IV.

The Heyday of the System

For 20 years or so after 1867 the empire enjoyed a measure of security at home and security abroad. Calm at last prevailed in Hungary under the firm hand of Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza, even though his “1867” party of Liberals loyal to the Compromise remained implacable in its hostility towards those inhabitants of the kingdom who refused to adopt Magyar culture; and Austria experienced a period of reform and prosperity under German Liberal governments (1867-1879) that were followed by the Iron Ring—a coalition of conservative, aristocratic, clerical, and Slav elements, under Francis Joseph’s childhood friend, Count Eduard Taaffe, who strove with some success to keep the nationalities “in a balanced state of dissatisfaction”. (The Compromise, an agreement between the king and the Magyars, did not establish the political supremacy of any particular national group in Cisleithania.)

By 1871 the empire’s foreign problems had been simplified by its retreat from Italy and Germany, and its main concern was henceforth to maintain control of its markets, retain its status as a Great Power in the Near East, and above all to prevent the growth of expansionist nation states beyond its borders that might lay claim to its South Slav or Romanian territories. This danger would, of course, only become real if such states could secure the support of another Great Power that could defeat the Imperial and Royal Army; and in their efforts to forestall such a fatal combination Habsburg statesmen showed a high degree of flexibility and ingenuity in adapting themselves to the changing international situation over 40 years after the Compromise settlement. War, given the empire’s relative weakness and Francis Joseph’s experiences in the 1850s and 1860s, was definitely not seen as a desirable option; and the Magyars, at times the most bellicose and anti-Russian of his subjects, never managed to influence Austro-Hungarian foreign policy in that direction. In the 1870s and 1880s Francis Joseph’s foreign ministers manoeuvred successfully between several available options. They joined blocs of like-minded powers to resist Russian attempts to control Balkan states—as with Great Britain at the Congress of Berlin (1878), where Austria-Hungary secured, in the form of occupation rights in Bosnia, a guarantee against the formation of a big Serbian state on its southern borders; and the Mediterranean Entente of 1887 with Britain and Italy, supported briefly even by Germany. They concluded defensive alliances against direct Russian attack (with Germany in 1879 and Romania in 1883); they concluded alliances to neutralize and influence potential troublemakers (with Serbia in 1881, Italy—the Triple Alliance—in 1882, and Romania in 1883); and they even managed to reach agreements with Russia itself that helped to stabilize the Balkan situations for several years (the Three Emperors’ League of 1873-1878; and the Three Emperors Alliance of 1881-1887). By all these devices the empire managed to achieve security short of war.