated her son to avoid those vices of his father which had disgraced the monarchy and embittered her whole life.

The reign of Francis II. was so eventful, and was so intimately blended with the fortunes of the French Revolution, the Consulate and the Empire, that the reader must be referred to works upon those subjects for the continuation of the history. During the wars with Napoleon Austria lost forty-five thousand square miles, and about three and a half millions of inhabitants. But when at length the combined monarchs of Europe triumphed over Napoleon, the monarch of the people's choice, and, in the carnage of Waterloo, swept const.i.tutional liberty from the continent, Austria received again nearly all she had lost.

This powerful empire, as at present const.i.tuted, embraces:

square miles inhabitants 1 The hereditary States of Austria, 76,199 9,843,490 2 The duchy of Styria, 8,454 780,100 3 Tyrol, 11,569 738,000 4 Bohemia, 20,172 3,380,000 5 Moravia 10,192 1,805,500 6 The duchy of Auschnitz in Galicia, 1,843 335,190 7 Illyria, 9,132 897,000 8 Hungary, 125,105 10,628,500 9 Dalmatia, 5,827 320,000 10 The Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, 17,608 4,176,000 11 Galicia, 32,272 4,075,000

Thus the whole Austrian monarchy contains 256,399 square miles, and a population which now probably exceeds forty millions. The standing army of this immense monarchy, in time of peace, consists of 271,400 men, which includes 39,000 horse and 17,790 artillery. In time of war this force can be increased to almost any conceivable amount.

Thus slumbers this vast despotism, in the heart of central Europe, the China of the Christian world. The utmost vigilance is practiced by the government to seclude its subjects, as far as possible, from all intercourse with more free and enlightened nations. The government is in continual dread lest the kingdom should be invaded by those liberal opinions which are circulating in other parts of Europe. The young men are prohibited, by an imperial decree, from leaving Austria to prosecute their studies in foreign universities. "Be careful," said Francis II. to the professors in the university at Labach, "not to teach too much. I do not want learned men in my kingdom; I want good subjects, who will do as I bid them." Some of the wealthy families, anxious to give their children an elevated education, and prohibited from sending them abroad, engaged private tutors from France and England. The government took the alarm, and forbade the employment of any but native teachers. The Bible, the great chart of human liberty, all despots fear and hate. In 1822 a decree was issued by the emperor prohibiting the distribution of the Bible in any part of the Austrian dominions.

The censorship of the press is rigorous in the extreme. No printer in Austria would dare to issue the sheet we now write, and no traveler would be permitted to take this book across the frontier. Twelve public censors are established at Vienna, to whom every book published within the empire, whether original or reprinted, must be referred. No newspaper or magazine is tolerated which does not advocate despotism.

Only those items of foreign intelligence are admitted into those papers which the emperor is willing his subjects should know. The _freedom_ of republican America is carefully excluded. The slavery which disgraces our land is ostentatiously exhibited in harrowing descriptions and appalling engravings, as a specimen of the degradation to which republican inst.i.tutions doom the laboring cla.s.s.

A few years ago, an English gentleman dined with Prince Metternich, the ill.u.s.trious prime minister of Austria, in his beautiful castle upon the Rhine. As they stood after dinner at one of the windows of the palace, looking out upon the peasants laboring in the vineyards, Metternich, in the following words, developed his theory of social order:

"Our policy is to extend all possible _material_ happiness to the whole population; to administer the laws patriarchaly; to prevent their tranquility from being disturbed. Is it not delightful to see those people looking so contented, so much in the possession of what makes them comfortable, so well fed, so well clad, so quiet, and so religiously observant of order? If they are injured in persons or property, they have immediate and unexpensive redress before our tribunals, and in that respect, neither I, nor any n.o.bleman in the land, has the smallest advantage over a peasant."