Part 551

"On the 4th of March [1849] a new Imperial Charter was promulgated at Olmütz, containing many excellent provisions, but having this fatal defect, that in it Hungary was merged completely in the Austrian Empire, and all its ancient institutions obliterated. On the 14th of April the Imperial Decree was answered by the Declaration of Independence, in which the Hapsburg dynasty was proclaimed to have forfeited all right to the Hungarian throne, and to be banished for ever from the country. Kossuth was appointed Governor, and a new Ministry was chosen, under the Premiership of M. Szemere, the late Minister for Home Affairs in the Batthyány Government. For a while the national army was victorious. … But the despotic princes of Europe were now recovering from the panic that had demoralised them and their principles in 1848; the time had come for absolutism to rally its forces and reassert itself after the old fashion. Acting on the maxim that 'La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure,' the Emperor of Austria, after previous arrangement with his imperial brother in St. Petersburg, felt at liberty to disavow and ignore the arguments for constitutional government which had seemed so cogent to his predecessor. … In July the Czar's troops a second time entered Hungary, this time with no disavowal of political motives, but on the ground that His majesty, having always reserved to himself entire freedom of action whenever revolutions in neighboring States should place his own in danger, was now convinced that the internal security of his empire was menaced by what was passing and preparing in Hungary.' {1686} … In August, Gorgei, the commander-in-chief of the national army, who had been nominated Dictator in the place of Kossuth, was invested with full powers to treat for a peace, and instructed to act according to the best of his ability to save the national existence of Hungary. At Vilagós, on the 13th of August, the Hungarian army, by order of the new Dictator, laid down their arms, and surrendered—not to the Austrians, but to the Russian general Rudiger. Thanks to the united efforts of 300,000 of the flower of the Austrian and Russian troops, the Hungarian rebellion was at an end. … General Haynau presided over the Bloody Assizes of Pesth and Arad, and the long roll of Hungarian patriots condemned to death at the hands of the Austrian hangman was headed by such names as Count Batthyány and General Damyanics, the wounded leader of the 'Redcaps,' the famous student brigade. Those who escaped death found a refuge in England, America, or Turkey, whither they carried with them bitter memories of wrong and suffering inflicted, and an undying 'love for the country of their birth. Those bitter memories have happily died away, under the healing influence of time, and still more of that great work of reconciliation which a wise generosity on both sides has effected between the two countries."

_Francis Deak, Hungarian Statesman: a memoir, chapter 14._

See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1849.

HUNGARY: A. D. 1849-1850. Contemplated recognition of the revolutionary government by the United States. The Hülsemann Letter of Daniel Webster.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1850-1851.

HUNGARY: A. D. 1849-1859. Completed Emancipation of the peasantry. Restoration of pure absolutism.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1848-1859.

HUNGARY: A. D. 1856-1868. Recovery of nationality. Formation of the dual Austro-Hungarian empire.

In 1856, the Emperor, Francis Joseph, "proclaimed an amnesty against the political offenders, and in the following year he decreed the restoration of their estates, and further steps were taken to study the wishes of the Hungarians. In 1859 other concessions were made, notably as to provincial Governments in Hungary, and they were given free administration as to their educational and religious rites in the Magyar tongue. In 1860 the 'Curia Regia' were reinstated, and finally, in 1861, the whole Constitution was restored to Hungary and its dependencies, Transylvania, Croatia, and Slavonia. The Hungarian Parliament, which had been closed for so many years, reopened its gates. These concessions, however, did not satisfy the Magyars, who wanted perfect autonomy for their country. … The Hungarians refused to pay taxes, which therefore had to be collected by military aid. In 1865 the Hungarian Parliament was opened by the Emperor in person, who gave his assent to the Self-Government of Hungary, but further details had still to be arranged, and the war which broke out between Austria, Prussia and Italy in 1866 prevented these from being carried out. On the strength of the Emperor's promise to accede to the wishes of his Hungarian subjects, the Hungarians fought most bravely in Germany and in Italy for the Austrian cause, but the disorganized system that then existed in the Austrian army was the cause of their defeat, and the dissolution of the German confederation, over which Austria presided for so many years. The final result of this was that a perfect autonomy for Hungary was reinstated in 1867, and the Dual System was introduced, by which Hungary received perfect freedom and independence as to the administration of its affairs without any interference from Austria, and became, so to say, a partner in the newly-formed Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, as also described in the able 'Memoir' on Francis Deák, to which Sir Mountstuart E. Grant-Duff wrote a preface, is constituted as follows:

I. The Common Ministry for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy consists of a Minister for Foreign Affairs, for War, and for Finance.

II. In each half of the monarchy there is a separate Ministry of Worship, of Finance, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, and National Defence, headed respectively by a Minister-President of the Council.

III. The Lower House in the Austrian Reichsrath consists of 353 members, in the Hungarian Diet of 444, now chosen in both cases by direct election.

IV. The Delegations, composed respectively of sixty members from each half of the monarchy, are elected annually from amongst their parliamentary representatives of the majority in each province by the members of the two Houses of the Austrian and Hungarian Legislatures.

V. The two Delegations, who meet alternately at Vienna and Budapest, deliberate separately, their discussions being confined strictly to affairs of common interest, with regard to which the Delegations have the right to interpellate the Common Minister and to propose laws or amendments. In case of disagreement between the two Delegations the question of policy at issue is discussed by an interchange of written messages; drawn up in the official language—German or Hungarian—of the Delegation sending the message, and accompanied by an authorized translation in the language of the Delegation to which it is addressed.

VI. If, after the interchange of three successive notes, an agreement between the two bodies is not arrived at, the question is put to the vote by ballot without further debate. The Delegates, of whom in a plenary session there must be an equal number present from each Delegation, vote individually, the Emperor-King having the casting vote.

VII. By virtue of the present definition of common affairs, the cost of the diplomatic service and the army, except the Honvéds (militia), is defrayed out of the Imperial revenues, to which Hungary contributes a proportion of 30 per 100.

VIII. With reference to the former, it is stipulated that all international treaties be submitted to the two Legislatures by their respective Ministries; with reference to the latter, that whilst the appointment to the military command of the whole army, as also to that of the national force of Hungary, is in the hands of the Sovereign, the settlement of matters affecting the recruiting, length of service, mobilization, and pay of the Honvéd army (the militia) remains with the Hungarian Legislature.

{1687}

IX. Those matters which it is desirable should be subject to the same legislation, such as customs, indirect taxation, currency, etc., etc., are regulated by means of treaties, subject to the approval of the two Legislatures. In cases where the two parties are unable to come to an agreement, each retains the right to decide such questions in accordance with their own special interests.

X. In common affairs, the decisions arrived at by the Delegations (within the scope of their powers), and sanctioned by the Sovereign, become thenceforth fundamental laws; each Ministry is bound to announce them to its respective National Legislature, and is responsible for their execution.

It should be here mentioned that the late great and lamented Hungarian statesman, Deák, and also the late Count Beust, have by their personal efforts contributed a great deal to these concessions being granted. The Hungarian Parliament was reopened in 1867, and the late Count Julius Andrássy, … who escaped to England from the noose of the hangman, became its Prime Minister. … In 1868 the Emperor and Empress entered in great state the town of Buda, and were crowned with the greatest pomp with the Apostolic crown of St. Stephen."

_L. Felbermann, Hungary and its People, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _Francis Deak: a memoir, chapters 26-31._

_Count von Beust, Memoirs, volume 2, chapter 38._

See, also, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1867, and FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS: MODERN FEDERATIONS.

HUNGARY: A. D. 1866-1887. Difficulties and promises of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Its ambitions in southeastern Europe.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1887.

HUNGARY: A. D. 1894. Death of Kossuth.

Louis Kossuth, the leader of the revolutionary movement of 1848, died at Turin on the 20th of March, 1894, aged ninety-two years. He had refused to the end of his life to be reconciled to the Austro-Hungarian government, or to countenance the acceptance by the Hungarians of the dual nationality established by the constitution of 1867, and remained an exile in Italy. After his death his remains were brought to Budapest, and their burial, which took place on Sunday, April 1st, was made the occasion of a great national demonstration of respect.

HUNGARY: End--------

HUNIADES AND THE HUNGARIAN WARS WITH THE TURKS.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1442-1458; and TURKS (OTTOMANS): A. D. 1402-1451.

HUNINGEN, Battle of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER).

HUNKERS.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1845-1846.

HUNS: Start--------

HUNS, Gothic account of the.

"We have ascertained that the nation of the Huns, who surpassed all others in atrocity, came thus into being. When Filimer, fifth king of the Goths after their departure from Sweden, was entering Scythia, with his people, as we have before described, he found among them certain sorcerer-women, whom they call in their native tongue Aliorumnas (or Al-runas), whom he suspected and drove forth from the midst of his army into the wilderness. The unclean spirits that wander up and down in desert places, seeing these women, made concubines of them; and from this union sprang that most fierce people (of the Huns) who were at first little, foul, emaciated creatures, dwelling among the swamps, and possessing only the shadow of human speech by way of language. … Nations whom they would never have vanquished in fair fight fled horrified from those frightful—faces I can hardly call them, but rather—shapeless black collops of flesh, with little points instead of eyes. No hair on their cheeks or chins gives grace to adolescence or dignity to age, but deep furrowed scars instead, down the sides of their faces, show the impress of the iron which with characteristic ferocity they apply to every male child that is born among them. … They are little in stature, but lithe and active in their motions, and especially skilful in riding, broad-shouldered, good at the use of the bow and arrows, with sinewy necks, and always holding their heads high in their pride."

_Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis, translated by T. Hodgkin in Italy and Her Invaders, book 1, chapter 1._

HUNS: First appearance in Europe.

See GOTHS: A. D. 376.

HUNS: A. D. 433-453. The empire of Attila.

After driving the Goths from Dacia, the terrible Huns had halted in their march westward for something more than a generation. They were hovering, meantime, on the eastern frontiers of the empire "taking part like other barbarians in its disturbances and alliances. Emperors paid them tribute, and Roman generals kept up a politic or a questionable correspondence with them. Stilicho had detachments of Huns in the armies which fought against Alaric; the greatest Roman soldier after Stilicho,—and, like Stilicho, of barbarian parentage,—Aetius, who was to be their most formidable antagonist, had been a hostage and a messmate in their camps. … About 433, Attila, the son of Mundzukh, like Charles the Great, equally famous in history and legend, became their king. Attila was the exact prototype and forerunner of the Turkish chiefs of the house of Othman. In his profound hatred of civilized men, in his scorn of their knowledge, their arts, their habits and religion, and, in spite of this, in his systematic use of them as his secretaries and officers, in his rapacity combined with personal simplicity of life, in his insatiate and indiscriminate destructiveness, in the cunning which veiled itself under rudeness, in his extravagant arrogance, and audacious pretensions, in his sensuality, in his unscrupulous and far-reaching designs, in his ruthless cruelty joined with capricious displays of generosity, mercy, and good faith, we see the image of the irreclaimable Turkish barbarians who ten centuries later were to extinguish the civilization of [eastern?] Europe. The attraction of Attila's daring character, and his genius for the war which nomadic tribes delight in, gave him absolute ascendency over his nation, and over the Teutonic and Slavonic tribes near him. Like other conquerors of his race, he imagined and attempted an empire of ravage and desolation, a vast hunting ground and preserve, in which men and their works should supply the objects and zest of the chase."

_R. W. Church, Beginning of the Middle Ages, chapter 1._

{1688}

"He [Attila] was truly the king of kings; for his court was formed of chiefs, who, in offices of command, had learned the art of obedience. There were three brothers of the race of the Amales, all of them kings of the Ostrogoths; Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ, his principal confidant; a king of the Merovingian Franks; kings of the Burgundians, Thuringians, Rugians, and Heruli, who commanded that part of their nation which had remained at home, when the other part crossed the Rhine half a century before."

_J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 7 (volume 1)._

"The amount of abject, slavish fear which this little swarthy Kalmuck succeeded in instilling into millions of human hearts is not to be easily matched in the history of our race. Whether he had much military talent may be doubted, since the only great battle in which he figured was a complete defeat. The impression left upon us by what history records of him is that of a gigantic bully, holding in his hands powers unequalled in the world for ravage and spoliation. … Some doubt has recently been thrown on the received accounts of the wide extent of Attila's power. … The prince who felt China on his left, who threatened Persepolis, Byzantium, Ravenna in front, who ruled Denmark and its islands in his rear, and who ultimately appeared in arms on the soil of Champagne on his right, was no minor monarch, and had his empire been as deep as it was widespread, he might worthily have taken rank with Cyrus and Alexander. At the same time it is well to remember that over far the larger part of this territory Attila's can have been only an over-lordship, Teutonic, Slavonic, and Tartar chieftains of every name bearing rule under him. His own personal government, if government it can be called, may very likely have been confined nearly within the limits of the modern Hungary and Transylvania."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 2, chapter 2 (volume 2)._

"As far as we may ascertain the vague and obscure geography of Priscus, this [Attila's] capital appears to have been seated between the Danube, the Theiss [Teyss] and the Carpathian hills, in the plains of Upper Hungary, and most probably in the neighbourhood of Jazberin, Agria, or Tokay. In its origin it could be no more than an accidental camp, which, by the long and frequent residence of Attila, had insensibly swelled into a huge village."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 34._

HUNS: A. D. 441-446. Attila's attack on the Eastern Empire.

Attila's first assault upon the Roman power was directed against the Eastern Empire. The court at Constantinople had been duly obsequious to him, but he found a pretext for war. "It was pretended that the Roman bishop of Margus had surreptitiously introduced himself into the sepulchre of the Hunnic kings and stolen from it the buried treasure. The Huns immediately fell upon a Roman town during the time of a fair, and pillaged everything before them, slaying the men and carrying off the women. To all complaints from Constantinople the answer was, "The bishop, or your lives.' The emperor thought, and with reason, that to give up an innocent man to be massacred would be displeasing to Heaven, would alienate the clergy, and only appease for a moment the demands of his merciless enemy. He refused, though timidly and in vague terms. The Huns replied by scouring Pannonia, laying Sirmium, its capital, in ruins, and extending their ravages far south of the Danube to the cities of Naissa and Sardica, upon both of which they wrought the extremity of their vengeance. A truce of four years only increased their fury and aggravated its effects. The war was suddenly recommenced. This time they reached Thessaly, and renewed with a somewhat similar result the far-famed passage of Thermopylæ by the hordes of Xerxes. Two Roman armies were put to complete rout, and seventy cities levelled to the ground. Theodosius purchased the redemption of his capital by the cession of territory extending for fifteen days' journey south of the Danube, by an immediate payment of 6,000 pounds of gold, and the promise of 2,000 more as an annual tribute."

_J. G. Sheppard, Fall of Rome, lecture 4._

HUNS: A. D. 451. Attila's invasion of Gaul.

In the spring of the year 451 Attila moved the great host which he had assembled in the Hungarian plains westward toward the Rhine and the provinces of Gaul. He hesitated, it was said, between the Eastern and Western Empires as the objects of his attack. But the East had found an emperor, at last, in Marcian, who put some courage into the state,—who refused tribute to the insolent Hun and showed a willingness for war. The West, under Valentinian III. and his mother Placidia, with the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians and Franks in the heart of its provinces, seemed to offer the most inviting field of conquest. Hence Attila turned his horses and their savage riders to the West. "The kings and nations of Germany and Scythia, from the Volga perhaps to the Danube, obeyed the warlike summons of Attila. From the royal village in the plains of Hungary his standard moved towards the West, and after a march of seven or eight hundred miles he reached the conflux of the Rhine and the Neckar, where he was joined by the Franks who adhered to his ally, the elder of the sons of Clodion. … The Hercynian forest supplied materials for a bridge of boats, and the hostile myriads were poured with resistless violence into the Belgic provinces." At Metz, the Huns "involved in a promiscuous massacre the priests who served at the altar and the infants who, in the hour of danger, had been providently baptized by the bishop; the flourishing city was delivered to the flames, and a solitary chapel of St. Stephen marked the place where it formerly stood. From the Rhine and the Moselle, Attila advanced into the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine at Auxerre, and, after a long and laborious march, fixed his camp under the walls of Orleans."

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 35._

Meantime the energy of the unscrupulous but able Count Aetius, who ruled the court and commanded the resources of the Western Empire, had brought about a general combination of the barbarian forces in Gaul with those of the Romans. It included, first in importance, the Goths of the kingdom of Toulouse, under their king Theodoric, and with them the Burgundians, the Alans, a part of the Franks, and detachments of Saxons, Armoricans and other tribes. There were Goths, too, and Franks and Burgundians in the host of the Hun king. The latter laid siege to Orleans and the walls of the brave city were already crumbling under his battering rams when the banners of Aetius and Theodoric came in sight. Attila retreated beyond the Seine and took a position somewhere within the wide extent of what were anciently called the Catalaunian fields, now known as the Champagn country surrounding Chalons. There, in the early days of July, A. D. 451, was fought the great and terrible battle which rescued Europe from the all-conquering Tartar. {1689} The number of the slain, according to one chronicler, was 162,000; according to others 300,000. Neither army could claim a victory; both feared to renew the engagement. The Goths, whose king Theodoric was slain, withdrew in one direction, to their own territory; the Huns retreated in the other direction and quitted Gaul forever. The wily Roman, Aetins, was probably best satisfied with a result which crippled both Goth and Hun. As for the battle, its latest historian says: "Posterity has chosen to call it the battle of Chalons, but there is good reason to think that it was fought fifty miles distant from Chalons-sur-Marne, and that it would be more correctly named the battle of Troyes, or, to speak with complete accuracy, the battle of Mery-sur-Seine."

_T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, book 2, chapter 3 (volume 2)._

"It was during the retreat from Orleans that a Christian hermit is reported to have approached the Hunnish king, and said to him, 'Thou art the Scourge of God for the chastisement of Christians.' Attila instantly assumed this new title of terror, which thenceforth became the appellation by which he was most widely and most fearfully known."

_Sir E. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 6._

HUNS: A. D. 452. Attila's invasion of Italy.