[The reader may be glad to possess the most important portions of this
celebrated document. The opponents of Kossuth have of late pretended,
that the deposition of the Hapsburgs _caused_ the overthrow of
Hungary. But the deposition was not carried until Austria was thoroughly
beaten, and Russia _had engaged_ to give her utmost aid. This
finally united all Hungary. At no earlier period would Hungary have
acted with full unanimity in so decisive a step. To have delayed it
longer would not have averted Russian invasion, and would have caused
deep discontent in Hungary. Nothing but the wilful disobedience of
Görgey, who wasted a month at Buda at this very crisis, saved the
Hapsburgs from being conquered in Vienna, before the Russian armies
could possibly come up.]
We, the legally-constituted representatives of the Hungarian nation
assembled in Diet, do by these presents solemnly proclaim, in
maintenance of the inalienable natural rights of Hungary, with all its
appurtenances and dependencies, to occupy the position of an Independent
European state; that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg, as perjured in the
sight of God and man, has forfeited its right to the Hungarian throne.
At the same time, we feel ourselves bound in duty to make known the
motives and reasons which have impelled us to this decision, that the
civilized world may learn we have not taken this step out of overweening
confidence in our own wisdom, or out of revolutionary excitement, but
that it is an act of the last necessity, adopted to preserve from utter
destruction a nation persecuted to the limit of the most enduring
patience.
Three hundred years have passed since the Hungarian nation, by free
election, placed the house of Austria upon its throne, in accordance
with stipulations made on both sides, and ratified by treaty. These
three hundred years have been, for the country, a period of
uninterrupted suffering.
The Creator has blessed this country with all the elements of wealth and
happiness. Its area of one hundred and ten thousand square miles
presents, in varied profusion, innumerable sources of prosperity. Its
population, numbering nearly fifteen millions, feels the glow of
youthful strength within its veins, and has shown temper and docility
which warrant its proving at once the main organ of civilization in
Eastern Europe, and the guardian of that civilization when attacked.
Never was a more grateful task appointed to a reigning dynasty by the
dispensation of Providence than that which devolved upon the house of
Lorraine-Hapsburg. It would have sufficed, to do nothing to impede the
development of the country. Had this been the rule observed, Hungary
would now rank among the most prosperous nations. It was only necessary
that it should not envy the Hungarians the moderate share of
constitutional liberty which they timidly maintained during the
difficulties of a thousand years with rare fidelity to their sovereigns,
and the house of Hapsburg might long have counted this nation among the
most faithful adherents of the throne.
This dynasty, however, which can at no epoch point to a ruler who based
his power on the freedom of the people, adopted a course towards this
nation, from father to son, which deserves the appellation of perjury.
The house of Austria has publicly used every effort to deprive the
country of its legitimate Independence and Constitution, designing to
reduce it to a level with the other provinces long since deprived of all
freedom, and to unite all in a common sink of slavery. Foiled in this
effort by the untiring vigilance of the nation, it directed its
endeavour to lame the power, to check the progress of Hungary, causing
it to minister to the gain of the provinces of Austria, but only to the
extent which enabled those provinces to bear the load of taxation with
which the prodigality of the imperial house weighed them down; having
first deprived those provinces of all constitutional means of
remonstrating against a policy which was not based upon the welfare of
the subject, but solely tended to maintain despotism and crush liberty
in every country of Europe.
It has frequently happened that the Hungarian nation, in despite of this
systematized tyranny, has been obliged to take up arms in self-defence.
Although constantly victorious in these constitutional struggles, yet so
moderate has the nation ever been in its use of the victory, so strongly
has it confided in the king's plighted word, that it has ever laid down
arms as soon as the king, by new compacts and fresh oaths, has
guaranteed the duration of its rights and liberty. But every new
compact was as futile as those which preceded it; each oath which fell
from the royal lips was but a renewal of previous perjuries. The policy
of the house of Austria, which aimed at destroying the independence of
Hungary as a state, has been pursued unaltered for three hundred years.
It was in vain that the Hungarian nation shed its blood for the
deliverance of Austria whenever it was in danger; vain were all the
sacrifices which it made to serve the interests of the reigning house;
in vain did it, on the renewal of the royal promises, forget the wounds
which the past had inflicted; vain was the fidelity cherished by the
Hungarians for their king, and which, in moments of danger, assumed a
character of devotion; they were in vain, since the history of the
government of that dynasty in Hungary presents but an unbroken series of
perjured deeds from generation to generation.
In spite of such treatment, the Hungarian nation has all along respected
the tie by which it was united to this dynasty; and in now decreeing its
expulsion from the throne, it acts under the natural law of
self-preservation, being driven to pronounce this sentence by the full
conviction that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburg is compassing the
destruction of Hungary as an independent State: so that this dynasty has
been the first to tear the bands by which it was united to the Hungarian
nation, and to confess that it had torn them in the face of Europe. For
many causes a nation is justified, before God and man, in expelling a
reigning dynasty. Among such are the following:
1. When the dynasty forms alliances with the enemies of the country,
with robbers, or partizan chieftains to oppress the nation: 2. When it
attempts to annihilate the Independence of the country and its
Constitution, supported on oaths, by attacking with an armed force the
people who have committed no act of revolt: 3. When the integrity of a
country, which the sovereign has sworn to maintain, is violated, and its
resources cut away: 4. When foreign armies are employed to murder the
people, and to oppress their liberties.
Each of the grounds here enumerated would justify the exclusion of a
dynasty from the throne. But the House of Lorraine-Hapsburg is
unexampled in the compass of its perjuries, and has committed every one
of these crimes against the nation.***
In former times, a governing COUNCIL, under the name of the Royal
Hungarian Stadtholdership, the president of which was the Palatine, held
its seat at Buda, whose sacred duty it was to watch over the integrity
of the state, the inviolability of the Constitution, and the sanctity of
the laws; but this _collegiate_ authority not presenting any
element of _personal_ responsibility, the Vienna cabinet gradually
degraded this council to the position of an administrative organ of
court absolutism. In this manner, while Hungary had ostensibly an
independent government, the despotic Vienna cabinet disposed at will of
the money and blood of the people for foreign purposes, postponing our
commercial interests to the success of courtly cabals, injurious to the
welfare of the people, so that we were excluded from all connection with
the other countries of the world, and were degraded to the position of a
colony. The mode of governing by a MINISTRY was intended to put a stop
to these proceedings, which caused the rights of the country to moulder
uselessly in its parchments; by the change,[*] these rights and the
royal oath were both to become a reality. It was the apprehension of
this, and especially the fear of losing its control over the money and
blood of the country, which caused the house of Austria to resolve on
involving Hungary, by the foulest intrigues, in the horrors of fire and
slaughter, that, having plunged the country in a civil war, it might
seize the opportunity to dismember the kingdom, and to blot out the name
of Hungary from the list of independent nations, and unite its plundered
and bleeding limbs with the Austrian monarchy.
[Footnote *: The change was solemnly enacted in the Parliamentary Laws of
March, 1848, which King Ferdinand V. sanctioned by his public oath in
April, 1848.]
The beginning of this course was, (after a Ministry had been called into
existence), by ordering an Austrian general [Jellachich] to rise in
rebellion against the laws of the country and nominating him Ban of
Croatia, a kingdom belonging to the kingdom of Hungary.***
The Ban revolted therefore in the name of the emperor, and rebelled
openly against the king of Hungary, who is however one and the same
person; and he went so far as to decree the separation of Croatia and
Slavonia from _Hungary_, with which they had been united for eight
hundred years, as well as to incorporate them with the _Austrian_
empire. Public opinion and undoubted facts threw the blame of these
proceedings on the Archduke Louis, uncle to the emperor, on his brother,
the Archduke Francis Charles, and especially on the consort of the
last-named prince, the Archduchess Sophia; and since the Ban, in this
act of rebellion, openly alleged that he acted as a faithful subject of
the emperor, the ministry of Hungary requested their sovereign, by a
public declaration, to wipe off the stigma which these proceedings threw
upon the family. At that moment affairs were not prosperous for Austria
in Italy; the emperor therefore did proclaim that the Ban and his
associates were guilty of high treason, and of exciting to rebellion.
But while publishing this edict, the Ban and his accomplices were
covered with favours at court, and supplied for their enterprise with
money, arms, and ammunition. The Hungarians, confiding in the royal
proclamation, and not wishing to provoke a civil conflict, did not hunt
out those proscribed traitors in their lair, and only adopted measures
for checking any extension of the rebellion. But soon afterward the
inhabitants of South Hungary, of Servian race, were excited to rebellion
by precisely the same means.
These were also declared by the king to be rebels, but were
nevertheless, like the others, supplied with money, arms, and
ammunition. The king's commissioned officers and civil servants enlisted
bands of robbers in the principality of Servia to strengthen the rebels,
and aid them in massacring the peaceable Hungarian and German
inhabitants of the Banat. The command of these rebellious bodies was
further entrusted to the rebel leaders of the Croatians.
During this rebellion of the Hungarian Servians, scenes of cruelty were
witnessed at which the heart shudders; the peaceable inhabitants were
tortured with a cruelty which makes the hair stand on end. Whole towns
and villages, once flourishing, were laid waste. Hungarians fleeing
before these murderers were reduced to the condition of vagrants and
beggars in their own country; the most lovely districts were converted
into a wilderness.***
The greater part of the Hungarian regiments were, according to the old
system of government, scattered through the other provinces of the
empire. In Hungary itself, the troops quartered were mostly Austrian;
and they afforded more protection to the rebels than to the laws, or to
the internal peace of the country. The withdrawal of these troops, and
the return of the national militia, was demanded of the government, but
was either refused, or its fulfilment delayed; and when our brave
comrades, on hearing the distress of the country, returned in masses,
they were persecuted, and such as were obliged to yield to superior
force were disarmed, and sentenced to death for having defended their
country against rebels.
The Hungarian ministry begged the king earnestly to issue orders to all
troops and commanders of fortresses in Hungary, enjoining fidelity to
the Constitution, and obedience to the ministers of Hungary. Such a
proclamation was sent to the Palatine, the viceroy of Hungary, Archduke
Stephen, at Buda. The necessary letters were written and sent to the
post-office. But this nephew of the king, the Archduke Palatine,
shamelessly caused these letters to be smuggled back from the
post-office, although they had been countersigned by the responsible
ministers; and they were afterward found among his papers when he
treacherously departed from the country.
The rebel Ban menaced the Hungarian coast with an attack, and the
government, with the king's consent, ordered an armed corps to march
into Styria for the defence of Fiume; but this whole force received
orders to march into Italy.***
The rebel force occupied Fiume, and disunited it from the kingdom of
Hungary, and this hateful deception was disavowed by the Vienna cabinet
as having been a _misunderstanding_; the furnishing of arms,
ammunition, and money to the rebels of Croatia was also declared to have
been a misunderstanding. Finally, instructions were issued to the
effect that, until special orders were given, the army and the
commanders of fortresses were not to follow the orders of the Hungarian
ministers, but were to execute those of the Austrian cabinet.***
The king from that moment began to address the man whom he himself had
branded as a rebel, as "dear and loyal" (Lieber Getreuer); he praised
him for having revolted, and encouraged him to proceed in the path he
had entered upon.
He expressed a like sympathy for the Servian rebels, whose hands yet
reeked from the massacres they had perpetrated. It was under this
command that the Ban of Croatia, after being proclaimed as a rebel,
assembled an army, and announced his commission from the king to carry
fire and sword into Hungary, upon which the Austrian troops stationed in
the country united with him.***
Even then the Diet did not give up all confidence in the power of the
royal oath, and the king was once more requested to order the rebels to
quit the country. The answer given was a reference to a manifesto of the
Austrian ministry, declaring it to be their determination to deprive the
Hungarian nation of the independent management of their financial,
commercial, and war affairs. The king at the same time refused his
assent to the bills submitted for approval respecting troops and the
subsidy for covering the expenditure.
Upon this the Hungarian ministers resigned, but the names submitted by
the president of the council, at the demand of the king, were not
approved of for successors. The Diet then, bound by its duty to secure
the safety of the country, voted the supplies, and ordered the troops to
be levied. The nation obeyed the summons with readiness.
The representatives of the people then summoned the nephew of the
emperor to join the camp, and as Palatine[*] to lead the troops against
the rebels. He not only obeyed the summons, but made public professions
of his devotion to the cause. As soon, however, as an engagement
threatened, he fled secretly from the camp and the country, like a
coward traitor. Among his papers a plan, formed by him some time
previously, was found, according to which Hungary was to be
simultaneously attacked on nine sides at once--from Styria, Austria,
Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, and Transylvania.
[Footnote *: The Palatine was a high officer elected by the Diet, as its
organ, and the defender of its Constitution. In fact, they always
elected a prince of the blood royal. He was virtually a Viceroy.]
From a correspondence with the Minister of War, seized at the same time,
it was discovered that the commanding generals in the military frontier
and the Austrian provinces adjoining Hungary had received orders to
enter Hungary, and support the rebels with their united forces.
This attack from nine points at once really began. The most painful
aggression took place in Transylvania; for the traitorous commander in
that district did not content himself with the practices considered
lawful in war by disciplined troops. He stirred up the Wallachian
peasants to take up arms against their own constitutional rights, and,
aided by the rebellious Servian hordes, commenced a course of Vandalism
and extinction, sparing neither women, children, nor aged men; murdering
and torturing the defenceless Hungarian inhabitants; burning the most
flourishing villages and towns, among which, Nagy-Igmand, the seat of
learning for Transylvania, was reduced to a heap of ruins.
But the Hungarian nation, although taken by surprise, unarmed and
unprepared, did not abandon its future prospects in any agony of
despair.
Measures were immediately taken to increase the small standing army by
volunteers and the levy of the people. These troops, supplying the want
of experience by the enthusiasm arising from the feeling that they had
right on their side, defeated the Croatian armaments, and drove them out
of the country.***
The defeated army fled in the direction of Vienna, where the emperor
continued his demoralizing policy, and nominated the beaten and flying
rebel as his plenipotentiary and substitute in Hungary, suspending by
this act the constitution and institutions of the country, all its
authorities, courts of justice, and tribunals, laying the kingdom under
martial law, and placing in the hand of, and under the unlimited
authority of, a rebel, the honour, the property and the lives of the
people; in the hand of a man who, with armed bands, had braved the laws,
and attacked the Constitution of the country.
But the house of Austria was not contented with the unjustifiable
violation of oaths taken by its head.
The rebellious Ban was taken under the protection of the troops
stationed near Vienna, and commanded by Prince Windischgrätz. These
troops, after taking Vienna by storm, were led as an imperial Austrian
army to conquer Hungary. But the Hungarian nation, persisting in its
loyalty, sent an envoy to the advancing enemy. This envoy, coming under
a flag of truce, was treated as a prisoner, and thrown into prison. No
heed was paid to the remonstrances and the demands of the Hungarian
nation for justice. The threat of the gallows was, on the contrary,
thundered against all who had taken arms in defence of a wretched and
oppressed country. But before the army had time to enter Hungary, a
family revolution in the tyrannical reigning house was perpetrated at
Olmütz. Ferdinand V. was forced to resign a throne which had been
polluted with so much blood and perjury, and the son of Francis Charles,
(who also abdicated his claim to the inheritance,) the youthful Archduke
Francis Joseph, caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of Austria and
King of Hungary. But no one can by any family compact dispose of the
constitutional throne without the Hungarian nation.
At this critical moment the Hungarian nation demanded nothing more than
the maintenance of its laws and institutions, and peace guaranteed by
their integrity. Had the assent of the nation to this change in the
occupant of the throne been asked in a legal manner, and the young
prince offered to take the customary oath that he would preserve the
Constitution, the Hungarian nation would not have refused to elect him
king in accordance with the treaties extant, and to crown him with St.
Stephen's crown, before he had dipped his hand in the blood of the
people.
He, however, refusing to perform an act so sacred in the eyes of God and
man, and in strange contrast to the innocence natural to youthful
breasts, declared in his first words his intention of conquering
Hungary, (which he dared to call a rebellious country, whereas it was he
himself that raised rebellion there,) and of depriving it of that
independence which it had maintained for a thousand years, to
incorporate it into the Austrian monarchy.***
But even then an attempt was made to bring about a peaceful arrangement,
and a deputation was sent to the generals of the perjured dynasty. This
house in its blind self-confidence, refused to enter into any
negotiation, and dared to demand an unconditional submission from the
nation. The deputation was further detained, and one of the number, the
former President[*] of the Ministry, was even thrown into prison. Our
deserted capital was occupied, and was turned into a place of execution;
a part of the prisoners of war were there consigned to the axe, another
part were thrown into dungeons, while the remainder were exposed to
fearful sufferings from hunger, and were thus forced to enter the ranks
of the army in Italy.
[Footnote *: Louis Bathyanyi. See Note to p. 6.]
[**]Finally, to reap the fruit of so much perfidy, the Emperor Francis
Joseph dared to call himself King of Hungary, in the manifesto of the
9th of March [1849], wherein he openly declares that he erases the
Hungarian nation from the list of the independent nations of Europe, and
that he divides its territory into five parts, cutting off Transylvania,
Croatia, Slavonia, and Fiume from Hungary, creating at the same time a
principality (vayvodeschaft) for the Servian rebels, and, having
paralyzed the political existence of the country, declares it
incorporated into the Austrian monarchy.
[Footnote **: This paragraph, omitted above, is inserted here, where the
reader will better understand it.]
The measure of the crimes of the Austrian house was, however, filled up,
when, after[*] its defeat, it applied for help to the Emperor of Russia;
and, in spite of the remonstrances and protestations of the Porte, and
of the consuls of the European powers at Bucharest, in defiance of
international rights, and to the endangering of the balance of power in
Europe, caused the Russian troops, stationed at Wallachia, to be led
into Transylvania, for the destruction of the Hungarian nation.
[Footnote *: The Russian army entered Transylvania on January 3d, 1849;
this is the army which was driven out again. But the main Russian armies
were only on the move in April, and took two months longer to enter
Hungary. These were applied for late in March.]
Three months ago we were driven back upon the Theiss; our just arms have
already recovered all Transylvania; Klausenburg, Hermanstadt, and
Kronstadt are taken; one portion of the troops of Austria is driven into
Bukowina; another, together with the Russian force sent to aid them, is
totally defeated, and to the last man obliged to evacuate Transylvania,
and to flee into Wallachia. Upper Hungary is cleared of foes.
The Servian rebellion is further suppressed; the forts of St. Thomas and
the Roman intrenchment have been taken by storm, and the whole country
between the Danube and the Theiss, including the country of Bacs, has
been recovered for the nation.
The commander-in-chief of the perjured house of Austria has himself been
defeated in five consecutive battles, and has with his whole army been
driven back upon and even over the Danube.
Founding a line of conduct upon all these occurrences, and confiding in
the justice of an eternal God, we in the face of the civilized world, in
reliance upon the natural rights of the Hungarian nation, and upon the
power it has developed to maintain them, further impelled by that sense
of duty which urges every nation to defend its existence, do hereby
declare and proclaim in the name of the nation regally represented by
us, the following:--
1st. Hungary, with Transylvania, as legally united with it, and the
possessions and dependencies, are hereby declared to constitute a free,
independent, sovereign state. The territorial unity of this state is
declared to be inviolable, and its territory to be indivisible.
2d. The house of Hapsburg-Lorraine--having by treachery, perjury, and
levying of war against the Hungarian nation, as well as by its
outrageous violation of all compacts, in breaking up the integral
territory of the kingdom, in the separation of Transylvania, Croatia,
Slavonia, Fiume, and its districts, from Hungary--further, by compassing
the destruction of the independence of the country by arms, and by
calling in the disciplined army of a foreign power, for the purpose of
annihilating its nationality, by violation both of the Pragmatic
Sanction and of treaties concluded between Austria and Hungary, on which
the alliance between the two countries depended--is, as treacherous and
perjured, for ever excluded from the throne of the united states of
Hungary and Transylvania, and all their possessions and dependencies,
and are hereby deprived of the style and title, as well as of the
armorial bearings belonging to the crown of Hungary, and declared to be
banished for ever from the united countries and their dependencies and
possessions. They are therefore declared to be deposed, degraded, and
banished for ever from the Hungarian territory.
3d. The Hungarian nation, in the exercise of its rights and sovereign
will, being determined to assume the position of a free and independent
state among the nations of Europe, declares it to be its intention to
establish and maintain friendly and neighbourly relations with those
states with which it was formerly united under the same sovereign, as
well as to contract alliances with all other nations.
4th. The form of government to be adopted for the future will be fixed
by the Diet of the nation.
But until this point shall be decided, on the basis of the foregoing and
received principles which have been recognized for ages, the government
of the united countries, their possessions and dependencies, shall be
conducted on personal responsibility, and under the obligation to render
an account of all acts, by Louis Kossuth, who has by acclamation, and
with the unanimous approbation of the Diet of the nation, been named
Governing President (Gubernator), and the ministers whom he shall
appoint.
And this resolution of ours we proclaim for the knowledge of all nations
of the civilized world, with the conviction that the Hungarian nation
will be received by them among the free and independent nations of the
world, with the same friendship and free acknowledgment of its rights
which the Hungarians proffer to other countries.
We also hereby proclaim and make known to all the inhabitants of the
united states of Hungary and Transylvania, their possessions and
dependencies, that all authorities, communes, towns, and the civil
officers, both in the counties and cities, are completely set free and
released from all the obligations under which they stood, by oath or
otherwise, to the said house of Hapsburg; and that any individual daring
to contravene this decree, and by word or deed in any way to aid or abet
any one violating it, shall be treated and punished as guilty of high
treason. And by the publication of this decree, we hereby bind and
oblige all the inhabitants of these countries to obedience to the
government, now instituted formally, and endowed with all necessary
legal powers.
_Debreczin, April_ 14, 1849.
* * * * *