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)

failures. Also, I include examples of confessional affiliation-driven political conduct transcending the motivations of individual gains (fishing for positions), as seen in the case of Gábor Prónay or József Darvas, the patron-client relationships, and the significance of regionality in the case of a client of the Károlyi and Csáky families respectively (Szuhányi Márton, Tiszta Pál). For the Protestant patron-nobles the diets in Pozsony were always a good occasion to hand over the list of their grievances to the monarch - if not at the actual diet, but at least outside it. They were in a worse bargaining positions than previously, but the handing over of these pleas created opportunities for gaining favours for their denominations, or even for individual gains (c.f. the careers of József Darvas and Gábor Prónay). I paid special analytical attention to the now almost proverbial oppositional status of the 13 north-eastern counties (along the upper Tisza) as well as the special political and social conditions of this region. When we examine the delegating process of the two Transdanubian counties, Baranya and Vas, we can see beside the efforts of their deputies, they also badly needed the help of their court-appointed lord-lieutenants at the diet, who could use their leverage and authority to try to control the amount of tax expected from their respective counties.

The divided and loyal Upper House

The sporadic sources referring to the Upper House (pasquilles, private letters and court ceremonial documents) reveal a fierce fight for prestige and positions. Presumambly the House in 1751 was divided by ‘jealousy and factions’, as cabinet secretary Koch describes it. This phrase refers partly to the fight for posts, ranks and titles among the aristocratic families like the Batthiánys, Esterházys, Erdődys and Barkóczy-Károlyis, and partly it reflects the monarch’s intention to gain the loyalty and pay for the favours of the magnate families by handing out titles like ‘chamberlain’ and ‘councillor’. Very few really personal utterances of the leading aristocrats have survived from the time of the diet, but thanks to a handful of ego-documents from roughly the same period, we can get an idea about their outlook. Even though they supported the tax increases in all cases, at this point they were all yet firmly opposed to the reforms concerning the privileges of the nobility.

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