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 The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...

into a

parliamentary democracy A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...

nation state A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may i ...

. The imperative program included Hungarian control of its popular

national guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

national budget A government budget is a document prepared by the government and/or other political entity presenting its anticipated tax revenues (Inheritance tax, income tax, corporation tax, import taxes) and proposed spending/expenditure (Healthcare, Educat ...

and Hungarian foreign policy, as well as the removal of

serfdom Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism, and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery, which deve ...

. They were passed by the

Hungarian Diet The Diet of Hungary or originally: Parlamentum Publicum / Parlamentum Generale ( hu, Országgyűlés) became the supreme legislative institution in the medieval kingdom of Hungary from the 1290s, and in its successor states, Royal Hungary and t ...

in March 1848 in Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava,

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

) and signed by king Ferdinand V at the

Primate's Palace The Primate's Palace ( sk, Primaciálny palác) is a neoclassical palace in the Old Town of Bratislava the capital of Slovakia. It was built from 1778 to 1781 for Archbishop József Batthyány, after the design of architect Melchior Hefele. I ...

in the same city on 11 April 1848. In 1848, the new young Austrian monarch Francis Joseph arbitrarily "revoked" the laws without any legal competence. Hungary did not retain full external autonomy until the

Compromise of 1867 The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (german: Ausgleich, hu, Kiegyezés) established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Compromise only partially re-established the former pre-1848 sovereignty and status of the Kingdom of Hungary ...

which would later influence Hungary's position in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. During the negotiations of the Austro-Hungarian compromise in 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. In April 1848, Hungary became the third country of Continental Europe (after 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

Twelve Points

The conservativeswho usually opposed most of the reformscould maintain a slim majority in the old feudal parliament, the reformer liberals were divided between the ideas of Széchenyi and Kossuth. 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.

References

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

1848 1848 is historically famous for the wave of revolutions, a series of widespread struggles for more liberal governments, which broke out from Brazil to Hungary; although most failed in their immediate aims, they significantly altered the polit ...

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