Late Minister of Justice of Hungary.
_London, January 17, 1852_.
* * * * *
Appendix II.--_Extracts from a Letter to the 'Times,' dated December
9th, 1851, by_ Bartholomew Szemere, _late Minister of the Interior
in Hungary; in answer to_ Prince Esterhazy.
I shall now proceed to give a succinct account of what took place from
April 14, when the new acts received the Royal sanction, to December,
1848. You may be assured that I shall conceal nothing that tended to
change the relations between Hungary and Austria.
The Prime Minister was already nominated when Jellachich was raised to
the dignity of Ban of Croatia by a Royal decree which the Premier was
not even asked to countersign. The Hungarian ministers, nevertheless,
for the sake of peace, overlooked this irregular proceeding.
By a decree, dated June 10, 1848, the King made known to all whom it
might concern, that all the troops stationed within the kingdom of
Hungary, whether Hungarians or Austrians, were placed under the orders
of the Hungarian Minister of War, and that all the Hungarian fortresses
were under the jurisdiction of the said Minister. Yet at this very time
officers of the Imperial and Royal army were taking an active part in
the rebellion of the Serbs and Valachs, while General Mayerhofer was
enlisting recruits in the principality of Servia, and sending them to
assist the rebels. The people thus beheld with astonishment civil war
break out, and saw with still greater astonishment that Imperial
officers were fighting on both sides.
Jellachich, as a functionary of the Hungarian Crown, refused to obey the
Hungarian ministry, and illegally summoned a Croatian Diet to meet at
Agram on June 5. In consequence of these proceedings, Ferdinand V., by a
decree dated June 10, 1848, deprived him, as a rebel, of all his civil
and military offices and dignities, but at the same time sent him,
through his Minister of War, Latour, field officers, artillery and
ammunition.
The troubles increased daily. The Hungarian ministry requested the
Archduke John to act us mediator. He accepted the office, but did
nothing.
The Diet met on July 2. The Palatine, as the representative of the
Sovereign in the speech from the Throne, said that, as several districts
were in a state of open rebellion, the principal objects to which, in
the name of His Majesty, he should direct the attention of the Diet were
the finances and the defences of the country, and that bills relating to
these objects would be brought in by the Ministers. He then proceeded as
follows:--"His Majesty has learned with painful feelings, that although
he only followed the dictates of his own gracious inclination, when, at
the request of the faithful Hungarian people, he gave his sovereign
sanction to the laws enacted by the last Diet--laws which the common
weal, according to the exigencies of the present age, rendered
imperatively necessary--there are, nevertheless, a number of seditious
agitators, especially in the annexed territories and the Hungarian
districts of the Lower Danube, who, by false reports and terrorism, have
excited the different religious sects and races speaking different
languages against each other, and, by mendaciously affirming that the
above-mentioned laws are not the free expressions of His Majesty's Royal
will, have stirred up the people to offer an armed opposition to the
execution of the law, and to the legally constituted authorities. And,
moreover, that some of these agitators have even proceeded so far in
their iniquitous course as to spread the report that this armed
opposition has been made in the interests of the dynasty, and with the
knowledge, and connivance of His Majesty or of the members of His
Majesty's Royal house. I therefore, in order that all the inhabitants of
the kingdom, without distinction as to creed or language, may have their
minds set at rest, hereby declare, in conformity with the sovereign
behest of His Majesty our most gracious King, and in his sovereign name
and person, that it is His Majesty's firm and steadfast determination to
defend with all his Royal power and authority the unity and integrity of
His Royal Hungarian crown against every attack from without, and every
attempt at disruption and separation that may be made within the
kingdom, and at the same time inviolably to maintain the laws which have
received the Royal sanction. And while His Majesty will not suffer any
one to curtail the liberties assured to all classes by the law, His
Majesty, as well as all the members of His Royal dynasty, strongly
condemns the audacity of those who venture to affirm that any illegal
act whatsoever or any disrespect of the constituted authorities can be
reconcileable with His Majesty's sovereign will, or at all compatible
with the interests of the Royal dynasty."
It thus clearly appears that the King acknowledged the validity and the
inviolability of the acts passed by the Diet of 1847-8 three months
after they had been sanctioned.
Relying on the sincerity of the Royal asseverations, the Diet humbly
requested that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to render the
country happy by his presence. It was, in fact, the general wish that
the King should come to Hungary; even the most radical journals loudly
declared that if he came he would be received with enthusiasm bordering
on madness.
Meanwhile the rebellion of the Croats, Serbs, and Valachs, was spreading
daily, and that, too, _in the name of the Sovereign_. Generals,
colonels, and other field officers of the Imperial army were at the head
of it, without any one of them being summoned by the King to answer for
his conduct. The eyes of the too credulous natives were now opened, and
still more when the King refused to sanction the acts for the levying of
troops and raising of funds for the suppression of the rebellion,
although the Diet had been convened chiefly for this purpose.
I must here observe that at this period nothing whatever had occurred
that could serve as a pretext for the dynasty to support the rebellion.
The Diet, it is true, would not consent that the troops that were to be
levied should be draughted into the old regiments; but it was obviously
impossible for the Diet to consent to any such measures at a period when
the rebels were everywhere led by Imperial officers, when the Austrian
troops stationed in Hungary, although they had been placed under the
orders of the Hungarian Ministry, refused to fight against those rebels,
and the commanders of fortresses to receive orders from the Hungarian
War-office.
On the 8th of September a deputation from the Hungarian Diet earnestly
entreated His Majesty to sanction two acts relating to the levying of
troops and taxes. The King refused; but in his answer to the address of
the deputation said, "I trust that no one will hereby suppose that I
have the intention to set aside or infringe the existing laws. This, I
repeat, is far from my intention. On the contrary, it is my firm and
determined will to maintain, in conformity with my coronation oath, the
laws, the integrity, and the rights of the kingdom, under my Hungarian
crown."
The King made this solemn declaration on the 8th of September, and on
the 9th of September Jellachich crossed the Drave with 48,000 men to
wage war in the King's name on the Hungarian Diet and Ministry. The King
had, moreover, on _the 4th of September_, affixed his sign manual
to a letter or Royal mandate addressed to Jellachich, and revoking the
decree by which he had been deprived of his civil and military offices
and dignities. His Majesty, in this letter, also expressed his high
approbation of the Ban's conduct. By a Royal decree, dated October 3,
the constitution was suspended, martial law proclaimed, and Jellachich,
the rebel, appointed His Majesty's Plenipotentiary Commissary for the
kingdom of Hungary, and invested with unlimited authority to act, in the
name of His Majesty, within the said kingdom.
Hungary, so far from commencing the revolution, was not even prepared to
meet the invasion of the Croatian Ban. He was defeated near
Stuhlweissenburg by the Landsturm. The Hungarian Government only began
to organize regular troops in October.
That the Diet did not recognize a decree that suspended the constitution
and invested Jellachich with the dictatorship, will be found quite
natural, if not by you, at least by every Englishman who cherishes
constitutional freedom, the more so as its proceedings on this occasion
were founded on legal right, viz., on act 4, sect. 6, of 1847-8, which
expressly ordains that "the annual session of the Diet shall not be
closed, nor the Diet itself dissolved, before the budget for the ensuing
year has been voted."
From this short but faithful account of what actually occurred, it
clearly appears that the Hungarian nation had not recourse to arms until
the Ban of Croatia entered the Hungarian territory with an
Austrian-Croatian army. It is also an undeniable fact that until the
promulgation of the Austrian Charter in March, 1849--by which, with a
stroke of the pen, the independence of Hungary was destroyed, its
constitution abolished, and its territories dismembered--the Hungarian
nation never demanded anything else than the maintenance of the laws and
institutions which its Sovereign had sanctioned and sworn to maintain
inviolate. It was however precisely for the purpose of destroying these
laws and institutions that the dynasty began the war. This, of course,
they did not venture to avow. It was necessary to conceal the real
motives of their perfidious conduct from the civilized world. Hence in
their public proclamations they always alleged some pretext or
other--all of them equally groundless. At the commencement they said
that it was only an insignificant faction they had to deal with; but
when they saw that the whole nation was arrayed in arms against them,
they declared it was for the suppression of demagogueism, propagated by
foreigners, chiefly Poles, that their armies had entered Hungary; and to
give a colour to this pretext they industriously spread the report that
there were 20,000 Poles in the ranks of the Hungarians. When however it
became notorious that no more than 1,000 Poles were fighting under our
national standard, the Austrian dynasty appeared as the
_soi-disant_ champion and judge of the various nationalities or
races. This answered well enough until the system of centralization
showed too clearly that an attempt would be made to Germanize these
nationalities; when the dynasty again veered about, and, leaving
"nationalities" in the lurch, took up the peasantry. We consequently
find the Austrian Government assuring the Washington Cabinet (in the
note of July 4, 1851) that they had waged war on Hungary in order to
crush a turbulent aristocracy that "preach democracy with their tongues,
while their whole lives consist in the daily exercise over their
fellow-men of arbitrary power in the most repugnant form." This last
pretext, so ostentatiously put forth, loses, however, even its
plausibility when contrasted with the policy of the dynasty in 1848, for
it is an undoubted fact that, although the reforms effected in our
_political_ institutions at that period were consented to by the
dynasty without much hesitation, it required the most energetic
remonstrances on the part of the Diet to obtain the Royal sanction to
the act for the liberation of the peasants from feudal bondage.
It is precisely to the fact of all classes, without distinction, being
equally aware of the cabals of the dynasty, that may be ascribed the
success of the Hungarian insurrection. It was not _one_ man, nor a
party, nor a conspiracy, nor terrorism, that awakened that spontaneous
enthusiasm with which the people rushed to arms. Kossuth may have been
the rallying cry; but he was not the cause of the war. For several
months the people had witnessed the equivocal conduct of the dynasty;
had seen that its words were belied by its deeds; had seen that the
rebels were everywhere led by Imperial officers; and finally beheld
Jellachich, a high functionary of the Hungarian Crown, invade the
country at the head of an Austro-Croatian army. It was then, and not
till then, that the nation cried, as with one voice--_the King is a
traitor_. From that day began the Hungarian revolution. On that day
the monarchical feeling was extinguished. What no one had thought it
possible to accomplish was accomplished by the dynasty itself.
* * * * *
APPENDIX III.--_Extracts from a Letter to the 'Daily News,' in
February, 1852, by a_, "HUNGARIAN EXILE," _in reply to a Letter
from_ SZEMERE, _to the 'London Examiner_.'
[I am personally acquainted with the accomplished and intelligent
"Exile;" but as he is absent from England, I cannot obtain permission to
publish his name.]
It was more than two months after the civil war had been raging in the
Banat and Transylvania that the question of giving fresh troops for the
suppression of the Italian war was brought before the Assembly at Pesth,
July 22, 1846. Now, what are the accusations M. Szemere brings forth
against Kossuth in reference to the Italian question? The pith of M.
Szemere's reasoning is, that the ministry agreed, in the protocol of
July 5, upon construing the Pragmatic Sanction as binding Hungary to
protect the integrity of Austria; "yet that Kossuth, as the organ of the
ministry, spoke in a way as if he did not approve of the policy, and
sought to make the public believe that the protocol was merely a moral
demonstration:" further, that when the opposition denied the obligation
of Hungary to defend Austria, the ministry refused to enter into any
discussion on an acknowledged principle of constitutional law.
In order to show the utter hollowness of this attack, it may be
sufficient to look at the date and circumstances M. Szemere talks of.
The protocol in question was agreed upon on July 5th, the day when the
parliament met to provide for the defence of the country. The members,
inexperienced in foreign politics and ignorant of the cabals of courts,
although presuming that the civil war was kindled in Vienna, were at
first blinded by the royal convocation of the Diet to provide for the
safety of the country; putting, moreover, implicit confidence in the
sagacity and goodwill of the ministry. When however Kossuth opened the
debate on the Italian question, July 22, affairs looked quite different
from what they appeared to be when the protocol was drawn up. The
treachery of the dynasty broke upon the mind of the most careless, and
its connexions with the leaders of the rebellious tribes had become
undeniable facts. It was during that short time, from July 5 to July 22,
that our national forces met in the Serbian entrenchments of St. Thomas,
Földvar, and Turia, regular Austrian soldiers: Meyerhofe, the Austrian
consul at Belgrade, was openly recruiting bands of Servians to reinforce
the insurgents; nay, it became even evident that General Bechtold,
appointed by His Majesty to lead the faithful Hungarians against the
rebellious Serbs, led them on in order to get them the sooner decimated
and broken. Some members of the opposition, headed by General Perczel,
declaimed loudly against the cowardly and fallacious policy of the
ministry, resolving to compel ministers to resign or to induce them to
take some more efficacious measures. In short, during this space of
time, the government and people found themselves in quite a new
position. Kossuth, in concert with the ministry, moved a levy of 200,000
men (July 11), which motion the Assembly hailed with unparalleled
enthusiasm, and which the people witnessed with approval, as affording a
guarantee of their liberties. It was in the midst of these moments of
excitement and temporary distress that Kossuth, as the most popular
member of the cabinet, was pointed out as the person most fitted to
undertake the very difficult task of speaking on the Italian question
alluded to by M. Szemere. Public opinion, aided by the opposition of the
house, was convinced that Austria, after having subjugated the
Lombard-Venetians with Hungarian troops, would then turn to Hungary, the
enslavement of which might more easily be executed by the country's
being bereft of a number of stout arms indispensable to her own defence.
Kossuth therefore, as a man of true liberal principles, while
acknowledging the ground to be right upon which the opposition moved,
professed in the speech alluded to that he had agreed then with his
colleagues in respect to the Italian question, on the ground that the
moral power of the protocol would suffice, although as a private
individual he could not help rejoicing at the victories of the Italian
people. Now, I submit it to every enlightened Englishman to decide
whether Kossuth evinced a want of civic virtue in declaring that, as a
man who wished freedom for himself, he could not rejoice in the sending
of troops to subjugate another people struggling against the same
tyrant?
Referring to the policy of the ministry, M. Szemere says "that Count
Louis Bathyanyi declared, on the 31st March, that the obligation
enjoined by the Pragmatic Sanction was such that Hungary was bound
thereby to defend the territorial integrity of the Austrian monarchy,
but that they (the ministers) would carefully avoid interfering in the
internal affairs of the states that constituted this monarchy."
Irrespective of this--that Count Bathyanyi explained the policy in
March, when Hungary enjoyed perfect peace, whereas the debate on the
Italian question happened in the midst of most threatening civil wars
carried on directly by Austria--it must be remembered that if by the 1st
article of the Pragmatic Sanction Hungary was bound to afford aid to
Austria _etiam contra vim externam_, that same article provided
that the States composing the realm of Hungary were to be preserved by
the monarch _aeque indivisibiliter_ as his hereditary estates; and
that by the 3d article of that celebrated law the Sovereign promised,
for himself and his successors, to compel his subjects of every state
and degree to observe the laws and rights of Hungary. It is therefore
evident that the infraction of this law, by the countenance and aid
furnished to the Serbs (as also to Jellachich), fully exonerated the
Hungarians from sending troops to Italy before they had provided for the
safety of their country, and fully justified them and their responsible
minister for drawing the attention of their Sovereign to it in the
address to the Crown. M. Szemere talks of protecting the integrity of
the Austrian empire, and carefully avoiding to interfere with the
internal affairs of other states. The Czar may indeed exclaim, with M.
Szemere, that in sending his Cossacks into Hungary he never intended to
interfere in our internal affairs.
The second charge, as to Kossuth's striving to concentrate in his person
all power and authority, is, I fear, indicative of the animus which
prompted M. Szemere to write these letters, namely, jealousy of his
great countryman. The charge, however, is entirely without foundation:
and the only question is, as to how Kossuth acquired such unbounded
influence over his countrymen of every rank and station. The means by
which Kossuth gained such an ascendancy over his colleagues, M. Szemere
himself must own, were, the implicit confidence the country placed in
his patriotism, and the conviction it had acquired of his genius and
indefatigable activity. In moments of extreme danger no name was heard
but that of Kossuth. I am far from asserting that all Kossuth has done
is exempt from censure; but it must, on the other hand, be admitted that
all that was grand in our revolution happened by his instrumentality.
His mere appearance, as, for instance, in Debreczin, January, 1849, when
the second danger seemed to overwhelm the country, roused the frightened
people of the Thesis, who crowded under the national standard and
shattered to pieces the Austrian forces.
The fall of Hungary can only be traced to the following three
circumstances:--1st. That it was not believed that European diplomacy
would allow Russian intervention. 2d. That our plan of warfare, directed
by the council of war, and not by Kossuth, wanted that concentration
which could alone have ensured success. 3d. That the character of
Görgei, whom our generals never accused of treacherous designs, was a
mystery: nay, the patriotic General Perczel, who proclaimed loudly
Görgei's treachery from the very beginning, had the satisfaction to be
laughed at and hooted down. To impute these disastrous circumstances to
Kossuth alone, is to render one's self guilty of the greatest perversion
of generally acknowledged and incontrovertible facts.