Part 6

For three years and a half Kossuth’s _Gazette_ had an unprecedented influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and expected to found another journal which should draw off the _Gazette’s_ patrons. Government, however, refused to grant him a license. Accordingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another form. In the assembly of the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless eloquence the great political questions; outside, he organized an economical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which stunted her industrial and commercial development. Kossuth created a league whose members vowed for five years to use only Hungarian products. He projected a railway to Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged the establishment of savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.

Thus through all the arteries of the body politic new blood was throbbing. Give a people a great idea, and they will find how to apply it to every concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely undermining feudalism; their race was growing more and more restive at Austria’s obstinate delays. When Austria removed the native county sheriffs and put German administrators in their stead, all the Magyar factions joined in denouncing such an assault on their national life. The county system had been the safeguard of Hungary’s political institutions for well-nigh eight hundred years; the sheriff was the foremost official in the county, to whose guidance its interests and civic activity were intrusted. To make an alien sheriff was therefore to check national agitation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance and resentment, though the platform of the Liberals, drawn up by the judicial Deák, wore on its surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot canvass, Kossuth was elected to represent Pesth in the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions sufficed to establish his preëminence as an orator, and his leadership of the Liberal party.

During the winter months of 1847-48 but little was done, though much was discussed. As usual, the Magnates resisted the reforms aimed at their class; as usual, Government temporized and postponed. Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 1848, news reached Presburg of the revolution in Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kindling as it passed the fires of revolt. At Presburg, on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and interrupted a debate on the financial difficulties with Austria. That question of finance, he said, could never be settled separately; in it was involved the whole question of Austria’s disregard of Hungary’s rights. Hungary must have her own laws, her own ministry; taxation must be equal; the franchise must be extended. More than that, he added, Hungary could never prosper until every part of the Empire should be governed by uniform constitutional methods.

Kossuth’s “baptismal speech of the revolution” took the Lower House by storm. An address to the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless reluctance on the part of the Magnates, a large committee, headed by Kossuth and Count Louis Batthyányi,--the Liberal leader in the Upper House,--carried twelve days later to Vienna. The delegates found the Austrian capital in an uproar. On March 13 Metternich, deserted by the aristocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupulously for fifty years, had been hounded from office. The people, after a bloody struggle, had possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth as a deliverer; for his “baptismal speech” had made their aims articulate.

The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the deputation very graciously, and promised to grant their petition. Exulting, they returned to Presburg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthyányi held the premiership, and Kossuth the portfolio of finance. Soon, very soon, tremendous difficulties beset them: Radicals clamored for a republic; the subject races revolted; the Imperial government proved perfidious.

The key to Austria’s subsequent conduct is this: Austria, at heart a coward, had long been able to play the bully; now, however, her outraged peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their mercy; the bully cringed, promised, conceded; concession brought a temporary respite from danger; thereupon she began to think she had been unduly terrified and to regret her concessions; so she cautiously put out feelers of arrogance, to resume her rôle of bully. When she met sharp resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await a better opportunity. Throughout this crisis, Emperor Ferdinand, at his best a man of mediocre capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, and a Court clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and the Empire.

All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. Assuming the Imperial assurances to be honest, they passed a reform bill abolishing the privileges of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the state for the loss they sustained in the emancipation of their serfs. Bills authorizing equal taxation, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the abolition of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to one million two hundred thousand voters, were adopted with but little discussion. Religious toleration--except for Jews--became the law of the land.

The Magnates having made this unparalleled sacrifice, King Ferdinand came over to Presburg and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the Constitution. The Cabinet proceeded to organize its administration,--a task which would have been sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now extraordinary and urgent matters pressed upon it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats rose in rebellion. Most alarming was the situation in Croatia, where the Slavs were agitating for separation from Hungary. Baron Jellachich, who had just been appointed Ban or Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In June the Magyar ministers hurried to Innspruck--whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled after a second outbreak in Vienna--to protest against these rebellious acts. The Emperor assured them that he had given the Ban no sanction; that he had, indeed, dismissed him from the Imperial service. It happened that Jellachich was at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his mind an unwritten commission to serve Austria against Hungary.

The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the outbreak in Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she had still to accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was her legal king; but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial government, was instigating her enemies.

The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the ancient capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by implication Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in violence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly the most effective speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to have moved stocks and stones by their voice; yet not on this account must we disbelieve the record. For posterity can never supply the one thing needful to the consummate orator’s success,--it can never supply the state of mind of his audience. We shall always find that the epoch-making speech was addressed to listeners every one of whom had long been burning to hear just those words. This is why so many of the orations that altered history look faded on the printed page; this is why we must in many cases judge the orator as we judge the singer or the actor,--by the effect he produces on his contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first orators of the century, though a later generation is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even those who heard him speak in a language not his own, and who had listened to Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard his equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged with the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his eloquence was irresistible.

In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,--that Hungary must either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and perilous sea. All were waiting for the decisive word.

Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was brown, his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-shaven chin. At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers dread a collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the strength which burned in his subject, and they listened for two hours, spell-bound and electrified.

“I feel,” he said to them, “as if God had put in my hands the trumpet to rouse the dead, that, if sinners and weak, they may sink back into death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, they may waken to eternity.” He then went on to review the quarrel with Croatia, declaring that to that country Hungary had, from immemorial time, accorded all the privileges which she herself enjoyed, and that recently she had conceded to the Croats a wider use of their native language. “I can understand a people,” he said ironically, “who, deeming the freedom they possess too little, take up arms to acquire more, though they play, indeed, a hazardous game, for such weapons are two-edged; but I cannot understand a people who say, ‘The freedom you offer us is too great,--we will not accept your offer, but will go and submit ourselves to the yoke of Absolutism.’” Kossuth next touched on the situation in the South, and showed wherein it differed from that in the Southwest. He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful pretensions of Croatia, and thereby to annul the pledges of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous cloud on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a Russian army along the Pruth. When, after this review, he solemnly announced, “The fatherland is in danger,” not a deputy was surprised, not a head shook incredulously. At last he asked for authority to levy two hundred thousand soldiers, and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins, setting forth the means by which he planned to meet this extraordinary measure as eloquently as he had set forth its need.

He had held the Assembly captivated for two hours; now, as he was closing, his strength failed, and he could not speak. The deputies, too, were speechless. For a brief moment intense silence reigned between him and them. Then Paul Nyáry, who only yesterday had attacked the policy of the Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking God to be his witness, and exclaimed, “We grant everything!” In a flash four hundred hands were raised, and four hundred voices repeated Nyáry’s covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had recovered strength to say that his request should not be taken as a demand for a vote of confidence. “We ask your vote for the preservation of the country; and, sirs, if any breast sighs for freedom, if any desire waits for fulfilment, let that breast suffer a little longer, let it have patience until we have saved the fatherland. You have all risen to a man, and I bow before the great-heartedness of the nation, while I ask one thing more: let your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates of hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary!”

In March, under the magic of Kossuth’s irresistible oratory, the Magyars had boldly demanded their constitutional rights; now in July, thrilled by the same magic, they pledged themselves to defend their independence to the death.

The summer passed amid recruiting of Honvéds, volunteer “defenders of the fatherland,” the attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues of the Imperial Court to browbeat the Hungarian Cabinet. In September, Jellachich, at last avowedly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade Hungary.

The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconciliation, quitted the country. The Viennese Cabinet appointed Count Lamberg to assume full control of the military affairs in the kingdom; the Hungarians pronounced his appointment unconstitutional, and they were right. On his arrival at Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash crime caused some of the Liberals to withdraw horrified. Batthyányi resigned the premiership, and a Committee of National Defense, in which Kossuth predominated, was chosen. On October 2, the Camarilla, grown truculent, dispatched Recsey to dissolve the Hungarian Assembly, and bade Hungary to submit to Jellachich. The Magyars heeded neither command. Having equity and law on their side, they acted henceforth on the assumption that the orders which emanated from Vienna could not be attributed to Ferdinand without imputing perjury to him.

War could no longer be avoided. The Committee of National Defense displayed great energy in organizing resistance. Kossuth’s eloquence went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left the plough, the well-to-do tradesman deserted his shop, the lawyer dropped his brief, to become volunteers in the service of their country. A third outbreak at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying off to Olmütz, and seemed for a moment to assure the final triumph of the revolution. During the three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian army under Prince Windischgrätz--he who said that “human beings begin with barons”--could be brought up, the Hungarians debated whether they should go to the assistance of the Viennese, for they wished to be strictly legal. At last they found justification in the plea that they had a right to pursue Jellachich, who was marching to join Windischgrätz, across the Austrian frontier. But they decided too late. Their troops were beaten at Schwechat, on the outskirts of Vienna, just as Windischgrätz was successfully storming the city (October 29).

For six weeks thereafter Windischgrätz devoted himself to stamping out the rebellion in Vienna, and in preparing for a campaign against Hungary. On December 2 poor, weak-witted Ferdinand abdicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph succeeded him as emperor. This change betokened the returning confidence of the Court party. They now felt sure of crushing the revolution, and of restoring the Old Régime; but they had no intention that, when the rest of Austria was re-subjected to their despotism, Hungary alone should enjoy a constitutional government. Yet this had been promised by Ferdinand, and he had scruples against openly violating his oath. Therefore, by removing him and substituting Francis Joseph, they had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend; their Constitution was their life, and that Constitution recognized no king who had not been crowned by the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their rights inviolate.

Ten days before Christmas, Windischgrätz opened his campaign. Five armies besides his own invaded Hungary from five different directions. The Magyars had employed the six weeks’ lull in defensive preparations. They gave Arthur Görgei, an ex-officer thirty-one years old,--able, stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious,--the command of the Army of the Upper Danube. He proposed to abandon the frontier and to mass the Hungarian forces in the interior, where they could choose their own ground; but the Committee of Defense insisted that every inch of Hungarian soil should be contested. A fortnight’s operations proved the wisdom of Görgei’s plan: the Magyars were easily driven back, and on New Year’s eve the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda-Pesth. The following day, January 1, 1849, a melancholy procession of ministers, deputies, state officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set out from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown of St. Stephen, the public coffers and archives, and the printing-presses for bank-notes. Debreczin, a town forty leagues inland, became the temporary capital. At Buda-Pesth, Windischgrätz celebrated his triumph by holding a Bloody Assize. To envoys from the fugitive government who asked him to state his conditions, he only replied, “I do not treat with rebels.”

Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly succeeded by a mood of desperation,--such a mood as made France invincible in 1792. Again did Kossuth’s eloquence pass like the breath of life over the land; again did his energy direct the equipment of new recruits and fill the gaps of the regiments already in the field. Had the deputies at Debreczin voted as they wished, they would have voted for peace; but they knew that the majority of their countrymen would reject any peace which Austria was likely to offer, and they were ashamed to appear less daring than Kossuth.

The enthusiasm, we might call it the recklessness, with which the Magyars rallied to repel invasion, became a people who counted John Hunyádi and Francis Rakóczy among their national heroes. Thanks to their patriotic fervor, the Hungarian cause, which seemed about to collapse at the beginning of January, seemed about to prevail at the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wallachs and Austrians in Transylvania; Görgei had redeemed Northern Hungary; Klapka and Damjanics had brought Windischgrätz to bay in the midlands.

Well had it been for Hungary if these astonishing successes had prevented internal discord, for twofold dissensions now threatened to sap the growing strength. From one side, the generals chafed at being subordinate to the civilian Committee of Defense; on the other, a large body of soldiers and of civilians were angry at the evident drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a republic. Görgei, the most conspicuous of the generals, led this opposition. He declared in a manifesto that the army would fight to maintain against every foreign enemy the Constitution granted by Ferdinand, but that they would favor no attempt to convert the constitutional monarchy into a republic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in their patriotism, could not refrain from meddling; they suffered from the delusion common to such committees, and believed that they knew better than the trained men of war how war should be waged. They felt, too, political responsibilities which made them all the more active; and they had, as was natural, their favorites among the officers. Had the government been strong, it would have cashiered Görgei; being weak, and solicitous of conciliating so important a man, it tolerated him. But when a government and its generals distrust each other,--as we learned in our civil war,--conciliation can satisfy neither. If Görgei lost a battle, his enemies charged him with lukewarmness or disobedience; he retorted by blaming the committee for failing to support him or for breaking in upon his plans. We need not sift the recriminations in detail: it suffices for us to know that, from January on, Görgei and Kossuth, and their respective partisans, worked thus at odds.

Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels had but slight effect. The average Magyar was simply bent on avenging his long score of oppression against Austria. He realized that his own existence depended on that of Hungary, and to him Kossuth’s eloquence was like a trumpet-call of duty. That in performing his duty the Magyar might lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors, made duty doubly attractive.

In the early spring, Austria closed the way to compromise by proclaiming a new charter for the whole Empire. This charter declared that all the provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a common equality, deprived of local rights, and governed by a central administration at Vienna.

The Magyars, then, had nothing to hope. Whether they submitted to Austria or were conquered by her, their ancient Constitution would be blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. Accordingly, on April 14, 1849, they proclaimed the independence of Hungary, calling God and man to witness the wrongs she had suffered from the House of Hapsburg, and setting forth the illegality, truculence, and perfidy of Austria during the past thirteen months. A diet was to be summoned, which should determine the form of government that Hungary would permanently adopt; meanwhile Kossuth was chosen president-governor, and by appointing Görgei commander-in-chief he hoped to heal old wounds.

The moment was propitious. The Austrians had been beaten in a great battle (at Isaszeg) on April 7; and most of the fortresses, except Buda, had been recaptured. Görgei himself seemed satisfied. The elated Magyars dreamed even of a swift campaign against Vienna, and of bringing the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be acceptable to all his subject races. But their dream, if ever attainable, was spoiled by delay. Görgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before he marched farther west, and only on May 21 did he succeed in storming its citadel. By that time a new peril, more terrible than any previous, loomed up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, had besought Russia to help her, and the Czar, glad of an excuse for interfering, was marshaling his troops on the Hungarian frontier.

No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset this threatened intervention. France and England would not even recognize their republic, although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately sympathized with their cause. From Venice alone, the little republic round whose neck the Austrian noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to their army nor a florin to their purse. Desperate, but not yet willing to surrender, the Magyars nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth proclaimed a crusade, a levy in mass; every man to arm himself, were it only with a scythe or a bludgeon; perpetual prayers to be offered up in the churches; the enemy to be harassed at all places, to be hindered by the destruction of bridges and stores, and, wherever possible, by open fighting.

Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like this, is amazed that any people could be roused to make that last stand. Plainly enough, the Magyars had three soldiers against them to every one of theirs; ammunition and victuals were failing them; their treasury was empty; their armies could expect no reinforcements: to what end, therefore, protract a hopeless war? Reasoning thus, we miss the secret, not only of the revolutionists of 1848-49, but of all who have ever been kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held dearer than life. The Magyars would never have gone thus far,--never have felt during that May-month the fleeting exhilaration of victory,--had they not been fired by a passion which not disaster but death alone could quench.