The history of Hungary is in this respect unique: it records the career
of an alien tribe which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the heart
of Europe, founded there a nation, and this nation, after the friction
of a thousand years, still preserves its racial characteristics. In
894 Duke Arpád led his horde of Magyars--whose earlier kinsmen were
Huns and Avars--up the valley of the Danube. Long were they a terror to
Europe; then, gradually, they had to content themselves with Hungary
as their home. They became Christians; they adopted a monarchical
government; alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on mediæval
civilization. Europe, unable to expel or to destroy, acknowledged them
as citizens. The time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting
fivescore years, defended Europe against the invasion of another
horde of Asiatic barbarians; till, unsupported by their neighbors,
the Magyars succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohács in 1526.
Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty years, Hungary herself writhed
in the hands of the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she had a
different oppressor,--Austria.
The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and after the battle of Mohács
the Magyars chose for their king the sovereign of the Austrian
states. The succession continued in the House of Hapsburg, becoming
in fact hereditary; but, before the Magyars accepted him as king,
each Hapsburg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian Diet, and
must swear to uphold the Hungarian Constitution. When, however, the
expulsion of the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth century, left the
Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their authority, they set about
curtailing the ancient liberties of Hungary. Throughout the eighteenth
century that process went on: the Magyars protested; the Emperor-King
encroached, or, when the protests threatened to pass into insurrection,
he paused for a while and gave fair promises.
Such was the situation when the French Revolution, followed by
Napoleon’s colossal ambition, startled Europe. During the quarter
century of upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their grievances into
Vienna, remained loyal to their King. After Napoleon’s downfall, the
Old Régime being firmly reëstablished, Emperor Francis not only failed
to keep his promises towards Hungary, but revived the old policy of
Austrianization, which meant the substitution of German for Magyar
officials, and the removal of the chief branches of government to
Vienna. Again the protests became angry, until Francis, baffled and
alarmed, convened the Diet. With the year 1825, when that Diet met,
began the modern struggle of Hungary to recover that home rule which
one after another of her Hapsburg kings had solemnly sworn to respect,
and had as perfidiously disregarded. Thus the seed of the Magyar
revolution was sown, like that of so many others, in a demand for the
restoration of acknowledged rights, and not in a demand for innovation.
Home rule,--Hungary to govern herself, instead of being bullied by
foreigners who happened to be also subjects of her Emperor-King,--that
seemed an object as simple and definite as it was just. Experience
soon showed, however, that this cause was not simple; that it no more
could be attained alone than gold can be taken from quartz without
crushing the quartz and separating the silver and lead, and the crushed
quartz itself, from the desired gold. For Hungary was imbedded in an
old civilization, which must be broken up before home rule, and many
another modern ideal, could be attained.
Imagine a country having an area about as large as the State of
Colorado, inhabited by people sprung from four different races,--the
Magyar, the Slav, the German, and the Italian: imagine, further, these
races subdivided into eight different peoples,--Magyars, having poor
kinsmen called Szeklers; Slavs, sending forth four different shoots,
Slovaks in the North, Croats in the Southwest, Serbs in the South, and
Wallachs in the East; imagine this motley population holding various
creeds,--Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and
Unitarian: imagine not merely each race, but each people, cherishing
its own language, its own customs, its own ambitions, which inevitably
clashed with those of its neighbors: and having imagined all this, you
have not yet come to the end of Hungary’s complex organism. Beside
the conflicts of race and creed, there were political and social
complications.
The dominant race was the Magyars, who numbered, however, only a third
of the total population; their prevailing system was the feudal. A
few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a considerable body of small
nobles and a multitude of artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up
the social strata. Every Magyar who could trace descent to Arpád and
his followers--though he were but a peasant in condition--was a noble:
members of all the other races had no political rights. Hungary proper
comprised fifty-two counties, each of which had its local congregation
or assembly, which met four times a year, and sent suggestions or
bills of grievances to the Central Diet, composed of the Table of
Magnates and the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, representing
the Sovereign, was the actual head of the kingdom. Outside of Hungary
proper, the Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Transylvania
had hers; both also chose representatives to the Hungarian Diet. In a
measure, therefore, we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting,
however, that it was a federation in which one race, the Magyars,
domineered. The Latin language was the common medium of communication
between Hungary and Austria, and among the diverse peoples.
The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 was the use by Count
Stephen Széchenyi of the Magyar language instead of the Latin.
Széchenyi, having traveled in Western Europe, came back imbued with
large schemes of progress. He helped to introduce steamboats on the
Danube; he founded a Magyar Academy; he proposed to join Buda and Pesth
by a suspension bridge. By stimulating the material welfare of his
country, he hoped that many of the social abuses would vanish without
a struggle. And now his use of the Magyar language was a symptom of
the awakening of the spirit of nationality,--one of the controlling
motives in the history of Europe during the nineteenth century. In
Hungary, as elsewhere, the arousing of that spirit was evidenced not
only by an intenser political life, but also by a literary revival.
In direct reforms the Diet of 1825 accomplished little,--the Austrian
government being still adroit in postponing a settlement,--but it was
important in so far as it revealed the presence of new forces, whose
nature was as yet undetermined. By the time another Diet assembled,
in 1832, several questions had taken a definite shape. Foremost, of
course, was Hungary’s demand of home rule, in which all Magyars stood
side by side; but when it came to internal affairs, they inevitably
disagreed. The advanced Liberals proposed to emancipate the serfs,
to extend the suffrage, and to abolish many of the privileges of the
aristocracy. How grievous was the condition of the Hungarian serf may
be inferred from the fact that, in spite of an improvement decreed
by Maria Theresa, he was still bound to contribute to his landlord
the equivalent of more than one hundred days’ labor a year; he had no
civic rights, and no other chance of redress than in the manorial court
presided over by his master. The nobles, on the other hand, paid no
taxes, ruled the county assemblies, appointed magistrates, and, except
in case of a foreign invasion, rendered no military service, in return
for all their exorbitant immunities.
That Magyar aristocracy has played so prominent a part in the history
of Hungary that we may pause a moment to describe it. In 1830 the
Magyar magnate was still the most picturesque noble in Europe. Like
the Spanish grandee and the Venetian senator of an earlier time, he
represented one of the highest expressions of the privileged classes.
He was haughty, but warm-hearted; emotional, but brave: appeal to
his honor, to his magnanimity, and--as Maria Theresa found--he would
forget his grievances, disregard his interests, and devote himself
body and soul to your cause. He might be ignorant, a spendthrift, an
exacting master, but in his capacity for generosity he was--by whatever
standard--truly a noble. In old times his forefathers had assembled
every year, or when an emergency required, on the plain of Rákos,--a
host of gallant warriors, in brilliant armor and gorgeous cloaks and
trappings. There they deliberated--perhaps chose a king or deposed
one--and then each rode home with his retinue, to live in a splendor
half-barbaric for another year. In his dress the Magyar had an Oriental
love of color, and in his music there is a similar glow, a similar
charm.
As late as 1840 both the magnates and the lesser nobility clung to
their national costume as loyally as to their national constitution.
“It now consists of the _attilla_” writes Paget at that date, “a frock
coat, reaching nearly to the knee, with a military collar, and covered
in front with gold lace; over this is generally worn, hanging loosely
on one shoulder, the _mente_, a somewhat larger coat, lined with fur,
and with a fur cape. It is generally suspended by some massive jeweled
chain. The tight pantaloons and ankle-boots, with the never-failing
spurs, form the lower part. The _kalpak_, or fur cap, is of innumerable
forms, and ornamented by a feather fastened by a rich brooch. The white
heron’s plume, or aigrette, the rare product of the Southern Danube,
is the most esteemed. The neck is opened, except for a black ribbon
loosely passed round it, the ends of which are finished with gold
fringe. The sabre is in the shape of the Turkish scimitar; indeed,
richly ornamented Damascus blades, the spoils of some unsuccessful
Moslem invasion, are very often worn, and are highly prized.
“The sword-belt is frequently a heavy gold chain, such as our ancient
knights wore over their armor. The colors, as in many respects the
form, of the Hungarian uniform, depend entirely on the taste of the
individual, and vary from the simple blue dress of the hussar, with
white cotton lace, to the rich stuffs, covered with pearls and
diamonds, of the Prince Esterházy.
“On the whole, I know of no dress so handsome, so manly, and at
the same time so convenient. It is only on gala days that gay and
embroidered dresses are used; on ordinary occasions, as sittings of
the Diet, county meetings, and others in which it is customary to wear
uniform, dark colors with black silk lace, and trousers, or Hessian
boots, are commonly used.”[1]
[1] John Paget, _Hungary and Transylvania_ (new edition, New York,
1850), i, 249, 250.
Such, in its dress, was the Magyar aristocracy which the reformers
set themselves to overcome; and in their character those Magyar
nobles--were they magnates or simply gentlemen--cherished a tenacity
of class unsurpassed by any other aristocrats in Europe. Nevertheless,
the reformers boldly put forth a programme which involved the complete
social and political reorganization of the country,--even throwing
down a challenge to the aristocracy to surrender privileges in which
these deemed their very existence rooted. Parties had begun to array
themselves on these lines when Louis Kossuth entered public life.
Born at the village of Monok, Zemplen County, on April 27, 1802,
Kossuth had for his father a lesser noble, Slavic in origin, Lutheran
in faith, and lawyer by profession. The son received a good education,
and began to practice law, which led easily to politics. He sat in his
county assembly, was early conspicuous as an advocate of popular rights
and as an eloquent speaker. Thus equipped, he took his seat in the Diet
of 1832, where, as proxy to a magnate, he had a voice but no vote.
There seemed slight chance of his emerging from his proxy’s obscurity,
but to genius all conditions are fluid. Kossuth conceived the plan
of publishing the reports of the debates in the Diet. The government
permitted no newspapers, and trimmed all other publications to suit
its views; but the members of both Houses could speak freely, without
danger of arrest for any of their utterances in the Diet. To circulate
their speeches would, therefore, as Kossuth saw, put within reach of
the Hungarians a mass of political reading not otherwise obtainable.
Hardly had he begun to publish, ere government signified its desire of
buying his press. Deprived of this, he employed secretaries who wrote
out his abstracts of the proceedings and sent them through the mails
to their destination. Government ordered its postmen to confiscate
and destroy. Still unvanquished, Kossuth dispatched his budgets by
special messengers. Government was foiled. By these devices, before the
close of the Diet in 1836, Kossuth--the obscure magnate’s proxy--had
become one of the most widely known men in the kingdom. The reports
were literally _his_ reports, giving not only the tenor of the chief
debates, but also his comments thereon.
He now proposed to edit in similar fashion the proceedings of the
quarterly meetings of the fifty-two county assemblies; but Government,
no longer restrained by his inviolability as member of the Diet,
arrested him. He spent two years in prison, denied books and all
intercourse with his friends, before his case came to trial: then he
was sentenced to a further confinement of four years, during which his
great solace was the study of Shakespeare.
Meanwhile, political and social agitation was swelling. The King,
thinking a European war over the Eastern Question imminent, summoned
another Diet to vote him a fresh subsidy and more soldiers. But the
Diet, indignant and headstrong, refused all help till Kossuth and some
other political prisoners should be released. The King yielded. Kossuth
came forth a national hero.
After several months spent in recuperating his health, Kossuth, in
January, 1841, established the _Pesti Hirlap_, or _Pesth Gazette_.
That Government acquiesced in this project showed how far the tide
of Liberalism had risen. It showed, too, that Government was
astute,--hoping in this way to rob Kossuth of his martyr’s halo;
deeming it wiser to let him publish openly than surreptitiously;
trusting, above all, to the sharpness of its censors’ eyes and
scissors. Kossuth, on his side, was equally cunning, versed in the
art of dressing his opinions in such guise that the censor could not
object to them, though they carried a meaning which his readers knew
how to interpret according to his intention. He wrote on all topics
with a vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him tens of thousands
of admirers. Like any Magyar patriot, he could count on one of the most
powerful of allies,--the race hatred between his countrymen and the
Austrians. The very word “German” signified, in the Magyar language,
_vile_, _base_, _despicable_. There was a Magyar proverb to the effect
that “German is the only language God does not understand.” Innumerable
illustrations of this antipathy might be cited, but the following,
which Paget tells, will serve as well as another: The proprietor of a
theatre produced what he considered a fine piece of scenery, in which
was represented a full moon, with round, fat, clean-shaved face. When
it rose, the audience hissed, and shouted, “Down with the German moon!”
The manager took the hint; next night there rose a swarthy-cheeked,
black-moustachioed orb. Hurrahs burst from every mouth, and all cried,
“Long live our own true Magyar moon!”
Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle the fuel which ages of hatred
had been storing. He had the gift peculiar to really great popular
leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and passion; so it
mattered little that he dealt in generalizations. Speaking broadly,
he preached the abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of the
Magyar nationality. The former purpose brought him and the Liberals
into conflict with the conservative aristocracy; the latter inflamed
against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred of their subject
peoples.
For the spirit of nationality had awakened these also. The Slavs
of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia dreamed of establishing a great
Slavic kingdom in Southeastern Europe; they, too, were putting forth
a literature. Their Illyrism--to their prospective nation they gave
the name “Illyria”--clashed with the recrudescent Magyarism. When the
Hungarian Diet decreed that the Magyar language should be taught in
their schools, and that every official must use it, they protested
as strenuously as the Magyars themselves had protested when Austria
tried to impose the German language and German officials on them. “The
Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,” exclaimed Gaj, the poet
and spokesman of Illyrism, to the Hungarian Diet: “I did not make this
ocean, I did not stir up its waves; but take care that they do not go
over your heads and drown you.” Nevertheless, the law was passed. In
the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, in the East the Wallachs
of Transylvania, feeling the first tingle of national aspirations,
resented this encroachment. Austria--whose motto was, _Divide et
impera_--found her advantage in embittering tribe with tribe and class
with class.
For three years and a half Kossuth’s _Gazette_ had an unprecedented
influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with
his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and expected to
found another journal which should draw off the _Gazette’s_ patrons.
Government, however, refused to grant him a license. Accordingly,
he devoted himself to agitation in another form. In the assembly of
the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless eloquence the great
political questions; outside, he organized an economical crusade.
Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which stunted her industrial and
commercial development. Kossuth created a league whose members vowed
for five years to use only Hungarian products. He projected a railway
to Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged
the establishment of savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And
for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.
Thus through all the arteries of the body politic new blood was
throbbing. Give a people a great idea, and they will find how to
apply it to every concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely
undermining feudalism; their race was growing more and more restive
at Austria’s obstinate delays. When Austria removed the native county
sheriffs and put German administrators in their stead, all the Magyar
factions joined in denouncing such an assault on their national life.
The county system had been the safeguard of Hungary’s political
institutions for well-nigh eight hundred years; the sheriff was the
foremost official in the county, to whose guidance its interests and
civic activity were intrusted. To make an alien sheriff was therefore
to check national agitation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which
met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance and resentment, though
the platform of the Liberals, drawn up by the judicial Deák, wore on
its surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot canvass, Kossuth was
elected to represent Pesth in the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions
sufficed to establish his preëminence as an orator, and his leadership
of the Liberal party.
During the winter months of 1847-48 but little was done, though
much was discussed. As usual, the Magnates resisted the reforms
aimed at their class; as usual, Government temporized and postponed.
Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 1848, news reached Presburg of
the revolution in Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That
news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kindling as it passed the
fires of revolt. At Presburg, on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and
interrupted a debate on the financial difficulties with Austria. That
question of finance, he said, could never be settled separately; in it
was involved the whole question of Austria’s disregard of Hungary’s
rights. Hungary must have her own laws, her own ministry; taxation must
be equal; the franchise must be extended. More than that, he added,
Hungary could never prosper until every part of the Empire should be
governed by uniform constitutional methods.
Kossuth’s “baptismal speech of the revolution” took the Lower House
by storm. An address to the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless
reluctance on the part of the Magnates, a large committee, headed by
Kossuth and Count Louis Batthyányi,--the Liberal leader in the Upper
House,--carried twelve days later to Vienna. The delegates found the
Austrian capital in an uproar. On March 13 Metternich, deserted by
the aristocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupulously for
fifty years, had been hounded from office. The people, after a bloody
struggle, had possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth as a
deliverer; for his “baptismal speech” had made their aims articulate.
The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the deputation very
graciously, and promised to grant their petition. Exulting, they
returned to Presburg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthyányi held the
premiership, and Kossuth the portfolio of finance. Soon, very soon,
tremendous difficulties beset them: Radicals clamored for a republic;
the subject races revolted; the Imperial government proved perfidious.
The key to Austria’s subsequent conduct is this: Austria, at heart
a coward, had long been able to play the bully; now, however, her
outraged peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their mercy; the
bully cringed, promised, conceded; concession brought a temporary
respite from danger; thereupon she began to think she had been unduly
terrified and to regret her concessions; so she cautiously put out
feelers of arrogance, to resume her rôle of bully. When she met sharp
resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await a better opportunity.
Throughout this crisis, Emperor Ferdinand, at his best a man of
mediocre capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, and a Court
clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and the Empire.
All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. Assuming the Imperial
assurances to be honest, they passed a reform bill abolishing the
privileges of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the state for
the loss they sustained in the emancipation of their serfs. Bills
authorizing equal taxation, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the
abolition of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to one million
two hundred thousand voters, were adopted with but little discussion.
Religious toleration--except for Jews--became the law of the land.
The Magnates having made this unparalleled sacrifice, King Ferdinand
came over to Presburg and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its
action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the Constitution. The
Cabinet proceeded to organize its administration,--a task which would
have been sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now extraordinary
and urgent matters pressed upon it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats
rose in rebellion. Most alarming was the situation in Croatia, where
the Slavs were agitating for separation from Hungary. Baron Jellachich,
who had just been appointed Ban or Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the
insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In June the Magyar ministers
hurried to Innspruck--whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled after
a second outbreak in Vienna--to protest against these rebellious acts.
The Emperor assured them that he had given the Ban no sanction; that
he had, indeed, dismissed him from the Imperial service. It happened
that Jellachich was at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the
notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his mind an unwritten
commission to serve Austria against Hungary.
The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities,
was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the outbreak in
Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she had still to
accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was her legal king;
but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial government,
was instigating her enemies.
The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the ancient
capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by implication
Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in violence from
day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly the most effective
speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the record
of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to have moved stocks and
stones by their voice; yet not on this account must we disbelieve the
record. For posterity can never supply the one thing needful to the
consummate orator’s success,--it can never supply the state of mind of
his audience. We shall always find that the epoch-making speech was
addressed to listeners every one of whom had long been burning to hear
just those words. This is why so many of the orations that altered
history look faded on the printed page; this is why we must in many
cases judge the orator as we judge the singer or the actor,--by the
effect he produces on his contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard,
ranks with the first orators of the century, though a later generation
is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even
those who heard him speak in a language not his own, and who had
listened to Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard
his equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged with
the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his eloquence was
irresistible.
In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can
feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized
that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,--that Hungary must
either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and perilous sea.
All were waiting for the decisive word.
Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps
mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was brown,
his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard sailor-wise,
so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-shaven chin.
At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though
they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers dread a
collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the strength which
burned in his subject, and they listened for two hours, spell-bound and
electrified.
“I feel,” he said to them, “as if God had put in my hands the trumpet
to rouse the dead, that, if sinners and weak, they may sink back
into death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, they
may waken to eternity.” He then went on to review the quarrel with
Croatia, declaring that to that country Hungary had, from immemorial
time, accorded all the privileges which she herself enjoyed, and that
recently she had conceded to the Croats a wider use of their native
language. “I can understand a people,” he said ironically, “who,
deeming the freedom they possess too little, take up arms to acquire
more, though they play, indeed, a hazardous game, for such weapons
are two-edged; but I cannot understand a people who say, ‘The freedom
you offer us is too great,--we will not accept your offer, but will go
and submit ourselves to the yoke of Absolutism.’” Kossuth next touched
on the situation in the South, and showed wherein it differed from
that in the Southwest. He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel
the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful pretensions of Croatia, and
thereby to annul the pledges of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous
cloud on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a Russian army
along the Pruth. When, after this review, he solemnly announced, “The
fatherland is in danger,” not a deputy was surprised, not a head shook
incredulously. At last he asked for authority to levy two hundred
thousand soldiers, and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins,
setting forth the means by which he planned to meet this extraordinary
measure as eloquently as he had set forth its need.
He had held the Assembly captivated for two hours; now, as he was
closing, his strength failed, and he could not speak. The deputies,
too, were speechless. For a brief moment intense silence reigned
between him and them. Then Paul Nyáry, who only yesterday had attacked
the policy of the Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking
God to be his witness, and exclaimed, “We grant everything!” In a
flash four hundred hands were raised, and four hundred voices repeated
Nyáry’s covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had recovered strength
to say that his request should not be taken as a demand for a vote of
confidence. “We ask your vote for the preservation of the country;
and, sirs, if any breast sighs for freedom, if any desire waits for
fulfilment, let that breast suffer a little longer, let it have
patience until we have saved the fatherland. You have all risen to a
man, and I bow before the great-heartedness of the nation, while I ask
one thing more: let your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates of
hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary!”
In March, under the magic of Kossuth’s irresistible oratory, the
Magyars had boldly demanded their constitutional rights; now in July,
thrilled by the same magic, they pledged themselves to defend their
independence to the death.
The summer passed amid recruiting of Honvéds, volunteer “defenders of
the fatherland,” the attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania
and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues of the Imperial Court
to browbeat the Hungarian Cabinet. In September, Jellachich, at last
avowedly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade Hungary.
The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconciliation, quitted the
country. The Viennese Cabinet appointed Count Lamberg to assume
full control of the military affairs in the kingdom; the Hungarians
pronounced his appointment unconstitutional, and they were right. On
his arrival at Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash crime caused
some of the Liberals to withdraw horrified. Batthyányi resigned the
premiership, and a Committee of National Defense, in which Kossuth
predominated, was chosen. On October 2, the Camarilla, grown truculent,
dispatched Recsey to dissolve the Hungarian Assembly, and bade Hungary
to submit to Jellachich. The Magyars heeded neither command. Having
equity and law on their side, they acted henceforth on the assumption
that the orders which emanated from Vienna could not be attributed to
Ferdinand without imputing perjury to him.
War could no longer be avoided. The Committee of National Defense
displayed great energy in organizing resistance. Kossuth’s eloquence
went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left the plough, the
well-to-do tradesman deserted his shop, the lawyer dropped his brief,
to become volunteers in the service of their country. A third outbreak
at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying off to Olmütz, and seemed for
a moment to assure the final triumph of the revolution. During
the three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian army under Prince
Windischgrätz--he who said that “human beings begin with barons”--could
be brought up, the Hungarians debated whether they should go to the
assistance of the Viennese, for they wished to be strictly legal. At
last they found justification in the plea that they had a right to
pursue Jellachich, who was marching to join Windischgrätz, across the
Austrian frontier. But they decided too late. Their troops were beaten
at Schwechat, on the outskirts of Vienna, just as Windischgrätz was
successfully storming the city (October 29).
For six weeks thereafter Windischgrätz devoted himself to stamping
out the rebellion in Vienna, and in preparing for a campaign against
Hungary. On December 2 poor, weak-witted Ferdinand abdicated, and his
nephew Francis Joseph succeeded him as emperor. This change betokened
the returning confidence of the Court party. They now felt sure of
crushing the revolution, and of restoring the Old Régime; but they had
no intention that, when the rest of Austria was re-subjected to their
despotism, Hungary alone should enjoy a constitutional government.
Yet this had been promised by Ferdinand, and he had scruples against
openly violating his oath. Therefore, by removing him and substituting
Francis Joseph, they had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this
scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend; their Constitution was their
life, and that Constitution recognized no king who had not been crowned
by the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their rights inviolate.
Ten days before Christmas, Windischgrätz opened his campaign. Five
armies besides his own invaded Hungary from five different directions.
The Magyars had employed the six weeks’ lull in defensive preparations.
They gave Arthur Görgei, an ex-officer thirty-one years old,--able,
stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious,--the command of the Army
of the Upper Danube. He proposed to abandon the frontier and to mass
the Hungarian forces in the interior, where they could choose their
own ground; but the Committee of Defense insisted that every inch of
Hungarian soil should be contested. A fortnight’s operations proved the
wisdom of Görgei’s plan: the Magyars were easily driven back, and on
New Year’s eve the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda-Pesth. The
following day, January 1, 1849, a melancholy procession of ministers,
deputies, state officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set out
from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown of St. Stephen, the
public coffers and archives, and the printing-presses for bank-notes.
Debreczin, a town forty leagues inland, became the temporary capital.
At Buda-Pesth, Windischgrätz celebrated his triumph by holding a Bloody
Assize. To envoys from the fugitive government who asked him to state
his conditions, he only replied, “I do not treat with rebels.”
Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly succeeded by a mood of
desperation,--such a mood as made France invincible in 1792. Again did
Kossuth’s eloquence pass like the breath of life over the land; again
did his energy direct the equipment of new recruits and fill the gaps
of the regiments already in the field. Had the deputies at Debreczin
voted as they wished, they would have voted for peace; but they knew
that the majority of their countrymen would reject any peace which
Austria was likely to offer, and they were ashamed to appear less
daring than Kossuth.
The enthusiasm, we might call it the recklessness, with which the
Magyars rallied to repel invasion, became a people who counted John
Hunyádi and Francis Rakóczy among their national heroes. Thanks to
their patriotic fervor, the Hungarian cause, which seemed about to
collapse at the beginning of January, seemed about to prevail at
the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wallachs and Austrians in
Transylvania; Görgei had redeemed Northern Hungary; Klapka and
Damjanics had brought Windischgrätz to bay in the midlands.
Well had it been for Hungary if these astonishing successes had
prevented internal discord, for twofold dissensions now threatened
to sap the growing strength. From one side, the generals chafed at
being subordinate to the civilian Committee of Defense; on the other,
a large body of soldiers and of civilians were angry at the evident
drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a republic. Görgei, the
most conspicuous of the generals, led this opposition. He declared
in a manifesto that the army would fight to maintain against every
foreign enemy the Constitution granted by Ferdinand, but that they
would favor no attempt to convert the constitutional monarchy into a
republic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in their patriotism,
could not refrain from meddling; they suffered from the delusion
common to such committees, and believed that they knew better than the
trained men of war how war should be waged. They felt, too, political
responsibilities which made them all the more active; and they had, as
was natural, their favorites among the officers. Had the government
been strong, it would have cashiered Görgei; being weak, and solicitous
of conciliating so important a man, it tolerated him. But when a
government and its generals distrust each other,--as we learned in our
civil war,--conciliation can satisfy neither. If Görgei lost a battle,
his enemies charged him with lukewarmness or disobedience; he retorted
by blaming the committee for failing to support him or for breaking
in upon his plans. We need not sift the recriminations in detail: it
suffices for us to know that, from January on, Görgei and Kossuth, and
their respective partisans, worked thus at odds.
Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels had but slight effect.
The average Magyar was simply bent on avenging his long score of
oppression against Austria. He realized that his own existence
depended on that of Hungary, and to him Kossuth’s eloquence was like
a trumpet-call of duty. That in performing his duty the Magyar might
lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors, made duty doubly attractive.
In the early spring, Austria closed the way to compromise by
proclaiming a new charter for the whole Empire. This charter declared
that all the provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a common
equality, deprived of local rights, and governed by a central
administration at Vienna.
The Magyars, then, had nothing to hope. Whether they submitted to
Austria or were conquered by her, their ancient Constitution would be
blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. Accordingly, on April 14,
1849, they proclaimed the independence of Hungary, calling God and man
to witness the wrongs she had suffered from the House of Hapsburg, and
setting forth the illegality, truculence, and perfidy of Austria during
the past thirteen months. A diet was to be summoned, which should
determine the form of government that Hungary would permanently adopt;
meanwhile Kossuth was chosen president-governor, and by appointing
Görgei commander-in-chief he hoped to heal old wounds.
The moment was propitious. The Austrians had been beaten in a great
battle (at Isaszeg) on April 7; and most of the fortresses, except
Buda, had been recaptured. Görgei himself seemed satisfied. The
elated Magyars dreamed even of a swift campaign against Vienna, and
of bringing the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be acceptable
to all his subject races. But their dream, if ever attainable, was
spoiled by delay. Görgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before he
marched farther west, and only on May 21 did he succeed in storming its
citadel. By that time a new peril, more terrible than any previous,
loomed up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, had besought
Russia to help her, and the Czar, glad of an excuse for interfering,
was marshaling his troops on the Hungarian frontier.
No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset this threatened
intervention. France and England would not even recognize their
republic, although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately sympathized
with their cause. From Venice alone, the little republic round whose
neck the Austrian noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt
recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to their army nor a
florin to their purse. Desperate, but not yet willing to surrender,
the Magyars nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth proclaimed a
crusade, a levy in mass; every man to arm himself, were it only with
a scythe or a bludgeon; perpetual prayers to be offered up in the
churches; the enemy to be harassed at all places, to be hindered by
the destruction of bridges and stores, and, wherever possible, by open
fighting.
Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like this, is amazed that
any people could be roused to make that last stand. Plainly enough,
the Magyars had three soldiers against them to every one of theirs;
ammunition and victuals were failing them; their treasury was empty;
their armies could expect no reinforcements: to what end, therefore,
protract a hopeless war? Reasoning thus, we miss the secret, not only
of the revolutionists of 1848-49, but of all who have ever been
kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held dearer than life.
The Magyars would never have gone thus far,--never have felt during
that May-month the fleeting exhilaration of victory,--had they not been
fired by a passion which not disaster but death alone could quench.
The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar government held a
council of war, at which it was proposed to consolidate the various
armies, and to defeat first the Austrians coming from the west and
then the Russians coming from the north and east,--a sensible plan,
frustrated, however, by delays, some of which were unavoidable. The
Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements from Italy, and commanded
by Marshal Haynau, who came red-handed from Brescia, advanced into
Hungary, and defeated Görgei on the river Waag (June 20-21). The
Magyar government and Diet departed for the second time, in melancholy
procession, from their capital. By the middle of July one hundred
and fifty thousand Russians--eighty thousand of whom were led by the
wolfish Paskevitch--had penetrated into the heart of the country.
Inevitably, the Magyar forces would be driven in and caught between the
victorious enemies: nevertheless, they would not yet submit.
Internal discord alone tarnished the record of the last days of
the Hungarian Republic. On July 1, Kossuth removed Görgei for
insubordination, but Görgei’s officers and men protested so loudly that
Kossuth thought it discreet to reinstate him. Three weeks later, a
fraction of the Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality of
all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, and then, warned by the
rumble of hostile cannon, it dissolved forever.
For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth hurrying hither and thither
to proclaim hope where no hope was; conferring with nonplussed but
still resolute generals; dragging after him, like his shadow, those
printing-presses for bank-notes, now worth no more than blank paper.
Finally, at Arád, he resigned the presidency, and appointed Görgei
dictator with full powers. At Világos, on August 13, Görgei surrendered
his exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to Rüdiger, the Russian
general. Thus was consummated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat,
branded as Görgei’s treason, but what, to an impartial observer,
appears an inevitable act. Görgei’s course throughout the war cannot be
commended: inordinate personal ambition, not treason, was its motive;
he may have thought to play the part of Monk, but more likely he had
taken Napoleon for his model; one thing alone is certain,--he did not
intend that Kossuth should reap the glory of victory, if victory came.
In surrendering at Világos he did what every commander is justified in
doing, when further resistance could only entail fresh losses without
any hope of altering the result.
Learning the capitulation of the main army, the other generals one by
one submitted. Klapka alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn
until September 27, when hunger and an empty magazine forced him to
surrender. With the hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from
the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol of that revolution
which, bursting forth at Palermo in January, 1848, had spread through
Europe, shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in down-trodden
people the belief that a new epoch, a Golden Age of Liberty, had come.
Hopes as splendid as men ever cherished had now been shattered, and in
their stead only the bitterest memories remained; for as each people
pondered in sorrow and oppression the events of those twenty months, it
was tormented by the reflection that its own dissensions, not less than
the might of its enemies, had wrought its ruin.
Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to encourage the stray bodies
of Magyar troops to give themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary
with a severity which matched the persecutions of the French Reign
of Terror. In every city Marshal Haynau set up his shambles; in every
parish he plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confiscation,
overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar cause; death awaited the
leaders. On October 6, at Arád, fourteen generals were hanged or shot,
and that same day Count Louis Batthyányi was shot at Pesth. Görgei was
spared, thanks to the personal intervention of Czar Nicholas.
Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took refuge in Turkey. The
Sultan protected him, in spite of the threats of Russia and
Austria,--protected him because the Turkish religion forbade the
betrayal of a refugee,--but kept him for nearly two years in half
bondage. Then the Magyar hero, at the instance of the American
Congress, was permitted to embark on an American man-of-war. He came
to the United States, where he was greeted with an enthusiasm which
no other foreigner except Lafayette had stirred. He got boundless
sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum of money for prosecuting the
emancipation of Hungary; but the times were unfavorable, and the lot
of the Magyars concerned very little the rulers of European diplomacy
after 1850. Returning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation his sole aim.
He strove to interest the great powers in Hungary’s fate; he strove,
through secret emissaries, to provoke the Magyars themselves to rebel.
The former were deaf; the latter, taught by terrible experience, deemed
it folly to attack Austria again in the field. Through the persistent
and judicious political agitation led by the sagacious Francis Deák,
they achieved, in 1867, a recognition of their constitutional rights,
and a full measure of home rule.
Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be reconciled. He lived in
exile at Turin, a forlorn old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the
memories of exploits which once had amazed the world. There he died
on March 20, 1894, having survived all his contemporaries, friends
and foes alike, who had beheld the rise and splendor and eclipse
of his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of a haughty and
valiant people at one of the heroic crises of their history was his
mission. His genius, his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his
countrymen; his glory, being a part of the glory of a whole race, is
secure. That race, which Arpád led into the heart of Europe, showed,
at Kossuth’s summons, a thousand years later, that it had not lost the
traits which had once distinguished it on the shores of Lake Baikal and
along the upper waters of the Yenisei.