Thursday, August 13, 2026

The Development of the Relationship between Peasant and Lord of the Manor in Galicia: 1772–1848, by Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises’s study traces the transformation of relations between landlords and peasants in Galicia from the province’s annexation by Austria in 1772 to the abolition of feudal obligations in 1848. He begins by describing the deeply unequal agrarian order inherited from the Polish Commonwealth, in which most peasants were bound to the soil, lacked secure ownership of the land they cultivated, owed extensive corvée labor and other dues, and possessed little effective legal protection against their landlords. Manorial authorities exercised economic, administrative, and judicial powers, making the estate resemble a small state controlled by the landowner. Austrian rule gradually challenged this arrangement by bringing landlords and peasants under a stronger central administration and introducing early protections against abuses.

The most ambitious changes came under Joseph II. His reforms attacked hereditary subjection, restricted peasant obligations, strengthened peasants’ rights to their holdings, reorganized manorial administration, and attempted to replace compulsory labor services with monetary payments. The Corvée Patent of 1786 became a central foundation of Galicia’s rural constitution, while subsequent measures gave peasants increasingly secure, eventually hereditary, rights to the land they occupied. Joseph’s broader tax and urbarial reform sought to dismantle the economic foundations of corvée-based manorial agriculture, but resistance from the nobility, practical difficulties, and political changes after his death led to the abandonment of the most sweeping measures. For much of the first half of the nineteenth century, therefore, Galicia remained caught between the surviving manorial system and a state bureaucracy that continued to regulate and limit it.

The crisis of 1846 exposed how unstable this compromise had become. Peasant unrest and conflict between rural subjects and the Polish landowning class persuaded Austrian officials that further regulation of corvée obligations would not resolve the underlying problem; an attempted urbarial settlement dissatisfied both peasants and landlords. After the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, the government moved to abolish the relationship altogether: an April 1848 decree ended all corvée and other subject services in Galicia effective May 15, with compensation provisions for landlords. Mises concludes that the old agrarian constitution disappeared not simply because it violated abstract principles of freedom, but because it had become incompatible with changing economic conditions. Emancipation removed the legal structure of serfdom and compulsory labor, yet it did not by itself end rural poverty or economic dependence, and Mises cautions against blaming the later difficulties of the Galician peasantry on the emancipation settlement itself.

Vienna Political Science Studies
edited by
Edmund Bernatzik and Eugen von Philippovich
in Vienna.

Volume Four. Issue Two.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MANORIAL-PEASANT RELATIONSHIP IN GALICIA

(1772-1848).

By
LUDWIG VON MISES.

Vienna and Leipzig.
FRANZ DEUTICKE
1902.

Preface.

The present work, which was written in the period from Easter 1901 to Easter 1902 at the suggestion and under the direction of my esteemed teacher, Professor Dr. Karl Grünberg, in his seminar at the University of Vienna, aims to present the development of the manorial-peasant relationship in Galicia from the time of the unification of this land with Austria (1772) to the emancipation of the land (1848). In doing so, both because of the diversity of the sources and for substantive reasons, the agrarian legislation of the Republic of Krakow, whose territory came to Austria in 1846, had to be excluded and reserved for a separate work.

In my search for materials, I encountered friendly cooperation in the archives and libraries. I feel obliged to express my special thanks to Prelate Dr. Karl Schrauf, Imperial and Royal Section Councilor in the House, Court, and State Archives; Government Councilor Dr. Thomas Fellner, Imperial and Royal Archive Director, Lecturer Dr. Heinrich Kretschmayr, Imperial and Royal Archivist, and Dr. Franz Wilhelm, Imperial and Royal Archive Drafter in the Ministry of the Interior; Dr. Franz Kreyczi, Imperial and Royal Archivist in the Court Chamber Archives.

Above all, however, allow me to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Dr. Karl Grünberg, who supported me in my work in the most gracious manner.

Vienna, August 1902.

The Author.

Table of Contents.
Page
Foreword III
Table of Contents V
Introduction 1
§ 1. Galicia 1
§ 2. Overview of the development of peasant conditions in Poland up to the first partition 2
§ 3. The rural constitution of Galicia in the 18th century. (I. Subjection.) 9
§ 4. The rural constitution of Galicia in the 18th century. (II. The manorial authority.) 15
§ 5. The rural constitution of Galicia in the 18th century. (III. The subject classes and their property rights.) 20
§ 6. The rural constitution of Galicia in the 18th century. (IV. Corvée labor.) 24
§ 7. A look at the state’s position on the peasant question in Poland and in Austria 28
Chapter One: Peasant conditions in the first years of Austrian rule 31
§ 1. The organization of the administration in its effect on the rural constitution 31
§ 2. Beginnings of rural worker protection 36
Chapter Two: The Josephine reforms 42
§ 1. The abolition of serfdom 42
§ 2. The regulation of subject obligations 46
§ 3. Measures to improve subject property rights 56
§ 4. The Raab system 69
§ 5. Reform of the manorial office 71
§ 6. The tax and urbarial regulation 74
Chapter Three: The post-Josephine era 79
§ 1. The repeal of the tax and urbarial regulation 79
§ 2. Reforms and attempted reforms in the post-Josephine era 88
§ 3. The manorial-peasant relationship in the first half of the nineteenth century 93
Chapter Four: The uprising of 1846 and its consequences 101
§ 1. On the background of the uprising 101
§ 2. The subject question at the Diet 106
§ 3. The outbreak of the uprising and the government’s measures 111
§ 4. The extraordinarily empowered Court Commission 120
§ 5. The implementation of the urbarial regulation 129
Chapter Five: The emancipation of the land 133
List of files and publications used 139

Introduction.

§ 1. Galicia1.

In the first partition of Poland (1772), apart from the Zips, an area of 1,420.5 Austrian square miles with a population of around 2,600,000 souls fell to Austria. These were parts of the Voivodeships of Krakow, Sandomierz, Lublin, Volhynia, and Podolia, then the Voivodeships of Belz and Red Ruthenia, the Land of Halych, a part of the Land of Chelm, and the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator. In the historical development and administrative division of Poland, this area had not formed a self-contained whole. Only after its incorporation into Austria, which was officially designated as a revindication, did it receive the name Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, reviving historical reminiscences of the former principalities of Halych and Vladimir.

Galicia in the sense of 1772 does not entirely coincide with present-day Galicia. For it still included the territory of Zamość (77.77 square miles), which was ceded to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in the Treaty of Schönbrunn in 1809. In contrast, the territory of Krakow (21.33 square miles) was only definitively united with Austria in 1846.

When an area of 883.4 square miles came to Austria in the third partition of Poland in 1795, the newly acquired province was called West Galicia (also New Galicia), and the longer-occupied one East Galicia (also Old Galicia). After the retrocession of West Galicia (1809), the designation Galicia came back into use for the territory in question. If West Galicia is still spoken of today in contrast to East Galicia, this only refers to the western part of the country (situated on the left bank of the San) in contrast to the eastern part.

The latter and the former had always been separated ethnographically as well as politically, and the administrative bifurcation of the country, as it existed from 1849 to 1867, was entirely justified. The left bank of the San had always been inhabited by Poles, while Little Russians (Ruthenians) lived on the right bank. Once, the Little Russians had formed an independent, powerful state on a relatively high level of culture. Only in the second half of the fourteenth century did they join Poland, which had just become the most powerful state in the European northeast through its union with Lithuania. However, the political community was only able to denationalize the upper classes of the Ruthenian people. The peasants managed to preserve their nationality and their faith even under Polish rule. Even today, there is a sharp contrast between the West of Galicia, inhabited by Roman Catholic Poles, and the predominantly Ruthenian and Greek Catholic East, a contrast that is also expressed in the economy.

§ 2. Overview of the development of peasant conditions in Poland up to the first partition.

In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the situation of the Polish peasants was quite favorable.

The terrible Tatar invasions, which had plagued Poland since 1241, had depopulated the already sparsely inhabited country. If the state was ever to recover from this severe blow, foreign forces had to be called in to help. Given how things were in Germany at the time, it was not difficult to persuade numerous German peasants to leave their homeland. Thus, since the second half of the thirteenth century, flocks of German settlers poured into Poland.

The immigration was primarily directed toward the newly founded cities. But a significant portion of the colonists also went to the flat countryside, where the king, the church, and secular large landowners welcomed them with open arms. For the Germans transformed desolate, uncultivated land into fertile fields. They brought with them a more perfect technique of agriculture, which increased the yield of the soil and significantly raised the incomes of the landlords. They therefore strove to establish as many German villages as possible on their estates, and to endow the already existing Polish ones with German law2.

Magdeburg Law, with which the overwhelming majority of these villages were endowed, was a city law and intended for the needs of large communities engaged in trade and commerce. Nevertheless, it proved to be excellent in its application to peasant settlements. At the head of every community stood the Schultheiß (scultetus, Pol. sołtys). He was the leader or, more accurately, the entrepreneur of the village foundation. He had been granted privileges by the landlord. He had selected the settlers in Germany and brought them to the site. Under his direction, the forest had been cleared, the arable land surveyed, and distributed among the peasants.

For his efforts, the Schulze was richly rewarded. He received several hides (Hufen) in the newly founded village as hereditary property, with the right attached to the estate, which was simultaneously a duty, to dispense justice to the community. Furthermore, he owned all the land in the fields that had not been distributed among the colonists (extremitates agrorum, alias obszary, ubi cmethones non possunt locari), then the village marketplace (vilagium, Pol. nawsie), as well as meadows and gardens. He had the right to settle gardeners, cottagers, craftsmen, and even peasants on his lands, as well as the right to build a tavern and a mill—quite apart from other uses of the lord’s rivers and forests. Of all the dues and rents that the peasants paid to the landlord, he received the sixth groschen, and de omni re iudicata the third groschen. Thus equipped, the Schulze was fully capable of appropriately safeguarding the rights of the village inhabitants against the landlord, as well as those of the landlord against the community3.

The peasants (cmethones, kmiećie) also found themselves in a legally secure position. After the expiration of a certain number of free years, they paid moderate rents to the landlord, rarely in money, more often in grain. The lord of the manor was not allowed to remove them from their place, but they too were not allowed to leave the village without having handed over the farm to a capable farmer and having sown the seed before their departure4.

Only in three cases were the peasants free to move away, even without having fulfilled these conditions: if the lord had done violence to a peasant’s wife or daughter, if the peasants had lost their belongings through the lord’s fault, or if the lord had been excommunicated5.

In the 16th century, numerous colonies of Vlach peasants were founded in Galicia under Vlach law (iure valachico). These villages differed only slightly from the German settlements. At their head, too, stood a Schulze (kniaz), who had roughly the same rights and duties as in the German communities6.

The main source of income for the Polish large landowner in the 13th, 14th, and even in the 15th century was the dues of the rent-paying peasants. His own farming, which he operated on the manor (dwór = manor or fólwarek from the German Vorwerk), was only intended to cover his household needs. However, since the 15th century, the economic prerequisites of the rural constitution changed. Until then, Poland had found no market for its grain. This now changed. Already since the end of the 14th century, Poland had been exporting some grain via Danzig to England, France, and the Netherlands. However, the uncertain legal conditions on the lower Vistula, where terrible battles had raged for centuries between the Teutonic Knights and the Slavs, still had a disruptive effect on trade. Although Poland sought to obtain favorable conditions for its export through treaties with the Teutonic Order, it was only when the West Prussian cities, among them Danzig, Memel, and Elbing, definitively came under Polish rule in the Peace of Thorn (1466) that navigation on the Vistula became free. Foreign demand for Polish grain grew. Polish trade experienced a magnificent upswing. This economic success, however, was bought with the enslavement of a class numbering millions of souls7.

At the moment when it became profitable to produce grain for the market, the desire awoke in the landlords to enlarge their own operations. This endeavor, however, met with manifold difficulties. There was no thought of “peasant eviction” (Bauernlegen), and even if the landlord had enlarged the demesne land in this or some other way—for instance, through clearing—he would have lacked the labor force to cultivate the larger property. Above all, however, the nobility had to reckon with the energetic resistance of the Schulzen in their expansionist efforts, who were close to depriving the landlords of all influence over the village community. To oust the Schulzen from their estates therefore now became the initial watchword of the landlords. In the course of the 15th century, they also succeeded in bringing the Schulzen estates into their possession, mostly through forced buyouts, more rarely through free contracts. The Schulzen were also bought out on the royal estates, except that here the sołtyships were not combined with the starosties, but were granted as tenancies (Tenuten) to nobles for lifelong possession. Only a few Schulzen managed to maintain possession of their estates. Through continued inheritance divisions, the so-called noble communities arose from these estates in later times8.

Only after the Schulzen estates had been united with the manor could the landlords proceed to establish a large-scale operation. With the Schulzen estate and the dignity of the Schulze, the office of judge had also come to them, which increased their power over the peasants. The extensive arable land of the Schulzen estate provided the spatial basis for the expanded own operation. Of all the rights of the Schulze, however, none was more desirable to the landlords than the claim to the corvée labor of the peasants, which they had lacked until then. Admittedly, these in themselves insignificant services were not sufficient to satisfy the increased demand for labor required by the transition to manorialism (Gutsherrschaft). Thus, already towards the end of the 15th century, we find the lords of the manor striving to increase the burdens of the peasant population. But the more difficult the situation of the peasants became, the more easily the peasant’s son decided to make use of his right to freedom of movement and move to the city. This had not been the intention of the lords of the manor at all, who did not want to miss the labor of even a single dependent. They therefore set about restricting the peasants' freedom of movement and ultimately abolishing it completely. In 1496, it was legally established by the Diet (Sejm) that henceforth only one of a peasant’s sons was allowed to leave the village. Incidentally, even he could not depart without a manorial certificate of departure, lest he be pursued and brought back as a fugitive9. In the following years, a number of laws followed that restricted the freedom of movement of the peasant population, and already around the year 1510, their bondage to the soil (glebae adscriptio) had become general law. It is true that the countryman was still free to buy his freedom for 10 marks even against the will of the lord, but in the course of the 16th century, the ransom sum for a peasant family rose to 500 marks10.

When the peasants' bondage to the soil was implemented, the nobility began to increase the corvée obligations through legislative measures11. Soon, however, this path was abandoned, as it did not lead to the desired goal. For on most estates there were still contracts between the landlord and the tenant, and the peasants insisted on their rights, which they endeavored to enforce in court. The lords of the manor therefore chose another means: the peasant was to be deprived of the right to sue his lord. First, contrary to previous custom, the peasant was placed under the exclusive jurisdiction of the lord of the manor by several Diet resolutions. The practice of the courts then denied him the right to take legal action against the lord. On August 30, 1518, the royal assessorial court in Krakow dismissed a countryman’s lawsuit for unlawful coercion to corvée labor on the grounds that subjects were not allowed to sue their lords before the king12.

With the general adoption of this principle, the great upheaval by which the rural population became serfs was completed. From then on, the landlords had absolute power over the peasants. The disposal of their life and death, servitude and freedom, property and labor depended solely on their will. And it is merely the confirmation of an already existing legal state when the Convocation Diet in 1573 declared that every lord had the right to punish his disobedient subjects “tam in spiritualibus, quam in saecularibus” according to his own judgment13.

Although it was now at the discretion of the lord of the manor to arbitrarily impose greater burdens on the peasant, he nevertheless did not make extensive use of these powers before the end of the 17th century. For one path still remained open to the peasant to escape excessive demands and oppressions: flight. In the east of the Republic stretched an immeasurable, only sparsely populated plain, where there was and could be no question of manorialism. There, where the arable land mostly lay fallow due to a lack of labor, the opportunity for market exploitation of agricultural products was also lacking, since the route to the Black Sea was blocked by Turks and Tatars. Therefore, the landlord in those regions contented himself with the rents of the tenants, without thinking of establishing his own large-scale operation. The Polish peasant, however, knew exactly that he could flee there at any time. There he was always welcomed with open arms by the landlords and settled under favorable conditions. The lord of the manor in the west therefore had to be careful not to provoke his subjects to flight through exaggerated severity. It is true that a series of strict laws had pronounced the prohibition to support, take in, or settle fugitive peasants; however, the courts were incapable of enforcing these laws. Indeed, the impotence of the authorities was so great that the fugitive peasants could even remain in the same province. Then they roamed the country as “hultaje” or “ludźi luźni”, and only at harvest time did they hire themselves out as free laborers14. Only at the beginning of the 18th century were the peasants deprived of every possibility of flight. After long years of war, peace returned, internal order was somewhat restored, and the peasants' bondage to the soil was strictly enforced, at least in the western parts of the state. In the eastern provinces, however, even in the first years of Austrian rule, the subjects escaped the oppressions of the lord of the manor by fleeing to Podolia and Volhynia. In the west, however, those laws that had been enacted in the 16th century attained unrestricted validity, and peasant conditions took on the form in which they persisted until the downfall of the independent Polish state15.

§ 3. The Rural Constitution of Galicia in the 18th Century.

I. Subjection.

According to the doctrine of Polish jurists, the Polish state is composed of three estates: King, Senate, and Nobility16. Whatever is outside these three estates has no influence in the state and no share in the government17. In reality, however, even the King and Senate do not have much say. Rather, all power lies with the nobility, specifically the landed nobility. Legally, the entire nobility (szlachta) is equal. De facto, however, there is a massive difference between the landed and landless noblemen.

Opposite this solely privileged class stand the citizens, endowed with far fewer rights, and the completely rightless peasants18.

Everyone living in the countryside, provided they are not of noble birth themselves or a privileged free peasant, is a subject (poddany) of the lord of the manor. Not only the peasant and his family, but also the cottager and lodger, farmhand and maid are subjects; indeed, even the sons of Ruthenian priests, if they have not taken up a non-peasant profession before their 15th year19.

Subjection is hereditary as a class characteristic20, but birth to subject parents is not the only way it originates. A free man also becomes a subject by marrying a female subject21. Subjection is also established by accepting subject land22. Finally, anyone who lives in a village for a year on the basis of a contract concluded with the manorial estate becomes bound to the soil23. Subjection is extinguished by the subject’s entry into a religious order, by receiving holy orders, and by obtaining a doctorate, furthermore by release, and finally by ennoblement. The lord of the manor can release the subject in two ways: either by a letter of manumission or by a declaration before the Voivodeship acts24. No peasant may be ennobled without the lord’s consent25.

In the interest of the estate’s large-scale agricultural operations, the subject is subjected to manifold restrictions on his freedom.

Above all, he is bound to the soil, glebae adscriptus. If he leaves the estate district without the lord’s permission, the latter has the right to pursue him, to apprehend him wherever he finds him, or to demand his extradition26. Strict laws seek to enforce this legal principle within the interior of the country. Through mutual extradition agreements concluded with foreign countries, it has become possible to reclaim subjects who have fled to neighboring countries27. Such agreements are concluded all the more easily since not only do Polish peasants flee abroad, but even up to the middle of the 18th century, thousands of peasants from Prussia, Farther Pomerania, and the Neumark28, from Silesia29, from Hungary, from Moldavia, and from Russia30 fled to Poland.

If a subject wishes to enter into a marriage outside the estate district, he requires the permission of the lord of the manor to do so. This permission is never granted to a man, but it is not denied to peasant girls. In return, they originally usually had to pay a marten pelt (kuniczne) to the lordship. In the 18th century, however, the in-kind payment of the marten pelt was generally replaced by a fee prescribed by the lordship on a case-by-case basis, payable either in money or in kind. The amount of this levy is not the same everywhere. Sometimes a calf is demanded, sometimes poultry or crops. The monetary payment is usually eight Polish guilders. Here and there, considerably higher amounts are also demanded, the payment of which is impossible for the subjects. On many estates, however, especially on royal ones, the kuniczne has been abolished entirely, and brides are granted free departure to all those dominions that practice reciprocity31.

The subject’s bondage to the soil is not matched by any right to the soil. The subject can therefore be separated from the estate, transferred to another estate belonging to the same lord, or even pass into the ownership of another estate owner through sale, exchange, or gift. As a rule, however, the subject only changes his lord along with the estate, but the opposite also occurs not too infrequently. No law opposes human trafficking32.

The subject possesses neither active nor passive legal capacity to sue or be sued. He does not sue, but rather the lordship sues on his behalf, just as it is sued in representation of its subject33.

Vis-à-vis the lordship, the subject of private estates enjoys no legal protection whatsoever; before no court, before no authority can he raise a complaint about suffered injustices34.

Fundamentally different from the position of the private peasants is that of the domain peasants35. These can bring lawsuits against the temporal owners of the royal estates before the referendary courts. Since Stanislaus Augustus, they have been represented free of charge before these courts by poor men’s advocates (patrony ludzi ubogich), who can to some extent be compared to the Austrian subject advocates. Yet even this legal protection is ineffective, since the courts are staffed exclusively by noblemen who are helpful in every possible way to their peers, the temporal owners. On the church estates, the subjects likewise lack the right of complaint. Already in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, they lost the right of appeal to the church superiors, which they formerly possessed36.

High and low jurisdiction over the subjects belongs exclusively to the lord. He rules at will over the life and death of the subjects37.

Only if a man of non-noble status kills a peasant is the malefactor prosecuted with capital punishment. But if a nobleman kills another’s peasant, he must pay a fine of one hundred marks, half of which goes to the lord of the slain man, and half to his surviving dependents38. The laws provide no information on what is to happen if the lord himself murders one of his subjects. However, precisely this silence teaches that the murderer goes unpunished in such a case. In the year 1768, high jurisdiction is withdrawn from the nobility and transferred to the Grod courts. It is also stipulated that the murder of a peasant can henceforth no longer be commuted by a blood money payment (wergild), but that capital punishment should apply. Yet the beneficial effect of this law is nullified by the addition that the nobleman should only be executed if he is caught in the act and convicted by six witnesses, of whom at least two must be of noble birth. Thus the ius vitae et necis is abolished only in appearance: in reality, however, it persists39.

A natural result of the bondage to the soil is compulsory domestic service, which exists not as a result of a legal statute, but merely by custom. Yet compulsory domestic service in Poland does not remotely have the significance it had in Prussia, Saxony, and Bohemia. In the western parts of Galicia, the keeping of domestic servants was not extensive; to the east, it was almost entirely alien40.

We thus see: The Polish private peasant of the 18th century is a serf. He is under the absolute power of the lord of the manor. His legal position is far worse than that of the Prussian or Bohemian peasant, although more favorable than that of the Russian.

Contemporaries also speak of the peasant as an unfree person (niewolnik), and all Polish jurists equate the subjection existing in Poland with Roman slavery41.

§ 4. The Rural Constitution of Galicia in the 18th Century. (Continued.)

II. The Manorial Authority.

Ruling over the subjects is the manorial authority. “It unites within itself relations of dominion and privileges of a private and public law character.” It is a small state within a state.

According to the status of the owners, the estates are divided into four categories: royal, ecclesiastical, noble, and estates owned by privileged cities or by citizens of such cities.

The royal estates are further divided into two classes: economy estates and state estates. The economy estates (bona mensae regiae) are intended to cover the expenses of the royal household. They are managed by administrators. The state estates, on the other hand, are granted as panis bene merentium to deserving noblemen for lifelong possession. The king is obliged to redistribute those estates that revert to the crown upon the death of their temporary owners. The owners of these starosties, advocacies, tenures, and scultetiae remit a fourth of the yield, the so-called Quarta, to the state treasury42. The church estates are among the best-managed estates. The rule of the clergy over the subjects is also milder than that of the nobles. By far the largest number of estates is in the hands of the nobility. However, citizens are not entirely deprived of the capacity to own land either. The citizens of Lviv and Krakow have the right to acquire and own manors. Individual cities as such also own manors and subjects43.

The size of the estates varies greatly. There are estates that encompass 30 or more villages, and those to which only parts of a village belong. Many a nobleman rules over thousands of subjects, while another calls only a single peasant family his own. On average, an estate consists of two to three villages44.

As a unified economic organism, the estate is called a key (klucz). As an administrative-legal body, it is called państwo (lordship/manor, but also state, empire). At its head stands the lord of the manor (heres = hereditary lord or pan = lord). He resides in the manor house (dwór). On the estate, he is the legislator and judge, supreme lord of the subjects, and bearer of political, administrative, and executive power45. All power and all law on the estate emanate from him. Only by grace does he leave certain rights to the village community. He appoints the municipal officials and, at his discretion, annuls, alters, or confirms the judgments of the village court46. Within the estate district, he is a petty king47. As a legislator, he issues regulations that alter or repeal the provisions of the prevailing general law.

Many magnates maintain household troops on their estates, the number of which is quite significant compared to the royal ones.

The collection and apportionment of state taxes (the podymne = hearth tax) is the responsibility of the manorial authority. Not infrequently, the latter is forced to pay the tax for the peasant who is unable to pay48. To cover the costs of the public duties they handle, some landowners levy taxes themselves49.

The generally predominant form of agriculture in 18th-century Poland is the manorial economy (Gutsherrschaft)50. The main source of income for the lord of the manor is his own large-scale agricultural enterprise. He produces for the market and also handles the distribution of his farm’s products himself. He sends grain and livestock on his own account to Danzig and the other Baltic Sea ports, and since the nobility enjoys duty-free status for all goods they import or export, it is easy for him to beat the competition of non-noble merchants51.

Even though the economic policy of the lord of the manor is aimed at giving his own enterprise the greatest possible expansion, the endeavor to expand the demesne at the expense of the peasant land emerges only late and to a small extent. For he still has plenty of uncultivated land at his disposal, and his efforts must primarily aim at retaining the precious and scarce labor force of the peasant on the estate52.

Besides the income from his own large-scale enterprise, the levies and rents of the subjects, as significant as they are in and of themselves, and as difficult as it may be for the peasants to pay them punctually, play only a subordinate role in the household of the lord of the manor. However, alongside this, propination takes on an ever-increasing importance.

The right of propination (ius propinationis s. propinandi) is the exclusive right to produce and serve certain beverages within the territory of a certain place. The subjects of the propination right are brandy, beer, mead, raspberry wine, and cherry wine. The propination right does not extend to wine. Because wine, since it is not cultivated in the country, is a luxury beverage that the nobility does not want to make more expensive for itself. As a rule, propination belongs to the lord of the manor, and the area of its validity coincides with the estate territory. Almost every nobleman has established a brandy distillery on his estate in order to profit from the propination right. Propination only achieved its great economic significance through the leasing of the taverns to the Jews. Since the middle of the 16th century, the Jews had given up royal protection, moved out of the cities into the market towns and the flat countryside, and placed themselves entirely under the protection of the nobility. They took over the leases (arenda) of the taverns everywhere and brought the income from propination to previously unimagined heights. When appraising the value of rural estates, next to the services of the subjects, the income from propination is primarily taken into consideration. In a hundred different ways, the peasant is induced to consume more brandy than he desires. At family festivities, at church consecrations, on Sundays and holidays, he is forced to purchase a certain quantity of brandy prescribed by the authorities. He is strictly forbidden to consume brandy outside the estate district; everything he drinks must be obtained from the authorities. In every locality, the leaseholder (arendator) employs a different method of forcing the poisonous beverage upon them. Thus, over the course of centuries, drunkenness was instilled in the Galician rural population53.

Within the estate district, only the lord of the manor may build mills, and the subjects are obliged to have their grain milled exclusively at the manorial mills. Even the use of hand mills is permitted to them only against a rent to be paid to the authorities54.

Once, the village mayor (Schulze) had collected levies from the craftsmen and shopkeepers settled on the main square of the village. This right is now exercised by the lord of the manor as the legal successor of the mayor. He also considers himself entitled to declare all trade within the village his monopoly, and to release it only upon payment of a rent. He therefore levies a tax on every commodity that the peasant takes to the city for sale, the so-called Targowe (targ = the market). But he goes even further, and forces the subjects to buy goods from him that he does not need or cannot dispose of, at an arbitrarily determined price. There is thus an “imposition of manorial wares,” just as, on the other hand, the “extortion of subject wares” takes place, i.e., the peasant is forced to sell certain products only to the manor55.

The levies of the peasants are exceedingly diverse, even if not particularly high. In cash or in kind, they pay land, wood, and pasture rents. They furthermore provide the poultry rent for the permission to drive their livestock onto the manorial pasture. Geese, capons, chickens, and more rarely swans are delivered as poultry rent. The lodgers (Innleute) pay a special monetary levy, the Komorne, for the right to gather wood. The subject craftsmen also pay rent to the authorities. The subjects are also obliged to gather and deliver a certain quantity of raspberries, nuts, mushrooms, and cochineal56. Furthermore, they have to present eggs, honey, and hops to the manor free of charge. Grain tithes are rarely to be paid to the authorities, more often to the priest. In contrast, the former has a claim to fruit, tobacco, bee, and livestock (especially sheep) tithes. The complaint of the subjects always recurs that the lord of the manor always picks out the best, the best piece, the best hive for himself. – Of all the levies of the subjects, which are collected under the most diverse titles, however, only the grain rent (also oat rent) has a greater economic significance57.

In addition to the levies to the authorities, the subjects must also pay fees and perquisites to the manorial officials. Such as the weighing fee for the weighing of the subject rents, as well as the Quittowe and Groszowe for the issuance of receipts for services rendered.

For the administration of the estate, the lord of the manor maintains an economic office (urząd), at the head of which stands the bailiff (faktor, rządca, starosta). The outlying farms (Vorwerke) are managed by a sub-administrator (podstarosta). However, only the smaller part of the estates is managed by officials. The larger part is leased out. While the lord of the manor lives in Warsaw and occupies himself exclusively with politics, the leaseholder, who is either a nobleman or a Jew, engages in overexploitation on the estate, both with the resources of the soil and the timber stock, as well as with the strength of the corvée peasants. Even on those estates that are under the direct administration of the lord of the manor, propination and the mill are leased to Jews58.

§ 5. The Rural Constitution of Galicia in the 18th Century. (Continued.)

III. The Subject Classes and Their Property Rights.

The peasant population of the flatlands is divided into subjects and free peasants. There are only a few free peasants left. The scultetus estates (Schulzengüter) have completely disappeared on the noble estates, but on the royal estates they are held as tenures by noblemen59.

Over time, many scultetus and noble estates have been fragmented into small holdings through continuous divisions among the descendants of the former owners. They now form the so-called noble villages (wsi szlachecki). Here, the nobleman cultivates the soil with his own hands; he enjoys no manorial rights and receives no seigniorial income. Alongside these noble country folk, who are the hereditary owners of their lands, there is a second class of noble peasants who do not own their own land but cultivate seigniorial lands granted to them censititie, i.e., against the payment of ground rent. Many of these rent-paying nobles (szlachta czynszowa) are also subject to corvée (robot). The “petty nobles” are extremely numerous in Galicia. Even though they are legally completely equal to the rest of the nobility, they are socially separated from them by a deep divide60.

In the western districts bordering Silesia, the peasants of some newly founded villages are the usufructuary owners of their lands. In contrast, the vast majority of all subjects in the western half of the country and all subjects in the eastern half are merely “tenants until further notice” (Wirte bis weiter). They have no rights whatsoever to the land they work. To use the official terminology of the 18th century, they are unpurchased manorial subjects (uneingekaufte Dominikalisten). The manorial authority has unrestricted right of disposal over the subjects' plots. It may withdraw them at will or exchange them for others. The farmhouse and the entire agricultural inventory, the livestock and farming implements, and even the furnishings of the living quarters are the property of the manor, and nothing prevents it from evicting the peasant from his holding at any day or hour. Of course, this only happens in the rarest of cases, as it contradicts the interests of the landlord, whose primary goal must be to retain the workforce for his estate. It does happen that the landlord takes good land from the subject and gives him worse land in return, that he takes away his livestock in times of need, or that he evicts a peasant—perhaps out of personal hatred. However, this is by no means the rule. Typically, only bad farmers or those guilty of a crime are evicted. The majority of subjects, on the other hand, remain in lifelong enjoyment of their lands. When they die, the children (sons) divide the father’s fields, or—as is not uncommon in the eastern parts of the country—continue the household and economic community. The manorial authority, for its part, actually favors division, as it offers a welcome opportunity to increase the corvée obligations61.

Just as undisputed as the ownership of the subject lands is the landlord’s ownership of the forest and pasture. However, the subjects also have extensive usage rights to these, which are legally precarious like the right to the arable land, but are nevertheless not restricted by the authority. After all, the value of the forest is low, since wood is not yet exported but is abundantly available in the country.

The subject’s farming operations are under the constant supervision of the authority. If his house is destroyed by fire or water, the manor rebuilds it; if his livestock dies, the authority provides replacements62.

The land ownership system in the southeastern districts, in Pokuttia, differs from the conditions described. Here, field communities (Feldgemeinschaft) still exist in numerous municipalities in the Kolomea, Czortkow, and Stanislau districts. Only the house gardens are in the firm possession of the householders. The arable land is the communal usufructuary property of the subjects, which, however, does not affect the landlord’s property rights. The use of the lands is not communal. Rather, the fields are distributed among the community members by lot or by the village council, rarely with the participation of the dominion. The shares vary depending on the subject class to which a community member belongs. The fields are kept under the plow for several years, but then left fallow for just as many years as communal pasture for livestock, while the fallow fields grazed up to that point are distributed among the community members for plowing, whereby each landowner “receives the previous surface area of land, but not the same lands”63.

The origins and history of the field community in Pokuttia remain obscure. In any case, it is related to those forms of communal property that we find around the same time in Little Russia64, in Moldavia, in Bukovina65, and in Hungary65.

In the inventories, the subjects are divided into classes according to the size of their holdings. However, the differences between the individual classes have been blurred by the custom of division in kind in cases of inheritance. The inventories now divide the subjects in the flatlands—the inhabitants of the subject towns do not concern us here—into peasants, gardeners, cottagers, and lodgers.

The peasants (włosciani, chłopi) are full peasants (kmieci, rolnicy), half peasants (połrolnicy), or quarter peasants (cwierciorolnicy). They own a house plot in the village and plots of arable land that lie intermingled with those of the manor in the fields. The gardeners (zagrodnicy) own only a hut and a house garden (zagroda), the cottagers (chałupnicy) only a hut (chałupa). The lodgers (komornicy) own neither a hut nor land and live as tenants with settled subjects66.

The size of a full peasant’s landholding varies in the individual parts of the country; it is smallest in the west and increases in size as one moves east67.

§ 6. The Rural Constitution of Galicia in the 18th Century. (Continued.)

IV. Corvée Labor (Frondienste).

The subjects are obliged to perform unpaid services for the authority, which are graduated according to the size of their holdings.

The obligations of the subjects on the royal estates are recorded in official documents, the so-called lustrations. A lustration is supposed to take place every five years. Sometimes, however, a period of a hundred years passes before it actually happens. The last lustration was carried out in 176568.

On the private estates, the subject obligations are recorded in the inventories (inwentarze). The inventories are created by the mere will of the landlord, who can overturn or change them at his discretion. This also happens extremely frequently, especially during sales and leases, in order to achieve a higher purchase price or lease payment69.

One must distinguish between the weekly corvée services and the auxiliary or secondary services.

The corvée (robot / panszczyzna = lord’s service) is either draft corvée (robota ciągła) or manual, i.e., foot corvée (robota ręczna). One day of draft corvée is generally equated to two days of manual corvée. In some areas, draft corvée is to be performed with horses, in others with oxen. As a rule, two animals are to be harnessed. Only the larger peasants have to appear for work with a four-horse team. One-horse and three-horse corvées are rare.

The extent of corvée services is not the same in the different parts of the country. Even between neighboring estates, there are great differences. Within a village, the extent of the corvée is directly proportional to the size of the peasant’s holding. However, this does not apply to the whole country. Rather, it can be observed that in the east, where the endowment of the subjects is greatest, the corvées are lowest, and they increase as one progresses from east to west. In the mountains, the corvée services are lower than in the plains, but the taxes are higher. On the royal and church estates, the corvées are indeed less high than on the private estates, but the state burdens are more oppressive. The full peasant performs corvée in the west of the country for four or five days a week, in the central and eastern parts for three days, in the mountains for two days—naturally with a team of draft animals. The other subject classes perform correspondingly lesser services. On most dominions, the subject must perform measured work; i.e., he must manage a certain amount of work, accomplish a certain task, on a workday. If he has not completed the work in one day, he must make up for it, beyond the measure of his time-limited corvée obligation70.

The corvée obligation does not have to be fulfilled by the subject personally. He can also send a family member or a farmhand to work. A portion of the services is not demanded in kind, but converted into monetary payments, whereby a draft day is usually set at 12 Polish groschen, and a foot day at 6 groschen.

In addition to these weekly recurring services, the subjects have to perform so-called auxiliary or secondary services (tłoki, gwałty, szarwarki) during times of urgent fieldwork, sowing, and harvesting. The scope of this obligation is also recorded in the inventories71. In many areas, the authorities save up the corvée in winter in order to be able to demand the accumulated work all at once in the spring and at harvest time. In other villages, the subjects must spin for the manor in winter, with the manor providing them with the raw material.

Since the authorities could arbitrarily increase the subject obligations, over time the subjects were drafted for all work that had to be performed in the manorial enterprise. All work in the mills and distilleries, gardens, and ponds was burdened upon them72.

A special type of service is the watches, which the community members have to perform in turn, and which are therefore also called turn service (kolei). Originally, the watchmen (stróży) were only supposed to guard the seigniorial buildings. But then they were only used for guard duties at night, while during the day they were used to perform domestic services in the manor house or in the tavern73. Often, the guard duties were ceded by the manor to the tavern lessee. Not infrequently, the services of several subjects were also rented out to him, through whom he had the lands belonging to the tavern (or mill) cultivated.

The authority also handles the transport of grain by means of the subjects' labor. The peasants capable of providing draft animals are obliged to transport the grain and also other products of the manorial enterprise, e.g., salt, potash, etc., many miles to the market or to the banks of a navigable river. The long hauls (powóz, podhoroszczyzna) are partly counted towards the corvée, partly compensated separately. On the royal estates, they are recorded in the lustration. From the banks of the rivers, the seigniorial products are transported on flatboats to Danzig. The construction of these boats must be handled by the subjects free of charge, and for a small remuneration they are required to perform rowing services74.

The transport services are of particularly great importance in those eastern parts of the country where agriculture is less profitable, and the landlords therefore focus primarily on salt extraction. Here, the subjects are sent with salt transports as far as Ukraine, while the other corvées are reduced to a minimum75.

The peasant sighs heavily under the burden of the corvée services, and he performs the work only reluctantly, its value being low precisely because of his negligence76. Centuries of oppression have turned him into an almost animalistic creature, indifferent to all attempts undertaken for his intellectual and economic upliftment. Time and again, the files emphasize this: “The common man in Galicia is still far too crude to know the great value of free property; he is accustomed to bonds that have shackled him for centuries. Inhospitable himself, he relies, like the farmhand in the dairy farm and like the beast of burden in the stable, on being fed when his harvest fails, on being protected when his house burns down, on being assigned other lands when his fields are washed away by water or covered with infertile sand. He finds his wood in the seigniorial forests, the pasture for his livestock on their commons. This kind of existence has its convenience for the ignorant man; he continues to vegetate on the spot of earth where nature let him grow up. Laziness and stupidity, one alternately birthing and supporting the other, make him unfeeling, and only extremely harsh treatment will awaken him from his inactivity and make him long for a better situation”77.

§ 7. A Look at the State’s Position on the Peasant Question in Poland and Austria.

For two centuries, Polish legislation did not concern itself with the peasants. When it mentions subjects at all, it speaks of them only as objects of law. For the Republic of Poland, the peasant did not exist as a legal subject at all78.

King John Casimir, hard-pressed by enemies, did indeed solemnly vow in the cathedral at Lemberg in 1656: that after the end of the impending struggles, he would come to the aid of the subjugated people and ease their burdens. He was also filled with good will to keep his vow, but he lacked the power to successfully stand up against the nobility, who were omnipotent in the state79.

It was not the state, but private individuals, from whom the impetus for reforms originated in the 18th century. Numerous large landowners, both secular and clerical, convinced of the low productivity of corvée labor, began to introduce reforms on their estates, which, incidentally, often aimed not so much at improving the lot of the subjects as at increasing the manorial revenues80.

Stanislaus August, the last King of Poland, declared immediately after his accession to the throne that he wanted to improve the situation of the peasants by legal means. But the deed fell far short of the intention. The only thing he was able to push through was that the nobility was ostensibly deprived of the ius vitae necisque81. Only after the First Partition did a lively movement in favor of the peasants begin in Poland. In countless pamphlets, the abolition of serfdom was demanded. But the nobility still resisted any concession, and in 1780, after four years of deliberation, they rejected the new legal code that the former Grand Chancellor of the Crown, Andrzej Zamoyski, had drafted in a peasant-friendly spirit82. Even when the state was already doomed to ruin, the nobility could not bring themselves to renounce their rights in favor of the fatherland. The Constitution of May 3, 1791, brought only completely worthless concessions83.

How completely different, on the other hand, was the behavior of the Austrian state regarding the peasant question!

In the 16th and 17th centuries, however, the sovereign in Austria cared little about the peasants. More pressing matters demanded his attention. With the exertion of all his strength, he barely managed to master the insubordinate estates internally and to secure the empire externally against the Turks, French, and Swedes. Only in the last quarter of the 17th century did things begin to change. Even then, admittedly, it was only fiscal considerations that prompted intervention in favor of the subject population. “The principal imperial and royal taxpayer” was to be maintained in a “tax-capable state.” In the 18th century, however, the Austrian administration went beyond this standpoint and recognized it as its most important task to protect the peasantry against oppression. “Where the subjects, in whatever it may be, are treated harshly and oppressed contrary to fairness, sine respectu personae, whoever it might be, shall be severely punished”84.

In accordance with this principle, intervention in the manorial-peasant relationship also took place in Galicia after the occupation.

Chapter One. Peasant Conditions in the First Years of Austrian Rule.

§ 1. The Organization of the Administration and its Impact on the Rural Constitution.

After the Austrian troops had already occupied Galicia, Count Johann Anton Pergen was appointed governor of the newly acquired province on October 11, 177285. The country was initially divided into 6 circles and 19 districts; later—in 1782—the division into districts was abolished and the number of circles was increased to 18. Most of the official posts were filled with men who had previously served in Bohemia and Moravia. The Galician nobility hoped that Galicia would be governed “on the Hungarian footing” and that they would thereby come to enjoy all those rights and privileges that the Hungarian nobility enjoyed. In Vienna’s government circles, however, there was a firm intention to put Galicia “on the German footing,” i.e., to organize the administration according to the model of the German-Slavic hereditary lands.

The first concern of the Austrian government was to counter the emigration of the peasants86.

As we have seen above, fleeing to the East was the only means for the peasant to escape oppression by the landlord. The authorities saw this as a severe detriment to the country’s interests and therefore forbade emigration in the strongest terms. Even more severely punished than the fleeing subjects were the agents who tried to lure the country folk across the border with promises. Many subjects sold their draft animals before fleeing, without being entitled to do so, since the livestock—like the entire agricultural inventory—was the property of the landlords. Therefore, it was ordered “that no settled subject shall sell a piece of cattle without the permission of his landlord.” The bought-in subjects, who were the owners of their cattle, were naturally not deprived of the right of disposal87.

The patents against the emigration of the peasants were renewed several more times88; nevertheless, they did not soon have the desired effect. The primary cause of the peasants' flight was the great distress into which they had been brought by the years of unrest and the Austrian occupation, the burdens of which they mainly had to bear. The peasants lacked even the seed corn necessary for sowing. The government sought to strictly compel the landlords to help out their destitute subjects with seed corn and to allow them the time required to cultivate the fields. Even then, it was decreed, the authorities were obliged to provide support if they themselves had no seed corn in stock and had to buy it first. After the harvest was brought in, they could have these advances reimbursed in reasonable installments as far as possible. The dominions were to be held responsible for the damage arising to the country from the failure to sow89. The authorities strictly oversaw the implementation of these provisions until the emancipation of the land.

Immediately after marching into Galicia, the imperial military authorities requisitioned in-kind supplies based on the existing old inventories and lustrations. However, since these inventories only took the services and dues of the subjects as the standard for estimation, great inequality arose in the assessment. Moreover, the landlords shifted the entire burden onto the subjects. It was therefore necessary to proceed as quickly as possible to the definitive establishment of the tax system. In response to an inquiry from Count Pergen, the Empress decided, after hearing Prince Kaunitz: all lands, without distinction as to whether they are owned by noblemen or by subjects, are to be declared “contribuable” (taxable). In return, the nobility’s obligation to military service (pospolite ruszenie) was to be abolished90. Thereupon, on December 22, 1772, Pergen ordered a general declaration of all manorial and subject lands, all corvées, rents, and dues for the purpose of an exact assessment of the tax91. The tax returns came in very unpunctually. Many were false. An official review only took place if a denunciation had been filed against a dominion. If the revision found that the revenues had been assessed too low, the landlord was hit with a heavy fine. The fear of a denunciation later induced quite a few dominions to correct the information provided on their own initiative92.

Long deliberations were held in the State Chancellery regarding the mode of taxation. The result of these was the proposal: only the nobility should be drawn upon to pay the land tax93. From the peasants, one could only demand those dues that they had traditionally been bound to pay to the Polish state in the past. The landlord should also bear the tax falling on the subjects' land, “because the latter is the owner, and because of the excessive dues imposed on the serf from it, the true beneficiary.” Moreover, the State Chancellery hoped thereby to be able to exert indirect pressure on the landlords to move them to cede property rights to their subjects. The dominical uses were to remain tax-free, because the landlords enjoyed them partly unlawfully, but the state tax would sanction this unlawful receipt. However, these principles did not meet with the Empress’s approval. With the Patent of February 25, 1774, the dominical tax was announced; it amounted to 12% of the net yield of all dominical revenues94. The subjects were provisionally taxed with a quarter of the in-kind supplies. The remaining three-quarters were compensated to them. In 1775, the in-kind supplies were abolished, and in their place came the rustical tax for subject property, which was collected on the basis of the military conscription tables. These tables had been compiled by the commissions in 1773 on the occasion of the conscription, according to the statements of the subjects or by visual estimation, and contained data on the sowing and meadow growth of the subjects. The korzec of seed was taxed at 20 kreuzers after a one-third deduction for fallow fields. A tax amount of 3 kreuzers was determined for a load of hay. Afterward, the tax amount falling on an entire community was calculated and announced to the land authority. The latter took care of the sub-repartition among the individual farmers in agreement with trusted representatives of the community and also collected the tax. The authorities were particularly urged “to proceed with leniency in the collection of the tax, and to entirely spare the subjects from unreasonable, unusual, and new executions devised by inhuman officials; and to keep them in a condition capable of paying contributions through authoritative help and forbearance”95.

In addition to the land tax, the subjects also had to pay a house tax, the military quartering contribution. The apportionment of this was done in such a way that all houses were divided into eight classes, taking into account local conditions, construction, and usage types. The houses of the peasants were consistently placed in the last three classes, which were taxed at 50, 28, and 14 kreuzers96.

The numerous flaws inherent in this tax system soon compelled the government to address the issue of tax regulation. However, although all authoritative factors were convinced of the inadequacy of the introduced system, no one knew of anything better to put in its place. Therefore, only a few provisional decrees were made to reduce the inequality in the assessment as much as possible. Otherwise, however, it was decided to wait until the introduction of the Urbarium97.

Particularly important for the subject constitution was the organization of the new judicial authorities. In the pre-Austrian period, the peasant, as already mentioned, was under the exclusive jurisdiction of his lord. He possessed neither active nor passive legal capacity. This now changes. The right to decide over the life and death of the subjects is withdrawn from the landlords. No death sentence, Count Pergen declared on October 20, 1772, on the basis of an instruction he received from Vienna, may be carried out without the confirmation of the Empress98. The right to bring a lawsuit against the landlord is also granted to the subject. Following the model of the Bohemian procedure in matters of subject grievances, the chain of appeals for such cases is also regulated in Galicia. The subject had to first bring any complaint before the land authority. The circle office was to serve as the second instance. For all complaints falling under the “contributional,” the Gubernium was the third and the Galician Court Chancellery the fourth instance. For complaints of the subjects not concerning the “contributional,” the consessus in causis summi principis was the third and the Supreme Court of Justice in Vienna the fourth instance. In disputes among subjects themselves, the consessus decided in the last instance, as well as when subjects sued their authorities for denial of justice, in which latter case coercive measures were available to the consessus. In disputes between subjects and third parties, the principle should apply: actor sequitur forum rei99.

These ordinances by no means stemmed from a purposeful intervention by the government in Galician affairs. Rather, it was a simple transfer of the subject constitution valid in the other Austrian provinces to Galicia, on the tacit assumption that the conditions here were the same as there, just as the thought repeatedly recurs in the files “that lord and peasant behave toward each other in Galicia just as in Bohemia and Moravia.” But that was not the case. In any event, however, the “adaptation” of the Austrian procedure in subject matters for Galicia had the extraordinarily important consequence that through it—provisionally at least in fact—serfdom in Galicia was abolished and replaced by the hereditary subjection of the Sudeten lands. That these cited norms also immediately came into force is proven by the numerous complaints from subjects that poured into the circle offices, the provincial Gubernium, the court offices, and the Emperor himself in the very next few years.

Alongside this, however, the state also begins to systematically influence subject relations; only this approach has little success as long as Maria Theresa lives.

§ 2. Beginnings of rural worker protection.

Given the economic views prevailing in Austria in the second half of the 18th century, it was no wonder that the officials sent to Galicia soon turned their attention to the poor condition of the peasantry. Count Pergen, immediately after his designation as governor in Vienna, asked whether serfdom should be abolished, and consequently whether the new urbarial regulation should be drafted from this perspective. Prince Kaunitz replied that it was indeed desirable to abolish serfdom, but this would require much time for preparation. Therefore, an urbarial regulation should first be issued as quickly as possible. For this purpose, the urbarial principles introduced in Hungary and Silesia were communicated to Count Pergen100.

The Galician nobility viewed the government’s reform intentions with great mistrust. Two Lviv notaries, Liemblice and Wiesiołowski, presented memorandums to the governor towards the end of 1772, in which they took a stand against the planned reforms. While one memorandum makes mediating proposals, is not averse to reducing the subjects' burdens and establishing an urbarium101, and wants to grant the subjects the usufructuary property of their lands, the second sharply opposes any reform. It would be unjust to tax the Galician nobility, because since ancient times this class had been exempt from all taxes and had served the fatherland with its lifeblood. The governor should not get information about the conditions of the country from the works of foreign historians, geographers, and political writers, because they all misrepresented the conditions of subjection, partly out of ignorance of the truth, partly out of malicious intent. The lot of the Galician peasant had always been a happy one, as proven by the fact that country people from all over the world fled to Poland, but Polish subjects never fled abroad. That the latter was not entirely true, we have shown above. Also on the occasion of the homage of the Galician estates, the nobility did not fail to send a representation to the Empress through the Gubernium, which culminated in the request: the robot (corvée) should be left on the old footing. But if a new urbarium absolutely had to be created, then this should be done with the involvement of sensible economists in such a way that the landowners would not be deprived of the use of their lands102.

In Vienna, however, they did not let themselves be misled by this. The reports coming in from Galicia depicted the sad situation of the peasantry in the blackest colors: “The peasant, a born slave of his lord and at the same time a slave of the tenant appointed by his lord (who is either a minor nobleman or a Jew) has nothing of his own, not even his person, with which the lord disposes at his discretion, so that even a homicidium dolosum (intentional homicide) of the subject is mostly committed impune (with impunity), or if justice does take place, is punished with 30 marks.” In addition, Emperor Joseph himself, during his stay in Galicia (1773), had convinced himself of the need for comprehensive agrarian reform in this province103. At his instigation, Johann Christoph von Koranda, who had already proven himself in Bohemia, was appointed as Gubernial Councilor to Lviv in 1774 and placed at the head of the department for taxation and subject oppression104. The Emperor, who even then, although he was only co-regent in the hereditary lands, took an outstanding part in all laws concerning the subject department, desired the “adaptation” of the Hungarian urbarial regulations for Galicia. However, until this lengthy reform was carried out, a provisional patent should be issued to counter at least the most frequently occurring oppressions of subjects, which should eliminate the worst abuses in the Emperor’s opinion105.

Koranda considered it more expedient to introduce the Upper Silesian urbarial regulation in Galicia. In his report, he excellently provides an overview of the development of peasant conditions in Poland. “If the Kingdoms of Galicia and Lodomeria still existed in their old good constitution, as in former times when the kings still had greater and freer power, one would not need an urbarial establishment for the subjects here.” But he feared the creation of the urbarium would be a work of several years. A special authority would have to be established to successfully carry out this operation, which was so extremely important for the future fate of the country. The Emperor’s intentions would also have to be expanded insofar as a provision concerning auxiliary services should also be included in the patent. For these services, which had already been abolished on the cameral estates under May 18, 1774, were particularly oppressive on the smaller estates106.

The Empress decided on these proposals on December 16, 1774, that a precise investigation into the situation of the subjects should be conducted on the cameral estates in order to create a solid basis for the future urbarial regulation. A strict penal sanction should be added to the fourth point of the patent, which was to contain the prohibition of the mistreatment of subjects. However, the Empress later dropped this intention upon representations from the State Council. Before the patent was issued, a survey was held among all circle and district offices as to whether the planned restriction of long hauls would not have a harmful influence on the grain trade. When this was denied, the patent received imperial approval and was promulgated on June 3, 1775107. Its content was briefly as follows:

1. The extortion of subject purchases and the forcing of manorial purchases, but especially the obligation of the subjects to buy an arbitrarily determined quantity of brandy from the Jewish tenant, are henceforth abolished (§ 1-3).

2. The authorities are not permitted to impose fines on the subjects. Rather, transgressions by the subjects are only to be punished with corporal punishment. However, in order to prevent overly harsh punishments and to prevent arbitrary actions by the sub-officials, corporal punishment on subjects may only be carried out in the presence of the chief official located on the estate. Against brutal action by the officials or tenants on those smaller estates that are managed by only one official or tenant, the affected subject may lodge a complaint with the competent circle or district office, which is to investigate the case as quickly as possible, provide a remedy, and finally report on the matter to the Gubernium (§§ 4 and 9).

3. The reportedly existing abuse that estate officials collect double fees during executions is abolished (§ 5).

4. On Sundays and holidays, subjects may only be required to do those jobs that domestic servants also usually perform on these days. Also, Christian servants serving with Jews should not be forced to do any work contrary to religion on such days (§ 6 and § 7).

5. If the subject is ordered by the authority to make a long haul, the catering costs for the duration of his absence must be reimbursed to him by the authority. The long hauls are to be deducted from the robot obligation. Their extent is precisely determined and the authorities are instructed not to demand this obligation at the time of urgent field work (§ 8).

6. Except for that robot which is recorded “in old authentic inventories”, no labor may be demanded from the subjects. Also, no subject may be forced against his will to commute the robot into money (§ 10).

In conclusion, the patent holds out the prospect of an urbarial establishment in which all complaints of the subjects are to be investigated. The authorities, however, are called upon until then “not to burden their subjects with any innovations regarding the traditional robot and other obligations founded in authentic inventories, much less to let them be oppressed and sucked dry by their manorial officials and tenants, but to treat the class of peasants, which is as useful to the public as it is indispensable to everyone, fairly, paternally, and philanthropically”.

As can be seen, the patent of June 3, 1775, contents itself with eliminating occurring abuses and making provisions about the type of robot performance; the intention to infringe upon the rights of the landowners is far from it. Only the exercise of these rights is regulated. The subject obligations are not reduced, but it is also to be prevented that the landowners increase them. The applicable legal status is to be protected against both parties. But what is applicable law? The patent speaks of traditional and authentic inventories. However, such existed only on those royal estates that had been sold by the Austrian government to private individuals. Upon handover to the new owner, a carefully drafted inventory was read to all village subjects and, in case no objection arose, confirmed. On the other hand, one could not attach too much value to the old inventories on the private estates, which were created, changed, or abolished by the unilateral will of the lord. The lustrations of the royal estates, in turn, contained only a general statement of the subject obligations; they provided no information about the obligations of the individual farmer. To these older documents, new ones had been added under Austrian rule: the Special Dominical Fassions. The various documents contradicted each other. Which of them deserved priority? That had to be decided if § 10 of the patent was not to become illusory. The Empress thus gave the Gubernium the order to make a proposal for the provisional regulation of the urbarial conditions. When the draft patent arrived in Vienna, Maria Theresa was already dead and Emperor Joseph II signed the patent, which was promulgated on January 5, 1781108. According to this, on the private estates, the subject obligations were to be judged according to the old land inventories and according to the Dominical Special Fassions. If the subjects dispute a manorial demand, it must be investigated whether the obligation in question appears shown in the dominical fassions among the specified provents. If this is not the case, then the encroachments of the dominium are to be rejected. If, however, the obligations in question are declared and the subjects can prove the illegitimacy of the demand with a credible document, then both the subjects are to be restored to their traditional obligation, and the authorities are to be granted the corresponding remissions of the dominical contribution. On the royal estates, as a rule, the land inventories and not the lustrations have to be drawn upon for the decision. But if a subject levy were demanded which was indeed specified in the land inventory but not noted at all in the lustration, then this levy is to be abolished.

Chapter Two. The Josephine Reforms.

§ 1. The Abolition of Serfdom.

Through the application of Austrian laws in Galicia, serfdom had been abolished and replaced by hereditary subjection. As a result, the legal—but not the economic—status of the peasants in Galicia was brought closer to that in Bohemia and Moravia.

Since the early 1770s, the institution of hereditary subjection in Austria had been subjected to fierce attacks. An effective tool in the struggle against the old order proved to be the reform party’s use of the hated word “serfdom” instead of the previously customary term “subjection.” It appeared for the first time in 1769 in an expert opinion by the actual originator and director of the Silesian urbarial regulation, Herr von Blanc109.

Maria Theresa had already entertained the idea of abolishing serfdom, but it was Joseph II who finally put it into practice. Without concerning himself with the remonstrances of the lords, he issued the so-called “Serfdom Abolition Patent” on November 1, 1781, which abolished hereditary subjection—initially only in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia110. On the same day, a second patent was published, intended to facilitate the purchasing of subject lands.

It was easy to foresee that these measures would not remain without repercussions on the conditions in Galicia as well. In fact, the Court Chancellery, in its report of October 5, 1781, on the abolition of serfdom and the granting of property rights in the Bohemian lands, had already pointed out that serfdom also existed in Galicia. In light of the Emperor’s stated intention to abolish serfdom generally and everywhere, it requested that the Galician provincial administration (Gubernium) be consulted on the modalities of how this intention should be carried out.

The Emperor had approved this proposal, and as early as December 27, the Gubernium submitted the requested report. The Gubernial referent Koranda was by no means an unconditional supporter of the immediate abolition of serfdom. Although he found the patents of November 1, 1781, sent for review, “entirely applicable, necessary, and useful,” he proposed, specifically in the interest of the country’s agriculture, that in order to make property “attractive and appealing” to the indolent peasants, the abolition of serfdom should initially take place immediately only for those subjects who had already purchased their land. For those who had not, it should only occur in accordance with their purchase, which was to proceed by way of an amicable settlement regarding the purchase price and “tolerable” installment payments to the landlord111.

For the Gubernium, headed in the governor’s absence by Count Ludwig von Dietrichstein, even this was not enough. Rather, it wanted to see the reform desired by Vienna delayed “until these kingdoms are brought into a stable organization, the estates established, but mainly until the Urbarium is introduced in the country, the obligations between lord and subject more closely and reliably determined, and finally a formal official administration established by the landlords, as in other Imperial and Royal hereditary lands, and proper land registers laid down.” Otherwise, a complete disruption of the subject relationship was to be feared. For it was foreseeable that the subject would misinterpret the abolition of serfdom, take it for full freedom, refuse his obligations to the authorities, “abuse the intended relocation from one estate to another at the slightest incident, and the otherwise customary inclination to emigrate would transform into a fanatical migration within the country from one corner to another.”

The Emperor, however, did not let this deter him. Instead, he decided on February 5, 1782: “It is not a matter of putting the decrees issued for Bohemia regarding property and serfdom into practice in Galicia right from now on in their entirety, but it is highly necessary without delay that servitude, in respect to its previous personal effects which degrade humanity, be abolished without further ado, and that every subject be granted the right to seek his livelihood in another place outside his dominion, just as in Bohemia. It is in this sense, therefore, that the patent for Galicia, as far as it concerns serfdom, is to be drafted.”

Nevertheless, at least the experiences gained in Bohemia were to be utilized here. There, the patent of November 1, 1781, had led to immediate inconveniences on some dominions, because the servants on the manorial outbuildings left their service without notice and simply departed112.

Similar occurrences were now to be avoided in Galicia, and therefore—as had also been done retroactively in Bohemia—it was to be decreed that servants should be obliged to continue serving for the customary local wage until the customary general termination date, even after the patent had been promulgated.

To the Galician Provincial Commissioner Count von Brigido, this temporal postponement of the patent’s effectiveness did not seem sufficient. Freedom of movement, he argued, should only be granted to the “subjects not settled with land.” This was in consideration of the fact “that at present the peasant lands mostly belong to the authorities, that the revenues from them consist primarily of corvée labor, and the other levies in interest and minor rights are only quite insignificant,” so there was a danger that with general freedom of movement, the authorities would be harmed "in that the lands could often be abandoned precisely at the time when they should be cultivated and worked."113 The acceptance of this proposal would have thwarted the most important intention of the law. However, the Emperor and the majority of the Court Chancellery councilors decisively rejected it. Brigido’s concerns were only taken into account insofar as the unpurchased farmers were obliged to provide a suitable replacement before departing. In the event of disputes over the suitability of the latter, the district office was to decide. It was in this sense that the Serfdom Abolition Patent for Galicia was then drafted and promulgated on April 5, 1782114. Its contents can be summarized as follows:

Serfdom is henceforth entirely abolished, and in its place steps moderate subjection. To be sure, the subjects remain obliged to obey the lords in the future as well. However, from now on they may marry upon mere notification to the authorities, and devote themselves to trades, arts, and sciences without needing a manorial consent to do so; furthermore, they may move away from the estate while observing the regulations on the recruiting district system—a provision which, however, became almost entirely illusory due to the aforementioned obligation, which was also recently reinforced later on115, of the unpurchased subjects, i.e., with vanishingly few exceptions all subjects, to provide the authorities with a suitable replacement before departing. The subjects also require a manorial consent for relocation, which is to be issued to them free of charge. Compulsory domestic service is abolished; only children orphaned of both parents should in the future, from their 14th year of age, perform court services for a maximum of three years on those estates where this had previously been customary. The regulation that the servants currently in service should continue to serve for the customary local wage until Mid-Lent or the end of March in the flatlands, and until St. George’s Day or the end of April 1783 in the mountains, had a merely transitory character.

The conditions of the agricultural servants were regulated by the patent of June 17, 1783116.

§ 2. The Regulation of Subject Obligations.

The patent of June 3, 1775, as we have seen, had only a provisional character from the very beginning. It was intended to curb the worst abuses and oppressions of subjects until the planned urbarial regulation could be implemented. The patent of January 5, 1781, pursued the same purpose and was designed to create a provisional basis for the assessment of subject obligations. For in the meantime, it had become clear to the government that the implementation of the planned major reform would take years, perhaps decades. However, the conditions in Galicia required swift intervention, and so it was decided to issue temporary decrees.

Since Joseph II became sole ruler, decrees were repeatedly issued to immediately reduce subject obligations and put an end to abuses. The nature of the robot (corvée) labor was regulated. Some services and levies that appeared unjustified to the Emperor were abolished without any compensation to the beneficiaries.

The first such regulation was the Court Decree of November 20, 1781. The subjects of the Marczyz starosty had filed a lawsuit against the estate of their deceased landlord, in which they complained, among other things, about excessive robot demands. They allegedly had to “work off 12 days every week with a four-horse team for every Lahn [hide of land], regardless of their barren and mountainous lands.” The estate management argued, on the other hand, that the demand in question was included in the inventory. However, prompted by this case, the Emperor decreed “that provisionally and until the establishment of the new urbarial system, the maximum robot shall from now on consist of three days a week; consequently, in all places where a higher robot was customary, it should immediately be reduced to the number of three days a week, and this number of days should no longer be exceeded under any pretext whatsoever”117.

The Court Decree of December 11, 1784, then expanded this provision insofar as, in the future, the “auxiliary services” to be performed by private peasants—which had already been abolished on the crown domains seven years earlier—and all other ancillary services existing under whatever name, were to be considered as robot days and therefore should not be demanded beyond the three-day robot118.

The restriction of the robot to a maximum of three days a week and the abolition of auxiliary services meant a severe material loss for the authorities [landlords]. The loss of labor could not be replaced. Even if the estate owner had been willing to pay for the work, he would not have found any workers. For the Galician peasant, satisfied with the meager yield of his plot of land, forwent increasing his income through wage labor.

For the sake of a better overview, the other decrees that Emperor Joseph issued in the first period of his reign shall be discussed in connection with the Robot Patent of June 16, 1786, since all of them, just like the two already mentioned, were incorporated into it.

As early as January 31, 1782, the Emperor had passed a resolution on a report concerning the urbarial system, stating that the Bohemian and Hungarian prohibita generalia were to be extended to Galicia. Shortly thereafter, the Court Chancellery presented the Emperor with the draft patent prepared by the Gubernium, along with its comments. However, since the Court Chancellery and the Gubernium did not agree on all points, the Emperor ordered the Court Chancellery’s report to be sent to the Gubernium for review. The latter did indeed send the revised draft law shortly afterwards, which essentially already contained all the provisions of the first part of the later Robot Patent; however, a final decision was not reached119.

In the meantime, numerous individual regulations were issued in the following years, which, however, could not eliminate the need for a general law. The provincial referent, Court Councilor von Margelik, therefore extracted from the protocols those oppressions of subjects that demanded immediate redress, and requested new expert opinions on these as well as on the prohibita generalia from the Galician Gubernium and the Estates. On the basis of these, the Emperor then ordered a patent to be drafted in brief sentences120. The Chancellery did comply with this order and submitted the draft written by Sonnenfels on September 9, 1785, but advised: one should wait a little longer, since the urbarial regulation would render such provisions superfluous anyway, and the Emperor agreed with this opinion121.

A few months later, however, negotiations were resumed. The estate owner Josef Ciołek Komorowski had presented to the Emperor in a petition the difficulties with which the dominions had to struggle since the abolition of unpaid auxiliary services. The Emperor thereupon decided: the abolition of the auxiliary days was to remain in place, but in return, the Bohemian working hours122 were to be introduced in Galicia. At the same time, he ordered “to determine a price at which those subjects who possess less than 6 Korzec of fields—since these subjects do not need their hands for their own harvest during the entire duration of the harvest time—are obliged to work for their authorities during the harvest time, in such a way that the reaper’s wage, which is customary in each district anyway, is taken as a benchmark, and a few kreuzers are added to it in proportion to each price, and that the express assurance must be made here so that none of the subjects in this category is compelled to do more than two days of wage labor a week.” However, it did not stop at this decision. For when the Court Chancellery submitted the corresponding draft patent123 a few months later, the Emperor wanted to postpone the matter again124. Because in the meantime he had conceived the massive plan of tax and urbarial regulation, which occupied him so much that all other matters faded into the background. Moreover, he was of the opinion that “the tax rate to be introduced would probably also entail some changes in robot matters” and only then would it be time to take a position on the question of publishing the patent. The circumstances, however, forced him to abandon his wait-and-see attitude. For complaints from Galicia were pouring in in ever greater numbers. Specifically, the Galician referent Margelik drew attention to the necessity of regulating not only the number of robot days but also, in the interest of the estates, the other robot modalities, since he had noticed on his tour of the province that the subjects did not show up for work until 8 or 9 o’clock in the morning125.

Thus followed the imperial resolution, which approved the Chancellery’s proposals and at the same time decreed: “everything that comes under the name of the prohibitorum generalium is to be included in the patent at the same time, and then the publication is to be carried out without delay, so that the subject, on the other hand, is also secured against all oppressions.” On the basis of the material prepared over the years, the patent was now quickly drafted and promulgated on June 16, 1786126.

The Corvée Patent consists of two main parts; the first (§§ 1-39) regulates the nature of the corvée labor and is entirely taken from the Bohemian Corvée Patent of August 13, 1775127. The second part (§§ 40-83) contains the general prohibitions, which, although not identical to those issued in Bohemia and Hungary, share with them the intention of abolishing certain subject obligations that appear harmful to the state, even if they are recorded in the inventories. Let us now delve into the contents of the Corvée Patent.

As for the extent of the corvée labor, it was set at a maximum of three days per week, including all ancillary services as well as the labor demands due to the parish priest – to which the patent regulations were also to apply. Existing excess obligations were to be reduced accordingly, but an increase in lesser obligations was not to take place. The equalization of the corvée labor according to the size of the subject holdings was reserved for the future urbarial regulation. (Introduction and §§ 1, 37.)

Along with the prohibition of demanding piecework instead of corvée determined merely by time, i.e., unmeasured corvée, the duration of the latter was set at 12 hours in the summer – April 1 to the end of September – and 8 hours in the winter, which time was also to include two rest or feeding hours in the summer and one in the winter, as well as the travel to and from the workplace. Only during the harvest season may both draft and manual laborers be kept at work for one or at most two hours longer. Only for woodcutting is a specific measure of work established. If the estate uses the weekly service for spinning in the winter, what is usually spun in 7 hours can be demanded for one corvée day. (§§ 1, 10, 32.)128 The division of whole corvée days into twice as many half days is not permitted, but conversely, the consolidation of half days into whole days is allowed. (§§ 2 and 3.)

If the work is interrupted in the morning by bad weather, the subject, provided he could still return home in the morning, may be required to make up the unperformed half corvée day in the same or the following week. (§ 2.)129

Manual and draft corvée cannot be demanded from a family at the same time; nor can draft work be demanded against the subject’s will in place of foot corvée, but conversely, the latter can be demanded in place of the former, whereby one single-team draft day is equivalent to one manual corvée day. No householder may be forced to appear with a smaller team for more corvée days or with a larger team for fewer corvée days than he is obligated to. Also, multi-team corvée drafts may not be divided, except for the four-team draft when harrowing, which can be divided into two two-team drafts each (§§ 4-6).

The corvée laborers must indeed work diligently and well throughout the prescribed time. However, on the other hand, man and beast are to be spared, and therefore the peasants are not to be expected to perform work that exceeds their strength, so that even in the event of significant livestock epidemics, the obligation to perform draft services is entirely waived (§§ 7 and 11). With a two-team corvée draft, only one man – the householder himself or a capable farmhand – must appear, but with a three- or four-team draft, a driver must also appear. The same applies when drafts are hitched together.

Cottagers and lodgers are only liable for corvée for one day a month130. Sick lodgers or those over 60 years of age, sons and daughters who are in service with their parents or parents-in-law, former householders or housewives who have lost their house through no fault of their own, invalids, and discharged soldiers, as long as they are only lodgers, are entirely exempt from corvée131 (§§ 12-13).

Except in urgent cases, the corvée must always be announced to the subject on Sunday for the coming week (§§ 14-15). If the subject has failed to perform the corvée announced to him in good time through his own fault, he is obliged to provide double compensation in a time determined by the authority. A subsequent demand for unused corvée also remained permitted. However, to counter abuses through the saving up of work, this right was restricted in two ways. On the one hand, unused summer and winter corvée was not to be demanded in the autumn and spring, and on the other hand, only one day in each week could be demanded subsequently (§§ 16-18).

Subjects who have to perform less than 52 days annually can be required to do corvée for one day each for several consecutive weeks (§ 20).

Long hauls and errands are to be considered in winter as distances of at most three (for ox corvée two), but in summer of four (or three) miles round trip combined, although road and weather conditions must be taken into account. All out-of-pocket expenses are to be reimbursed to the corvée laborers, namely 3 kr. daily for each farmhand, 1 kr. in stable money for each head of cattle, and 1 kr. for the purchase of fodder in summer, 2 kr. in winter. The long hauls imposed on a subject in one year should total no more than twenty miles on the outward journey and twenty miles on the return journey. Also, they may only be used for the dispatch of manorial products and goods – within the kingdom. The time spent on long hauls, including delays through no fault of their own, is to be deducted from the corvée obligation. At the time of urgent fieldwork, the subject is not to be held to any hauling. On Sundays and public holidays, work should generally rest as far as possible (§§ 21-27)132.

The estate owners are permitted to transfer the corvée services to other estates belonging to them that are not too far away, but without exceeding the daily hour limit set by the patent – including the time required for the outward and return journey, as well as for feeding and resting. Otherwise, a transfer of corvée is to be considered a long haul and treated accordingly (§§ 28-30)133.

Corvée redemption contracts entered into voluntarily and in perpetuity were also maintained for the future, but forcing the subjects to enter into such contracts was prohibited; except in the case where those obligated to corvée are more than two hours' walk away from the place where the corvée services are to be performed and therefore these cannot be used without considerable loss of time to the detriment of the estate (§§ 35-36). The cultivation of the so-called barren lands may not be burdened upon the subjects (§ 38).

Particularly important and far-reaching was the renewed stipulation of the abolition of all ancillary services already decreed on January 15, 1784. Henceforth, hunting corvées, errands, night watches134, the various works on manorial ships, the special unpaid services in the manorial courtyard, in the agricultural industrial enterprises and in the field, etc., were only to be demanded and performed within the framework of the weekly corvée obligation, and even compulsory wage days were to be prohibited. In particular, the subject’s duty to thresh the manorial grain in exchange for the thresher’s measure was also abolished (§§ 31, 33, 34, 42, 43, 50-56, 64).

The use of statute labor days dedicated to the improvement of roads, bridges, and dams for fieldwork was prohibited (§ 44).

However, the Corvée Patent also regulated a number of other important points. For example, it decreed that craft work could never be demanded from the craftsmen located on manorial land and soil as a deduction from the corvée obligation, but must always be paid for (§ 47).

Furthermore, it eliminated all in-kind levies not contained in the land inventories, as well as the Komorne, i.e., the housing rent of the lodgers, and the marriage consent tax, the Kuniczne (§§ 59 and 70)135.

The serving of wine, the salt trade, and linen bleaching were henceforth to remain free of all levies (§§ 58, 64, 77)136.

The imposition of manorial goods for sale is newly prohibited. Likewise the levy that the subjects paid on every commodity taken to the city for sale (§§ 63, 68, 69, 78-80).

Upon delivery of the rent grain, no dust or measure money can henceforth be demanded (§ 61).

The fruit and tobacco tithe is abolished (§ 62)137.

All levies to the manorial officials must cease (§§ 65, 71, 72).

The receipts for the performed subject obligations must be clearly drafted, and no fee may be demanded by the officials for their issuance (§ 75).

Likewise, the poultry rent for the use of the manorial pastures and the feather tithe, as well as the manorial right to pluck the geese belonging to the subjects, were done away with (§ 67).

Furthermore, the subjects are not obliged in the future to provide their authorities arriving on the estates with drinks and fodder for the horses (§ 73).

Nor shall bail be demanded of them anymore under the pretext of preventing their escape (§ 66).

They are to meet their monetary rent obligations in any current coin (§ 74) and may never be subjected to fines (§ 83).

Finally, it was stipulated that in all cases of oppression of subjects, the estates were to be held liable for double, and depending on the circumstances even triple, compensation for what was illegally extorted (§ 84).

These were the most important provisions of the Corvée Patent of June 16, 1786, which formed the basis of the rural constitution of Galicia until the emancipation of the land. The estate owners suffered a very considerable loss of corvée, and the abolition of the ancillary services even made it impossible for them for the moment to bring in the harvest from the fields. It is therefore not surprising that all their efforts were directed towards preventing its implementation or at least weakening it. They also succeeded in this in part. For upon their representations, supported by Count Brigido, the Emperor, who was staying in Lemberg at the time, condescended to the concession that in the future those subjects who performed corvée for only two or fewer days a week should, during the haymaking and the grain harvest, work for the authority for the usually determined price measured for manual and draft corvée for as many days as their corvée obligation fell short of the weekly maximum138.

The Corvée Patent (§ 76) had only provided inadequate norms regarding the collection of the tithe; this gap was filled by the patent of January 25, 1787139.

While the outlined provisions of the Corvée Patent granted the subjects numerous reliefs on the one hand, they were on the other hand more heavily drawn upon for the state, above all through the direct taxes, the rustic tax, and the military quartering contribution. In addition, there still existed for them the not very oppressive obligation to assist in the establishment of new tollhouses140, to perform draft and manual corvée in the construction or repair of roads141, and to provide relay teams for the military, which latter service was remunerated142. The road corvées were later abolished by the Court Chancellery Decree of July 27, 1824143. Finally, the Corvée Patent expressly declared that the subjects were bound to perform all services concerning the security of the land, such as: night watches in the villages or at the church, the construction of neighborhood paths from village to village, assistance in the event of fire or flood danger, etc., without the authority being obliged to deduct these services from the corvée (§ 39).

§ 3. Measures for the Improvement of Subject Property Rights.

A goal that the state peasant policy of the 18th century persistently pursued is the preservation of peasant land within the peasantry. Since 1751, it was already fundamentally maintained in Bohemia that the land still in peasant hands should not be alienated from the peasantry in the future and must not be added to the manorial land144. At about the same time, the state began – parallel to the advance of the view that the welfare of the state depended mainly on the freedom and property of the rural population – to turn to the second task: securing and improving the property rights of the subjects. To the goal: “the peasant land to the peasantry” was added the second: “the peasant estate to the peasant son.” The “unpurchased” lands were to be transformed into “purchased” ones, and the “tenants until further notice” were to be made into “owners”145.

It can therefore not be particularly surprising that the government, immediately after taking possession of Galicia, considered the plan to carry out the conversion of unpurchased lands into hereditary property here as well. However, more pressing matters pushed this plan into the background146.

The property rights of the subjects were not influenced by the tax system established in the following years. And since the tax liability affected the lord’s land just as well, even if admittedly not on the same scale, as that in peasant hands, the special fiscal incentive for a rapid implementation of the reform was also lacking. One thing, however, meant progress: that the lands cultivated by subjects were recorded in public documents, the tax declarations (Fassionen).

The patent promulgated on September 1, 1781, concerning the manorial criminal procedure against subjects, established eviction from house and farm as the most severe punishment, which, however, could only be imposed by the manorial estate with the consent of the district office147. For Galicia, this provision could not be of any significance for the time being, since the lord of the manor was generally free to do as he pleased with the peasant holdings.

Emperor Joseph had intended to grant the subject tenants hereditary ownership of their lands in the Bohemian lands simultaneously with the abolition of serfdom. In doing so, however, he had met with energetic resistance from the estates. When he had to realize that they did not in the least intend to make sacrifices to help realize his intention, but only returned to their old demand: to compel the subjects to compulsory purchase, he had again postponed his plan and contented himself with recently reinforcing the regulation that had already existed in the Sudeten lands for more than eleven years with the patent of November 1, 1781. As before, the authorities were therefore not to place any obstacles in the way of the subjects' efforts to purchase their land, but equally, they were not to be allowed to force the subjects to purchase148. This patent was now transmitted to the Galician Gubernium at the same time as the one on the abolition of serfdom, so that it could express its opinion on its applicability to Galicia.

The Gubernial referent v. Koranda took a negative stance. A compulsory purchase law for Galicia seemed questionable to him not only with regard to the attitude of the manorial estates, but also with regard to the subjects149. Above all, property must first be made “attractive and appealing” to the peasant. He therefore proposed introducing hereditary property for the time being only on the state domains scattered in all districts. Koranda had obviously misunderstood the government’s intention. Coercion was not intended anyway. Moreover, the Gubernium itself had described the granting of hereditary property to the subjects as the most effective means of improving agriculture a few months earlier, namely on June 1, 1781150. Nevertheless, the Emperor agreed with the Gubernium. “The introduction of property,” he decided by resolution of February 5, 1782, “will be taken into consideration with the urbarial regulation, and the first attempt can initially be made on the cameral estates.”

The patent of November 1, 1781, was therefore not promulgated in Galicia at all, which was admittedly no great loss, since its success in Bohemia was extremely insignificant.

The patent of March 18, 1784, is of significance for the further development of subject relations151. According to it, all purchase and sale contracts between the authority and subjects relating to subject property were to be submitted to the district office for confirmation. This began a system of paternalism which, although often attacked, was not entirely unjustified given the poorly developed economic characteristics of the rural population. The aim was to protect the subjects not only against the lordship but also against usurious exploitation from other quarters. Here the manorial interest coincided with the subject interest, so that the supervision of the credit system could be transferred to the manorial estates. After the serving of liquor on credit had already been prohibited previously152, the patent of July 26, 1784, forbade the transfer of subject plots into so-called obligatory or pledge possession and obligatory possession itself. The plots possessed under the title of pledge right were to be returned to their owners within a year, whereas the latter would have to liquidate the debts attached to their plots. For the future, however, subjects were generally forbidden to borrow more than five Rhenish guilders without manorial permission. Higher claims that had not received manorial permission were to be supported neither by pledge right nor by judicial execution. The widespread usurious contract that awarded half the harvest to the creditor, the so-called “sowing by halves,” was also abolished153.

Meanwhile, Emperor Joseph II had returned to his favorite plan of making the subjects owners of their lands. In the Sudeten lands, since the recently implemented reforms, the unpurchased subjects already possessed their lands “with the most excellent effects of property.” It was therefore no particular imposition when the Emperor had the estates asked to give the unpurchased lands to the peasants free of charge as hereditary property, “all the more so as they would lose nothing thereby, but would be entirely freed from the burdensome obligation incumbent upon them to provide the unpurchased possessors with everything necessary for the maintenance of the sartorum tectorum of the fundus instructus free of charge, and also to support the subjects residing thereon free of charge in cases of crop failure and distress154.” The situation was admittedly different in Galicia, where nothing had yet been done to protect peasant land from being absorbed into manorial land. Nevertheless, the same request was also issued to the Galician estates, and the Gubernium was instructed to draw the attention of all district offices and authorities to the fact that the lords of the manor were obliged to support the unpurchased subject, but that they had no right to eviction except in the cases already determined by law, not even if a buyer should be found155. The Gubernium, however, did not carry out the order. It did not fail to recognize the Emperor’s noble intention to promote the welfare of the subjects, its answer read, but it believed, "since the Galician subject is too crude to see his own welfare shining forth from this decree, that it had not acted wrongly if it had provisionally communicated this decree only to the estates' committee; if it were communicated to all authorities, the subjects would have to learn of the great advantages enjoyed by the unpurchased possessors and would resist the acceptance of property even more than is already happening now." However, the Gubernium itself would take this regulation as a guideline in all occurring cases. The Emperor declared his agreement with this156.

Meanwhile, the estates' committee had also submitted its expert opinion. It presented the difficulties that the implementation of the imperial project would encounter. Above all, however, the peasant in the east of the country was too lazy and too superstitious to make proper use of the gift that would be bestowed upon him by the granting of property. It would therefore be better to wait for the completion of the surveying of the land that had just been set in motion and for the implementation of the urbarial regulation. The Court Chancellery was absolutely not in agreement with these arguments. “The Galician estates,” it declared157, “are completely wrong in thinking that hereditary property alone will not already have good effects and prosperous consequences, and that the love of work must first be provisionally achieved through better education; for daily experience flatly contradicts this, and rather proves that the subjects in all places where they own their lands, even if they are otherwise quite backward and neglected in education, nevertheless distinguish themselves everywhere by their diligence and industriousness, just as this is actually the case in Galicia, and those few villages where the subject owns lands noticeably distinguish themselves from the rest right at first glance.” It would therefore have been much more correct to realize “that, since the subjects, despite possessing fertile lands, nevertheless cultivate them only poorly, this might presumably have its reason in the fact that they do not own these lands.”

However, despite its concern that the urbarial regulation would place obstacles in the way of purchasing, the Chancellery could not close its eyes to the view that the immediate implementation of the measure was not possible. It therefore proposed that at least the Court Decree of January 7, 1785, be publicly promulgated for the time being. In doing so, it also expressed the wish that the enormous dominical possessions might be reduced and the subjects better endowed. The Emperor was now also in favor of promulgating the Court Decree, but wanted the manorial assistance to be limited only to that to which the authorities were actually obliged158. This unclear designation would have been apt to cause even greater confusion than already existed anyway. However, upon a renewed representation by the Court Chancellery, the Emperor decided that the same thing that had been issued for Bohemia on January 7, 1785, should also apply to Galicia159. With this, the prohibition against arbitrarily evicting subjects was pronounced for the first time in Galicia as well. It was not yet effective for the time being.

The Emperor’s appeal to the Bohemian and Moravian estates had remained just as unsuccessful as that to the Galician ones. Joseph therefore definitively abandoned the plan to bring about subject property at a single stroke. Henceforth – and this remained the case until 1848 – the implementation of the hereditary purchase was to take place exclusively by way of voluntary agreements between manorial estates and subjects160. But in Galicia, the peasant property right was still precarious, worse than in the other provinces of Austria. Much still remained to be done in Galicia to create a similarly secure position for the peasant there as the Bohemian peasant, even the unpurchased one, already had. Above all, the rustical land was not yet separated from the dominical land, a condition that was all the more questionable since precisely at that time, when agriculture was experiencing a new upswing after the restoration of peace and order in the country, the desire began to stir among the lords of the manor to expand the manorial land at the expense of the peasant land.

However, the state did not disavow the principles in Galicia either that it had successfully represented in the other crown lands for decades. The prohibition of peasant eviction was repeatedly pronounced161 and included in the Corvée Patent162. But now the question arose: Which lands are rustical lands, to which lands must this prohibition extend? That had to be precisely established if the prohibition of eviction was not to remain a dead letter.

However, an important provision had just been made for Bukovina by the Court Decree of February 24, 1787. According to this, “the property status as it was on November 1, 1786, namely at the time of the union with Galicia, should be taken as the basis, and consequently those lands which were then in the possession of a subject should be declared as subject lands”, and the authorities should be forbidden for the future “to take these lands away from the subject, nor even to exchange them for others without his own consent and the foreknowledge of the district office”163. Therefore, when the Court Chancellery submitted a Court Decree to the Emperor for approval, which was to forbid the authorities in all Imperial and Royal hereditary lands to exchange their own lands for rustic lands, it proposed, just as had been done for Bukovina, to set November 1, 1786, as the normal date for distinguishing between dominical and rustic land for Galicia as well164. The Emperor agreed to this proposal, and accordingly a Court Decree was issued to the Galician provincial authority on April 2, 1787165. With one blow, the land in the hands of subjects was thus “rusticalized”.

Various errors arose during the publication of this law. The provincial administration (Gubernium) had taken offense at the aforementioned Court Decree of February 24 issued for Bukovina for tax-technical reasons. It had therefore used the Emperor’s presence in Lviv (May 1787) to request an explanation, and mistakenly interpreted the monarch’s answer as if the Court Decree of February 24 had been revoked. This had not been the case, and therefore the Gubernium, when it published this alleged revocation, was promptly ordered by Vienna to withdraw it166. In expectation of the Emperor’s renewed decision on the Bukovina conditions, the Gubernium had delayed the announcement of the analogous provision made for Galicia and, with a circular letter of April 26, 1787167, published only the part of the Court Decree that concerned the arbitrary exchange of subject and manorial lands. The other part, which contained the determination of the normal year, was temporarily withheld. It was also not published later, any more than the revocation of the incorrect announcement concerning Bukovina168.

Nevertheless, the Court Decree of April 2, 1787, remained valid. When it came to establishing a precise distinction between dominical and rustic land in the Tax Regulation Patent of February 10, 1789, the Court Chancellery, which did not know that the Galician Gubernium had only incompletely published the Court Decree of April 2, 1787, took up the earlier provision again and expressly repeated it in the patent169. This naturally only had declaratory significance, since it only referred to an existing law.

This was therefore adhered to even after the repeal of the patent of February 10, 1789. The Court Chancellery Decree of April 2, 1787, had fallen into oblivion; the determination of the normal year, however, was maintained. Thus it came to the legal curiosity that for more than half a century a paragraph of a repealed law formed the basis of countless highly important decisions by the authorities170. However the legal detail of this matter took shape, it must be emphasized that the Court Decree of April 2, 1787, was one of the most important measures that the Austrian government took for the benefit of the Galician peasantry. The peasant received a lifelong right of use to his land; he may only be evicted in certain cases determined by law171, and indeed his right of use eventually becomes hereditary172.

Once again – on the occasion of a report on the Galician land registry system – the question was considered in the Court Chancellery whether the peasants should not be granted hereditary ownership at the same time as the tax and urbarial regulation. However, this time too, the execution of this intention was postponed to a later time, and only the subjects of the cameral and spiritual estates, the starosties and tenutes were granted the ownership of their lands free of charge by Court Decree of January 20, 1787173. A reform carried out on the entailed estate of Zamośc by Count Zamojski also made the peasants there hereditary owners174.

The result of the Josephinian reforms with regard to the property rights of private peasants is now as follows: the unpurchased dominicalist has become an unpurchased rusticalist; and even more, he possesses his estate “with the most excellent effects of ownership”. For he may not be evicted – except after a legally conducted procedure. However, he can dispose of his lands neither among the living nor in the event of death, and when he dies, legal succession always occurs. But the peasant does not strive for such a right of disposal at all. What he desires is undisturbed, peaceful possession, and that this possession passes to his children. That is granted to him. That he can only take on debts up to 5 guilders is determined solely for reasons of agricultural culture. After all, the purchased farmer of the Bohemian lands is also not allowed to indebt his holding beyond 2/3 of its value. Freedom from debt is always a Greek gift for the countryman, especially in Galicia, where rural usury has always flourished.

The authorities, who had suffered a severe loss of wealth through the withdrawal of the disposal over the subject lands, through the restriction of the robot (corvée), through the abolition of numerous subject dues, and through the introduction of high taxes, sought to find compensation in gaining complete control over forest and pasture.

The government itself had shown them the way. Namely, in order to put a stop to the progressive devastation of the forests, the logging rights had been abolished altogether when the royal estates were taken over by the patent of October 16, 1772175.

A few weeks later, however, this strict regulation was repealed, and the subjects were permitted to collect firewood where it had been customary up to that point176. The logging right was thus significantly restricted, but in return the subjects were assured that they could exercise this reduced right undisturbed again in the future.

The government also wanted to introduce regulated forestry on the private estates and therefore issued a forest regulation177. Complaints immediately poured in: the authorities were using this patent as a pretext to deprive the subjects of the enjoyment of the manorial forests. What the lordships were striving for was clear. The subjects were to be forced by the withdrawal of forest and pasture rights to continue providing the prestations abolished by the imperial decrees of recent years178.

The state had to intervene against this. By patent of January 12, 1784, it was therefore stipulated “that where the subjects had previously been permitted to fetch their wood requirements from the manorial forests, this must continue to be permitted, only with the difference that from now on, during the logging itself, the forest regulation patent must be strictly observed and complied with every time.” Where the subjects had the authority to cut and transport wood for sale, the continuation of this right must be granted to them “until the authority has properly demonstrated that this wood transport was only granted precariously and at the pleasure of the authority, and that the subjects can live and find their livelihood without this wood transport”179. Now it would have been necessary to officially determine and record the extent of the servitudes for each village, and thus prevent all disputes for the future. But that did not happen. Neither at the moment, nor later. Disputes then did not fail to materialize. The attempt by the dominions to partially shift the forest tax onto the subjects on the occasion of the introduction of the tax and urbarial regulation was, however, rejected by the Court Decree of September 14, 1789180. Likewise, however, the attempt by the Gubernium, based on this Court Decree, to carry out a settlement of the disputed conditions181, had to be abandoned due to the repeal of the urbarial regulation after Joseph II’s death.

§ 4. The Raab System182.

For demographic reasons, the Austrian state of the 18th century became an opponent of large estates. It saw the increase of the population as the primary task of its administrative activity. For the increased population, sufficient means of subsistence were to be created through the extensive promotion of agriculture. But nothing hindered “the perfect cultivation of the soil and the flourishing of agriculture” more than the corvée (Frondienste). Its abolition, however, must entail the destruction of the large manorial enterprise by way of breaking up the demesne land into peasant holdings. Thus, the latter became the watchword. This program, which was drawn up in 1775 by the Court Councilor of the Commerce Commission Franz Anton v. Raab, was to be introduced in Bohemia and Moravia on the estates administered by the state. For the private domains were not willing to accept this innovation, from which they not unjustly feared a reduction of their income, and the state did not attempt to force them to do so for the time being. On the state estates, however, quite favorable experiences were made with the new system. No wonder, then, that the government thought of introducing the Raab system in Galicia as well. After all, it had numerous state estates at its disposal here, which it had taken over from the Republic of Poland, as well as ecclesiastical fund estates and the estates of the Jesuit order abolished in 1773183.

It was not intended to keep this mass of estates in state ownership, as this would have contradicted the principles prevailing at the time. Rather, they were to be sold to private individuals after the introduction of the abolition of the corvée (Robotabolition)184. In fact, however, things turned out differently; it was precisely on those estates that the state kept under its administration that the corvée abolition system was carried out, at least for the most part, while the majority of the sold state estates were not organized according to this system.

In the populous western provinces of the empire, the parceled-out dairy farm lands could be distributed to natives. It was different in sparsely populated Galicia. Here, foreigners had to be brought in. Indeed, the element of settling foreign colonists came so much to the fore that the original purpose of the Raab system was completely forgotten and temporarily only foreigners were endowed with the new peasant holdings185. Above all, Germans were to be drawn into the country, from whose high level of education and exact knowledge of agriculture great advantages for agriculture were expected, and secondly Poles from the republican territory. The colonists were promised quite extraordinary favors. They received a house and arable land as hereditary property; livestock and implements were provided to them free of charge by the cameral estate administration; after the expiration of a certain number of free years, they were to pay a moderate rent and perform the customary local corvée. However, they retained the right, like the other subjects of the cameral estates, to commute the corvée into money or grain186.

Incidentally, colonization was not limited to the state estates alone: on the private estates, too, the gaps created by the emigration of many subjects were filled by German settlers. Thus, in the years 1782-1786, about 20,000 Germans from the Empire, mostly Württembergers and Reformed Palatines, were settled in 120 colonies187, and colonization continued, albeit on a smaller scale, even in the post-Josephine period.

Under the direction of the state estate administrator Matthias von Ainser, the business of abolishing the corvée in Galicia also made satisfactory progress. After individual dairy farms had already been distributed to the subjects in 1778, the Raab system was implemented in 1783 on the cameral estates of Niepołomice and Sandomierz, and in the following years on the remaining estates under the direct administration of the state (the greater part of the crown estates was in the lifelong possession of noblemen)188. The subjects were generally satisfied with the reform, and the state also seemed to fare well by it.

§ 5. Reform of the Manorial Office.

The abolition of “serfdom” did not affect the public-law powers of the manorial estates. The position of the domains as judicial and administrative organs was also retained in the future, but at the same time subjected to legal regulation. Through two patents issued on September 1, 1781, and through instructions issued at the same time for the district offices and the subjects' advocates, the procedure in disputes between authorities and subjects was newly regulated, whereby the old sequence of appeals – valid in Galicia since 1775 – was not changed. The authorities were granted a limited penal power against rebellious subjects. On the other hand, however, the district offices were instructed to strictly punish manors and economic officials who were guilty of violating the laws protecting subjects189.

The area of validity of these decrees extended over all of Austria. For Galicia, however, special precautions were necessary. For while in the other crown lands more or less well-organized offices had already existed for a long time, in Galicia, especially on the smaller estates, administration was left to uneducated officials who, due to their poor knowledge of the law, were unable to meet the demands placed on them by the state. It was therefore ordered “that those landlords who do not live on their estates themselves, or who do not want to apply themselves to the handling of public business, employ an honest and capable official in loco.” This official was to take an examination before the district office regarding his qualification to administer public business. His duties were to include collecting the published decrees and ensuring their observance, as well as collecting and accounting for the rustic tax. He was not to be dismissed from service without the knowledge of the district office190.

The class of “mandataries”, which later achieved a sad notoriety, owes its origin to these decrees191.

The exercise of jurisdiction was also left to the domains during the reform of the manorial authorities192. The estates offered to administer justice free of charge, and the state agreed193. Jurisdiction was to be exercised by a certified justiciary. The manors were forbidden to influence the passing of judgments194. Along with the Josephine tax and urbarial regulation, a reform of the lower administrative authorities was also planned: certain agendas that had hitherto been handled by the manorial estates were to pass to sovereign officials (tax collectors, district officials). The premature cancellation of this reform also prevented the execution of this plan.

The authorities had to be liable for the oppression of subjects by their officials and leaseholders195. The claims of the subjects arising from the title of subjection did not expire through a change in the person of the landlord. Rather, they were attached to the land; however, they had to be asserted within three years196. These regulations existing to secure the subjects' claims were expanded by the patent of July 10, 1789, to the effect that in the future, in the event of bankruptcies, the mentioned claims should rank in the second class, thus enjoying the right of lien. Moreover, the so-called Oktava or the eighth part of the value of each manor was to be liable for the subjects' claims in such a way that even without pre-registration, these claims should be entitled to the right of lien before all creditors up to the stated amount197.

The manorial mill prerogative was substantially restricted by the patent of September 9, 1784198.

The Emperor also intervened in the internal affairs of the village community. The powers of the community authorities were regulated; in every village a judge and for every 50 houses 2 jurors were to be appointed. For the office of judge, the community had to make a proposal of three candidates (Ternovorschlag) to the domain. It was allowed to elect the jurors itself in agreement with the judge199. Village judges and jurors enjoyed special privileges regarding the extent of the corvée200. Their duties were quite significant201.

§ 6. The Tax and Urbarial Regulation.

Right upon taking possession, the government had expressed the intention to reform the conditions of subjection in Galicia through an urbarial regulation. “A well-ordered urbarial system should and can be introduced,” was the motto202. And Joseph II writes to his imperial mother from Lemberg on May 19, 1780: "La regulation urbariale, si elle a jamais été nécessaire l’est bien ici."203 Only, there was complete unclarity about the manner of its implementation. At one time the Hungarian, at another the Silesian, then again the Bohemian agrarian constitution was to be taken as a model. But ultimately it was recognized that the unique conditions in Galicia demanded special treatment204.

This matter was only seriously approached towards the end of 1782. The external impetus was provided by a promemoria on the economic situation of Galicia, which Count Wieloborski had presented in Vienna. From this memorial, the Emperor had gathered “that 3/4 of the estates are not owned and utilized by their landlords, but by leaseholders who severely mistreat the peasantry and draw up to 50 percent annual profit.” Upon this, Joseph now built the plan for an urbarial regulation. “The landlords are only to be given the assurance of their momentary lease, be it in money or in kind, about which they would have nothing to complain, except that they will not be able to increase their leases in future times. This, however, would be a fair retribution for their wealth, mostly consumed out of the country, or such dissolute administration. That profit of 50 percent more or less, which the leaseholder now draws, would remain in the hands of the subject, and provide him with a better livelihood, more strength for the state’s necessities, and the possibility to properly keep his contract with the landlord.” A tax regulation was also to be combined with this reform205.

The Court Chancellery showed very little inclination to entertain the Emperor’s proposals. It considered them impracticable. However, its arguments convinced the Emperor so little that he simply returned its remonstrance against his intentions with the remark: that “this babble is of no use”206. In the bosom of the court departments, consultations were then held under the direct leadership of the Emperor concerning a better kind of urbarial regulation, the result of which was the Tax and Urbarial Regulation of 1789, which extended to the entire empire. The essence of this magnificent agrarian reform has been treated so thoroughly that we can limit ourselves to merely indicating the most important points in brief strokes207.

Proceeding from the physiocratic demand for an impôt unique, the Emperor intends to subject the land and soil, without distinction as to whether it is in the possession of the state or church, landlord or peasant, to uniform taxation. The gross natural yield was henceforth to be solely decisive for the amount of the tax, which in the German-Austrian lands averaged 12 florins 13 1/3 kreuzers per 100 florins of gross land yield, and in Galicia, so that “culture and industry may be more easily fostered,” amounted to only 8 florins 16 4/5 kreuzers. The seigniories were stripped of the right of tax sub-repartition, sublevation, and collection. The first was henceforth completely abolished. The collection, in turn, was to be done in the future by sovereign officials. A comprehensive urbarial regulation was also combined with the tax regulation. In the future, money alone was to be the “sole and unalterable standard” for determining the subjects' obligations; the manorial authorities were generally only to be able to demand money from their subjects, and the latter, in turn, were only obliged to provide money. Therefore, all subject obligations were reduced to money. However, the interested parties were permitted to continue transforming the urbarial obligation into wage labor by way of free agreement in the future. The state, however, did not want to exert any influence on the conclusion of such contracts. But not only the quality of the obligations was changed; their quantity also underwent a significant change—likewise in favor of the subjects. The subjects, insofar as they were declared regulable, were in any case to retain at least 70% of the gross land yield determined for the purpose of tax regulation, free for their own maintenance and that of their families, as well as for defraying cultivation costs, municipal taxes, and levies for pastoral care and schools. All sovereign and manorial demands in the German-Austrian lands were therefore not to exceed 30% of the gross land yield. Insofar as this was the case, the manorial demands were to be reduced to the statutory maximum amount. That third by which the land tax was assessed lower in Galicia was to benefit the subjects, so that here too the subject obligations could not exceed the maximum set for the German crown lands. Thus, out of 100 florins of land yield, 73 florins 56 8/15 kreuzers remained free for the Galician subject. Regulable were all peasant rusticalists, regardless of whether they were bought-in or not bought-in. However, anyone who paid at least 1 1/3 florins (in the German crown lands 2 florins) in land tax from their rustical lands was considered a peasant. The obligations of the cottagers and lodgers, insofar as they were an equivalent for manorial protection, were left unchanged in kind and measure. But if they possessed taxable lands, they were to be treated equally to the peasant rusticalists with respect to these208.

The new urbarial system was to come into force together with the tax reform on November 1, 1789209. However, in order to facilitate the transition to the new economic constitution for the manorial authorities, the subjects were obliged, until the end of October 1791, on account of their cash obligations, upon the demand of the authorities under certain conditions, to work for them for a legally determined wage.

The Josephinian urbarial regulation was based on the same idea that had already found expression in the Raab system: to transform the natural services, of whose harmfulness to the national wealth one was convinced, into monetary levies. At the same time, the subject obligations are substantially reduced without any regard for the “well-acquired” rights of the seigniories. It could not escape the Emperor that the abolition of natural services would make it impossible for the dominions to continue the previous economic system, and would compel them to distribute the demesne land to peasants in exchange for rent. That was precisely the Emperor’s intention. The hated system of corvée labor was to be completely broken with, the large estate complexes were to be smashed into peasant holdings, the peasantry, which constitutes the most numerous class of citizens and the foundation, consequently the greatest strength of the state, was no longer to be exploited and sucked dry by the manorial authorities and their officials.

A new era seemed to have dawned for Austria.

The privileged estates, whose prerogatives were threatened, armed themselves for defense and they also succeeded in thwarting the Emperor’s work of reform.

Chapter Three. The Post-Josephine Era.

§ 1. The Repeal of the Tax and Urbarial Regulation.

Even the unconditional supporters of the tax and urbarial regulation had to admit that the reform showed many flaws in its execution. The surveying and assessment had been done in haste – within the short period of four years. It was therefore incorrect and unreliable in many respects. And apart from these minor errors, which could be corrected over time, was it even possible or desirable to carry out such a reform in a country as poor in money as Galicia? Wouldn’t it be easier for the peasant to perform a certain number of days of labor per week than to pay a monetary tax, even a small one210? And wasn’t it in the interest of national prosperity to force the subject, who disdained working for wages in the time left free from cultivating his land, to work?

The policy of the Austrian government in Galicia was aimed at favoring the peasantry at the expense of the nobility. The dull mass of the rural population accepted all benefits without showing a sign of gratitude. Living from day to day, they seemed to have no understanding at all of the struggle that was now erupting over their fate between the state and the landowners. Among the Galician nobility, on the other hand, there was fierce agitation over the measures of the Austrian government. Everything the Austrian state had undertaken for the benefit of Galicia had exclusively benefited the middle class, the peasantry, and the Greek Church, which had been severely oppressed during the Polish era. The nobles, who had just recently been almost sovereign, could not get over the fact that they had been pushed into the second row, and that all important civil service and officer positions were filled with – mostly middle-class – Germans. But the landowners must have felt most painfully the material losses inflicted on them by the new system of government. They, who had previously been almost tax-exempt, were drawn into contributing to all state burdens. A series of decrees reduced their urbarial benefits quite considerably. The confiscation of the crown estates and the monopolization of salt extraction and the salt trade diminished their income significantly. The urbarial regulation altogether seemed intended to complete their economic ruin.

This drove the nobility to the extreme. The question of a forcible separation of Galicia from Austria was discussed quite openly. Secret committees formed everywhere in the country, establishing contact with the Prussian and Polish governments211. The more moderate elements, led by the estate representatives, presented petitions to the government in which they urgently warned against the introduction of the new system. They complained that such an important reform, which transformed the whole country, had been decided upon without them being heard. The new system could not be introduced. If it were nevertheless introduced – despite the warnings of the landowners – it must “infallibly bring ruin within a short time to the nobleman, the subject, and all kinds of inhabitants of the country in general, and consequently to the whole empire.” The system was “a) universally inapplicable for this country, b) defective and consisting of mere ideal concepts, but not of true principles.” The ownership of the subject lands belonged exclusively to the dominions. It was an encroachment on rights expressly recognized by the Emperor to diminish the manorial revenues212. But the Emperor remained firm. He decided: the new system was to irrevocably come into force on November 1, 1789213. Yet only a few weeks later, the reaction had triumphed on all points and forced the Emperor to withdraw the decrees he had made for Belgium and Hungary214.

In the depressed mood into which the Emperor had been put as a result of the failure of his great plans and the failures in foreign policy, he received an anonymous letter from a nobleman from the Zamość district, which described the difficult situation of the Galician landowners in stark terms215. The Emperor immediately sent the letter by express messenger to the Governor, Count Brigido, with the request to express his opinion on the validity of the accusations raised against the reform. Brigido’s report formed the basis of a court commission meeting held on February 5, 1790, the result of which amounted to the complete abandonment of the reform ideas. “The main stumbling block always remains the tax and urbarial regulation.” Since its immediate removal was not easily feasible, Galicia’s tax quota was temporarily reduced by 500,000 fl., but otherwise the Governor was given extensive authority to decree whatever seemed necessary to him without first having to obtain the Emperor’s consent216.

Nowhere in the numerous petitions presented by the Galician landowners to the government in the winter of 1789/90 is the peasantry mentioned. It is always only said that the nobility and clergy would suffer under the new tax. And that was quite natural. For the subjects saw the goal of their desires achieved in the urbarial reform, which, incidentally, they only considered the prelude to a general abolition of all subject obligations. The rather significant increase in state burdens was of less concern to them compared to the substantial reduction in services and dues. In many places, the subjects wanted to force the immediate implementation of the reform and refused the wage labor to which they were still obligated for two years. The government’s decrees had to be enforced by dispatched military detachments217.

Emperor Joseph had still maintained in his resolution on the commission protocol of February 5 that the 17% urbarial demands must not be exceeded. After the Emperor’s death (February 20, 1790), however, this principle was abandoned. The old state of affairs was to be restored, only the government expressed the expectation that the Galician estates, just as the Upper Austrian ones had already done, would grant the subjects certain reliefs218. Immediately after the Emperor’s death, the nobility committees that had formed in Lviv and in the district towns had sent four deputies to Vienna to greet the new ruler and convey to him the wishes of the landed nobility. The estate committee assigned them two more representatives from its midst, thereby lending legitimacy to the illegal actions of the committees219. The Court Chancellery negotiated with these envoys about the repeal of the Josephine system. The result was the patent of April 19, 1790220. According to this, the old state of affairs in the tax system was to be restored starting May 1, and in the urbarial system starting July 1, in return for which the authorities would grant the subjects some favors. These consisted in the manors taking upon themselves half of the increase in the land tax compared to the old rustical tax, and dedicating the in-kind delivery certificates for the deliveries they made in the years 1789 and 1790 to the endowment of the communal granaries. Moreover, they wanted to bear the burden of tax collection alone from then on. Finally, they renounced that “sixteenth measure” which the subjects, according to the circular of July 19, 1787221, were obliged to add when repaying received grain advances, so that the manorial assistance was to be provided interest-free from then on.

With the repeal of the Josephine tax and urbarial regulation, the Galician deputies had only achieved a part of their wishes. The task whose fulfillment had been most strongly urged upon them by their constituents was obtaining a constitution for Galicia that would secure freedoms and special rights for the Galician nobility for all time. Although the draft constitution presented by the deputies sought to grant Galicia a position almost independent of the central government, the Emperor also seemed not averse to accepting the deputation’s proposals, since his main concern was to pacify the country in order to be able to more firmly counter the expected Prussian attacks222. The constitutional provisions of the 1790 constitutional project (charta Leopoldina) are not considered here. But specifically regarding peasant conditions, the authors of the draft wished to fix the status as of October 31, 1789. The land inventories were to be declared public documents and henceforth not changed without the consent of both involved parties; on the other hand, oppression of subjects was to be punished with a fine of double the value223. These brief indications were not sufficient to solve the highly important question of the urbarium for the country’s future; this required a special regulation. The deputies therefore requested that a rectification of the land inventories be undertaken, and in agreement with them, the Court Chancellery commissioned the former administrator of the Galician cameral estates, Matthias von Ainser, whom we have already met as the head of the corvée (robot) abolition business, to provide an expert opinion on how to proceed with carrying out such an operation224. “It is irrefutable,” Ainser stated in his extensive memoire, “that since the revindication, through all these circumstances (increase in state burdens, decline in trade to Danzig due to high Prussian tariffs, decline in the salt trade and tobacco cultivation due to the introduction of the monopoly, crop failures and cattle plagues, reduction of forest and pasture rights since the introduction of the forest ordinance), the condition of the subject on the whole has worsened, therefore it is not to be thought that in general the prohibita generalia could be repealed again, and the subject obligations, as they were at the time of the revindication, could be reintroduced, but rather as a rule the abolition should remain unalterable, and only the urbarial obligations existing as of the end of October 1789 in concreto should be taken as valid and inviolable pro basi for the rectification of the inventories.” In principle, the deputies also agreed with this. They refrained from demanding the withdrawal of the Josephine reforms and contented themselves with making a few minor demands225. Ainser’s proposals and those of the estate representatives formed the basis for deliberations that dragged on for months. The new gubernatorial referent Count Trautmannsdorf proposed: “that the concretal mass of all subject obligations be collected, brought into one sum, this then again subdivided according to the proportion of the location, fertility of the soil, possibility of more or less earnings of the localities, and in such a way all subjects of the country should be brought into an equal element with regard to their obligations.” In the bosom of the Gubernium, a defender of the most extreme interest standpoint of the dominions was found in the person of Councilor Kolmanhuber, who had already proven his friendly disposition towards the landowners in earlier years as district captain of Zamośc. Now he demanded the restoration of the status of 1772, which proposal met with resolute resistance from his colleagues226. The dispute was conducted with great vehemence from both sides.

Meanwhile, the negotiations on the Galician constitution also continued. In their course, the government proposed that in the future the peasantry should also be granted representation in the state diet227. Soon, however, the negotiations stalled, and at the beginning of 1793 they were also formally broken off. At Reichenbach and Pillnitz, Austria had successfully achieved a rapprochement with Prussia, and from Poland, whose statehood’s final hour had struck, there was also no longer any danger threatening Galicia228. The government now felt strong enough to maintain the peace of the country even without granting a constitution. The standstill of the deliberations on the constitution did not remain without effect on the urbarial reform either. The matter gradually fell asleep. On the basis of the court decree of December 3, 1791, the vice-president of the Bohemian Gubernium, Baron v. Margelik, was sent to Galicia as court commissioner “to investigate and remedy the perceived disorder”. He was also specifically instructed to accelerate the rectification of the manorial land inventories229. However, Margelik’s report on this matter only had the one success that all reform intentions were finally abandoned.

The Galician governor Count Brigido, who openly leaned towards the side of the dominions, was against any reform because he realized that the restoration of the status of 1772 sought by the landowners was impossible. In his report of April 8, 1792, he stated: “Through all the proposals that have occurred so far, encountering various obstacles everywhere, I see myself more and more confirmed in my opinion that it is currently not at all advisable to undertake an urbarial regulation on the part of and with the influence of the government, but that only an amicable agreement between landowner and subject can lead to this.”

The Court Chancellery, on the other hand, considered: "it generally does not appear to be the time at present to undertake anything in this matter (urbarial regulation), especially since the proposals of the Gubernium are neither applicable nor correspond to the intentions230". Once again in the following year, the question of an urbarial regulation was considered. From the operations of the “Galician Court Commission in Estate Exchange Matters”, Emperor Francis had learned of manifold abuses in the urbarial system. He therefore gave the Directorate in cameralibus et publicis politicis the order to indicate "whether and what it might have already initiated to remedy such essential defects, or how and according to what principles it believes it should behave in this matter, since precisely the current critical and precarious situation of Galicia does not seem to permit a longer delay of the necessary remedies, – on the contrary, seems to call upon the provincial government to all possible diligence for the satisfaction of the subject taxpayer231". However, the Directorate soon convinced the monarch that “under present circumstances” it would be best to do nothing.

After years of deliberations, a redemption law appeared on September 1, 1798, which clearly expressed that the government was not willing to change the existing order of things232. The redemption of subject obligations was henceforth to be left to the free agreement of the parties. Redemption contracts were to require district office confirmation, which could only be granted if the political authority had gained the conviction that the contract did not affect the rights of third parties (mortgage creditors, expectants, etc.) and that it “suits the maintenance of the subject”.

With the patent of September 1, 1798, socio-political legislation in the agrarian field in Austria concluded for almost half a century233.

§ 2. Reforms and Attempted Reforms in the Post-Josephine Era.

Since the publication of the patent of September 1, 1798, it had become clear to everyone that the government was not inclined to continue on the path of reforms embarked upon by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. Initially, it also lacked the peace required to implement major changes in the state apparatus. Since 1792, Austria had been constantly embroiled in severe wars that shook the foundations of the empire, and when peace was restored in 1815, quieta non movere had become the fundamental principle of politics. With anxious timidity, the leading statesmen avoided any major legislative action; "to order what the immediate need recommended, to insert here, to eradicate there, to reword individual provisions, to organize and interpret them differently, and not always better, that was all they trusted their strength to do234".

It was not a contradiction to this that a series of those laws, which had been enacted in the Josephine era for the protection of subjects in Galicia, were extended to the province of West or New Galicia, acquired in 1796. For there was an intention to organize West Galicia completely on the model of East Galicia, and so the laws regarding subjects also had to be transferred to the new province235. The property rights of subjects were protected236, serfdom was abolished237, and the procedure against disobedient subjects and in cases of subject grievance lawsuits was regulated following the model of the patents of September 1, 1781238. The Robot Patent was not promulgated in West Galicia.

Since 1792, a Court Commission had been meeting in Vienna, whose task was to submit proposals for a complete reform of the Galician administration239. The intended major reforms were never implemented, but the government strove to actually enforce Emperor Joseph’s patents issued before 1789, which were still far from being observed everywhere240.

Through Article V of the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, Austria had regained possession of the Tarnopol and Czortkow districts, which had been ceded to Russia in 1809. The Russian government had indeed allowed the Austrian subject laws to provisionally remain in force in this region; nevertheless, during the period of Russian rule, the authorities had increased the obligations of the subjects, while reducing their landholdings in favor of the manorial land, to which the authorities gave the legally required consent when it was already settled that the land would revert to Austria. It was no longer possible to restore the former extent of the subjects' lands. The dominions were therefore ordered to conclude settlements with the subjects regarding the dues and the lands within 6 months and then submit them for confirmation by the district office. If an agreement could not be reached, the district office had to mediate. Dominical and rustical taxes were to be regulated according to the new property relations241.

Emperor Leopold II had repealed the Josephine laws on peasant inheritance in Lower Austria and enacted a new law in their stead242. As early as 1790, negotiations began on the introduction of this law in Galicia. At the same time, a reorganization of the Bestiftungszwang [compulsory land allocation] was also discussed. The deliberations dragged on until 1848 without leading to any result. The Josephine inheritance order remained in existence in Galicia—admittedly only on paper—until 1868. The Bestiftungszwang, after having led a phantom existence, was likewise abolished by provincial law in 1868243. We should be all the less surprised by the fruitlessness of these deliberations, given that even the constitutional era, in more than a generation, has to this day not brought about a satisfactory solution to this highly important question.

“All reports from the political and judicial authorities are unanimous regarding the poor state of the administration of justice in the countryside,” complained the Court Chancellery244 and therefore had been deliberating since 1803 on the regulation of the courts of first instance in Galicia. At one point district courts were to be established, then again local courts, then finally justices of the peace, which were just being created in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw on the French model. At times they wanted to abolish the jurisdiction of the landlords entirely, then again it was said it should be preserved and only another judicial authority placed above or alongside it245. Only in 1818 did these plans solidify into a positive proposal by the Gubernium: to establish sovereign district courts, to which all matters of political and civil jurisdiction were to be assigned, with the exception of business arising from the bond of subjection, the handling of which was to remain with the manorial authorities246. The Governor, Franz Freiherr von Hauer, was currently absent from Lemberg. When he saw the project, he declared that he did “not agree, because the provincial authority wants to unite the various matters of political and civil jurisdiction under one and the same authority, whose officials would have to acquire a completely unattainable universality of legal and business knowledge.” Above all, however, the matter would make “an incursion into patrimonial jurisdiction, which seems to me not to lie in the intention and spirit of the Austrian state administration.” In the event that the central government should nevertheless insist on the reform, Hauer made the proposal to leave the maintenance of the land registers247, guardianship matters, and probate proceedings to the manorial authorities. District authorities were to be established to handle political business, and district courts to handle judicial business248.

Many more sheets of paper were written on, but everything remained the same. Only in the tax system was a major reform undertaken. By the patent of December 23, 1817249, the regulation of the land tax was ordered, which was to be carried out on the basis of the “stable cadastre,” which was to be created through careful measurement and appraisal. However, since it became apparent shortly after the start of the work to create the stable cadastre that this work would take a longer period of time than originally assumed, the Josephine tax regulation documents, which had barely escaped being pulped in 1790, were brought back to light from the archives and, with some changes demanded by the changing times, were used as a provisional cadastre as the standard for tax assessment250. The provisional cadastre was to be replaced by the stable one as soon as possible. But this did not happen, and until the land tax regulation carried out in 1882, the provisional cadastre remained in force in Galicia251.

The land tax regulation gave the government cause to address the communal field system [Feldgemeinschaft]. During the Josephine land tax regulation, the surveying and yield estimation had been carried out without linking them to a stable land distribution. This was also perfectly possible now and was to be carried out again, since the cadastral registration was not influenced by property rights252. Nevertheless, the Gubernium wanted to see the communal field system eliminated, just as it had been striving for years—admittedly without success for the time being—to introduce individual ownership in Bukovina. And without a doubt, the institution of the communal field system in Pokuttya was already dissolving. The communities themselves desired the distribution of the lands; in many villages it had already been carried out, in others it was imminent253.

There was uncertainty about how the state should intervene in these conditions. The Gubernium was against an imperative regulation; most voices were in favor of waiting to see what would happen in Bukovina. There, the communal field system was eliminated in 1835254, but in Galicia, nothing was done by the government in this regard. Even the land relief encountered the mutable field ownership and had to take a position on it255. Only on the occasion of the detailed cadastral survey was the communal field system in Galicia completely eliminated and the property status of the individual landowners fixed256.

§ 3. The landlord-peasant relationship in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The power and influence of the Austrian government in Galicia barely extended beyond the boundaries of the district towns. The few district officials, overburdened with official duties and often with superfluous paperwork, could not possibly oversee their vast administrative districts entirely. Even the police duties incumbent upon them could not be carried out adequately, as a sovereign security guard was not available to them. The financial guard, established in 1835 and reorganized in 1842, which was distributed in small detachments throughout the country, could not and was not supposed to take the place of such a guard, since it served exclusively fiscal purposes. The center of gravity of the administration lay with the dominions, which were responsible for the exercise of political and judicial business in the first instance257. The manner in which the lordships discharged this task was the worst imaginable; the magisterial “office” in Galicia could not be compared in the slightest with the economic office of the western crown lands, which functioned to general satisfaction, even if not flawlessly258.

The dominions were obliged to pay a legally trained justiciary to exercise civil jurisdiction in disputes. Let us now hear what a man familiar with the country’s conditions reports about the activities of the justiciaries: "For the exercise of civil jurisdiction, separate justiciaries are appointed, but disproportionately few compared to the actual need, to whom 20 and more dominions attach themselves for a contribution of 10, 15, 20 florins, which hardly deserves mention, merely to be able to prove that civil jurisdiction has been appointed for their territory. The business protocols of these justiciaries provide proof that they do not visit the judicial districts assigned to them for years, and only get there when a litigating party or an heir succeeds in enforcing this in a costly manner. Estate proceedings, securing and supervising the subject orphans' property and guardianships, on the other hand, are left to the arbitrariness of other manorial officials ignorant of the law. If complaints about neglected or partial administration of justice by the parties disadvantaged thereby only rarely reach the higher authorities, one is very mistaken in the assumption and in the trust in a legal and active administration of justice in those manorial judicial districts; one must rather recognize the poverty, the loss of time, the helplessness, and the ignorance of the law on the part of the common people as the sole obstacle in order to find the true cause of the omission of costly complaints."259

The business arising from the bond of subjection, furthermore the business of the noble judge’s office and the local police, were handled by the so-called mandataries, manorial officials who had to have passed an examination on political regulations before the district office. "Without legal studies, indeed without thorough schooling and other education, usually equipped only with a very superficial knowledge of the political laws and found suitable for handling dominical business at the examination taken on this at the district office, partly out of pity, partly out of a lack of better candidates, poorly paid, often blessed with a large family, subordinate on the one hand to the landlord as their employer, but on the other hand to the district offices as their superior authorities, who certified them for their offices and could revoke their certificates according to circumstances, they were from the beginning forced to sit on two chairs, from there to throw dust in the eyes of the owners of these chairs, and to be primarily mindful of their own advantage."260 Countless complaints were raised against them by all contemporaries. “Petitions,” says our anonymous author cited above, “only find admission with them through bribes, and the corruptibility has also spread to the lower estate officials; every scribe, every hayduk must be bribed.” Already in 1809, Emperor Francis stated in a handwritten note to Count Ugarte: "There is a general complaint in Galicia that the police and justice administration is very poorly appointed there, especially in the countryside."261

It suited the peasants quite well that the dominions neglected the administration of justice. From time immemorial they were accustomed to settling their disputes before the village judge and the jurymen, and in the case of larger objects of dispute, before the assembly of the entire community. The village judge ensured the maintenance of peace, order, and security, in which he was willingly obeyed by everyone. The less the justiciary and mandatary cared about the affairs of the community, the better and freer the peasantry felt262.

It should come as no surprise that with such a state of the administration of justice, the Josephine laws on succession in peasant estates led only a sham existence263. Although the division of peasant holdings was legally forbidden, it was nevertheless the rule. It was the traditional inheritance custom corresponding to the people’s sense of justice. The district office’s permission, which would have been required for the divisions, was never applied for. The landlord, however, watched the breaking up of the peasant estates with joy, since he could easily increase the corvées in the process and actually did increase them. “An inheritance division in any other way than the illegal manner of actual division into the plots of land was actually”—as Count Stadion explained in a lecture on December 13, 1846—"impossible. For how can co-heirs be satisfied as long as there is no mortgage to secure their inheritance shares? Indeed, how can these even be determined, by what standard should the usufructuary right of the taker of the farm, which perhaps expires tomorrow through his death, be estimated? With these difficulties lying in the nature of the previous conditions, the legal order of succession has still not gained any validity. The peasants themselves do not yet understand the principle of undivided farms, and in the event of death, these are distributed almost everywhere without any judicial mediation according to the inmates' own customs, or handed over to those who happen to be at hand, without regard to legal inheritance rights or underage forced heirs. If it comes to a dispute, the local judge decides. In this way, in the more densely populated districts, the division of farms has already progressed to a deplorable degree264."

We are also partly in a position to form a—admittedly not exact—picture of the extent of this “deplorable” fragmentation of landownership. In 4,867 Galician communities for which statistical data were available, it amounted to265
according to the the number of settlements the number of corvée days (converted to manual days)
stock inventories (1772) 221,482 30,429,287
operates of the Josephine land tax regulation (1789) 266,118 34,825,805
operates of the provisional cadastre (1820) 301,561 37,785,525
operates of the urbarial regulation (1847) 334,367 37,947,243

It was a great misfortune for the country that the government had finally abandoned the intention of carrying out an urbarial regulation. Now there was a lack of a secure, generally recognized basis for the relations between land lordships and subjects. The mutual rights and duties were unclear and continually offered cause for disputes. If the subjects complained that the authorities were depriving them of land and overburdening them with corvée, the authorities complained that the subjects fulfilled their obligations poorly or not at all and that, as a result of their sloppy farming, they claimed magisterial assistance all too frequently. Above all, however, the subject usage rights to forest and pasture were a source of endless lawsuits, not infrequently also bloody clashes between manorial servants and peasants. The dominions regarded the forests as their absolute property, the rights of the subjects as precariums revocable at any time, for the continuation of which they believed themselves entitled to demand any price. The subjects, in turn, saw the forests as a public good offered by nature or at least a community good, the use of which no one should hinder them from.

If a community (—for it was rarer for the individual to dare to take up the dangerous and uncertain struggle—) felt its rights diminished by the dominion, it elected a number of deputies from its midst to represent its cause. The complaint had to be brought first before the land authority, according to the regulation. After the latter had, as usual, chased the litigants away, they turned to the district office. Here the complaint had to be submitted in writing, and the peasants, ignorant of writing, were therefore forced to enlist the help of a pettifogger266. Once they had fallen into the hands of these unscrupulous persons, one could be sure that the lawsuit would not find its end anytime soon. The overburdening of the district offices with business and “sometimes also the corruptibility of a part of the district office and higher administrative officials267” contributed their share, and so it happened that many of these pregravation lawsuits lasted twenty, thirty, and even more years. A large part of the subject communities was constantly in conflict with the dominions268. If the peasants' attempt to obtain their rights by legal means had failed, they offered passive resistance to the authorities. The corvée patent had abolished the previously customary “measured work” and introduced the hourly measure in its place. The subjects took advantage of this, appeared unpunctually for the corvée, and worked negligently and sloppily. The estate officials, for their part, made all too frequent, excessive use of the stick and whip. Nevertheless, or perhaps precisely because of this, the work of the corvée laborers became worse and worse, so that the value of the corvée constantly sank269.

Under such circumstances, the brutalization of the peasants made terrible progress. The number of crimes grew in a frightening manner. In the flat countryside, all bonds of order dissolved, and nowhere were life and property safe anymore. The gulf between landlords and peasants became unbridgeable, and the resentful hatred of the people against their tormentors vented itself from time to time in gruesome crimes. Cases of corvée refusal multiplied. Military assistance had to be called in more and more frequently to suppress peasant revolts. Galicia stood on the eve of a social revolution270.

Chapter Four. The Uprising of the Year 1846 and its Consequences.

§ 1. On the Background of the Uprising.

Since the year 1790, the peace of Galicia had not been disturbed a single time by a conspiracy or even by an open revolution aimed at the reunification of the country with Poland, or rather the restoration of the old Polish state. While secret societies demonstrably emerged in Warsaw as early as 1817, and lively agitation unfolded in the other Polish lands at the same time, everything remained quiet in Galicia. This situation changed after the unfortunate outcome of the uprising of 1830/31. Many thousands of participants in the uprising had to leave their homeland to escape the persecution of the Russian authorities. Some of the emigrants settled permanently in Galicia, others turned to Belgium, America, but above all to France. All the thoughts and aspirations of the exiles were understandably directed toward the restoration of the Polish empire; however, there was no unity regarding the ways and means that should lead to this goal.

Already during the revolutionary war, the old-school Poles, who wanted to re-establish the old state in all its parts, were opposed by a democratic party under the leadership of the excellent historian Joachim Lelewel, which wrote the complete dissolution of the condition of serfdom at the top of its program. However, the aristocratic party kept the upper hand, and the uprising of 1831 failed due to the lack of support from the rural population, just like the subsequent ones of 1846 and 1863.

The gap between the two parties widened even further in exile under the influence of the French Legitimists on the one hand, and the Democrats on the other. The aristocratic party, whose head, Adam Prince Czartoryski, had assumed the title of a King of Poland in France, expected all salvation from the intervention of the powers. But their prestige sank all the more, the slighter this prospect became; the Democrats, on the other hand, unfolded a lively activity. On March 17, 1832, they founded the “Towarzystwo demokratyczne” in Paris, which henceforth formed the center of the Polish movement, and which entered into active contact with the Poles in Galicia271. The program of the Democrats culminated in the demand to abolish the peasant burdens without any compensation to the entitled parties272. They broke completely with the old Poland, whose social order was founded on the servitude of the people. The old Poles, they concluded, had known no genuine love for the fatherland, otherwise they would not have enslaved the people. Poland would never have perished had the nobility not harshly oppressed the subjects, so that they watched the decline of the state with indifference. For the slave does not love the fatherland, which is not a loving mother to him, but a stepmother273. Had the people risen up against the enemies, they would have been done for. For there is no power on earth that can subjugate a nation of twenty million274. Even through a slight alleviation of the corvée, Kościuszko had succeeded in gathering a host around him, to which the Russian bayonets had to yield at Racławice. How would it be, then, if the peasants were freed from all burdens?

Therefore, only one means could save Poland, the social revolution. It must go hand in hand with the national uprising. For, if attempted beforehand, it would be suppressed by the foreign powers; but it would be foolish to want to wait with the implementation of the social reforms until the successful completion of the struggle for independence, since the work of liberation could only succeed if the entire people joined the uprising275.

The planned social revolution was directed against all who drew advantage from the combated abuses. It would turn into a civil war if people were found who would defend the privileges. If the nobility does not want to let go of its prerogatives, then woe to it. The revolution knows – it was threatened – only one punishment, the death penalty, which is to be rejected in principle, but without which no revolution can be carried out. He who hesitates to shed the blood of the noblemen will do a disservice to the fatherland. No revolution without terrorism. Everyone who opposes the orders of the uprising committee must die276.

In order to win over the people, it was not enough to speak of the unity of the Polish people and to write treatises about it, or to babble in vague terms about the social revolution. An easily comprehensible catchphrase had to be found that would immediately draw the masses of the people to the side of the insurgents. Such a magic word was uwłaszczenie (free land ownership for the peasants) or as it is stated more precisely, more elaborately: Every peasant, householder, gardener, etc., who cultivates a piece of land in exchange for the performance of corvées, rents, tributes, or other obligations, becomes the owner of his plot of land and henceforth has no more obligations whatsoever to fulfill toward any person277.

But is it not an injustice to deprive some of their land ownership and bestow it upon others? No! For everything that is required for the salvation of the fatherland may be demanded of everyone. The fatherland may indeed also demand the lives of its sons, how should it not also be able to freely dispose of their property? And then, if one makes the peasants owners, that is merely a reinstatement to the previous state278. For once, in the gray prehistory, all Poles were free peasants with equal rights. Only later, to the immeasurable detriment of the nation, did class distinctions develop, and the great majority became subject to a minority279.

For these principles, the Democrats immediately began to unfold a lively agitation among the lower nobility, the clergy, the estate officials, the citizens, the students, and also among the soldiers, which did not remain without success. In a short time, the revolutionary associations were spread over the whole country, and despite the government uncovering several of these associations and investigating and punishing their participants, the movement secretly made ever greater progress280. The conspirators also carried the agitation among the peasantry. Here, however, they had experiences which filled the few among them, whose clear vision had not been clouded by enthusiasm for the national cause, with gloomy premonitions. The peasants did indeed listen when city dwellers, clergymen, estate officials, and on some smaller estates probably even the lord of the manor himself, all of whom had previously anxiously avoided any contact with them, sought them out and spoke with them confidentially. Their eyes did indeed shine when they heard them speak of a better, more beautiful future in which there would be no more masters and no more servants, and all would be brothers. But everything they gathered from the words of the agitators only stoked their hatred against the nobility even more. They wanted to know nothing of the restoration of the Polish state. What did Poland matter to them? To them it was the same whether Polish or German. But they knew this, that the only help against the oppressions of the lords of the manor came to them from the Austrian officials. The memory of all the injustice that the peasant had once had to endure, and which he now, thanks to the intervention of the Emperor, no longer had to bear, still lived on in the older people. That is why the peasants everywhere called themselves “imperial” and “Austrian” and abhorred everything that was “Polish,” for their oppressors were Polish281.

The agitation among the rural population thus did not have the success that the Democrats had expected. On the other hand, it awakened the distrust of the propertied nobility. The friendship of the nobility seemed more important to the party leaders than that of the peasants, and temporarily the ban on rural agitation was even pronounced282. In an altered form, however, it was soon resumed. No longer citizens and estate officials, but solely the clergy were henceforth to strive to draw the people to the side of the revolutionary party. In order to tie the bond of trust between clergy and people more closely, and at the same time to make the movement appear quite innocent, a form was chosen for this that could have had beneficial consequences. Temperance societies were founded, which were supposed to counteract the increasingly rampant drunkenness. Urged by the clergy, numerous peasants took the vow of abstinence from all alcoholic beverages or even just of temperance. The beneficial effects on the population were soon visible. The propertied nobility placed no obstacles in the way of these endeavors, even though the propination income was diminished by them. For in the meantime they had concluded a compromise with the democratic party283.

§ 2. The Peasant Question at the Diet.

The nobility had been brought to this compromise not only by the hopelessness of their expectations for a European intervention, but perhaps even more so by the democratic agitation threatening the large estates. Aristocracy and democracy thus reached an agreement: the latter would no longer agitate against the nobility, while the former would bring the peasant question before the Diet for a legal settlement284. The previously described disorganization in the countryside also played a part in persuading the Galician large landowners to abandon the position they had held for seventy years: that the state should not interfere in the relationship between landlord and peasant. The value of the corvée labor – as it was still being performed by the subjects – was decreasing daily, and the fear grew that it would ultimately become completely worthless285.

And so the peasant question came up for discussion at the Diet. Since it had become increasingly clear in recent years that the absolutist central government was not up to the task of administering such a large and diverse state as the Austrian monarchy, the previously entirely uninfluential estates demanded a larger share in the government286. Even though the Galician estates could not invoke any historical rights like those in Austria, Bohemia, and Tyrol, they had nevertheless participated in the upsurge of parliamentary influence. The Diet assemblies were more heavily attended than before, and the debates became livelier. In a number of important matters, the Diet had spoken the decisive word, but above all, through the establishment of the Credit Institution (1841), it had shown that it was capable of independently carrying out a major economic initiative. It had also just taken the resolution of the railway question into its own hands. It was therefore a matter of course that it also wanted to address the peasant question, which was far more important and urgent for the country than all other issues287.

Thus, in September 1843, during a confidential meeting of the members of the estates, the Deputy Provincial Marshal Thaddäus Ritter Chochlik von Wasilewo-Wasilewski proposed the establishment of a commission "which was to concern itself with proposals for improving the condition of the subjects, granting them property, and modifying the corvée obligations."288 The proposal met with fierce opposition from the majority of those assembled, especially from the landowners from the East. Nevertheless, since weighty voices were raised in its favor, an agreement was reached that a motion would be introduced in the official Diet session requesting the Emperor “to most graciously authorize the estates to appoint a commission from their midst in the next Diet assembly, which would be tasked with considering the mutual relations between the manorial estates and the peasant tenants of this province, gathering information on this matter in a prudent manner through appropriate channels where necessary, and in due course presenting to the Diet assembly those improvements and changes regarding these relations which prove to be expedient and conducive to the best interests of the manorial estates and the peasant tenants, and thus to the general welfare, so that the estates may direct their further most humble petitions to the throne of His I. & R. Majesty on this basis.” In this milder wording, the motion was passed as a resolution on September 23, 1843, with 86 votes to 15.

The government was in a state of great embarrassment. It dreaded the noise and unrest that such a profound change in agrarian law as the reform of the condition of subjection was bound to arouse. Its first thought was therefore to anxiously conceal the Diet’s negotiations on the peasant question from the public. To be sure, it was not entirely averse to a reform. It recognized quite correctly that, “viewed according to the Court Chancellery files, the situation in Galicia is merely a provisional maintenance of the status quo, which was supposed to reach its end with the urbarial and tax regulation of 1789”. However, it rejected the presumption of the estates to want to solve such an important question on their own authority289. But not least of all, it feared that revolutionary ideas were hiding behind this proposal. The estates were therefore answered that the government had always made and would continue to make the improvement of landlord-peasant relations the object of its care, “insofar as such can take place without violating vested rights and with the complete exclusion of coercive measures,” but that "His I. & R. Majesty, given the vagueness and generality of the wording of the estates' resolution, does not recognize the establishment of a dedicated commission, whose task would be sufficiently defined neither in its subject matter nor in regard to the direction which the commission would have to take in its work, as a suitable means to achieve a prosperous outcome in this difficult matter while sparing all considerations deserving of careful deliberation; whereby, moreover, the estates remain at liberty, should they find it appropriate to make a specific proposal on a clearly designated subject, to submit the same through constitutional channels290."

Paralyzing as this answer was, the estates nevertheless refused to be deterred from their intention and at the next Diet (September 1844) submitted a renewed request: that a commission elected from among the provincial estates be permitted “to consider the establishment of land registers, which would serve as evidence in future disputes, the explicit granting of usufructuary property of subject lands, the regulation of servitudes and common ownership, and to submit a well-considered plan to the estates for future deliberation and higher forwarding.” The Governor-General, Archduke Ferdinand, was against granting this request, or at least in favor of postponing its fulfillment. The Court Chancellery, however, within which Josephinian influences were still noticeable, proposed: “that Your Majesty not only approve the establishment of the intended commission, but also instruct the provincial administration to deliberate and prepare the means, in agreement with the same and through joint cooperation, by which the property relations between the manorial and the subject landholdings can be regulated and secured, the means and the inclination for their better cultivation awakened, and the frictions and disadvantages arising from the current situation eliminated without infringing upon vested rights.” In accordance with the Court Chancellery’s report, the Emperor approved the establishment of the commission and determined that the Chamber Procurator, an experienced judicial official, and a businessman intimately familiar with the conditions of the state and fund estates be added to it as members291.

Indeed, on September 18 and 19, 1845, the estates proceeded to elect 18 members and an equal number of substitute members for the commission (one member and one substitute for each district), which, under the chairmanship of the Governor-General as President of the Estates, was initially to undertake preparatory discussions on the determination of usufructuary property and the establishment of land registers for subject landholdings292. Upon the motion of the estates' honorary assessor in the provincial committee, Moriz Ritter von Kramski, it was further resolved to petition the Emperor to expand the commission’s sphere of activity so that it could consider the measures necessary to convert the subject obligations into monetary or grain rents, or to facilitate their complete redemption by means of voluntary agreements293.

The commission was not to convene until after the monarch’s resolution on this petition had been issued. In the meantime, however, the commission members were to occupy themselves with gathering data and preparatory work for the deliberations294,295.

Before the Emperor’s renewed resolution had even been promulgated, the outbreak of the uprising cut off all further deliberations and negotiations. The commission elected by the estates never convened; after crushing the revolution, the government took the resolution of the peasant question into its own hands, and when the Galician Diet was convened again years later, corvée services already belonged to history.

Even if the estates or the government had tackled the resolution of the peasant question more energetically – the uprising of the rural population against the nobility could no longer have been avoided. Such a reform would in any case have been carried out with careful preservation of the rights of the lords of the manor and would thus, especially due to the redemption of servitudes to be undertaken simultaneously according to the wishes of the lords, only have increased the agitation among the peasantry even more. The agitators of the democratic party had instilled in the subjects the conviction that all burdens had to be abolished without any compensation whatsoever, and they now stubbornly insisted upon this.

The time for reforms had been missed – to the eternal detriment of the country.

§ 3. The Outbreak of the Uprising and the Measures of the Government.

While the estates and the government were negotiating the subject question, the conspirators had not remained idle. Everywhere in the territory of the former Polish state, they had recruited followers. On one and the same day – February 21, 1846 – Congress Poland, Lithuania, Posen, Krakow, and Galicia were to rise up. The civil service and officer positions of the Polish state had already been assigned, but the soldiers were still missing. It probably did not escape the more insightful among the Polish leaders that the rural population was averse to their efforts. But they thought the peasants would at worst waver in the beginning, but then, once the Poles had achieved their first successes – and no one doubted that the successes would materialize – quickly join the victors. At the moment of the outbreak, the estate owners were to gather the subjects, remit all their corvée labor and taxes, give them their lands, and then call upon them to participate in the uprising296.

A part of the democrats had not joined the agreement made by the party leadership with the aristocrats and continued the agitation among the rural population in a fierce and excessive manner.

Never, it says in an appeal distributed in the Rzeszow district in November 1845297, is the abolition of corvée labor to be expected from the lords, nor from the Emperor. For, “what can a German Emperor, sitting far away in Vienna, care about the fate of a Polish peasant?” Help could only come from God: “Christ was killed because he wanted there to be no serfdom.” But, “God is not a knight to fight with your enemies, nor a lawyer to defend your cause in court, nor is he your servant to wipe the sweat from your brow. And you are not worms, but created in the image of God and can help yourselves.”

“God merely gave you proof through the death of his best son that he desires your redemption. God gave you strong arms and sharp iron so that you yourselves may be knights, – and gave you reason so that you yourselves may defend your cause. Roasted pigeons do not fly into one’s mouth by themselves. – And you want freedom to bed itself down with you. – God gives us everything, but only when we have earned it! Man sows and plows, and God then gives rain, and warms the beautiful wheat with the sun. But he who does not sow and does not plow, for him no wheat grows.”

“So it is, dear brothers. Only you yourselves can free yourselves from serfdom, and God will bless you from above if you free yourselves! There are so many of you that if each of you throws just a small stone at those who oppress you, mountains of stones would arise on the corpses of your enemies.”

The inflammatory speeches and writings did not miss their mark.–

The Prussian government preempted the conspirators. Through numerous arrests and comprehensive security precautions, all revolutionary enterprises were thwarted. With merciless severity, Russia nipped the Polish movement in the bud. Only in Krakow and in Western Galicia did it come to a fight.

The lively movement among the Polish patriots had not escaped the Austrian authorities either. Toward the end of 1845, the signs of an imminent uprising multiplied. From all sides, reports about the activities of the conspirators reached the government organs. In the Gubernium, deliberations were held on how to counter the impending danger. The Gubernial President Franz Freiherr Krieg v. Hochfelden298 was in favor of reinforcing the relatively weak garrison of Galicia. The Governor General, however, only approved the calling up of those on leave; he wanted to hear nothing of drawing in troops from the west of the empire299.

Meanwhile, the situation in Western Galicia had become critical. Severe floods had repeatedly destroyed the crops in the fields, which caused a great famine, in the wake of which typhus caused terrible devastation. The government, the estates, and private charity made large funds available for distribution to the unfortunate peasants; but these donations could do little against the boundless misery. The rumor spread among the rural population that the estate owners were hoarding large supplies in their granaries for the coming uprising, which further increased the old hatred of the peasants against the nobles; on the other hand, the state officials, who were responsible for distributing the incoming donations, had the opportunity to win the affection of the subjects anew300.

The full magnitude of the danger only became apparent to the Governor General when he received the news that the peasants of the Bochnia district were arming themselves against the nobility. In the greatest dismay, he issued the order to the district offices to have a calming effect on the country people; too late. When the order of the Gubernium reached the district offices, the rebellion had already broken out301.

The rather openly conducted preparations of the insurgents for the uprising scheduled for the night of February 18 to 19 (the date had been moved forward by two days) had aroused the suspicion of the peasants of the Tarnow area. Dark rumors spread about the abolition of the corvée. The Emperor, it was said, had abolished it long ago, but the estate owners were holding back the relevant patent. Then again, one heard that the “Poles” had eliminated the subject obligations. Agents of the revolutionary committee proclaimed the end of serfdom everywhere, promised cheap tobacco and salt, and urged the peasants to join the uprising. They met with suspicion. The hatred of the peasants gained the upper hand. The opinion prevailed that the nobles wanted to massacre the peasants. In this uncertainty, the communities decided to be on their guard. Armed with scythes, pitchforks, and flails, they positioned themselves at the crossroads to keep watch. The village judges and the jurymen, as the most respected, the men on leave and the former soldiers, as the most experienced, took the lead. On the way to the agreed meeting place, the rebels had to pass the peasant mobs. They were not let through. They tried to force their way through; a fight ensued, in which the vastly more numerous peasants remained victorious. The nobles were partly killed, partly wounded, the rest taken prisoner. Dead and alive were loaded onto wagons and delivered to the district office in Tarnow. When the morning of February 19 dawned, the uprising in the Tarnow district had been crushed302.

The enterprise of the revolutionary party failed even more miserably in the other districts. In Eastern Galicia, fighting only occurred in two places at all. Everywhere the peasants rose up against the nobles for the government303. Only in the mountain village of Chocholow in the Sandoc district had the peasants – instigated by the local clergyman – joined the uprising against the government. A detachment of financial guards and the peasants of the neighboring communities, however, immediately crushed the rebellion304.

The Polish insurrection had not been overthrown by government troops, but by the peasants. Yet the peasants did not return home after achieving victory. They did not miss the opportunity to take revenge on their oppressors. In bands, they moved from estate to estate, murdering, plundering, scorching. All estate owners and economic officials who had not been able to flee in time were mercilessly butchered. The terrible murder lasted for days throughout Western Galicia.

Only in the first days of March did calm return. Military detachments roamed the country and ordered the peasants to refrain from all acts of violence. Most obeyed willingly; only rarely did they have to be dealt with severely. They returned to their villages to their usual fieldwork, in the firm conviction that from then on they were no longer obliged to perform any services for the lordship305.

The bloody events in Galicia had been caused by the harsh pressure that the landlords had exerted on their subjects for centuries. The machinations of the democratic party had fanned the spark that had long smoldered under the ashes. As simple as the truth was, it was nevertheless not believed. In the parliaments of England and France and in the entire European press, the accusation was leveled against the Austrian government that it had incited the Galician peasants against the “paternal rule” of the landlords. The district offices had supposedly paid a bounty for the head of every murdered nobleman; communist doctrines had allegedly been officially spread among the peasantry, etc.306.

Even if the Viennese government informed the foreign powers that it was by no means alarmed by the Galician events, but rather felt uplifted "by the feeling of the broad basis on which the power of the government in Galicia rests, namely the loyal attachment of the population,"307 the anxiety it secretly harbored was greater than it wanted to admit. In the opinion of Prince Metternich, sweeping reforms had to be tackled as quickly as possible in order to keep the country with Austria308. However, these reforms were to be undertaken in such a way that no suspicion could arise that the government had allowed itself to be intimidated by the uprising. Above all, emphasis was placed on the peasants returning to the corvée before any decision was made about its commutation, alleviation, or complete abolition. But that was not so easy to achieve. The opinion was widely held among the peasants that the obligation to perform statute labor had been abolished by the recent events. How should they, who had just emerged victorious from the struggle, bow their necks under the yoke of the defeated? At the outbreak of the uprising, the insurgents had held out the prospect of the abolition of all burdens to the subjects as a reward for participating in the revolution; should the peasants be punished for having fought for the Emperor and preserved the province for him?

The provincial government was of a different opinion. First of all, the subjects were to obediently resume work on the manorial fields, and only then should they enjoy the favors that had been intended for them. This demand was justified from the standpoint of agriculture. It was high time that the demesne lands were cultivated. Due to a lack of free laborers, this could only be done with the help of the corvée peasants. Since the majority of the estates were deserted – the landlords and officials were partly killed, partly fled, partly arrested for participating in the uprising – provisions had to be made for handling political and judicial business. A decree by the Governor General ordered the district captains to provisionally appoint a mandatory ex officio in those dominions where, for whatever reason, there was none. This was the first step toward establishing sovereign courts of first instance, a measure whose necessity was obvious to everyone after the recent events309.

Many peasants appeared in the district offices asking whether it was true that the Emperor had abolished the corvée. The Gubernium informed them "that nothing had changed in their duties toward the manorial lords as a result of the events that had taken place, and that decisions regarding the future could only come from His Majesty."310 So great was the peasants' trust in the government that a large portion of them resumed work upon receiving this information. Only in the Tarnow district did many communities resolutely refuse to perform the corvée. Again it was Jakob Szela who drove the peasants to resistance. From Tarnow, the refusal to perform corvée soon spread to those districts where the subjects had already begun to fulfill their obligations. Toward the end of March, the situation was critical again. In the meantime, however, the garrison of Western Galicia had been reinforced and the government’s position strengthened. The Gubernium therefore decided not to make or promise any concessions to the subjects for the time being, because this could appear as a reward for the acts of violence committed. Where the subjects did not comply with the amicable admonitions of the officials, they were to be forced to resume work by military executions311.

While the Gubernium struggled to restore the old state of affairs, measures of the greatest consequence were being considered in Vienna. Under the fresh impression of the Galician events, the Emperor had on March 9 approved in principle the proposal of the Court Chancellery to strip the landlords of the right of jurisdiction, which they had forfeited through their rebellion, and to establish sovereign courts of first instance, and had given the order to submit a precisely elaborated draft for the new administrative and judicial organization. At the same time, deliberations were held in the Court Chancellery regarding the regulation of the corvée conditions; radical proposals were made to confiscate the estates of the insurgents, to completely remit the corvée for the subjects, and to grant them the ownership of their lands free of charge. Soon, however, cooler considerations gained the upper hand. The abolition of the subjects' obligations in Galicia would also have shaken the agrarian constitution of the western provinces, and the authoritative circles, who were in close contact with the landlords, wanted to avoid that. The intended abolition of the natural corvée was therefore abandoned. However, the plan to regulate the landlord-peasant relations was not given up for that reason312.

Already on March 2, the Court Councilor at the united Court Chancellery, Wenzeslaus Ritter von Zaleski, had been sent to Galicia with the task of submitting proposals for the permanent pacification of the country. Zaleski proposed the immediate abolition of the auxiliary days and the long hauls, as well as the reduction of the cottagers' corvée by half313. The Court Chancellery submitted these proposals to the Emperor, but at the same time requested “approval of the principle of transforming the natural corvée into a monetary payment to the state in exchange for its obligation to compensate the dominions, and with the reservation of fixed, remunerated labor services on the part of the subjects to the dominions at prices to be determined by the district offices”314. The Emperor did not want to take such important and drastic measures without consulting the provincial authorities. He therefore gave the order to immediately initiate negotiations with the Gubernium regarding the modality of the corvée commutation proposed by the Court Chancellery and the question of granting usufructuary property to the subjects. The reduction of the cottagers' corvée was rejected, whereas the proposals concerning the abolition of the long hauls and the auxiliary days were approved and promulgated by patent on April 13. The same patent also stipulated that subjects who believed themselves aggrieved by a demand from their lordship could address their complaint directly to the district office without first having to bring the complaint before the manorial authority, as required by § 8 of the patent of September 1, 1781, a provision that had been included at the instigation of the Archduke Governor General315.

Even if the patent of April 13 did not bring the peasants what they had expected, namely the complete elimination of corvée services, it nevertheless contained some undoubtedly effective concessions. The subjects in Eastern Galicia were also completely satisfied. Less so those in Western Galicia. But here too, especially under the impression of the government’s coercive measures, work was resumed316.

§ 4. The Extraordinary Plenipotentiary Court Commission.

The subjects were all the more satisfied with the reliefs granted in the patent of April 13, as they knew that they were only to consider them as an installment. It was an open secret that the government intended to abolish the natural corvée (Naturalfrone), and thus comply with the wishes of the subject population not only of Galicia, but of all Austria317. Projects and drafts for the regulation or complete dissolution of the subject relationship poured in to the government from all parts of the empire.

In accordance with the Emperor’s order, the Galician Gubernium submitted a proposal for the commutation of peasant burdens318. According to this, the peasants were to be granted the usufructuary ownership of the lands, which de facto already belonged to them, without any compensation to the landlords. The robots and other services were to be “transformed into a monetary rent, using the land tax cadastre and the urbarial registers, which on the one hand stands in an appropriate proportion to the net yield of these lands and never exceeds half of it, and on the other hand never allows the entitled parties, in case this measure is exceeded, to suffer a higher loss than 30% of the value of the previous urbarial services, for which they, like all entitled parties, receive the advantage of being relieved of the obligation to support the subjects in emergencies, of representing them in court and of other obligations existing under this title, – to consolidate their landholdings where this appears absolutely necessary, appropriate to rational farming, and to separate them from the peasant property, and to free them from burdensome obligations that hinder cultivation”. The shortfall of the urbarial amount exceeding 30% (amounting to 222,049 florins C. M. annually) was to be reimbursed by the province. The monetary rent was to be commutable by depositing twenty times the value. In order to facilitate the transition to the new method of managing the manorial land, which the introduction of these measures made necessary, the subjects were to be obliged to perform paid services for another 6 years.

The Gubernium had overlooked two things in this proposal. First, the Galician subjects – especially in the east – were completely unable to pay the commutation rents, let alone commute them319. And second, it was certain that the peasants, made dull and work-shy by long oppression, would refuse to work on the manorial fields for pay.

What the landlords had to criticize about the government’s proposal was that it directed them to the peasants with their claims. The disposition of the rural population was too well known to them to expect to be able to enjoy the secure receipt of their rents with this reform. Complete dissolution of the landlord-peasant relationship at any price had to be their demand. The subjects were to be granted full ownership of their lands, the robots were to cease against compensation to the landlords, such was the motion that Kraiński and Gołuchowski made in the Gubernial session320. From the annual urbarial yield, 30% for the burdens that accrued to the authority from the relationship321, and 5% for the urbarial tax to be capitalized, which was to be abolished, were to be taken into account when determining the compensation. The remaining balance, multiplied by 20, was to represent the compensation capital, which the communities (because the landlords only wanted to deal with the communities and not with the individual landholders) were to settle either in cash or – since probably hardly any community had the necessary capital at its disposal – with 4% bonds. The entire community with its landholdings was to be jointly and severally liable for the punctual payment of the interest and the capital amortization quota (of 1% annually). The collection was to be handled by the sovereign tax district authority, which was to take enforcement action against defaulting payers. In the same way, the communities were to compensate the state for the loss of the urbarial tax.

The premise of this motion, that the landlord-peasant relationship was untenable and had to be eliminated the sooner the better, was accurate. The motion itself, however, was impracticable, since it was simply an impossibility to burden the Galician peasants with the payment of a sum of 81.2 million florins C. M. It was quite cleverly devised by the proposers to leave the collection of the monetary installments to the sovereign authorities, so that the odium of the coercive measures to be taken would fall back on the government.

Even before the decision on the various reform projects was made, the aged Governor General Archduke Ferdinand, who generally admitted the necessity of the reforms but did not want to see the nexus subditelae completely eliminated, resigned from the responsible post he had held for 14 years322. The position of Governor General was not filled again. Gubernial President Baron Krieg was to direct affairs from then on. However, in order to accelerate the passing of resolutions on those reforms that the situation demanded, the Moravian-Silesian Provincial Governor Count Rudolf Stadion was appointed extraordinary plenipotentiary Court Commissioner for the Kingdom of Galicia, and “provided with the official power of the united Court Chancellery”, insofar as he should need it “for the complete restoration and lasting establishment of peace between the landlords and the subject class, then for organic institutions and improvements of the perceived shortcomings in the public administration”323. The Court Commissioner was to “deprive the seduced rural population of the delusion that the services due from them to the manorial estates, namely the corvée, could be abolished without full compensation to the entitled claimants, and that in general reliefs in their fate could be forced by insubordination or violence”. In order to prepare the establishment of sovereign courts of first instance, he was authorized to establish district office branches, and was instructed to make preparations for the intended determination of usufructuary ownership and the introduction of land registers for the subject landholders324. But precisely in the important question of corvée commutation, the Court Commissioner was deprived of all influence. The commutation of corvée and tithe rights was to be subjected to uniform regulation throughout the empire, for which purpose deliberations were held in the Court Chancellery on the basis of the imperial autograph letter of May 26325.

The intention to withdraw all political and judicial powers from the dominions and to establish sovereign courts of first instance had gradually been abandoned. The government shrank from the great costs that the establishment of several hundred new offices would impose on the state treasury, and feared the bad effect that such a measure would have to exert on the western provinces, in which patrimonial jurisdiction was to be preserved. Nevertheless, the deliberations on a new judicial and administrative organization of Galicia were continued in Vienna and Lemberg, but in the meantime the attempt was made to see whether an expedient organization of the public service in Galicia would not be possible without resorting to the radical means of completely eliminating the manorial office.

The provision of the patent of April 13, 1846, that subject complaints were henceforth to be submitted to the district office, bypassing the manorial authority, as well as the numerous agendas that had to be handled by sovereign officials since the uprising, urgently required an increase in the personnel of the district offices. When this was completed, several district office branches were established in each district, which were not to form independent authorities, but organs of the district office. However, the branches were to “step in as the first instance in all robot, urbarial matters, and complaints of land deprivation”. They were to “make provisional, or where possible, immediately decisive dispositions ex commissione. The course of appeal in these matters was to go directly to the provincial authority to simplify the course of business”326. The “ex officio mandataries” appointed in the western districts during the month of March were to continue to function under the district office branches. The position of the other mandataries was improved by demanding a minimum salary of 250 fl. for them and making their dismissal dependent on the consent of the district office327. The confirmation of the village judges was transferred to the district offices in order to remove the community from manorial influence328. A sovereign security guard was established to handle the security service329.

After long deliberations, the decision on the peasant question finally fell in November and was announced by three circulars330.

The unpurchased tenants were granted full beneficial ownership of their lands, with the simultaneous removal of the manorial obligation to support them in emergencies – which exemption was to take effect three years after the introduction of the land registers on the subject property status. From then on, they were to be free to manage their lands and incur debt up to two-thirds of the value. Their obligation to provide capable tenants before the departure of the manorial authority was only to apply in a manner corresponding to the provisions of the General Civil Code on beneficial ownership (§ 1140).

The year 1820 (as the year of the provisional land tax), rather than the year 1786, was to serve as the standard time for determining the legal nature of the properties.

The granting of beneficial ownership to the subjects was not of overly great importance. They had de facto possessed it since the Josephine era. Only the name had been missing. The prospective abolition of the manorial support obligation was bound to have a beneficial effect. It plugged a source of constant dispute between the manorial authority and the subjects. The change of the standard year was highly desirable in the interest of expedited jurisprudence. Given the lack of authentic documents, it was virtually impossible to provide proof of property status at the standard time 60 years prior.

Less beneficial was the resolution of the corvée (Robot) question. Hardly had the excitement into which the rural population had been thrown by recent events subsided, when the government also abandoned the intended imperative commutation of the corvée. The commutation of subject obligations was to be left to free agreement between the landlord and the subject. In contradiction to all experts on the country’s conditions, Stadion declared: “the corvée in and of itself, as a natural service most homogeneous to the countryman who has manual and labor power, is by no means untenable.” Only the excess of the corvée and the abuses associated with it had made the subject relationship hated. Therefore, applying the reservation expressed in the Corvée Patent of June 16, 1786, an urbarial regulation must be carried out. The main features of this reform proposed by Stadion, which was based on the Moravian regulation of 1775, were as follows:

“Half of the yield of the so-called subject properties, as determined by the provisional cadastre, is to serve as the standard for the services to be paid to the manorial estates, therefore the remainder of that half, after deducting the cadastral value of the small gifts, which are to remain unchanged, is to be estimated as corvée and thus distributed among the rustical land ownership according to the current tax florin, and prescribed to the individual subject landowners by classes”331. “With the repeal of the relevant provision of § 10 in the Corvée Patent of June 16, 1786, both the manorial estates and the subjects shall be permitted to demand that the future corvée obligation be performed not according to the statutory number of hours, but according to a daily work quota determined in kind and measure.” The determination of the daily work quota can take place within a period of six months by voluntary agreement between the parties involved and is to be submitted to the district office for confirmation; if such a settlement is not reached within the mentioned period and even if only one of the two parties claims the measured work, a determination is to be made ex officio.

“The corvée regulation is not to extend to the patent-based cottager and lodger corvée, and the other subject dues to the manorial estates known under the name of small gifts, which also include the spinning obligation existing in some places, are to continue to be paid.”

Every individual subject as well as entire municipalities reserve the free choice between their previous, perhaps lower, and the regulated corvée obligation within one year from the time of the completed regulation.

“As soon as this deadline has passed, legal corvée registers, recognized as correct by both parties, are to be prepared for each municipality.”

“In no case will compensation be paid by the state treasury for the omitted corvée, however, I permit the question of whether and under what modalities individual manorial estates should be granted fair compensation from provincial funds in the event of a disproportionately large shortfall in the previous corvée obligation, to be negotiated by the Estates, whose proposals are then to be submitted to Me for an expert opinion.”

After long negotiations, the law on the commutation of peasant burdens, eagerly awaited by the entire rural population of Austria, finally appeared on December 18, 1846. But far from leading the subject question towards a solution, it left everything as it was. The Court Chancellery Decree of December 18, 1846, expressed in a widely perceptible manner that the government was not willing to abolish the corvée. It specified the ways in which the commutation could take place, but left the commutation itself to the free agreement of the interested parties. In short: it contained nothing that had not already been stated in the Patent of September 1, 1798, and, just like that one, it never achieved practical validity332. Incidentally, it was not promulgated in Galicia at all333.

The purely political or administrative decrees of the extraordinarily empowered Court Commission do not interest us here. Towards the beginning of 1847, having fulfilled its mission, it was dissolved, and Count Rudolf Stadion returned to the Moravian governor’s post334.

§ 5. The Implementation of the Urbarial Regulation.

The urbarial regulation was a failed measure. It satisfied neither the landlords nor the subjects.

The peasants, whose expectations were heightened by the nine-month delay, found their hopes completely dashed. They had firmly counted on the complete abolition of the corvée and now learned that the government wished for the forced labor to continue. The cottagers and lodgers, precisely the poorest and most dissatisfied elements of the rural population, had not been considered at all. The minor dues, which were just as hated by the peasant as the corvée, and the collection of which was associated with countless abuses, remained unchanged. The discontent among the peasant population was therefore general, and many municipalities had to be compelled by military assistance to accept the new corvée laws335.

The landlords were equally dissatisfied. They suffered a severe loss of corvée labor; the draft corvée in particular was significantly reduced in the west, where the land was heavily parceled out336. These losses were only compensated to the smallest extent by the exemption from the obligation to support the subjects. It also caused great concern that the provisional cadastre was taken as the standard for the land yield. Many a landlord was aware that he had made a false declaration in 1820, even if this had sometimes only been done to reduce the tax burden on the subjects. The inaccuracy of the provisional cadastre was, moreover, perfectly known to the government; it had clearly come to light during the measurements for the stable cadastre already undertaken in some districts. But it had been impossible to postpone the regulation any longer, whether to create special urbarial tables or to await the completion of the stable cadastre. That would have meant a postponement ad calendas græcas, just as the stable cadastre never actually came into effect in Galicia. Given the above, it is easy to understand that the landlords sought to delay the implementation of the corvée regulation in every possible way, and since the peasants also offered passive resistance, the reform stalled. On January 23, 1847, 45 Galician landowners asked the government for permission to convene an assembly to make proposals regarding the urbarial regulation. Their request, however, was denied337. This did not stop the complaints of the nobles from piling up. Changes were also proposed from other sides, and the government wavered indecisively back and forth between the parties. Orders and counter-orders crossed paths; the confusion became general338.

Only the imperial resolutions and handwritten letters of April 17 brought some clarity. It was the earnest intention of the Emperor, it was stated, to implement the urbarial regulation in its main principles. However, the Gubernium was to express its opinion on whether individual provisions could not be changed. To present in detail here the phases that the matter went through from then on during the year 1847 would lead too far and also offer no great interest. Let it only be noted that the provincial commission, which met in June under the chairmanship of Krieg, in accordance with the suggestions of the Court Chancellery, proposed: the class division, which was foreign to Galician conditions, should be abolished. The corvée should rather be calculated according to the property tax, namely one manual day for 2 kr. of rustic tax339. The draft corvée would already apply at a tax payment of 2 fl. 15 kr.

Even with this modification, the losses for most estates remained very considerable; in comparison with the status quo, they amounted to 25% in 831 municipalities, 25-33 1/3% in 466 municipalities, and 33 1/3-80% in 4712 municipalities. Only in 1488 municipalities was there no loss to the detriment of the lordships. The estate deputies Gołuchowski and Kraiński, as well as the Gubernial Councilor Kwiatkiewicz, therefore proposed for their part: “with the elimination of the class division, to determine the corvée obligation according to half of the net yield of the subject landholdings in such a way that the value of the minor dues, calculated according to the cadastral prices, be deducted separately from the half-yield for each landholding, while the remainder for each holding provides the standard for determining the corvée obligation.” However, this proposal was rejected by the majority of the assessors.

Meanwhile, Baron von Krieg had resigned from office and Count Franz Stadion had been appointed Governor in his place340. The new provincial chief took up the minority proposal of the Gubernial Commission again, but ultimately dropped his intention following the representations of the Gubernial Vice-President Philipp Baron von Kraus and joined the majority decision341. By virtue of the authority granted to him by the Emperor, he also implemented these decisions immediately. Still in the course of November, the subjects were informed of the extent of the future corvée obligation – the second such announcement within a year. The Emperor approved the Governor’s decrees and at the same time instructed him to submit a draft patent. For a patent was to announce the final reform to the subjects, since bad experiences had been had with the form of announcement by circular letter chosen the last time342. Of great consequence was the proposal that Stadion made in his report of March 17, 1848; namely, since the loss suffered by many estates was quite significant, the state should – for reasons of justice, state economy, and state wisdom – compensate a part of these losses.

When Stadion sent his report, he had no knowledge yet of the events of which the city of Vienna had been the scene on March 13, 1848.

Chapter Five. The Land Relief.

The news of the events that had taken place in Vienna on March 13, 14, and 15, 1848, caused great excitement in Galicia, as everywhere in Austria. The nobility and the bourgeoisie thought of realizing their political and national demands, but the distrust of the peasants, who were filled with hostile feelings toward the landlords, held them back from any bolder steps. "It is solely due to the deep social discord, the unbridgeable gulf between the different social classes, that the spectacle of defection, which took place in Lombardy on March 18, was not repeated in Galicia during the March days."343

The Polish party had to be primarily concerned with winning the peasants over to their side, and there was only one means to do this: the abolition of all feudal obligations. The citizens and the students, who had nothing to lose in the process, were also quickly ready to resort to this means. In a petition dated March 18 and in an address presented to the Emperor on April 6, a request was therefore made to the government to abolish the corvée344. In Lemberg, the “rada narodowa,” consisting of citizens and students, proclaimed the end of serfdom. Emissaries were sent out into the countryside to share the glad tidings with the peasants. "The number of uncalled heralds of the abolition of the robot grew daily."345

The nobility was also called upon to renounce the services of the serfs. But only a few landlords complied with this wish of the entire people, and even they declared that they would only renounce them if the subjects, for their part, would renounce the exercise of the servitudes346.

Stadion initially believed that by hastily executing the changes to the urbarial regulation he had proposed, he could forestall the danger of a renewed peasant rebellion. As early as March 28, he sent the requested draft patent to Vienna, in which, apart from the above-mentioned provisions, effective July 1, 1848, all subject farmers whose total previous urbarial and tithe obligations had not been reduced by at least one-third through the regulation were granted the reduction of these prestations to two-thirds. He instructed the district offices to remain passive regarding the gifts of robot, and issued a circular to protect the rights of third parties (especially mortgage creditors)347. But just a few days later, he recognized and reported to Vienna that only the complete elimination of the nexus subditelae could prevent the outbreak of civil war348. The central government agreed with his assessment of the situation, and on April 17, 1848, the Council of Ministers authorized and requested him: “to immediately pronounce the abandonment of all robots and subject services in the name of the government in exchange for a compensation to be determined in the future at the expense of the state, whereby the existing servitudes, however, are to remain untouched and the compensation to be paid for them is to be reserved for future negotiation.” Stadion complied with this request without delay. A gubernatorial proclamation of April 22, 1848, declared “all robot and subject services” to be abolished as of May 15, even before the Galician landowners had complied with the National Council’s request and remitted the corvées on Holy Saturday, "so that the day of the Redeemer’s resurrection might also be the day of the resurrection and redemption of the people."349 An imperial patent confirmed this decree of the provincial authority and provided the detailed provisions for its implementation350. Its content was as follows:

“All robots and all other subject services, both of the landholding farmers and of the cottagers and lodgers, are to cease as of May 15, 1848.”

The existing servitudes remain untouched. However, the subjects are henceforth obliged to adequately compensate the manors for their exercise. In the absence of an amicable agreement between the subjects and their manors, the determination of this remuneration is to be made ex officio.

In return, the landlords are exempted as of May 15, 1848: a) from the payment of the urbarial tax; b) from the obligation to support their needy subjects; c) from the liability, where no land registers previously existed, to establish and maintain them; d) from the obligation to represent the subjects in legal disputes; e) from the payment of a contribution to cover the expenses for the provincial security guard; f) from defraying the expenses associated with the provision of recruits, which are to be borne by the municipalities in the future; g) from the payment of a contribution to the healing costs in the event of epidemic human diseases, venereal disease, and livestock epidemics. With the actual establishment of the prospective sovereign authorities of the first instance, the dominions were furthermore naturally to be relieved of the burdens that arose for them from their position as administrative and judicial organs – thus also specifically of the octava liability. With explicit reference to the obligation assumed by the state to compensate the dominions, the listed reliefs in their favor are already estimated in the patent at one-third of the value of the previously existing obligation, and cited as a further deduction item: the “value of the servitudes which the subjects are entitled to exercise on the manorial land, provided these servitudes cease through voluntary agreements, or provided they continue to exist, the remuneration which the subjects have to pay for the continued existence of these servitudes.”

Thus, only the remainder of their “lawfully due” urbarial and manorial tithe revenues is to be reimbursed to the beneficiaries by the state on the basis of a valuation to be calculated according to the prices of the provisional land tax, whereby, however, “a partial amount of 5% for the costs and losses of collection” is also to be deducted. The determination of the means to cover the “remuneration to be calculated according to the urbarial prices” was reserved for the “constitutional” path. However, the beneficiaries were to receive cash advances even before the final determination of their compensation claims.

Finally, the parties who would consider themselves aggrieved by the fixing of the remuneration amounts were left free “to assert their request for a more favorable extent of remuneration before the civil judge in accordance with the provisions which will be issued in this regard in due course.”

The implementation of the land relief, which was tackled later in Galicia than in the other crown lands, took place extremely quickly. On March 1, 1857, the operation was completed. The number of obligors was determined to be 527,835, that of the beneficiaries 4,265. The following burdens were abolished: in services:
16,452,902 manual robot days,
497,071 one-horse draft robot days,
5,313,815 two-horse "
62,538 three-horse "
1,381,367 four-horse "
34,848 one-ox draft robot days,
6,582,339 two-ox "
9,849 three-ox "
520,126 four-ox "

in payments in kind:
20,457 Lower Austrian bushels of wheat,
91,745 " " of rye,
63,036 " " of barley,
451,138 " " of oats,
72 " " of millet,
926 " " of buckwheat;

tithes with an annual value of 161,597 fl. C. M.;

in fixed monetary payments: 373,741 fl. C. M.

The determined land relief capital amounted to: 73,555,370 fl. C. M.351

Difficulties arose only with the question: who was to raise the land relief capital? The Imperial Law of September 7, 1848, had namely not sanctioned the obligation assumed by the state in the patent of April 17, 1848, for Galicia to compensate the dominions from state funds. For three and a half decades, the state and the province then argued over who had to pay the land relief compensation. Only so as not to shake public credit did both agree on a provisional payment method352. The final decision, however, was only brought about by the agreement concluded between the state and the province on the basis of the law of June 5, 1890, with which the former took over a considerable part of the compensation353.

The agricultural servitudes were redeemed on the basis of the patent of July 5, 1853354. The right of propination was not affected by the land relief. Its redemption was only tackled later. On January 1, 1911, the right of propination will have expired throughout the entire province355.

Finally, it should be noted that in Galicia, even after the abolition of patrimonial jurisdiction, the dominical land was not incorporated into the municipality, but remained an independent administrative body as an “estate territory,” within which the landlord has to fulfill all the duties and services of the municipality356.

Serfdom and subjection, corvée and the obligation to the soil did not disappear because they contradicted “natural law,” as was generally believed in the 18th century, but because they no longer appeared compatible with the new economic constitution, which demanded the strong increase of the population. The manorial organization of labor also did not give way to a state of absolute freedom, as the pioneers of the abolition of the corvée had hoped, but only to another form of economic dependence.

The old agrarian constitution had to be completely eliminated; no reform was capable of preserving it. The Austrian statesmen, who struggled in vain between 1846 and 1848 to find a satisfactory solution to the peasant question on the basis of natural services, were able to convince themselves of this.

The expected beneficial effects of the emancipation of the peasants, however, failed to materialize. Today, the plight of the rural population is no longer disputed by anyone. However, it would go beyond the scope of this work to discuss the causes of the economic decline of the Galician peasantry. Only one thing must be emphasized here: these causes must not be sought in the implementation of the land relief.

List of the files and publications used.

A. Files.

a) In the archive of the Imperial-Royal Ministry of the Interior:

II. A. 6 Organization.

III. A. 5. District tours.

IV. G. 2. Agriculture. Land reclamation or lands. Municipalities. Agricultural machinery.

IV. H. 2. Estate complaints.

IV. H. 3. Provincial diets.

IV. K. Matters concerning subjects. Subject complaints.

IV. K. 1. Matters concerning subjects. Procedure. Lawyers and agents in genere.

IV. K. 2. Matters concerning subjects. Abolition of serfdom.

IV. K. 3. Matters concerning subjects. Subject obligations in genere.

IV. K. 4. Matters concerning subjects. Mill monopoly and propination.

IV. K. 5. Matters concerning subjects. Mistreatment of subjects and their punishment.

IV. K. 6. Matters concerning subjects. Property and right of purchase. Leased lands. Succession in peasant estates.

IV. K. 7. Matters concerning subjects. Land fragmentation and evictions.

V. B. 1. Regulation of the tax rate.

VI. B. 1. Court organization. Patrimonial courts.

Galician unrest 1846: Fascicles 308-312, 315, Furthermore 31 ex 1846; 11 ex 1847; 389, 867, 887 ex 1848

Patent collection.

b) in the archive of the Imperial and Royal General Court Chamber:

Fascicles 6850, 7050, 8943.

Fascicles 7117-7119 (Corvée abolition business).

c) in the Imperial and Royal House, Court and State Archive:

State Council files 1772-1780.357

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Appendices, No. 70, to the stenographic protocols of the X. Session of the Austrian House of Deputies. Vienna 1886.

Reflections on the constitution of Galicia, the causes of its decline and the means to help the country recover. 1790. (In Grellmann, I. pp. 173-228.)

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Obvious typographical errors were corrected during transcription. In addition, the following corrections were made:

  • “die mit weitaus geringeren Rechten ausgestalteten Bürger” changed to “die mit weitaus geringeren Rechten ausgestatteten Bürger”
  • in “plus souvent sans procedure et sans formalité”: é added in formalité
  • in "Durch die Urbarialregierung wurden die Einkünfte mancher Edelleute um 1/2 bis 2/3 vermindert.": Urbarialregierung changed to Urbarialregulierung.
  • “auf Veranlassung des Erzherzogs-Generalgouverneur” changed to “auf Veranlassung des Erzherzog-Generalgouverneurs”

  1. Cf. Demian, Darstellung der österr. Monarchie nach den neuesten statistischen Beziehungen. Vienna 1804/7. Vol. II; Czörnig, Statistisches Handbüchlein. Vienna 1861; Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild. Galizien. Vienna 1898.↩

  2. Cf. Piekosinski in the “Rozprawy akademii umiejętności w Krakowie”. Vol. XVIII. p. 19.↩

  3. Cf. Stadnicki, O kniaztwach we wsiach wołoskich z poglądem na wójtowstwa we wsiach na magdeburskiem prawie osadzonych. Lviv 1853. pp. 5-13.↩

  4. Volumina legum. Anno 1347: “Quando in iure theuthonico cmetho residet, idem fugere nec recedere non potest nisi hereditate vendita, vel loco sui cmethonem aeque divitem collocet, aut agris ex toto extirpatis, hyemalibusque et aestivalibus seminatis, domino resignando, recedere potest.”↩

  5. Vol. leg. Anno 1347: “Si dominus villae opprimat filiam aut uxorem sui cmethonis aut si pro excessu seu culpa heredis ibidem villani bonis ipsorum depraedantur, vel in sententia excommunicationis per annum durant sui Domini ex delicto, in talibus casibus non tantum tres aut quattuor villae eiusdem incolae abire possunt, sed et omnes ibidem habitantes recedant quo unique placebit.”↩

  6. Cf. Stadnicki in the “Bibliotheka naukowa zakładu Ossolinskich.” Vol. I. pp. 3-32, 129-152; Maciejowski, Historya włościan. Warsaw 1874. p. 176 ff.↩

  7. Cf. Korzon, Wewnętrzne dzieje Polski za Stanisława Augusta. Krakow 1882/86. Vol. II. p. 1 ff.; Balzer, Reformy spóleczny i polityczny Konstitucyi 3. Maja. Krakow 1891. pp. 8 ff., 14.↩

  8. Cf. Stadnicki, O kniaztwach etc. p. 17 ff.; Lubomirski, Rolnicza ludność w Polsce od XVI. do XVIII. wieku in “Biblioteka Warszawska” 1857-1862. 1862 Vol. II. p. 21 ff.↩

  9. Vol. leg. A. 1496: “Statuimus quod tantummodo unus filius de villa a patre recedere potest ad servitia, et praesertim ad studia, aut literarum aut artificiorum, reliqui maneant in hereditate cum patribus… Quod si aliquis adolescens villanus praeter istud decretum, fugiens repertus fuerit, sive in civitatibus et oppidis, sive alibi ubicunque, ille domino loci illius a quo fugit, sine iuris strepitu restituatur sub poena quattuordecim marcarum et nihilominus illi, qui eum retinuerint, poena toties quoties secus fecerint soluta, ad restitutionem sunt adstricti.”↩

  10. Cf. Bobrzyński, Karta z dziejów ludu wiejskiego w Polsce in “Rocznik akademii umiejętności w Krakowie”. 1891/92. p. 164 f.↩

  11. Vol. leg. A. 1520; Bobrzyński op. cit. p. 166 ff.↩

  12. “ażeby poddani swoich panów nie pozywali przed króla.” (Bobrzyński op. cit. p. 170.) – Rakowski, Entstehung des Großgrundbesitzes in Polen. Berlin Inaug. Diss. 1899. p. 32 f. – In 1546, King Sigismund I rejected the complaint of the peasants of Staniąt against the manorial authority with the words: “Nie jest naszym zamiarem, wtrącać się miedzy naszych poddanych i ich kmieci.” (Lubomirski in B. W. 1861. Vol. III. p. 48).↩

  13. Vol. leg. A. 1573: “Wszakże przez tę konfederacyę naszą, zwierzchności żadnej nad poddanymi ich tak panów duchownych jako i swieckich nie derogujemy i posłuszenstwa żadnego poddanych przeciwko panom ich nie psujemy i owszem, jesliby takowa licencya gdzie była sub praetextu religionis, tedy jako zawsze było, będzie wolno i teraz każdemu panu poddanego swego nieposłusznego tam in spiritualibus, quam in saecularibus, podług rozumienia swojego skarać.”↩

  14. Cf. Bobrzyński op. cit. pp. 175-191.↩

  15. Cf. Bobrzyński op. cit. p. 192.↩

  16. “Rem publicam nostram tribus constare ordinibus notissimum. Penes regem dignitas, penes senatum auctoritas, penes nobilitatem libertas est.” (Chwalkowski, Regni Poloniae ius publicum. Regiomonti 1684, L. I. C. II). Cf. Skrzetuski, Prawo polityczny narodu polskiego. W Warszawie 1787. Vol. I. p. 42.↩

  17. “Libertas polona, adeo celebrata, non aliis civibus quam nobilibus servit, qui illa ita fruuntur, ut ad communionem alios praeter nobiles non admittant.” (Lengnich, Ius publicum regni Poloniae. Gedani 1742. L. III. C. I. § 2).↩

  18. Cf. Dresner, Institutionum iuris regni Poloniae libri IV. Zamosci 1613. L. I. T. XIX.↩

  19. “Qui in villis fundisve regis aut nobilium habitant, agris addicti sunt, unde etiam vocantur servi glebae.” (Chwalkowski op. cit. L. I. C. X. § 1.) Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 149. Krasiński, Geschichtliche Darstellung der Bauernverhältnisse in Polen und der wirtschaftlich-rechtlichen Reformen im ersten Decennium der Regierung Stanislaus Augustus. Krakau 1898. Vol. II. p. 31.↩

  20. “Liberi autem eorum (sc. subditorum) in Dominorum recidunt potestatem, in quorum fundis nati sunt.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XXI.) Cf. also Zalaszowski, Ius regni Poloniae. Reimpressum Varsaviae 1741. L. IV. P. II. T. 23.↩

  21. Cf. Korzon, Wewnętrzne dzieje Polski za Stanisława Augusta. W Krakowie 1882/86. Vol. I. p. 359 and Maciejowski, Slavische Rechtsgeschichte. Stuttgart 1835/39. Vol. III. p. 191.↩

  22. Cf. Korzon op. cit. Vol. I. p. 359.↩

  23. Cf. Bobrzyński op. cit. p. 188.↩

  24. “Hodie usus obtinuit, ut nonnisi per ingressum ad aliquam religionem, vel per susceptionem sacrorum ordinum aut per promotionem ad gradum doctoratus, aut per obtentam manumissionem literalem aut coram Actis manumissionem obtineant: liberi a potestate dominorum afficiantur.” (Zalaszowski op. cit. L. IV. P. II. T. 23.) Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 198. Two letters of manumission from the years 1622 and 1638 printed in Maciejowski, Historya włościan p. 308 ff. – Cf. Ostrowski, Prawo cywilne narodu polskiego. W Warszawie 1787. Vol. I. p. 53.↩

  25. “Vetitum non ingenuum creare nobilem, nisi dominus, cui per servitutem obnoxius, consenserit.” (Lengnich op. cit. L. III. C. 2. § 17.) Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 47.↩

  26. “Si se clam, aut vi, aut alio quopiam modo, contra dominorum voluntatem, in libertatem vindicaverint, ac dominos subterfugerint, habent in eos Domini, ubicunque eos invenerint, praesertim in locis desertis, manuum iniectionem, vel si quis eos detineat aut tueatur, eorum iure ac iudicio vindicationem.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XXI.) Cf. Zalaszowski op. cit. L. IV. P. II. T. 23. Ostrowski op. cit. I. p. 47. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150.↩

  27. Agreement with the Duchy of Prussia. Cf. Bobrzyński op. cit. p. 179. – “Inhibitio supremae Curiae de anno 1728: Denen Pohlnischen von Adel, sollen die von ihnen in Schlesien entwichenen Unterthanen ehender nicht verabfolget werden, bis nicht die Schlesische in Pohlen entwichene Unterthanen würcklich zurück gestellet worden.” Even earlier (1652), the principle of reciprocity had been articulated in Silesia. (Cf. Friedenberg, Tractatus iuridico-practicus de ... Silesiae iuribus. Breslau 1738/40. Vol. II. p. 53.)↩

  28. Cf. Knapp, Die Bauernbefreiung und der Ursprung der Landarbeiter in den älteren Teilen Preußens. Leipzig 1887. Vol. I. p. 83. II. p. 1.↩

  29. Cf. Grünberg, Die Bauernbefreiung und die Auflösung des gutsherrlich bäuerlichen Verhältnisses in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien. Leipzig 1893/94. Vol. I. p. 12.↩

  30. Acts: 9. ex Januario 1773. II. A. 6. Archive of the Ministry of the Interior. Cf. also Grünberg, Studien zur österreichischen Agrargeschichte. Leipzig 1901. p. 28.↩

  31. Court Chancellery report of November 17, 1777 with enclosures. – Report of the Galician Domain Administration of January 4, 1782. Cf. Maciejowski op. cit. p. 176.↩

  32. Cf. Modrzewski, O poprawie rzeczypospolitej. 1551. Przemysl edition 1857. p. 117. – “subditi a dominis alienantur, comparantur, emuntur, venduntur.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XXI.) – “Trop souvent, par un trafic scandaleux, nous les vendons à des maîtres aussi cruels, et qui bientôt, par un excès de travail, les forcent à leur payer le prix de leur nouvelle servitude.” (Leszczynski, Oeuvres d’un philosophe bienfaisant. Paris 1764. Vol. III. p. 4.) – “Panu wolno ich darować, przedać, zamieniać, ze wśi do wśi przenosić.” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150). – “Dziedzic.. ich darować, przedać, na inną rolę lub wieś przenieść prawnie wolen.” (Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 47.) – Cf. furthermore Konstytucya 3. Maja 1791 roku z uwagami podawanemi jej twórcom. Lipsk 1865. p. 24; Lelewel, Betrachtungen über den politischen Zustand des ehemaligen Polens. Brussels 1845. p. 158; Lubomirski in B. W. 1862. Vol. II. p. 10. Conversely Krasiński op. cit. Vol. I. p. 167. – On cases of exchange, cf. Bochenski, Beitrag zur Geschichte der gutsherrlich-bäuerlichen Verhältnisse in Polen auf Grund der archivalischen Quellen der Herrschaft Kock. Krakau 1895. p. 145.↩

  33. “servi, quorum capita domini sunt, sine quorum assistentia, sive actores, sive rei sint, locum standi contra quasvis personas in iure ac iudicio terrestri non habent.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XX). – “Rustici, qui continua servitute premuntur, et fictione iuris pro nullis habentur, ut antiquitus apud Romanos servi habebantur ... sine dominorum suorum assistentia, sive actores, sive rei sunt, locum standi in iudiciis saecularibus (nam secus observatur in spiritualibus) non habentes.” (Zalaszowski op. cit. L. IV. P. II. T. 23). Cf. also Chwalkowski op. cit. L. I. C. X. § 1. – “im nie pod imieniem własnym czynić nie wolno.” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150).↩

  34. Cf. Lubomirski in B. W. 1862. Vol. II. p. 1. – “si qua iura et privilegia Domini dant subditis, eadem servare, nec violare, in arbitrio et voluntate eorum est positum; de quibus violatis non habemus in Statutis et constitutionibus actiones propositas.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XXI). – “Nec habent contra dominos actionem.” (Chwalkowski op. cit. L. I. C. X. § 1). – Cf. Zalaszowski op. cit. L. IV. P. II. T. 23. – “im prawa nasze nie wyznaczyły żadnego sądu, w którymby się o krzywdy i uciążliwósci od dziedziców zadane uskarzyć; i upomienić mogli.” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150).↩

  35. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 163. 391 ff. – Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 56. – Korzon op. cit. Vol. I. p. 377.↩

  36. Cf. Lubomirski in B. W. 1862. Vol. II. p. 21.↩

  37. “Nobilitas in subditos suos glebae adscriptos ius vitae et necis habet, non aliter ut apud Romanos servi habebantur.” (Zalaszowski op. cit. L. I. T. 39). – “Z dawności, źycia i śmierci ich panami byli dziedzice.” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150). – “Que voit-on cependant parmi nous? Un noble y condamne son sujet à la mort, quelque fois sans cause légitime, plus souvent sans procedure et sans formalité.” (Leszczynski op. cit. Vol. III. p. 111).↩

  38. Cf. Zalaszowski op. cit. L. IV. P. II. T. V. A. III.↩

  39. Vol. leg. A. 1768. – Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 48 f. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 61. – Korzon op. cit. Vol. I. p. 376. – Krasiński op. cit. Vol. II. p. 84.↩

  40. Court Chancellery report of February 5, 1782. Cf. especially Guradze in the Zeitschrift der hist. Gesellschaft für Posen. Vol. XIII. p. 287 ff. 294. – (Kratter) Briefe über den itzigen Zustand von Galizien. Leipzig 1786. Vol. I. p. 167. – O chłopach. Lipsk 1847. p. 84.↩

  41. “ut breviter dicatur, quae antiquis Romanis in servos fuit, haec nunc nobilibus Polonis in plebeios subditos absoluta est, quod ad ius attinet, potestas.” (Dresner op. cit. L. I. T. XXI). There D. declares the slave protection provisions of Roman law applicable to Poland. – “Stan poddaństwa mało co różni się od niewoli.” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150). – Wielopolski (Briefe eines polnischen Edelmannes an einen deutschen Publizisten, Hamburg 1846 p. 56) disputes the above and declares the condition of the Polish peasants to be a “subjection not sufficiently defined by state law vis-à-vis an absolute government of the landlords, which in the worst case could sometimes also be harsh, but by no means had the character of the serfdom of slavery.” The condition of the Polish peasants is considered serfdom by: Brünneck in the “Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte”. Germ. Abt. Vol. X. p. 24-62. Guradze op. cit. Korzon op. cit. Vol. I. p. 346. Conversely Bochenski op. cit. Krasiński op. cit. and Ulanowski in the “Rocznik akademii umiejętności w Krakowie”. 1893/4. p. 120-178. – Cf. Grünberg, Art. Unfreiheit in the “Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften”. Vol. VII. p. 317 ff.↩

  42. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. I, p. 230 ff. Krasiński op. cit. Vol. I, p. 30 f.↩

  43. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. I, p. 200. II. p. 96-98. – Krasiński op. cit. Vol. I, p. 151. Report of the Domain Administration of June 5, 1786.↩

  44. The number of dominions was around 2,500, that of the villages around 6,500.↩

  45. Cf. Ulanowski op. cit. p. 132.↩

  46. ibid. p. 134. – Lubomirski in B. W. 1862 Vol. II, p. 33.↩

  47. “Quisque e nobis Polonis sui vulgi et bonorum, parvus quodam modo et absolutus Monarcha est” (Fredro, Scriptorum seu togae et belli notationum fragmenta. Dantisci 1660. p. 294).↩

  48. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. I, p. 370 ff. II. p. 190.↩

  49. Such as the Heiduck moneys. See 156 ex Septembri 1785. (Under this designation we will cite the expert opinions of the Galician Gubernium and the Galician Estates, submitted on the basis of the Court Decree of January 22, 1785, concerning the "subject curtailments customary in this country.") – As a contribution to the maintenance of their household troops, the Radziwiłłs levied an annual amount of 7,872 Polish guilders on their estates of Złoczów and Pomorzany (3 small towns and 42 villages) under the names Raytarszczyzna (Raytar = rider/cavalryman) and Pacholszczyzna (pacholstwo = retinue of servants). (Report of the Lviv District Office of September 15, 1775.)↩

  50. On the concepts of Grundherrschaft (landlordship) and Gutsherrschaft (manorial economy), cf. especially Knapp, Die Landarbeiter in Knechtschaft und Freiheit, Leipzig 1891, and Grundherrschaft und Rittergut, Leipzig 1897; then Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung. Vol. I, p. 36 ff.↩

  51. Cf. Korzon op. cit. Vol. II, p. 6 ff.↩

  52. Only under Austrian rule did the dominions begin to confiscate peasant land, but the authorities soon opposed this. (Court Chancellery Report of June 20, 1785.)↩

  53. Cf. Kleczyński, Stosunki propinacyjne w Galicyi (Wiadomości statystyczne. Vol. II, p. 47-193. Lwów 1876) esp. p. 57-63. – Ulanowski op. cit. p. 143. Kratter op. cit. p. 190.↩

  54. Gubernial Report of August 20, 1789. – A curious royal prerogative (regal) of the authorities was the exclusive right to bleach linen. The subjects had to pay a levy on every piece of linen they bleached.↩

  55. Gubernial Report of November 15, 1774, furthermore the files: 156 ex Septembri 1785.↩

  56. Czerwiec = St. John’s blood, Polish cochineal scale insect; once a significant trade article.↩

  57. Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I, p. 52 f.; furthermore Court Chancellery Report of September 6, 1782, and November 13, 1783; Gubernial Council Session of December 15, 1782; Minutes of the Court Chancellery Session of January 29, 1782, as well as the files: 1004 ex Majo 1774; Fasc. 7050 (Court Chamber); 156 ex Septembri 1785 (Archive of the Min. of the Interior).↩

  58. Cf. Ulanowski op. cit. p. 132. – Minutes of the Court Chancellery Session of January 7, 1783.↩

  59. The explanation of the complicated legal and political conditions of the various categories of free peasants falls outside the scope of this work.↩

  60. Gubernial reports of November 15, 1774, and July 3, 1779. Protocol of the Rectification Commission of September 15, 1778.↩

  61. “nie mają własności, bo nie będąc panami osob własnych, jakże mogą panami być majątku?” (Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 150). – Cf. ibid. Vol. II. p. 187. – Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 47. – Konstytucja op. cit. p. 24. – Guradze op. cit. p. 275 f. 297. – Ulanowski op. cit. p. 160, 171. – Pilat in the appendices No. 70 to the protocols of the 10th session of the House of Representatives p. 545. – Gubernial report of December 27, 1781; furthermore the files: 9 ex Januario 1773. II. A. 6 and V. B. 1, 599 (Arch. of the Min. of the Interior); Report of the Zamośc district office of October 1784.↩

  62. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 195 and the files cited above.↩

  63. Cf. Popper in the “Zeitschrift für österreichische Rechtsgelehrsamkeit und politische Gesetzkunde” 1826. Issue 4. p. 209. – Drdacki, Die Fronpatente Galiziens, Vienna 1838. p. 79 f. – Die Grundentlastung in Österreich. Vienna 1857. p. 11. – “In Podolia, the so-called Tloken exist; there, the subjects mostly use the lands communally, and apart from the house gardens and a few meadows, which constitute the property of individual farmers, their lands consist of several main divisions, which are alternately cultivated for several consecutive years according to the variously established custom, and then left fallow again for as many years; the annual distribution of these lands is also not equal among all householders, but according to whether each commits to two- or four-horse or foot corvée.” (Gubernial protocol of May 7, 1791); furthermore Court Chancellery report of October 3, 1826. – The official Austrian designation for the field community was “wandelbarer Grundbesitz” (changeable land ownership).↩

  64. Cf. Lutschitzky in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch. XX. pp. 165-196.↩

  65. Cf. Grünberg, Studien p. 51 ff.↩↩

  66. Cf. Drdacki op. cit. p. 128. Klunker, Die gesetzliche Untertansverfassung in Galizien. Lemberg 1845/46. Vol. II. p. 15.↩

  67. Files: 1004 ex Majo 1774. Fascicle 7050 (Hofkammerarchiv); Chancellery report of November 8, 1782. Cf. also Merunowicz in the appendices cited above. No. 70. p. 553.↩

  68. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 197. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 55. Klunker op. cit. Vol. II. p. 105 ff.↩

  69. “The inventories were created by the mere will of the lord; the will of the hereditary lord and the signature were the only formality necessary for the establishment of an inventory, and only then, when the estate was sold, leased, or pledged, or some other judicial transfer took place, was the inventory signed by witnesses and handed over to some provincial court for registration.” (Report of the Bochnia district office, July 1783); furthermore files: 156 ex Septembri 1785 (Arch. of the Min. of the Interior).↩

  70. Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 51. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II. p. 194 f. – Betrachtungen über die Verfassung von Galizien etc. in Grellmann, Statistische Aufklärungen Vol. I. p. 177. Wybranowski in the “Dziennik Polski” of August 8, 1896. – Files: 1004 ex Majo 1774. Fasc. 7050 (Hofkammerarchiv); Protocol of the Gubernial Council sessions of July 7, 1781, and December 15, 1782. Chancellery report of September 6, 1782. Report of Gubernial Councilor von Ainser of July 17, 1790, and appendices.↩

  71. Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 52. Lelewel, Betrachtungen über den politischen Zustand des ehemaligen Polen. Brussels 1845. p. 289 f. – cit. File: 156 ex Septembri 1785. – Another designation for these services is daremszczyzna or daremny dzień (unpaid work or unpaid day).↩

  72. cit. File: 156 ex Septembri 1785.↩

  73. Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 52. Lelewel op. cit. p. 290. Gubernial report of March 11, 1784.↩

  74. Cf. Ostrowski op. cit. Vol. I. p. 52. – Files: 156 ex Septembri 1785 (Arch. of the Min. of the Interior).↩

  75. Cf. Jasiński’s memorandum IV. H. 3.↩

  76. “il ne travaille qu’autant que la crainte de châtiments le force de travailler.” (Leszczynski op. cit. Vol. III. p. 9). – The authorities spared neither man nor beast during the corvée. “à peine les distinguons-nous des bêtes qu’ils entretiennent pour la culture de nos terres. Souvent nous ménageons moins leurs forces que celles de ces animaux.” (Leszczynski Vol. III. p. 4). – “It happens that the subjects, without observance of any regulations, are driven to corvée for whole weeks; from early morning until night uninterruptedly and are held to corvée work in such a way that they are permitted neither to feed their livestock nor even to eat a bite of bread themselves. In the process, they lose their livestock and cannot tend to their own farming. Through frequent long hauls, for which barely half of the corvée days are credited to them, they are completely ruined, as they perform these only in spring and autumn on the worst roads, have to feed themselves and their livestock at their own expense, wear them out on the bad roads, and let them perish.” (Report to the Gubernial Council session of March 30, 1781. – “any regulations” refers to the patent of June 3, 1775.)↩

  77. Court Chancellery report of September 22, 1781.↩

  78. Cf. Skrzetuski op. cit. Vol. II, p. 176.↩

  79. Cf. Lelewel op. cit. p. 285. Maciejowski op. cit. p. 198 f. 311 ff.↩

  80. Cf. Maciejowski op. cit. p. 200 f.↩

  81. See above p. 14.↩

  82. Cf. Maciejowski op. cit. p. 202 ff.↩

  83. Cf. Konstytucja op. cit. § IV. – J. J. Rousseau expressed himself on the peasant conditions in Poland as follows: “Affranchir les peuples de Pologne est une grande et belle opération, mais hardie, périlleuse et qu’il ne faut pas tenter inconsidérément. Parmi les précautions à prendre est une indispensable et qui demande du temps. C’est avant toute chose de rendre dignes de la liberté et capables de la supporter les serfs qu’on veut affranchir.” (Oeuvres complettes. Aux Deux-Ponts. 1782. II. p. 212.)↩

  84. Resolution of Emperor Charles VI (1738). Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung. Vol. II, p. 28.↩

  85. Piller’s Collection of Laws I.↩

  86. Patent of November 16, 1772. (Piller’s Collection of Laws VI.)↩

  87. Patent of March 10, 1774. (Piller’s Collection of Laws XVI.) – Report of the District Director of Zamość of January 4, Gubernial Report of January 28, Chancellery Presentation of February 12, 1774.↩

  88. Patent of March 1, 1777. (Piller’s Collection of Laws II.)↩

  89. Patents of November 18, 1772 (Piller’s Collection of Laws VII.), of December 23, 1772 (ibid. XII.), of March 4, 1773 (ibid. XX.), of May 2, 1773 (ibid. XXIX.).↩

  90. State Chancellery Presentations of August 30 and September 17, 1772.↩

  91. Piller’s Collection of Laws XI.↩

  92. Cf. Linden, Die Grundsteuerverfassung der österreichischen Monarchie. Vienna 1840. Vol. I, p. 53.↩

  93. “In the future, when the land is to be subjected to an equal assessment without distinction of ownership, the serf shall also be included in the contribution. But now, when the lord, as landlord and usurped sovereign, imposes all possible burdens on him, it does not seem possible that he could pay the contribution at the same time alongside his exaggerated dominical prestations (which, however, one will not fail to set within reasonable bounds as soon as possible).” (From the presentation of the State Chancellery of November 3, 1773.)↩

  94. Piller’s Collection of Laws XIV. Cf. Linden op. cit. Vol. I, p. 54.↩

  95. Patent of April 18, 1775. (Piller’s Collection of Laws V.) Linden op. cit. Vol. I, p. 54.↩

  96. Linden op. cit. Vol. I, p. 57 f.↩

  97. A depiction of the Galician tax system in the first decade of Austrian rule is given in the Court Chancellery presentation of August 21, 1783.↩

  98. Wawel-Louis, Początkowe sądownictwo austryackie w Galicyi (1772-1784) we Lwowie 1897. p. 10, 148 f.↩

  99. Patent of March 18, 1775. (Piller’s Collection of Laws IV.)↩

  100. State Chancellery reports of August 30 and September 17, 1772. Cf. Arneth, History of Maria Theresa. Vienna 1863/79. Vol. X, p. 78 ff.↩

  101. “ut suos labores et dationes non ab arbitrio sui domini, sed a lege publica dependere sentiant.”↩

  102. Report of the Galician Court Deputation of February 22, 1774.↩

  103. On August 1, 1773, the Emperor wrote to his mother from Lviv: “le paysan est un malheureux, qui n’a rien que la figure humaine et la vie physique.” Cf. Arneth, Maria Theresa and Joseph II. Vol. II, p. 14.↩

  104. Koranda came from a bourgeois family and had been raised to the nobility for services rendered to the state. He had begun his civil service career in Bohemia, where since 1747 he had always been entrusted with important work in the tax and subject departments. Cf. Kratter, Letters on the Current State of Galicia. Leipzig 1786. Vol. I, pp. 205-209. – State Archives ex 1780 No. 1474.↩

  105. Court Chancellery decree to the Galician Gubernium of Sept. 7, 1774.↩

  106. Gubernial report of November 15, 1774.↩

  107. Piller’s Collection of Laws X. – The introductory words of the patent were originally very sharp; the Galician Court Chancellery, however, rejected “the harsh-seeming expressions”. – Court Chancellery decree of February 1, 1775, reports of the Galician circle offices; Gubernial report of April 1, 1775; Court Chancellery report of April 26, 1775. Also State Archives No. 1168.↩

  108. Piller’s Collection of Laws I. Court Chancellery decree of September 2, Gubernial report of October 27, Court Chancellery report of December 7, 1780. Also State Archives (No.: 2070.)↩

  109. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, pp. 87-94, 272. Vol. II, p. 105; the same author’s article “Unfreiheit” in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. 2nd ed.↩

  110. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, pp. 272-290.↩

  111. In his report (sent to Vienna on December 27, 1781), Koranda describes the conditions of the peasants as follows: “Serfdom, which was introduced and customary in the Kingdom of Bohemia and Moravia from ancient times under the word Czlowieczenstwo, is also known in the Republic of Poland and in the reclaimed Kingdoms of Galicia and Lodomeria under the name Mancipium, Plebeius, et subditus glebae adscriptus.” After citing the laws dealing with the peasants according to the Volumina legum and Zalaszowski’s Jus regni Poloniae, he continues: “From this it is now quite clear that according to the Polish imperial constitutions, the serf subjects were valued as mancipia like cattle, and if the subject was beaten to death by another nobleman, half of the capital tax fell to the landlord; but if he was mistreated quocunque modo or even beaten to death by his own landlord, the latter was not subject to any punishment. This tyrannical spirit still prevails today in the minds of the national nobility, which is the source of the frequent complaints of subject oppression that have occurred so far, and the landlords still believe that restricting and abolishing their manorial rights constitutes a massive encroachment and injustice. It was therefore highly just and necessary that all these excesses and abuses running contrary to humanity be seriously abolished by the general ordinances issued since then and the local investigations initiated thereafter, and that future subject complaints be brought into a precise order by the normal patent most graciously prescribed on September 1 anni currentis.” (On the patent of September 1, 1781, see p. 71.)↩

  112. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, p. 289, Vol. II, pp. 396 to 398.↩

  113. Regarding the date for the departure of servants, Brigido noted: “There is no actual date determined for the change of service for the serving domestics in Galicia. However, for all economic changes, such as lease departures, lease abandonments, takeovers, settlements with officials, etc., the time around Mid-Lent or the end of March in the flatlands, and the Feast of St. George or the end of April in the mountains, are generally chosen, and thus the servants required for the rural economy are also changed at these times.” (Brigido’s report of February 21, 1782.)↩

  114. Piller’s Collection of Laws VIII.↩

  115. This provision was repeated by a circular letter of December 5, 1785 (Piller’s Collection of Laws CXXVII).↩

  116. § 12 of this servant regulation states: “The authorities must also compel those parents who have several children at home fit for service, and who do not need them for their own services, to put such children into service, and likewise the orphans fit for service are to be brought into service, to which end the village judges and jurymen must report to the economic office those householders and lodgers who are provided with more children than they themselves need at home, and likewise the orphans capable of service.” (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXVI.)↩

  117. Complaints of the subjects of Marczyz, November 1781. – Klunker, Die Unterthans-Verfassung in Galizien. Vol. II, p. 129.↩

  118. Patent of January 15, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws IV.)↩

  119. Court Chancellery reports of August 16 and December 13, 1782.↩

  120. Resolution of July 5, 1785.↩

  121. 156 ex Septembri 1785.↩

  122. On the Bohemian working hours, cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 262.↩

  123. The Gubernium had determined the following wages: work with the scythe 13-14 kreuzers, work with the sickle 10-12 kreuzers, lighter work (raking, turning, binding and loading sheaves) 7 kreuzers, for a four-horse wagon 30 kreuzers and for a two-horse wagon 15 kreuzers. (Gubernial report of July 25, 1785. Court Chancellery report of August 29, 1785.)↩

  124. Resolution on the Court Chancellery report of August 29, 1785.↩

  125. Court Chancellery report of February 20, 1786.↩

  126. Piller’s Collection of Laws LI.↩

  127. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, pp. 257-267. – A precursor to the Corvée Patent was the Court Decree of April 26, 1784, which abolished a number of subject obligations on the cameral estates. (Cf. Löwenwolde, Handbuch der galizischen Gesetze in Auszügen, Vol. II, p. 281.)↩

  128. Cf. the Bohemian patent in Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 262.↩

  129. Already ordered earlier by the patent of May 21, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXXIX.). A similar provision is contained in § 19.↩

  130. Already by the Circular of December 6, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws CIX.), the lodger’s corvée had been reduced to 13 days a year, following the example of the Bohemian lands; now a further reduction to 12 days took place. Thus, from then on, it was not the inventory but the Corvée Patent that was decisive for assessing the obligations of the cottagers and lodgers. Cf. Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 144-146.↩

  131. Was already established by § 3 of the patent of March 8, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XVII.). – By the decree of the Court Commission on Studies of October 11, 1811, certified midwives were also exempted from the lodger’s corvée. Cf. Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, p. 148.↩

  132. The provisions on long hauls are modeled on the Bohemian ones. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 264 f. A part of these provisions is already found in § 8 of the patent of June 3, 1775; the others are contained in the patent of January 26, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws V.). Cf. Court Decree of May 30, Gubernial Report of September 19, and Resolution of December 13, 1783.↩

  133. Analogous to the Bohemian patent. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 265.↩

  134. These specifically had already been eliminated by the patent of July 11, 1783 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXVIII.).↩

  135. On the domains, this had already been abolished by the Court Decree of November 29, 1777 (Court Chancellery Report of November 14, 1777, including appendices), but on the private estates by the Serfdom Abolition Patent.↩

  136. The latter two prohibitions had already been pronounced in the patent of March 18, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XVII.).↩

  137. Had already been decreed by the Circular of December 9, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws CXIV.).↩

  138. Circular of August 9, 1786 (Piller’s Collection of Laws LXI.) – Gubernial Report of August 8, 1786. – By Court Chancellery Decree of March 22, 1817, it was ordered that the benchmark for the remuneration of the auxiliary days should no longer be the inventory prices, but the local labor prices, which were to be determined annually by the district office. Klunker, op. cit. II., p. 152 ff. – Gubernial Reports of November 1 and December 28, 1816. – Court Chancellery Report of January 23, 1817. Resolution of March 22, 1817. – In the winter of 1786/87 there was a famine in Galicia; the noblemen declared: it had been caused by the poorer cultivation of the manorial fields as a result of the Corvée Patents.↩

  139. Piller’s Collection of Laws VIII.↩

  140. Notice of March 21, 1785 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXVII.)↩

  141. Patent of June 17, 1787 (Piller’s Collection of Laws LXXXI.)↩

  142. Cf. Klunker, op. cit. Vol. I, pp. 170-175.↩

  143. Cf. Klunker, op. cit. Vol. I, p. 287.↩

  144. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, p. 242 ff.↩

  145. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, p. 253 f.↩

  146. State Chancellery report of November 3, 1773.↩

  147. §§ 8 and 9 of the Patent. (Piller’s Law Collection XV.)↩

  148. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, pp. 259-264. Vol. II, pp. 313-314, 376-387.↩

  149. In his expert opinion, he stated the following: "Firstly, the lands possessed by the subjects of this country are mostly left to them by the manorial authority according to inventory, cum fundo instructo, together with the necessary draft animals and other agricultural accessories, and their dwellings have been built at the authority’s expense. If, therefore, this possessed land were to be left to the subject as his own hereditary property, the landlord would be entitled to demand the inventoried equipment or the ransom for it from his subject; but if he does not have this, the landlord cannot well be forced to cede it as hereditary property.

    "Secondly: But even if the landlords were willing to be inclined to do so, many subjects themselves will not so easily consent to it, especially those situated in the flat country, where there is a lack of forests and wood. For as soon as the land belongs to the subject as his property, he must also keep his dwelling in a state of repair and, if it burns down, restore it at his own expense; whereas currently the authority, just to preserve its subject, must take care of this, just as, if he loses his draft animals in the event of a livestock accident, it must procure them for him again, just to put him back into a condition capable of performing corvée labor.

    "A confirming example occurred only recently on the princely Massalski dominium of Nizini in the Pilsen district, where the investigating district director, with the consent of the possessoris, made the proposal to the village subjects: that they wanted to leave them their possessed peasant lands cum jure successionis as their property; but out of 100 peasants present, only 6 declared themselves in favor of it.

    "Thirdly: In general, however, the nature and moral character of the local subject must be observed and judged according to the different regions of the country.

    "In the Wieliczka district, especially in the Zathor district, which borders on Silesia, and where the peasants do not lack industriousness and industry, almost all lands are already hereditarily purchased.

    “On the other hand, in the rest and almost in all of Red Ruthenia from the San River to the Volhynian, Podolian, and Moldavian borders, where crops are always low in price and have no sale, the subject is lazy and has no inclination towards greed at all. He contents himself with the most necessary needs and cultivates only as much of his fields as is necessary for the nourishment of himself and his family.” (Gubernial report of December 27, 1781.)↩

  150. Court Chancellery report of September 22, 1781.↩

  151. Piller’s Law Collection XIX. – Repeated by circular letter of September 10, 1789 (Piller’s Law Collection LXXXIII.) Cf. also Patent of July 23, 1783 (Piller’s Law Collection LXV.)↩

  152. Patent of April 24, 1783 (Piller’s Law Collection XII.)↩

  153. Piller’s Law Collection LIV. – Cf. also circular letter of April 3, 1787 (Piller’s Law Collection XLVII.)↩

  154. Supreme Resolution of December 31, 1784, and Court Decree of January 7, 1785, in Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 402 f.↩

  155. Decree to the Galician Gubernium of January 7, 1785. – Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. II, p. 403. Kalinka, Galicya. p. 135 f.↩

  156. Resolution of March 2, 1785.↩

  157. Court Chancellery report of March 31, 1785.↩

  158. Resolution on the Court Chancellery report of March 31, 1785: "Just as I have already expressly indicated to the Chancellery, the authorities are not to be forced to cede the ownership of the lands to the subjects, but everything in this regard is to be left entirely to the voluntary agreement between lords and subjects. –

    "The circular regulation concerning the assistance to be provided by the authorities to the subjects is also to be issued in Galicia. In general, however, this assistance must be limited to that to which the authorities are actually bound towards their subjects who do not own the lands as property. –

    “Incidentally, the rectification regulation of the truly unjust corvée payment will already provide for this properly, and instead of the concern expressed by the Chancellery, it can be confidently promised that the rectificatorium will by no means hinder the distribution of the lands, but rather promote it.” –↩

  159. Gubernial regulation of May 30, 1785. Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, p. 34.↩

  160. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, p. 265.↩

  161. By Court Decree of May 6, published with Gubernial regulation of May 27, 1785 (Klunker, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 38) and by the above-mentioned Gubernial regulation of May 30, 1785.↩

  162. § 41 of the Corvée Patent of June 16, 1786.↩

  163. Grünberg, Studien, p. 63 f.↩

  164. Court Chancellery report of March 1, 1787.↩

  165. The exchange of manorial and subject lands without the consent of the subject given before the district office is forbidden under penalty of double the value. “Since in some places the subjects do not yet have any actually allocated lands, but are accustomed to using some field portions in this area in one year and in that area in the other, and consequently the circumstance could arise as to which field should actually be regarded as one to remain with the subject, His Majesty has been pleased to designate the first of the winter month of the previous year, so that the lands in the possession of the subjects at this point in time are to be regarded as those to which the prohibition of confiscation or exchange is to extend.” (Court Decree of April 2, 1787.)↩

  166. Cf. Grünberg, Studien, p. 65 f.↩

  167. Piller’s Law Collection LX.↩

  168. Cf. Grünberg, Studien, p. 66, note 3.↩

  169. § 11 of the Patent: “Rustic lands are those lands which have always served the rural population for the so-called settlement and their livelihood, and by virtue of the issued patents may no longer be confiscated for manorial enjoyment under penalty; nor does it make any difference with these whether they are possessed by purchase, or by hereditary right, or unpurchased. Should a question arise here and there about the nature of the lands, whether they are dominical or rustic lands, one must adhere to the current property status to avoid delaying complications, and the subjects who have some lands in their hands and declare them to be rustic lands, as well as the authorities who claim this or that real estate in the hands of the subjects as truly dominical, are required to provide proof that such belonged on November 1, 1786, as the normal date which is set in this province for the distinction of dominical and rustic real estate, to that category under which a claim is currently being made to it. E.g., therefore, that this or that land which a subject now enjoys originates from a manorial dairy farm that existed in the normal year, and that this derivation is generally known.”↩

  170. Cf. Klunker op. cit., Vol. II, p. 35 ff.; furthermore Krzeczunowicz op. cit., p. 24, and Słotwinski op. cit. Vol. III, p. 12.↩

  171. Such cases are: disobedience to the authority (Patent of September 1, 1781, Piller’s Law Coll. XV., §§ 1-3), smuggling (Circular letter of March 6, 1787, Piller’s Law Coll. XXIV.), flight from military conscription (Circular letter of May 10, 1788, Piller’s Law Coll. LVII.).↩

  172. Cf. Tomaschek in the “Zeitschrift für österreichische Rechtsgelehrsamkeit und pol. Gesetzkunde”. Year 1840. Vol. I, p. 82-105. – Grünberg, Studien, p. 235, note 1. – Circular letter of May 26, 1789 (Piller’s Law Coll. LI.).↩

  173. Court Chancellery report of January 7, 1787. Cf. Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, p. 51.↩

  174. Cf. Court Chancellery act 16 ex Augusto 1792.↩

  175. “Unus quisque a lignatione in silvis regiis absque expressa nostra permissione abstinebit.” (Piller’s Law Collection III.)↩

  176. “In illis locis ubi hactenus usus viguit, subditis pro necessitate proprii foci ligna subministrandi ipsis putrefactioni proxima hinc inde in silvis iacentia colligere liceat. Quod vero ad ligna noviter caedenda attinet omnia privilegia lignandi cassantur.” (Patent of January 28, 1773, Piller’s Law Collection XIV.)↩

  177. Patent of September 20, 1782. (Piller’s Law Collection XL.)↩

  178. The Bohemian estates had also pursued the same policy in their time. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I p. 236 ff.↩

  179. Piller’s Law Collection II.↩

  180. Published with circular letter of October 29, 1789 (Piller’s Law Collection CIV). Gubernial report of January 15, 1789.↩

  181. Provincial presidential decree of February 26, 1790 in Klunker op. cit. Vol. II p. 67-69.↩

  182. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. 1, pp. 290-314, Vol. II, pp. 332-359, 423-431.↩

  183. Cf. Pilat in the “Statistische Monatsschrift” Vol. XVIII, p. 295.↩

  184. Corvée Abolition Court Commission under June 7, 1784.↩

  185. It caused bad blood among the natives in Galicia that in the distribution of the manorial-cameral estate lands only the immigrants and not the natives were considered. To a corresponding representation by the Court Chancellery, the Court Chamber replied on June 8, 1784: “The increase of the population is one of the most excellent intentions which His Majesty sees in the ordered abolition of the corvée; if in the distribution of the dominical lands special consideration is not given to foreign immigrants, this increase will not be promoted.”↩

  186. The numerous decrees concerning the settlement system in Galicia were codified in the “Main Norm on the Settlement System” of April 3, 1787. (Printed in Czörnig, Ethnographie etc. Vol. III, Appendix pp. 14-54.)↩

  187. Czörnig op. cit., Vol. I, p. 17. Cf. also Drdacki op. cit., p. 122 f.↩

  188. Files in the Imperial and Royal Court Chamber Archive, Fascicles 7117-7119.↩

  189. Piller’s Collection of Laws XIV and XV.↩

  190. Gubernial Circulars of April 5 and June 28, 1782. (Patent collection in the archive of the Ministry of the Interior.) Cf. also Klunker op. cit. Vol. III, p. 7.↩

  191. Patent of January 15, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws IV.) demands that henceforth only subjects of the hereditary lands shall be employed as officials.↩

  192. Patent of April 9, 1784. (Cf. Klunker op. cit. Vol. III, pp. 17 ff.)↩

  193. Patent of June 24, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws LXVIII.)↩

  194. Circular letter of April 12, 1787. (Piller’s Collection of Laws LIII.) Important for the “organization of the manorial offices” was the decree of August 21, 1788. (Klunker op. cit. Vol. III, pp. 25 ff.) Gubernial report of August 17, 1786. Court Chancellery lecture of September 20, 1787.↩

  195. Patent of January 5, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws I.) The patent of October 3, 1783 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XLVI.) had ordered the following paragraph to be inserted into the estate lease contracts to be concluded in the future: “Furthermore, with regard to the corvée and other subject obligations, the leaseholder must pay the strictest attention to the entire content and prescription of the patent of June 3, 1775.” The patent of March 31, 1783 (Piller’s Collection of Laws X.) abolished the so-called obligatory and arendatory contracts.↩

  196. Patent of April 18, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXVIII.) This patent had been sent to all provincial authorities for publication.↩

  197. Piller’s Collection of Laws LXVII.↩

  198. Piller’s Collection of Laws LXXIV. Files in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior: IV. K. 4, 2536.↩

  199. Patent of April 13, 1784 (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXVI.)↩

  200. Circular of September 23, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws XC.)↩

  201. The following provision was important: “The village courts shall make it their business to settle disputes arising between subjects and subjects amicably as much as possible, and only when the attempts at an amicable agreement are fruitless shall the manorial office make the legal decision according to the existing regulations.” Patent of June 24, 1784. (Piller’s Collection of Laws LXVIII.)↩

  202. Report of the State Chancellery of November 3, 1773.↩

  203. Cf. Arneth op. cit. Vol. III, p. 248.↩

  204. The following according to the files in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior: II. A. 6; V. B. 1, 598; IV. K. 1, 2470; IV. K. 3, 2497.↩

  205. Supreme handwritten note to Count Kollowrat of December 4, 1782. Printed in Meynert, Kaiser Josef II., Vienna 1862. p. 153 f. Cf. Röscher, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland. Munich 1874. p. 632.↩

  206. Commission protocol of January 7, 1783.↩

  207. I follow here Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, I. pp. 314-343 and Vol. II. 420-451. – In the Court Chancellery report of April 5, 1783, it says: “In the urbarial regulation, the main thing is a) that the subject is left with his sufficient subsistence in his hands, without which everything else cannot be imagined anyway. b) The state is assured of the contributional [tax] and finally c) the landlord is allocated his fair share either in money and crops, or with unpaid labor.”↩

  208. Patent of February 10, 1789. (Piller’s Collection of Laws XIII.) Circular of May 26, 1789. (Piller’s Collection of Laws LI.) Uniwersał of September 19, 1789. (Piller’s Collection of Laws LXXXVI.) Cf. (Zanetti), Steuer- und Urbarialregulierung Josephs des Zweyten in den deutschen Erbländern und in Galizien nach ihrer wahren Beschaffenheit in Grellmann op. cit. III. pp. 437-536.

    Taking into account the various gradations, the following table results:
    on average from fields, fallow lands, ponds compared with fields, then from lakes and rivers from meadows and gardens and ponds compared with meadows from pastures, scrublands and woodlands
    in sovereign tax in the German provinces 12 fl. 13 1/3 kr. 10 fl. 37 1/2 kr. 17 fl. 55 kr. 21 fl. 15 kr.
    in Galicia 8 fl. 16 4/5 kr. 7 fl. 5 kr. 12 fl. 5 kr. 14 fl. 10 kr.
    in urbarial obligations (maximum) 17 fl. 46 2/3 kr. 15 fl. 25 kr. 26 fl. 2 1/2 kr. 30 fl. 50 kr.

    From 100 florins of gross land yield were to be paid:↩

  209. During the famine that prevailed in Galicia in the winter of 1786/87, the plan had emerged to carry out the urbarial regulation immediately, without waiting for the complete surveying of the land. (Supreme handwritten note of February 8, 1787.) However, this intention was soon dropped again. (Resolution of March 9, 1787: "If the prohibita generalia are published and their observance strictly monitored, and then the patent of free movement is also strictly kept in all its parts, the actual urbarial regulation in Galicia can remain postponed until the completion of the tax regulation business.")↩

  210. Already during the implementation of the robot abolition system, the peasants in individual villages had declared that they found it difficult to raise the monetary interest. (Robot abolition report of July 1, 1787.)↩

  211. Cf. Kalinka, The Four-Year Polish Diet 1788-1793. Berlin 1896/98. Vol. I, pp. 630-635. Vol. II, pp. 100 ff. – Cf. also Wolf and Zwiedineck-Südenhorst, Austria under Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II. Berlin 1884, p. 308.↩

  212. “The nobles or rather the hereditary owners of the estates are to be regarded as the most excellent cultivators of the soil, which indeed no one could deny, since the great multitude of magazine supplies had always been procured by the landowners, never by the peasants, the latter having hardly as much in crops as belongs to their necessary sustenance.” It was impossible to distribute the dominical lands among the subjects, because they hardly possessed the necessary fundus instructus to cultivate the lands currently in their possession. Just as little was it possible for the dominions to arrange their economy in such a way that they could dispense with the corvée services; they would then have to increase their service personnel all at once by 20,000 ox-hands and just as many ox-boys, and their livestock by 80,000 head of oxen. – “The nobleman, who is so useful to the country, deserves consideration so that he would not be exposed to oblivion and ultimate misery.” (Petition of the Galician Estates of July 7, 1789.)↩

  213. Resolution of September 14, 1789.↩

  214. Wolf and Zwiedineck-Südenhorst op. cit. p. 314.↩

  215. The original in the archives of the Imperial and Royal Ministry of the Interior: 85 ex Februario 1790. IV. H. 2, 524. The letter is printed according to a copy located in manuscript 525 of the Ossoliński Institute in Lviv in W. Loziński, Galiciana. Lviv 1872. pp. 129 ff.↩

  216. According to Brigido’s report, the nobility was hit particularly hard by the lack of cash and labor, furthermore the high costs of surveying and the forest tax, which was set too high. The new land tax was more than twice as large as the previous one; out of the determined land yield of 27,133,152 fl. 23 kr., it amounted to 2,239,787 fl. 58 kr. against 996,942 fl. of the dominical and rustical tax. Added to this were 271,331 fl. as administrative costs and 700,000 fl. as an extraordinary war tax. Furthermore, in-kind deliveries to the value of 1,593,333 fl., for which non-interest-bearing notes were issued, which, however, were only to be accepted in lieu of payment by the state treasuries after the end of the war. The additional burden on the country was therefore quite significant; it fell almost entirely on the nobility. Through the urbarial regulation, the incomes of some nobles were reduced by 1/2 to 2/3. – The Court Chancellery renewed the proposal it had already made in April 1788 and then in July 1789 to reduce the tax rate for Galicia to 1/2 (instead of 2/3) of that set in the other crown lands. (Gubernial reports of January 26 and February 28, Court Chancellery meetings of February 5 and March 11, 1790. Cf. Loziński op. cit. pp. 107 ff.)↩

  217. Circular of March 31, 1790.↩

  218. In the meeting of the estate committee of April 6, 1790, Brigido made the proposal to increase the dominical tax from 12% to 18%. The additional amount achieved thereby was to be written off from the rustical tax quota in favor of the subjects. (The dominical tax amounted to 581,634 fl. in 1789, the rustical tax to 413,057 fl.) The estates declared themselves ready for an increase to 16%. The course of these deliberations proves that both in government circles and in those of the landowners, fierce resistance from the peasants against the intended repeal of the Josephine system was expected. Cf. the files under 85 ex Martio et 41 ex Majo 1790. V. B. 1, 600.↩

  219. Ibid. Cf. furthermore Kalinka op. cit. pp. 104 f. Starzynski, Projekt galicyjskiej konstitucyi 1790/91 in “Przewodnik naukowy i literacki” 1892. p. 410. Cf. Circular of June 2, 1790. (Piller’s Collection of Laws XXXVIII).↩

  220. Piller’s Collection of Laws XXX.↩

  221. Piller’s Collection of Laws XCI.↩

  222. Cf. Uwagi nad rządem galicyjskim. Przyczyny, dla których do tego stopnia nikczemności prowincja ta przyszła, a nakoniec sposoby, jakimiby los tego kraju poprawić można. Roku 1790. and the reply: (E. B. Kortum) Magna Charta von Galicien oder Untersuchung der Beschwerden des galicischen Adels pohlnischer Nation über die österreichische Regierung. Jassy 1790. Both in Grellmann op. cit. Vol. I, pp. 1-148, 173-228. The text of the draft constitution is also printed there on pp. 149-173. Cf. Starzynski op. cit.↩

  223. §§ 45-46 of the charta.↩

  224. Court decree of July 9, 1790. Ainser’s expert opinion of July 17, 1790.↩

  225. According to the deputies' proposal, a 6-member commission, half of whose members were to be appointed by the government and half by the estates, was to travel from dominion to dominion and rectify the inventories. – The restriction of the corvée to 3 days a week was to be lifted for the larger peasant estates (also according to Ainser’s proposal): “Heureusement qu’il y a moien de le faire sans aggraver le sort du peuple, et même sans outre passer la règle, qu’aucun individu ne soit tenu à plus de corvées qu’à trois par semaine. Les colons de Galicie ne sont pas propriétaires de leurs fonds, ils en jouissent à titre de métayer. On pourrait donc sans blesser leurs droits distraire des possessions de ceux donc les charges ont été mis au moins, de portions proportionnées à ce rabais et les faire servir à l’établissement des autres colons à rédevances.” The deputies also spoke out in favor of the reintroduction of measured services. – Furthermore, they declared: “Où une grande disproportion tant entre les possessions qu’entre les charges respectives des paisans se trouverait être introduite, soit à la suite de l’abolition des droits seigneuriaux, soit par quelque circonstance accidentelle: Le seigneur qui en alleguerait la preuve et la cause, aura le droit de proposer la manière de l’égaliser. Cependant le total des rédévances tel qu’il a été le dernier 8bre 1789 sauf les droits à rétablir restera immuable sans augmentation ou diminution.” – “Il importe pour plusieurs raisons de laisser en ce cas l’initiative au Seigneur; c’est à dire qu’aucune égalisation entre les paisans ne puisse être entreprise, que sur la demande qu’il ferait la dessus.”↩

  226. Kolmanhuber further demanded a) "that instead of the proposed costly and slow recasting of the inventories, they should merely be corrected according to old custom, the subjects' own admission and consultation, b) that this correction be left entirely to the landowner, and a period of 6 months be granted to him for this, c) that the government should not interfere in this operation at all, but only in cases where the landowner demands more than the subjects acknowledge owing according to old custom, the dispute should be investigated by a district official and two propertied district residents at the expense of the dominion, decided according to legal documents or, in their absence, settled by means of a settlement, according to the example of neighboring estates, or according to the lustration of the nearest starosty, d) that as soon as the inventories thus formed are corrected, finalized, and signed by landowners and subjects, notice thereof is given to the district office, from which a commissioner is dispatched ad locum, where he has to review the now drafted inventory with regard to the prescribed completeness, read it to the subjects in the presence of two neighboring estate owners, and have the contents confirmed by them, e) that these inventories moreover be judged by a commission composed of gubernatorial councilors and estate deputies, and finally f) be sanctioned by the government."↩

  227. Starzynski op. cit. pp. 627, 915.↩

  228. Cf. Starzynski op. cit. pp. 920 ff.↩

  229. Margelik’s report of March 26, 1792. Supreme handwritten letter of April 28, 1792.↩

  230. Court Chancellery report of June 16, 1792.↩

  231. Supreme handwritten note ddo. Laxenburg, June 13, 1793. Report of the Directorate of June 26, 1793.↩

  232. Piller’s collection of laws XXXXVI.↩

  233. Cf. Grünberg, Bauernbefreiung, Vol. I, p. 357.↩

  234. Springer, Geschichte Österreichs seit dem Wiener Frieden 1809. Vienna 1863, Vol. I, p. 53.↩

  235. Cf. Meynert, Kaiser Franz I. Zur Geschichte seiner Regierung und seiner Zeit. Vienna 1872, p. 141.↩

  236. Court Decree of November 30, 1796. (Franz des Zweiten politische Gesetze und Verordnungen. Vol. IX, 59.) Court Decree of January 5, 1797. (Vol. X, 3.)↩

  237. Patent of January 17, 1799 (ibid. Vol. XIV, 3.)↩

  238. Patents of January 17, 1799 (ibid. Vol. XIV, 4 and 5.)↩

  239. Cf. the files in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior. II. A. 6, 320.↩

  240. Cf. in particular the Gubernial Ordinance of April 2, 1802 (in Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 225-238). Also of far-reaching importance was the Gubernial Ordinance of September 16, 1817 (in Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 276-279), which assigned the decision in disputes over subject obligations, lands, and servitudes to the political authorities. Cf. on this Krzeczunowicz op. cit. p. 13 ff.↩

  241. Court Chancellery Report of October 24, 1816; Resolution of December 20, 1816. Followed by Gubernial Ordinance of January 28, 1817 (in Klunker op. cit. Vol. II, pp. 252-256).↩

  242. Patent of October 29, 1790. (Sammlung der Gesetze im Untertansfache etc. 54.)↩

  243. Cf. Grünberg, Studien pp. 217-223, 256-263 and the files cited there. Furthermore Tomaschek op. cit. and Pilat in the cited appendices No. 70 to the stenographic protocols, X. Session p. 545.↩

  244. Decree to the Galician Gubernium of February 2, 1809.↩

  245. The relevant files sub VI. B. 1, 1541 and 1542.↩

  246. Gubernial Report of August 28, 1818.↩

  247. Land registers did not yet exist at all for subject property.↩

  248. Remarks by Baron Franz Hauer of September 7, 1818, on the Gubernial Report of August 28, 1818.↩

  249. Piller’s Law Collection LXX.↩

  250. Patent of May 6, 1819. (Provincial Law Collection 44.)↩

  251. Cf. Freiberger, Handbuch der österreichischen direkten Steuern. Vienna 1899, p. 96.↩

  252. Cf. Grünberg, Studien, p. 90.↩

  253. Even in the Josephine era, the lands seem to have been “permanently” distributed in individual communities. At least, the manner in which the Gubernial referent speaks of it in 1791 suggests this. (Gubernial session of May 7, 1791.) Around the mid-1820s, the Galician Gubernium drew the following picture of the “mutability of the lands”: a) “In the Kolomea district, it currently still exists in 8 communities with respect to all rustical lands. In 12 communities, most of the lands have indeed already been distributed for permanent possession, but 2 fields in each community are not yet distributed due to their unequal nature and will soon be distributed. In 24 communities, it is only a matter of equalizing individual parcels. b) In the Czortkow district, land ownership in concreto still appears in 44 communities. c) In the Stanislawow district in 6 communities, where, however, the dominion has declared itself in favor of land regulation.” (Court Chancellery Report of October 3, 1826.)↩

  254. Cf. Grünberg, Studien, p. 92 ff.↩

  255. Die Grundentlastung in Österreich. Vienna 1857, p. 50 f.↩

  256. Ibid., p. 12.↩

  257. After the end of the uprising of 1846, Polish aristocrats raised the accusation against the government that it had only granted the dominions the administration of office so that they would incur the hatred of the peasantry in the exercise of police powers and the collection of public burdens. The absurdity of this accusation—which, incidentally, is also encountered on the part of the Romanian large landowners in Bukovina (cf. Grünberg, Studien p. 35 f.)—is obvious. If further proof were needed, it would be that in the negotiations on the regulation and eventual abolition of patrimonial jurisdiction, which lasted for decades, a similar thought never once emerged. Only when the accusation had been publicly raised against the government did the district captain of Przemysl, Karl Czetsch Ritter von Lindenwald, declare himself against the intended introduction of sovereign first instances for this reason in an expert opinion dated April 18, 1846. “If one eliminates,” he argued, “the main instigator of hatred between peasant and nobility, namely patrimonial jurisdiction, one undermines the government’s conditions of existence.” However, the Gubernium and the Court Chancellery took no further notice of this peculiar view.↩

  258. From a lecture by Count Rudolf Stadion on December 13, 1846: “It is not a matter, as I said, of improving what exists, but of newly creating an administration of justice for which organs previously existed barely in name, but which—with the exception of a few dominions, mostly cameral estates—was practiced nowhere, for which therefore no judicial custom and no civil service could form, and for which every administrative aid, such as land registers, orphan accounts, deposit protocols, etc., is almost everywhere completely lacking.”↩

  259. “Remarks on the patrimonial jurisdiction in the first instance granted to the Galician land lordships, etc.” Anonymous memorandum, presented to the Court Chancellery in March 1846. – In order to deceive the superior judicial authorities about the extent of their activities, the justiciaries falsified their periodic accountability reports. Cf. Kalinka op. cit. p. 368.↩

  260. Sala, History of the Polish Uprising of 1846. Vienna 1867. p. 5.↩

  261. Supreme handwritten note of February 8, 1809. – “It is an all too well-known fact that in the flat countryside the administration of justice for non-nobles exists only in name, that apart from the district offices no one concerns themselves with the proper enforcement of the political laws, that even the swift course of criminal justice frequently finds obstacles through the negligent cooperation of the local authorities in preliminary inquiries and witness interrogations, and that in the flat countryside obedience to the law and security of persons and property, on which public welfare so essentially depends, can only be achieved through a better organization of the first instances.” The cause of these conditions is to be sought in the “lack of a sufficient number of magisterial officials, their uselessness and bias.” (Gubernial report of August 18, 1818.) – The supreme judicial body declared in a note on the crimes committed in Galicia in 1821: “The numerous cases of crime, of abuse of official power, stem, according to the assurance of the criminal authorities, partly from the frequent attempts at bribery, but partly from the isolated position, from the crudeness, ignorance, and meager pay of many dominical officials.” – Cf. The Polish Assassination Attempt in 1846. From the diary of an officer of the West Galician army. Grimma 1846. p. 39.↩

  262. “Na ugodę (for a settlement) the Polish peasant calls to his neighbor when he has a dispute with him, and drags him to the village judge before he goes to the justiciary… This community justice of the peace is the only order-keeping authority on most smaller estates in Galicia, since on many dominions no one otherwise takes care of the peasants out of duty, unless it concerns their corvée labor.” (Presidential remarks of the Provincial Governor Count von Goeß of February 28, 1813, on the Gubernial report of February 13, 1813.) – Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 6 f.↩

  263. Cf. Grünberg, Studien p. 256 ff.↩

  264. A report by the district captain of Przemysl dated August 13, 1846, expresses itself similarly. Cf. furthermore Sala op. cit. p. 5 f. and cit. appendices No. 70 p. 520, 524, 545.↩

  265. Gubernial report of March 17, 1848.↩

  266. In vain did the government fight against the nuisance of the pettifoggers. The ordinances against them are compiled in Słotwinski op. cit. II. p. 155-159.↩

  267. This is claimed by Sala (op. cit. p. 8), who from 1840-1846 had been Gubernial Councilor and head of the presidential bureau of the Galician Gubernium under the Governor General Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este.↩

  268. Cf. especially Sala op. cit. p. 7-12.↩

  269. Jasiński, Observations etc.↩

  270. Jasiński op. cit. – In 1811, the then Governor Count Goeß wrote: “The peasantry, this so useful and important class of inhabitants, still labors here in the country deep on the lowest rung of culture. Although His Majesty’s wise laws secure his rights and property, he is nevertheless unable to recognize their value and enjoy their fruits. Lack of diligence and industry limit him in his livelihood, consequently in his primary needs, to the detriment of his health and strength. Idleness is his delight and excessive consumption of intoxicating drinks his pleasure, and the consequences thereof are not infrequently sad for him, but always detrimental to the state.” As a means of elevating the peasantry, Goeß recommended: “Increase of public schools in every possible way.” (Gubernial report of July 11, 1811.) – Already in 1822, the supreme judicial body noted that the extraordinary increase in crimes of rebellion, riot, and public violence in Galicia was to be attributed to the pressure that the subjects endured from their lordships.↩

  271. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 3, 50 ff. Ostaszewski-Barański, Krwawy rok (1846) W Złoczowie 1896. p. 1 ff.↩

  272. For the following presentation, the following have primarily been used: Filaret Prawdowski (Henryk Kamieński), O prawdach żywotnych narodu polskiego. Bruxella 1844 and Katechizm demokratyczne. Paryż 1845. Furthermore Wiktor Heltman, Demokracya polska na emigracyi. Lipsk 1866.↩

  273. “Niewolnik niezna ojczyzny, która nie jest jému matką ale barbarzyńską macochą, która zamiast opieki ma dla niego tylko nędzę i zhańbienie niewoli, ucisk i plaki.” O prawdach żywotnych. p. 56. Similarly Katechizm p. 13.↩

  274. Manifest towarzystwa demokratycznego polskiego. Poitiers, 1836. (Heltman p. 5.) Cf. O prawdach żywotnych. p. 53.↩

  275. Katechizm p. 31.↩

  276. Katechizm, p. 35 ff., 55 ff↩

  277. “Każdy włoscianin, gospodarz, zagrodnik i t. d. uprawiający jakąkolwiek ilość ziemi w zamian dawanych przez siebie panszczyzny, czynszu, danin, lub jakichkolwiek innych powinności, staje się właścicielem całego swojego gruntu, żadnych odtąd niemając względem nikogo obowiązków.” O prawdach żywotnych. p. 71.↩

  278. Katechizm, p. 42 ff.↩

  279. A scientific justification of this view was attempted by Lelewel in the two writings: Betrachtungen über den politischen Zustand des ehemaligen Polen. Brüssel 1845 and Stracone obywatelstwo stanu kmieciego w Polsce. Bruxella 1847.↩

  280. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 18 ff.↩

  281. This experience was had by all who came into contact with the peasants. Słotwiński said: “U chłopa na Mazurach “ojcyzna” była ojcowizną, “polok” był jakimś mitycznym potworem, nierównie gorszym od dyabła, a chłop sam w swem silnem przekonaniu nie był polskim, jeno “cysarskim”.” (Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. p. 31.) – Theophil Wiśniowski, the leader of the '46 movement executed in Lemberg in 1847: “Masy nie troszczą się o to, jaki jest rząd, masy nie myślą, tylko słuchają, a nie zapominajmy, źe lud nasz nic nie wie o Polsce i jeżeli co wie, to dzięki niecnym zabiegom pewnie nic dobrego.” (Schnür-Pepłowski, Życie za wolność. We Lwowie 1897. p. 68.) Cf. furthermore (Wielopolski), Briefe eines polnischen Edelmannes an einen deutschen Publizisten. Hamburg 1846. p. 42. Das Polenattentat, p. 68 – 74, 101. Katechizm op. cit. p. 106. – (Schwarzenberg) Antidiluvianische Fidibusschnitzel. Wien 1850. p. 64.↩

  282. Cf. Schnür-Pepłowski op. cit. p. 10.↩

  283. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 118 – 123. Gubernialberichte vom 25. September und 2. Dezember 1844 und vom 24. Februar 1848.↩

  284. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 114 f.↩

  285. A shift in public opinion in favor of the subjects had also taken place, perhaps under the influence of the democrats. “Thanks to advanced civilization, public opinion is beginning to become a real power in Galicia as well; the oppression of the subjects is increasingly condemned by it day by day, and the oppressor of subjects is treated with disdain.” (Jasiński’s memorandum cited below.) Cf. also Obecne stan Galicyi. 1843. p. 52. – A proverbial expression for poor work was “robota jak za panszczyznę” [work like corvée].↩

  286. Cf. Springer op. cit. Vol. I. p. 509 ff.↩

  287. For the following, cf. in addition to the files in the Archive of the Ministry of the Interior IV. H. 3: Proceedings of the Diet opened in the Kingdoms of Galicia and Lodomeria in 1843, 1844, 1845. Lemberg 1844, 1845, 1846. – Sala op. cit. p. 115-118. – (Kraiński), Memoirs and Documents from Galicia in the Year 1846. Leipzig 1847. p. 33-63.↩

  288. In the same session, Josef Ritter von Jasiński, lord of the manor of Zablotow (Kolomea district), introduced two motions regarding the regulation of the procedures of the political authorities in matters concerning subjects and regarding the reduction of the monetary rents payable by the subjects to the manorial estates from Viennese currency to Convention coin. Both motions were referred to the commission to be elected. (Proceedings of 1843 p. 41.) Shortly thereafter, Jasiński presented the government with a comprehensive memorandum (cited by us several times above) on the conditions of subjection, which also contained a proposal for the redemption of the subjects' obligations.↩

  289. The estates had supported Wiesiolowski’s motion out of a desire for popularity; the government, however, must not accommodate these efforts, because “high interests dictate that what is done in Galicia for the benefit of the lower classes should emanate from the government and be recognized as a benefaction which they owe to the care and benevolence of the government”.↩

  290. Supreme Resolution of July 9, 1844. – Simultaneously with the motions of the Galician estates, the Lower Austrian estates had introduced a motion for the redemption of tithes and corvées. The government left this motion unanswered, even when the estates repeated it the following year and provided detailed justification. Cf. Springer op. cit. Vol. I. p. 543 f.↩

  291. Gubernial report of September 26, 1844. Court Chancellery report of November 14, 1844. Supreme Resolutions of March 11, 1845.↩

  292. Proceedings etc. 1845. p. 39 ff.↩

  293. ibid. p. 43 f.↩

  294. ibid. p. 67 ff.↩

  295. Preliminary discussions among the commission members also took place, in which the various reform plans were evaluated. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 159.↩

  296. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 123 ff.↩

  297. Communicated in translation in Sala op. cit. pp. 339-349. Since the appeal contained sharp attacks against the Austrian government, it was handed over to the military authorities by the peasants. Ibid. p. 127.↩

  298. Born 1776 in Rastatt, died 1856 in Vienna as President of the Imperial Council. Cf. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon.↩

  299. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 142 f.↩

  300. Cf. (Sacher-Masoch), Polnische Revolutionen. Prague 1863. p. 58.↩

  301. The decree is communicated in Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. p. 64 ff. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 187 f.↩

  302. Cf. Sala op. cit. pp. 179-196. Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. pp. 69-82. Ostrow, Der Bauernkrieg vom Jahre 1846 in Galizien. Vienna 1869, pp. 38-59.↩

  303. Cf. Sala op. cit. pp. 196-203, 224-240. Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. p. 83 ff. Ostrow op. cit. p. 66 ff.↩

  304. Cf. Sala op. cit. pp. 204-211. Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. pp. 140-146. Ostrow op. cit. pp. 78-86.↩

  305. Cf. Sala op. cit. pp. 260-293. Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. pp. 83-169. Ostrow op. cit. pp. 59-66. Tessarczyk, Rzeź Galicyjska 1846 r. Kraków 1848. p. 1 ff. – The best-known leader of the Galician peasants was Jakob Szela from Smarzowa (Tarnow district), who was about 65 years old at the time of the uprising. For twenty years, as a deputy of the communities of Smarzowa and Siedliska, he led a gravamen lawsuit against the noble Bogusz family. Ignorant of reading and writing, he had nevertheless acquired a not insignificant knowledge of the subject laws with remarkable aptitude, so that he was approached for advice by all communities of the district in the event of disputes. In the course of the Smarzowa trial, personal friction had occurred several times between him and Bogusz, until Bogusz refused to recognize Szela any longer as a community representative. The district captain Breinl rejected Szela’s appeal, but the Court Chancellery reinstated him in his dignity. From then on, Szela was a resolute enemy of the estate owners. Cf. on Szela, in addition to the writings cited above: (Sacher-Masoch) op. cit. pp. 108-116. Das Polenattentat op. cit. pp. 277-287. “Hardly has a historical personality ever been judged so differently as the Galician peasant Jakob Szela.” Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Jakob Szela (in Dorf- und Schloßgeschichten, Berlin 1894).↩

  306. It is superfluous to refute the nonsensical assertions of the Polish parties. According to Ostaszewski-Barański (op. cit. p. 53), the Tarnow district captain Josef Breinl Ritter von Wallerstein supposedly said to Szela on February 16, 1846: “The government is counting on you. I give you full authority to do as you please in your district. Be aware of your position! The Governor General is the first in Galicia, you are second in rank. You have all powers. For 24 hours you may murder and rob noblemen. The entire proceeds of the robberies are yours. When you have broken the hands and feet of the nobility, deliver the bound ones to the district office, where I will pay you 10 florins for every dead one, 5 florins for every wounded one, and 2 florins for every uninjured prisoner.” A documentary refutation of these accusations is provided by Sala op. cit. pp. 302-313. – The accusations against the government organs originated from the democrats, who wanted to justify themselves before public opinion. The truth was by no means unknown to the aristocrats, and they also publicly blamed the democrats for the sad events. Cf. Heltman op. cit. p. 106. – Incidentally, a part of the democrats seemed quite satisfied with the success of their agitation. Thus, one of their leaders (Dembowski) declared on February 26, 1846, i.e., after the terrible excesses of the peasants (in a speech given in the Krakow revolutionary club), that he was surprised that the people had not dealt more severely with the nobility. ("O! dziwna, dziwna ta łagodność naszego ludu, że uraz tak łatwo zapomina, że srożej sie nie pomścił na tych, którzy go tak długo deptali i bezcześcili.") Ostaszewski-Barański op. cit. p. 234.↩

  307. Letter from Prince Metternich to the Austrian representatives abroad, dated Vienna, March 7, 1846. (Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung. p. 589 f.)↩

  308. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 324.↩

  309. Decree of the Governor General dated Bochnia, March 9, 1846. – Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 295.↩

  310. Decree of the Governor General dated Bochnia, March 10, 1846. – Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 296.↩

  311. Gubernium session of March 30, 1846. – Cf. also Sala op. cit. p. 315 ff.↩

  312. Court Chancellery sessions of March 9 and 16, 1846. Supreme handwritten note of March 22, 1846.↩

  313. Report of March 22, 1846.↩

  314. Commission deliberation of the Court Chancellery of March 31, 1846. The Court Chancellery submitted the above proposals after having thoroughly considered “1. whether the government is entitled to imperatively regulate private rights, 2. whether, because of the influence on the other provinces, it would not be alarming to allow concessions to be wrung from it by the insubordination of the Galician subjects, 3. whether great disadvantages for agriculture were not to be feared from the abolition of the corvée”. The President of the Court Chamber, Baron Kübeck, had a decisive influence on the commission’s decision. – The transformation of the natural corvée into a monetary payment was to take place gradually over the course of several years.↩

  315. Provincial Law Collection 44. – Report of the Archduke of April 1, 1846. Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 326. Grünberg, Die Grundentlastung. p. 29 f.↩

  316. Reports of April 17, 18, and 22, 1846. – Cf. Galizien und die Robotfrage. Leipzig 1846, p. 74.↩

  317. In the month of April, Jakob Szela presented a petition on behalf of 50 communities of the Tarnow and Jaslo districts for the general abolition of the robot (corvée).↩

  318. Session of the Gubernium of June 16, 1846, under the chairmanship of Gubernial President Baron Krieg. Present: Court Councillors Ettmayer and von Milbacher, Revenue Administrator Pöcher, Chamber Procurator Holzgethan, Gubernial Councillors von Widmann and Emminger, District Captains von Czetsch and Martinowitz, Knight von Krajewski, Administrator von Micewski and the estate deputies Moritz Knight von Kraiński and Agenor Count Gołuchowski. – Cf. Bronisław Loziński, Agenor hr. Gołuchowski. We Lwowie 1901. p. 13 ff.↩

  319. Jasiński wrote in the frequently mentioned memorandum: “One can work 130 days a year from 10-12 yokes, because the year has 365 days, but to pay for 130 days of owed robot would not be so easy, because the land yield, at least in Galicia, does not produce particularly large percentages.”↩

  320. The Kraiński-Gołuchowski project is printed in (Kraiński), Memoiren und Aktenstücke, pp. 227-284.↩

  321. The 30% was composed of “5% for the administrative expenses of the landlords connected with the existence of the urbarial service; 5% to complete the compensation due to the subjects for the loss of their right of pasture on manorial fallow and stubble fields (the landlords were likewise to renounce the right of pasture on the subject fallow and stubble fields due to them as a result of political regulations); 10% for the ceasing right to obtain gathered, fallen and cleared wood, then timber from the manorial forests; 10% for the benefits lost to the subjects with the cessation of the subject relationship (namely a) free patrimonial jurisdiction, b) legal representation in court, c) maintenance of the local police, conscription and recruiting business, then the expenses connected with sanitary and local police regulations, with regard to which obligations the landlords from now on had to contribute equally with every community member in proportion to their landholding”).↩

  322. Before his resignation, the Archduke had expressed his opinion on the Galician conditions in a memorandum (dated April 23, 1846). Cf. Sala op. cit. p. 327.↩

  323. Supreme Cabinet Letter of July 3, 1846.↩

  324. Instruction for Stadion of July 20, 1846.↩

  325. Cf. Grünberg, Grundentlastung p. 32. – The relevant passage in the instruction for Stadion read: “With regard to the question of the commutation of the robots, you must first await those provisions which I shall decide upon concerning the negotiation initiated in this regard in general.”↩

  326. Reports of Stadion of August 7 and December 4, 1846.↩

  327. Gubernial Decree of August 28, 1846. (Provincial Law Collection 99.) – Circular of December 16, 1846.↩

  328. Gubernial Decree of August 28, 1846. (Provincial Law Collection 100.)↩

  329. Gubernial Announcement of August 25, 1846. (Provincial Law Collection 97.) – The measures aroused the greatest displeasure of the large landowners, who demanded nothing less than the complete abandonment of peasant protection. Cf. the petition handed to the Court Commissioner by 107 landowners in (Kraiński) Memoiren und Aktenstücke. pp. 203-225.↩

  330. Presentations of the Court Commissioner of September 6, 13, 14 and 15; Supreme Cabinet Letter to Count Rudolf Stadion of November 12; 3 Circulars of November 25, 1846. (Provincial Law Collection 127-129.) Instruction for the district offices and their district commissioners. Instruction for the manorial estates and tax district authorities. Both of December 18, 1846. (Provincial Law Collection 140 and 141.)↩

  331. The division into classes was to be done according to the following principles: | | | | | | |————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–|—————————————————————|———|—————|———| | Classes | From a property from which is paid | | | | | | Land tax according to the tax rate of the administrative year 1845/46 | | | | | | over fl. | kr. | up to fl. | kr. | | I. | – | – | 1 | 20 9/15 | | II. | 1 | 20 9/15 | 2 | 14 5/15 | | III. | 2 | 14 5/15 | 3 | 8 1/15 | | IV. | 3 | 8 1/15 | 4 | 1 12/15 | | V. | 4 | 1 12/15 | and above | | | NB. In the classes established for manual corvée, all those landowners are to be classified who have previously only performed manual or foot corvée, no matter how high the tax paid by them may rise. | | | | | Class determination for manual corvée: | | | | | | | | |—————————————————————————————————————————————————————|—————————————————————|———-|—————|———-|——————————|———————————————————————| | Classes | From a property from which is paid | | | | Is performed annually | | | | Land tax according to the tax rate of the administrative year 1845/46 | | | | | | | | over fl. | kr. | up to fl. | kr. | Draft days | | | I. | 3 | 8 1/15 | 4 | 1 12/15 | 104 one-horse or 52 two-horse| Depending on whether the corvée was previously performed with one or two horses. | | II. | 4 | 1 12/15 | 6 | 43 | 156 one-horse or 78 two-horse| | | III. | 6 | 43 | 7 | 36 11/15 | 104 two-horse or 83 three-horse| Depending on whether the corvée was previously performed with two or three horses. | | IV. | 7 | 36 11/15 | 12 | 18 13/15 | 156 two-horse or 132 three-horse| | | V. | 12 | 18 13/15 | 14 | 33 2/15 | 156 three-horse or 104 four-horse| Depending on whether the corvée was previously performed with three or four horses. | | VI. | 14 | 33 2/15 | and above | | 156 four-horse | | | N. B. In the classes of draft corvée, all those landowners are to be classified who have previously performed draft corvée and paid more than 3 fl. 8 1/15 kr. in tax. | | | | | | | Class determination for draft corvée:↩

  332. Cf. Grünberg, Die Grundentlastung. p. 34 ff. – the Court Chancellery Decree is also printed there.↩

  333. Imperial Resolution of December 14, 1846: “When and whether the aforementioned regulation (namely the Court Chancellery Decree of December 18) is to be promulgated in exactly the same form for Galicia as well – the expert opinion of the provincial authorities is first to be obtained on this, and submitted to Me properly elucidated for a final decision.” The Gubernium spoke out in favor of publishing the law in Galicia, and the Court Chancellery made its proposals accordingly, but the resolution of April 13, 1847, postponed the promulgation “until the ordered corvée regulation has been completely or largely carried out.”↩

  334. On January 9, 1847, Stadion announced the end of his mission and was relieved of his position as Court Commissioner by Supreme Autograph Letter of February 20, 1847, whereby the Emperor, considering his “personal influence in the implementation of the arrangements made for Galicia” to be necessary, reserved the right to send him back to Galicia “at the measured moment” in order to receive truthful reports on the progress of the reform work.↩

  335. Report of the troop division commander in Tarnow F. M. L. Baron Wetzlar of January 16, 1847, and of the commanding general in Lemberg FZM. Hammerstein of January 21, 1847.↩

  336. Cf. Hillbricht in the “Jurist”. Year 1848, p. 177. – The net yield of the rustic lands amounted to 8,452,151 fl. 35 2/8 kr. Since the value of the minor dues amounted to 884,445 fl. 29 5/8 kr., the value of the regulated corvée remained at 3,341,620 fl. 18 kr. This, reduced to foot (manual) corvée, equaled 33,416,203 days, against 47,857,943 of the old obligation. The loss suffered by the authorities in corvée thus amounted to at least 14,441,740 reduced manual days or 30·18%. In reality, however, it was much greater, since the regulation could only ever be done in favor of the subjects. There was also great local variation; some estates lost nothing at all, some over 60%.↩

  337. Gubernial report of January 27, Court Chancellery report of February 22, Resolution of April 17, 1947. Cf. Loziński op. cit. p. 25 f.↩

  338. Court Chancellery reports of February 22 and March 21. Handwritten letters of March 6 and March 31. Resolution of June 2, 1847.↩

  339. According to Stadion’s class division, one manual day accounted for 2 1/15 kr. of tax payment; thus, according to the Gubernium’s proposal, there was a surplus of 1,183,066 manual days in favor of the authorities.↩

  340. Count Franz von Stadion-Warthausen (1806-1853) was a son of Count Johann Philipp and an older brother of Count Rudolf. He had already been employed in political service in Galicia from 1828-1832. Cf. Wurzbach op. cit.↩

  341. The justification given by Kraus was interesting: “If the principle is maintained that the obligations of the subjects individually should not exceed half the land yield, this could also have repercussions on other provinces and prompt there – (where, as in Bohemia and Moravia, the corvée regulation took place according to the tax florin) the not unproblematic demand for a similar treatment of subject obligations.” (Court Chancellery report of November 27, 1847.)↩

  342. “Presentation of the negotiations on the corvée regulation, then complete abolition of the corvée in Galicia” (Court Chancellery file).↩

  343. Springer op. cit. II. p. 233.↩

  344. The petition of March 18 is printed in Widmann, Fr. Smolka pp. 806-809; the address of April 6 ibid. pp. 810-817.↩

  345. Letter from Count Franz Stadion to the Minister of the Interior Baron von Pillersdorf dated Lemberg May 13, 1848. (Gazeta lwowska. 1848. Supplement to No. 68. pp. 1-14.)↩

  346. Cf. Heltmann op. cit. p. 165 ff. 273 ff.↩

  347. Circular of April 5, 1848. (Printed; not included in the provincial law collection.) This circular had been preceded on March 20 and 29 by two others of similar content, which, however, are known to me only from the brief summary in Wurzbach op. cit. (Art. Stadion).↩

  348. Reports of April 12 and 14, 1848.↩

  349. Provincial Law Collection 25.↩

  350. The patent is dated April 17 and was published by gubernatorial proclamation of May 14. (Provincial Law Collection 34.)↩

  351. Die Grundentlastung op. cit. – Information on the amount of the small gifts is missing. – Those landlords who had remitted the corvée received no compensation. Cf. Loziński op. cit. p. 230 f.↩

  352. Cf. Zyblikiewicz, Indemnizacya. W Krakowie 1880. p. 1 ff.↩

  353. Proclamation of the Ministry of Finance of November 27, 1890, R. G. Bl. 219.↩

  354. R. G. Bl. 130.↩

  355. Provincial laws of December 30, 1875 (L. G. Bl. 55 of the year 1877), of December 8, 1877 (L. G. Bl. 56), of April 22, 1889 (L. G. Bl. 30).↩

  356. Provincial law of August 12, 1866 (L. G. Bl. 20).↩

  357. A coincidence of external circumstances prevented the author from using the State Council files of the Josephine era.↩

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