April Laws (1848)
4월 법 (1848)
The package of reform laws passed by the Hungarian Diet at Pozsony in March 1848 and signed by Ferdinand V on 11 April. Based on the Twelve Points, it abolished noble privilege and established a government responsible to parliament, representative elections (Act V of 1848), a national guard, Hungarian control of the budget and foreign policy, and the end of serfdom, making Hungary a virtually independent constitutional state. Also called the March Laws.
In depth
After the bloodless revolution in Pest on 15 March and Metternich's fall in Vienna the court had no choice but to yield. Lajos Batthyány's first responsible ministry was approved on 17 March, and the bills the Diet passed received royal assent at the Primate's Palace in Pozsony on 11 April (10 April in another source). The new electoral law turned the Estates diet into a representative parliament, and Hungary became, after France (1791) and Belgium (1831), the third country of continental Europe with a democratic electoral law. One of the Diet's first acts was the abolition of serfdom, announced on 18 March.
But Franz Joseph, who came to the throne in December 1848, unilaterally "revoked" the April Laws he had never signed, while the Hungarians held that a new king had no right to withdraw laws his predecessor had sanctioned. The clash grew into the war of independence. The April Laws also ignored Croatian autonomy and provoked the Croatian national movement. Eighteen years later, in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, Franz Joseph accepted the April Laws, except those based on the ninth and tenth points.