April Laws

The laws were passed by the Hungarian Diet in March 1848 in Pozsony (Pressburg, now Bratislava, Slovakia)[3] and signed by king Ferdinand V at the Primate's Palace in the same city on 11 April 1848.

[5] In April 1848, Hungary became the third country of Continental Europe [after France (1791), and Belgium (1831) ] to enact law about democratic parliamentary elections.

In 1848, the new young Austrian monarch Francis Joseph arbitrarily "revoked" the laws without any legal competence.

The conservatives, who generally stood in opposition to the majority of reforms, managed to retain a narrow advantage in the traditional feudal parliament.

Immediately before the elections, however, Deák succeeded in reuniting all the Liberals on the common platform of "The Twelve Points".