With the awakening of the Czech and Slovak national consciousness at the beginning of the 19th century and the frequent crises of the Habsburg ruling circles, the Czech/Bohemians and the Slovaks in Hungary began to pursue their own national liberation and independence, thus beginning the struggle for national independence between the Czech and Slovaks in the mid-19th century......
Czech Revolution of 1848
In January 1848, a revolution broke out in Sicily, Italy. On February 23 of the same year, the government of King Louis Philip (i.e. Louis Philippe I) of France was overthrown, the king was forced to abdicate, barricades appeared on the streets of Paris, and the French proclaimed a republic.
Louis Philippe I
This act of revolutionary violence sparked the uprisings that swept Europe in March, when the masses took over the streets in the hope of changing the social and political status quo. Because these social upheavals occurred in many European capitals at about the same time, the Revolution of 1848 is also known as the Spring of Nations or the Spring of the Peoples.
The Revolution of 1848 was an armed revolution between the plebeians and the aristocracy, mainly the European plebeians and liberal scholars against the monarchy. This series of revolutions spread widely and affected so many countries that it can be said to be the largest revolutionary movement in European history.
1848 Revolution
The revolution was also spurred by these seismic news, and a radical bourgeois group in the Czech Republic, including the famous writers Karel Shabina, Josef Wenceslas Fritsch and Yemanuel Arnold, was inspired by the French Revolution and embraced revolutionary democratic ideas.
And when news of the February events in France reached the Czech Republic, they began to encourage the people to take action. On March 11, 1848, the national organization "Bohemian Appeal" convened an important meeting of the people of Prague in the hall of the Baths of St. Wenceslas in the new city of Prague to discuss the submission of a petition to the Emperor.
February events in France
Founded primarily by middle-class Czechs and Germanic people, the "Bohemian Appeal" aimed to liberate the Bohemian lands from the centralized power of the imperial government, but a small clique of the group preached more radical and democratic ideals.
So, under the leadership of Palacky and the young journalist Karel Havlicek Borowski, the St. Wenceslas Council drafted a petition in March reaffirming the unity of the Bohemian territory and demanding greater autonomy through the Bohemian Local Assembly and the common parliaments representing Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia.
Karel Havlicek Borowski
The petitioners, who were mainly small businessmen, workers and students, indicated the predominance of the popular component, demanded the abolition of all remaining provisions of servitude, the civil equality of Czechs and Germans, and the granting of fundamental freedoms. Later, under pressure from representatives of the bourgeoisie and some aristocratic people, the petition programme eliminated all radical social demands and focused on national demands, such as the use of the Czech language in government offices and schools, and the establishment of Czech self-government institutions.
A delegation was then sent to Vienna to present a petition to the Imperial Government. Although the liberal bourgeoisie of the St. Wenceslas Council were content with the vague promises made to them by Emperor Ferdinand V in his reply to the petition, there was also a revolution in the imperial capital Vienna at this time.
Emperor Ferdinand V
The student-led street demonstrations in Vienna on March 13-15 had already changed the political landscape in the capital: they overthrew the authoritarian regime, forced Prime Minister Metternich to resign, and the emperor promised a constitution, an electoral assembly, and an end to censorship.
Metternich
And after the capital had overthrown Metternich and proclaimed its constitution, the Austrian Imperial Government issued a brief statement promising to grant basic civil rights to all inhabitants and to convene an elected Constituent Assembly. To this end, the March Bill was also introduced by the Hungarian Rajoš Koschut.
Rajosh Koschutte
Compared to the Hungarian demands, the Czechs' petition was mild. The Czech delegation returned to Prague on 27 March, but its efforts were rarely fruitful. Two days later, the delegation came up with a new petition: it demanded a government representing the unified territory of the Bohemian crown, which should be elected.
The delegation then sent a revised petition to Vienna, and the Reich Government postponed discussions on the unification of the Crown until the next meeting in July, although the Reich Government had otherwise agreed to the Czech demands for a common parliament, a secession of the Bohemian administration, and equality between the Czechs and the Germans.
For many Germanic merchant Bohemians, however, the goal was not the political unification of Bohemia, but the inclusion of Bohemia and Austria within a unified German state. So in mid-May, while the government was deliberating on the constitution, demonstrations broke out again on the streets of Vienna.
As a result, the Government announced that an elected parliament would take on the task of drafting the document, and the Reich Government would leave Vienna for Innsbruck on 17 May. And in Bohemia, negotiations on elections and a provisional government led to a split between the moderate middle-class liberals, led by Palacky, and the equally radical students and artisans sympathetic to the radicals on the streets of Vienna.
In fact, the revolutionary movement in Bohemia was long ago confined to Prague: in the countryside the serfs refused to perform forced labor and contributions, and in some places the serfs even took the land from their masters. Although these actions were not awakened by radical democrats, the liberal bourgeoisie transformed the entire movement into a struggle for national independence.
The German bourgeoisie, on the other hand, intended to create a Greater German Empire, in which the Czech territories would be included in the territory of the empire, so that the tradition of the "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation" could be inherited. In this way, the whole revolutionary movement was divided into two camps: the Czech bloc and the German bloc.
Palacky was then invited to represent Bohemia at the Preparatory Committee of the Frankfurt Parliament, which Palacky declined on 11 April in a lengthy statement in which he declared his loyalty to the Habsburg Empire, declaring that as a Bohemian and then a Slav, he could not accept any connection between Bohemia and the German lands except as a result of a personal connection between the rulers.
Palacky recognized the role of Bohemia in the former Holy Roman Empire, but insisted that as a separate people from the Germanic peoples, the Czechs should not be part of the process of German unification, and that Austria and Bohemia could not be disintegrated in the name of a united Germany.
Palatsky
In response, Palacky and other Czech leaders decided to rebel against the interests of the Germans and the Frankfurt Parliament, and they hosted a congress of Slavs in Prague in the hope of promoting cooperation among the Slavic peoples within the Austrian Empire. This meeting was held from June 2 to 11, 1848.
Prague Revolution
The manifesto drawn up at the Congress of Slavs was written by Palatsky, who demanded the reorganization of the empire into a federation in which the rights and freedoms of all peoples were respected. The document condemned the oppression of the Slavs by the Germanic peoples and ended with a French-style demand for freedom, equality and fraternity for all peoples.
Palatsky
At the same time, the Austrian general Wendishgradz (Prince Alfred von Wendisschretz) was also ordered to "maintain order", but Wendishgradz was an overtly reactionary believer who could not be accepted even by Czech liberals, and his arrival was seen as a final provocation. Soon there was a clash between his army and the revolutionary movement in Prague, which then developed into the Prague Uprising of June 12-17, 1848!
Prince Alfred von Wendisch Gratz
On 12 June, the revolution broke out in the streets of Prague, and after a special celebratory rally in St. Wenceslas Square, university students, workers and artisans set up barricades and clashed with the troops of Wendish Gradez. As a result of the instigation of the Congress of Slavs and radical speakers and pamphlets, the students and their allies demanded a revolution in the name of an independent Czech Republic.
Since many fortifications had already been set up in the city to defend against the Austrians, a bloody battle broke out here, and the Bohemian military governor Wendisz Grytz mobilized troops and artillery into the key points around Prague and ordered the artillery to bombard the city in an attempt to disperse the radicals who had presided over the mass meetings and demonstrations before June 12 in one operation.
Wendish Glaze
About 1,200 Prague citizens and 500 militiamen confronted 10,000 soldiers under the command of Wendish Glaze. The first to appear next to the fortifications were workers, students and craftsmen, but the liberals and the Civil Defence (the armed organization of the free citizens) disappointed the people.
Many liberal political commentators have had a bad effect by discouraged revolutionary means, but by coaxing their readers into the false expectation of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. There were also riots in many of the provinces. Armed support teams organized by the urban and rural proletariat rushed to Prague to the rescue, but they were intercepted and eliminated by the Imperial troops on the way.
Wendish Glaze
And after several days of skirmishes on the streets of the Old Town and the New Town, Wendish Gléz withdrew his troops from the city and began shelling the Old City from the Hradčani Heights. At the same time, the efforts of Palacky and the moderates to stop the violence were unsuccessful, and the radicals were apparently unable to agitate the peasants to participate in the national uprising.
Palatsky
On 17 June, after several days of shelling the city surrendered, Wendish Glaze imposed martial law to suppress it, ordering the arrest of the leader of the uprising. With the fall of Prague, the Bohemian revolution came to an end, and the National Council and the Slavic Congress ceased to exist......
Eventually, the Slavic Council was disbanded, and the revolt was bloodily suppressed. Be that as it may, it proves that the revolutionary spirit of the Czech people was not extinguished by the Habsburgs, who decided to use force against their oppressors!
Although the Viennese government took full advantage of its victorious situation by taking the opportunity to cancel the Czech parliamentary elections that had been prepared, allowing only participation in the elections of the Reichstag and dissolving the National Council, it did not dare to provoke the masses too much. The Viennese government recalled Wendish Glaze and did not deal with the leaders of the uprising too harshly afterwards.
Wendish Glaze
At this time, even the Habsburg government felt that if it was to remain in power, there were many problems to be solved. The most pressing of these problems was the question of serfdom and servitude, which was the most dissatisfied aspect of the countryside. So on September 7, 1848, the Austrian parliament passed a bill proposed by Hans Kudlich, a member of the German left-liberal parliament, according to which serfdom and all monetary and in-kind tributes were abolished.
Thanks to the vote of the Czech liberal deputies, the forced servitude system was subsequently abolished, subject to compensation: the peasants were liable for the debts they had bought over the next few years. The feudal lords thus obtained the capital they needed and turned their semi-feudal estates into capitalist enterprises. But the parliament did not fulfill its most important task: the promulgation of the constitution......
In August 1848, Ferdinand and the Reich government returned to Vienna at the invitation of the Reichstag convened on 22 July, as Wendish Glez's victories in Bohemia and Radetzky's victory in northern Italy had shifted the tide in favor of the counter-revolution. The following month, the Austrians, in coordination with the Croatian army led by Baron Josip Jelačić, invaded Hungary in an attempt to suppress the "legitimate revolution" of Koschute and the Hungarians.
Josip Jelačic
And when the Hungarians tried to bring their case to the Reichstag, the Czechs led the majority that refused the request for a hearing. However, the radicals in Vienna supported the cause of Hungarian autonomy and even independence, and on October 6 the authorities tried to send the Vienna Military Guard to fight the Hungarians, they organized a protest.
In October 1848, another revolution took place in Vienna, and as the city fell into chaos, the emperor and his court fled from Vienna again, and the parliament moved to the Moravian city of Kromäritz. Only a very small number of radical democratic parliamentarians remained, and most of the Czech right-wing deputies fled with them to Kromäritz, where they took a stand against the revolution in Vienna.
The representatives of Czech liberalism always believed that the interests of the Czech nation coincided with those of the dynasty and the emperor, and they thought that service to the Habsburgs could be exchanged for recognition of the rights of the Czech nation. They failed to see that the interests of the Czech nation were inextricably linked to the revolutionary movement.
At this time, Wendish Glaze and the army were fighting the radicals in the streets, and at the end of the month they regained control of the imperial capital. Due to the uncertainty of the situation in Vienna, Ferdinand relocated the Imperial Assembly to Kroměříž in Moravia, where deliberations on the constitution continued in November. Eventually, however, both the Reichstag and the Constitution fell victim to a failed revolution as the new executive tried to revoke the reforms granted during the months of the revolution.
Wendish Glaze
On 27 November 1848, Wendishgrad's brother-in-law, Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, assumed the duties of Prime Minister, with Rudolf Stadion as Minister of the Interior and Alexander Bach as Minister of Justice. The empire then underwent a transfer of monarchical power on 2 December, with Ferdinand I abdicating in favor of his nephew, Franz Joseph I.
Before the Reichstag could approve even a relatively robust new constitution, Franz Joseph I dissolved the Krommeliz Parliament. Without the consent of the National Assembly, the emperor promulgated a separate and fragmented "King James Constitution" in its place.
Franz Joseph I
So for the Czechs, the "National Spring" of 1848-1849 ended with the arrest and trial of the radicals, and the Czechs finally recognized the fact that the policy of cooperation with the imperial authorities failed to produce any meaningful results for the Czech nationalists!
The Czech leadership is the only exception to the likes of Karel Havlicek, who will continue to fight for civil liberties and liberal reforms!
Karel Havlicek
Arrested in December 1851 and exiled to Tyrol, Austria, for many years, and upon his return to Prague in 1855, Havlicek died of tuberculosis on July 29, 1856, and was revered by many Czech nationalists as a martyr for his cause......
1848 Slovakia
At the same time as the Czechs were carrying out the national revolution in 1848, the Slovaks in Hungary were not idle: on March 3 Rajos Koschte spoke in the Hungarian parliament in Bratislava, and his demands soon became the nucleus of the March Act presented to Emperor Ferdinand.
Rajosh Koschutte
Koschute demanded liberal social reforms, such as the abolition of servitude, and Koschute and other liberals in parliament demanded a parliament elected by male property holders and a cabinet in which ministers would report directly to elected subjects. Hungary will manage its own diplomatic relations and army.
The leaders of the Slovak national movements, such as Sztur, Khoja and Kurban, tried to mobilize support for the petition submitted to the Hungarian administration. On 28 March 1848, a meeting of Slovak nationalists produced a modest petition for permission to teach in the Slovak language in primary schools in areas with a majority Slovak-speaking population.
Shtur
The Imperial government, plagued by the Vienna Revolution, had no choice but to allow the Emperor to visit parliament in Pressburg in April and pass the March Act. The new Hungarian government took immediate action to abolish the duty of servitude for the peasants who held the land, and introduced a series of civil liberties.
But for the Slovaks, Koschut and other Hungarian leaders were not interested in giving similar rights to Hungarian non-Magyars, so Slovak leaders convened a larger meeting on May 10-11 in Liptowski Mikulaš in northern Slovakia.
Koschute
After more time to prepare, Curban, Stefan Marko Daksner, and other Slovak nationalists drew up a list of 14 demands, the "Demands of the Slovak Nation," calling for the abolition of serfdom, land ownership, and the establishment of a system of civil liberties, including freedom of the press.
The petition also proposes the reorganization of the Kingdom of Hungary into a federation based on ethnic equality, with each ethnic group having a regional parliament through universal adult suffrage and equal suffrage. The united Hungarian parliament would connect all the nationalities, while the autonomous Slovak nation would receive the right to use the Slovak language as the language of education and administration, to retain the militia with the Slovak officer formation, and to add the red and white colors of the Slovak nation to the Hungarian flag.
The Hungarian ministers reacted to the Slovak petition by ordering the arrest of Shtur, Khoja and Hulban, and Kurban left northern Hungary in an attempt to negotiate with other Slavs. Štur served as the unofficial representative of the Slovak nation to the Congress of Slavs in Prague.
Shtur
In mid-July, Koschute and the Hungarian parliament allocated salaries to a new Hungarian army, Honvéd, which had achieved an initial victory against Jelačić's army. As the conflict continued, Stur, Khoja, Hulban and others also created the Slovak National Council, which set about creating a fighting force of about 600 volunteers, mainly students, under the command of two Czech officers.
On 19 September, the Slovak National Council declared Slovakia's independence from Hungary and demanded a national uprising in support of the volunteer forces that were fighting the Hungarians at this time. Despite their poor equipment and lack of organized support and supplies, the Slovak volunteers and their foreign comrades defeated the Hungarians at Brezova on 22 September, and then prepared to cooperate with them upon the arrival of the troops sent by the Imperial Government.
The Hungarian authorities classified the Slovak leaders as traitors and deprived them of their citizenship while imposing a policy of revenge on them with mass arrests and executions. The Slovak leadership met with the Emperor in Olomouc on March 20, 1849, and demanded the creation of an autonomous Slovakia, with a parliament and an administrative body directly linked to the imperial government in Vienna.
On 4 April, Koschute and the local council announced the end of Habsburg rule in Hungary, and Koschute became the head of state of an independent Hungarian state. And the declaration of Slovak loyalty to the emperor brought Austrian aid, and the newly created Slovak National Army was thrown into battle with Hun Wade and the partisans operating on Slovak soil.
Koschute
In early June, opposition to the reform ordered 100,000 Russian soldiers to enter Hungary, and a smaller force into Transylvania, making the battle unwinnable for the Hungarians. Thus Hungary surrendered to the Russians at Vlogos on 11 August, ending the period of revolution and war.
Tsar Nicholas I
For the Slovaks, they were granted the right to have administrative bodies and to use the Slovak language in primary schools and administrative affairs, but the dream of a self-governing Slovakia did not become a reality, and the desire of many to fight for that goal was disappointed.
Many Slovak leaders finally understood the fact that neither the conservative Magyar aristocracy nor the peasants had supported the national struggle of 1848-1849! Disillusioned with the Hungarians and Czechs, the Slovak leaders now had no reason to trust the imperial administration in the pursuit of the Slovak national project.
The revolutionary struggle in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1848-1849 came to an end, and although neither the Czechs nor the Slovaks were able to achieve complete independence in the "National Spring", it also sowed the seeds for the future struggle for national independence, and a new struggle would spread across the German land......