The Sinews of Habsburg Power

Abstract

This book explores the domestic foundations of the immense growth of central European Habsburg power from the rise of a permanent standing army after the Thirty Years War to the end of the Napoleonic wars. With a force that grew in size from around 25,000 soldiers to half a million in the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Habsburg monarchy participated in shifting international constellations of rivalry and in some two dozen armed conflicts. Raising forces of such magnitude constituted a central task of Habsburg government, one that required the cooperation of society and its elites. The monarchy’s composite-territorial structures in the guise of the Lower Austrian Estates—a leading representative body and privileged corps—formed a vital, if changing, element underlying Habsburg international success and resilience. With its capital at Vienna, the archduchy below the river Enns (the historic designation of Lower Austria) was geographically, politically, and financially a key Habsburg possession. Fiscal-military exigency induced the Estates to take part in new and evolving arrangements of power that served the purposes of government; in turn the Estates were able in previously little-understood ways to preserve vital interests in a changing world. The Estates survived because they were necessary, not only thanks to their increasing financial potency but because they offered a politically viable way of exacting ever-larger quantities of money and other resources from local society. These circumstances persisted as ruling became more regularized and formalized, and as the very understanding of the Estates as a social and political phenomenon evolved.

Absolutism and representative government in early modern France and Austria

“…234 As Godsey points out, unlike in France, where the provincial estates had mostly ceased to function except in several peripheral provinces, the Austrian estates "survived in virtually all of the Habsburg monarchy's central lands, as well as further afield." 235 Meetings of the Lower Austrian diet were presided over by the Landmarschall, a member of the noble estate who was appointed by and represented the emperor; at meetings, the Landmarschall would address the estates, explaining what the emperor expected of them. As a member of the estates, he was also expected to pass on the deputies' concerns to the emperor.…”

“…238 Also, in Austria there were no provincial or local corporate bodies like the French parlements and other sovereign courts to compete with the estates for authority, and Austrian government offices, including the judicial ones, were not bought and sold and held as private property as they were in France. 239 By the late seventeenth century, the average annual grant of the Lower Austrian estates was 580,000 florins. In addition, the estates were credit institutions which borrowed money on behalf of the government from individuals and corporations.…”

“…In 1691, Leopold decreed a capitation tax, again without the estates' consent. 242 Winkelbauer writes that the Habsburg monarchs based their actions of levying taxes without the consent of the estates upon Jean Bodin's theory of sovereignty: "It was only the reinterpretation of Bodin by Le Bret and other supporters of royal absolutism under Louis XIII and Louis XIV that concluded that the indivisible legislative sovereignty of the king included his unconditional fiscal power and eliminated the need for any approval of the taxation." 243 In the 1680s, the annual Contribution paid by the Austrian and Bohemian lands totaled less than three million florins.…”

“…The 1748 recess was unprecedented, he writes, because it was such a massive increase of taxation in peacetime; the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle would be signed later that year. 245 The recess of 1748, and additional subsequent reforms, have traditionally been portrayed by historians as a turning point in the history of the Austrian estates, which have been described as "emasculated" and "disempowered," reduced to "ciphers" and "shells," and even as "incorporated" into the state. Recent scholarship has almost completely discredited this interpretation.…”

“…Joseph refused to perform the ceremony of Erbhuldigung, in which the archdukes of Austria were inaugurated and they confirmed the rights and liberties of the Lower Austrian estates, and he ceased to take part in the ceremony in which he gave the annual tax request to the estates, delegating the task to a commissioner. 256 The procedure and the organization of the estates were reformed. However, for the most part, the Austrian estates continued to function as before.…”