of May, left Vienna, and fled to Innspruck. Here surrounded by the
bigoted Tyroleans, whose loyalty was roused again by the danger of an
invasion of their country by the Sardo-Lombardian army, supported by
the vicinity of Radetzky's troops, within shell-range of whom
Innspruck lay, here the Counter-Revolutionary party found an asylum,
from whence, uncontrolled, unobserved and safe, it might rally its
scattered forces, repair and spread again all over the country the
network of its plots. Communications were reopened with Radetzky, with
Jellachich, and with Windischgraetz, as well as with the reliable men
in the administrative hierarchy of the different provinces; intrigues
were set on foot with the Slavonic chiefs, and thus a real force at
the disposal of the Counter-Revolutionary camarilla was formed, while
the impotent ministers in Vienna were allowed to wear their short and
feeble popularity out in continual bickerings with the revolutionary
masses, and in the debates of the forthcoming Constituent Assembly.
Thus the policy of leaving the movement of the capital to itself for a
time; a policy which must have led to the omnipotence of the movement
party in a centralized and homogeneous country like France, here in
Austria, in a heterogeneous political conglomerate, was one of the
safest means of reorganizing the strength of the reactionists.
In Vienna the middle class, persuaded that after three successive
defeats, and in the face of a Constituent Assembly based upon
universal suffrage, the Court was no longer an opponent to be dreaded,
fell more and more into that weariness and apathy, and that eternal
outcry for order and tranquillity, which has everywhere seized this
class after violent commotions and consequent derangement of trade.
The manufactures of the Austrian capital are almost exclusively
limited to articles of luxury, for which, since the Revolution and the
flight of the Court, there had necessarily been little demand. The
shout for a return to a regular system of government, and for a return
of the Court, both of which were expected to bring about a revival of
commercial prosperity--this shout became now general among the middle
classes. The meeting of the Constituent Assembly in July was hailed
with delight as the end of the revolutionary era; so was the return of
the Court, which, after the victories of Radetzky in Italy, and after
the advent of the reactionary ministry of Doblhoff, considered itself
strong enough to brave the popular torrent, and which, at the same
time, was wanted in Vienna in order to complete its intrigues with the
Slavonic majority of the Diet. While the Constituent Diet discussed
the laws on the emancipation of the peasantry from feudal bondage and
forced labor for the nobility, the Court completed a master stroke. On
the 19th of August the Emperor was made to review the National Guard;
the Imperial family, the courtiers, the general officers, outbade each
other in flatteries to the armed burghers, who were already
intoxicated with pride at thus seeing themselves publicly acknowledged
as one of the important bodies of the State; and immediately
afterwards a decree, signed by Herr Schwarzer, the only popular
minister in the Cabinet, was published, withdrawing the Government
aid, given hitherto to the workmen out of employ. The trick succeeded;
the working classes got up a demonstration; the middle class National
Guards declared for the decree of their minister; they were launched
upon the "Anarchists," fell like tigers on the unarmed and unresisting
workpeople, and massacred a great number of them on the 23rd of
August. Thus the unity and strength of the revolutionary force was
broken; the class-struggle between bourgeois and proletarian had come
in Vienna, too, to a bloody outbreak, and the counter-revolutionary
camarilla saw the day approaching on which it might strike its grand
blow.
The Hungarian affairs very soon offered an opportunity to proclaim
openly the principles upon which it intended to act. On the 5th
of October an Imperial decree in the _Vienna Gazette_--a
decree countersigned by none of the responsible ministers for
Hungary--declared the Hungarian Diet dissolved, and named the Ban
Jellachich, of Croatia, civil and military governor of that
country--Jellachich, the leader of South Slavonian reaction, a man
who was actually at war with the lawful authorities of Hungary. At the
same time orders were given to the troops in Vienna to march out and
form part of the army which was to enforce Jellachich's authority.
This, however, was showing the cloven foot too openly; every man in
Vienna felt that war upon Hungary was war upon the principle of
constitutional government, which principle was in the very decree
trampled upon by the attempt of the emperor to make decrees with legal
force, without the countersign of a responsible minister. The people,
the Academic Legion, the National Guard of Vienna, on the 6th of
October rose in mass, and resisted the departure of the troops; some
grenadiers passed over to the people; a short struggle took place
between the popular forces and the troops; the minister of war,
Latour, was massacred by the people, and in the evening the latter
were victors. In the meantime, Ban Jellachich, beaten at
Stuhlweissenburg by Perczel, had taken refuge near Vienna on
German-Austrian territory; the Viennese troops that were to march to
his support now took up an ostensibly hostile and defensive position
against him; and the emperor and court had again fled to Olmuetz, on
semi-Slavonic territory.
But at Olmuetz the Court found itself in very different circumstances
from what it had been at Innspruck. It was now in a position to open
immediately the campaign against the Revolution. It was surrounded by
the Slavonian deputies of the Constituent, who flocked in masses to
Olmuetz, and by the Slavonian enthusiasts from all parts of the
monarchy. The campaign, in their eyes, was to be a war of Slavonian
restoration and of extermination, against the two intruders, upon what
was considered Slavonian soil, against the German and the Magyar.
Windischgraetz, the conqueror of Prague, now commander of the army that
was concentrated around Vienna, became at once the hero of Slavonian
nationality. And his army concentrated rapidly from all sides. From
Bohemia, Moravia, Styria, Upper Austria, and Italy, marched regiment
after regiment on routes that converged at Vienna, to join the troops
of Jellachich and the ex-garrison of the capital. Above sixty thousand
men were thus united towards the end of October, and soon they
commenced hemming in the imperial city on all sides, until, on the
30th of October, they were far enough advanced to venture upon the
decisive attack.
In Vienna, in the meantime, confusion and helplessness was prevalent.
The middle class, as soon as the victory was gained, became again
possessed of their old distrust against the "anarchic" working
classes; the working men, mindful of the treatment they had received,
six weeks before, at the hands of the armed tradesmen, and of the
unsteady, wavering policy of the middle class at large, would not
trust to them the defence of the city, and demanded arms and military
organization for themselves. The Academic Legion, full of zeal for the
struggle against imperial despotism, were entirely incapable of
understanding the nature of the estrangement of the two classes, or
of otherwise comprehending the necessities of the situation. There was
confusion in the public mind, confusion in the ruling councils. The
remnant of the German Diet deputies, and a few Slavonians, acting the
part of spies for their friends at Olmuetz, besides a few of the more
revolutionary Polish deputies, sat in permanency; but instead of
taking part resolutely, they lost all their time in idle debates upon
the possibility of resisting the imperial army without overstepping
the bounds of constitutional conventionalities. The committee of
safety, composed of deputies from almost all the popular bodies of
Vienna, although resolved to resist, was yet dominated by a majority
of burghers and petty tradesmen, who never allowed it to follow up any
determined, energetic line of action. The council of the Academic
Legion passed heroic resolutions, but was in no way able to take the
lead. The working classes, distrusted, disarmed, disorganized, hardly
emerging from the intellectual bondage of the old _regime_, hardly
awaking, not to a knowledge, but to a mere instinct of their social
position and proper political line of action, could only make
themselves heard by loud demonstrations, and could not be expected to
be up to the difficulties of the moment. But they were ready--as they
ever were in Germany during the revolution--to fight to the last, as
soon as they obtained arms.
That was the state of things in Vienna. Outside, the reorganized
Austrian army flushed with the victories of Radetzky in Italy; sixty
or seventy thousand men well armed, well organized, and if not well
commanded at least possessing commanders. Inside, confusion, class
division, disorganization; a national guard part of which was resolved
not to fight at all, part irresolute, and only the smallest part ready
to act; a proletarian mass, powerful by numbers but without leaders,
without any political education, subject to panic as well as to fits
of fury almost without cause, a prey to every false rumor spread
about, quite ready to fight, but unarmed, at least in the beginning,
and incompletely armed, and barely organized when at last they were
led to battle; a helpless Diet, discussing theoretical quibbles while
the roof over their heads was almost burning; a leading committee
without impulse or energy. Everything was changed from the days of
March and May, when, in the counter-revolutionary camp, all was
confusion, and when the only organized force was that created by the
revolution. There could hardly be a doubt about the issue of such a
struggle, and whatever doubt there might be, was settled by the events
of the 30th and 31st of October, and 1st November.
LONDON, March, 1852.
XII.
THE STORMING OF VIENNA--THE BETRAYAL OF VIENNA.
APRIL 9th, 1852.
When at last the concentrated army of Windischgraetz commenced the
attack upon Vienna, the forces that could be brought forward in
defence were exceedingly insufficient for the purpose. Of the National
Guard only a portion was to be brought to the entrenchments. A
Proletarian Guard, it is true, had at last been hastily formed, but
owing to the lateness of the attempt to thus make available the most
numerous, most daring, and most energetic part of the population, it
was too little inured to the use of arms and to the very first
rudiments of discipline to offer a successful resistance. Thus the
Academic Legion, three to four thousand strong, well exercised and
disciplined to a certain degree, brave and enthusiastic, was,
militarily speaking, the only force which was in a state to do its
work successfully. But what were they, together with the few reliable
National Guards, and with the confused mass of the armed proletarians,
in opposition to the far more numerous regulars of Windischgraetz, not
counting even the brigand hordes of Jellachich, hordes that were, by
the very nature of their habits, very useful in a war from house to
house, from lane to lane? And what but a few old, outworn,
ill-mounted, and ill-served pieces of ordnance had the insurgents to
oppose to that numerous and well-appointed artillery, of which
Windischgraetz made such an unscrupulous use?
The nearer the danger drew, the more grew the confusion in Vienna. The
Diet, up to the last moment, could not collect sufficient energy to
call in for aid the Hungarian army of Perczel, encamped a few leagues
below the capital. The committee passed contradictory resolutions,
they themselves being, like the popular armed masses, floated up and
down with the alternately rising and receding tide of rumors and
counter-rumors. There was only one thing upon which all agreed--to
respect property; and this was done in a degree almost ludicrous for
such times. As to the final arrangement of a plan of defence, very
little was done. Bem, the only man present who could have saved
Vienna, if any could then in Vienna, an almost unknown foreigner, a
Slavonian by birth, gave up the task, overwhelmed as he was by
universal distrust. Had he persevered, he might have been lynched as a
traitor. Messenhauser, the commander of the insurgent forces, more of
a novel-writer than even of a subaltern officer, was totally
inadequate to the task; and yet, after eight months of revolutionary
struggles, the popular party had not produced or acquired a military
man of more ability than he. Thus the contest began. The Viennese
considering their utterly inadequate means of defence, considering
their utter absence of military skill and organization in the ranks,
offered a most heroic resistance. In many places the order given by
Bem, when he was in command, "to defend that post to the last man,"
was carried out to the letter. But force prevailed. Barricade after
barricade was swept away by the imperial artillery in the long and
wide avenues which form the main streets of the suburbs; and on the
evening of the second day's fighting the Croats occupied the range of
houses facing the glacis of the Old Town. A feeble and disorderly
attack of the Hungarian army had been utterly defeated; and during an
armistice, while some parties in the Old Town capitulated, while
others hesitated and spread confusion, while the remnants of the
Academic Legion prepared fresh intrenchments, an entrance was made by
the imperialists, and in the midst of the general disorder the Old
Town was carried.
The immediate consequences of this victory, the brutalities and
executions by martial law, the unheard-of cruelties and infamies
committed by the Slavonian hordes let loose upon Vienna, are too well
known to be detailed here. The ulterior consequences, the entirely new
turn given to German affairs by the defeat of the revolution in
Vienna, we shall have reason to notice hereafter. There remain two
points to be considered in connection with the storming of Vienna.
The people of that capital had two allies--the Hungarians and the
German people. Where were they in the hour of trial?
We have seen that the Viennese, with all the generosity of a newly
freed people, had risen for a cause which, though ultimately their
own, was in the first instance, and above all, that of the Hungarians.
Rather than suffer the Austrian troops to march upon Hungary, they
would draw their first and most terrific onslaught upon themselves.
And while they thus nobly came forward for the support of their
allies, the Hungarians, successful against Jellachich, drove him upon
Vienna, and by their victory strengthened the force that was to attack
that town. Under these circumstances it was the clear duty of Hungary
to support, without delay, and with all disposable forces, not the
Diet of Vienna, not the Committee of Safety or any other official body
at Vienna, but the _Viennese_ revolution. And if Hungary should even
have forgotten that Vienna had fought the first battle of Hungary, she
owed it to her own safety not to forget that Vienna was the only
outpost of Hungarian independence, and that after the fall of Vienna
nothing could meet the advance of the imperial troops against herself.
Now, we know very well all the Hungarians can say and have said in
defence of their inactivity during the blockade and storming of
Vienna: the insufficient state of their own force, the refusal of the
Diet or any other official body in Vienna to call them in, the
necessity to keep on constitutional ground, and to avoid
complications with the German central power. But the fact is, as to
the insufficient state of the Hungarian army, that in the first days
after the Viennese revolution and the arrival of Jellachich, nothing
was wanted in the shape of regular troops, as the Austrian regulars
were very far from being concentrated; and that a courageous,
unrelenting following up of the first advantage over Jellachich, even
with nothing but the _Land Sturm_ that had fought at Stuhlweissenburg,
would have sufficed to effect a junction with the Viennese, and to
adjourn to that day six months every concentration of an Austrian
army. In war, and particularly in revolutionary warfare, rapidity of
action until some decided advantage is gained is the first rule, and
we have no hesitation in saying that upon _merely military grounds_.
Perczel ought not to have stopped until his junction with the Viennese
was affected. There was certainly some risk, but who ever won a battle
without risking something? And did the people of Vienna risk nothing
when they drew upon themselves--they, a population of four hundred
thousand--the forces that were to march to the conquest of twelve
millions of Hungarians? The military fault committed by waiting until
the Austrians had united, and by making the feeble demonstration at
Schwechat which ended, as it deserved to do, in an inglorious
defeat--this military fault certainly incurred more risks than a
resolute march upon Vienna against the disbanded brigands of
Jellachich would have done.
But, it is said, such an advance of the Hungarians, unless authorized
by some official body, would have been a violation of the German
territory, would have brought on complications with the central power
at Frankfort, and would have been, above all, an abandonment of the
legal and constitutional policy which formed the strength of the
Hungarian cause. Why, the official bodies in Vienna were nonentities!
Was it the Diet, was it the popular committees, who had risen for
Hungary, or was it the people of Vienna, and they alone, who had taken
to the musket to stand the brunt of the first battle for Hungary's
independence? It was not this nor that official body in Vienna which
it was important to uphold; all these bodies might, and would have
been, upset very soon in the progress of the revolutionary
development; but it was the ascendancy of the revolutionary movement,
the unbroken progress of popular action itself, which alone was in
question, and which alone could save Hungary from invasion. What forms
this revolutionary movement afterwards might take, was the business of
the Viennese, not of the Hungarians, so long as Vienna and German
Austria at large continued their allies against the common enemy. But
the question is, whether in this stickling of the Hungarian government
for some quasi-legal authorization, we are not to see the first clear
symptom of that pretence to a rather doubtful legality of proceeding,
which, if it did not save Hungary, at least told very well, at a later
period, before the English middle class audiences.
As to the pretext of possible conflicts with the central power of
Germany at Frankfort, it is quite futile. The Frankfort authorities
were _de facto_ upset by the victory of the counter-revolution at
Vienna; they would have been equally upset had the revolution there
found the support necessary to defeat its enemies. And lastly, the
great argument that Hungary could not leave legal and constitutional
ground, may do very well for British free-traders, but it will never
be deemed sufficient in the eyes of history. Suppose the people of
Vienna had stuck to "legal and constitutional means" on the 13th of
March, and on the 6th of October, what then of the "legal and
constitutional" movement, and of all the glorious battles which, for
the first time, brought Hungary to the notice of the civilized world?
The very legal and constitutional ground upon which it is asserted the
Hungarians moved in 1848 and 1849 was conquered for them by the
exceedingly illegal and unconstitutional rising of the people of
Vienna on the 13th March. It is not to our purpose here to discuss the
revolutionary history of Hungary, but it may be deemed proper if we
observe that it is utterly useless to professedly use merely legal
means of resistance against an enemy who scorns such scruples; and if
we add, that had it not been for this eternal pretence of legality
which Goergey seized upon and turned against the Government, the
devotion of Goergey's army to its general, and the disgraceful
catastrophe of Villagos, would have been impossible. And when, at
last, to save their honor, the Hungarians came across the Leitha, in
the latter end of October, 1848, was not this quite as illegal as any
immediate and resolute attack would have been?
We are known to harbor no unfriendly feeling toward Hungary. We stood
by her during the struggles; we may be allowed to say that our paper,
the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_,[8] has done more than any other to
render the Hungarian cause popular in Germany, by explaining the
nature of the struggle between the Magyar and Slavonian races, and by
following up the Hungarian war in a series of articles which have had
paid them the compliment of being plagiarized in almost every
subsequent book upon the subject, the works of native Hungarians and
"eyewitnesses" not excepted. We even now, in any future continental
convulsion, consider Hungary as the necessary and natural ally of
Germany. But we have been severe enough upon our own countrymen, to
have a right to speak out upon our neighbors; and then we have here to
record facts with historical impartiality, and we must say that in
this particular instance, the generous bravery of the people of Vienna
was not only far more noble, but also more far-sighted than the
cautious circumspection of the Hungarian Government. And, as a German,
we may further be allowed to say, that not for all the showy victories
and glorious battles of the Hungarian campaign, would we exchange that
spontaneous, single-handed rising, and heroic resistance of the people
of Vienna, our countrymen, which gave Hungary the time to organize the
army that could do such great things.
The second ally of Vienna was the German people. But they were
everywhere engaged in the same struggle as the Viennese. Frankfort,
Baden, Cologne, had just been defeated and disarmed. In Berlin and
Breslau the people were at daggers-drawn with the army, and daily
expected to come to blows. Thus it was in every local center of
action. Everywhere questions were pending that could only be settled
by the force of arms; and now it was that for the first time were
severely felt the disastrous consequences of the continuation of the
old dismemberment and decentralization of Germany. The different
questions in every State, every province, every town, were
fundamentally the same; but they were brought forward everywhere under
different shapes and pretexts, and had everywhere attained different
degrees of maturity. Thus it happened that while in every locality
the decisive gravity of the events at Vienna was felt, yet nowhere
could an important blow be struck with any hope of bringing the
Viennese succor, or making a diversion in their favor; and there
remained nothing to aid them but the Parliament and Central Power of
Frankfort; they were appealed to on all hands; but what did they do?