Constitutions of 1848

26-01-2023

It's the 175th anniversary of the 1848 movements, the Springtime of the Peoples that rocked many monarchies in Europe, and often brought to a change in regime - and brand new constitutions! #Constitutionsof1848 will analyse the 1848 movements and the ideas behind Constitutions, the documents that hold the fundamental principles on which the legal system of a nation (or other entities) is based!

We start in Hungary, where the Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár hold the original, handwritten copy of the "April Laws", a set of 31 articles passed by the last Hungarian Parliament (1847–1848) and approved by King Ferdinand V on the 11th April 1848. [pic 01]

The documents created a new public law system in the Habsburg Empire, and aimed to ensure the civil democratic development of Hungary into a parliamentary state and a constitutional monarchy. Hungary was the third country of Europe (after France in 1791 and Belgium in 1831) to enact a new law system about democratic parliamentary elections.

Unfortunately, the new Austrian monarch Francis Joseph, who ascended the throne in December 1848, unilaterally "revoked" the laws; Hungary did not retain full external autonomy until the Compromise of 1867, when the country was able to reinstate the April Laws.

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In Italy, 1848 brought the Statuto Albertino, Albertine Statute, granted by Carlo Alberto of Savoy, king of the Kingdom of Sardinia on 4 March 1848, at the end of a period of strong riots in the country. The King of Sardinia was only following what other rulers in pre-unification Italy were doing in their country, but the statute was the only one to survive the following repression periods, and it remained valid as the constitution of Italy until 1948, when Italy became a Republic.

As Marion Duvigneau, the director of the Archives Municipales de Nice, one of the first providers on APE, explains, the House of Savoy has experienced many shocks policies in the 19th century, and liberalism was not their cup of tea. When the climate turned bad in Turin, the capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, the kings often took refuge in Nice, as they did their liberal opponents when the royal family put a bounty on their heads. Carlo Alberto was the Lois-Philippe of North Italy, as in he was more liberal than the rest of the royal family. After the riots of 1820 had forced king Vittorio Emanuele to abdicate in favour of his brother Carlo Felice, Carlo Alberto had tried, as regent of Turin, to promulgate a constitution similar to the one granted in 1812 by the rulers of Spain; however Carlo Felice immediately abrogated it. Later in life, when he succeeded to Carlo Felice, Carlo Alberto adopted a much more conservative view, and the 1848 Statuto Albertino was not as liberal as the 1820 copy of the Spanish constitution.

An original copy of the Statuto Albertino (in Italian) is held at the Archives municipales de Nice [pic 02]; on APE, it is possible to find the announcement of the charter made by the consul of Nice, count Audiberti di Santo Stefano, who claims to be "exultant" about the new statute even though, as Mme Duvigneau explains, it was probably a very hard pill to swallow seeing all these liberalities granted to the plebs [pic 03].

More information about the relations of the Kings of Sardinia with Nice can be found in this article by Simonette Tombaccini, available on the website of the Archives Municipales de Nice here; and on the 1820 insurrections that forced Vittorio Emanuele to resign, an interesting article is also available on the website of the Archives de Nice here.

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The First Spanish Constitution was promulgated in 1812 and it is also called La Pepa, or The Constitution of Cadiz. It was created during the Napoleonic wars and the occupation of France, which replaced the Spanish monarch Carlo IV with Napoleon's brother Joseph. The Cortes Generales, Spain’s national legislative assembly, took refuge to the city of Cadiz; with the French sieging the city, the deputies drafted a liberal constitution proclaiming Spain as a democratic parliamentary monarchy, in an attempt to protect the fundamental rights of Spanish citizens. The liberal majority in the Cortes allowed the Constitution to pass, based on three principles: confirmation of the legitimacy of the monarch; the inviolability of the deputies; national sovereignty.

In addition to limiting the absolute power of the monarch and outlawing corruption, it reduced the power of the Church and of the nobility, and extended significantly male suffrage, including people from the Spanish Empire. It protected the freedom of the press, and supported reform of tax and land law to remove the feudal system).

When the Spanish monarch Ferdinando VII (son of Carlos IV) was restored in 1814, one of his first act as ruler was to abolish the Constitution. However, there were other attempts to reinstate it over the 19th century (from 1820-1823 and 1836-1837), and La Pepa served as inspiration for many later constitutions around Europe, including the Albertine Statute in 1848.

The National Archives of Spain hold an original printed copy of the constitution, on cards held in a bronze box - almost like a (very precious) card game [pic 04]

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Going even more back in time, one of the first Constitution in the world was the first constitution of Hungary, called the "Golden Bull" [pics 05-08]. It was created in 1222, 801 years ago. There is little concrete knowledge about the circumstances leading to the drafting of this charter. King Andrew II was forced by the nobility to accept it, in the diet of Fehérvár, making the Golden Bull one of the first examples of constitutional limits being placed on the powers of a European monarch - for this reason, it is often compared to the British Magna Charta.

The Golden Bull also established that nobles and the church were freed from all taxes, and they could not be forced to go to war (or finance it) outside of Hungary. Reading the text, it turns out that it was originally issued in seven copies.

The text is known because it was renewed and confirmed in 1351 by King Louis the Great.

Here is a short documentary made by the Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, the National Archives of Hungary, to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Golden Bull in 2022:

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In Ukraine, the Pylyp Orlyk’s Constitution (Конституція Пилипа Орлика, Konstytutsiia Pylypa Orlyka), was promulgated in 1711. Formally titled 'The Treaties and Resolutions of the Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army' (Договори і Постановлення Прав і вольностей Війська Запорозького), it was written by the King ('Hetman') of Ukraine, Pylyp Orlyk, and the generals of the Zaporozhian Army, a semi-autonomous Cossacks State corresponding to the South-East part of modern Ukraine.

The Constitution limited the executive authority of the hetman, and established a Cossack parliament called the General Council. It also established the principle of separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches - 40 years before the publication of 'The Spirit of the Laws' by Montesquieu, which suggested this division as best way to preserve political liberty.

The original version of the document in old Ukrainian was accompanied by a diploma (a document conferring privileges) signed by King Charles XII of Sweden, who had just lost the battle of Poltava, which ended the status of Sweden an a great imperial power over Europe. It was dscovered by Ukranian researchers in 2008, in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The original in Latin is kept at the Swedish National Archives [pic 09], together with all the documentation on the negotiations between Sweden and the Cossacks from 1655 to 1719: http://www.archivesportaleurope.net/advanced-search/search-in-archives/results-(archives)/?&repositoryCode=SE-RA&term=Diplomatica+Muscovitica+&levelName=clevel&t=fa&recordId=SE%2FRA%2F2113&c=C833585661

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The Norwegian Constitution of 1814, signed in Eidsvoll on the 17th of May, was one of the most radical constitutions in Europe at the time. It was inspired by Enlightenment ideas such as political freedom and universal human rights, and it shared the revolutionary ideologies of the American and French constitutions created at the end of the 18th century. The constitution broke with the principles of absolute monarchy, which had been the form of government in Norway since the Lex Regia (The King’s Act) of 1665. The 1814 constitution, based on the principles of the separation of powers and popular sovereignty, formed the basis not only of Norway as an independent state, but of a democracy. It started with the following sentences: “The Kingdom of Norway is a free, independent and indivisible realm. Its form of government is a limited and hereditary monarchy.” The original document [pic 10] reflects the heated debate between the National Assembly of Norway and the Constitutional Committe, which had the mandate of writing the first draft.

In this document, the first draft is written with light ink, changes are added with a darker ink. The National Assembly also made further changes before it was completed.

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Only a few years later, on the 23rd September 1822, Portugal passed its first Constitution, the Constituição Política da Monarquia Portuguesa. The constitution was the result of the work of the General and Extraordinary Cortes of the Portuguese Nation, the first modern Portuguese parliament. The Cortes was established after the so-called Liberal Revolution of 1820, in which protestants demanded the return of the King, who had fled for Brazil during the Napoleonic wars, but to start a parliamentary monarchy. The demands of the people and the constitution were strongly modelled on the Spanish Constitution of 1812, La Pepa; but the text was gathered and published as a more traditional book rather than a series of disks [pics 11-12]

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