Nagy János: Rendi ellenzék és kormánypárt az 1751. évi országgyűlésen - Disszertációk Budapest Főváros Levéltárából 7. (Budapest, 2020)
The opposition of the estates and the loyalists at the Diet of 1750 (summary)
In the last chapters I pay special attention to the relationship between the counties’ deputies and the various groups within the diet, thus I have dedicated an entire chapter respectively to the relationship with the Upper House, the clergy, the deputies of the absent magnates and the deputies of free royal boroughs. The beginning of mutual distrust The Diet of 1751, as documented in the works of earlier historiographers, proved to be a test of endurance for the relationship between the Hungarian estates and Maria Theresa. This is when the cooperation that had characterised the years from 1741 turned into mutual distrust. Among the Maria Theresa’s demands to the diet it was the raising of the taxes that was the most important. While the diet was financially successful for her, because she managed to secure the majority of the tax increase she was seeking, politically it was more of a failure. During the debate the practice of divided sovereignty was called into question - by urging the diet the monarch upset the finetuned tractatus diaetalis, the traditional bargaining process, whereby the estates, in turn, replied by breaking more rules. This experience (and the fact that the urgent reforms failed to materialise) brought about absolutistic solutions on behalf of the government, while on behalf of the estates the idea of appropriating the legislative power of the diet altogether was raised. These political tendencies, however, only reached their peak by the Diet of 1764-65, and it took yet another conflict for the monarch to arrive at governing completely without the participation of the estates, from 1765. Preparations for the diet Both in academic discourse and contemporary public opinion there have been suggestions that Maria Theresa had been preparing for reforms restricting the rights of the estates similar to the Haugwitz Reforms introduced a few years previously in the Hereditary Lands. However, having looked at the resources I can only say that though there had been plans for restricting the tax exemptions of the landed nobility, Maria Therese didn’t intend to introduce profound reforms in the Kingdom of Hungary at the diet, she only wanted to coax the country to take on greater financial burdens than previously. Looking at the preparations for the diet gave me new insights, i.e. the government was keen to exercise control over the counties what with the forthcoming diet. On the one 558
