Századok – 2019
2019 / 6. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Deák Ágnes: Konzervatív kiegyezési kísérlet 1863 tavaszán
KONZERVATÍV KIEGYEZÉSI KÍSÉRLET 1863 TAVASZÁN 1268 A CONSERVATIVE ATTEMPT AT COMPROMISE IN THE SPRING OF 1863 by Ágnes Deák SUMMARY In the spring of 1863, Emperor Francis Joseph I ordered the Hungarian chancellor, Count Antal Forgách, to submit a compromise proposal that would settle the constitutional situation of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire. The program drafted by the chancellor was hotly disputed in the council of ministers during March, while state minister Anton Schmerling firmly stood by the basic principles of the constitution of February 1861, which favoured imperial centralisation, and rejected all forms of compromise. Eventually, the Emperor ordered the compromise proposals to be shelved, an edict which was equal to the victory of Schmerling. The proposals of the chancellor, aimed at conciliation regarding the maintenance of imperial unity with the Hungarian claims to constitutional separatism, have long been known of and profoundly analysed by historical scholarship. So far, however, little was known about the history behind the plan’s elaboration and about the Hungarian “magnates’ conference” that took place from January 1863 in Vienna. Based on the diaries of Vince Szent-Ivány, one of the backstage protagonists of the story, the present paper reconstructs the personal relations and conflicts among the Hungarian conservative personalities then staying in Vienna, as well as the circumstances among which the proposal subsequently submitted was conceived, and the dominant role of the ruler in the process.
