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CHAPTER VI

The Revolution of 1848

Extra Hungariam non est vita; Aut si vita, non est ita.

Old Proverb.

THE revolution of 1848 is one of the great landmarks not merely of the nineteenth century, but of all history; for never before had the solidarity of the European common­wealth revealed itself so clearly. The true import of modern industrial and scientific discoveries first became apparent, when with lightning rapidity a spark struck in Paris burst into flame in half a dozen foreign capitals. The world awoke once more, this time to the noblest of all struggles, and claimed that equality of race without which equality of the individual is a mere idle dream.

The long period of exhaustion and reaction which followed the Napoleonic Wars, was the inevitable precursor of a fresh upheaval; and had events delayed the fall of Louis Philippe, Paris might have been robbed of her revolutionary pre­eminence, but the storm would not have been averted. In Hungary the movement in favour of constitutional reform was specially strong, and was fanned by the influence of a man who, whatever may have been his shortcomings, possessed in a signal degree the qualities of a successful demagogue and agitator. To great eloquence and readiness of phrase Louis Kossuth added a perfervid patriotism, a reckless impetu­osity and a talent for journalistic exaggeration, such as fired the impressionable Magyars into a perfect frenzy of enthu­siasm. Though, as we have already seen, his conception of liberty was by no means so ideal as is generally supposed, he undoubtedly represented democracy and reform in the Hungary of his day, and to him are mainly due the two great reforms of parliamentary government and the abolition of Serfdom. The national concessions won at the Diets of 1840 and 1844, while alarming the central government, had merely served to whet the Magyar appetite; and the re­actionary and barely constitutional system established by the Hungarian Chancellor, Count George Apponyi, so far from checking the movement, only made its leaders more clamorous. The immense influence of Kossuth's brilliant journal, the Pesti Hírlap, was consistently employed to push extreme national claims; while the more sober and states­manlike Deák supplied the reformers with a programme, whose liberal tone assured its popularity from the outset and whose insistence upon legal and constitutional tradition made it impossible for the government to treat it as revolutionary.

By the autumn of 1847 the position of Apponyi and his old Conservative followers had become well-nigh untenable, and the summons of Parliament could no longer be post­poned. From the moment when the new Diet met (November 10, 1847), Kossuth dominated the assembly, and the waning influence of Széchenyi grew daily more apparent. The royal proposals, which contained many concessions of genuine importance, and which three years before would have been received with acclamation, were now regarded as wholly inadequate; and the rival parties, closely matched in numbers, plunged from the very first into a heated contest. Long before the news from Paris reached Hungary, the excitement had reached fever pitch, and more than one measure of primary importance had been passed. The fall of the July Monarchy, and still more the consternation which that event produced in Vienna, encouraged the Magyars to hasten their pace. The great speech of Kossuth, in which he proposed the Address to the Monarch, demanded a responsible ministry for Hungary and a constitution for Austria, and declared that the future of the dynasty depended upon the cordial union of the various: races of the Monarchy, marks an important stage in the evolution of the Dual State. In the words of a recent historian,[1] it expresses under legal forms ideas which are essenti­ally revolutionary; and nothing so well illustrates the peculiar genius of the Magyars for imparting a legal aspect to an entirely new situation or for claiming a new departure as an ancient tradition. The effect of the speech was tremendous, and henceforth Kossuth was irresistible in Parliament. The events of March, 1848, in Hungary are unique in modern history; for never surely were so many radical reforms adopted in such feverish haste and almost without discussion. In one short month Hungary was transformed in theory from a mediaeval to a modern state, from a land of aristocratic privilege and semi-feudal traditions, to a parliamentary monarchy which recognized the equality of all citizens before the law. The Hungarian Chancellory and the Palatinal Council were abolished and replaced by an independent and responsible Hungarian Cabinet, with exclusive control of the executive. Parliament was to hold annual sessions, and to be renewed every three years; while a new electoral law swept away the old system of delegates from county and town, and substituted the direct election of deputies. The old exclusive noble franchise was annulled, and the nobles were deprived of their exemption from taxation. Serfdom and feudal dues were abolished, with compensation to the landlords out of State funds; and with these privileges fell the primitive institution of seignorial courts, and the first breach was made in the law of entail. The franchise of the town and county assemblies was extended, a law regulating freedom of the Press was passed, religious equality was solemnly proclaimed, a national University and Credit Bank were founded, and a national guard was organized. Finally a law was carried, proclaiming the union of Transylvania with Hungary.

The laws of 1848 form the foundation of modern Hungary, and in the main they are inspired by a truly liberal spirit. But though legally sanctioned by the Monarch, they contained the seeds of future evil. The ambiguity with which the vital question of Common Affairs is treated, left free play for the most dangerous interpretations, and thoroughly alarmed the advisers of Ferdinand, the shadow-Emperor. Unhappily this ambiguity was destined to find its way from the laws of 1848 into the Ausgleich of 1867, and to provoke in the early years of the twentieth century a grave constitutional crisis, of which none can as yet foresee the end. The first outbreak of revolution in Vienna had placed the control of affairs in the hands of men friendly to the movement in Hun­gary. But the dynasty soon fell once more a prey to reac­tionary influences, and there is little doubt that even if Kossuth and his party had shared the military views of Radetzky himself in questions affecting the army, the Camarilla would still have vowed vengeance to the new regime in Hungary. Meanwhile another fatal omission in the laws of 1848 secured to the Absolutist party a most welcome ally. This was no other than the Croats, who, already seriously alarmed and offended by the linguistic provisions of 1844, saw in more than one of the newly-voted laws a confirmation of their worst fears. Throughout the winter strained relations had existed between the party of reform and the Croatian delegates to the Diet, who had at a critical moment turned the scale in favour of the unpopular government of Apponyi. The whole trend of the new legislation was towards centralism, unification, even assimilation, and this fact could not be concealed even by the genuinely humanitarian nature of many of its provisions. Croatia and her special interests were pressed into the background, and the attitude of the majority seemed to threaten her with a fate similar to that of Tran­sylvania. The Croats were from the first alive to their danger, and favoured by their geographical position and by the rise of an able national leader in Baron Jellčić, they soon proved as impatient of half measures as the Magyars themselves. Jellačić set Budapest at open defiance, negotiated behind the back of the Batthyány Cabinet with the fugitive court at Innsbruck, and in his double capacity as Ban of Croatia and commander of the military frontiers organized the resist­ance of the southern Slavs to Hungary. The Court was not slow to use its opportunity, and in many cases Austrian officers were sent out with the object of imparting discipline to the insurgent peasantry. By the late summer of 1848 the Magyars were virtually ringed round by hostile nation­alities in arms, and their only willing support came from a handful of Polish emigres and from the Germans of Temesvár and its immediate neighbourhood. Such was the result of limiting themselves to a strictly national programme, instead of rallying the whole nation round them by the grant of racial equality.

The desperate and prolonged struggle of the Magyar against overwhelming odds contains elements of heroism which readily appeal to the casual observer. Closer inspection shows us that the reverse of this brightly polished medal is dull and tarnished. The Hungarian Revolution was a contest on two fronts — against Vienna on the one side, against the non-Magyar races on the other. To the former Kossuth offered-armed resistance, in the hope of asserting the very claims which he denied to the latter on the ground of historic rights. It was no idle phrase of Széchenyi when he accused Kossuth of "goading into madness against the Magyar nation" all other races of the Crown of St. Stephen.

The Croats, as we have seen, were ready and eager, months before the Court at Innsbruck gave its sanction, for the signal to march against Budapest. The Serbs of the Banat[2] who still looked back regretfully on their autonomous position, were specially susceptible to ideas of nationality, and the marked hostility displayed towards them by Kossuth and his organ, the Pesti Hírlap, certainly did not allay the feeling. In May, 1848, the Serb National Congress met at Karlowitz, and placed itself in such direct opposition to Batthyány's government that an open rupture became inevitable. Early in June the first blows were struck between the Serbs and Magyars, and the contest was conducted with ever-growing bitterness and cruelty. Meanwhile the union of Transylvania with Hungary, hurried through a packed Diet under illegal forms and under the terrorism of a howling mob, goaded the Roumanians into open revolt. Though forming two­thirds of the population of Transylvania, they lacked every vestige of political rights, all power being concentrated in the hands of the three privileged nations, the Magyars, Saxons and Szekels; and the petition drawn up at the national assembly of Roumanians in Blaj (Balázsfalva) in May, 1848, had been entirely ignored by the Diet. No longer content to be regarded as mere beasts of burden,[3] they boldly claimed recognition as the fourth nation of the country, and when the union showed them that they had nothing to expect through legal means, they resorted to violence and flung themselves into the arms of the Imperialists, whose com­manders were more than once seriously compromised by the terrible cruelties of these free-lance adherents. The excesses perpetrated by the Serbs and Roumanians against the Magyar nobles and bourgeoisie, though doubtless the result of centuries of repression, destroy our sympathy for a cause whose innate justice is beyond dispute; and the equally violent reprisals of the incensed Magyars complete the sombre colouring of the picture. Even the Saxons joined in the general resistance to the Pan-Magyar claims. To this course they were driven not merely by their proverbial loyalty to the dynasty, but by the natural aversion with which they regarded the union with Hungary, where their scanty numbers were in danger of being swamped in the rising flood of Magyar Chauvinism. Two heroic Lutheran pastors, Stephan Ludwig Roth and Karl Obert, sealed with their blood their fidelity to, the House of Habsburg and the ancient privileges of the Saxon nation.

During this national awakening, the Slovaks also began to raise their heads. The three leaders of their literary revival, Štúr, Hurban and Hodža, now appear as the champions of a political. cause. Štúr, who as representative of the town of Neusohl had distinguished himself at the Diet, had found his position untenable, owing to the increasing fanaticism. In the early days of the Viennese revolution, he and Hurban conferred with the numerous Slavs gathered in the Austrian capital; and when Jellačić was illegally acclaimed Ban of Croatia by popular vote and then confirmed in office by the Ernperor, the latter attended his installation at Agram, in cornpany with representatives of the Czechs, Serbs and Slovenes. As spokesman of the Slovaks, he even went so far as to declare in a firebrand oration, that the lot of the Christians of Turkey was far more bearable than the condition of the Slovaks in Hungary.[4] Meanwhile open meetings were held during the early spring in more than one place in Northern Hungary. When the March laws were published in Liptó St. Miklós, a petition was read before the County Assembly (March 28), in which the rights of the Slovak language were vindicated not only for elementary schools and courts of first instance, but also for all petitions and official proclamations, and also for the county assemblies.[5] After a somewhat stormy scene, the assembly very naturally declared that it was not competent to introduce such radical changes, and that the matter must be referred to Parliament. Six weeks later, however, a much more significant event took place. On May 10 a national Slovak meeting was held at Liptó St. Miklós, under the leadership of Miloslav Hurban, the fiery Lutheran pastor, who favoured instant action, and, like Montrose, was ready to " put it to the touch, to gain or lose it all." This assembly drew up a highly characteristic petition to " the King, Parliament, the Palatine, the Hungarian Ministry and all friends of humanity and nationality."[6] After laying special stress upon the claims of the Slovak nation to be the original occupant of the soil, and upon " the chains of abuse and shame " in which the fatherland had hitherto held their language and nationality, the petition proceeds to summon all the nations of Hungary to equality and fraternity, under the banner of the new age, and protests that no one deserves the glorious name of a Hungarian patriot, who docs not honour the national rights of every race which owns allegiance to the Crown of St. Stephen. The chief demands formulated in this remarkable petition were as follows: —

1.  The summons of "a general parliament for the brother nations of Hungary," in which every deputy has the right to use his mother tongue.

2.  Special provincial assemblies on a racial basis.

3.  The right to use the mother tongue in all public deliberations, and in courts of law.

4.  The introduction of the Slovak language into elementary and secondary schools, and into seminaries for clergy and teachers; and the foundation of a Slovak University.

5.  The formation of a Slovak national guard, with Slovak language of command.

6.  Universal Suffrage.

7.  Press freedom, without a Press law.

8.  Complete freedom of assembly and association.

The programme is curiously mixed. Side by side with demands like the last three — without which full liberty is impossible in a country of mixed races, but which have hitherto been withheld in Hungary — there are others which can only be described as visionary and extravagant, and which prove the framers of the petition to have acted under the hysteria of the moment, in clear defiance of practical considerations. The demand for a University, for instance, was manifestly absurd, since even if a sufficient number of students had been forthcoming, it would have been impossible, out of the very limited Slovak educated classes, to provide an adequate professorial staff. The demand for a Slovak national guard was bound to alienate not only the Magyars, but Vienna land the dynasty also. The right of every race in Hungary to use its mother tongue in the central parliament, would, if combined with universal suffrage, have created a Babel of voices from which no solid work could be expected. Above all, the formation of provincial assemblies on a racial basis was open to the gravest objections. It would have involved the partition of Hungary into at least six, and possibly nine, federal units, and would have destroyed not only the unjust political monopoly of the Magyars, but also that pre-eminence which their great political talents and superior culture could not fail to preserve to them even after they had surrendered their oligarchic privileges. Magyar opposition was therefore a foregone conclusion, and the action of the Slovak leaders proved once more the political truth of the French proverb: qui trop embrasse, mal étreint. But with all its folly their programme affords overwhelming disproof of their alleged " Pansláv " leanings; for its every phrase betrays an intense particularist feeling which is the direct antithesis of Panslavism. Pan-Austrian the Slovaks may have been; Pan-Slav they certainly were not in any political sense. The Magyars, on the other hand, were fully entitled to protest against their extravagant claims, and even to take such steps as might prevent their realization. Unhappily they plunged headlong into a policy of repression which robs them of much of the sympathy which must otherwise have been their due. The petition was to have been submitted to a popular assembly on the following day; but permission to hold it was withheld, and the petition itself was promptly confiscated. None the less, the example of Liptó was followed in several of the North Hungarian towns, and Slovak patriotism seemed to be at last awakening from its long slumbers. At first the Government was inclined to treat the movement with contempt, since it obviously could not compare in volume and importance with that which was stirring the southern Slavs. But the Liptó assembly thoroughly alarmed the new Cabinet, and Batthyány[7] instructed the county authorities of the north, at the slightest renewal of these "Pansláv movements or other disturbances," to set all the rigours of the law in motion; while Kossuth thundered in Parliament against the Slovak petition, and swore to throw into prison all who ven­tured to make further demands of this kind.[8] Nor was this a mere idle threat. Even before the Liptó meeting, Jan Král the poet, a brother of Hodža, and several other Slovak patriots had been arrested, and Hurban himself found it necessary to fly across the Moravian frontier. Hardly had he left his parish Hluboká on his way to Liptó, when Magyar troops appeared in the village, hoisted the Hungarian tricolor and issued an order for Hurban's arrest. His wife was roughly treated, and gallows were erected before the parsonage, on which, it was boasted, the Slovak clergy were to be hanged.[9] Henceforth the Slovaks were prevented from holding meetings, though this was allowed everywhere else in Hungary.[10] When the mobilization of the National Guards was commenced by the Diet, its execution was entrusted to county committees specially formed for the purpose; and as these levies were to be sent to cope with the Serb and Croatian rising in the south, there was considerable resistance on the part of the Slovaks, who were unwilling to fight against their brother Slavs, all the more so since the Royal sanction required by law had not been obtained. The town of Tiszolcz in Gömör county, actually had the courage to refuse levies; but there is little doubt that large numbers of able-bodied youths were pressed into the revolutionary service.[11]

The prompt and uncompromising methods of the Hun­garian Government paralysed the movement among the Slovaks, and the north remained quiet, or perhaps apathetic, during the summer. Meanwhile Štúr was attending the Slav Congress in Prague, which followed upon the famous refusal of Palacky, in name of the Czechs, to appear at the Federal Diet of Frankfurt. To Palacky's initiative was doubtless due the dignified proclamation issued by the Congress: — "The enemies of our nationality have succeeded in alarming Europe with the phantom of political Panslavism, which, they maintain, threatens to destroy all that freedom, culture and humanity .have won. We know the magic formula which alone can dispel this apparition ... its name is jus­tice" Štúr is reported to have expressed himself in bitter terms regarding Austria's claims of assistance, and to have purged the primary duty of self-preservation. "Austria," he said, has managed to survive hitherto, and we have rotted." However that may be, the Slovak National Council (Slovenska Národná Rada), which was now organized under the auspices of Štúr, Hurban, Hodža, Daxner and Francisci, placed itself at the disposal of the Austrian Government — surely one more disproof, if any were needed, of their alleged Panslavism. On September 17, the first Slovak expedition entered "Slovensko" from Moravia; but led as it was by inexperienced men, and badly disciplined, it never obtained support among the cowed peasantry of Trencsén and Nyitra, and was soon forced to disband. Severe measures of repression were at once adopted throughout " Slovensko "; and on October 17, Štúr, Hurban and Hodža were outlawed by the Pest Government, and a price was set upon their heads.

In October the Magyars, under the incapable Moga, assumed the offensive and at the invitation of the revolutionary Government in Vienna, crossed the Austrian frontier. On the 30th, however, they were routed by Jellačić at the battle of Schwechat, and on the following day Windischgrätz reduced Vienna to submission. Moga was superseded by Görgei, who from his headquarters at Pressburg watched the move­ments of Windischgrätz's army. On November I, encour­aged by their success at Schwechat, the first Imperialists entered Hungary, and their leader Simunič occupied Tyrna without much difficulty. But the peasants had been so cowed by Magyar severity, that he could not obtain the sligtest information, and the superior numbers of Görgei and Perczel forced him to abandon so exposed a position and to withdraw into Moravia. A week later he again advanced from Göding, but was still too weak to block Görgei's line of retreat up the valley of the Vág. Towards the end of November a second Slovak inroad was planned by Bloudek, with the sanction of the Minister of War. Joined by four companies of Imperialist troops under Colonel Frischeisen, the expedition entered Hungary on December 4 by the Jablun­ovsky Pass, and on the nth defeated a body of Magyar troops near Budatin. But Hurban's expectations of a general rising were disappointed. Eight thousand volunteers are said to have joined his standard, but it is probable that even this figure has been exaggerated. Their discipline was bad, and they were outnumbered by the National Guards of Nyitra county, and compelled to disband. Thus till the close of 1848, the greater part of Hungary north of the Danube remained in the hands of the Magyars. On December 15, Prince Windischgrätz crossed the frontier with 52,000 men; but as he naturally made the Hungarian capital his objective, Görgei's army was for the moment left unassailed in the middle valley of the Vág. On January 5, 1849, the Austrians entered Budapest unopposed, while Kossuth, with his Rump Parliament, withdrew to Debreczen. For the insurgents, all now depended upon a reunion of their scattered armies, between which the advance of Windischgrätz had skilfully driven a wedge. The Austrian commander failed to take advantage of the situation, and the manner in which Görgei executed his retreat from the Vág east­wards, and especially his march from Neusohl (Beszter­czebánya) over the mountains to Rózsahegy, forms one of the most brilliant episodes of the war. Count Schlick, who had advanced southwards from Galicia, escaped with diffi­culty to Windischgrätz, and the united Magyar forces, 46,000 strong, concentrated at Miskolcz, under the command of the Polish emigre Dembinski.

While the main contest was being waged on either side of the Theiss on the plains between Budapest and Debreczen, the Magyar flood rolled slowly back from " Slovensko," and traces of the reign of terror instituted by the revolutionary officials became apparent to the outside world.[12] Not content with pressing young peasants into the military service, they filled the jails with those suspected of Slovak leanings, and gibbets were erected in almost every village along the river Vág, to strike terror into the peasantry. While the one party mockingly described these landmarks of Magyar culture as " Slovak trees of liberty," the other more justly gave them the name of " Kossuth gallows," in memory of the man of Slovak origin, who only two years later was electrifying Europe and America with a passionate account of the wrongs which his adopted race had suffered at the hands of the hated Austrians. Nor did these ghastly trees remain barren of fruit; according to the official statistics compiled after Világos, there were 168 such victims of the rebels' martial law.[13] Baron Jeszenák, afterwards the least regretted of Haynau's victims, Was especially active in the counties of Nyitra and Trencsén, giving out his decisions from the chateau of Countess Erdödy at Galgócz (Freistadtl) on the Vág. Two young Slovak students, Holuby and Sulek, were offered the choice between death upon the gallows or freedom and the abjuration of their Slav sentiments.[14] They resolutely chose the first alter­native, and died as truly martyrs to the cause of nationality as Count Louis Batthyány and " the martyrs of Arad." In other counties the courts martial were equally active, and in Gömör, Szentiványi, the commissioner of the Debreczen Government, only saved Daxner and two other young Slovaks from impending execution by referring their case to the ordi­nary court. In Rózsahegy, a young Moravian named Hro­bařík, cried from the foot of the gallows, " Just wait, hang­man; I am the last from Moravia whom you will hang guilt­lessly. Then it will be your turn." [15]When Simunić entered the little town of Szenicz on the Moravian border, he found that the Slovak clergy, the village mayor, and numerous peasants had been pent up in jail for weeks past. Their chains were removed in the presence of the general, and some of the prisoners were so stiff and exhausted that they had to be carried by the soldiers. Then "the robber captain of Galicia," as the colleagues of Damjanich ventured to call him, walked to the place of execution and stood with bared head before the graves of the victims, whom he then ordered to be reburied in consecrated earth.[16] Where life was held so cheaply, property was naturally treated with scant respect. Charles Kuzmány, the distinguished Lutheran Superintendent of Neusohl, who formed one of the subsequent deputation to Francis Joseph, had his property confiscated during his absence, and his wife was ejected from the parsonage. So widespread was the terror inspired by the summary justice of Kossuth's Government, that many peasants had abandoned their homes and taken to the woods and mountains.[17]

The brutal treatment of the Slovaks in 1848 has been passed over in silence by most historians, with the notable exception of Baron Helfert. That it was by no means an isolated incident, but entirely in keeping with the general policy of the Magyars towards all the other races of the country, is proved beyond all question by the events in the Banat of Temesvár and in Transylvania. It is by no means easy to determine whether the Serbs or the Magyars are first respon­sible for the series of outrages which stain the annals of the war in Southern Hungary. Certain it is that as early as July, 1848, Vukovics, a commissioner of the Magyar Govern­ment, sentenced (two Serb officers to death at Temesvár, and that some Serbs on the other hand cut off the head of a village notary and carried it on a pike. Other still worse atrocities followed, and ere long no quarter was given on either side. Serious Magyar historians accuse the Serbs of burning alive, and even impaling some of their victims.[18] On the other hand, on a single day in March, 1849, the Magyar general Perczel ordered the execution of forty-five Serb prisoners, including several women.[19] As many as 299 Serbs were thus put to death without trial, and Kossuth seems at one time during the war to have seriously entertained the idea of exterminating the Serbs of the Banat and the Bácska, and colonizing the vacant territory with stalwarts of the national militia. In the same way Kossuth wished to hold the Saxons responsible for the ejection of the Russians, on the occasion of their first invasion of Transylvania; "other­wise," he writes to Bern (March 18, 1849), "they will either be themselves ejected from the country, or deprived of all their liberties, and their national property confiscated as an indemnity." [20]The behaviour of Kossuth's commissioners in Transylvania baffles description. The Roumanians had been guilty of terrible excesses, especially at Nagy Enyed, where the Protestant college was burnt to the ground, and at Alvincz, where the little town was almost wiped out of existence. But this forms no excuse for the reign of terror inaugurated by the Magyar officials. On June 6, 1849, the chivalrous Bem wrote to Kossuth, that the arbitrary and ferocious behaviour of the courts martial reminded him of the tribunals of the French Revolution.[21] The tribunals of Public Danger (Vésztörvényszék), which were created by the Diet of Debreczen (February 13, 1849), were empowered to try all persons who bear arms against the country, consti­tution, independence and territorial unity of Hungary; all who supply food, arms or information to the enemy; all who mislead the Magyar troops or hinder transport or forage; all who spread false news, urge disobedience to the Diet, or rouse the population in favour of the enemy. The proceed­ings were to be public, and death was the sole sentence.[22] That courts endowed with such plenary powers should have been guilty of excesses, is hardly to be wondered at; yet we would fain believe that the official list of their victims drawn up after the war, errs on the side of over-statement. For it contains the names of 4,425 men, 340 women, and 69 children who were put to death without trial by the Magyar troops, in Transylvania, exclusive of those who fell in open fight. As Austria's latest and most brilliant historian, Dr. Friedjung, justly observes, if 500 or even 1,000 names could be proved to be unauthentic, the truth would still remain sufficiently horrible.[23] Görgei, by his unwise execution of Count Zichy at an early stage of the war, had given the signal for reprisals; and though Görgei himself is entirely free from the stain of ferocity, the same cannot be said of Dam­janich, another revolutionary general. This notorious Serb renegáté was filled with such remorseless hatred for his own kith and kin, that, as he assured Count Kolowrat, he would have cursed his own mother in her grave, had he not been certain that he was the offspring of an intrigue with a Magyar officer and thus had inherited nothing save the name from his Serb father.[24] These revolting sentiments find their parallel in the words with which Damjanich concluded one of his proclamations to the Serbs of the Banat: " I come to exterminate you root and branch, and then I will send a ball through my own head, that the last Serb may vanish f rom the earth."[25] Fortunately for the honour of the Magyar race, the renegáté Serb found no imitators among his brother generals, most of whom were conspicuous for their gallant and honourable bearing.

On April 14, 1849, Kossuth committed the crowning error of his career, by solemnly deposing the Habsburg dynasty and proclaiming Hungarian independence. The way was thus opened for Russian intervention (the Czar Nicholas being a fanatical adherent of the principle of Legitimacy); and the last opportunity of the Magyars vanished when Görgei wasted three precious weeks of May in reducing the citadel of Buda, instead of staking all upon a bold march against Vienna. When once the Russian armies had entered Hungary, the cause of Magyar independence was doomed, and the dissensions which now broke out between Kossuth and Görgei only served to hasten the inevitable end. In July the revolutionary Diet was transferred from Debreczen to Szeged, and devoted its expiring moments to the discus­sion of a law guaranteeing the free development of all nation­alities upon Hungarian soil. Under its provisions, while Magyar was to remain the official language in all administrative, legal and military affairs, the right of every citizen to use his own language in the communal and county assem­blies was distinctly recognized: the language of instruction in the schools was to be that of the locality, and in it also the parish registers were to be drawn up: petitions might be presented in any language: and appointments to all offices were to be made without distinction of language and religion. Special concessions were included for the benefit of the Greek Oriental Church, with a view to conciliating the Serbs and Roumanians. But of course the time for such action was long since past. A law which if voted in March, 1848, might perhaps have rallied the whole of Hungary in support of Magyar pretensions, was worse than useless in July, 1849, when the country was bleeding from the wounds inflicted by a furious racial war, and when overwhelming masses of Russian troops were closing in upon every side. On August 11 Kossuth issued a proclamation renouncing his office of Governor, and transferring all civil and military powers to Görgei; while he himself, with the gallant Bern and several thousand refugees, fled across the Turkish fron­tier. Two days later Görgei with 23,000 men and 130 cannon capitulated at Világos, and save for the isolated fortress of Komárom, the Hungarian Revolution was at an end.

The Austrian Government, as if determined to alienate all sympathies and to place itself utterly in the wrong, adopted the most brutal methods of repression. Thirteen of the revolutionary generals were executed at Arad by Haynau's orders — among them more than one officer who had originally taken the oath to the Hungarian constitution with the greatest reluctance and under express orders from Vienna, and who now suffered for faithfully observing his plighted word. In defiance of all political decency, Count Batthyány, the late Premier, was put to death at Pest, and a number of high officials of the revolutionary Government shared the same fate. Over 800 individuals were sentenced to considerable terms of imprisonment; and after two whole years had elapsed, the Government had the bad taste to nail upon the gallows the names of thirty-six prominent exiles, among them Kossuth the ex-Dictator, and Andrássy the future Premier.

None of the races of Hungary gained by this unhappy civil war. The Magyars were reduced to a state of political bondage, of which even their chequered history affords no previous example. The Croats, after leading the van of the Imperial cause, were deprived of the liberties for which they had fought. The erection of the Banat into a separate province brought the Serbs no satisfaction, for its boundaries were so drawn as to include an equal number of Magyars and Roumanians, and the authorities consistently played off one race against the other.[26] The Roumanians were still excluded from all political privileges, and even the loyal Saxons saw their autonomy and ancient rights invaded. In the same way the Slovaks gained little or nothing under the new régime, save that the local administration was con­ducted on less arbitrary and brutal lines; and ere long the sole difference consisted in the imposition of one of the four world-languages instead of an Asiatic dialect. At the open­ing of his career, Alexander Bach was undoubtedly friendly disposed towards the Slavs, and he it was who took up Sta­dion's idea of a Slav newspaper in Vienna. In a memo­randum found by Dr. Friedjung among Bach's papers, and apparently dating from before the Revolution, we find that he was at that time in favour of recognizing the nationality of " the North Hungarian Slavs by introducing their lan­guage into the churches, schools, law courts, administration and representative assemblies."[27] Either the rapid march of events led Bach to modify his views, or else his influence was discounted in this direction by other members of the Cabinet. In March, 1849, Štúr, Hurban and Kuzmány were received in audience by the young monarch Francis Joseph at Olmütz; but Hurban's memorandum, recounting the various arbitrary acts of Magyar officialdom and point­ing to autonomy as the sole remedy, remained without effect. In the course of the summer a further memorandum in favour of an autonomous " Slovensko" was presented to Bach, and a request was added for the publication of the March constitution in Slovak as well as in German. On September 16 and 18 Francis Joseph received two large Slovak deputa­tions which put forward the same demands, but contented himself with a gracious yet evasive answer. The political

movement among the Slovaks gradually simmered out, for as yet it failed to awaken any real response among the back­ward and docile peasantry. For the Slovaks the next ten years, though barren in incident, were a period of calm, without which the tender plant of the Slovak language could hardly have taken root, and without which the nucleus of a middle class true to Slovak traditions and national feeling could never have been formed.