296 Chapter XII
The spirit shown in this document and in others, more the spirit of a Mau Mau
rebellion than of the French peasant revolts of 1789, naturally spread terror in
Hungary. Where in France, in August 1789, the Assembly pacified the peasants,
and avoided appeal to the army, by enacting the August decrees for the “abolition
of feudalism,” no such concessions, or any concessions, came from the diet at Bu-
dapest in 1790. Given the composition of the diet, concession to dangerously en-
raged serfs was scarcely possible. At war with its own people, the diet was in a
weak position against the king. An army of peasant soldiers would be poor defend-
ers of the famous Hungarian constitution. Class struggle made impossible any suc-
cessful revolution in Hungary.
The internal or purely parliamentary politics of the diet, though significant, was
therefore somewhat unrealistic. Since the nobles were numerous and divided, the
small gentry being opposed to the magnates, and since the towns sent deputies
who could speak, though restricted in voting, and since Hungarians were by no
means unacquainted with ideas of the European Enlightenment, two parties or
groupings formed in the preparation of the new Diploma to be presented to Leo-
pold before his coronation. One group wanted things as they always had been.
Another, accused of susceptibility to French ideas, wanted diets in the future to
meet in a single house only, the King to have only a suspensive veto for three diets,
a civic oath by all persons including clergy to uphold the constitution, a national
army, and a national guard. These ideas were in fact inspired by the example of
France, as were some of the arguments. It was to have “one country, one law, one
public good” that an upper chamber of higher nobles and prelates was to be abol-
ished. The contrary argument was ancient long before the French Revolution: that
“without a nobility we shall all be brothers and Quakers.”^18
Then on August 15, 1790, Budapest learned that Leopold was moving eleven
regiments of Austrian soldiers into Hungary. His aim was to impress the diet and
to quell the peasants. It was one of the steps (followed by the sending of troops to
Belgium the next December) by which he restored his authority in his shattered
empire. On the news of the troop movement, the two factions in the diet came to
a speedy compromise. They submitted a Diploma to Leopold, which he refused to
accept. He offered, and they accepted, the Diploma which Maria Theresa had ne-
gotiated in 1740, favorable to the Hungarian political classes and abrogating most
of Joseph’s edicts, but with a few modifications, as will be seen, in favor of the
peasants.
The peasant problem, the problem of serfdom, of the relation between the lord
and his labor in the remotest villages, or, conversely, the relation of government with
its subjects, was the fundamental issue underlying constitutional and political argu-
ment throughout the empire. The diets advanced an array of reasons for the neces-
sity of forced labor and personal subjection. Their view of the qualities of European
white men five or six generations ago will remind Americans of views heard nearer
home in other connections. The picture they drew was probably not wholly mis-
taken, given the unfortunate history of the East European peasantry for three cen-
turies before 1790; but they did not propose anything that would improve it.
18 From a seminar paper prepared by Mr. Sugar.