CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE RACES--APRIL TO JUNE, 1848.

Apparent unanimity between races of Austrian Empire in the March risings.--Unreality of this appearance.--Local aspirations.--The Serbs of Buda-Pesth.--The Magyar politics in Pesth.--The first Hungarian Ministry.--Szemere's Press Law and its failure.--The answer of the Ministry to the Serb petition.--Position and History of the Serbs in Hungary.--Treatment by Magyars and Austrian Kings.--Growth of Serb literature.--The deputations from Neusatz and Carlowitz.--Velika-Kikinda.--Position and character of Rajaciç.--Of Stratimiroviç.--The summoning of the Serb Assembly.--Croatian movement revived.--The Croats and the "twelve points."--Joseph Jellaciç.--Pillersdorf and the Bohemian deputation.--The meeting at the Sophien-Insel.--The second petition.--The Germans of Bohemia and Moravia.--Opening of the Vor-Parlament at Frankfort.--Blum's influence.--Struve's proposals and their effect.--The Slavonic question at Frankfort.--The Polish phase of it.--The Bohemian question evaded by the Vor-Parlament.--The Committee of Fifty and Palacky.--The discussion between the National Committees in Prague.--Schilling's insults.--The appeal to the Austrian Government and its failure.--The summons of the Slavonic Congress.--The difficulties in Vienna.--The April Constitution.--The Galician movement.--The rising of May 15 and the flight of the Emperor.--Effect of the May movement on Bohemian feeling--on Hungarian feeling.--The Serb meeting of May 13.--The Roumanian meeting of May 15.--The Saxon opposition to the Union.--The alliance between the Magyars and the Szekler.--The fall of Transylvanian independence.--The first collision with the Roumanians.--Their position, and character of their rising.--Alliance between Croats and Serbs.--The attack on Carlowitz of June 11.--The Slavonic Congress at Prague.--The difficulties in Prague.--Windischgrätz and the Town Council.--The quarrel between the students of Prague and the students of Vienna.--The Slavonic petition.--The rising of June 12.--The fall of Prague and its consequences.

Few points were more remarkable in the March Risings of 1848 than the apparent reconciliation between those champions of freedom who had been separated from each other by antagonism of race. Gaj and his friends had hastened to Vienna to join in the general congratulations to that city on its newly won freedom. The Slavonic students of Prague had been equally sympathetic; and members of the different races of Hungary had expressed their satisfaction in the successes of Kossuth. But this sudden union was necessarily short-lived; for it sprang from a hope which could not be realized; the hope, namely, that the Germans and Magyars would join in extending to each of the Slavonic races of the Empire those separate national freedoms which those two great ruling races had secured for themselves. Thus proposals soon began to be made for the formation of a district which was to be called Slovenia, after the Slovenes who inhabited the province of Krain, and other south-western provinces of the Austrian Empire. At the same time, the Slovaks of North Hungary desired to be formed into a separate province, in which they could freely use the Slovak language and profess the Lutheran creed, undisturbed by Magyar language or Magyar Calvinism. Lastly, on March 15, Ivan Kukuljeviç, who, next to Gaj, was the most distinguished of the Croatian patriots, carried, in the Agram Assembly, an address to the Emperor, asking him to summon the old parliament of the three kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. But, though all these demands contained within them the seeds of future quarrels, the first actual outbreak was not to come either from Slovenes, Slovaks, or Croats. The first token of the "rift within the lute," which, if it could not "make the music" of Liberty "mute," would at least weaken its sound and introduce discord into its harmony, showed itself in connexion with a branch of the Slavonic race to which little allusion has yet been made.

Those who have visited Buda-Pesth will remember how, when they had left the modern magnificence of Pesth and crossed the suspension-bridge which joins it with Buda, they have come to a pause at the foot of the steep rock which confronts them. Then, if, instead of ascending to the fortress of Buda, they turned southwards along the shores of the Danube, in a short time they would have found themselves in a district in complete contrast with the rest of the capital, where an air of poverty, hardly found elsewhere in the town, is combined with an originality and picturesqueness of decoration which is neither German nor Magyar. Little cottages, coloured yellow, blue, or white, are built up against the rock in all kinds of irregular ways; in some places the rooms are below the street, and the gay appearance is increased by signs outside the shops, showing what articles can be procured there. The bright handkerchiefs on the heads of the women, and the gay colours worn by both sexes, give a somewhat Eastern aspect to the streets and market-place. Such is the Raitzenstadt, the quarter of the Serbs, long looked down upon by their Magyar countrymen. There, on March 17, the representatives of about a hundred districts of the neighbourhood gathered to prepare a petition for leave to use their national language in national affairs. This roused the fierce opposition of the Magyar youth of Pesth; and the Committee of Safety which had just been formed found itself unable to protect the Serbs from violence. If, indeed, the spirit of Kossuth's speech of March 3 had been still triumphant, compromises might have been found which would have hindered the claims of the Serbs from provoking actual war. But the sudden outburst of statesmanlike feeling which produced that speech was not of long duration; and, even if Kossuth had desired to conciliate the subject-races of Hungary, there were those at his back who would never have consented to such tolerance.

The fiery youth of Pesth supplied an element to the Magyar revolution very different from that which generally found expression in the Diet at Presburg; and this element had been so necessary to Kossuth's purposes that it was impossible to disregard its influence. Three days before the Serb meeting a great gathering had been held in a café at Pesth, which had been followed on the 15th by a march of the Hungarian students, headed by the poet Petöfy, to the Town Council, to demand the concession of twelve points. Some of these points were being secured on that very day by the deputation which had gone to Vienna; others were already conceded in principle by the Diet at Presburg; one of them, the proposal for the union of Transylvania with Hungary, was to be the seed of future mischief, but was, at present, acceptable to all parties of the Magyars. It was not so much, then, by political theories that the youth of Pesth were distinguished from the quieter spirits of Presburg; it was rather the fiery manner in which they made their demands, and the dogmatic intolerance with which they insisted on particular formulas.

Moreover, the Presburg policy, if one may so call it, was weakened in its effect by that attempt to reconcile hopeless opposites which is the great difficulty of all moderate parties. Count Louis Batthyanyi, when he was appointed as the first responsible Minister of Hungary, thought himself bound to form his Ministry, so far as possible, by a combination of the different representatives of the rival parties; and he not only hoped to find a basis for common action between the growing Conservatism of Szechenyi and the growing Radicalism of Kossuth, but he even gave a place in his Ministry to Count Esterhazy, who sympathized to some extent with the Camarilla at Vienna. Baron Eötvös, who had been the champion of centralization when Kossuth was arguing for County Government, was also a member of this Ministry; while Meszaros, the War Minister, might be supposed to combine opposite principles in his own person; for, while he had contributed to Kossuth's paper, the "Pesti Hirlap," his last public action had been to serve under Radetzky in his attempt to suppress the liberties of Milan. Batthyanyi, indeed, hoped that, by introducing Deak into the Ministry, he should secure an influence which should reconcile these various incongruous elements; but such a task was beyond even Deak's powers. By his honourable abstention from the Diet of 1843, he had deprived himself of his former influence; and, though he accepted the place offered him by Batthyanyi, and honestly tried to work with his different colleagues, yet, as the movement became more and more revolutionary, he fell further into the background.

The weakness of this Coalition Ministry was first brought into prominence by Bartholomaus Szemere, a cold, hard man, who had had little previous influence on politics. He was appointed to draw up the new regulations with regard to freedom of the Press; and produced a law which was of so reactionary a character that the students of the Pesth University burnt it publicly in front of the Town Hall, and sent a deputation to the Diet to entreat them to repeal the law and to change the seat of government to Pesth. Batthyanyi consented to the repeal of the law; but rejected, for a time, the other proposal of the students; and the Ministry remained at Presburg, weakened by the sense that the strongest element of Magyar feeling was centred in Kossuth and the Pesth party, and that this feeling would eventually overpower the more moderate patriots. Under these circumstances it was natural that the weak Ministry at Presburg should sacrifice to their fiery opponents the claims of those races with which neither party had any deep sympathy; and when, on March 24, the Serb petition came before the Ministry, they answered that the Hungarians would not endure that any nationality except the Hungarian should exist in Hungary.

But the Serbs of the Raitzenstadt were but the feeble representatives of a much more powerful body, which was scattered over various parts of Hungary and found its chief centre in the province of Slavonia. It was during the sixteenth century that the great immigration of the Serbs into Hungary had taken place. All the important history of this race had been connected with their struggle against the Turks; and it was as fugitives from Turkish tyranny that they took refuge in Hungary. They arrived just about the time when Hungary had accepted the rule of the House of Austria, and, finding that Ferdinand I. was more zealous than his Magyar subjects in resistance to the Turks, and that some of the Magyars were even willing to call in the Turks to their assistance, the Serbs naturally became the champions of the House of Austria against the Magyars. As a reward for this loyalty, the Austrian rulers granted various privileges to their new subjects; and, in 1690, Leopold I. gave special invitation to the Serbs to come over from the Turkish provinces and to settle in the district assigned to them. To those who lived in that district was granted the right of choosing the Patriarch of their own Church, their own Voyvode, or military leader, and their own magistrates; while those living actually on the frontier were placed under a special military government which was administered from Vienna, and were rewarded for their military services by freedom from taxation. The Magyars, indeed, did not abandon the hope of drawing the Serbs to their side; and when, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rakoczi[11] attempted to set up an independent principality in Transylvania, he appealed to the Serbs to assist him in his attempt. But their gratitude to the House of Austria, strengthened in this instance by a dislike to the Calvinism of Rakoczi, kept them firm in their championship of the Austrian cause.

The House of Austria, on the other hand, showed as little gratitude to the Serbs in the early part of the eighteenth century as they did to the Magyars in the nineteenth; and Joseph I. and Charles VI. steadily violated the promises which had been made by Leopold. The concession of religious liberty was found to be not inconsistent with a vigorous Jesuit propaganda for the crushing out of the Greek faith. A small émeute in a Serb town gave excuse for further interferences with liberty; and, as the Magyars gained in strength, Charles VI. resorted to the mean device of submitting to the Diet of Presburg the list of privileges which he had granted to the Serbs, and asking if the Diet would be pleased to approve them; and, on receiving the refusal which he had expected, he declared that he could not uphold these privileges against the wish of the Hungarian Diet. The Serbs in Hungary were, in many cases, reduced to the position of serfs; the districts of the Banat and Batschka, which had formed part of the Serb settlement, were given up to Hungary in 1741 by Maria Theresa; the Voyvodeschaft was abolished, and so, at a later period, was the Patriarchate also. Maria Theresa, indeed, would have desired to redress some of the grievances of the Serbs; but the need which she felt for the help of the Magyars, first in the War of Succession, and afterwards in the Seven Years' War, compelled her to disregard the interests of the subject-races when they clashed with those of her more powerful allies. In spite, therefore, of several insurrections and continual meetings of Congresses, the Serbs failed to recover their former privileges; and a few concessions which were made to them by Leopold II. were speedily withdrawn by Francis.

During the latter part of the eighteenth century a new hope came to the Serbs in the growing development of their national literature. A school was founded at Carlowitz by the Patriarch of the Serbs; printing-presses were set up, and writers were gradually produced by this education, one of whom, named Obradoviç, composed the first essay in the Serb dialect: while Karadziç, another writer, gathered up the old songs, proverbs, and stories of the country and tried to reduce the dialect into grammatical forms. The movement of Szaffarik and Kollar in North Hungary gave new hopes to the Serbs and other Slavs in the development of their literature; and it was whilst this feeling was growing that Gaj put forward his plan for the Illyrian language. Gaj's movement was, to some extent, an apple of discord among the Serb national party; for, while some of them were eager to join in any union of the Slavs, many of the more powerful of the clergy objected altogether to the abandonment of the old Cyrillic alphabet which had been introduced by the Bishops Cyril and Methodius, who converted the Slavs to Christianity. And while, as was mentioned in a former chapter, Gaj was suspected by the Roman Catholics of wishing to swamp them in a union with the members of the Greek Church, the Greek clergy among the Serbs, on the other hand, feared a movement which seemed likely to have its centre in the Roman Catholic province of Croatia. Thus there had grown up two centres of the Serb movement in two towns situated within a few miles of each other. Neusatz, or Novi Sad, the most important town of Slavonia, was the centre of the literary and trading part of the Serb community; and Carlowitz, or Karlovci, was the head-quarters of the Metropolitan, and the centre of the clerical section of the Serb national party.

It was from Neusatz, then, that, on April 8, 1848, a deputation arrived at Presburg and declared that, while they were in sympathy with the March movement, and had no desire to separate from Hungary, they yet wished for protection for their national language and customs. They therefore demanded the re-establishment of the Patriarchal dignity and of the office of Voyvode; requesting, further, that the power of the latter officer should be extended over the territories which the Serbs had reconquered from the Turks. Kossuth answered that the Magyars would do their best to respect national feeling, and to give the Serbs a share in the freedom which the Magyars had won; but that only the Magyar language could bind the different nationalities together. Batthyanyi echoed the words of Kossuth in an even stronger form. "Then," the Serbs answered, "we must look for recognition elsewhere than at Presburg." "In that case," answered Kossuth, "the sword must decide." "The Serbs," retorted one of the deputation, "were never afraid of that." And so the glove was thrown down. A few days later came a deputation from Carlowitz with the same object; for the clergy, however little sympathy they might feel with Gaj's movement, feared, as heartily as the citizens of Neusatz could do, the interference of the Magyars with Serb independence. The Magyars seem to have learned already the tyrannical arts of Metternich; for they met the petition of the clergy with the threat that they would extend to the Roumanians the liberties granted to the Serbs; and they were, no doubt, proportionately disappointed when the deputation answered that they were perfectly ready to share their rights with the Roumanians.

The quarrel thus begun soon led to an actual outbreak. In the town of Velika-Kikinda, in the Banat, there had arisen one of those disturbances which are the natural marks of a revolutionary period. The peasantry, excited by the changes in their position, had begun to expect still further advantages. A worthless adventurer had become a candidate for one of the village judgeships, and had promised that, if elected, he would recover for the peasantry, without compensation to the present possessors, all the lands that their lords had taken from them. He was elected, but was, of course, unable to carry out his promises; and the disappointed peasantry rose in indignation and made a riot. The soldiers were called out to suppress the movement, but were repelled and disarmed; the magistrates' houses were broken open, and two of them were killed. Thereupon the Magyars sent down a Commissioner to inquire into the riot; the people were ready to surrender the murderers to justice; but the Commissioners seized the opportunity to declare that all the Serb villages in the neighbourhood were concerned in a communistic rising; and, in consequence, they placed them under martial law.

The Serbs now despaired of getting any justice from the Magyars, and determined to appeal from them to the Emperor. They desired, however, still to act legally; and they therefore resolved that the petition to the Emperor should be drawn up by an Assembly which had been convoked in a legal manner. The only official leader to whom they could appeal was their Metropolitan, Rajaciç. He was an old man, and unwilling to bestir himself in politics. He hesitated, therefore, to comply with the request of his countrymen; but a man of more determined spirit was ready to take the lead among the Serbs. This was George Stratimiroviç, one of those erratic characters who add picturesqueness to a revolutionary movement. He came from a Serb family which had settled in Albania; but he had been brought up in Vienna in a military school, and had entered the Austrian Army, which he had been compelled to leave on account of an elopement. Since that time he had started a popular journal, and had joined in the Serb deputation to the Hungarian Diet. His fiery and determined character had attracted the more vigorous politicians among the Serbs; and, though only twenty-six years of age, he was chosen President of the National Serb Committee which was now being formed. The impulse given to the movement by Stratimiroviç was further quickened by the alarm which was roused among the Serbs by the appointment of a new Governor to the fortress of Peterwardein, which overlooked Neusatz. This decided the National Committee to act at once; and, gathering together the Serbs from those other provinces of Hungary which had once been under their rule, they organized in Neusatz a deputation which was to rouse Rajaciç to a sense of his duty. Along the road to Carlowitz they marched with banners and flags, singing the old national airs, and telling of the exploits of Voyvodes and Patriarchs who had saved their country in former times. Rajaciç was greatly impressed by this deputation; and, after notifying his decision to the Count Palatine, as the legal ruler of Hungary, he summoned the Assembly to meet on the 13th of May.

In the meantime, the attitude of the Croatians was alarming the Hungarian Diet. As mentioned above, they had determined from the first to claim a separate Assembly for Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, and also a separate national guard. Kossuth and some of his friends seemed more disposed, at this time, to make concessions to the Croats than to the Serbs. But the bitter struggles of 1843 to 1846 had destroyed the hope of smoothing over the breach with soft words; and, even while Kossuth was promising to sanction the use of the Croatian language in Croatian affairs and to protect their nationality, he was at the same time denouncing their separatist tendencies as shown in their desire for a separate Assembly. The Croatians, on their part, resented fiercely the visit of certain youths from Pesth, who came to demand their acceptance of the "twelve points." The growing sympathy between the different subject-races of Hungary had led the Croats to protest against the proposal to absorb Transylvania in Hungary. The question of the abolition of the forced labour of the peasants, and of the introduction of peasant proprietorship, was complicated in Croatia by the existence of village communities which managed the land on the old tribal system; and therefore the Croats maintained that it was impossible to pass the same land laws for Hungary and for Croatia. The question of religious equality was connected in the minds of the Croats with the fear of an invasion by Magyar Protestants to denationalize Croatia. But the great cause of the Croatian dislike to the "twelve points" lay not so much in their objection to any particular reform as in their resentment at the arrogant attempt to thrust upon them whole-sale formulas concocted at Buda-Pesth. On the other hand, the Magyars considered that they had a special grievance, both against the Croats and against the Emperor, in the sanction which Ferdinand had given on March 23, without waiting for Magyar approval, to the election of Joseph Jellaciç as Ban of Croatia. Jellaciç was colonel in one of the regiments stationed on that military frontier which was specially under the control of Vienna; and he was chiefly known for his share in a not very successful campaign in Bosnia; while rumour connected his appointment with the favour of the Archduchess Sophia. This appointment, therefore, was doubly distasteful to the Hungarian Diet, as being at once an exercise of court influence and an assertion of the independence of Croatia against the power of the Magyars.

But while these various causes were working together to undo the harmony which had been established in the beginning of March, another race struggle was coming to a head, in a different part of the Austrian Empire, which was to have as vital an effect on the history of that Empire as any produced by the struggle between the Magyars and the subject-races of Hungary. We left the Bohemian deputation enjoying their welcome from Ferdinand and Kolowrat in Vienna, and sending happy messages to their fellow citizens in Prague; and on March 24 Pillersdorf, who was now the most important Minister at Vienna, announced the concession by the Emperor of most of the demands of the people of Prague. There were, however, three exceptions on very vital points. The Emperor declared that the equalization of nationalities was already secured by a previous ordinance, and therefore needed no new legislation; that the special law court for Bohemia, which the petitioners wished to see established in Prague, must be left to the consideration of the Minister of Justice; and that the proposal to reunite Moravia and Silesia to Bohemia must be decided by the local Assemblies of the respective provinces.

Some of the quieter citizens of Prague were willing to accept this answer; but the more determined patriots called upon their friends to attend a meeting on the Sophien-Insel, a green island which lies just below the Franzensbrücke in Prague, and which is used by the citizens as a great place for holiday gatherings. Here the more vigorous spirits of Prague uttered their complaints against the Emperor's answer. They pointed out that the local Estates, to which Ferdinand wished to refer some of the questions submitted to him, were mediæval bodies, having no real representative character; and that only an assembly freely elected by the whole people would be competent to decide on these questions; that, as to the ordinance to which the Emperor referred for securing equality between Bohemians and Germans, that ordinance had ceased for two hundred years to have any effect; and that a law passed in a formal manner was therefore necessary as a guarantee for the desired equality; while with regard to the question of the union between Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, the claim for that union rested on the historical, national, and geographical connections between those lands. The petitioners, accompanied by the national guard, then marched to the house of the Governor of Bohemia, and induced him to sign their new petition. On April 8 Ferdinand answered this petition in a letter, promising complete equality between the German and Bohemian languages in all questions of State Administration and public instruction. He further promised that a Bohemian Assembly should be shortly elected on the broadest basis of electoral qualifications, and should have the power of deciding on all the internal affairs of Bohemia. Responsible central boards were to be set up; and the new Assembly was to consider the question of the establishment of independent district law courts, and the abolition of the old privileged tribunals; while the question of the union between Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia was to be decided by a general Assembly, in which all three provinces would be represented. Public offices and legal boards in Bohemia were to be filled exclusively by men who knew both the German and Bohemian languages; and the Minister of Public Instruction was to make provision for the thorough education of Bohemian and German teachers.

There seemed to be nothing in these concessions which was likely to irritate either the German or the Bohemian party; but the work of Germanizing Bohemia, so ruthlessly inaugurated by Ferdinand II. after the Battle of the White Hill in 1620, could not be entirely undone by the March insurrection of 1848. Several towns in Bohemia had been completely Germanized, and they looked with the greatest suspicion on the movement for restoring the Bohemian language to its natural place as an educational and literary power; while they regarded, with hardly less suspicion, any attempt to weaken the hold of Vienna on Prague, or to restore in any degree a Bohemian national life. The towns of Saatz and Reichenberg, particularly, seem to have retained the German impress most thoroughly, and were extremely jealous of the claim of Prague to take the lead in a Bohemian movement. In Moravia the German party were able to appeal to some feeling of provincial independence against the absorption of that province in Bohemia; while the Germans who had been born in Bohemia, but who had subsequently settled in Vienna, naturally caught the infection of that intense German feeling which connected itself with the March movement in Lower Austria. It must not be supposed, however, that this division of feeling ran strictly parallel with the lines of hereditary descent. Men of undoubtedly German name and German origin had accepted heartily the language and traditions of the conquered people; while names that were as certainly Slavonic were found among the leaders of the German party. Another element of confusion of the party lines arose from the change which had come over the religious feelings of the two races respectively. In Prague at any rate, especially among the aristocracy, the championship of that cause of Bohemian independence which had been dear to the followers of John Huss, and to the subjects of the Winter King, was often connected in 1848 with strong Roman Catholic sympathies. This irregularity in the division of parties might have been expected to soften the bitterness of the growing antagonisms; and, if the discussion of the question at issue had been confined to the Germans and Bohemians of the Austrian Empire, there seems some reason to hope that, under freer institutions, the bitterness of local and national divisions might have been weakened, and a satisfactory solution of the claims of the different races might have been arrived at.

But a new element of discord was now to be introduced into the struggle; and the great movement for the unity and freedom of Germany became for a time a source of tyranny, and a new and more fatal cause of division between the races of the Western half of the Austrian Empire. This collision is the more to be regretted because, until its occurrence, the leaders of the German movement had exhibited the same dignity and moderation of temper which had been shown in the early phases of the Bohemian movement. On March 31, the very day of the meeting in the Sophien-Insel, the representatives of the German nation arrived in Frankfort, to open that Preparatory Parliament which was to be the first step towards German unity. One who saw this opening scene has thus described it:--"Under a wavy sea of German flags, through a crowd of green trees of freedom, covered with flowers and crowns, walked the members of the Preparatory Parliament. They were surrounded and accompanied by thousands of excited women, as they went from the Imperial Hall of the Roman Emperors to their work in that Church of St. Paul, which from thenceforth for nearly a year would contain the best men of Germany, the holiest hopes of the nation."

Nor were their early efforts unworthy of the nation whom they represented; for it seemed likely that the wisest men would be able to get their due influence in the Assembly. And this was the more remarkable, because the ease with which they had accomplished the first steps of their work seems to have led many of the Assembly to fear that there was some deeper plot in the background; and both in the city and among the members of the Assembly a rumour spread that troops were on the march to put down their meeting. A panic seized the Deputies, and bitter reproaches were interchanged. Violence seemed likely to follow, when Robert Blum came forward to reconcile the opposing factions. "Gentlemen," said he, "from whence shall we get freedom, if we do not maintain it in our dealings with each other, in our most intimate circle?" He went on then to point out, that the immediate causes of quarrel were mere matters of form and not of principle; and that it was the duty of the Assembly to maintain the reputation of the German people for calm decision. For any tumults that were made in that Parliament would be settled out of doors not by shouts, but by fists, and perhaps by other weapons. "We will first," he continued, "reverence the law which we ourselves have made, to which we voluntarily submit. If we do that, gentlemen, then not only will the hearts of our people beat in response to us, but other nations too will stretch out their arms in brotherly love to the hitherto scorned and despised Germans, and will greet in the first representative body, which has come here, the full-grown true men, who are as capable of obtaining freedom as they have shown themselves worthy of it." The influence of his clear voice, powerful figure, and determined manner added to the natural effect of his eloquence in bringing the Assembly to a wiser state of mind.[12] Another sign of the power which these men showed, of responding to appeals which were addressed to their higher instincts, was given in answer to one of the Baden representatives, who called on them to accept as their fundamental maxim that "Where the Lord does not build with us, there we build in vain." At these words all the Assembly rose to their feet.

The same triumph of gentle and moderating influences was shown in their reception of a programme presented to them by Struve on behalf of the Committee of Seven. This programme contained fifteen propositions, in which the desire for liberty and national life which animated all sections of the Assembly was combined with Republican aspirations, so strong among the Baden leaders, and with those Socialistic proposals which were as yet entirely in the background of German politics. Thus, for instance, the list begins with a proposal for the amalgamation of the army with the Civic Guard, in order to give a really national character to the army; while another clause proposes equality of faiths, freedom of association, and the right of communities to choose their own clergy and their own burgomasters. On the other hand, the 12th clause aims at the settlement of the misunderstandings between labour and capital by a special Ministry of Labour, which should check usury, protect workmen, and secure them a share in the profits of their work; while the 15th clause proposes the abolition of hereditary monarchies, and the introduction into Germany of a Federal Republic on the model of the United States of America. This medley of various ideas which Hecker and Struve desired to force upon the Assembly was finally referred to a Committee, which in the end would sift out what was practicable and embody it in a law. Even in the burning question of the relations between the Frankfort Parliament and their antiquated rival the Bundestag, Blum's influence was used in moderating the violence of the disputes between those who wished to drive the older institution to extremities and those who wished to make for it a golden bridge by which it could pass naturally into greater harmony with modern ideas.

So far, then, the German national movement had, on the whole, been guided wisely and moderately; but when the discussions began about the basis of the election of the future Assembly there quickly appeared that German national arrogance which was destined to inflame to so intolerable an extent the antagonism of feeling between the rival races in Bohemia. It was, indeed, unavoidable that the German movement in Austria should be met by some expression of friendliness and some attempt at common action on the part of the Frankfort Parliament; but the desire to welcome all Germans into the bosom of the newly-united Germany became at once complicated with the question of the best way of dealing with those districts where Slavs and Germans were so closely mixed together. This question, indeed, would in all probability have been summarily answered by the German Parliament in favour of absolute German supremacy and of the absorption of Bohemia in Germany; but the Slavonic question in the South could not be considered apart from that other phase of it, which was concerned with the mutual relation between Poles and Germans in the Polish districts of the Kingdom of Prussia. Even the most extreme champions of German supremacy were influenced in their decision of this _North_ Slavonic question by their desire to restore an independent Poland as a bulwark against Russian oppression; and they could not deny that the claims of the Poles to the possession of Posen, at any rate, were as justifiable morally and historically as their claims to that part of their country which had been absorbed by Russia. They were desirous, therefore, of making concessions to Slavonic feeling in Posen; and this desire was increased by the connection which Mieroslawsky had established between the struggle for Polish freedom in Posen and that for German freedom in other parts of Prussia. Under these circumstances they could not wholly disregard in Bohemia the feeling which they humoured in Posen; and thus it came to pass that the Preparatory Parliament, unwilling either to abandon German supremacy or to violate directly the principle of unity and autonomy of race, came to the conclusion so common to men under similar difficulties, to throw the burden of the decision on others. They therefore passed a vague resolution which might be differently interpreted by different readers, while they left the practical decision of the question to the Committee of Fifty which was to govern Germany from the dissolution of the Preparatory Parliament on April 4 till the meeting of the Constituent Assembly on May 8.

It was this Committee, therefore, which undertook the decision of the relations to be established between Bohemia and the new free Germany. The new body proved bolder than the Preparatory Parliament; for it took a step which, though it may have been intended in a conciliatory spirit, yet involved the distinct assertion of the claim to treat Bohemia as part of Germany. They invited the Bohemian historian Palacky to join with them in their deliberations, and thus to sanction the proposal that Bohemia should send representatives to the German Parliament. Palacky answered by a courteous but firm refusal of the proposal, based partly on the grounds of previous history, partly on the needs of Bohemia, and partly on the necessity of an independent Austrian Empire to the safety and freedom of Europe. He pointed out that the supposed union between Bohemia and Germany had been merely an alliance of princes, never of peoples, and that even the Bohemian Estates had never recognized it. He urged that Bohemia had the same right to independence which was claimed by Germany; but that both would suffer if extraneous elements were introduced into Germany. He urged that an independent Austria was necessary as a barrier against Russia, but that Germany could be united only by a Republican Government; and, therefore, Austria, which must necessarily remain an Empire, could not consent to a close union with Germany without breaking to pieces.

In spite, however, of this rebuff, the German leaders at Frankfort were so eager to secure their purpose in this matter that they sent down messengers to Prague to confer with the Bohemian National Committee. A long discussion ensued, turning partly on the independence of the Austrian State, partly on the nationality of Bohemia. The Bohemians urged that the Germans were endeavouring to force upon them traditions which they had rejected for themselves; that the Frankfort Parliament had repudiated the old Bund on account of its unrepresentative character; and yet they demanded that Bohemia should recognise a union which rested on the arrangements which had been destroyed, a union about which the Bohemians had never been consulted as a nation. The Germans, on their side, attempted to advance certain arguments of expediency in favour of a closer union between Bohemia and Germany. But a certain Dr. Schilling, who does not seem to have been one of the original messengers from Frankfort, declared, with brutal frankness, the real grounds of the German proposal. If Austria did not become German, he said, the Germans of Austria would not remain Austrian. The five million Germans in Austria would not stay to be oppressed by the twelve million Slavs. The freedom and culture of Bohemia was, he declared, entirely German. The idea of freedom could not be found among the Slavs; and it was therefore necessary, in the general interests of freedom, that Bohemia should be absorbed in Germany.

Palacky bitterly thanked Schilling for the frankness of his speech; and expressed his regret at hearing that the Germans would not stay where they could not rule, and where they were obliged to be on an equality with others; while another of the Bohemians exclaimed that the Bohemians had shown their love of liberty by their resistance to the attempts to Germanize them. But Schilling seemed entirely unable to appreciate the feelings of his opponents; and, with a naïve contempt for logic, he declared that, _because_ Nationality was just now the leading idea of the Peoples, _therefore_ all the Slavs who belonged to the German Bund must be absorbed in Germany! Kuranda, the former champion of Viennese liberty, tried to soften the effect of Schilling's insults. He abandoned any claim based on the old German Bund, and declared that the Assembly at Frankfort was not so much a German Parliament as a Congress of Peoples, a beginning of the union of humanity. But this ingenious change of front could not destroy the effect of Schilling's words; and perhaps the Bohemians could not understand why a Congress of the Peoples should find its centre at Frankfort any more than at Prague.

But though the Bohemians had failed to convince the German Committee that Bohemia had as much right as Germany to a separate existence, they still hoped that the Austrian Government would protect them from an attack which seemed directed both against their national rights and against the integrity of the Austrian Empire. So they despatched to the Minister of the Interior a protest against the proposal to hold elections for the Frankfort Parliament in Bohemia. Such elections, they declared, would lead to a breach of the peace of the country, to Communistic and Republican agitations, and to attempts to break up the Austrian Empire. The Bohemian Assembly, they urged, would disavow the legal right of such representatives when they were elected; and thus any really satisfactory alliance between Austria and Germany would be hindered by this attempt. The Ministers in Vienna were, no doubt, troubled in their mind about this question of the relations between Germans and Bohemians. On the one hand, they desired to conciliate a people whose national interests led them to seek protection in a union with the rest of the Austrian Empire. But, on the other hand, they felt it difficult to disregard the intense German feeling which was growing in Vienna, and which was shared by important towns in Bohemia. Therefore, after, no doubt, considerable deliberation, the Ministry resolved to announce to the Bohemians that they might either vote for the representatives in the Frankfort Parliament or abstain from voting, as seemed best to them. This seems, of all conclusions, the most unreasonable which could have been arrived at. The union with Germany might or might not be defensible; but it was obviously a step which must be taken by the whole nation or by none. Of all possible political arrangements, none could be more intolerable than the permission to certain citizens of a country to retain their civil rights and residence in that country, and at the same time to be free to claim, _according to their own fancy_, the special protection secured by citizenship in another State.

The National Committee of Prague, finding that the Government at Vienna were unable or unwilling to protect them, resolved on stronger measures of self protection; and on May 1 they issued an appeal to all the Slavs of Austria to meet on the 31st of the same month in Prague, to protest against the desire of the Frankfort Parliament to absorb Austria in Germany. This appeal was signed by Count Joseph Matthias Thun, whose relative, Count Leo Thun, had taken an active part in forming the National Committee; by Count Deym, who had headed the first deputation to Vienna; by Palacky and his son-in-law Dr. Rieger; by the philologer Szaffarik, and by less well known men. But at the same time the Bohemian leaders were most anxious to try to maintain the connection with Austria and to observe a strictly deferential attitude towards the Emperor. They therefore appealed again to the Emperor and his Ministers to withdraw the indirect sanction which they had given to the proposed Bohemian elections to the Frankfort Parliament. They pointed out that Austria had never belonged, in regard to most of her provinces, to the German Bund; and that the question of whether or no Bohemia should join herself to Germany was clearly one of those internal questions with reference to which she had been promised the right of decision. They further urged that the Emperor had acted on a different line with regard to the union between Moravia and Bohemia; and although the claim for this latter union rested on old treaties and laws, he had decided that it should only be restored by a vote of the respective provincial Assemblies, and the Bohemians had been perfectly willing to accept a compromise on the subject. How much more reasonable then was it that the Bohemians should claim the right of deciding on the question of an entirely new relation between their country and Germany? Again they warned him of the violence which might be the consequence of such elections; and they entreated him to consider also that any attempt on the part of the Frankfort Parliament to make a Constitution for all the lands of the Bund, would be a violation of the independence of the Emperor of Austria and of all his subjects. This last argument might, at an earlier stage, have produced an effect on some at least of the Ministers to whom it was addressed; for they had already announced that Austria could not be bound by the decisions of the Frankfort Parliament. But affairs in Vienna were at this time hastening towards a change, which was materially to affect the relations of that city with the other parts of the Empire.

The Ministry, which had been formed after the fall of Metternich, was little likely to satisfy the hopes of the reformers. Kolowrat and Kübeck, who had been supposed to be rather less illiberal than Metternich, but who had worked with him in most of his schemes, were prominent in this Ministry; and another member of it was that Ficquelmont who had hoped to pacify Milan by help of dancers and actresses. Only one member of the Ministry, the Freiherr von Pillersdorf, had any real reputation for Liberalism; and even he had been a colleague of Metternich, and had done little in that position to counteract Metternich's policy. Finding it impossible, therefore, to put any confidence in the official rulers of their country, the Viennese naturally turned their attention to the formation of some Government in which they could trust. On March 20 a special legion had been formed composed of the students of the University; and a Committee was soon after chosen from those professors and students who had played a leading part in the Revolution. This Committee, which was at once the outcome and the guide of the Students' Legion, became the centre of popular confidence and admiration. Thus then there arose, in the very first days of the Revolution, a marked division of interest and feeling between the real and nominal rulers of Vienna. Some such antagonism is perhaps the scarcely avoidable result of a revolution achieved by violence, especially when the change of persons and forms produced by that revolution is so incomplete as it was in Vienna. Those who, by mere official position, are allowed to retain the leadership of followers with whom they have no sympathy, are constantly expecting that reforms which were begun in violence must be necessarily continued by the same method; while the actual revolutionary leaders can hardly believe in their own success, and are constantly suspecting that those who have apparently accepted the new state of things, are really plotting a reaction.

In Vienna these mutual suspicions had probably stronger justification than they have in most cases of this kind. The courtiers, who had plotted against Metternich, had as little desire for free government as the Jacobins who overthrew Robespierre; and Windischgrätz was gradually gathering round him a secret council, who were eventually to establish a system as despotic as that of Metternich. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the gallant lads who had marched in procession to the Landhaus on March 13, and who had defied the guns of Archduke Albert, were unwisely disposed to prefer violent methods of enforcing their opinions. Thus, when, on March 31, a law regulating the freedom of the Press was issued, as distasteful to the Viennese as Szemere's had been to the Hungarians, the Viennese students at once proposed to follow the example of the students of Pesth, and burn the law publicly. Hye persuaded them to abandon this attempt; and he, with Fischhof, Kuranda, Schuselka and other trusted leaders, went on a deputation to Pillersdorf, to entreat him to withdraw the law. Pillersdorf assured them that this law was only a provisional one, and that amendments would soon be introduced into it; but, a few days later, Count Taaffe, another member of the Ministry, publicly contradicted Pillersdorf's statement, and spoke of the Press law as being a permanent one, though he promised that it should be mildly administered. Perhaps the students may be excused if they felt no great respect for such a Ministry. Nor were their feelings conciliated by what they considered a growing tendency on the part of the Ministry to make concessions of local liberties to the provinces.

After the first enthusiasm for Kossuth had a little subsided, the Viennese began to reflect that the concession of a separate ministry to Hungary might be a dangerous source of weakness to the central Government; while the growing demands of the Bohemians seemed likely to injure both the position of Vienna, and the cause of German unity. But the Viennese were in many cases aiming at the two incompatible objects of maintaining the position of Vienna as the capital of the Austrian Empire, and gaining for it a new position as the second or third town of United Germany. But a more reasonable cause of discontent arose from the fact that, while parliaments were conceded to Hungary and Bohemia, the Constitution which had been promised in March to the Austrian Empire was as yet unrealized.

Dr. Schütte, a Westphalian by birth, organized a demonstration in favour of a mass petition. Schütte was arrested by the police, and banished from Vienna as a foreign agitator; and, while this irritated the students still further, the Ministry on their side were alarmed at finding that they had failed to secure the one advantage which they had hoped to reap from the power of the students. The men who had succeeded in retaining office after the March Rising, had trusted that the intellectual youths, who had fought for freedom of the Press and freedom of teaching, would have discouraged the coarse socialistic agitations of the workmen, and have separated themselves altogether from their movements. But, though the extremer forms of Socialism found little favour among the leaders of the University, the sympathy between the students and the workmen grew ever closer. If the workmen complained of an employer, the students went to him and warned him to behave better; if any poor man needed money, the students organized the collection; if the cause of a workman was suffering by the undue length of a trial, the students called upon the judges to do their duty; if the workmen wished to state some special grievance in the form of a petition, the students composed the petition for them, or found a lawyer who would do it gratuitously. Reductions of the hours of labour and higher wages frequently resulted from these efforts.

This combination naturally alarmed the authorities, and they showed their fears both by coercion and concession. On the one hand they arrested Schütte and other agitators; on the other hand they consented on April 25 to issue the long promised Constitution. The Constitution, however, at once disappointed the petitioners. The proposed Parliament was to consist of two Chambers; the Upper Chamber to be composed of Princes of the royal House, of nominees of the Emperor, and of 150 landlords chosen by the landlords; and the assent of both Chambers and of the Emperor was to be necessary before the passing of a law. This Constitution was objected to both by the students and the workmen; the former condemning it on the ground of its aristocratic character, the latter becoming discontented when they found that the issue of this document did not free them from the payment of rent.

The revolutionary enthusiasm of the students was further whetted by the events which were taking place in Galicia. That unfortunate province had been so hampered by the effects of the abortive movement of 1846, that it had not been able to join in the March insurrection of the rest of Southern Europe. But by the beginning of April even the Galicians had taken heart; and they sent a deputation to the Emperor asking for a State recognition of the Polish language, a separate army for Galicia, and the concession of the different liberties which were then being demanded throughout the Empire. Even the Preparatory Parliament of Frankfort had passed a resolution in favour of the reconstitution of Poland; and the students of Vienna were prepared to be far more generous in their recognition of Galicia's claim to a share in Polish independence, than the Frankfort Parliament had been in its attitude towards Posen. So alarming did the movement appear to the Austrian Governor of Galicia, that he forbade any emigrants to return to his province unless they could prove that they had been born there. The Galicians rose in indignation, and imprisoned the Governor; but he was set free, and, after a sharp struggle, the insurrection was suppressed.

But, if their Polish sympathies tended to rouse the revolutionary fervour of the Viennese students, their anger, on the other hand, was kindled by the growing tendency of the rich merchants to abandon the position which they had taken up in March, to accept the April Constitution, and to fall into more peaceable methods of action. Even the Reading and Debating Club, which had been the first centre of the Liberal movement, was now the object of hostile demonstrations on the part of the students. The Students' Committee had been strengthened by the adhesion of many of the National Guard, and had received the name of the Central Committee; Hoyos, the commander of the National Guard, was alarmed at this sign of revolutionary feeling, and forbade his subordinates to take part in any political movement. The Central Committee entreated him to withdraw this prohibition, to which Hoyos answered that he would withdraw his prohibition if the Central Committee would dissolve itself. The Committee met to consider this proposal; but, while they were still sitting, a report arrived that the soldiers and the National Guard had been called out to put them down by force. The truth appeared to be, that the soldiers had been called out to suppress a supposed attack by the workmen; but that, finding that no such attack was intended, the military leaders seemed disposed to turn their hostility against the University. Thereupon the students at once rose and marched to the Castle. It seems that their exact object was at first uncertain; but on someone demanding of them their intentions, Dr. Giskra, one of their leaders, answered with, a shout, "Wir wollen eine Kammer" (we want a single Chamber.) The cry was taken up by the students; Pillersdorf advised the Emperor to yield, and on May 16 Ferdinand issued a proclamation granting a one Chamber Constitution. But whether the shock had been too much for his feeble health, and had struck him with a panic, or whether he yielded to the advice of his courtiers, Ferdinand suddenly resolved to leave Vienna, and on May 17 he fled secretly to Innspruck.

These events produced a somewhat peculiar effect on opinion in various parts of the Empire. In Bohemia the extreme national feeling had been hitherto represented by the Swornost, a body corresponding almost exactly to the Students' Legion in Vienna; and they had been held somewhat in check by the noblemen and citizens, who had organized the March movement. But the Vienna rising of May 15, and the flight of the Emperor, roused the indignation of men like Count Thun and Count Deym; and they decided to take the important step of breaking loose altogether from the Viennese Ministry, summoning a special Bohemian assembly in June, and inviting the Emperor to take refuge in Prague. The Swornost, on their part, felt some reluctance to take any steps which seemed to condemn the abolition of the Upper Chamber by the Viennese; but the bitter hostility, which the Germans of Vienna had so repeatedly shown against the Bohemians during the months of April and May, prevented the possibility of any understanding between the Democrats of Prague and those of Vienna; and thus the students of Prague were ready to approve, not only the assertion of Bohemian independence, but even the proposed deputation to the Emperor.

Kossuth, on his part, saw in these events an opportunity for increasing the growing friendliness between the Magyars and the Emperor; and he induced the Hungarian Ministry to invite Ferdinand to Pesth. This attitude of the Magyar leaders was due to one or two causes. In the first place the Viennese, as mentioned above, had been growing alarmed at the separate position granted to Hungary, and had feared that they would lose their hold over that kingdom altogether. This naturally produced an attitude of hostility on their part, which provoked a counter-feeling of antagonism in the Magyars; and thus the latter became more friendly to Ferdinand as the representative of the anti-democratic principle, and therefore the opponent of the ruling spirits of Vienna. There was also a second reason of a stranger kind, which placed the leaders of the Magyar movement in hostility to the Democratic party in Vienna. In spite of the strong German feeling which prevailed among the leading Democrats of Vienna, it was the opinion of some of those Hungarians who were best acquainted with that city, that the change from indirect to direct elections, which was one of the results of the May rising, would tend to increase the power of the large Slavonic population of Vienna.

But the great cause of the growing sympathy between the Magyars and the Emperor was the attitude taken up by the latter in the questions at issue between Hungary and Croatia. Although the appointment of Jellaciç, as Ban of Croatia, had been considered as an undue exertion of the power of the Court to the disadvantage of the Magyars, yet the independent tone which Jellaciç had adopted since his appointment, seemed to alarm the Emperor as much as it did Batthyanyi or Kossuth. Immediately after his appointment, Jellaciç announced that "the Revolution has changed our relations to our old ally, Hungary"; and that "we must take care that the new relation shall be consistent with independence and equality"; and he had then proceeded to summon the Assembly of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia to meet at Agram in June. This independent attitude had brought rebukes upon Jellaciç from Ferdinand and the Hungarian Ministry alike; and the Croatian Council, while appealing to the Emperor to strengthen the hands of the Ban, had threatened that, if pressed too hard by the Magyars, they would take measures to defend themselves. It was not unnatural, therefore, that at this moment the Croats should be more disposed to sympathise with the Democrats of Vienna; and that Kossuth should try to draw closer the bond between the Emperor and the Magyars.

It might indeed seem that the appeal of the Bohemians to the Emperor under these circumstances would have brought them out of sympathy with the Slavs of Croatia and Slavonia; but not only did the Emperor refuse to go to Prague, but the Tyrolese followed up that refusal by a sharp rebuke to the Bohemians for their proposal of a Slavonic Congress in Prague. Though, however, the Slavs of Hungary looked forward to the Slavonic Congress, and were willing to accept Prague as the centre of their political deliberations, it was in the Hungarian provinces themselves that the most vigorous action in defence of their rights was at present to be found. For while the Croatian Council were protesting against the Emperor's rebuke to Jellaciç, the Serbs were gathering for their Conference of May 13 in Carlowitz, and resolving to send deputies to the Croatian Assembly, and to the Emperor himself, and also to choose representatives for the Prague Congress. Crnojeviç, who had been sent by the Magyars to enforce martial law on the Serbs of the Banat and Bacska, after the riot at Kikinda, denounced the meeting, and called on Rajaciç to prevent it. Rajaciç would have hesitated about further action, but Stratimiroviç and his more fiery friends answered the threat by burning Crnojeviç's letter publicly; and the meeting took place in defiance of his warning.

From every district where the Serb language was spoken, there came to Carlowitz representatives wearing the old national costume. Carlowitz is little more than a village; and it would have required a large city to provide for the crowds who arrived on this occasion. Hundreds, therefore, lay out by night in the streets, to wait for the meeting in the morning. In the garden which lies between the Archbishop's library and the small room where the archives of Carlowitz are kept, there met on May 13 the Assembly of the newly-roused Serb people. Rajaciç appeared, accompanied by some of the clergy, and presented to the Assembly the old charters which had been granted by the Emperor in 1690 and 1691, and on which the liberties of the Serbs were based. Physicians, lawyers, and young students denounced the abolition of their Voyvodeschaft, claimed back the provinces which Maria Theresa had abandoned to Hungary, and demanded the removal of all hindrances to the development of their life, language, and history. They then proceeded to revive the old dignity of Patriarch in the person of Rajaciç and to choose as their Voyvode a man named Suplikaç, who was then serving in the army in Italy. Finally they appointed a committee to prepare rules, and gave it the power to call the Assembly together when circumstances required it. Hrabowsky, the commander of the fortress of Peterwardein, had been uncertain what attitude he should assume towards this movement. Sometimes he seemed to be personally friendly to the Serbs; but, in his official position, he felt doubtful whether to support the extreme Magyar authority, or to wait for orders from Ferdinand; and this confusion of mind led him to give doubtful and contradictory answers to the Serb deputations which waited on him. Under these circumstances, the Serbs were compelled to rely, even more markedly than before, on the support of their own countrymen, and of those races whom a common oppression had driven into sympathy with them. It was not only to the Croatians and Bohemians that they now appealed; even the Germans of the Bacska were expected to look with friendly eyes on the Serb movement, and Stratimiroviç believed that beyond the old Serb provinces there were races to whom they might look for alliance.

For while the Serbs were still discussing their grievances and the remedies for them, the Roumanians were meeting in their village of Blasendorf to make their protest against Magyar rule. They, like the other Peoples of the Empire, had been disposed to sympathise with the March movement; but when it became known that the Magyars at Pesth had put forward as one of their twelve points the union of Transylvania with Hungary, the Roumanians became alarmed. Had the Transylvanian Diet met under the extended suffrage now granted in Hungary, the Roumanians would have had a majority in the Diet; and the influence of this majority would have been far more important under the new parliamentary system than in the old days of centralised officialism. If, on the other hand, they were to be absorbed in Hungary, they naturally feared that the fanaticism of the Magyars in enforcing the use of the Magyar language, would be directed with even greater vigour against the despised Roumanians, than it had been against Serbs and Croats; and that the Greek Church to which the Roumanians belonged, and which had always been at a disadvantage in Transylvania, would be crushed, or, at any rate, discouraged. The tradition of their Roman descent recorded in the Libellus Wallachorum, had given some of them hopes for leadership in Transylvania, and had strengthened, even in the less ambitious, the desire for a dignified equality. Animated by these motives, they met on May 15 at Blasendorf.

This little capital of the Roumanian race lies in one of the large open plains of Transylvania. It is still little more than a straggling village of low huts; but it is apparently as important to the Roumanians as Carlowitz is to the Serbs and Hermannstadt to the Saxons. Crowds of the strange figures, whom one may still see in the villages of Transylvania, flocked in to this meeting, covered with their rough sheep-skins and dark, flowing hair, and showing in their handsome faces at once the consciousness of the new life that was awakening, and their pride in those dim traditions of the past, which were supposed to unite them with the glories of ancient Rome. Even here, too, there were found some of the ruling race, who were prepared to make common cause with this, the most despised and oppressed of the races of Hungary; for a Magyar noble named Nopcsa was prominent in the meeting. But now, as ever, the chief hope for the Roumanians was in their clergy, and specially in their bishops; and Lemenyi, the bishop of the United Greeks,[13] appeared side by side with the more popular and influential Schaguna. Speaker after speaker dwelt on the great traditions of the Roumanian nation, and their determination to obtain an equality with the Magyar, Szekler, and Saxon. They avowed their loyalty to Ferdinand, and declared that they had no desire to oppress any other nation; but that they would not suffer any other nation to oppress them; that they would work for the emancipation of industry and trade, for the removal of the feudal burdens, for the securing of legal justice, and for the welfare of humanity, of the Roumanian nation, and of the common fatherland. They then proceeded to ask for a separate national organization, for the use of the Roumanian language in all national affairs, and for representation in the Assembly in proportion to their numbers. They further demanded a Roumanian national guard to be commanded by Roumanian officers. They claimed to be called by the name of Roumanian, instead of the less dignified epithet of Wallach. They also asked for an independent position for their Church; for the foundation of a Roumanian University; for equality with the other races of Hungary in the endowment of their clergy and schools. These were the chief points of their petition; but along with these came the demands for the ordinary freedoms of the time, and for the redress of special local grievances. At the close of the petition, came the prayer which specially explained the urgency of their meeting at that time. They entreated that the Diet of Transylvania should not discuss the question of the proposed union with Hungary until the Roumanians were fully represented in the Diet. This petition Schaguna carried to Vienna on behalf of the meeting.

In the meantime the Saxons were preparing to express their opposition to the proposed union with Hungary in a separate protest of their own. The peculiar organization which the Saxons had enjoyed had become very dear to them; and they had hoped to retain their old institutions under the new Government. But when they appealed to the Hungarian Ministry, Deak told them that they had no right to make conditions; and it soon became evident that, in the larger matter of the union of Transylvania with Hungary, they would have as little chance of a fair hearing as in the smaller question of their own race organization. Count Teleki, the Governor of Transylvania, had announced, on May 2, that the union was practically settled already; and that only questions of detail had now to be arranged. This direct attack on the legal power of the Transylvanian Diet naturally alarmed the Saxons, and Count Salmen, the Comes der Sachsen or Chief Magistrate of the Saxon colony, organized the opposition to the proposed union. Hitherto the Saxons, with the exception of a few generous-minded men like Roth, had been as bitterly scornful of the Roumanians as any Magyar or Szekler could be; but now the sense of a common danger drew these races together; and the Saxons offered to allow the Roumanians to hold office in the Saxon towns and villages, and to be admitted to apprenticeships by the tradesmen of those towns. The opposition of the Saxons to the Magyars was, no doubt, strengthened by the sympathy of the former with that German feeling which would lead to the strengthening of the influence of Vienna; and they declared that they would rather send representatives to a Viennese Assembly than to a Diet at Presburg.

And while, on the one hand, common danger to their liberties was drawing together the Saxons and the Roumanians, the sympathies of race and a common antipathy to aliens was drawing together the Magyar and the Szekler. As early as May 10 Wesselenyi issued an appeal to the Szekler to arm themselves as guardians of the frontiers, and to be prepared to suppress any rising of the Roumanians; and on May 19 Batthyanyi appealed to them to march to Szegedin. But it was not to the Szekler alone that the Magyars trusted to enforce their will on the Transylvanian Diet. The fiery young students of Pesth hastened down, on May 30, to Klausenburg, where the deputies were gathering for the final meeting of the Diet. A Roumanian deputation, coming to entreat the Parliament not to decide till the Roumanians were adequately represented in it, were contemptuously refused a hearing, and one of their leaders was roughly pushed back. Banners were displayed bearing the words, "Union or Death!" and the young lawyers from Pesth filled the galleries of the Assembly, and even crowded into the Hall. The Saxon representatives, more used to quiet discussion, or to commercial transactions, than to the fiery quarrels in which the Magyar and Szekler delighted, tremblingly entered the Hall; and, unable to gain courage for their duties, they gave way to the storm, and voted for the union. Thus ended the local independence of Transylvania, which was to be revived twelve years later by the Germanizing Liberalism of Schmerling, and then to be finally swept away in the successful movement for Hungarian Independence.

The bitterness roused by the passing of the Act of Union was not long in leading to actual bloodshed. The immediate quarrel, however, arose out of a matter connected, not with the race contest, but with the new land laws of the country. The Hungarian Diet had decided that the peasant should not only be freed from his dependence on the landlord, but should be also considered by his previous payment of dues to have earned the land on which he had worked. Naturally, disputes arose as to the extent of the land so acquired; and in more than one case the peasants were found to be claiming more than their own share. It was to redress a blunder of this kind that, on June 2, a party of National Guards, composed partly of Szeklers and partly of Magyars, entered the Roumanian village of Mihalzi (Magyar, Mihacsfalva). The exact circumstances of such a collision as that which followed will always be told differently by the most honest narrators; but it seems probable that the Roumanians, in some confused way, connected this visit with the recent struggle about the Union; and it is certain that the race-hatred between the Szekler and the Roumanians soon became inflamed. The National Guard fired, and several of the Roumanians fell. The others fled; but their previous resistance soon produced a rumour of a general Roumanian insurrection. The Magyars were seized with a panic; the Roumanian National Committee was dissolved, and several of their clergy and other leaders were imprisoned. Had the Roumanians been now organized by Austrian officers it is possible that less might have been heard of the savagery of the new warfare. Had some of their own leaders, who afterwards tried to control them, been ready at this time to take the lead, many of the actual cruelties might never have taken place. But just at this time the Emperor answered the deputation of May 15 by referring the Roumanians to the Magyar Ministry for the redress of their grievances, and declaring that equality could only be carried out by enforcing the Act of Union. This rebuff was accompanied by a letter from Schaguna written somewhat in the same sense; and thus, finding that some of their leaders had deserted them; that others were imprisoned; that the Emperor was discouraging their complaints; that the Magyars were denouncing them as rebels, and the Szekler making raids on their territory, the Roumanians began to defend themselves by a warfare which rapidly became exceptionally barbarous and savage.

In the meantime the other subject races of Hungary were preparing in their own way for resistance to the Magyars. The Croatian Assembly at Agram, finding themselves discouraged by the Emperor, were disposed to strengthen their union with the Serbs of Slavonia; and, on June 6, Gaj and Jellaciç both supported proposals at Agram for uniting the Serbs and Croats under one rule. Rajaciç, who happened to be passing through Agram, heartily responded to these proposals; and it was resolved that the relations between the Ban of Croatia and the Voyvode of the Serbs should be left to be settled at a later period. But the Serbs, though heartily desiring sympathy with the Croats, were not disposed to trust to alliances, however welcome, or to Constitutional arrangements, however ingenious, for the settlement of their grievances against the Magyars; for they, too, had been forced to abandon peaceable discussions for actual warfare. Crnojeviç, not having been found sufficiently stern in the Magyar service, was being driven into more violent courses by the addition of a fiercer subordinate; and the cruelties inflicted on the Serbs of the Bacska had so roused their kinsmen in other parts of Hungary that an old officer of the military frontier had crossed the Danube at the head of his followers and seized the town of Titel.

At the same time the Serbs sent a deputation to Hrabowsky, the Governor of Peterwardein, to complain of the cruelties of the Magyar bands. Hitherto Hrabowsky had seemed to hesitate between the two parties; but he now grew angry in the conference with the Serb deputation, and disputed the right of the Serbs to stay in Hungary. The Serbs, alarmed at these threats, began once more to gather at Carlowitz; and they now tried to draw recruits from friendly neighbours. Stratimiroviç had succeeded in persuading some of the regiments from the frontier to take up the Serb cause; but he perhaps relied still more on the help of those Serbs from the principality of Servia, who were now flocking in across the border to defend their kinsmen against the Magyars. Of the leaders of these new allies the most important was General Knicsanin, who helped to organize the forces in Carlowitz. The Serbs of Carlowitz had, however, not yet entered upon actual hostilities, when, on June 11, during one of the meetings of their Assembly, Hrabowsky suddenly marched out of Neusatz, dispersed a congregation who were coming out of a chapel half way on the road between Neusatz and Carlowitz, and reached the latter town before the Serbs were aware of his intention. The Serbs, though taken by surprise, rushed out to defend their town, with a Montenegrin leader at their head. The contest continued for several hours; but at last Hrabowsky and his soldiers were driven back into Neusatz. Two days later ten thousand men were in arms in Carlowitz to defend their town and their race.

But while the Slavs in Hungary were girding themselves for this fierce war, they had not forgotten the more peaceable union proposed to them by the Bohemians; and on May 30 representatives from the different Slavonic races of the Empire had been welcomed in Prague by Peter Faster and other Bohemian leaders. On June 1 the National Committee of Prague, while deliberating on the future Constitution of Bohemia, were joined by several of their Slavonic visitors; and out of this combination the Congress was formed. It was speedily divided into three sections: one representing Poles and Ruthenians, one the Southern Slavs (that is not only the Serbs and Croats, but also the Slovenes of Krain and the adjoining provinces), and the third the Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians, and the Slovaks of North Hungary. Many of the members of the Congress appeared in old Bohemian costumes, and from the windows of the town waved the flags of all the different Slavonic races. At 8 a.m. on June 2 the members of the Congress went in solemn procession through the great square called the Grosser Ring, so soon to be the scene of a bloody conflict, to the Teynkirche, the church in which Huss preached, and where his pulpit still stands. In front of the procession went the Students' Legion, singing patriotic songs; two young men followed, one in the Polish dress, the other bearing a white, blue, and red flag, which was supposed to symbolize the union of the Slavonic peoples. A division of the Swornost corps followed these; then came the Provisional Committee, and then the representatives of the three sections of the Congress. The Poles were led by Libelt, a leader in the recent rising in Posen, and the Bohemians by the philologist Szaffarik. At the altar, which was sacred to the bishops Cyril and Methodius, the presiding priest offered thanks to God for having put unity and brotherly love into the hearts of the Slavs; and he prayed that the Lord of Hosts would bless the work to the salvation of the nation, as well as of the whole fatherland. From the church they proceeded to the hall in the Sophien-Insel. That hall had been decked with the arms of the different Slavonic races. At the upper end of it was a table covered with red and white, the Bohemian colours; and the choir began the proceedings with an old national song. The Vice-President, after formally opening the Assembly, resigned his seat to Palacky, who had been chosen President.

Palacky then rose and addressed the meeting. He spoke of the gathering as the realisation of the dreams of their youth, which a month ago they could hardly have hoped for. "The Slavs had gathered from all sides to declare their eternal love and brotherhood to each other. Freedom," he continued, "which we now desire, is no gift of the foreigner, but of native growth, the inheritance of our fathers. The Slavs of old time were all equal before the law, and never aimed at the conquest of other nations. They understood freedom much better than some of our neighbours, who cannot comprehend the idea of aiming at freedom without also aiming at lordship. Let them learn from us the idea of equality between nations. The chief duty of our future is to carry out the principle of 'What thou wouldst not that men should do unto thee, that do not thou to another.' Our great nation would never have lost its freedom if it had not been broken up, and if each part had not gone its own separate way, and followed its own policy. The feeling of brotherly love and freedom could secure freedom to us. It is this feeling and Ferdinand that we thank for our freedom." For himself, Palacky continued, he could say, "Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation which Thou hast prepared for us before the face of the whole world. A light for the enlightenment of the peoples, and the glory of the Slavonic race." Then, addressing the Assembly, he concluded with these words: "Gentlemen, in virtue of the office entrusted to me by you, I announce and declare that this Slavonic Assembly is open; and I insist on its right and duty to deliberate about the welfare of the fatherland, and the nation, in the spirit of freedom, in the spirit of unity and peace; in the name of our old, renowned Prague, which protects us in its bosom; in the name of the Czech nation, which follows our proceedings with hearty sympathy; in the name of the great Slavonic race, which expects from our deliberations its strengthening and eternal regeneration. So help us God." Other speeches followed from representatives of the different Slavonic races; and petitions to the Emperor were prepared in favour of the demands made by the Serbs at Carlowitz, and of the rights of the Poles and Ruthenians; while plans were drawn up for the equalization of the rival languages in the schools.

But while these peaceable discussions were proceeding in the Slavonic Congress, more fiery elements were at work in other parts of the city. During the months of April and May there had been signs of various kinds of discontent among different sections of the population. Workmen's demonstrations about wages had attracted some attention; while one public gathering, approaching to a riot, had secured the release of an editor, supposed to have been unjustly arrested, and had hastened the resignation of Strobach, the Mayor of Prague. But the most fiery agitations were those which had been stirred up among the students by a man named Sladkowsky, with the object of weakening as far as possible the German element in Prague. So alarming did these demonstrations become that Count Deym resigned his seat on the National Committee; and Count Leo Thun, the Governor of Prague, threatened to dissolve the Swornost in order to hinder further disorder; but the opposition to this proposal was so strong that he was obliged to abandon it.

The great cause of the students alarm was the appointment of Windischgrätz to take the command of the forces in Bohemia. His proceedings during the March movement in Vienna were well known; and the fear caused by his arrival was still further increased by the threatening position that he had taken up; for he had mounted his cannon on two sides of the city; namely, on the commanding fortress of the Wissehrad, on the South, from which he could have swept a poor and crowded part of Prague; and in the Joseph's barrack, on the North-East. The members of the Town Council tried to check the demonstrations of the students, and to persuade them to appeal to Windischgrätz in a more orderly manner. In order to give dignity to the proceedings, the Burgomaster consented to accompany the students on the proposed deputation. Windischgrätz, however, answered that he was responsible to the King, and not to the Council; though, when Count Leo Thun appealed to him, he consented to withdraw the cannon from the Joseph's barrack, declaring that there was no need for its presence there; but that he had been determined not to yield to the students.

While the students succeeded in further irritating against them a man whose haughty and overbearing spirit was naturally disposed to opposition, they were still more rash and unfortunate in their relations with some whom they had had greater hopes of conciliating. The aristocratic leaders of the Bohemians, while asserting the independence of Bohemia, and the need for protecting Slavonic liberties, were most anxious to make as many concessions to German feeling as could be made consistently with these objects. One of the noblemen, who had been fiercest in his denunciations of the rising of May 15th, even thought it well to send to Vienna a long explanation and modification of his protest; while Palacky and other leading nationalists inaugurated a feast of reconciliation in which many of the German Bohemians took part. So successful had this policy appeared to be that the town of Saatz, which had been the first to express alarm at the Bohemian attitude towards the Germans, declared on May 20 its sympathy with the Prague address to the Emperor, and its desire for union between the German and Bohemian elements in Bohemia. But the students seemed doomed to weaken the effect produced by their more moderate countrymen. They combined a strong Czech feeling with a great desire for democratic government; and while they thought they could enlist the sympathies of the Vienna students by the latter part of their creed, they seemed to be unaware that Germanism was to the students of Vienna what Czechism was to them. On June 5th, the very same day on which the Slavonic Congress was deciding to send its petition to the Emperor, more than a hundred students of Prague started on a deputation to their comrades in Vienna. But on their way, they thought it necessary to attack and insult the German flag, wherever it was displayed. They arrived in Vienna to find the Viennese students suspicious even towards those who had been their champions, and still smarting from the recollection of a struggle between their Legion, and the National Guard, who had attempted to suppress them. It was while they were in this state of irritation, that the Czech students appeared in the Hall of the University; and, unfortunately, at the same time, there arrived from Prague the representatives of two German Bohemian Clubs. Schuselka, Goldmark, and other Viennese leaders, urged a reconciliation between the two races; but the news of the insults to the German flag so infuriated the Viennese students, that they drove the Czechs from the Hall, and ordered them to leave Vienna within twenty-four hours.

The unfortunate deputation returned to Prague to find that the Slavonic Congress was approaching its final acts, and was preparing two appeals, one to the Emperor, and one to the Peoples of Europe. The latter appeal was based on a general complaint of the oppressions from which the Slavs suffered. It demanded the restoration of Poland, and called for a European Congress to settle international questions; "since free Peoples will understand each other better than paid diplomatists." In the appeal to the Emperor, the Congress went into greater detail, as to the special demands of the different Slavonic races of Austria. The Bohemians, indeed, mainly expressed their thanks for the independence which now seemed legally secured. The Moravians suggested an arrangement which would combine the common action of Moravia and Bohemia with a provision for Moravian local independence. The Galicians pointed out how much they had been left behind by the other Austrian provinces in the struggle for freedom, and proposed an arrangement for securing equality between the Polish and Ruthenian languages in Galicia, and for granting to Galicia the same provincial freedom that had already been secured to Bohemia. The Slovaks of North Hungary demanded protection for their language against the Magyar attempt to crush it out; equal representation in the Hungarian Assembly; official equality between the Slovak, Ruthenian, and Magyar languages; and freedom for those Slovaks who had recently been arrested and imprisoned by the Magyars, for defence of their national rights. The Serbs, of course, demanded the acceptance of the programme put forward at Carlowitz; and the Croats the recognition of the legality of the acts of Jellaciç, and of the municipal independence of the Assembly of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. Lastly, the Slovenes desired that the provinces of Steiermark, Krain, Carinthia, and some neighbouring districts, should be formed into a separate kingdom, in which the Slovenian language should be the official one. All the Slavs combined in the desire that Austria should be a federal State, and in the protest against that absorption in Germany, the fear of which had led to the calling of the Congress.

But sober and rational as was the tone of the Slavonic Congress, as a whole, there were turbulent spirits in Prague, who were determined that the matter should not end peaceably. The extremer representatives of Polish feeling desired the separation of Poland, and disliked any plan which would reconcile Galicia to remaining part of Austria. On the other hand, there had appeared in Prague at this period an adventurer named Turansky, who while professing to be a champion of the Slovaks of North Hungary, seems undoubtedly to have acted as an "agent provocateur." Such men as these were easily able to act upon the excited feelings of the students; and were further aided in stirring up violent feeling by a strike among the cotton workers which was just then going on.

Finally, the outburst came on June 12. The Slavonic Congress at Prague, already preparing to break up, met on that day to celebrate a last solemn mass. Once more they all gathered in front of the statue of S. Wenzel; but now the numbers were so great that they spread down the whole length of the Wenzels Platz. In spite of the peaceable intentions of the majority, a number of the workmen had come bearing arms. The mass went off quietly enough; but several of those who had attended it, had had their national feelings excited to the utmost; and, as they left the Wenzels Platz, they marched back singing Bohemian songs, and howling against Windischgrätz. As they passed under the Pulverthurm into the narrow and busy Zeltnergasse, which leads to the Grosser Ring, some soldiers, as ill luck would have it, came out of the neighbouring barrack. The house of Windischgrätz was in the street, and the crowd were hooting against him. Under these circumstances a collision was unavoidable. The crowd were dispersed by the soldiers; some of the students attempted to rally them, and were arrested; the workmen then tried to rescue the students; the soldiers charged, and drove them back under the Pulverthurm, and round into the wider street of Am Graben, and right up to the National Museum, which was the head-quarters of the Swornost. After a fierce struggle the soldiers stormed the Museum, and captured many of the students; but the panic had now spread to other parts of the town. Sladkowsky, at the head of the workmen, broke into the depôt of the Town Watch, and seized arms; while others rushed into the country districts round Prague, and spread the rumour that the soldiers were trying to take away all that the Emperor had granted, and to restore the feudal dues.

In the meantime the leaders of the March movement were greatly startled at hearing of the outbreak. Some of them had already been alarmed at the growing tendency to disturbances in Prague; several of them hastened out to check the riots, and some of them even fought against the insurgents. Count Leo Thun, the Governor of Prague, hastened down to the Grosser Ring to try to still the disturbance; but the students seized him, and carried him off prisoner into the Jesuit College near the Carlsbrücke. They seem to have had very little intention of violence; but they thought to secure by this means his promise of help in a peaceful settlement of the contest. He refused, however, to promise anything while he was kept a prisoner. Some of the students went to the Countess to try to get her to persuade her husband to yield; but though she was so alarmed for his safety that her hair turned white from fear, she firmly refused to comply. Meanwhile, one of the more moderate men went to Windischgrätz to entreat him to give up the students who had been taken prisoners, on condition of the barricades being removed. But Windischgrätz demanded that Count Leo Thun should first be set free. While the discussion was going on, the fight was still raging in the Zeltner Gasse; and Princess Windischgrätz coming to the windows was struck by a shot which mortally wounded her. Windischgrätz hastened to the room where his wife was dying, while the soldiers guarded the house against further attacks. With all his hardness, Windischgrätz was entirely free from the blood-thirstiness of Radetzky and Haynau; and under this terrible provocation he seems to have exercised a wonderful self-restraint. While the Burgomaster and some members of the Town Council were exerting themselves to restore order, Windischgrätz sent an offer to make peace, if Count Leo Thun were released, if guarantees were given for the peace of the town, and if Count Leo Thun and he were allowed to consult together about the restoration of order; and he even promised to await the deliberations of the Town Council on this subject.

But the fight was raging so hotly that the Town Council were unable, for some time, to deliberate. At last, however, temporary suspension of firing was secured, and the Burgomaster, with the assistance of Palacky, Szaffarik and others organized a new deputation to Windischgrätz. Windischgrätz insisted on his former terms; and at last Count Leo Thun was set free, giving a general promise to use his efforts for securing peace. The students, however, put forward the conditions, that Bohemia should be under a Bohemian commander who should be in most things independent of Vienna; that Bohemian soldiers, alone, should be used in the defence of Bohemia; that the officers and soldiers should take their oath to the Constitution, both of Bohemia and of Austria; that the gates of Prague should be defended by the citizens and students alone; and lastly that Windischgrätz should be declared the enemy of all the Peoples of Austria, and tried by a Bohemian tribunal. As Windischgrätz was, obviously, one of the people to whom these conditions would be referred, it was not very likely that the last of these requests would be complied with. He seems still, however, to have retained some desire for concession; and on June 15 he withdrew his soldiers from the other parts of the town to the North side of the river. But new acts of violence followed; and Windischgrätz began to cannonade the town. Again the Burgomaster appealed to him; and he consented to resign in favour of Count Mensdorff, on condition that the barricades should be instantly removed. On the 16th the town seemed to have become quiet; but the barricades were not yet removed; the soldiers indignantly demanded that Windischgrätz should be restored to his command, as the conditions of his resignation had not been fulfilled; and the first act of Windischgrätz, on reassuming power, was to threaten to bombard the town, if it did not surrender by six o'clock a.m. on the 17th.

The wiser students saw the uselessness of further resistance, and began to remove the barricades; but some stray shots from the soldiers, whether by accident or intention, hit the mill near one of the bridges; some women in the mill raised the cry that they were being fired on; the mill hands returned the fire, and Windischgrätz began at once to bombard the town. The barricades were quickly thrown up again; for four hours the bombardment continued; and, while the students were fiercely defending the Carlsbrücke against the soldiers of Windischgrätz, the fire, which had been lighted by the bomb-shells, was spreading from the mill to other parts of the town. Of such a contest there could be but one result. In the course of the 17th several thousand people fled from Prague; and on the 18th Windischgrätz entered the town in triumph, and proclaimed martial law.

The conspiracy had collapsed; but, except Peter Faster, who escaped from the town during the siege, none of the leaders of the March movement were at first suspected of any share in the Rising. Indeed, it was well known that many of them had exerted themselves to suppress it. But Turansky, the agitator above mentioned, suddenly gave himself up to the authorities, and offered to reveal a plot, in which he declared that Palacky, Rieger, and other Bohemian leaders were implicated. The evidence broke down; but it gave excuse for the continuance of the state of siege, for the arrest of many innocent men, and for the refusal to summon the Bohemian Assembly, which was to have met in that very month. This imaginary plot was used as the final pretext for the complete suppression of Bohemian liberty. Turansky was believed, rightly or wrongly, to have been sent by Kossuth to stir up the insurrection; that he had desired the failure of the movement which he stirred up was evident enough; and thus there arose an ineffaceable bitterness between the Bohemians and the Magyars. There also arose out of these events further cause for the bitterness between the Bohemians and the Germans. For, while Prague was still burning, and Windischgrätz was still enforcing martial law, a band of Vienna students arrived in Prague, to congratulate Windischgrätz on his victory over the liberties of Bohemia. The long-simmering hatred between the Germans and Bohemians seems to have found its climax in that congratulation; and from that time forth, whatever might be the political feeling of the leaders on either side, common action between Bohemians and Germans became less and less possible.

As for the effect of the fall of Prague on the position of the Slavonic races in Austria, they were deprived by that event of their last help of a free centre of national life round which their race could gather. For Prague had supplied such a centre in a way in which none of the other Slavonic capitals ever could supply it. Its fame rested on a past, which was connected with struggles for freedom against German tyranny, and the leading facts of which were clear and undisputed; while its geographical position prevented it from coming into collision with the other Slavonic races. Agram and Carlowitz might at times look upon each other as rivals; but Prague had no interest in preferring one to the other, or in destroying the independence of either, while the connection in language between the Bohemians and the Slovaks of North Hungary ensured the sympathy of the former for any attempts at resistance to Magyar supremacy. Lastly, wedged in as Bohemia is between the Germans of the Archduchy of Austria, and that wider Germany with which so many of the Austrians desired to unite, it could never cherish those separatist aspirations which would have prevented Lemberg, for instance, from ever becoming the centre of an Austrian Slavonic federation. Thus the fall of Bohemian liberty prepared the way for a complete change in the character of the Slavonic movement. The idea of a federation of the different Slavonic races of the Empire might be still cherished by many of the Slavonic leaders; and, for a short time, the struggle of the Slavonic races against Magyar and German supremacy might retain its original character of a struggle for freedom. But it was unavoidable that this movement should now gradually drift into an acceptance of the leadership of those courtiers and soldiers, who hated the Germans and Magyars as the opponents, not of Slavonic freedom, but of Imperial despotism.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Rakoczi is still to a great extent a national hero among the Magyars, as is shown by the name of the Rakoczi March, which is given to one of the national airs; for the Magyars, in the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, were willing to risk the separation of Transylvania from Hungary if thereby they could secure an independent background to their struggles for liberty against Austria, much as the Venetians in 1859 were thankful for the liberation of Lombardy from Austria, though it involved the loss to Venetia of fellow-sufferers under Austrian oppression.

[12] English readers may be reminded by this scene of that fiery debate on the Grand Remonstrance, when the members of the House of Commons would "have sheathed their swords in each other's bowels, had not the sagacity and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented it."

[13] Out of the various efforts of the Roman Catholics to bring back the Greeks to the Roman Church, there had arisen a community called the United Greeks, which acknowledged the power of the Pope while maintaining the Greek ritual.