Hungarian Defence Forces
In April 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was established. Franz Josef, the head of the ancient Habsburg dynasty, was recognized as both Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. Nevertheless, the issue of what form the Hungarian military would take remained a matter of serious contention between Hungarian patriots and Austrian leaders. As the impasse threatened the political union, Emperor Franz Josef ordered a council of generals in November of the same year. Ultimately, the leaders resolved on the following solution: in addition to the joint (k.u.k.) army, Hungary would have its own defence force, whose members would swear their oath to the King of Hungary (who was also Emperor of Austria) and the national constitution, use the Hungarian language of command, and display their own flags and insignia. (Austria would also form its own parallel national defence force, the "Landwehr".) As a result of these negotiations, on 5 December 1868, the Royal Hungarian Landwehr ("Magyar Kiralyi Honvédség", or Defence Force) was established.
December Constitution
Hungary had come close to independence during the 1848 revolutions, had been beaten into submission only with the help of the Russian Empire, and had lived under what effectively was a military dictatorship ever since. In 1866, Austria was defeated in the Austro-Prussian War and lost its claim to being the leading German state, plunging the Habsburg dynasty and their German-speaking realms into an unprecedented identity crisis. The monarch's moral authority gravely damaged once more, unrest in Hungary threatened to erupt again. His back to the wall, Franz Joseph saw no choice but grant Hungary all but full independence in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. To prevent the empire's non-Hungarian ethnicities from demanding similar levels of autonomy, Franz Joseph then had to return to constitutionalism and vest the empire's peoples with participation rights in the legislative and administrative process.