| The Prince and the Feudal Orders | 2. GABRIEL BETHLEN'S REIGN | 3. TRANSYLVANIA IN THE ANTI-HABSBURG ALLIANCE |
To finance the modernization of their states, Western rulers contemporary with Bethlen resorted primarily to taxation. The 17th century saw a rapid increase in state taxes all over Europe. This was the time when citizens unencumbered by feudal obligations came to be taxed on the basis of their property. This social stratum, capable of rapid accumulation of wealth, became a financial support of the absolutist states. The relationship was of mutual benefit: the modernizing state drew on the resources on the citizenry, while burghers exploited the new economic system to enrich themselves.
Bethlen could not follow suit, for he inherited from his predecessors an anachronistic system of taxation that had been drawn up in 1609, in the wake of the devastation and chaos of the Fifteen Years' War. Earlier, and in harmony with general European practice, Transylvanians had paid taxes according to their property; the base was the number of draught animals or amount of property equivalent in value to five oxen. In 1609, this system was changed: noting that 'taxation based on the number of oxen is very onerous for our impoverished community,'[30] the diet decided to impose a poll tax. Without regard to livestock, ten villeins would constitute a 'gate' (kapu), and five villeins, half a gate. Every estate would be {2-48.} taxed separately, and if the number of villeins was slightly over the benchmarks of ten and five, the others would simply help to pay the basic tax. Apart from this modification of the tax base, the traditional distinctive features of the Transylvanian system remained in place: Saxons were taxed as a 'nation,' with a notional number of gates, a few towns were taxed directly, and the Székelys were exempt. Thus, in the new system, the great majority of the Transylvanians — the exception being a few towns, notably Kolozsvár and Gyulafehérvár — paid taxes without regard to their property.
This procedure was unique in Europe at the time, for the general tendency since the Middle Ages had been to link taxation to facultas, or 'capability.' Even in the case of the house tax in royal Hungary, introduced in 1598 and justified, as with the Transylvani-an poll tax, by the war's devastation, it was specified that 'the wealthier villeins and cotters should help the poorer ones.'[31] After eleven years, this tax was abrogated and replaced by a more common system that linked tax to agricultural property.
In Transylvania, however, the 1609 system, unrelated to property, endured. It had been originally imposed by the estates on Gábor Báthori on grounds of war damage. The reform represented a major defeat for the princely government, for it left the latter unable to influence the distribution of wealth. Báthori, looking to his immediate interests, heedlessly agreed. Bethlen generally took a longer view, but he did not invalidate the measure, for he wanted to avoid any confrontation with the estates. He made no attempt to introduce property-linked taxation or to erase the other anomalies involving Saxons and Székelys. As a consequence, the burgeoning towns of Székelys and the Saxons — including Transylvania's most prosperous towns, Szeben and Brassó — remained exempt from taxation; admittedly, a change in their status would have represented a drastic transformation of the system.
{2-49.} Ideally, Transylvania's traditional feudal structure, resting on the principle of distinct 'nations,' should have been dismantled, and taxation reorganized on the basis of the stratified society. But the princes shrank from taking such an initiative. Gábor Báthori's wasteful and exploitative methods had drained the towns of their wealth; Bethlen left them undisturbed. Had it been implemented, the union reform proposed in 1614 might have modified the status of Saxons and Székelys; when it failed, the problems of the citizens who constituted these 'nations' also came to be neglected. The result was mutual indifference. Denied access to the resources of wealthy citizens in order to finance the consolidation of princely power, Bethlen showed no interest in promoting their economic interests. And since the reorganized state did not assist economic development, the Székely and Saxon burghers continued to support the feudal order against the prince. Only the few towns that paid property-based taxes, first and foremost Kolozsvár, would develop a relationship with the princely administration similar to that which obtained in the West between the middle classes and the state. Their case gives an inkling of the other, untapped resources that remained hidden in the feudal system. The tax paid by Kolozsvár, a town aided by the prince's economic measures, grew from 350 forints in 1614 to 2400 forints in 1624, an increase of 686 per cent. That paid by the Saxons grew at a lower rate, by 275 per cent to 1624. Székely towns would pay only a small fraction of these amounts, and then only in exceptional circumstances.
This taxation system, unique in Europe, compelled Bethlen to devise an exceptionally well-thought out and comprehensive economic policy. In the process, he integrated all of the creative approaches taken by his predecessors.
Bethlen first took advantage of the fact that, in Transylvania, the princely title was not hereditary, and annulled the grants of property made by his predecessor. This method of breaking the power of the feudal orders had already been resorted to by Stephen {2-50.} Báthori; in the fall of 1571, the diet had ruled that all grants made by 'our late Majesty and his wife' would be reviewed.[32] Zsigmond Rákóczi was next to exploit this option; the diet decided in June 1607 to review the many ill-considered grants that had been made in the preceding, thirteen-year period of turbulence. Gábor Báthori's diets followed suit, and with such a frequency that by the time of Bethlen's election, the feudal orders had become accustomed to periodic reviews. Indeed, the orders themselves requested, as a condition of Bethlen's election, that he review the land grants of his predecessors. In 1615, the diet decided that all the princely grants since 1588 would be reviewed.
Thus Bethlen walked a well-trodden path in seeking to retrieve former crown lands and other properties. However, whereas a new ruling stratum had emerged after Stephen Báthori's confiscations, no such tendency materialized under Bethlen. Yet even his father had obtained Illye out of confiscated property; the prince thus had personal experience of Stephen Báthori's policies, which aimed to develop a circle of supporters through the granting of estates. Bethlen, in contrast, chose not to resort to this indirect device in order to enhance his power; instead, he sought more immediate results. He retained the confiscated properties as crown lands or, in some cases, passed them on to close relatives. His method greatly increased state revenues.
In adopting an early mercantilist system, Bethlen again built upon the practice of his predecessors. The system emerged in Transylvania under the rule of Stephen Báthori, when the diet laid down the maxim — almost as if it was quoting an economic theorist — that 'in a country where merchants are scarce, there is little money, whereas in countries where merchants actively engage in commerce, the money supply will grow.'[33] They were well aware of the notion that money was the measure of wealth, and that trade was the means of increasing its supply. From the 1560s onward, Transylvania followed mercantilist practices of state intervention: {2-51.} the state tried to keep valuable currencies — gold and thalers — in the country and regulated foreign trade so as to draw in more of these currencies. Price controls and export prohibitions were not unknown even before 1571, but their application became systematic only after 1578, when the prince obtained a monopoly in foreign trade and the diet issued the first in a series of tough measures to constrain the outflow of valuable currency. These practices, which had an impact on the whole economy, survived through the turbulent years of war. By 1607, the diet was taking measures to regulate the activity of cattle merchants from Moldavia, Wallachia, and other parts; in 1609, Gábor Báthori got the diet to confirm a decree of 1588 that guaranteed freedom of movement to Greek merchants, whose activity, 'far from being harmful, brings benefit to this country.'[34]
The introduction in Transylvania of mercantilist practices may have owed something to the theories assimilated by Stephen Báthori's learned political associates. However, by the early 1600s, state regulation of trade had become a necessity, for none of Transylvania's neighbors believed in free trade.
Thus, in royal Hungary, the diet repeatedly acted to protect monetary and mineral resources, to preserve the value of the currency, and to control prices and exports. The Polish Sejm acted in similar fashion. In the case of the Ottoman empire, the Porte's central agencies ruled explicitly that Transylvania must act 'as a country' to obtain trade concessions from Constantinople. In the Romanian voivodeships, economic decisions were made by the rulers. For example, hardly had Simion Movilă taken office in 1606 before he formally acceded to a request from Beszterce to maintain the exemption from duty of cattle exports from his country, a concession that his father 'had been pleased to grant.'[35] The wish for reciprocity, implicit in Movilă's message, was openly expressed twenty years later by the voivode Ştefan Tomşa II: 'If our people travel to Your Highness's country to buy wheat or conduct other {2-52.} business, I ask Your Highness not to hinder them; likewise, merchants from your country will come to no harm here.'[36]
In these circumstances, it was natural for Gabriel Bethlen to base his economic power on the regulation of trade and of the production for trade. In spring 1614, he confirmed the prohibition — renewed several times since the war — of cattle exports. Whereas, previously, the prince had no particular rights in this domain, Bethlen now decreed the state's monopoly over trade in this eminently marketable product: the Treasury was not bound (salvo iure fisci) by the export prohibition.[37] The ban was lifted the following year, but the Treasury, i.e., the prince, would continue to claim an ever-changing variety of foreign trade privileges. Bethlen's government had a remarkable feel for the fluctuations of the market; in contrast, the majority of Transylvanians probably only detected these fluctuations through the arrival or absence of the government's procurement agents. Cattle, beeswax, leather, mercury, iron, and other minerals were exported by Bethlen's agents or by foreign merchants who had a government permit. On Swedish initiative, the prince even considered the possibility of allying himself with merchants from that country to corner the European market in copper, an important commodity in the growing industrial sector. That scheme did not materialize, and neither did a Venetian investment valued at 353,000 gold coins, but these examples are indicative of the scale of state-managed foreign trade. They also indicate the geographical scope of the prince's trading ventures: cattle, mercury, and beeswax were shipped to Venice, salt and mercury to Turkey, and minerals, mainly iron, to the Romanian voivodeships.
In the absence of account books and registers, it is impossible to determine the value of these exports. Judging from fragmentary data spread over several years, it may be estimated that of Transylvanian state revenues, 160,000–170,000 forints were raised at home, while slightly over 110,000 came from Hungary, for a total of close to 300,000 forints. The same sources indicate that {2-53.} state expenditures were at least in the order of 610,000–720,000 forints. Thus, by rough approximation, the revenue from state trading monopolies in the second half of the 1620s was comparable to all revenues from other sources, including taxes, duties, and thirtieths. These statistics indicate that Bethlen had made the central government financially independent; he was free to dispose of the revenue from trade, and, by tradition, he had discretionary powers over the larger part of regular, domestic revenues. The estates exercised jurisdiction only over taxation and the corresponding expenditures. Since, in the years under consideration, taxes amounted to 60,000–80,000 forints, only ten percent of annual expenditures came within the purview of the diet, most of whose members, it should be remembered, were chosen by the prince.
The state forged by Gabriel Bethlen has earned divergent assessments. It has been characterized as absolutist, or a peculiar variant of feudal centralism. However, the prince clearly did not adopt the orthodox, western European model of absolutism. The most striking departure lies in the Transylvanian model of taxation: the imposition of taxes without reference to the taxpayers' material circumstances sharply differentiates the Transylvanian political system from the typical forms of absolutism. The shunting aside of the diet did testify to the prince's unbridled power, but it did not signify absolutism, for Bethlen did not create functionally distinct agencies to supplant or complement the diet. The structure of central government, set in 1541, was not altered by Bethlen. The spheres of authority of the various offices continued to overlap. Nor did the adoption of mercantilist practices clearly signify that the ruler had absolute power. To be sure, absolutist states were generally identified with this economic policy, but the reverse does not hold true. In the Middle Ages and the early 16th century, elements of mercantilism emerged independently of absolutism across Europe.
{2-54.} The less obvious difference between Gabriel Bethlen's state and classical absolutism is that the prince did not intervene in the relationship between landowner and villein. Only once during his entire reign did he address this question, in 1624, when he had a law passed confirming the custom that villeins' children could not be barred from school. Apart from this instance, the issue of villeins came before the diet only on the initiative of the estates. For all practical purposes, the landowners exercised unlimited authority over the villeins. This indicates, in turn, that the social tensions which gave rise to absolutism in the west were absent in Transylvania. Moreover, the urban middle class was, both in size and economic power, far inferior to the ruling class. Thus, since nothing threatened the social structure that had been carried over from the preceding century, there was no need for absolutism; this is the argument advanced by those who consider Bethlen's political model to be one of feudal centralism. The prince was able to govern with the tools bequeathed by his 16th century predecessors. His neglect of the diet and an economic policy that left taxes as a small fraction of state revenues did not involve spectacular modification of the political structure, but they nevertheless deeply altered the balance of power by making the ruler independent of the feudal orders. And a prince independent of his subjects does not fit the notion of a centralist system based on collaboration between the estates.
Bethlen's state bears more similarity to the absolutist systems east of the Elbe. There, feudalism was still safely entrenched in the 17th century, and absolutism emerged not as a consequence of social tensions — the case in Western Europe — but in response to external stimuli. The external environment functioned as both example and threat. Emulation was an important factor: by the 17th century, most European countries were linked by intensive political and economic contacts. By emulation and mutual adaptation, they adopted a potent political model capable of quick decisions. {2-55.} External threat was also an inducement, for effective defense required a responsive state apparatus.
It was this eastern form of absolutism that Bethlen instituted in Transylvania. And if, east of the Elbe, he was the first to create a flexible system of power, capable of quick response, it may have been because, even as he was in the grip of two great powers, his concerns went beyond mere defense. He knew that a great coalition was forming against one of this enemies, the emperor. The mounting threat around the periphery of the empire was arousing great expectations. France's Henry IV had already begun to move against Rudolph II when his assassination halted the war. Conflict between the emperor and the German princes prevented the holding of a royal election at Rome in 1611. In 1613, England aligned itself with the Habsburg emperor's enemies. The marriage of Elizabeth Stuart and the Elector of the Palatinate (Pfalz) gave further testimony to the spread of the anti-Habsburg movement. Taking note of this configuration of forces, Gabriel Bethlen took deliberate and decisive steps to turn himself into an effective participant in international politics. When, in 1618, trouble brewed in Bohemia, foreshadowing the Thirty Years' War, Bethlen could decide on participating in an attack on the emperor without having to weigh any domestic consequences.
| The Prince and the Feudal Orders | 2. GABRIEL BETHLEN'S REIGN | 3. TRANSYLVANIA IN THE ANTI-HABSBURG ALLIANCE |