century, the power of all non-monarchical institutions
weakened further. When a deputation of citizens from the
Austrian province of the Tyrol petitioned Francis for a
constitution, he responded, “So, you want a
constitution! … Now look, I don’t care for it, I will give you a
constitution but you must know that the soldiers obey me,
and I will not ask you twice if I need money … In any case I
advise you to be careful what you are going to say.” Given
this response, the Tyrolese leaders replied, “If thou thinkest
thus, it is better to have no constitution,” to which Francis
answered, “That is also my opinion.”
Francis dissolved the State Council that Maria Theresa
had used as a forum for consultation with her ministers.
From then on there would be no consultation or public
discussion of the Crown’s decisions. Francis created a
police state and ruthlessly censored anything that could be
regarded as mildly radical. His philosophy of rule was
characterized by Count Hartig, a long-standing aide, as the
“unabated maintenance of the sovereign’s authority, and a
denial of all claims on the part of the people to a
participation in that authority.” He was helped in all this by
Prince von Metternich, appointed as his foreign minister in
1809. Metternich’s power and influence actually outlasted
that of Francis, and he remained foreign minister for almost
forty years.
At the center of Habsburg economic institutions stood
the feudal order and serfdom. As one moved east within
the empire, feudalism became more intense, a reflection of
the more general gradient in economic institutions we saw
i n chapter 4, as one moved from Western to Eastern
Europe. Labor mobility was highly circumscribed, and
emigration was illegal. When the English philanthropist
Robert Owen tried to convince the Austrian government to
adopt some social reforms in order to ameliorate the
conditions of poor people, one of Metternich’s assistants,
Friedrich von Gentz, replied, “We do not desire at all that
the great masses shall become well off and
independent … How could we otherwise rule over them?”
In addition to serfdom, which completely blocked the
emergence of a labor market and removed the economic
incentives or initiative from the mass of the rural population,
Habsburg absolutism thrived on monopolies and other