298 Chapter XII
said the Moravian count Poteani, was stirred up by agitators and outsiders. It was
outrageous for revolutionary scribblers to refer to compulsory labor as slavery.
At one time, in the Bohemian diet, the remarks on the vulgar and slovenly Bo-
hemian character became so extreme that a few members, mainly nobles who were
Czechs themselves, took offense that “part of the nation” should be so insulted.
Most of the diet was puzzled to hear peasants called part of the nation. The epi-
sode was significant, for the truth is that in Bohemia and Hungary, as in Galicia
and the part of Poland that was still independent, the “nation” did mean the politi-
cal nation of nobles and gentry. It should be added that men who worked for the
imperial government, from Joseph and Leopold down through the central admin-
istration, consistently denied that the peasants were as bad as they were said to be
by their own lords.
Leopold II, in the two years of his reign, managed at least to hold the Hapsburg
empire together. Most of Joseph’s reforms he was obliged to repeal. He yielded on
all fronts to the aristocratic demand for constitutional liberties. Only in detail
could he maintain parts of the reforms in which he really believed. On the peasant
question the most that he could obtain was a compromise. The estates accepted
Joseph’s abolition of Leibeigenschaft in 1781, and the peasant remained free in law
to change his place of residence or his occupation. But Joseph’s decree of February
1789 was rescinded. Peasants who stayed on the land, as most of them did until the
industrial era, remained subject to forced labor and corporal punishment until the
revolution of 1848. The compromise greatly favored the landlords. Enlightened
despotism in the Austrian empire was over. Aristocracy, estates rights, states rights,
traditional constitutions, and constituted bodies had prevailed.
This outcome has often been ascribed to fear of the French Revolution, and pre-
sented as one phase of a European reaction to that event. In this view the violence
of the French Revolution is seen as a cause, or even a justification, for a conservative
resurgence throughout Europe. It seems more likely that, while the revolution in
France heightened feeling on all sides, causes native to the Hapsburg empire are
enough to explain the failure of Joseph II. Had Joseph lived, he could have done
only as Leopold did. Effects of the French Revolution became more evident a little
later, after the war began and the French monarchy was overthrown. Meanwhile the
course of revolution in France was affected by the state of the Hapsburg empire. The
disaffection of peasant soldiers did not strengthen the Hapsburg armies in the War
of the First Coalition, and the eleven regiments that were kept in Hungary were
unavailable for use against France. The warlike Magyars, like the peaceful Dutch,
lacked enthusiasm for the monarchist crusade of 1792; not until 1797 did Hungar-
ian volunteer forces appear in the field against the French Republic.
It is said also, in what may be called the school of the history of ideas, that Jo-
seph was a pure rationalist engaged in a vain attempt to change the realities of the
world. His reign, says Professor Valsecchi, was a war of reason against history, and
it was the vendetta della storia, the revenge of history, that destroyed his work. To
me it seems that something tougher than history was against him.^24
24 If we are wary of the philosophical conservatism in Valsecchi’s view, Assolutismo, I, 138, which
sees Joseph in terms of il regno della ragione and the vendetta della storia, we can derive even less satis-