The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 17 · Chapter 20Holiness to the Lord! (6)
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In the mean time the deputation of citizens had reached the Castle. At first the officials were disposed to treat them angrily, and even tried to detain them by force; but the news of the concession of arms to the students, the urgent pressure of Archduke John, and the accounts of the growing fury of the people finally decided Metternich to yield; and, advancing into the room where the civic deputation was assembled, he declared that as they had said his resignation would bring peace to Austria he now resigned his office, and wished good luck to the new government. Many of the royal family and of the other members of the Council flattered themselves that they had got rid of a formidable enemy without making any definite concession to the people. Windischgraetz alone protested against the abandonment of Metternich by the rulers of Austria.
Metternich had hoped to retire quietly to his own villa, but it had been already burned in the insurrection; and he soon found that it was safer to fly from Vienna and eventually to take refuge in England. He had, however, one consolation in all his misfortunes. In the memoir written four years later he expressed his certainty that he at least had done no wrong, and that if he had to begin his career again, he would follow the same course he took before, and would not deviate from it for an instant.
When, at half-past eight in the evening of March 13th, men went through the streets of Vienna, crying out "Metternich is fallen!" it seemed as if the march of the students and the petition of Fischhof had produced in one day all the results desired. But neither the suspicions of the people nor the violent intentions of the princes were at an end. The archdukes still talked of making Windischgraetz dictator of Vienna. The workmen still raged in the suburbs; and the students refused to leave the University for fear an attack should be made upon it. But in spite of the violence of the workmen the leaders of the richer citizens were more and more determined to make common cause with reformers. Indeed both they and the students hoped to check the violence of the riots, while they prevented any reactionary movement. The Emperor also was on the side of concession. He refused to let the people be fired on, and announced on the 14th the freedom of the press. But unfortunately he was seized with one of his epileptic fits; and the intriguers, who were already consolidating themselves into the secret council known as the "Camarilla," published the news of Windischgraetz's dictatorship, and resolved to place Vienna under a state of siege while the Emperor was incapable of giving directions.
The news of Windischgraetz's accession to power so alarmed the people that they at once decided to march upon the Castle; but one of the leading citizens, named Arthaber, persuaded them to abandon their intention, and instead to send him and another friend to ask for a constitution from the Emperor. A struggle was evidently going on between Ferdinand and his courtiers. Whenever he was strong and able to hold his own, he was ready to make concessions. Whenever he was either ill or still suffering from the mental effects of his illness, the Government fell into the hands of Windischgraetz and the archdukes, and violent measures were proposed.
Thus, though Arthaber and his friends were received courteously and assured of the constitutional intentions of the Emperor, at eleven o'clock on the same night there appeared a public notice declaring Vienna in a state of siege. But even Windischgraetz seems to have been somewhat frightened by the undaunted attitude of the people; and when he found that his notice was torn down from the walls, and that a new insurrection was about to break out, he sent for Professor Hye and entreated him to preserve order. In the mean time the Emperor had to some extent recovered his senses; and he speedily issued a promise to summon the Estates of the German and Slavonic Provinces and the congregations of Lombardo-Venetia.
But the people had had enough of sham constitutions; and the Emperor's proclamation was torn down. This act, however, did not imply any personal hostility to Ferdinand; for the belief that the Austrian ministers were thwarting the good intentions of their master was as deeply rooted at this time in the minds of the Viennese as was a similar belief with regard to Pius IX and his cardinals in the minds of the Romans; and when the Emperor drove out on March 15th, he was received with loud cheers.
But as Ferdinand listened to these cheers he must have noticed that, louder than the "Es lebe der Kaiser" of his German subjects and the "Slawa" of the Bohemians, rose the sound of the Hungarian "Eljen." For mingling in the crowd with the ordinary inhabitants of Vienna was the Hungarian deputation, which had at last been permitted by the Count Palatine to leave Presburg, and which had arrived in Vienna to demand both freedoms that had been granted to the Germans and also a separate responsible ministry for Hungary. They arrived in the full glory of recent successes in the Presburg Diet; for, strengthened by the news of the Viennese rising, Kossuth had carried, in one day, many of the reforms for which his party had so long been contending. The last remnants of the dependent condition of the peasantry had been swept away; taxation had been made universal; and freedom of the press and universal military service had been promised. Szechenyi alone had ventured to raise a note of warning, and it had fallen unheeded.
In Vienna Kossuth was welcomed almost as cordially as in Presburg; for the German movement in Vienna had tended to produce in its supporters a willingness to lose the eastern half of the empire in order to obtain the union of the western half with Germany. So the notes of Arndt's "Deutsches Vaterland" were mingled with the cry of "Batthyanyi Lajos, Minister Praesident!" Before such a combination as this, Ferdinand had no desire, Windischgraetz no power, to maintain an obstinate resistance; and, on March 16th, Sedlnitzky, the hated head of the police, was dismissed from office. On the 18th a responsible ministry was appointed; and on the 22d Windischgraetz announced that national affairs would now be guided on the path of progress.
In the mean time that German movement from which the Viennese derived so much of their impulse had been gaining a new accession of force in the north of Germany. In Berlin the order of the Viennese movements had been to some extent reversed. There the artisans, instead of taking their tone from the students, had given the first impulse to reform. The King indeed had begun his concessions by granting freedom of the press on March 7th; but it seemed very unlikely that this concession would be accompanied by any securities that would make it a reality. The King even refused to fulfil his promise of summoning the Assembly; and it was in consequence of this refusal that the artisans presented to the Town Council of Berlin a petition for the redress of their special grievances. The same kind of misery which prevailed in Vienna had shown itself, though in less degree, in Berlin; and committees had been formed for the relief of the poor. The Town Council refused to present the petition of the workmen, and, in order to take the movement out of their hands, presented a petition of their own in favor of freedom of the press, trial by jury, representation of the German people in the Bundestag, and the summoning of all the Provincial Assemblies of the kingdom. This petition was rejected by the King; and thereupon, on March 13th, the people gathered in large numbers in the streets. General Pfuel fired on them; but instead of yielding, they threw up barricades, and a fierce struggle ensued.
On the 14th the cry for complete freedom of the press became louder and more prominent; and the insurgents were encouraged by the first news of the Vienna rising. The other parts of the kingdom now joined in the movement. On the 14th came deputations from the Rhine Province, who demanded in a threatening manner the extension of popular liberties. On the 16th came the more important news that Posen and Silesia were in revolt. Mieroslawsky, who had been one of the leaders of the Polish movement of 1846, had gained much popularity in Berlin; and he seemed fully disposed to combine the movement for the independence of Posen with that for the freedom of Prussia, much in the same way as Kossuth had combined the cause of Hungarian liberty with the demand for an Austrian constitution. In Silesia, no doubt, the terrible famine of the previous year, and the remains of feudal oppression, had sharpened the desire for liberty; and closely following on the news of these two revolts came clearer accounts of the Viennese rising and the happy tidings of the fall of Metternich.
The King of Prussia promised, on the arrival of this news, to summon the Assembly for April 2d; and two days later he appeared on the balcony of his palace and declared his desire to change Germany from an alliance of states into a federal state.
But the suspicions of the people had now been thoroughly aroused; and on March 18th, the very day on which the King made this declaration, fresh deputations came to demand liberties from him; and when he appealed to them to go home his request was not complied with. The threatening attitude of the soldiers, and the recollection of their violence on the preceding days, had convinced the people that until part at least of the military force was removed they could have no security for liberty.
The events of the day justified their belief; for, while some one was reading aloud to the people the account of the concessions recently made by the King, the soldiers suddenly fired upon them, and the crowd fled in every direction. They fled, however, soon to rally again; barricades were once more thrown up; the Poles of Posen flocked in to help their friends, and the black, red, and gold flag of Germany was displayed. Women joined the fight at the barricades; and on the 19th some of the riflemen whom the King had brought from Neuchâtel refused to fire upon the people. Then the King suddenly yielded, dismissed his ministers, and promised to withdraw the troops and allow the arming of the people.
The victory of the popular cause seemed now complete; but the bitterness which still remained in the hearts of the citizens was shown by a public funeral procession through Berlin in honor of those who had fallen in the struggle. The King stood bare-headed on the balcony as the procession passed the palace; and on March 21st he came forward in public waving the black, red, and gold flag of Germany.
(1848) THE REVOLT OF HUNGARY, Arminius Vambery
Deep interest throughout the civilized world was aroused by the unavailing struggle of Hungary, in 1848, for national independence. The name of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot and famous orator, became celebrated in many lands; and in the various countries where he sojourned as an exile from his own—especially in the United States (1851-1852) and in England—his eloquent appeals awakened profound sympathy for his people's cause. Vambery, however, regards Kossuth's compatriot, Count Stephen Szechenyi (born in 1791) as "the greatest Hungarian of the nineteenth century." He was descended from a distinguished family, which had given to its country many champions of liberty. The great aim of his life was to revive the drooping energies of the nation. As a youth he served in the army. Entering the famous Diet of 1825, in which, by right of birth, he took his seat in the Upper House, he distinguished himself by his liberal leadership, and as a writer and an advocate of public endowments accomplished much for the education of his people.
Up to the time at which Vambery, the celebrated historian of Hungary, begins the present narrative, the growth of the national spirit had been more and more evident each year since the end of the Napoleonic wars. For more than two centuries Hungary had been under the oppressive rule of Austria. Hungary had furnished soldiers to Austria in her struggle against Bonaparte, and the Austrian Emperor had repeatedly promised to redress Hungarian grievances; but after the fall of Napoleon these promises were repudiated. Hungary so emphatically showed her indignation that the Emperor was compelled to convoke the Diet in which Szechenyi distinguished himself. The subsequent career of this leader, the character and aims of Kossuth, and the insurrection they did so much to incite are powerfully described by Vambery, who writes not only as an author fully versed in his country's annals, but also as a patriot jealous of her liberties, proud of her heroic sons, and loyal to her fame.
For fifteen years, up to 1840, the popularity of Szechenyi extended over Hungary, and his name was cherished by every patriot in the land. About this time, however, the great statesman was destined to come into collision with a man who was his peer in genius and abilities. The two patriots were representatives of different methods, and in the contest produced by the shock of antagonistic tendencies Szechenyi was compelled to yield to Louis Kossuth, his younger rival. Although there was no material difference between their aims—for both wished to see their country great, free, constitutionally governed, prosperous, and advanced in civilization—yet in the ways and means employed by them to attain that aim they were diametrically opposed to each other.
Szechenyi, who descended from a family of ancient and aristocratic lineage, and presented himself to the nation with connections reaching up into the highest circles of the court, with the lustre of his ancient name, and with his immense fortune, wished to secure the happiness of his country by quite different methods from those adopted by Louis Kossuth, a child of the people, who, although he was a nobleman by birth, yet belonged to that poorer class of gentry who support themselves by their own exertions, and who, in Hungary, are destined to fulfil the mission of the citizen-classes of other countries. It is from this class of the gentry, for the most part, that are recruited the trades-people, the smaller landowners, professional men, writers, subordinate officials, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, teachers, and professors. By virtue of their nobility, it is true, they belonged to the privileged class of the country, and were not subjected to the humiliations of the oppressed peasantry, yet they had to earn a living by their own work, and were therefore not only accessible to, but were ready enthusiastically to receive, the lofty message of liberty and equality which the French Revolution of 1830 began to proclaim anew throughout Europe.
These doctrines formed a sharp contrast to the views of Count Stephen Szechenyi, views which, owing to the social position of the man who held them, were not devoid of a certain aristocratic tinge, and according to which the most important part in the regeneration of the Hungarian nation was assigned to the aristocracy. It was a part, however, which the Hungarian aristocracy was itself by no means disposed to assume. Among its younger members, indeed, could be found, here and there, enthusiastic men who were devotedly attached to the person of the lordly reformer, but the great majority of his class were hostilely arrayed against Szechenyi's aims, and, obstructing the granting of even the most inoffensive demands of the nation, supported the Viennese Government; which was rigidly opposed to political reforms and to any changes in the public institutions of the country. This attitude of the aristocracy compelled Szechenyi to avoid as much as possible all questions concerning constitutionality and liberty, and to confine the work of reform chiefly to the sphere of internal improvements.
The only way in which he could hope to obtain the support of the court of Vienna and of the majority of the Upper House for his politico-economical measures, was to remain as neutral as possible in politics. The idea which chiefly governed his actions was that the country should be first strengthened internally, and that afterward it would be easy for the nation to bring about the triumph of her national and political aspirations.
After 1840, however, the bulk of the nation, and especially the small gentry whose preponderating influence was making itself continually felt, were unwilling to follow Szechenyi in his one-sided policy. The reformatory work of Szechenyi during the preceding fifteen years had educated public opinion up to new and great ideas, but the leaders of that public opinion were now to be found in the House of Representatives in the persons of Francis Deak and Louis Kossuth. They wished to obtain for their country both political liberty and material prosperity. They knew the effect of political institutions upon the material well-being and civilization of a nation, and they no longer deemed it possible to attain these objects without a modern constitutional government.
Louis Kossuth, who was born in 1802, was the very incarnation of the great democratic ideas of his age. He was entirely a man of work and entered the legal profession, after he had completed his studies with great distinction, for the purpose of supporting himself by it. Kossuth was present at the Diet of 1832, when the Government, which conducted itself most brutally and arbitrarily toward the press, refused to allow the newspapers to print reports of the deliberations of the Diet in spite of the repeated urgings by the Deputies for such an authorization, and it was owing to his ingenuity that this prohibition was evaded. The censorship was exercised on printed matter only and did not extend to manuscripts. Kossuth wrote out the reports of the Diet himself, had numerous copies made of them in writing, and circulated them, for a slight fee, in every part of the country, where they were looked for with feverish expectation, and, owing to the spirit of opposition with which they were colored, were read with the greatest eagerness.
This manuscript newspaper produced quite a revolutionary movement among the people, frightening even the Austrian Government. The latter now attempted to silence Kossuth by gentle means, promising him high offices and a pension, but he refused the enticing offers and continued his work for the benefit of the nation. Foiled in the attempt to lure Kossuth from his duty, the Government resorted to violence, seized the lithographic apparatus by means of which Kossuth planned to multiply his manuscript newspaper, and gave directions to the postmasters to detain and open all those sealed packages which were supposed to contain the reports. But these arbitrary proceedings of the Government could not put an end to the circulation of the newspaper; the country gentlemen, by their own servants, continued to send each other single copies, and the matter was given up only when the Diet ceased to be in session.
Then Kossuth, at the urgent request of his friends and, one might say, of the whole country, started a new manuscript newspaper at Budapest, which reported the deliberations of the county assemblies. The effect produced by this new paper was fraught with even greater consequences than the first had created, for it was instrumental in bringing the counties into contact with one another, thus giving them an opportunity to combine against the Government. The latter, however, soon prohibited its publication, but the prohibition gave rise to a storm of indignation throughout the whole country. The counties in solid array addressed protests to the Government against the illegal act and in behalf of Kossuth, who continued to publish the paper in spite of the inhibition. The Government at last resorted to the most barefaced brutality. Kossuth, the brave champion of liberty, its eloquent pen and herald, was dragged to a damp and dark subterranean prison-cell in the castle of Buda, and detained there, while his father and mother and his family, who were looking to him solely for their support, were robbed of the aid of their natural protector.
Although at that period lawlessness was the order of the day, yet this last cruel and illegal act of the Government greatly exasperated the public mind, which was already in a ferment of excitement. But while the excited passions raged throughout the country, the Government, nothing loth, caused Kossuth to be prosecuted for high treason, and, having obtained his conviction, had him sentenced to an imprisonment of three years. Kossuth applied himself during his detention to serious studies, and acquired also, while in prison, the English language to such an extent that he was enabled to address in that language, during his exile, with great effect and impressiveness, large audiences both in England and in the United States of America. His imprisonment lasted two long years, after the lapse of which he obtained, in 1840, a pardon in consequence of the repeated and urgent representations of the Diet.
Kossuth returned to the scene of his former activity as the martyr of free speech and the victim to the cause of the nation. He very soon found a new field in which to labor. The Government perceived at last that violence was of little avail, and that those questions which were occupying the minds to such a degree could no longer be kept from being publicly discussed by the press. Kossuth now obtained permission to edit a political daily paper. Its publication was commenced under the title of Pesti Hirlap ("Newspaper of Pest") in 1841, and may be said to have created the political daily press of Hungary. It disseminated new ideas among the masses, stirred up the indifferent to feel an interest in the affairs of the country, and gave a purpose to the national aspirations. It proclaimed democratic reforms in every department; the abolition of the privileges of the nobility and of their exemption from taxation, equal rights and equal burdens for all the citizens of the State, and the extension of public instruction, and it endeavored to restore the Hungarian nationality to the place it was entitled to claim in the organism of the State.
The wealth of ideas thus daily communicated to the country appeared in the most attractive garb, for Kossuth possessed a masterly style, and his leaders and shorter articles showed off to advantage so many unexpected beauties of the Hungarian language that his readers were fairly enchanted and carried away by them. His articles were a happy compound of poetical elevation and oratorical power, gratifying common-sense and the imagination at the same time, appealing by their lucid exposition to the reader's intelligence, and exciting and warming his fancy by their fervor. Kossuth always rightly guessed what questions most interested the nation, and the daily press became, in his hands, a power in Hungary, electrifying the masses, who were always ready to give their unconditional support to his bold and far-reaching schemes.
The extraordinary influence obtained by Kossuth through his paper frightened Szechenyi, and, to even a greater degree, those whose prejudices were shocked or ancient privileges and interests were endangered by the democratic agitations for reform. Kossuth was attacked in books, pamphlets, and newspapers, but he came out victorious from all contests. In vain did Szechenyi himself, backed by his great authority in the land, assail him, declaring that he did not object to Kossuth's ideas, but that his manner and his tactics were reprehensible, and that the latter were sure to lead to a revolution. The great mass of the people felt instinctively that revolution had become a necessity and was unavoidable if Hungary was to pass from the old mediaeval order to the establishment of modern institutions and was to become a state where equality before the law should be the ruling standard. The masses were strengthened in this conviction by the unreasonable, short-sighted, and violent policy pursued by the Government of Vienna, which obstructed the slightest reforms in the ancient institutions and opposed every national aspiration, and under whose protecting wing the reactionary elements of the Upper House were constantly paralyzing the noblest and best efforts made by the Lower House for the public weal, while the same Government arbitrarily supported claims of the Catholic clergy, in flat contradiction to the rights and liberties of the various denominations inhabiting the country.
The Government, in its antipathy to the national movement, went even further. It secretly incited the other nationalities, especially the Croats, against the Hungarians, and thus planted the seeds from which sprang the subsequent great civil war. In observing the dangerous symptoms preceding the last-mentioned movement, and the bloody scenes and fights provoked at every election by the hirelings of the Government, in order to intimidate the adherents of reform, the friends of progress became more and more convinced that the period of moderation, such as preached by Szechenyi, had passed by, and must give way to that resolute policy, advocated by Kossuth, which recoiled from no consequences. Numerous magnates, all the chief leaders of the gentry boasting of enlightenment and patriotism, and imbued with European culture, rallied around Kossuth, until finally the public opinion of the country and the enthusiasm of which he was the centre caused him to be returned, in 1847, together with Count Louis Batthyanyi, as Deputy from the foremost county of the country, the county of Pest.
During the first months of the Diet of 1847-1848, which was to raise Hungary to the rank of those countries that proclaimed equal rights and possessed a responsible parliamentary government, it differed very little from the one preceding it. The opposition initiated great reforms, as before, but there was no one who believed that their realization was near at hand. Kossuth repeatedly addressed the House, and soon convinced his audience that he was as irresistible an orator as he had proved powerful as a writer. But there was nothing to indicate that the country was on the eve of a great transformation.
The revolution of February, 1848, which broke out in Paris, changed, as if by magic, the relative positions of Austria and Hungary. Metternich's system of government, which was opposed to granting liberty to the people, collapsed at once. The storm of popular indignation swept it away like a house built of cards. At the first news of the occurrences in Paris, Kossuth asked in the Lower House for the creation of a responsible ministry. The motion was favorably received, but in the Upper House it was rejected, the Government not being yet alive to the real state of affairs, and still hoping by a system of negation to frustrate the wishes of the people. But very soon the revolution reared its head in Vienna itself, and the wishes of the Hungarian people, uttered at Budapest, received thereby a new and powerful advocate.
At that time the Hungarian Diet still met at Presburg, but the two sister-cities of Buda and Pest formed the real capital of the country and were the centre of commerce, industry, science, and literature. Michael Vorosmarty, the poet laureate of the nation, lived in Pest, and there the twin stars of literature, Alexander Petofi and Maurice Jokai, shone on the national horizon. Jokai, who is still living (1886) and enjoys a world-wide fame as a novelist, and Petofi, the eminent poet, who was destined to become the Tyrtaeus of his nation, were then both young men, full of enthusiasm and intrepid energy, and teeming with great ideas.
About these two gathered the other writers and youth of the University, and all of them, helping one another, contrived, on hearing the news of the sudden revolutions in Paris and Vienna, to enact in Budapest the bloodless revolution of March 15, 1848, which obtained the liberty of the press for the nation, and at the same time, in a solemn manifesto, gave expression to the wishes of the Hungarians in the matter of reform. The only act of violence these revolutionary heroes were guilty of was the entering of a printing establishment, whose proprietor, afraid of the Government, had refused to print the admirable poem of Petofi entitled Talpra Magyar ("Up, Magyar"), and doing the printing there themselves. The first stanza of this poem, later the war-song of the national movement, runs, in a literal translation, thus:
"Arise, O Magyar! thy country calls. Here is the time, now or never. Shall we be slaves or free? That is the question—choose! We swear by the God of the Magyars, We swear, to be slaves no longer!"
This soul-stirring poem was improvised by Petofi under the inspiration of the moment, and at the same establishment where it was first printed was also printed a proclamation which contained twelve articles setting forth the wishes of the people.
While the capital was resounding with the rejoicings and triumphant shouts of her exulting inhabitants, the proper department of the Government for the carrying through of these movements, the Diet, assembled at Presburg, lost no time, and set to work with great energy to reform the institutions of Hungary, constitutionally, and to put into the form of law the ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The salutary legislation met now with no opposition, either from the Upper House or from the court at Vienna, and in a short time the Diet passed the celebrated acts of 1848, which, having received the royal sanction, were proclaimed as laws on April 11th, at Presburg, amid the wildest enthusiasm, in the presence of King Ferdinand V.
By these laws Hungary became a modern state, possessing a constitutional government. The Government was vested in a ministry responsible to the Parliament, all the inhabitants of the country were declared equal before the law, the privileges of the nobility were abolished, the soil was declared free, and the right of free worship accorded to all. The institution of national guards was introduced, the utmost liberty of the press was secured, Transylvania became a part of the mother-country—in a word, the national and political condition of the country was reorganized, in every particular, in harmony with the spirit, the demands, and aspirations of our age. At the same time the men placed at the head of the Government were such as possessed the fullest confidence of the people. The first ministry was composed of the most distinguished patriots. Count Louis Batthyanyi was the President; and acting in conjunction with him were Francis Deak, as Minister of Justice; Count Stephen Szechenyi, as Minister of Home Affairs; and Louis Kossuth, as Minister of Finance.