JOHN WILLIAM BURGESS
THE EUROPEAN WAR OF 1914
Its
Causes, Purposes, and Probable Results
1915
CHAPTER V
p. 155—166
155
CHAPTER V
THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE AND THE CRIME AT SARAJEVO
IN the first chapter of this work I compared the
assassination of the heir to the Hapsburg Throne with the supposed
assassination of a Vice-President of these United States. The
comparison proves more, however, than was there claimed for it. It is
one thing to murder the Vice-President or even the President of a
Republic, but a far more serious thing to murder the dynastic successor
to a throne, especially when the purpose is manifest to destroy the
dynasty itself. It may, indeed, be true that the Vice-President or the
President of the Republic may be far more worthy individually, both as
to intelligence, character, and capacity, than the Crown Prince, and it
may be that the Republic is a higher form of political organization
than the Monarchy,
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but this is
not at all the question here involved. The question is as to the effect
of such a catastrophe upon the security and existence of the state
concerned.
The Republic has not only a law of succession to the
office of its chief magistracy, but a law of election for the creation
of a new chief Magistrate. The Monarchy, however, has only the former.
The death of all those persons qualified by the law of succession to
succeed to the powers of the throne brings the state face to face with
a crisis for the solution of which its Constitution makes no adequate
provision, because a dynasty is an historical product. It grows with
the development of the state from little beginnings. Its roots reach
out in every direction. Its official powers are intertwined with its
rights to property. With the prosperity of the state it prospers, and
it suffers with the adversities of the state. It gives its name to the
institutions and monuments of the state, to its cities and highways and
streets and bridges. Its deeds of glory and
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victory are
interlaced with the state's advancement and its defeats with the
state's decline.
All this is peculiarly true of the Hapsburg Dynasty
and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our earliest historical knowledge of
the Hapsburgers is furnished us by deeds of gifts made by them to pious
purposes, dated in the year 1099. The donor in these, one Count Werner
of Hapsburg, seems to have been a wealthy Swabian gentleman, nephew of
Bishop Werner of Strasburg, the builder of the castle occupied by Count
Werner, a gentleman of high ideals and philanthropic turn. The Castle
Hapsburg was located on the river Aar some miles north of the present
city of Lucerne In Switzerland, and it was from this centre that the
power and possessions of the Hapsburgers spread east, west, north, and
south. The Hapsburgers seem to have been favorites with the
Roman-German Emperors of the Swabian House, Frederick
Barbarossa and Frederick
II, and received from these Emperors lands and offices. In
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the early part
of the thirteenth century, Albert,
called the Wise, of Hapsburg, married a relative of the Emperor
Frederick II, and the son of this marriage, Rudolf,
became German King and Roman-German Emperor. From this position he was
able to add the Margravates of Austria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria
to his patrimonial possessions, and although the imperial-royal power
passed for a time out of Hapsburg hands, they were, and continued to
be, the chief family within the Roman-German Empire. In 1437 Albert II,
of Hapsburg, wrested the crowns of both Bohemia and Hungary from the Emperor
Sigismund and the next year became Roman-German Emperor, which
great office now remained in the hands of the Hapsburgers down to 1806,
when the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was destroyed by
Napoleon. The Hapsburgers then assumed the title of Emperors of Austria
and proceeded to organize the political system now known as the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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Out of how many elements, homogeneous, quasi-homogeneous, and
heterogeneous, this state body has been composed and what the work of
the Hapsburg Dynasty has been in welding them and in holding them
together may be in some degree concluded from the titles of the
Hapsburg Emperor. He is Emperor of Austria; King of Hungary, Bohemia,
Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, and Lodomeria; Archduke of
Austria; Grand Duke of Krakau; Duke of Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia,
Carniola, Bukowina, Upper and Lower Silicia, Auschwitz and Zator,
Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa, and Zara; Prince of Siebenbürgen, Trent
and Brixen; Margrave of Moravia, Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria;
Count of Hapsburg, Tyrol, Kyburg, Görz, Gradisca, Hohenembs,
Feldkirch, Bregenz and Sonnenberg; Lord of Triest and Cattaro. I think
I have omitted some and I know that I have not invented any.
It has been a prodigious work for the Hapsburg
Dynasty to mould the Austro-
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Hungarian
Empire from these elements and it is a really wonderful product of
unity in diversity which this Dynasty has wrought. Instead of beating
down all local independence and obliterating all racial differences as
the French Monarchy did, for example, in its development, the Hapsburg
Dynasty has preserved a sphere of local independence and of racial
diversity and has sought to reach down to fundamental principles in
rights and policies upon which men of different race and religion can
stand, and live in peace together.
If I should be asked to define the political system
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in a single sentence, I would call it a
confederation of two States each with federal government. Austria is a
State composed of seventeen autonomous Provinces. Each one of these
Provinces has its own legislature elected by the voters and exercising
all legislative power not reserved by the written Constitution to the
Reichrath, the national legislature. The laws of the provinces are
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executed by
Crown appointees. The national legislature, the lower house of which is
chosen by manhood suffrage of all citizens over twenty-four years of
age, exercises the powers vested in it by the written Constitution.
Hungary is a federal union of two States, Hungary
proper and the State of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Each one of these
States has its own legislature, and this body, the members of the lower
house of which are chosen by suffrage slightly removed by a very small
tax qualification from the manhood suffrage of all citizens over twenty
years of age, makes local laws. In order to form a national legislature
for the two States in union a certain number of representatives from
Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia sit in the legislature for Hungary proper.
The laws of the two States separately are executed by the King of
Hungary and his appointees, as also the laws of the Union.
These two States with federal Governments are then
brought together in the Confederation, entitled the Austro-Hungarian
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Empire. The
bonds which hold them together are, first and most important, the
Hapsburg Dynasty, whose head is Emperor, King, Archduke, Grand Duke,
Prince, Margrave, Count, and Lord in all the different parts of the
complex organization, and second, the House of Delegations, which is
composed of an equal number of persons chosen by the National
legislatures of Austria and of Hungary-Croatia. This Confederate
Government has control of the Foreign Affairs, and the Army and Navy of
the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire and of the finances in so far as they
are related to these subjects. Finally, Bosnia-Herzegovina is a
territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with its own legislature for
local affairs, but without any representation in either the National
Legislature of Austria or that of Hungary-Croatia.
I consider the Austro-Hungarian Empire as about the
most interesting experiment in the political science of the twentieth
century. The nineteenth century has given us the na-
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tional state
based largely upon unity of race, language and custom. While the system
of national states related to each other only through treaty,
international law, and diplomacy, is a vast advance over the system of
universal empire, there still remains the danger of too great
particularism, if every race and linguistic idiom is to be regarded as
the proper foundation of a separate and sovereign state. There still
remains the problem, therefore, of bringing together different races or
fragments of different races and bodies of men of different tongues,
inhabiting naturally connected territory, into a political and
governmental union, which shall be free enough to preserve valuable
race differences, but which shall go down deep enough in universal
human nature to find a foundation of principle broad enough for men of
different races to stand upon and feel at home upon, and thus to
develop a nationality in ideals of a profounder sort than that resting
upon race or language, one approaching nearer to the universal human.
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No great state in Europe has addressed itself so assiduously and
sincerely to the solution of this great problem as the Austro-Hungarlan
Empire. It has brought together German, Magyar, Czech, Pole, Slovack,
Moravian, Ruthenian, Croatian, Ruman, Serb, Italian, and Lodin, both
Christian and Mohammedan, and for a full half-century held them
together in the bonds of a peaceful empire. And it has done this not by
the domination of one race over the others, but by a system which
leaves to each race its language and local customs, and secures to each
its due representation in the State and Imperial Governments, and which
seeks to find principles of union so fundamentally human that all races
may feel their national ideals and aspirations fulfilled under them.
This is what the British Chancellor of the Exchequer
calls a "ramshackle" empire. I have no doubt it appears so to a man
accustomed to see the British Empire governed by a handful of men
seated in Downing street, London, who receive their authority
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from a body in
which only forty-five millions of men, inhabiting one hundred and
twenty thousand square miles of territory, out of the five hundred
millions of men, occupying the thirteen millions of square miles of
territory of the British Empire, have any representation at all. But it
is quite evident that this high British official has no appreciation or
even conception at all of the great problem of race reconciliation in
the bonds of a peaceful Empire, which Austria-Hungary has labored so
honestly and sincerely to solve, and to the solution of which it has
come nearer than any other great state in Europe. And in this great
work the Hapsburg Dynasty has played the leading part. I have often
heard it said that the Emperor Francis
Joseph is the only man in all Austria-Hungary, who can speak to
every subject of the Empire in his own tongue. Through misfortune,
suffering, and sorrow, frequently misunderstood, and at times abused
and maligned, mediating, compromising, conceding, yielding, and
sacrificing, this Grand Old
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Man has worked
on for more than sixty-five years to establish justice and harmony
between the races and tongues and religions of his Empire, and no
higher testimony to the success of his efforts, and those of his House,
could be given than the united uprising of these races in this war for
the defense of the integrity of the Empire and the protection of the
Dynasty which has been its creator and continues to be its chief
cementing bond.
Only in the light of these facts and considerations
can we fully appreciate the magnitude of the crime at Sarajevo as one
involving, in the highest degree, not only the honor but the very
existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Last update: August 10th, 2014
