A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 44

[429] These provincial rights had fared much as others in the Austrian Empire. The Patriarch and the Voivode had disappeared, and the Banat had been completely merged in Hungary. Enough, however, of Serb nationality remained to kindle at the summons of 1848, and to resent with a sudden fierceness the determination of the Magyar rulers at Pesth that the Magyar language, as the language of State, should thenceforward bind together all the races of Hungary in the enjoyment of a common national life. The Serbs had demanded from Kossuth and his colleagues the restoration of the local and ecclesiastical autonomy of which the Hapsburgs had deprived them, and the recognition of their own national language and customs. They found, or believed, that instead of a German they were now to have a Magyar lord, and one more near, more energetic, more aggressive. Their reply to Kossuth's defence of Magyar ascendency was the summoning of a Congress of Serbs at Carlowitz on the Lower Danube. Here it was declared that the Serbs of Austria formed a free and independent nation under the Austrian sceptre and the common Hungarian Crown. A Voivode was elected and the limits of his province were defined. A National Committee was charged with the duty of organising a Government and of entering into intimate connection with the neighbouring Slavic Kingdom of Croatia.

[Jellacic in Croatia.]

At Agram, the Croatian capital, all established authority had sunk in the catastrophe of March, and a National Committee had a.s.sumed power. It happened that the office of Governor, or Ban, of Croatia was then vacant.

The Committee sent a deputation to Vienna requesting that the colonel of the first Croatian regiment, Jellacic, might be appointed. Without waiting for the arrival of the deputation, the Court, by a patent dated the 23rd of March, nominated Jellacic to the vacant post. The date of this appointment, and the a.s.sumption of office by Jellacic on the 14th of April, the very day before the Hungarian Ministry entered upon its powers, have been considered proof that a secret understanding existed from the first between Jellacic and the Court. No further evidence of this secret relation has, however, been made public, and the belief long current among all friends of the Magyar cause that Croatia was deliberately instigated to revolt against the Hungarian Government by persons around the Emperor seems to rest on no solid foundation. The Croats would have been unlike all other communities in the Austrian Empire if they had not risen under the national impulse of 1848. They had been murmuring against Magyar ascendency for years past, and the fire long smouldering now probably burst into flame here as elsewhere without the touch of an incendiary hand. With regard to Jellacic's sudden appointment it is possible that the Court, powerless to check the Croatian movement, may have desired to escape the appearance of compulsion by spontaneously conferring office on the popular soldier, who was at least more likely to regard the Emperor's interests than the lawyers and demagogues around him. Whether Jellacic was at this time genuinely concerned for Croatian autonomy, or whether from the first, while he apparently acted with the Croatian nationalists his deepest sympathies were with the Austrian army, and his sole design was that of serving the Imperial Crown with or without its own avowed concurrence, it is impossible to say. That, like most of his countrymen, he cordially hated the Magyars, is beyond doubt. The general impression left by his character hardly accords with the Magyar conception of him as the profound and far-sighted conspirator--he would seem, on the contrary, to have been a man easily yielding to the impulses of the moment, and capable of playing contradictory parts with little sense of his own inconsistency. [430]

[Affairs of Croatia April 14-June 16.]

Installed in office, Jellacic cast to the winds all consideration due to the Emperor's personal engagements towards Hungary, and forthwith permitted the Magyar officials to be driven out of the country. On the 2nd of May he issued an order forbidding all Croatian authorities to correspond with the Government at Pesth. Batthyany, the Hungarian Premier, at once hurried to Vienna, and obtained from the Emperor a letter commanding Jellacic to submit to the Hungarian Ministry. As the Ban paid no attention to this mandate, General Hrabowsky, commander of the troops in the southern provinces, received orders from Pesth to annul all that Jellacic had done, to suspend him from his office, and to bring him to trial for high treason.

Nothing daunted, Jellacic on his own authority convoked the Diet of Croatia for the 5th of June; the populace of Agram, on hearing of Hrabowsky's mission, burnt the Palatine in effigy. This was a direct outrage on the Imperial family, and Batthyany turned it to account. The Emperor had just been driven from Vienna by the riot of the 15th of May. Batthyany sought him at Innsbruck, and by a.s.suring him of the support of his loyal Hungarians against both the Italians and the Viennese obtained his signature on June 10th to a rescript vehemently condemning the Ban's action and suspending him from office. Jellacic had already been summoned to appear at Innsbruck. He set out, taking with him a deputation of Croats and Serbs, and leaving behind him a popular a.s.sembly sitting at Agram, in which, besides the representatives of Croatia, there were seventy Deputies from the Serb provinces. On the very day on which the Ban reached Innsbruck, the Imperial order condemning him and suspending him from his functions was published by Batthyany at Pesth. Nor was the situation made easier by the almost simultaneous announcement that civil war had broken out on the Lower Danube, and that General Hrabowsky, on attempting to occupy Carlowitz, had been attacked and compelled to retreat by the Serbs under their national leader Stratimirovic. [431]

[Jellacic, the Court, and the Hungarian Government.]

It is said that the Emperor Ferdinand, during deliberations in council on which the fate of the Austrian Empire depended, was accustomed to occupy himself with counting the number of carriages that pa.s.sed from right and left respectively under the windows. In the struggle between Croatia and Hungary he appears to have avoided even the formal exercise of authority, preferring to commit the decision between the contending parties to the Archduke John, as mediator or judge. John was too deeply immersed in other business to give much attention to the matter. What really pa.s.sed between Jellacic and the Imperial family at Innsbruck is unknown. The official request of the Ban was for the withdrawal or suppression of the rescript signed by the Emperor on June 10th. Prince Esterhazy, who represented the Hungarian Government at Innsbruck, was ready to make this concession; but before the doc.u.ment could be revoked, it had been made public by Batthyany.

With the object of proving his fidelity to the Court, Jellacic now published an address to the Croatian regiments serving in Lombardy, entreating them not to be diverted from their duty to the Emperor in the field by any report of danger to their rights and their nationality nearer home. So great was Jellacic's influence with his countrymen that an appeal from him of opposite tenor would probably have caused the Croatian regiments to quit Radetzky in a ma.s.s, and so have brought the war in Italy to an ignominious end. His action won for him a great popularity in the higher ranks of the Austrian army, and probably gained for him, even if he did not possess it before, the secret confidence of the Court. That some understanding now existed is almost certain, for, in spite of the unrepealed declaration of June 10th, and the postponement of the Archduke's judgment, Jellacic was permitted to return to Croatia and to resume his government. The Diet at Agram occupied itself with far-reaching schemes for a confederation of the southern Slavs; but its discussions were of no practical effect, and after some weeks it was extinguished under the form of an adjournment. From this time Jellacic held dictatorial power. It was unnecessary for him in his relations with Hungary any longer to keep up the fiction of a mere defence of Croatian rights; he appeared openly as the champion of Austrian unity. In negotiations which he held with Batthyany at Vienna during the last days of July, he demanded the restoration of single Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs for the whole Austrian Empire. The demand was indignantly refused, and the chieftains of the two rival races quitted Vienna to prepare for war.

[Imminent breach between Austria and Hungary.]

[Jellacic restored to office, Sept. 3. He marches on Pesth.]

The Hungarian National Parliament, elected under the new Const.i.tution, had been opened at Pesth on July 5th. Great efforts had been made, in view of the difficulties with Croatia and of the suspected intrigues between the Ban and the Court party, to induce the Emperor Ferdinand to appear at Pesth in person. He excused himself from this on the ground of illness, but sent a letter to the Parliament condemning not only in his own name but in that of every member of the Imperial family the resistance offered to the Hungarian Government in the southern provinces. If words bore any meaning, the Emperor stood pledged to a loyal co-operation with the Hungarian Ministers in defence of the unity and the const.i.tution of the Hungarian Kingdom as established by the laws of April. Yet at this very time the Minister of War at Vienna was encouraging Austrian officers to join the Serb insurgents. Kossuth, who conducted most of the business of the Hungarian Government in the Lower Chamber at Pesth, made no secret of his hostility to the central powers. While his colleagues sought to avoid a breach with the other half of the Monarchy, it seemed to be Kossuth's object rather to provoke it. In calling for a levy of two hundred thousand men to crash the Slavic rebellion, he openly denounced the Viennese Ministry and the Court as its promoters. In leading the debate upon the Italian War, he endeavoured without the knowledge of his colleagues to make the cession of the territory west of the Adige a condition of Hungary's partic.i.p.ation in the struggle. As Minister of Finance, he spared neither word nor act to demonstrate his contempt for the financial interests of Austria. Whether a gentler policy on the part of the most powerful statesman in Hungary might have averted the impending conflict it is vain to ask; but in the uncompromising enmity of Kossuth the Austrian Court found its own excuse for acts in which shamelessness seemed almost to rise into political virtue. No sooner had Radetzky's victories and the fall of Milan brought the Emperor back to Vienna than the new policy came into effect. The veto of the sovereign was placed upon the laws pa.s.sed by the Diet at Pesth for the defence of the Kingdom. The Hungarian Government was required to reinstate Jellacic in his dignities, to enter into negotiations at Vienna with him and the Austrian Ministry, and finally to desist from all military preparations against the rebellious provinces. In answer to these demands the Diet sent a hundred of its members to Vienna to claim from the Emperor the fulfilment of his plighted word. The miserable man received them on the 9th of September with protestations of his sincerity; but even before the deputation had pa.s.sed the palace-gates, there appeared in the official gazette a letter under the Emperor's own hand replacing Jellacic in office and acquitting him of every charge that had been brought against him. It was for this formal recognition alone that Jellacic had been waiting. On the 11th of September he crossed the Drave with his army, and began his march against the Hungarian capital. [432]

[Mission of Lamberg. He is murdered at Pesth, Sept. 28.]

The Ministry now in office at Vienna was composed in part of men who had been known as reformers in the early days of 1848; but the old order was represented by Count Wessenberg, who had been Metternich's a.s.sistant at the Congress of Vienna, and by Latour, the War Minister, a soldier of high birth whose career dated back to the campaign of Austerlitz. Whatever contempt might be felt by one section of the Cabinet for the other, its members were able to unite against the independence of Hungary as they had united against the independence of Italy. They handed in to the Emperor a memorial in which the very concessions to which they owed their own existence as a Const.i.tutional Ministry were made a ground for declaring the laws establis.h.i.+ng Hungarian autonomy null and void. In a tissue of transparent sophistries they argued that the Emperor's promise of a Const.i.tution to all his dominions on the 15th of March disabled him from a.s.senting, without the advice of his Viennese Ministry, to the resolutions subsequently pa.s.sed by the Hungarian Diet, although the union between Hungary and the other Hereditary States had from the first rested solely on the person of the monarch, and no German official had ever pretended to exercise authority over Hungarians otherwise than by order of the sovereign as Hungarian King. The publication of this Cabinet memorial, which appeared in the journals at Pesth on the 15th of September, gave plain warning to the Hungarians that, if they were not to be attacked by Jellacic and the Austrian army simultaneously, they must make some compromise with the Government at Vienna. Batthyany was inclined to concession, and after resigning office in consequence of the Emperor's desertion he had already re-a.s.sumed his post with colleagues disposed to accept his own pacific policy. Kossuth spoke openly of war with Austria and of a dictators.h.i.+p. As Jellacic advanced towards Pesth, the Palatine took command of the Hungarian army and marched southwards. On reaching Lake Baloton, on whose southern sh.o.r.e the Croats were encamped, he requested a personal conference with Jellacic, and sailed to the appointed place of meeting. But he waited in vain for the Ban; and rightly interpreting this rejection of his overtures, he fled from the army and laid down his office. The Emperor now sent General Lamberg from Vienna with orders to a.s.sume the supreme command alike over the Magyar and the Croatian forces, and to prevent an encounter. On the success of Lamberg's mission hung the last chance of reconciliation between Hungary and Austria. Batthyany, still clinging to the hope of peace, set out for the camp in order to meet the envoy on his arrival.

Lamberg, desirous of obtaining the necessary credentials from the Hungarian Government, made his way to Pesth. There he found Kossuth and a Committee of Six installed in power. Under their influence the Diet pa.s.sed a resolution forbidding Lamberg to a.s.sume command of the Hungarian troops, and declaring him a traitor if he should attempt to do so. The report spread through Pesth that Lamberg had come to seize the citadel and bombard the town; and before he could reach a place of safety he was attacked and murdered by a raging mob. It was in vain that Batthyany, who now laid down his office, besought the Government at Vienna to take no rash step of vengeance. The pretext for annihilating Hungarian independence had been given, and the mask was cast aside. A manifesto published by the Emperor on the 3rd of October declared the Hungarian Parliament dissolved, and its acts null and void. Martial law was proclaimed, and Jellacic appointed commander of all the forces and representative of the sovereign. In the course of the next few days it was expected that he would enter Pesth as conqueror.

[Manifesto of Oct. 3.]

[Tumult of Oct. 6 at Vienna. Latour murdered.]

In the meantime, however confidently the Government might reckon on Jellacic's victory, the pa.s.sions of revolution were again breaking loose in Vienna itself. Increasing misery among the poor, financial panics, the reviving efforts of professional agitators, had renewed the disturbances of the spring in forms which alarmed the middle cla.s.ses almost as much as the holders of power. The conflict of the Government with Hungary brought affairs to a crisis. After discovering the uselessness of negotiations with the Emperor, the Hungarian Parliament had sent some of its ablest members to request an audience from the a.s.sembly sitting at Vienna, in order that the representatives of the western half of the Empire might, even at the last moment, have the opportunity of p.r.o.nouncing a judgment upon the action of the Court. The most numerous group in the a.s.sembly was formed by the Czech deputies from Bohemia. As Slavs, the Bohemian deputies had sympathised with the Croats and Serbs in their struggle against Magyar ascendency, and in their eyes Jellacic was still the champion of a national cause. Blinded by their sympathies of race to the danger involved to all nationalities alike by the restoration of absolutism, the Czech majority, in spite of a singularly impressive warning given by a leader of the German Liberals, refused a hearing to the Hungarian representatives. The Magyars, repelled by the a.s.sembly, sought and found allies in the democracy of Vienna itself. The popular clubs rang with acclamations for the cause of Hungarian freedom and with invectives against the Czech instruments of tyranny. In the midst of this deepening agitation tidings arrived at Vienna that Jellacic had been repulsed in his march on Pesth and forced to retire within the Austrian frontier. It became necessary for the Viennese Government to throw its own forces into the struggle, and an order was given by Latour to the regiments in the capital to set out for the scene of warfare. This order had, however, been antic.i.p.ated by the democratic leaders, and a portion of the troops had been won over to the popular side.

Latour's commands were resisted; and upon an attempt being made to enforce the departure of the troops, the regiments fired on one another (October 6th). The battalions of the National Guard which rallied to the support of the Government were overpowered by those belonging to the working men's districts. The insurrection was victorious; the Ministers submitted once more to the masters of the streets, and the orders given to the troops were withdrawn. But the fiercer part of the mob was not satisfied with a political victory. There were criminals and madmen among its leaders who, after the offices of Government had been stormed and Latour had been captured, determined upon his death. It was in vain that some of the keenest political opponents of the Minister sought at the peril of their own lives to protect him from his murderers. He was dragged into the court in front of the War Office, and there slain with ferocious and yet deliberate barbarity. [433]

[The Emperor at Olmutz.]

[Windischgratz marches on Vienna.]

The Emperor, while the city was still in tumult, had in his usual fas.h.i.+on promised that the popular demands should be satisfied; but as soon as he was un.o.bserved he fled from Vienna, and in his flight he was followed by the Czech deputies and many German Conservatives, who declared that their lives were no longer safe in the capital. Most of the Ministers gathered round the Emperor at Olmutz in Moravia; the a.s.sembly, however, continued to hold its sittings in Vienna, and the Finance Minister, apparently under instructions from the Court, remained at his post, and treated the a.s.sembly as still possessed of legal powers. But for all practical purposes the western half of the Austrian Empire had now ceased to have any Government whatever; and the real state of affairs was bluntly exposed in a manifesto published by Count Windischgratz at Prague on the 11th of October, in which, without professing to have received any commission from the Emperor, he announced his intention of marching on Vienna in order to protect the sovereign and maintain the unity of the Empire. In due course the Emperor ratified the action of his energetic soldier; Windischgratz was appointed to the supreme command over all the troops of the Empire with the exception of Radetzky's army, and his march against Vienna was begun.

[Windischgratz conquers Vienna, Oct. 26-Nov. 1.]

To the Hungarian Parliament, exasperated by the decree ordering its own dissolution and the war openly levied against the country by the Court in alliance with Jellacic, the revolt of the capital seemed to bring a sudden deliverance from all danger. The Viennese had saved Hungary, and the Diet was willing, if summoned by the a.s.sembly at Vienna, to send its troops to the defence of the capital. But the urgency of the need was not understood on either side till too late. The Viennese a.s.sembly, treating itself as a legitimate and const.i.tutional power threatened by a group of soldiers who had usurped the monarch's authority, hesitated to compromise its legal character by calling in a Hungarian army. The Magyar generals on the other hand were so anxious not to pa.s.s beyond the strict defence of their own kingdom, that, in the absence of communication from a Viennese authority, they twice withdrew from Austrian soil after following Jellacic in pursuit beyond the frontier. It was not until Windischgratz had encamped within sight of Vienna, and had detained as a rebel the envoy sent to him by the Hungarian Government, that Kossuth's will prevailed over the scruples of weaker men, and the Hungarian army marched against the besiegers. In the meantime Windischgratz had begun his attack on the suburbs, which were weakly defended by the National Guard and by companies of students and volunteers, the nominal commander being one Messenhauser, formerly an officer in the regular army, who was a.s.sisted by a soldier of far greater merit than himself, the Polish general Bem. Among those who fought were two members of the German Parliament of Frankfort, Robert Blum and Frobel, who had been sent to mediate between the Emperor and his subjects, but had remained at Vienna as combatants. The besiegers had captured the outskirts of the city, and negotiations for surrender were in progress, when, on the 30th of October, Messenhauser from the top of the cathedral tower saw beyond the line of the besiegers on the south-east the smoke of battle, and announced that the Hungarian army was approaching. An engagement had in fact begun on the plain of Schwechat between the Hungarians and Jellacic, reinforced by divisions of Windischgratz's troops. In a moment of wild excitement the defenders of the capital threw themselves once more upon their foe, disregarding the offer of surrender that had been already made.

But the tide of battle at Schwechat turned against the Hungarians. They were compelled to retreat, and Windischgratz, reopening his cannonade upon the rebels who were also violators of their truce, became in a few hours master of Vienna. He made his entry on the 31st of October, and treated Vienna as a conquered city. The troops had behaved with ferocity during the combat in the suburbs, and slaughtered scores of unarmed persons. No Oriental tyrant ever addressed his fallen foes with greater insolence and contempt for human right than Windischgratz in the proclamations which, on a.s.suming government, he addressed to the Viennese; yet, whatever might be the number of persons arrested and imprisoned, the number now put to death was not great. The victims were indeed carefully selected; the most prominent being Robert Blum, in whom, as a leader of the German Liberals and a Deputy of the German Parliament inviolable by law, the Austrian Government struck ostentatiously at the Parliament itself and at German democracy at large.

[The Parliament at Kremsier, Nov. 22.]

[Schwarzenberg Minister.]

In the subjugation of Vienna the army had again proved itself the real political power in Austria; but the time had not yet arrived when absolute government could be openly restored. The Bohemian deputies, fatally as they had injured the cause of const.i.tutional rule by their secession from Vienna, were still in earnest in the cause of provincial autonomy, and would vehemently have repelled the charge of an alliance with despotism.

Even the mutilated Parliament of Vienna had been recognised by the Court as in lawful session until the 22nd of October, when an order was issued proroguing the Parliament and bidding it re-a.s.semble a month later at Kremsier, in Moravia. There were indications in the weeks succeeding the fall of Vienna of a conflict between the reactionary and the more liberal influences surrounding the Emperor, and of an impending _coup d'etat_: but counsels of prudence prevailed for the moment; the a.s.sembly was permitted to meet at Kremsier, and professions of const.i.tutional principle were still made with every show of sincerity. A new Ministry, however, came into office, with Prince Felix Schwarzenberg at its head. Schwarzenberg belonged to one of the greatest Austrian families. He had been amba.s.sador at Naples when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and had quitted the city with words of menace when insult was offered to the Austrian flag.

Exchanging diplomacy for war, he served under Radetzky, and was soon recognised as the statesman in whom the army, as a political power, found its own peculiar representative. His career had hitherto been ill.u.s.trated chiefly by scandals of private life so flagrant that England and other countries where he had held diplomatic posts had insisted on his removal; but the cynical and reckless audacity of the man rose in his new calling as Minister of Austria to something of political greatness. Few statesmen have been more daring than Schwarzenberg; few have pushed to more excessive lengths the advantages to be derived from the moral or the material weakness of an adversary. His rule was the debauch of forces respited in their extremity for one last and worst exertion. Like the Roman Sulla, he gave to a condemned and peris.h.i.+ng cause the pa.s.sing semblance of restored vigour, and died before the next great wave of change swept his creations away.

[Ferdinand abdicates, Dec. 2. Francis Joseph Emperor.]

[Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament, March 7, 1849.]

[The Unitary Const.i.tutional Edict, March, 1849.]

Schwarzenberg's first act was the deposition of his sovereign. The imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand had long suggested his abdication or dethronement, and the time for decisive action had now arrived. He gladly withdrew into private life: the crown, declined by his brother and heir, was pa.s.sed on to his nephew, Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen. This prince had at least not made in person, not uttered with his own lips, not signed with his own hand, those solemn engagements with the Hungarian nation which Austria was now about to annihilate with fire and sword. He had not moved in friendly intercourse with men who were henceforth doomed to the scaffold. He came to the throne as little implicated in the acts of his predecessor as any nominal chief of a State could be; as fitting an instrument in the hands of Court and army as any reactionary faction could desire. Helpless and well-meaning, Francis Joseph, while his troops poured into Hungary, played for a while in Austria the part of a loyal observer of his Parliament; then, when the moment had come for its destruction, he obeyed his soldier-minister as Ferdinand had in earlier days obeyed the students, and signed the decree for its dissolution (March 4, 1849). The a.s.sembly, during its sittings at Vienna, had accomplished one important task: it had freed the peasantry from the burdens attaching to their land and converted them into independent proprietors. This part of its work survived it, and remained almost the sole gain that Austria derived from the struggle of 1848. After the removal to Kremsier, a Committee of the a.s.sembly had been engaged with the formation of a Const.i.tution for Austria, and the draft was now completed. In the course of debate something had been gained by the representatives of the German and the Slavic races in the way of respect for one another's interests and prejudices; some political knowledge had been acquired; some approach made to an adjustment between the claims of the central power and of provincial autonomy. If the Const.i.tution sketched at Kremsier had come into being, it would at least have given to Western Austria and to Galicia, which belonged to this half of the Empire, a system of government based on popular desires and worthy, on the part of the Crown, of a fair trial. But, apart from its own defects from the monarchical point of view, this Const.i.tution rested on the division of the Empire into two independent parts; it a.s.sumed the separation of Hungary from the other Hereditary States; and of a separate Hungarian Kingdom the Minister now in power would hear no longer. That Hungary had for centuries possessed and maintained its rights; that, with the single exception of the English, no nation in Europe had equalled the Magyars in the stubborn and unwearied defence of Const.i.tutional law; that, in an age when national spirit was far less hotly inflamed, the Emperor Joseph had well-nigh lost his throne and wrecked his Empire in the attempt to subject this resolute race to a centralised administration, was nothing to Schwarzenberg and the soldiers who were now trampling upon revolution.

Hungary was declared to have forfeited by rebellion alike its ancient rights and the contracts of 1848. The dissolution of the Parliament of Kremsier was followed by the publication of an edict affecting to bestow a uniform and centralised Const.i.tution upon the entire Austrian Empire. All existing public rights were thereby extinguished; and, inasmuch as the new Const.i.tution, in so far as it provided for a representative system, never came into existence, but remained in abeyance until it was formally abrogated in 1851, the real effect of the Unitary Edict of March, 1849, which professed to close the period of revolution by granting the same rights to all, was to establish absolute government and the rule of the sword throughout the Emperor's dominions. Provincial inst.i.tutions giving to some of the German and Slavic districts a shadowy control of their own local affairs only marked the distinction between the favoured and the dreaded parts of the Empire. Ten years pa.s.sed before freedom again came within sight of the Austrian peoples. [434]

[Hungary.]

[The Roumanians in Transylvania.]

The Hungarian Diet, on learning of the transfer of the crown from Ferdinand to Francis Joseph, had refused to acknowledge this act as valid, on the ground that it had taken place without the consent of the Legislature, and that Francis Joseph had not been crowned King of Hungary. Ferdinand was treated as still the reigning sovereign, and the war now became, according to the Hungarian view, more than ever a war in defence of established right, inasmuch as the a.s.sailants of Hungary were not only violators of a settled const.i.tution but agents of a usurping prince. The whole nation was summoned to arms; and in order that there might be no faltering at headquarters, the command over the forces on the Danube was given by Kossuth to Gorgei, a young officer of whom little was yet known to the world but that he had executed Count Eugene Zichy, a powerful n.o.ble, for holding communications with Jellacic. It was the design of the Austrian Government to attack Hungary at once by the line of the Danube and from the frontier of Galicia on the north-east. The Serbs were to be led forward from their border-provinces against the capital; and another race, which centuries of oppression had filled with bitter hatred of the Magyars, was to be thrown into the struggle. The ma.s.s of the population of Transylvania belonged to the Roumanian stock. The Magyars, here known by the name of Szeklers, and a community of Germans, descended from immigrants who settled in Transylvania about the twelfth century, formed a small but a privileged minority, in whose presence the Roumanian peasantry, poor, savage, and absolutely without political rights, felt themselves before 1848 scarcely removed from serfdom. In the Diet of Transylvania the Magyars held command, and in spite of the resistance of the Germans, they had succeeded in carrying an Act, in May, 1848, uniting the country with Hungary. This Act had been ratified by the Emperor Ferdinand, but it was followed by a widespread insurrection of the Roumanian peasantry, who were already a.s.serting their claims as a separate nation and demanding equality with their oppressors. The rising of the Roumanians had indeed more of the character of an agrarian revolt than of a movement for national independence. It was marked by atrocious cruelty; and although the Hapsburg standard was raised, the Austrian commandant, General Puchner, hesitated long before lending the insurgents his countenance. At length, in October, he declared against the Hungarian Government. The union of the regular troops with the peasantry overpowered for a time all resistance. The towns fell under Austrian sway, and although the Szeklers were not yet disarmed, Transylvania seemed to be lost to Hungary. General Puchner received orders to lead his troops, with the newly formed Roumanian militia, westward into the Banat, in order to co-operate in the attack which was to overwhelm the Hungarians from every quarter of the kingdom. [435]

[The Austrians occupy Pesth, Jan. 5, 1849.]

On the 15th of December, Windischgratz, in command of the main Austrian army, crossed the river Leitha, the border between German and Magyar territory. Gorgei, who was opposed to him, had from the first declared that Pesth must be abandoned and a war of defence carried on in Central Hungary.

Kossuth, however, had scorned this counsel, and announced that he would defend Pesth to the last. The backwardness of the Hungarian preparations and the disorder of the new levies justified the young general, who from this time a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of contempt and hostility towards the Committee of Defence. Kossuth had in fact been strangely served by fortune in his choice of Gorgei. He had raised him to command on account of one irretrievable act of severity against an Austrian partisan, and without any proof of his military capacity. In the untried soldier he had found a general of unusual skill; in the supposed devotee to Magyar patriotism he had found a military politician as self-willed and as insubordinate as any who have ever distracted the councils of a falling State. Dissensions and misunderstandings aggravated the weakness of the Hungarians in the field.

Position after position was lost, and it soon became evident that the Parliament and Government could remain no longer at Pesth. They withdrew to Debreczin beyond the Theiss, and on the 5th of January, 1849, Windischgratz made his entry into the capital. [436]

[The Hungarian Government at Debreczin.]

[Kossuth and Gorgei.]

The Austrians now supposed the war to be at an end. It was in fact but beginning. The fortress of Comorn, on the upper Danube, remained in the hands of the Magyars; and by conducting his retreat northwards into a mountainous country where the Austrians could not follow him Gorgei gained the power either of operating against Windischgratz's communications or of combining with the army of General Klapka, who was charged with the defence of Hungary against an enemy advancing from Galicia. While Windischgratz remained inactive at Pesth, Klapka met and defeated an Austrian division under General Schlick which had crossed the Carpathians and was moving southwards towards Debreczin. Gorgei now threw himself eastwards upon the line of retreat of the beaten enemy, and Schlick's army only escaped capture by abandoning its communications and seeking refuge with Windischgratz at Pesth. A concentration of the Magyar forces was effected on the Theiss, and the command over the entire army was given by Kossuth to Dembinski, a Pole who had gained distinction in the wars of Napoleon and in the campaign of 1831. Gorgei, acting as the representative of the officers who had been in the service before the Revolution, had published an address declaring that the army would fight for no cause but that of the Const.i.tution as established by Ferdinand, the legitimate King, and that it would accept no commands but those of the Ministers whom Ferdinand had appointed. Interpreting this manifesto as a direct act of defiance, and as a warning that the army might under Gorgei's command make terms on its own authority with the Austrian Government, Kossuth resorted to the dangerous experiment of superseding the national commanders by a Pole who was connected with the revolutionary party throughout Europe. The act was disastrous in its moral effects upon the army; and, as a general, Dembinski entirely failed to justify his reputation. After permitting Schlick's corps to escape him he moved forwards from the Theiss against Pesth. He was met by the Austrians and defeated at Kapolna (February 26). Both armies retired to their earlier positions, and, after a declaration from the Magyar generals that they would no longer obey his orders, Dembinski was removed from his command, though he remained in Hungary to interfere once more with evil effect before the end of the war.

[The Austrians driven out of Hungary, April.]

The struggle between Austria and Hungary had reached this stage when the Const.i.tution merging all provincial rights in one centralised system was published by Schwarzenberg. The Croats, the Serbs, the Roumanians, who had so credulously flocked to the Emperor's banner under the belief that they were fighting for their own independence, at length discovered their delusion. Their enthusiasm sank; the bolder among them even attempted to detach their countrymen from the Austrian cause; but it was too late to undo what had already been done. Jellacic, now undistinguishable from any other Austrian general, mocked the politicians of Agram who still babbled of Croatian autonomy: Stratimirovic, the national leader of the Serbs, sank before his rival the Patriarch of Carlowitz, a Churchman who preferred ecclesiastical immunities granted by the Emperor of Austria to independence won on the field of battle by his countrymen. Had a wiser or more generous statesmans.h.i.+p controlled the Hungarian Government in the first months of its activity, a union between the Magyars and the subordinate races against Viennese centralisation might perhaps even now have been effected. But distrust and animosity had risen too high for the mediators between Slav and Magyar to attain any real success, nor was any distinct promise of self-government even now to be drawn from the offers of concession which were held out at Debreczin. An interval of dazzling triumph seemed indeed to justify the Hungarian Government in holding fast to its sovereign claims. In the hands of able leaders no task seemed too hard for Magyar troops to accomplish. Bem, arriving in Transylvania without a soldier, created a new army, and by a series of extraordinary marches and surprises not only overthrew the Austrian and Roumanian troops opposed to him, but expelled a corps of Russians whom General Puchner in his extremity had invited to garrison Hermannstadt. Gorgei, resuming in the first week of April the movement in which Dembinski had failed, inflicted upon the Austrians a series of defeats that drove them back to the walls of Pesth; while Klapka, advancing on Comorn, effected the relief of this fortress, and planted in the rear of the Austrians a force which threatened to cut them off from Vienna. It was in vain that the Austrian Government removed Windischgratz from his command. His successor found that a force superior to his own was gathering round him on every side. He saw that Hungary was lost; and leaving a garrison in the fortress of Buda, he led off his army in haste from the capital, and only paused in his retreat when he had reached the Austrian frontier.

[Declaration of Hungarian Independence, April 19.]

The Magyars, rallying from their first defeats, had brilliantly achieved the liberation of their land. The Court of Vienna, attempting in right of superior force to overthrow an established const.i.tution, had proved itself the inferior power; and in mingled exaltation and resentment it was natural that the party and the leaders who had been foremost in the national struggle of Hungary should deem a renewed union with Austria impossible, and submission to the Hapsburg crown an indignity. On the 19th of April, after the defeat of Windischgratz but before the evacuation of Pesth, the Diet declared that the House of Hapsburg had forfeited its throne, and proclaimed Hungary an independent State. No statement was made as to the future form of government, but everything indicated that Hungary, if successful in maintaining its independence, would become a Republic, with Kossuth, who was now appointed Governor, for its chief. Even in the revolutionary severance of ancient ties homage was paid to the legal and const.i.tutional bent of the Hungarian mind. Nothing was said in the Declaration of April 19th of the rights of man; there was no Parisian commonplace on the sovereignty of the people. The necessity of Hungarian independence was deduced from the offences which the Austrian House had committed against the written and unwritten law of the land, offences continued through centuries and crowned by the invasion under Windischgratz, by the destruction of the Hungarian Const.i.tution in the edict of March 9th, and by the introduction of the Russians into Transylvania. Though coloured and exaggerated by Magyar patriotism, the charges made against the Hapsburg dynasty were on the whole in accordance with historical fact; and if the affairs of States were to be guided by no other considerations than those relating to the performance of contracts, Hungary had certainly established its right to be quit of partners.h.i.+p with Austria and of its Austrian sovereign. But the judgment of history has condemned Kossuth's declaration of Hungarian independence in the midst of the struggle of 1849 as a great political error. It served no useful purpose; it deepened the antagonism already existing between the Government and a large part of the army; and while it added to the sources of internal discord, it gave colour to the intervention of Russia as against a revolutionary cause. Apart from its disastrous effect upon the immediate course of events, it was based upon a narrow and inadequate view both of the needs and of the possibilities of the future. Even in the interests of the Magyar nation itself as a European power, it may well be doubted whether in severance from Austria such influence and such weight could possibly have been won by a race numerically weak and surrounded by hostile nationalities, as the ability and the political energy of the Magyars have since won for them in the direction of the acc.u.mulated forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[Russian intervention against Hungary.]

It has generally been considered a fatal error on the part of the Hungarian commanders that, after expelling the Austrian army, they did not at once march upon Vienna, but returned to lay siege to the fortress of Buda, which resisted long enough to enable the Austrian Government to reorganise and to multiply its forces. But the intervention of Russia would probably have been fatal to Hungarian independence, even if Vienna had been captured and a democratic government established there for a while in opposition to the Court at Olmutz. The plan of a Russian intervention, though this intervention was now explained by the community of interest between Polish and Hungarian rebels, was no new thing. Soon after the outbreak of the March Revolution the Czar had desired to send his troops both into Prussia and into Austria as the restorers of monarchical authority. His help was declined on behalf of the King of Prussia; in Austria the project had been discussed at successive moments of danger, and after the overthrow of the Imperial troops in Transylvania by Bem the proffered aid was accepted. The Russians who then occupied Hermannstadt did not, however, enter the country as combatants; their task was to garrison certain positions still held by the Austrians, and so to set free the Emperor's troops for service in the field. On the declaration of Hungarian independence, it became necessary for Francis Joseph to accept his protector's help without qualification or disguise. An army of eighty thousand Russians marched across Galicia to a.s.sist the Austrians in grappling with an enemy before whom, when single-handed, they had succ.u.mbed. Other Russian divisions, while Austria ma.s.sed its troops on the Upper Danube, entered Transylvania from the south and east, and the Magyars in the summer of 1849 found themselves compelled to defend their country against forces three times more numerous than their own. [437]

[The summer campaign in Hungary, July-August, 1849.]

[Capitulation of Vilagos, August 13.]

[Vengeance of Austria.]

When it became known that the Czar had determined to throw all his strength into the scale, Kossuth saw that no ordinary operations of war could possibly avert defeat, and called upon his countrymen to destroy their homes and property at the approach of the enemy, and to leave to the invader a flaming and devastated solitude. But the area of warfare was too vast for the execution of this design, even if the nation had been prepared for so desperate a course. The defence of Hungary was left to its armies, and Gorgei became the leading figure in the calamitous epoch that followed.