Clashes with Monarchy 81
doctrine was calculated to appeal to the Magyar nobles. The idea that “intermedi-
ate bodies” should check the power of a king, and that a nobility sensitive to its
honor and installed in a diet or two- chamber parliament should assure the preser-
vation of constitutional liberty, was exactly what the Hungarians already believed.
Confirmation from a famous French political scientist was a great piece of good
fortune.
The diet met in June 1764. The Queen, Maria Theresa, made two important
proposals. First, to pay debts from the late war, and to maintain a regular army in
peacetime, she asked for an increase of taxes of about 1,000,000 florins. The old
“free gift,” she declared, had never been enough. Secondly, she expressed the opin-
ion that under modern military conditions the old Hungarian “insurrection,” a
kind of noble upsurge or militia, was inadequate. She asked that the Hungarians
maintain 30,000 regular troops at their own expense, instead of the insurrection of
80,000; and since the insurrection was an obligation of nobles only, she thought it
reasonable that in getting rid of this obligation the Hungarian nobles should pay
the taxes which replaced it. She thus called into question the tax exemptions en-
joyed by nobles and clergy.
The diet rejected both proposals. Tax exemption and the right or duty of insur-
rection were the marks of noble status in Hungary, privileges to which the nobility
stubbornly clung. Some of the magnates were willing to consider their modifica-
tion; it was the lesser gentry in the lower house that adhered most firmly to the old
order. It may be recalled, to show the class character of this lower house, that this
same diet of 1764 renewed the rule that all the cities represented in the chamber
should exercise only a single vote, the equal of the most obscure county member.
The Queen, to bring pressure, barred entrance into her Life Guard at Vienna to
Hungarians. Since service for a few years in this guard had recently become a cus-
tom for young Hungarian nobles, by which they obtained some courtly and
worldly experience at the metropolis (as well as being exposed to Western ideas
and bound emotionally to the dynasty in their youth), the lower house grudgingly
yielded, and granted 310,000 of the million asked, of which 100,000 was to main-
tain the purely noble Life Guard. Maria Theresa, as usual, compromised. The diet,
while granting a portion of the increase asked, refused any redistribution of the tax
burden. The Queen- Empress, in her final rescript, again urged that the tax burden
be divided between nobles and non- nobles—in vain. The diet also antagonized her
by refusing to grant the indigenat to certain high officials of the empire—office in
Hungary was to be limited to Hungarians, who understood the Hungarian point
of view. The Queen was very dissatisfied. “This diet has taught me to know peo-
ple,” she said. She thought she could rule better without it; no diet met again in
Hungary for twenty- five years.
In summary, in the Hapsburg countries as in France and Sweden, by about the
year 1774 or 1775, the various constituted bodies were under severe pressure from
monarchs. The French King had crushed his parlements, the Swedish King had
forced the Riksdag to accept his authority, the Hapsburg Queen- Empress was ig-
noring her diets of Hungary and Bohemia, and offending the corresponding bod-
ies in Belgium and the Milanese. The diets, estates, parlements, and councils all
stoutly defended liberty, and indeed stood for many genuine liberal ideas; but at