When the heads of the Transylvanian chancellery and of the Gubernium both threatened to resign, the government in Vienna bowed to the inevitable and prepared to convene the diet as soon as tempers had cooled. However, that expectation proved illusory. The opposition movement impelled the counties to declare the Gubernium illegitimate and refuse to obey its instructions. In 1833, the monarch dispatched the governor (ban) of Croatia, Ferenc Wlassics, to act as his commissioner and quell the resistance.
The peasantry was already suffering from a bad harvest, and news of the monarch's initiative led to a rash of minor risings; once {3-109.} again, peasants came to believe that the purpose of the 'good emperor' in naming a commissioner was to address their grievances and abolish or reduce their socage obligations. In order to avoid being caught between two fires, the opposition-led county assemblies urged Wlassics to dispel these false expectations. The royal commissioner complied, then came to the conclusion that he could not carry out his original charge; after advising the court to convene a diet, he departed from Transylvania.
Indeed, tempers were rising. When one of the opposition leaders, Ádám Kendeffi, died of a heart attack, a rumour spread in Kolozsvár that he had been poisoned; the authorities had great difficulty in dispersing the huge crowd of townsfolk and suburbanites that had gathered in protest. A few days later, an altercation between a student and a military sentry provoked a serious clash between soldiers and masses of students and other townsfolk; some of the protesters called for a 'republic.'
The monarch finally decided to convene the diet, and named as 'agent of his will' an archduke, Ferdinand Estei, Governor of Galicia. The new royal commissioner proved more resolute than the previous one. Estei saw little likelihood of massive rebellion by Transylvania's nobles; he advised the court that if one did break out, the Romanian peasantry would join in with a vengeance, and the Hungarian nobles would feel compelled to reaffirm their loyalty to the government. When people in the Alsó-Fehér County village of Diód forcibly occupied woodlands that belonged to the oppositionist Zeyk family, the archduke waited a few days before responding to the request for military assistance; that was his way of sending a warning signal to the nobility.
Amidst these mounting tensions, the diet convened in summer 1834 and, taking the occasional recess, remained in session until winter 1835. The opposition immediately seized the initiative. To be sure, among those assembled, there were over 220 regalists, including members of the Gubernium and the royal court of justice, {3-110.} senior officials, and magnates as well as other nobles who had been selected by the monarch. However, most of them were defenders of feudal constitutional rights and tended to adopt a passive stance, for they saw little merit in the government's policies; a fair number of them covertly sympathized with the opposition. The opposition movement, on the other hand, could count on the thirty-six delegates from the counties and Székely széks as well as on roughly the same number of delegates from the towns and other privileged places. By exploiting the Saxons' interest in preserving a feudal constitution that constrained bureaucratic absolutism, Wesselényi and Károly Szász managed on several occasions to win the backing of a majority of that 'nation's' twenty-two delegates. However, Wesselényi anticipated that this opportunistic alliance could easily break up over some minor issue, and he therefore decided to seek the diet's support for the reunification of Hungary and Transylvania. As a first step, the diet's autonomy and authority had to be confirmed, for the acrimonious debates over the agenda and rules of procedures threatened to bring down dissolution. That danger was averted when the diet turned to its Hungarian counterpart for support; the Transylvanian delegates received such an enthusiastic welcome in Pozsony that the monarch dared not provoke an outrage by ordering dissolution.
The court wished to appoint an acting chairman of the diet, while the opposition wanted the post to be filled by election. In a compromise, twelve men were nominated, representing the four recognized denominations and three 'nations.' When the monarch picked the nominee who had received the fewest votes, the majority delegates endorsed a new oath of office that limited the authority of the chairman. The next challenge was to the legitimacy of the list of regalists. For one thing, the document did not match the size of the envelope, leading some to question whether it really came from Vienna. There followed debate over the question whether the monarch had the right, in the absence of any statutory limits, to invite regalists at will to the diet.
{3-111.} Noting that some opposition members were disposed to compromise, Wesselényi took an initiative to safeguard cohesion and keep the public informed: he bought a printing press to publish the diet's proceedings. This tangible manifestation of freedom of the press aroused great enthusiasm, but it proved short-lived, for the diet was dissolved by the royal commissioner. In fact, the monarch had decided on this step before the first publication appeared, but much time would pass before the voice of a 'free press' would be heard again in Kolozsvár.
Although the opposition incurred much criticism for the inflexible stance that precipitated dissolution, it probably had no choice but to stick to its guns if it wanted to preserve the possibility of change. The deadlock was caused not only by different interpretations of legality but also by the government's refusal to make any concession. The monarch acknowledged that the Gubernium, which had only one elected member, lacked constitutional legitimacy, but he wanted a diet that would do his bidding; one that would nominate candidates for key posts, leaving the final choice to Vienna, and then deal with the problem of socage, thus allowing the government to play the role of the peasantry's champion and ignore the need for social reform.
The opposition, for its part, acknowledged that the monarch shared his legislative powers with the institution that represented the will of 'the people,' but it argued that, in keeping with feudal constitutionalism, the diet should play a more important role. The opposition's greatest orator, Baron Dénes Kemény, was known for his rigorous logic and skill in finding a suitable statute to back up their demands. In a speech to the diet, he had stressed that 'it is inappropriate to call us liberals, for we are not yet in a position to be liberals; our first task is to ensure respect for the existing laws.'[110] The argument was designed not only to justify the delay in initiating proposals for reform, but also to forestall charges of liberalism, which was grounds for dissolution. As far as the {3-112.} Viennese court was concerned, the opposition's efforts to validate the majority's will, to review delegates' credentials, and to publish the minutes of the diet were all inspired by liberalism and the principle of representative government. There was much truth in this, but none in the notion that the Transylvanian opposition formed part of continent-wide plot. Chancellor Metternich held Miklós Wesselényi, a champion of constitutional monarchy, to be a radical conspirator; and he believed that János Bethlen Sr and Károly Szász, both of whom favoured compromise, mere even more dangerous members of a 'doctrinaire liberal party.' That elusive, 'phantom-like' party, observed Metternich, 'resorts to poison where radicals want to use gunpowder and bullets.'[111] The all-powerful chancellor wanted to resolve the Transylvanian problem by force, and he was displeased at the suggestion of Archduke Estei that a few minor concessions might be in order. He wanted to drive the more moderate and widely-respected liberals to choose between backing the government and joining the so-called radicals.
After the diet had been dissolved, Metternich resorted to exemplary measures of retaliation in order to cow the opposition. Over a dozen county politicians and diet delegates were put on trial. The Austrians had long planned to make sure that Wesselényi could not return to Pozsony, and they now moved to exclude him from public life by laying charges in both 'sister countries.' The punitive measures provoked widespread outrage. At the time Wesselényi was sentenced to several years' imprisonment, he was at the crest of his popularity; the whole county was talking about his superhuman efforts to rescue victims of the flood that struck Pest in 1838. The government also intervened forcefully in Church affairs. The monarch refused to endorse the reorganization of the Calvinist Church along more democratic lines, and thus such reforms could only be pursued at the diocesan level.
Despite dissolution, the psychological impact of the Transylvanian diet was considerable. Liberal public opinion considered {3-113.} that the diet had been justified in putting up a resistance to autocracy. The Pozsony diet protested at the act of dissolution. In Transylvania, several of the counties' lords-lieutenant resigned, as did a number of government councillors; those who remained in office, and the nobility at large looked on with great hostility as Ferdinánd Estei tried his hand at governing the country.
In 1837, the new monarch, Ferdinand V, summoned a diet at the loyalist Saxon town, Nagyszeben. The initiative came from the government, but the opposition — now under the leadership of Count János Bethlen Sr and Baron Dénes Kemény — went along. Both parties — the royal commissioner, in the name of the monarch, and the diet — swore an oath on the Diploma Leopoldinum, and the inaugural session was disturbed by only one controversy, when it was noted that a clerk had accidentally omitted a few words from the text of the Diploma. The feudal constitutional machinery slowly got under way. Nominations were made to the seventeen so-called cardinal offices (including governor, treasurer, and eight Gubernium councillors); the monarch made sure that a few moderate members of the opposition would be among those chosen. Concerns were raised when Ferdinánd Estei volunteered — with a notable lack of enthusiasm — to be one of the nominees for governor. János Bethlen persuaded the opposition to vote for conservative Transylvanian candidates, thus forestalling — by a hair's breadth — nomination of the archduke. The latter suffered a rough rebuke from Metternich for having allowed himself, an archduke, to be drawn into an electoral competition, and he refrained from seeking revenge for his humiliation. Estei made an attempt to construe his defeat as a victory, then lost his temper and observed, in a parting shot, that he 'would rather share a room with Wesselényi than live in the same country as János Bethlen.'[112]
For a time, both sides sought to avoid exacerbating the conflict of interests. The opposition made no legislative proposals, and only at the end of the session did it submit to the monarch a petition concerning {3-114.} national grievances and infringements of the feudal constitution. This comparatively conciliatory stance helped to defuse political tensions. Meanwhile, Hungarian cultural life was in full efflorescence, and it came to be dominated by the ideas of national autonomy and social progress.