April Laws

The April Laws, also called March Laws, were a collection of laws legislated by Lajos Kossuth with the aim of modernizing the Kingdom of Hungary into a parliamentary democracy, nation state. The laws were passed by the Hungarian Diet in March 1848 in Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava, Slovakia) and signed by king Ferdinand V at the Primate's Palace in the same city on 11 April 1848.

The April laws utterly erased all privileges of the Hungarian nobility. In April 1848, Hungary became the third country of Continental Europe fter France (1791), and Belgium (1831) to enact law about democratic parliamentary elections. The new suffrage law (Act V of 1848) transformed the old feudal estates based parliament ( Estates General) into a democratic representative parliament. This law offered the widest suffrage right in Europe at the time.prof. András Gerő (2014): Nationalities and the Hungarian Parliament (1867-1918) LIN

The imperative program included Hungarian control of its popular militia, national guard, national budget and Hungarian foreign policy, as well as the removal of serfdom.

In 1848, the new young Austrian monarch Francis Joseph arbitrarily "revoked" the laws without any legal competence.

Twelve Points

The conservatives, who generally stood in opposition to the majority of reforms, managed to retain a narrow advantage in the traditional feudal parliament. On the other hand, the reform-minded liberals found themselves divided in their support for either Széchenyi's or Kossuth's ideas.
Immediately before the elections, however, Deák succeeded in reuniting all the Liberals on the common platform of "The Twelve Points". The so-called "Twelve Points" of reformers became the ruling principles of the April laws.

Political aftermath

1848-49 Revolution and War of Independence in Hungary

The pivotal juncture arose when Franz Joseph I, the nascent Austrian sovereign, enacted a unilateral abrogation of the April Laws—an act devoid of juridical legitimacy, given their prior ratification by his predecessor, King Ferdinand I. This unconstitutional extra-legal decree irrevocably inflamed tensions between the Crown and the Hungarian parliament. The imposition of Austria’s restrictive Stadion Constitution, the annulment of the April legislation, and Vienna’s martial incursions into Hungary precipitated the collapse of prime minister Lajos Batthyány’s pacifist government, which had pursued diplomatic rapprochement with the imperial court. Consequently, adherents of Lajos Kossuth—advocates of Hungary’s unqualified sovereignty—swiftly attained ascendancy within parliamentary deliberations. Austria’s armed transgressions against the Hungarian realm galvanized profound antipathy toward Habsburg dynasty, transmuting regional dissent into a fervent struggle for complete emancipation from dynastic hegemony. Thus, the political strife burgeoned into an unequivocal war of independence, irrevocably altering the trajectory of the Hungarian nation.

Revival during the Austro-Hungarian Compromise

18 years later, during the negotiations of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, the April Laws of the revolutionary parliament (with the exception of the laws based on the 9th and 10th points) were accepted by Francis Joseph. Hungary did not regain full external autonomy until the Compromise of 1867 which would later influence Hungary's position in World War I.

References

Hungary under Habsburg rule
Legal history of Hungary
1848 in Hungary
1848 in law
1848

{{Hungary-stub