Note (Back) — Chapter XXIV

504. Restoration of Autocracy.—In Austria and Hungary alike the reaction was complete. In the Empire there had been promulgated, March 4, 1849, a revised constitution; but at no time had it been intended by the sovereign or by those who surrounded him that constitutionalism should be established upon a permanent basis, and during 1850-1851 one step after another was taken in the direction of the revival of autocracy. December 31, 1851, "in the name of the unity of the Empire and of monarchical principles," the constitution was revoked by Imperial patent. At a stroke all of the peoples of the Empire were deprived of their representative rights. Yet so incompletely had the liberal régime struck root that its passing occasioned scarcely a murmur. Except that the abolition of feudal obligations was permanent, the Empire settled back into a status which was almost precisely that of the age of Metternich. Vienna became once more the seat of a government whose fundamental objects may be summarized as (1) to Germanize the Magyars and Slavs, (2) to restrain all agitation in behalf of constitutionalism; and (3) to prevent freedom of thought and the establishment of a free press. Hungary, by reason of her rebellion, was considered to have forfeited utterly the fundamental rights which for centuries had been more or less grudgingly conceded her. She not only lost every vestige of her constitutional system, her diet, her county assemblies, her local self-government; large territories were stripped from her, and she was herself cut into five districts, each to be administered separately, largely by German officials from Vienna. So far as possible, all traces of her historic nationality were obliterated.[653]