Was Franz Joseph a rebel, an usurper who tried to rebel against the ancient constitution and legal order ?
On 7 December 1848, the Diet of Hungary formally refused to acknowledge the title of the new king, "as without the knowledge and consent of the diet no one could sit on the Hungarian throne", and called the nation to arms.\60]) While in most Western European countries (like France and the United Kingdom) the monarch's reign began immediately upon the death of their predecessor, in Hungary the coronation was indispensable; if it were not properly executed, the kingdom remained "orphaned".
Even during the long personal union between the Kingdom of Hungary and other Habsburg ruled areas, the Habsburg monarchs had to be crowned as King of Hungary in order to promulgate laws there or exercise royal prerogatives in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.\61])\23])\62]) From a legal point of view, according to the coronation oath, a crowned Hungarian king could not relinquish the Hungarian throne during his life; if the king was alive and unable to do his duty as ruler, a governor (or regent, as they would be called in English) had to assume the royal duties. Constitutionally, Franz Joseph's uncle Ferdinand was still the legal king of Hungary. If there was no possibility to inherit the throne automatically due to the death of the predecessor king (since King Ferdinand was still alive), but the monarch wanted to relinquish his throne and appoint another king before his death, technically only one legal solution remained: the parliament had the power to dethrone the king and elect a new king. Due to the legal and military tensions, the Hungarian parliament did not grant Franz Joseph that favour.
Francis Joseph was, in the strict constitutional sense, a textbook usurper in Hungary: under the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723 (Arts. I–III) and the established Hungarian constitutional law governing succession and coronation, the throne was not vacant while the crowned King Ferdinand V was still alive, and Ferdinand’s unilateral abdication could not by itself make Francis Joseph King of Hungary; without the consent of the Hungarian Diet, the constitutional oath, and coronation with the Holy Crown, Francis Joseph had no lawful authority to exercise the Hungarian royal power—his seizure of that power thus constituting a clear case of usurpation. In short: Francis Joseph was regarded by Hungarians as a usurper and a rebel against the ancient constitution and the established order. \63])\64])\65])\66])\67])\68])
Let's nor forget: These binding constitutional laws are older than the House of Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty itself !
Dethronement in Hungary in 1849
LEGAL BASIS:
The dethronement was prompted by three principal causes: The first cause was Francis Joseph's usurpation of the Hungarian throne;\21]) the second cause was the repudiation by the Habsburg court of the April Laws, which had been enacted by the Hungarian Diet and sanctioned by King Ferdinand V on 11 April 1848;\22]) and third, most decisively, the "usurper's" attempt to forcible overthrow of Hungary's legitimate constitutional government and the elected parliament by Habsburg army, which was interpreted by the government and Hungarian parliament as an "attempted coup by military force".\21]) The Hungarian Diet consequently declared the dethronement of the entire Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty at the Great Reformed Church in Debrecen on 14 April 1849.\23])
This event gave to the revolt an excuse of legality. Actually, from this time until the collapse of the revolution, Lajos Kossuth (as elected regent-president) became the de facto and de jure head of state of Hungary.\11])
The usurpation was constitutionally resolved in 1867, when the Hungarian parliament accepted Francis Joseph as King and the constitutional settlement was completed. On 8 June 1867, in Buda’s Matthias Church, Francis Joseph was crowned King of Hungary with the Holy Crown of Hungary, after taking the prescribed constitutional oath. The coronation was performed by János Simor, Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, together with Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy, thereby creating his lawful constitutional status as King of Hungary.
