78 Chapter IV
a moderate freedom of the press. A few years were to show that the Swedish nobil-
ity were not satisfied with the new arrangements. The next decade was to see an
aristocratic resurgence in Sweden as elsewhere. Meanwhile, however, all seemed to
pass by general acclamation. The Freedom Era was over. The country accepted its
new royal leader with relief.
In France, there was quite a vogue for what they called the “revolution” in Swe-
den, soon eclipsed by more unbounded excitement over the revolution in the
American colonies.
THE HAPSBURG EMPIREThe monarchy of Vienna was a kind of vast holding company, under which a great
many subsidiary corporate structures remained much alive. There were the estates
of the several provinces of the Austrian Netherlands, the area of the modern
Belgium- Luxembourg without Liège. They represented not only the clergy and
the nobility of the provinces, but also certain gild interests and certain of the Bel-
gian cities to the exclusion of others. There were the various overlapping magistra-
cies of Milan monopolized by the Milanese patricians. And, to omit lesser organi-
zations, there were the diets of Bohemia and of Hungary, where town interests had
been silenced and the landowning nobility and gentry entirely prevailed. The
Hapsburg government was in continual conflict with these bodies, though in the
1760’s and 1770’s no such acute crisis developed as in France or Sweden.
It is necessary to emphasize, since after the revolutionary era it became so dif-
ferent, that for half a century before 1790 the Hapsburg government was one of
the most enlightened in Europe, as enlightenment was then understood. Martini
and Sonnenfels, professors at the University of Vienna, had great influence in af-
fairs of state. Theirs was the pure teaching of enlightened absolutism. “A prince is
the creator of his State,” wrote Sonnenfels; “he can establish and develop in it what
he wants, if only he takes the right measures.”^18 Ministers and administrators under
Maria Theresa were zealous reformers. They had to be, if the monarchy was to
survive at all. In the Succession War half the Bohemian nobles had collaborated
openly with the French, when the French, occupying Prague, had attempted to set
up Bohemia as an independent kingdom. In 1749, therefore, after restoring her
authority, Maria Theresa had annulled the Bohemian charter and greatly cut down
the powers of the Bohemian diet. The Bohemian nobles, one of whose grievances
was the attempt of the Hapsburg government to build up legal protection for the
peasants against them, complained repeatedly of the loss of their local rights.
Maria Theresa, strongly backed by Prince Kaunitz and her other advisers, refused
concessions. Kaunitz wrote to her in 1763:^19
“I am a Bohemian myself, and have lands in Moravia. If I considered only my
own interests I would agree with those who wish to bring the nobility and the es-
tates more to the forefront than they now are, or let them play a role in the central
18 Quoted by E. Denis, La Bohème depuis la Montague Blanche, 2 vols. (Paris, 1903), I, 513.
19 Quoted by A. von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresas, VII, 30–31.