The April laws, also called March laws, were a collection of laws legislated by Lajos Kossuth with the aim of modernizing Kingdom of Hungary into a nation state. The imperative program included Hungarian control of its popular national guard, national budget and Hungarian foreign policy, as well as the removal of serfdom. They were passed by the Hungarian Diet in March 1848 in Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia) (German: Pressburg) and signed by Ferdinand V at the Primate's Palace in the same city on 11 April 1848, as a reaction to the Revolution of 1848. When the revolution was crushed in 1849, Austria did not pass the laws, and Hungary did not retain full external autonomy until the Compromise of 1867 which would later influence Hungary's position in World War I.
Famous quotes containing the words april and/or laws:
“From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women’s subordination], if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)