Part I Revolution

with a Foreword by The Duke of Northumberland.

Published by PHILIP ALLAN & CO.

Footnote 1:

A photograph of St. Stephen’s Crown (the Holy Hungarian crown) is reproduced at page 162 of Part I of this work.

Footnote 2:

A portrait of Böhm is reproduced at page 196 of Part I of this book.

Footnote 3:

Francis Rákoczi, the leader of the Kuruc rising against the Hapsburgs, in the early years of the 18th Century, a national hero, is buried in the Cathedral of Kassa. His body was transferred from Turkey to Kassa in 1907. [Transl.]

Footnote 4:

It is a common belief in Hungary (and in many other countries) that if a murderer approaches the corpse of his victim the blood will flow from the fatal wound. [Transl.]

Footnote 5:

For a further account of him _see pp. 228–229_.

Footnote 6:

The Publishers of this volume are greatly indebted to Dr. Oscar Szollosy and to the Editor of _The Anglo-Hungarian Review_ for permission to include this account of some of the chief actors in The Terror.

Footnote 7:

The People’s Commissioner for Public Education, George Lukács, was the son of a wealthy banker, and was persuaded to join the Communists by the crack-brained daughter of an extremely rich Budapest solicitor, who subsequently assisted Béla Kún and his associates to counterfeit banknotes, till finally she was thrashed publicly (in the street) with a hunting crop by an embittered ‘bourgeois.’ A portrait of Lukács is reproduced at page 106 of this volume.

A certain Ministerial Councillor, Stephen Láday, once declared emphatically to the writer of this article that Communism might be very pretty in theory, but was, in his opinion, impossible in practice. Two months later Láday became a Bolshevik People’s Commissioner.

Footnote 8:

For a portrait of Béla Kún, see vol. i., p. 160 of this work, where a further account of him is given.

Footnote 9:

See pp. 96–98.

Footnote 10:

See vol. i., p. 70.

Footnote 11:

A story which is far from improbable, though it certainly sounds like a popular anecdote, runs to the effect that, at a trial of one of the proletarian tribunals, in answer to the ‘Public Prosecutor’s’ question: ‘Where did you take the stolen articles?’ one of the persons accused of theft said, ‘To the woman in Budafok to whom you and I took that bicycle last year!’

Footnote 12:

A photograph of her is reproduced at p. 140 of this volume.

Footnote 13:

See also pp. 185–186.

Footnote 14:

There were similar detachments outside of Budapest, the same being delegated to hold the provincial towns in mortal terror, _e.g._, the ‘Fabik Detachment’ in Székesfehérvár, the ‘Gombos Terror Gang’ in Györ, etc.

Footnote 15:

Béla Kún and a large number of his fellow-Commissioners escaped to Vienna. Our efforts to obtain their extradition by Austria were fruitless; under the pressure of the Socialists the Austrian Government refused, and subsequently handed them over to the Russian Soviet authorities.

After the re-establishment of law and order, of the revolutionary criminals arrested ninety-six were condemned to death, the rest being sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Of the persons condemned to death fourteen were reprieved, eighteen (together with 400 other condemned persons) handed over—in exchange for Hungarian prisoners of war—to the Russian Soviet, while sixty-four were hanged, the latter number including Korvin, László, Schán, and Cserny.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.