Neoabsolutist era, 1849–60

All things considered, the revolution across the empire had not accomplished much. Absolutism seemed firmly entrenched, and the political clock seemed to have been set back to the 18th century. And yet a regime so badly shaken as Austria’s could not hope to rule unchallenged in the future. The unresolved social, constitutional, and national issues became more intense, and new changes were soon in the offing.

The period 1849–60 is called the Neoabsolutist era because it was the last effort by an Austrian emperor to provide good government by relying solely on bureaucratic effectiveness. In doing so, it was the legitimate descendant of the governments of Joseph II and Metternich. The emperor in this case was Francis Joseph, who in December 1848 had succeeded at the age of 18 to the throne in a deal engineered by Felix, Fürst (prince) zu Schwarzenberg, an able and iron-willed opponent of the 1848 revolutionaries and a proponent of strong central government. Francis Joseph had not been the heir, but Schwarzenberg contended that too many promises to revolutionaries had been made in the name of Ferdinand and the true heir, Francis Joseph’s father, Francis Charles, and so only his son could rule without making compromises. Francis Joseph thus became emperor and ruled for the next 68 years, dying in the midst of World War I at the age of 86.

Under Francis Joseph and Schwarzenberg, order was restored. Schwarzenberg died in 1852, and the new regime passed largely to the direction of Alexander, Freiherr (baron) von Bach, minister of the interior and a competent bureaucrat. Despite its reputation as a repressive instrument, Bach’s government was not without positive accomplishments. It established a unified customs territory for the whole monarchy (including Hungary), composed a code for trades and crafts, completed the task of serf emancipation, and introduced improvements in universities and secondary schools. In this period, economic growth continued its slow but steady pace, which had characterized the monarchy before 1848 and would continue to do so after 1860.

The regime’s policies on other matters were more typically reactionary. Freedom of the press as well as jury and public trials were abandoned, corporal punishment by police orders restored, and internal surveillance increased. The observation of the liberal reformer Adolf Fischhof that the regime rested on the support of a standing army of soldiers, a kneeling army of worshippers, and a crawling army of informants was exaggerated but not entirely unfounded. One of the more backward developments was the concordat reached with the papacy that gave the church jurisdiction in marriage questions, partial control of censorship, and oversight of elementary and secondary education. Priests entrusted with religious education in the schools had the authority to see to it that instruction in any field, be it history or physics, did not conflict with the church’s teachings.

The neoabsolutist regime came to an end because of its foreign policy. In the mid-1850s the matter that dominated the foreign offices of the European states was the Crimean War, a struggle that pitted an alliance system of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia against Russia. Since the mid-18th century, Austrian statesmen had generally agreed that it was better to have as the monarchy’s southeastern neighbour a weak Ottoman Empire than any strong power—especially Russia. So, in this war the monarchy declared its neutrality but also insisted that Russia not advance into the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Walachia, which lay to the east of the Austrian Empire. This policy had two deleterious results: it alienated Russia, which had helped the monarchy put down the Hungarian revolution, and it did not befriend France, which would in 1859 support Sardinia in its war of Italian unification against the Austrians.

It was the Austro-Italian war of 1859 that humiliated Austria and ended Bach’s system. First securing support from Napoleon III of France, Sardinia provoked a woefully unprepared Austria into war and then invited France to come to the Italian kingdom’s assistance. The Austrians suffered two major defeats at Magenta and Solferino and concluded peace. The monarchy gave up Lombardy and kept Venetia, but, more important, it lost its influence in Italy. The Habsburgs had no say in the events of 1860 and 1861 that led to the proclamation of a unified Italy under the rule of the kings of Sardinia. (See also Risorgimento.)