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THE 
 
 PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 HUNGARY: 
 
 FACTS, FIGURES, AND DATES, 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE OF ITS 
 
 PAST STRUGGLE, AND FUTURE PROSPECTS. 
 
 ^/ BY 
 
 C. R HENNINGSEN, ESQ., 
 
 SECRETARY TO GOVERNOR LOUIS KOSSUTH, AUTHOR OF "TWELVE MONTHS' 
 
 CAMPAIGN WITH ZUMALACARREGUI," "REVELATIONS OF 
 
 RUSSIA," " EASTERN EUROPE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 T. C. NEWBY, PUBLISHER, 
 
 30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. 
 
 1852. 
 

THE 
 
 PAST AND FUTUBE 
 
 OF 
 
 HUNGARY. 
 
 HUNGARY AND THE RACES IN- 
 HABITING IT. 
 
 The Magyars bearing the same proportion to 
 the other races, as the Anglo-Saxons, in 
 the United States, to the remainder of the 
 population. 
 
 Hungary is a country about three hundred 
 and twenty miles in breadth, from north to 
 south, and some five hundred from its 
 eastern to its western extremity. It is com- 
 puted to comprise about one hundred and 
 
 B 
 
S THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 twenty thousand square miles, being rather 
 larger than Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 extending over about the same area as the 
 states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. 
 It is naturally bounded and defended, on 
 the north and east, by the Carpathian moun- 
 tains, and on the south by the Danube and 
 the Save, a tributary river. The Danube 
 and the Theiss, which flow into it, traverse 
 the great central plains of Hungary. The 
 northern section of the country is mountain- 
 ous, and Transylvania, a mountainous pro- 
 vince, it will be perceived by reference to 
 map No 1, is literally fenced in by a wall of 
 mountains. 
 
 Climate, fertility of soil, irrigation, variety 
 of surface, and mineral wealth, render this 
 region, naturally, the most favoured on the 
 continent of Europe. Its great arterial 
 rivers, level plains, and mountain chains, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 3 
 
 traversed by streams, invite steam naviga- 
 tion and the construction of railroads and 
 canals. Every variety of European product, 
 from wheat and rye to maize and rice, are 
 produced in great luxuriance ; and Hungary 
 has no rival on the continent for its horses, 
 cattle, and tobacco, or westward of the 
 Rhine — if any where — for its wines. 
 
 To Europe, it is what the most fruitful 
 parts of the great valley of the Mississippi 
 are to the North American continent. 
 
 This territory is inhabited by about fifteen 
 millions of inhabitants. Of these, about 
 seven millions, or nearly half, belong to the 
 Magyar race, the remainder being made up 
 of Slovacks, Ruthenians, Serbians, Croats, 
 Sclavonians, Wallacks, Germans, Jews, Gip- 
 sies, Greeks, and Armenians. None of 
 these other nationalities number indivi- 
 dually over two millions and three quarters ; 
 
 b 2 
 
4 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 some only amount to a few thousand, and 
 they all differ from each other in origin, 
 language, habits, or religion. 
 
 Many attempts have been made by the 
 Austrian government and its partizans to 
 misrepresent these facts. The number of 
 the Magyars has, for instance, been officially 
 given as 5,400,000. It is a common prac- 
 tice also in enumerating the different races, 
 to place the Magyars on one side, and to 
 sum up the Szeklers, who are rather more 
 Magyar than the Magyars themselves, with 
 the remainder of the population. This can 
 only be compared to a census for the pur- 
 pose of establishing the relative numbers of 
 the white and coloured population in the 
 United States, and which should report 
 the whites at so many, the blacks at so 
 many, and the population of Ohio or Penn- 
 sylvania at so many more, from whence an 
 
OF HUNGARY. 5 
 
 ignorant reader in Europe would naturally 
 deduce that the people of Pennsylvania or 
 Ohio were not white. Secondly, the Slo- 
 vacks, Croats, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Scla- 
 vonians are spoken of collectively as Sclaves 
 or Sclavonians, and computed collectively at 
 five millions, as if they constituted one 
 people. Now, for this there is no other 
 foundation than the fact of their belonging, in 
 common, to the Sclavonic family. With very 
 few exceptions, the European nations may be 
 divided into three great families ; that is to 
 say, the Germanic, the Latin, and Sclavonic. 
 The English, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Swiss, 
 Norwegians, Dutch, and Flemings belong, 
 for instance, to the Germanic family. The 
 French, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and 
 Wallachians to the Latin family. The Poles, 
 Russians, Cossacks, Slovacks, Serbians, 
 Croates, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Bosniaks, 
 and Montenegrins to the Sclavonic families. 
 
4» 
 
 6 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 It does not follow that the members of 
 each family should have much, or, in some 
 cases, any affinity beyond that of language ; 
 and this affinity, although decided, is not 
 sufficient to render them intelligible to one 
 another. For instance, an Englishman, or 
 American, can not understand a German ; 
 an Italian can not understand a Frenchman, 
 nor a Hungarian Slovack, a Hungarian Serb. 
 The proverbial hatred of a Pole to a Rus- 
 sian, and of a Spaniard to a Frenchman, 
 affords a popularly recognised exemplifica- 
 tion of the failure of a mere assimilation of 
 language in securing harmony between the 
 individual nations classified in one family. 
 So it is with the Sclavonic races inhabiting 
 Hungary. The Slovacks, for instance, are 
 frequently Catholic or Protestant, and ad- 
 here closely to the Magyars. When a 
 Slovack is well to do in the world, he brings 
 
OF HUNGARY. 7 
 
 his children up to learn the Magyar tongue, 
 and calls himself a Magyar. 
 
 The returns of the census for 1850, made 
 by the Austrian government, gave eight mil- 
 lions of Magyars for Hungary ; and it was 
 not, as originally proposed, made over again, 
 because it was feared that, instead of eight, 
 nine millions would be the result. The fact 
 was, that the Slovacks set themselves down 
 as Magyars. The Ruthenians, a little Rus- 
 sian or Cossack race, belong to the united 
 Greek rite ; that is to say, to a sect of the 
 Greek Church, who permit their priests to 
 marry, and use leavened bread and wine for 
 the celebration of the mass, but who recog- 
 nize and are recognized by the Pope of 
 Rome. They belong to the same sect which 
 the Emperor Nicholas so barbarously per- 
 secuted in the provinces of Russian Poland. 
 The Croatians, who will not fraternize with 
 
•A> 
 
 8 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 either of these branches, and with whom 
 these branches will not fraternize, are very 
 bigoted Roman Catholics, in whose country 
 no Protestant is ever allowed to settle or hold 
 property. The Serbians and Sclavonians— 
 the latter, so called from inhabiting a pro- 
 vince of that name — are mostly members of 
 the pure Greek Church, and, as such, look 
 with great aversion on their Croatian neigh- 
 bours. The Wallacks appertain to the pure 
 Greek Church, but belong to the Latin 
 family, their language being a corruption of 
 the Italian, and no more like any Sclavonian 
 tongue than the English to the Greek. 
 
 Magyars and Szeklers . . 6,500,000 to 7,500,000 
 Slovacks and Ruthenians. 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 
 
 Serbians 900,000 
 
 Croats and Sclavonians . . 800,000 
 
 Wallacks 2,000,000 
 
 Germans 1,000,000 
 
 Jews, Gipsies, Greeks, Ar- 
 menians, and Albanians 500,000 
 
OF HUNGARY. i) 
 
 It will be observed that the Magyar race 
 is not only — even according to the Austrian 
 census — more numerous than any other, but 
 more numerous than all the Sclavonic races 
 put together. 
 
 The Magyar race, in fact, constitutes quite 
 as predominant an element in Hungary as 
 the Anglo-Saxon in the states of the Ame- 
 rican Union, if a deduction of the French, 
 Germans, Celts, Indians, &c, be made. 
 
 b 3% 
 
10 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE 
 MAGYARS. 
 
 The Magyars for a century and a half the 
 bulwark of Christendom against the Turks, 
 Their King being killed in battle, elect 
 the Austrian Emperors, on condition of 
 maintaining the constitution. Bad faith 
 of the Emperors, encroachments on the 
 liberties of the Magyars, and religious 
 persecution rouse champions, who succes- 
 sively drive the Austrians out of Hungary. 
 The House of Hapsburg appealing to Hun- 
 gary in its need, and again oppressing it. 
 
 This Magyar race bears no relation to the 
 Germanic, Latin, or Sclavonic families, nor 
 has its language any resemblance whatever 
 to their idiom. The Magyars are an 
 
OP HUNGARY. 11 
 
 Asiatic people, isolated in the heart of 
 Europe, but without kindred, unless it be 
 among the Turks, or among the Basques, 
 inhabiting the Western Pyrenees, and isola- 
 ted among strange races like themselves ; 
 with the Turks similitude of language seems 
 to connect, and, with the Basques, is alleged 
 to connect them. If so, it is a further 
 coincidence that both Basques and Magyars 
 have been distinguished by a jealous ad- 
 herence to the principle of local self-govern- 
 ment, and that that one people has made, 
 against overwhelming numbers, in a moun- 
 tain region, the other in a plain country, the 
 most remarkable stand recorded in our 
 times. 
 
 The Magyars are supposed to owe their 
 origin either to the Huns, one of the great 
 predatory nations who over-ran the Roman 
 Empire in its decline, or to be descended 
 
12 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 from a conquering tribe of that people, 
 which afterwards, under Arpad, immigrated 
 into Europe. 
 
 The Magyars framed for themselves a 
 constitution about the same period that the 
 English Barons extorted the Magna Charta 
 from King John, and from that period have 
 always enjoyed, watchfully guarded or 
 courageously defended, a certain amount of 
 practical self-government. 
 
 As an independent Kingdom, Hungary 
 for more than a century and a half was the 
 bulwark of Christendom against the inva- 
 sions of the Turks. That is to sav, that, 
 out of a dozen battles won by the Christians 
 against the Musselmen, eight were fought 
 by the Hungarians, and that the historic 
 honours, justly paid to the Polish King 
 Sobeiski, for once saving central Europe 
 from a Turkish inroad, were due to the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 
 
 13 
 
 Magyars during one hundred and seventy 
 years. 
 
 From the battle of Kossova, in 1389, 
 where the Hungarians first came in contact 
 with the Ottomans, to the fatal field of 
 Mohacz, one Turkish Sultan and two Hun- 
 garian Kings perished in battle, in the 
 fierce wars waged, alternately and with vary- 
 ing success, on Turkish or Hungarian ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 King Sigismond, Hunniades, Matthias 
 Corvinus, Paul Kinnis, and Bathory, the 
 heroes of these conflicts, succeeded in re- 
 sisting the Mahommedan inroad, thereby 
 securing Europe from molestation. 
 
 Even after King Louis fell, with the flower 
 of his nobility, at Mohacz, against Solyman 
 the Magnificent, the Turkish armies were 
 obliged to evacuate the country. It was 
 only after the Hungarians had, in 1527, in 
 
14 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 consequence of this untoward event, elected 
 as their King the Emperor Ferdinand of 
 Austria, brother-in-law of King Louis, who 
 had died without male issue, that Hungary 
 fell wholly or partially under Ottoman rule 
 or protectorate for one hundred and fifty 
 years. 
 
 Ferdinand the First, of Hapsburg, Em- 
 peror of Germany, was elected King of Hun- 
 gary in 1587, on condition of his respecting 
 the rights and privileges of the nation. It 
 was not until 1687 that the crown of Hun- 
 gary was made hereditary in the male line 
 of the House of Hapsburg, and it was not 
 until the reign of Charles the Sixth in 1723, 
 that the female succession was conceded, 
 and shortly after accepted in the person of 
 Maria Theresa. 
 
 The crown of Hungary had, therefore, 
 been conferred by free choice on the Princes 
 
OF HUNGARY. 15 
 
 of the House of Hapsburg, who stood in 
 the same relation to it as the absolute sove- 
 reigns of Hanover to the throne of Constitu- 
 tional England. These Princes, though 
 Emperors of Germany, and afterwards styled 
 Emperors of Austria, were never recognized 
 but as Kings of Hungary. 
 
 From the period of this unhappy choice 
 to the present, during nearly three hundred 
 years, the history of Hungary has been one 
 continued series of perfidious attempts on 
 the part of the perjured sovereigns of 
 Austria to ravish or to filch, by force or 
 fraud, the civil and religious liberties of 
 their Hungarian subjects, on whose part is 
 presented, on the other hand, a picture of 
 credulity and forgiveness, which only the 
 spirited nature of their resistance to op- 
 pression and encroachment has redeemed. 
 
 It has been said already that Hungary, 
 
16 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 which, before the election of the House of 
 Hapsburg, knew how to protect its soil from 
 Turkish invasion, remained after that event, 
 for more than a century and a half, wholly 
 or chiefly in possession of the Turks. 
 
 The fact was that the persecution of 
 Austria and its machiavelian policy not only 
 neutralised the power of the nation by divi- 
 ding it, but drove its patriots to seek, under 
 the more tolerant protectorate of Turkey, 
 that religious liberty, and the free exercise 
 of those civil rights which the Austrian rule 
 was unceasingly exerted to subvert, 
 
 The insurgent leaders who arose to assert 
 these liberties were usually successful in 
 obliging Austria to withdraw, until a more 
 favourable season, her pretensions, and the 
 nation, or at least a large portion of it, re- 
 turned again to its allegiance whenever this 
 pressure was removed. Some of these 
 
OE HUNGARY. 17 
 
 leaders carried their arms victoriously into 
 the hereditary States of Austria, some of 
 them expelled the Austrians from the country 
 and kept possession of it, or of parts of it, 
 during the whole term of their natural lives. 
 Others died in exile or upon the field, but 
 the names of all have been handed down to 
 popular veneration. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that they were 
 indifferently Catholics or Protestants who 
 led, at various times, the struggle for liberty 
 of conscience against the persecution of 
 Austria, one of whose princes, Ferdinand the 
 Second, sold two hundred and fifty Pro- 
 testant clergymen, for fifty dollars each, to 
 the Neapolitan galleys, whence they were 
 ransomed by the great Dutch Admiral, De 
 Ruyter. 
 
 Moses Szekeli swept the Austrians before 
 him in Transylvania till slain in battle by 
 
18 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the Turkish mercenaries which Austria had 
 hired. 
 
 Botskay, after in vain pleading at the 
 Austrian court, drove the Austrians out of 
 Hungary, and retained possession till his 
 death. 
 
 Bethlen Gabor took Pressburgh by as- 
 sault, attacked the Austrians on their own 
 territory and compelled the Emperor to sign 
 a treaty with him for twenty years. 
 
 Leopold the First, having attempted to 
 reign as an absolute sovereign in Hungary* 
 Emeric Tokolyi pushed on to the gates of 
 Vienna, obliged the Emperor to retract his 
 pretensions, and was finally put down only 
 by the aid of John Sobeiski. 
 
 Subsequently, in 1703, on the occasion of 
 a fresh religious persecution, Francis Leo- 
 pold Rakoczy expelled the Austrians from 
 Hungary, till the Duke of Marlborough's 
 
OF HUNGARY. 19 
 
 victories, having left Austria all her dis- 
 posable and many auxiliary forces, the in- 
 surrection was suppressed, and like Tokolyi 
 his predecessor, Rakoczy died an exile upon 
 Turkish ground, and was buried in the 
 cemetery of Pera, whence his tomb still 
 overlooks the Bosphorus. 
 
 Forgiving and loyal when an appeal to 
 their fidelity or loyalty was made, as spirit- 
 ed in resisting an infringement of their 
 privileges, the Hungarians were ever con- 
 ciliated by the House of Hapsburg, in its 
 need, by concessions which were always 
 perjuriously and ungratefully revoked when 
 the necessities of the hour had passed away. 
 
 The celebrated Maria Theresa, when 
 driven to the last extremity, threw herself, 
 with her infant son, into the arms of her 
 Hungarian subjects, who re-established her 
 fortunes, and that son, the Emperor Joseph 
 
20 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the Second, afterwards repaid them by en- 
 deavouring to overturn their constitution, 
 till forced by the revolted Hungarians to 
 desist. From that time forward, until 
 1848, the House of Austria abandoned the 
 policy of force, to adopt, perseveringly, the 
 more successful policy of intrigue and fraud, 
 by which the progress of the nation was 
 impeded and many of its rights insidiously 
 filched away. 
 
OP HUNGARY. 21 
 
 NOBILITY AND SERFDOM MATTERS 
 OF CASTE, AND NOT OF RACE. 
 
 Nobles only any share in representation, 
 Russian peasants, slaves. Peasantry of 
 Austrian Poland in a stringent state of 
 serfdom. Hungarian peasants in a miti- 
 gated form of serfdom — Illusory nature of 
 pretended laws by Russia and Austria for 
 their relief — Real opposition to their 
 emancipation. 
 
 Previous to 1848, the population of Hun- 
 gary consisted of half a million of nobles. 
 Of these nobles a few hundred families were 
 magnates, with princely fortunes and pecu- 
 liar privileges ; the others were rather free- 
 men, in the enjoyment of political rights 
 denied to other classes of community than 
 nobles. 
 
22 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Of the remaining inhabitants a large por- 
 tion were serfs, but serfs in a very miti- 
 gated form of serfdom. 
 
 The term serf has been frequently mis- 
 applied. In Russia, for instance, the great 
 bulk of the population are slaves, and not 
 serfs, although it has cost Russian diplo- 
 macy great expenditure and pains to get 
 the term of serf, instead of slave, adopted or 
 applied to her peasantry in foreign countries. 
 The Russian peasant, and in the same man- 
 ner the peasant of Russian Poland, could, 
 in fact, a few years back, be sold without 
 any reference to the estate to which he 
 belonged, and though a ukase has since 
 been issued prohibiting their sale without 
 the estate to which they are attached, yet, 
 practically, a slave is sold to be taken to 
 the most remote part of the empire, the 
 purchaser receiving with his purchase the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 23 
 
 conveyance of a few worthless or imaginary 
 acres to iavade the law. By law the master 
 has, only in certain localities remote from a 
 police station, the right to chastise his slave, 
 male or female, but for a few shillings the 
 police, who are bound to punish them on 
 his demand, will inflict any number of thou- 
 sand lashes. 
 
 In Austrian Poland, otherwise called Gal- 
 icia, the peasantry are in a stringent state 
 of serfdom. A law, illusory as are most of 
 the laws of despotism humane in their 
 tendency — the celebrated urbarium of Maria 
 Theresa — has long since nominally detached 
 him from the soil, and given him the pri- 
 vilege of going where he pleases whenever 
 he has paid up the debt of forced labour he 
 owes his master. But as the Galician serf 
 is obliged to give, besides other dues, one 
 hundred and fifty days labour as rental for 
 
24 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 fifteen acres of land, to his master, and as 
 these days may be chosen by that master in 
 sowing or in harvest time, it follows that 
 the peasant is always hopelessly indebted 
 to his landlord to an extent no human in- 
 dustry can liquidate. 
 
 In Hungary, where a mitigated form of 
 serfdom existed, the peasant was bound 
 down to the same conditions, but with this 
 practical difference, that the proportion of 
 his labour due to the landlord — that is to 
 say, fifty-four days — for thirty acres of land, 
 was such as industry might enable him to 
 perform, in which case he was at liberty to 
 remove at his discretion. 
 
 These distinctions were, however, distinc- 
 tions of class, and not of race. Of the half 
 million nobles of Hungary, not more than 
 three hundred and fifty thousand were 
 Magyars, the remainder belonging indis- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 25 
 
 criminately to the other populations, and 
 not only were there German, Croatian, Wal- 
 lachian, and Serbian landlords, but Magyar 
 peasantry who belonged to them. 
 
 It is true that the Magyars had a larger 
 proportion of nobles than the other races, 
 but this is naturally enough accounted for, 
 when it is remembered that the Serbians 
 and a large proportion of Wallachians were 
 originally fugitives from Turkey, during the 
 contest of their respective nations with that 
 country, who came to seek refuge in Hun- 
 gary, and to whom the Magyars would 
 extend rather a protective hospitality than 
 political rights. 
 
 It has been the policy of Russia, and of 
 Austria, to uphold the systems of slavery 
 and of serfdom as a means of security to 
 their rule, by enabling them to play off the 
 interests of the slaves, serfs, slave-owners, 
 
26 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 and serf landlords reciprocally against each 
 other. 
 
 The slave-owners and landlords in these 
 countries were made the medium through 
 which the government levied men and 
 money on the peasantry, with whom their 
 proprietors incurred the chief share of the 
 odium attendant on the tax. The interests 
 of the proprietors became identified with 
 those of the government in keeping down 
 the peasantry, and if the proprietors or 
 landlords made any resistance to oppression, 
 they were threatened with a rising of the 
 slaves or serfs. 
 
 A consciousness of the dangers of their 
 position, and of the hopeless bondage to 
 which it subjected them, had long since 
 induced the majority of the nobles through- 
 out Russia, Poland, Austrian Poland, and 
 Hungary, to desire to remove themselves 
 
OF HUNGARY. 27 
 
 from this unsatisfactory and perilous posi- 
 tion. But both the Russian and the Aus- 
 trian governments, though making illusory 
 laws which threw the onus of this state of 
 things upon the nobles, have at all times 
 discouraged or prohibited, and in every 
 instance (except that of Hungary in 1848,) 
 effectually frustrated every attempt on the 
 part of the landowners to emancipate their 
 peasantry. 
 
 Several Russian provinces — called " go- 
 vernments" in Russia — during the early 
 part of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas, 
 who, himself, is at this time proprietor of 
 upwards of sixteen millions of slaves apper- 
 taining to his private domain, mooted the 
 question, but were sternly bidden not to 
 meddle in such matters. 
 
 In Gallicia, or Austrian Poland, the en- 
 franchisement of the serfs was not only, on 
 
 c 2 
 
28 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the one hand, prevented by Austria, but, on 
 the other, the landlord was converted into 
 a forced instrument of extortion by being 
 made responsible to the crown for the men 
 and money at which his estates were rated, 
 whilst agents were appointed to whom the 
 peasants could appeal, so that the govern- 
 ment appeared, in their eyes, as a protector 
 against the rapacity of their masters. 
 
 In 1845 a revolutionary movement was 
 anticipated on the part of the Polish nation, 
 which (twenty millions in number) has never 
 become reconciled to its partition between 
 Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and as it was 
 understood that the Gallician nobility were 
 likely to join the insurrection, Austria, by 
 means of Jesuits and subordinate agents, 
 raised the peasantry against their masters. 
 The most alarming and extravagant fictions 
 were imposed on the credulity and ignorance 
 
OF HUNGARY. 29 
 
 of the serfs by salaried Austrian agents. A 
 price was placed upon the heads of the 
 nobles, and their families, and the result 
 was the massacre of upwards of three thou- 
 sand men, women, and children, belonging 
 to that class. 
 
 In Hungary the urbarium of Maria The- 
 resa, in 1764, had brought the serf above the 
 actual level of the Gallician serf — that is to 
 say, he could leave the estate on which he 
 was settled, by paying up his debts, but 
 this debt was necessarily influenced by the 
 number of days' labour which could be ex- 
 acted from him, which amounted to fifty- 
 four — he, meanwhile, being amenable to 
 limited corporeal punishment, at the dis- 
 cretion of his lord. 
 
 But the Diets which Austria, for the sake 
 of obtaining supplies, was obliged, from time 
 to time, to call together, and which, in 1807 
 
30 THE PAST AND EUTURE 
 
 and in 1812, had boldly remonstrated with 
 their sovereign, proposed, in the sessions of 
 1832-4 and of 1839, the emancipation of 
 the peasantry. This the cabinet of Vienna 
 succeeded in preventing, although unable to 
 hinder the effectuation of considerable ame- 
 lioration in the condition of that class — such 
 as further limitation of the power of punish- 
 ment, the faculty conceded of commuting 
 body-service for a money rent, and lastly, 
 that of purchasing from his lord the freehold 
 of the land he occupied, and therewith his 
 enfranchisement from all duties. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 31 
 
 DIETS AND PUBLIC MEN IN 
 HUNGARY. 
 
 Progressive character of Diets since 1832— 
 great works undertaken. Kossuth devotes 
 himself to assert the right of reporting 
 speeches of members of the Diet. Braves 
 Austria and is imprisoned. Austria 
 obliged to release him. Szechenyi and 
 Bathyanyi. Demand for the restoration 
 of a Hungarian ministry. 
 
 The Gallician massacres were a great lesson 
 to the Magyars, and determined them to 
 remove the danger with which Austria 
 threatened them, whenever labouring to 
 assert their liberties and rights. 
 
 From 1832 the spirit of the country had 
 
32 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 been resolutely progressive, and the efforts 
 of the Austrian cabinet had been as ener- 
 getically directed to arrest this tendency, 
 and still further to encroach. Count Szee- 
 henyi and Louis Bathyanyi belonging to the 
 higher aristocracy, Baron Wesselzenyi the 
 Transylvanian, and lastly Kossuth, who may 
 be regarded as having represented all classes 
 of the nation, laboured conjointly and suc- 
 cessfully to restore the Magyar language, 
 which the Austrian government, in its en- 
 deavours to denationalize the Hungarians, 
 had supplanted by the German, and to 
 promote the industrial and material im- 
 provement of the country. In pursuance of 
 this design, the Pesth and Solnok railway, 
 the opening of the navigation of the Danube, 
 and construction of the suspension bridge at 
 Pesth, were undertaken. 
 
 The opening of the navigation of the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 33 
 
 Danube is one of the great engineering 
 works of Europe; and, in 1848, the magnifi- 
 cent suspension bridge at Pesth (which the 
 ensuing year the Austrian garrison of Buda 
 wantonly attempted to destroy,) was still 
 the finest on that principle in the world. 
 It is further worthy of remark that up to 
 that time neither Vienna nor St. Petersburg 
 had any but wretched floating wooden 
 bridges to connect the sections of these 
 capitols, divided by the Danube and the 
 Neva. Kossuth from a very early period 
 had foreseen and pointed out that the prin- 
 cipal efforts of Austria would be directed to 
 obtain the controul of the finances of Hun- 
 gary. Austria bankrupt in 1812, was deep 
 already in the embarrassments which are 
 leading her to that same bankruptcy, which 
 it is acknowledged must shortly overtake 
 her. Historical experience had proved be- 
 
 c 3 
 
34 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 sides, that this financial contronl is the chief 
 safeguard of a nation's liberties, a conviction 
 which all practical communities have enter- 
 tained, and upon which the long parliament 
 of Charles the First and George the Third's 
 American colonies acted. Necessity and 
 policy alike prompted Austria therefore to 
 this course ; and, successfully to prosecute it, 
 resort was systematically made to every 
 species of parliamentary corruption and in- 
 timidation. 
 
 Though the members of the Hungarian 
 Diet were rather delegates than represent- 
 atives, entrusted with discretionary power, 
 their constituencies could exercise over them 
 but a very limited controul so long as the go- 
 vernment prevented their votes and speeches 
 from being recorded, through the censorship, 
 without whose permission nothing could be 
 published. To remedy this inconvenience, 
 
OP HUNGARY. 35 
 
 Kossuth, then a journalist, caused reports of 
 the Diet to be lithographed and distributed 
 through the country. When these were 
 prohibited, on the ground that they amount- 
 ed equally to publication, he resorted to 
 the expedient of having written copies made 
 and distributed to each constituency. This 
 attempt the Austrian cabinet resolved to 
 check, threatening, if he persisted, to pro- 
 secute him for treason with the whole 
 weight of its influence and power. Kos- 
 suth however, having " placed his house in 
 order," devoted himself to do what all 
 wished done, but what no other man would 
 do, and daringly continued to distribute his 
 circulars — was seized by the Austrian go- 
 vernment, and condemned to three years 
 imprisonment. It was in this imprisonment 
 that, from the study of Shakspeare, he learn- 
 ed the English tongue, in which his great 
 
36 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 crusade against absolutism has been preach- 
 ed, so that the future may have yet to record 
 that the Austrian absolutism was, so to say, 
 pierced like the Eagle stricken by the shaft 
 fledged with a feather from its own wing. 
 
 The public spirit gathered, however, such 
 impetus from this courageous devotion, that 
 two years after, the government was obliged 
 to liberate the captives — Kossuth emerging 
 from his prison shattered in constitution, 
 and Wesselzenyi blind. Returned by the 
 most important county to the Diet, Kossuth 
 became at once a party leader, devoting 
 with untiring perseverance his energies and 
 talents to the financial condition of his 
 country, to the emancipation of the pea- 
 santry, and to obtain a restoration of those 
 political rights which would permit the na- 
 tion to amend its institutions by the adoption 
 of this and other necessary reforms. 
 
OP HUNGARY. 37 
 
 It should be here observed, that as re- 
 garded the three principal political leaders, 
 Szechenyi, Bathyanyi, and Kossuth, that 
 they never differed as to the end, but only 
 as to the means. 
 
 Szechenyi, who was first in the field, 
 founded his chief hope on the development 
 of the material resources of his country, 
 which he imagined would render it so 
 powerful as to oblige Austria to respect its 
 wishes and its rights. Kossuth and Bath- 
 yanyi cordially co-operated in these endea- 
 vours, but argued that Austria being as well 
 aware of the fact as themselves, would be 
 thereby incited to more vigorous attempts 
 to bring the country into political subjec- 
 tion, and hence felt the necessity of such 
 vigorous measures as the emancipation of 
 the serfs, and amelioration of the political 
 condition of all classes, which would disarm 
 
38 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the cabinet of Vienna of the power of play- 
 ing over again in Hungary, the sanguinary 
 drama of Gallicia. Szechenyi who did not 
 thoroughly appreciate either the spirit and 
 resources of the country, nor the novel posi- 
 tion which would oblige Austria either to 
 resign its pretensions, or to adopt a more 
 boldly hazardous policy, considered Bath- 
 yanyi and Kossuth too rash and daring, in 
 the same way that Bathyanyi subsequently 
 thought Kossuth himself too sanguine 
 when, during the two first invasions by Jel- 
 lachich and Windischgratz, he did not de- 
 spair of the salvation of the country. As 
 events showed Bathyanyi and Kossuth to 
 have been right with reference to Szechenyi, 
 so Kossuth was proved to have been with 
 regard to Bathyanyi, Hungary having been 
 entirely reconquered upon both occasions, 
 though Bathyanyi fell, as I shall subse- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 89 
 
 quently have to show, the victim of his un- 
 belief. 
 
 One of the immediate aims of the Hun- 
 garian patriots was to obtain a ministry re- 
 sident in Hungary, as a step indispensable 
 to the recovery of those rights still nomi- 
 nally possessed by them, but really with- 
 held from them by Austria, and which were 
 indispensable to the amelioration of their 
 institutions . The Hungarian native ministry 
 which formerly had always resided in the 
 Magyar capital as ministers of the Hunga- 
 rian King, not of the Austrian Emperor, 
 had been removed to Vienna, and trans- 
 formed into an insignificant Department, 
 called the Hungarian Chancery. 
 
40 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 THE EMPEROR OE AUSTRIA SWEARS 
 TO THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The Home of Hapsburg, threatened on all 
 sides with revolution, to conciliate Hun- 
 gary restores its ancient constitution — 
 Made use of to effect reforms — The Em- 
 peror comes into Hungary to sanction them, 
 and to swear to the constitution. 
 
 It is frequently asserted that the convulsions 
 which shook Europe in 1848 were occa- 
 sioned by the French revolution. This re- 
 volution, it is true, gave a fresh impetus to 
 the march of events; but to allege that 
 they originated in it, is to make a confusion 
 of cause and effect, which a few facts and 
 dates will rectify. The triumph of the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 41 
 
 liberal cause in Switzerland, the insurrection 
 of Sicily, the constitutions granted to Sar- 
 dinia and Denmark, the reforms promised 
 by the Pope, and the agitation pervading 
 Italy were all antecedent to, and mainly 
 operative in, the overthrow of Louis 
 Philippe. 
 
 Revolutions in Europe are accelerated by 
 any internal convulsion in France ; but these 
 convulsions are as likely to be produced by 
 occurrences beyond her boundary as to pro- 
 duce them. This was the case with Hun- 
 gary. The spirit which had obliged the 
 Austrian Cabinet to liberate Kossuth and 
 Wesselzenyi was resolutely and progressively 
 rising when, on March 2, 1848, telegraphic 
 accounts of the Preneh revolution reached 
 Pressburg, where the Diet was sitting. 
 
 Kossuth, on the following day, made a 
 memorable speech in the Diet, in which he 
 
42 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 advised demanding from Austria the consti- 
 tutional administration of the finances, and in 
 which he reiterated the opinions he had re- 
 cently expressed, that Hungary could not be 
 sure of the reforms it desired at home, of 
 the constitutional tendency of those reforms, 
 or of their results, so long as the system of 
 the monarchy, which had the same prince as 
 the Hungarians, remained in direct opposi- 
 tion to constitutionalism ; and so long as 
 that privy council, which conducted the 
 general administration of the monarchy, re- 
 mained anti-constitutional in its elements 
 and tendency, and in which he repeated 
 his conviction, that the prince who would 
 reform, upon a constitutional basis, the beau- 
 reaucratic system of Vienna, reared on the 
 ruins of the liberties of the states consti- 
 tuting the Austrian Empire, would be the 
 second founder of the House of Hapsburg. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 43 
 
 Kossuth's speech had a profound effect 
 on the population of Vienna, amongst which 
 the situation of Europe and the expulsion 
 of Louis Philippe had occasioned a great 
 fermentation. On the 13th of March, 
 headed by the academic legion, the people 
 marched to the imperial palace and de- 
 manded and obtained the promise of a con- 
 stitution. On the 15th of March, Kossuth, 
 at the head of a deputation of the Diet, ar- 
 rived in Vienna to demand the restoration of 
 a resident Hungarian ministry, consisting of 
 Hungarians devoting themselves exclusively 
 to the management of Hungarian affairs. This 
 demand was conceded. The chief states and 
 cities of the House of Austria were in a 
 state of declared or incipient revolution. 
 Bohemia was on the eve of insurrection, and 
 a profound agitation reigned among the 
 Sclavonic population of the empire, On 
 
44 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the 16th of March the Viennese had in- 
 sisted upon having, and had obtained a 
 written constitution ; on the 21st, Metter- 
 nich was dismissed; on the 18th, the insur- 
 rection broke out in Lombardy; on the 
 22d, Radetsky was expelled from Milan 
 with the imperial army ; and on the 23 d, 
 Count Zichy had given up Venice by capi- 
 tulation. 
 
 In the midst of this general disintegra- 
 tion of the Austrian Empire the House of 
 Hapsburg, in its need, turned, as it had 
 done before, in the time of Maria Theresa, 
 to the Hungarians, and to secure their 
 loyalty, hastened to concede to them their 
 rights. Kossuth, the man whom Austria 
 had illegally held in a long and rigorous 
 captivity, was now appealed to by its cabinet 
 to exert his mediative influence, which he 
 did in such a manner as afterward enabled 
 
OF HUNGARY. 45 
 
 him conscientiously to assert in his cele- 
 brated speech at Winchester — 
 
 " That humble individual as he was, he 
 had held in his hand the crowns of imperial 
 Austria, and that if that perjured House of 
 Hapsburg still ruled, he could declare before 
 history, which was his witness, and posterity 
 which would be his judge, that its existence 
 was owing only to his forbearance/' 
 
 On the 26th of March, a separate ministry 
 was agreed to and appointed ; on the 30th, 
 it was published, and on the 11th of April, 
 the Emperor Ferdinand, as King of Hun- 
 gary, and accompanied by the present Em- 
 peror, came deliberately, of his own free will, 
 into the Hungarian territory, and into the 
 midst of the Hungarian Diet, to legalize 
 and sanction, by his approval and accept- 
 ance, the new laws which it had passed, and 
 to swear solemnly to the constitution. 
 
46 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 EQUALIZATION OF ALL RACES 
 AND ALL CLASSES. 
 
 April II, 1848, emancipation of the serfs, 
 and equalization of all classes and races 
 carried by Kossuth in the Diet. 
 
 These laws, passed by the Hungarian Diet 
 and sanctioned by the crown within twenty 
 days of the concession of a separate and re- 
 sponsible ministry, equalized throughout 
 Hungary, Transylvania, Sclavonia, and 
 Croatia, all classes and all races be- 
 fore the law, and — with one exception — 
 decreed universal religious toleration. 
 That exception was in favour of the Roman 
 Catholic province of Croatia, whose former 
 law, forbidding Protestants to settle in that 
 country, was suffered to remain unaltered. 
 
OF HUNGAEY, 47 
 
 Lastly, these laws not only proclaimed 
 the emancipation of the peasantry from 
 their feudal burdens, and their elevation to 
 equality of civil and political rights with 
 the first magnates of the land, but they en- 
 dowed these emancipated serfs in perpetuity 
 with the lands, for which formerly their 
 body-service was exacted, and, at the same 
 time, provided compensation for the land- 
 owners out of the national domains, 
 
 These measures, passed by a unanimous 
 vote of a Diet of landlords and of magnates, 
 were due principally to the energy and elo- 
 quence of Kossuth, who had laboured in 
 this direction untiringly for years, and w T ho 
 now, pointing to the signs of the times, 
 succeeded in persuading the Hungarian re- 
 presentatives magnanimously to make com- 
 plete, by the addition of endowment, that 
 boon of emancipation which their security 
 
48 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 and patriotic duty prompted them to concede. 
 By this act two-thirds of the whole popula- 
 tion (except that of the military frontier, 
 where no such body-service existed), amount- 
 ing to about one million and three-quarters 
 of families, representing between eight and 
 nine millions of individuals, were raised 
 from a servile condition to the free pro- 
 prietorship of the soil on which they had 
 previously been settled. 
 
 No political measure in the history of 
 Europe has been more unmixedly beneficial 
 and successful. Austria, even with Russia 
 at her back, has never dared retract or dis- 
 turb either this emancipation or the distribu- 
 tion, and from that time to the present, 
 Hungary has presented a picture, unfor- 
 tunately unexampled on the continent of 
 Europe, of the most perfect harmony be- 
 tween classes formerly estranged, whilst the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 49 
 
 magnate, the noble, the burgher, and the 
 peasant engaged in a common cause, have 
 been since seen bleeding on the same battle- 
 field, side by side, sharing the same captivity 
 or triumph, and ascending the same scaffold. 
 The Hungarians have been reproached by 
 those who cannot deny these concessions 
 with granting them too late, under the pres- 
 sure of circumstances, and when the war 
 was assuming an unfavourable aspect. It 
 will be perceived that these memorable laws 
 w r ere passed, not only before the war had 
 begun, but several weeks previous to any 
 domestic disturbances. It remains only to 
 be added, that no attempt was ever, at any 
 time, made afterward by the Executive or 
 Diet to qualify or rescind them. 
 
50 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 AUSTRIA INCITES RACE AGAINST 
 RACE. 
 
 Austria no longer able to set class against 
 class, incites race against race. Works 
 through the Jesuits and the Greek clergy. 
 The Ban Jellachich stirs up civil war, and 
 urges the Serbians and Sclavonians to 
 massacre and outrage, before they can be 
 made atvare that the Hungarian Diet has 
 equalized all classes and all races before 
 the lata. Jellachich solemnly proclaimed 
 a traitor and a rebel by the JEmperor, to 
 lull the Hungarians into security. 
 
 But the Austrian Cabinet, though anxious 
 in the moment of its need to propitiate the 
 Magyars, still true to its old habit, im- 
 mediately prepared to counteract all its con- 
 cessions on the first favourable opportunity ; 
 
OF HUNGARY. 51 
 
 and, as soon as it began to recover from the 
 first shock of the danger which assailed it, 
 proceeded energetically in its perfidious 
 course. 
 
 On the 24th of March, that is to say, a 
 few days after a separate ministry had been 
 agreed to, the Arch-Duke Stephen, the 
 Palatine or Imperial Viceroy, wrote to the 
 Emperor Ferdinand a letter (afterwards in- 
 tercepted and published) which contained 
 the following passage : 
 
 " I shall at present attempt to bring 
 
 forward the three measures by which alone 
 
 I hope to attain any result in Hungary. 
 
 The first measure would be to withdraw the 
 
 whole armed force from the country, and 
 
 leave it a prey to total devastation ; to look 
 
 passively on the disorders and fire-raisings, 
 
 and also upon the struggles between nobles 
 
 and peasants/' 
 
 b 2 
 
52 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 The letter then proceeds to point out as 
 the second means, the attempt to influence 
 Count Louis Bathyanyi ; and, as the third, 
 the recall of the Palatine, and the sending 
 a roval Commissioner " invested with ex- 
 traordinary powers, and accompanied by a 
 considerable military force, who, after dis- 
 solving the Diet there, should proceed to 
 Pesth and carry on the government there 
 with a strong hand, as long as circumstances 
 would permit/' 
 
 As the emancipation of the peasantry and 
 equalisation of all classes before the law, 
 rendered it impossible to set class against 
 class, the Austrian cabinet lost no time in 
 setting race against race before it was too 
 late. 
 
 Austria possessed two means of operating 
 on the ignorance of the Croatian, Sclavonian, 
 Serbian and Wallack populations. With 
 
OF HUNGARY. 53 
 
 the Croatians through the agency of the 
 Jesuits and a portion of the Roman Catholic 
 clergy ; with the other races named, who 
 belonged to the Greek Church, through the 
 interest of Russia, who had long since culti- 
 vated an influence with the Greek clergy for 
 purposes of its own, but which for the mo- 
 ment it was glad to abandon, in order to 
 assist Austria to stem the tide of revolution. 
 Urban was despatched by the Austrian 
 cabinet to incite the Wallacks against the 
 Magyars ; Rajacsics the Greek patriarch, 
 whom it gained over, amongst the Serbians ; 
 and it illegally appointed Jellachich, its 
 creature, Ban of Croatia, and sent him to 
 intrigue in that province, and with the 
 military colonies of the frontier, where he 
 enjoyed some popularity. 
 
 All these populations had a general im- 
 pression, or I should say, conviction — the 
 
54 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 same as at the present time is entertained 
 throughout the Austrian Empire — that 
 nothing can prevent its dissolution. This 
 belief, their vanity and ambition, and the 
 prejudice of race against the Magyars was 
 skilfully turned to account. Some of the 
 Croatians, Sclavonians and Serbians of Hun- 
 gary were persuaded that the time was come 
 to found upon the ruins of the Austrian 
 Empire, a Sclavonic Empire, w r hich should 
 easily absorb the hitherto dominant Magyars, 
 and the sympathies of Turkish Serbia were 
 enlisted in the same cause. Others were 
 told that the House of Austria would 
 willingly see them constituted into free 
 states under its supremacy. Rajacsics and 
 the Greek clergy were encouraged to believe 
 that they could found a theocracy, and Jel- 
 lachich figured as a Sclavonian liberal. The 
 reforms passed by the Hungarian Diet were 
 
OF HUNGARY. 55 
 
 either denied or derided as a snare, and the 
 enactment for the diffusion of the Magyar 
 language, was cited as a proof that that 
 people intended to root out their nationality 
 and religion. Above all, no time was lost 
 in coming to blows and engaging in civil 
 war, which should embitter prejudice, and 
 silence all discussion, 
 
 The Croatian and Sclavonic frontiers of 
 Turkish Bosnia and Serbia were inhabited 
 by the military colonies originally estab- 
 lished to protect the border from the in- 
 roads of the Turks. 
 
 The whole population of these colonies 
 was subjected to a strict military organiza- 
 tion. It consisted, in fact, of regiments, 
 with families, cultivating lands. 
 
 Of these military colonies Jellachich 
 availed himself. He invited over sympa- 
 thisers and freebooters from Turkish Serbia, 
 
56 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 and incited an attack upon the Magyar 
 villages. 
 
 A glance at map No. 1 will show that 
 the Magyar population chiefly inhabits the 
 central portions of Hungary, whilst other 
 races, like the Serbians and Wallacks, are 
 located in the natural order of their immi- 
 gration from Serbia or Wallachia, or in the 
 mountain ranges to which they may have 
 been originally driven. But this distribu- 
 tion, as marked upon the map, is only 
 general, not absolute. A great, and, in 
 fact, inextricable admixture exists through- 
 out the country, and in the same manner 
 that there are other races settled in the 
 districts where the Magyars predominate; 
 so Magyar villages are mixed up where the 
 Serbians, Wallachians, and Sclavonians con- 
 stitute the majority. These Magyars, like 
 the people amongst whom they live, were 
 
OF HUNGARY. 57 
 
 the least enlightened and most prejudiced 
 and violent, and the same antipathies ex- 
 isted between them and the Serbians, for 
 instance, as reciprocally between the Ser- 
 bians and Wallachians. 
 
 A few massacres by a disorderly soldiery 
 and drunken freebooters, led to retaliation 
 on the part of the Magyars, and in a few 
 weeks the whole frontier line was in a blaze 
 of civil war and insurrection. 
 
 On the 13th of May, Jellachich called a 
 Serbian, and on the 5th of June, a Croatian, 
 assembly together. On the 10th of June, 
 his conduct was solemnly disowned by the 
 Austrian Cabinet, and he was officially pro- 
 claimed by the Emperor a traitor and a 
 rebel 
 
 Kossuth, who had been appointed Fi- 
 nance Minister of the Hungarian Cabinet, 
 * over which Count Louis Bathyanyi presided, 
 
 d 3 
 
58 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 had penetrated the designs of Austria, but 
 was unable to place the country in a due 
 condition of defence, through the timidity 
 of Count Bathyanyi and of the Conser- 
 vatives, who, although convinced of the 
 treachery of Austria, imagined, on the one 
 hand, that she would not venture on any 
 positive hostility unless a pretext were fur- 
 nished, which the attempt to arm the 
 country would afford, whilst, on the other 
 hand, they did not believe that it could be 
 placed, in time, in a condition to resist. 
 
 It was not, therefore, till the 11th of 
 July that the Diet could be got to pass 
 laws for a levy of 200,000 men, to which 
 the Emperor evaded giving any sanction. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 59 
 
 FIRST INVASION OF HUNGARY. 
 
 SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND MEN AGAINST FIVE THOU- 
 SAND. (See Map No. I.) 
 
 Jettachich crosses the Drave and invades 
 Hungary— Approval of his conduct by the 
 Emperor, while the Emperor s Viceroy 
 offers to head the Hungarian troops — 
 Tlie Viceroy having helped to paralyse 
 resistance, escapes into Austria— The Em- 
 peror illegally appoints Count Lamberg 
 commander of the Hungarian forces — 
 The Diet vote the appointment unconstitu- 
 tional, and himself a traitor if he attempts 
 to carry it out — Lamberg enters Pesth, is 
 killed by the people — Jettachich loithin 
 sight of the capital — Bathyanyi a?id his 
 colleagues retire in consternation — Kos- 
 suth organises resistance — Battle of Pah- 
 hozd, and total defeat of Jettachich. 
 
 On the 9th of September the Emperor re- 
 
60 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 fused at length his sanction to the very 
 laws he had himself proposed on the 2d of 
 July, through his viceroy, to lull the sus- 
 picion of the Diet ; and on the same day, 
 Jellachich, after reading to his army an Im- 
 perial decree, dated 4th of September, 
 which declared him to have "proved his 
 unalterable fidelity to the House of Austria" 
 crossed the Drave, and advanced into Hun- 
 gary. 
 
 He was joined, as he proceeded, by Ge- 
 neral Ottinger, by a regiment of Austrian 
 cuirassiers, and by other Austrian corps and 
 garrisons upon his passage, with which he 
 advanced, devastating the country and mas- 
 sacreing the Magyar and German popula- 
 tion. Some idea of the conduct of his 
 troops and their auxiliaries may be formed 
 from the fact, that Mr. Fonblanque, the 
 British Consul -General at Belgrade, in 
 
OF HUNGARY. 61 
 
 Turkish Serbia, where their plunder was 
 disposed of, was obliged to complain to the 
 Prince of Serbia of the disgusting spectacle 
 offered in the market-place, where the ear- 
 rings and rings of women, still appended to 
 the dissevered ears, or encircling the fingers 
 of gory hands, were exhibited for sale, like 
 fruits culled with the leaf to render them 
 more tempting. 
 
 Jellachich mustered 65,000 men, inclu- 
 sive of his rear-guard, numbering 12,000, 
 whilst in the whole of Hungary there were 
 only 5,000 disposable Hungarian troops, 
 not more than half of whom were within 
 reach of the Diet. That is to say, of 
 18,000 regular troops in the country, 8000, 
 including the garrisons of Temesvar and 
 Arad, went over to Jellachich. Of the 
 10,000 remaining, 5000 were required to 
 garrison Comorn and Peterwardein. Fur- 
 
62 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 thermore, the stores of arms accumulated by 
 the Diet in Esseg and Peterwardein had 
 been secretly distributed by the commanders 
 to arm the insurgents. Nothing could ap- 
 pear more helpless and hopeless than the 
 condition of the country ; and the old Con- 
 servative party, without faith in the na- 
 tional resources, sent deputation after depu- 
 tation to the Emperor Ferdinand, and clung, 
 with the tenacity of despair, to the promises 
 of the Arch-Duke Palatine. 
 
 On the 4th of September, Esterhazy (a 
 mere creature of the Austrian Camarilla) 
 had abandoned the ministry, and on the 9th, 
 Louis Bathyanyi had resigned, both for 
 himself and on behalf of his colleagues, so 
 that Hungary would have remained at this 
 critical moment without a ministry, but for 
 the decision of Kossuth, who declared that 
 he had not resigned, and would continue in 
 
OF HUNGARY. 63 
 
 office ; where his first step was to organize 
 the militia. On the 1 5th of September the 
 Arch-Duke Palatine, the Emperor's Viceroy, 
 who, on the 2d of July, had, in the Empe- 
 ror's name, repeated the denunciation of 
 Jellachich as a traitor and a rebel, made on 
 the 10th of the preceding June, offered to 
 place himself at the head of the forces 
 raised to oppose him, thereby giving hope 
 to the timid, and helping to distract the 
 councils of the nation. On the 21st, after 
 much ambiguity and evasion, the Emperor 
 refused to order the withdrawal of Jella- 
 chich, which Bathyanyi made the condition 
 of forming a new ministry, and on the 23d, 
 the Arch-Duke Palatine Stephen deserted 
 stealthily from his camp, and escaped into 
 the Austrian territory. On the following 
 day a letter was intercepted and published 
 from Jellachich to Count Latour, the Aus- 
 
64 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 trian Minister of War, acknowledging the 
 receipt of money and of military stores; 
 and on the 23d, Count Lamberg, an obse- 
 quious servitor of the Imperial Court, was 
 illegally and unconstitutionally appointed 
 Commander-in-chief of all the forces in 
 Hungary. 
 
 At this moment all was consternation, 
 but Kossuth had induced the Diet to* nomi- 
 nate a committee of defence, over which he 
 presided, which enabled him to take the 
 energetic measures for that resistance, of 
 which his colleagues had despaired. 
 
 To have allowed Lamberg to assume this 
 command would simply have been to let the 
 wolf into the fold, and to have placed at the 
 disposal of a betrayer the disproportioned 
 forces mustered to oppose the overwhelming 
 invasion of the Ban. The Diet, therefore, 
 passed a resolution declaring his appoint- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 65 
 
 ment illegal, and himself a traitor if he at- 
 tempted to carry out his commission. 
 
 Nevertheless, Lamberg, counting on the 
 fears of a party in the Diet, did attempt it ; 
 on the 28th, was recognised crossing the 
 bridge at Pesth, and was immediately put 
 to death by the infuriated mob. In his 
 pocket was discovered the order to dissolve 
 the Diet, a proceeding diametrically opposed 
 to the constitution, and evidence was found 
 of his intention to seize the citadel of Buda, 
 occupied by a mixed garrison of Imperial 
 troops and national guards, to proclaim mar- 
 tial law, overawe the capital, and paralyze 
 all defence. 
 
 The destruction of Lamberg by the 
 people was a murder, but, if they had not 
 killed him, it was clearly the duty of the 
 Diet to have sentenced and executed him as 
 a traitor and a spy, 
 
66 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 At this time the camp-fires of Jellachich 
 were visible from the spires of Buda. 
 Count Bathyanyi had retired from Pesth, 
 and Kossuth, abandoned by his despairing 
 colleagues, obtained executive powers from 
 the Diet for the committee over which he 
 presided. 
 
 On the 29th, Jellachich having resumed 
 his march, a battle was fought at Pakhozd, 
 twelve miles from Pesth, between his post 
 and the army of soldiers, citizens, and mi- 
 litia, improvised by Kossuth. The result 
 was the defeat of Jellachich, who, at the 
 close of the day, sent over a flag of truce 
 proposing an armistice. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 67 
 
 HUNGARIANS MARCH TO THE RE- 
 LIEE OF VIENNA. 
 
 Armistice dishonourably broken by Jellachich, 
 who escaped by forced marches into Austria, 
 leaving behind 18,000 men, who surrendered 
 ' — The Emperor appoints him plenipotent 
 commissary in Hungary — Conservative 
 party prevent the pursuit of Jellachich — 
 Troops sent from Vienna to reinforce them 
 detained by the people — Insurrection in 
 that city — Death of the Minister of War 
 — Vienna in the hands of the peop)le — 
 Prince Windischgratz marches on Vienna 
 — Kossuth reaches the camp, persuades the 
 Hungarians to march to its relief — This 
 relief delayed through the treachery of 
 Moga till Vienna had fallen — Battle of 
 
68 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Swechat — Bepulse and retreat of the 
 Hungarians, 
 
 An armistice was concluded for three days, 
 during which it was stipulated that neither 
 party should move from its position ; but 
 after nightfall Jellachich retired, by forced 
 marches, to the Austrian frontier, and was 
 enabled to escape through the connivance 
 of General Moga, chief of the staff, to 
 the fugitive Arch-Duke Palatine, who had 
 been left in command of the Hungarian 
 forces. 
 
 The Ban, however, left behind him his 
 rear guard, under generals Phillipovitch and 
 Rott, who were obliged to surrender, twelve 
 days afterwards, with 12,000 men, to General 
 Ozora, and 6,000 more who were destroyed 
 by the Hungarian levies at Kanischa. 
 Austria had, however, scattered her parti- 
 zans and agents throughout Hungary, who 
 
OF HUNGARY. 69 
 
 were actively furthering her interests in all 
 branches of the executive, and principally 
 in the army, whose very commander, Moga, 
 was a creature of the Austrian court. 
 
 These people, working on the timidity of 
 the Conservatives, and on the scruples of the 
 Hungarians, who have always been slaves of 
 legality, persuaded them to pause, when 
 they came to the Austrian frontier, and for- 
 bear from pursuing the invader beyond the 
 territories of Hungary. 
 
 On crossing the Austrian frontier, Jella- 
 chich detached 18,000 men southward ; the 
 remainder of his force subsequently took 
 part in the second invasion, under Windisch- 
 gratz, where the whole of it perished, except 
 some 7,000 men ; so that of the 65,000 
 men who crossed the Drave under his com- 
 mand, 40,000 were killed or made prisoners 
 in Hungary. 
 
70 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Jellachich, instead of being repudiated by 
 the Emperor, was named by him, through 
 an imperial decree from Schonbraun, on the 
 3d of October, commander-in-chief of all 
 the forces of Hungary, with orders to place 
 the country under martial law, dissolve the 
 Diet, and annul all the enactments it had 
 made in its own defence. 
 
 Mr. Francis Pulsky, Hungarian Secretary 
 of State, and who had been left, after the 
 dissolution of the Ministry on the 9th, in 
 charge of its duties at Vienna, had, at his 
 own peril, published the intercepted corre- 
 spondence between the Imperial Court and 
 Jellachich. 
 
 The effect of this publication, which re- 
 vealed to the Viennese the perfidy of their 
 government, together with the fact that it 
 was provoking the victorious Hungarians to 
 a Avar, resulted in the insurrection of the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 71 
 
 5th of October, which commenced through 
 an attempt on the . part of the indignant 
 people to prevent an unwilling regiment 
 from being sent away to aid Jellachich. 
 
 The people, having been fired upon, rose 
 in arms, repulsed the troops who took part 
 with the government, invested the palace of 
 the War Minister, Count Latour, from whom 
 the unconstitutional order had emanated. 
 Latour, in great alarm, w r as led out into the 
 balcony by his friends, and promised to re- 
 call the commands he had given, by which 
 the crowd outside the building was entirely 
 pacified. But returning to the back part of 
 the house, he was seen by those who had 
 penetrated thither, and who were ignorant 
 of what had just passed in the street. 
 With a shout, which drowned all explanation 
 or entreaty, they dragged him down and 
 hanged him to a lamp-post. 
 
72 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Count Latour (together with the Arch- 
 Duchess Sophia, a bold and ambitious prin- 
 cess, and Dr. Bach, the liberal renegade, 
 their tool) had been the inspiring genius of 
 reaction, and, like Lamberg, he was both 
 perjured and a traitor to his country, whose 
 constitution he had sworn to maintain, and 
 which he was perfidiously involving in a 
 war with Hungary. 
 
 This insurrection placed Vienna in the 
 power of the Diet assembled in that city. 
 It was soon known that Prince Windisch- 
 gratz, who had put down the insurrection 
 in Bohemia, was marching against Vienna. 
 Kossuth had been anxious that the Hun- 
 garians should have followed up and exter- 
 minated Jellachich on the Austrian territory. 
 He was more anxious they should furnish 
 assistance to the people of Vienna against 
 their common enemy, but he could not pre- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 73 
 
 vail on the Hungarians to cross the border 
 without a formal invitation from the legis- 
 lative assembly or executive of Austria, 
 whilst on their part, these authorities, though 
 verbally inviting the Hungarians to enter, 
 and, although preparing to defend the city 
 against the Imperial troops, had yet no man 
 among them who would compromise himself 
 by that proceeding. 
 
 On the 24th of October, Kossuth, with 
 12,000 volunteers and thirty pieces of can- 
 non reached the Hungarian camp, and, on 
 the 27th, persuaded the army to cross the 
 frontier to the relief of Vienna. On the 
 29th, General Moga begged only that the 
 attack should be deferred for four and 
 twenty hours, that is to say, until the 30th, 
 a respite he had the influence to obtain, 
 and which enabled Windischgratz to enter 
 Vienna, of which his troops were already in 
 
 E 
 
74 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 possession when the Hungarians attacked 
 him on the following day. At the battle 
 of Swechat, which ensued, the Hungarian 
 army, only thirty thousand strong, including 
 scythemen, found itself engaged, without 
 chance of diversion, against sixty thousand 
 of the troops of Windischgratz. At first 
 the Hungarians were successful, storming 
 the village of Mannsworth and easily rout- 
 ing the Croatians of Jellachich, but it was 
 perceived, only just in time to save the 
 army from destruction, that it had fallen or 
 been led into a snare, so that the baffled 
 Hungarians were forced to make a precipi- 
 tate retreat. 
 
 General Moga, who escaped, after the 
 battle, to the Austrians, was nevertheless, 
 after the war, tried by an Austrian court 
 martial, and alleged in his defence, which 
 the Viennese papers were allowed to publish, 
 
OF HUNGARY. /D 
 
 "I gave the army, bound hand and foot, 
 into the power of Prince Windischgratz 
 and he had not enough wit or courage to 
 take advantage of it." 
 
 The Hungarian army recrossed the fron- 
 tier, and Kossuth having in part re-officered 
 it, retired to Pesth to organize the defence 
 of the kingdom against Windischgratz, who, 
 he foresaw, would speedily invade it. 
 
 Thus terminated the first campaign, began 
 with 65,000 men, when Hungary was not 
 only disturbed by two rebellions and un- 
 armed, having only 5,000 disposable troops 
 in the country, but when treachery had 
 rendered its conditiont still more defenceless, 
 and when dupes or traitors deliberated 
 in its councils and shared its commands. 
 From the field of Pakhozd, whose watch- 
 fires were distinguishable from the spires 
 of Pesth, it had led the Hungarian army 
 
 e 2 
 
76 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 within sight of the steeples of Vienna, and, 
 if the advice of Kossuth had been followed, 
 would have placed the arbitration of the 
 destinies of the Empire in the hands of the 
 Hungarian Diet. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 77 
 
 SECOND INVASION OF HUNGARY. 
 
 Undertaken with 220,000 men against 
 70,000, of whom only half were armed. 
 {Map No. 2.) ' 
 
 In Italy, Charles Albert, more afraid of the 
 republicans than of the Austrians, had lost 
 the golden opportunity, and was forced to 
 sue for peace. Milan, whose unaided popu- 
 lation had driven out Radetsky in March, 
 capitulated in August to the same Radetsky, 
 when it had a royal army, and a king within 
 its walls, who had proclaimed his resolution 
 to bury himself, if necessary, beneath the 
 ruins of the city, in Its defence. Insurrec- 
 tion had been put down in Bohemia, and 
 the Imperial authority re-established in the 
 
78 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 capital, so that the Austrian cabinet was 
 now at liberty to devote all its resources to 
 crushing Hungary. 
 
 Field Marshal Prince Windischgratz, after 
 the entrance of several co-operating armies, 
 crossed the Hungarian frontier, on the 16th 
 of December, 1848. The total force with 
 which he invaded Hungary, from the west, 
 exceeded 85,000 men, inclusive of the corps 
 of Simonich and Hurban, which entered 
 from the north-western corner, and the force 
 of General Dahlen, which operated to the 
 south of the Neusiedler Lake. 
 
 General Schlick occupied Kaschau, Epe- 
 ries, and the great road leading from the 
 passes of the Carpathians on the frontier of 
 Gallicia, toward the Theiss, and intersecting 
 the mountain region of upper Hungary, from 
 north to south. He had entered on the 1st 
 of December, and defeated Pultsky at Kas- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 79 
 
 chau, although losing his chief of the staff, 
 taken prisoner, and his second in command 
 amongst the dead. He then fought a drawn 
 battle with General Messaros, at Siksio, and 
 a few days later defeated him signally, at 
 Bartza, and obliged him to retire across the 
 Theiss. 
 
 The orders of Schlick were to maintain 
 himself in this region till he received notice 
 of the advance of the main army, under 
 Prince Windischgratz, when he was to push 
 forward upon Debretzin. Encouraged by 
 his success, he made, however, two attempts 
 to cross the Theiss, but was repulsed by 
 General Klapka, and then took up the ex- 
 pectant position he had originally intended 
 to assume, with a force raised, by reinforce- 
 ments which had joined him, to five-and- 
 twenty thousand men. 
 
 In Transylvania, Puchner was at the head 
 
80 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 of from twelve to fifteen thousand Austrian 
 troops ; General Luders soon after occupied 
 the south with ten thousand Russians, and 
 the Wallachian regiments of the military 
 frontier, together with other forces, number- 
 ed upwards of thirty thousand men. Urban 
 (the Wallack) and Janko had been as suc- 
 cessful in raising the Wallachian peasantry, 
 by the same means, as Jellachich and Rajac- 
 sics had been with the Croats, Serbians, and 
 Sclavonians. Like Rajacsics, they operated 
 through the Russian interest, with the Greek 
 clergy ; and like Jellachich, profited by the 
 discipline and subordination of the military 
 colonies. 
 
 In the north-west, where the Slovack 
 Hurban tried to rouse the Slovack popula- 
 tion, which was better educated, and more 
 within reach of knowledge of events, he 
 never succeeded in raising in Hungary more 
 
OF HUNGARY. 81 
 
 than one batallion. The remainder of the 
 Slovacks identified themselves with the 
 Magyars, fighting by tens of thousands 
 in the ranks, whilst it is worthy of notice, 
 that in a like manner, the Catholic Ser- 
 bians, Ruthenians, Germans, and Wallacks 
 of Hungary (though not the Transylvanian 
 Wallacks) made common cause with the 
 Magyars. 
 
 In the south, between Austrians, Croa- 
 tians, Sclavonians, Hungarian Serbians, and 
 Turkish Serbians (of whom, during the 
 second and third invasions, 80,000 crossed 
 the frontier), there were under the orders of 
 Jellachich and Knichanin, or garrisoning 
 the fortresses of Arad, Temesvar, and Esseg 
 between fifty and sixty thousand men. 
 
 To face this invasion, made by 220,000 
 men (inclusive of 150,000 regulars), Kos- 
 suth, the president of the Committee of 
 
 e 3 
 
82 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Defence, had but from 65 to 70,000 men, 
 of whom not more than 35,000 were 
 regularly armed, and only 10,000 had been 
 disciplined as regulars, the remainder con- 
 sisting of militia or of newly raised and still 
 undisciplined levies, waiting for muskets or 
 armed with pikes or scythes. There were 
 not, in fact, at the commencement of this 
 second invasion, 35,000 firelocks in the 
 whole Hungarian army, and it was only "by 
 degrees that the remainder of the troops 
 were provided with them. Kossuth first 
 established factories at Pesth and then at 
 Groswardein, together with moveable ar- 
 morer's smithies, which followed the armies, 
 repairing the muskets taken from the enemy, 
 or which otherwise got out of order, and 
 making up whole ones from the various 
 parts of those grown quite unserviceable. 
 Out of this force 4,000 occupied Thorda, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 83 
 
 in Transylvania, under Czets, or had been 
 driven across the Hungarian frontiers ; 9,000 
 were stationed on the upper Theiss ; 10,000 
 under Generals Kiss and Esterhazy, in the 
 south ; 5,000 in the south-west, under 
 Perczel, and 6,000 garrisoning Peterwar- 
 dein. 
 
 Comorn itself was, properly speaking, 
 without a garrison, except the citizens of 
 the national guard, who, armed with pikes 
 and scythes, did duty on the walls ; and 
 the recruits, who assembled there to be 
 armed and drilled for a few days, previous 
 to their being sent to join their different 
 corps — Kossuth judging that Comorn could 
 not be invested till the main western army 
 had been defeated, and that, if that army 
 were defeated, it would retire upon Comorn 
 and constitute a garrison for the fortress. 
 
 The main western army, intended directly 
 
84 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 to check the advance of Prince Windischgratz, 
 comprised the best regiments in the service, 
 and had been raised to 33,000 men. To 
 the command of this army, Kossuth had 
 been forced by circumstances to appoint 
 Arthur Gorgey. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 85 
 
 ARTHUR GORGEY. 
 
 Kossuth's reason for promoting Gorgey — 
 character and conduct of that commander 
 until his retreat to JPesth. 
 
 Besides the odds of overwhelming numbers, 
 besides the rebellions of the Serbians, 
 Croatians, and Wallachians (of Transyl- 
 vania), and besides the fears of the faint- 
 hearted in the Diet, which he had to face ; 
 there was this further difficulty which he 
 had to contend with, that there was scarcely 
 an officer above the rank of a captain or 
 lieutenant, on whom he could rely, so perse- 
 veringly had the policy of Austria perverted, 
 or so jealously had it stopped the promotion 
 of those Hungarians serving in its armies, 
 whom it could not pervert. 
 
86 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 This has been one of the chief reasons of 
 his selection of Gorgey, whom he appointed, 
 after the retreat of the army from Swechat, 
 to the chief command. Kossuth, who had 
 long foreseen that the sword would eventually 
 decide the contest, was painfully aware of 
 the disadvantage under which the popular 
 cause laboured, and at an early period had 
 cast about him, to ascertain what talent 
 could be discerned among subalterns, on 
 whose fidelity to their country he could rely. 
 At this time his attention was called to 
 Arthur Gorgey. Gorgey, a Hungarian by 
 birth and parentage, had early entered the 
 Austrian army, which he left in consequence 
 of a quarrel with a superior officer, decided 
 by a Court of Inquiry, which led, according 
 to the custom of the service, to Gorgey's 
 retirement, although the case was decided 
 in his favour. Having repaired to Bohemia, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 87 
 
 he devoted himself to the study of chemistry, 
 in which science he became a remarkable 
 proficient. On the death of his father, he 
 retired to the patrimonial estate in northern 
 Hungary, and endeavoured to utilize his 
 theoretical knowledge in mining operations. 
 At a subsequent period, when Kossuth was 
 minister, an influential member of the Diet 
 came to ask, for Gorgey, the place, then 
 vacant, of engineer to the mint. Kossuth 
 refused it, and, being pressed and assured of 
 the ability of the candidate proposed, replied, 
 " I know it ; if I do not appoint him to 
 that office, it is because probably before a 
 year, I shall want him to make out of him 
 a minister of war." 
 
 Gorgey was supposed at the time of the 
 battle of Swechat to be thoroughly com- 
 promised on account of his having hanged 
 Count Zichy, whose family was very in- 
 
88 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 fluential at the Court of Austria, and whom 
 he put to death after he had been sentenced 
 as a traitor, though no one else would ex- 
 ecute him. Count Zichy was a Hungarian 
 nobleman, who entered Pesth a few days 
 before the advance of the Ban Jellachich, 
 during the first invasion, and in whose car- 
 riage a stock of treasonable proclamations 
 were discovered, which he had undertaken 
 to distribute. 
 
 Previous to the battle of Swechat, the 
 choice of Kossuth had been limited to 
 Gorgey and Ivanka, a young officer of great 
 promise, on whom he would have conferred 
 the command, but who, having gone to the 
 Austrian camp with a flag of truce, was 
 detained prisoner, according to the Austrian 
 practice, in violation of all the usages of war. 
 
 During the battle, after Major Guyon 
 had carried by storm the village of Manns- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 89 
 
 worth, and just as Colonel Gorgey was 
 attacking Swechat on the Austrian centre, 
 which was the key to the position, General 
 Moga recalled him. When Kossuth, who 
 saw how the Commander in Chief was com- 
 promising the success of the battle and the 
 safety of the army, insisted on counter 
 orders being given, Moga resigned his baton 
 of command. Gorgey, coming up at that 
 moment to complain of the injurious effect 
 of Moga's orders, was appointed to the 
 command by Kossuth, who, at this time, 
 had no other choice. 
 
 Kossuth, now (as throughout the war), 
 w^as, above all, determined to have one main 
 army, whose superiority in quality, numbers, 
 or in both these requisites, should enable it 
 to beat any hostile army it encountered. 
 This plan was judiciously based upon the 
 conviction, that occupying a concentric 
 
90 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 position against an eccentric attack (or, in 
 other words, operating within a circle 
 whose diameter only his armies had to tra- 
 verse, against an enemy whose communica- 
 tions could only be kept up by making the 
 circuit of its circumference), he could, with 
 one very superior army, successively defeat 
 several armies collectively manifold exceed- 
 ing the whole force at his disposal. 
 
 Gorgey found himself, by the above cir- 
 cumstances, named to a command in which 
 subsequent incidents induced Kossuth to 
 confirm him. This main army Kossuth had 
 reinforced by his best men and by all the 
 means he could controul, being accustomed 
 to say, " Whilst Gorgey's army wants any- 
 thing, do not let any one ask me for a pair 
 of shoes." 
 
 Gorgey was unquestionably a man of 
 great ability, who possessed a remarkable 
 
OF HUNGARY. 91 
 
 i 
 
 power of fascinating those with whom he 
 came in contact, and who succeeded in de- 
 ceiving (with few exceptions) every public 
 man in Hungary, to a greater or less extent, 
 inclusive of Kossuth himself. His military 
 abilities were principally of the adminis- 
 trative order, though, in fact, as almost 
 from the commencement of the war, he was 
 manoeuvring rather with a political, or 
 factious object, or in concert with the enemy 
 than against him, his powers in this respect 
 were never fairly tested. A skilful and un- 
 scrupulous party leader, in whom ambition 
 and envy, developed by his sudden eleva- 
 tion, had swallowed up all gratitude, sense 
 of duty, or patriotic feeling, he conceived 
 that, excepting for Kossuth, he could sway 
 the destinies of Hungary, and hoped to do 
 so, in opposition to him, by creating in his 
 army a party favourable to military dictator- 
 
92 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 ship. Gorgey had been ordered by *Kossuth 
 (when Kossuth quitted the army, to repair 
 to the Diet and organize the military resis- 
 tance of the country) to occupy Tyrnau, to 
 fortify Raab, and to await there the junction 
 of Maurice Perczel's force with his army. 
 The first step of Gorgey was to endeavour 
 to sacrifice Guyon, now Colonel, an Eng- 
 lishman, whom he could not influence. 
 Aware of his impetuous character, he sent 
 him, with a vanguard of 1,500 men, to 
 attack Tyrnau (against which he had once 
 failed in consequence of mistaking the road), 
 but detained the main body which should 
 have followed the vanguard. Guyon was 
 surrounded in the night by the whole army 
 of Simonich, and only cut bis way through 
 it by daring and good fortune, with heavy 
 loss. Abandoning the intrenchments of 
 Raab, on pretence of the hard frost setting 
 
OF HUNGARY. 93 
 
 in, Gorgey exposed Perczel, who was making 
 for that city, to be overwhelmed. Perczel, 
 however, having received timely notice, 
 marched eastward ; but Gorgey, following a 
 parallel direction to the north, and with- 
 out attempting to unite with or succour him, 
 allowed his forces — which amounted to 
 5,000 infantry and cavalry, and some thou- 
 sand pike and scythe men — to be defeated 
 and dispersed by the army of Prince Win- 
 dischgratz. Kossuth, learning that the 
 main Austrian army had pressed forward 
 against Perczel, and that Gorgey was too 
 far north to effect a junction with him in 
 time, now ordered Gorgey to return by a 
 forced march to Raab, where he might have 
 overwhelmed the reserves of Windischgratz 
 left in that city. This order he disobeyed. 
 Furthermore Kossuth gave him positive in- 
 structions to fight a battle, in any case, at 
 
94 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 some distance from Pesth, because, even if 
 defeated, a fresh stand might be made at 
 Buda, to cover the passage of the Danube 
 (for which the Committee of Defence had 
 taken every military precaution), whilst, if 
 defeated at Pesth itself, the confusion would 
 have endangered the passage of the river. 
 Instead of fighting that battle, Gorgey re- 
 tired directly to the capital, where he arrived 
 on the 3rd of January. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 95 
 
 THE DIET NEGOTIATES— KOSSUTH 
 CONTINUES THE DEFENCE. 
 
 When Gorgey was retreating upon Pesth, 
 consternation seized the Diet. A majority 
 of the representatives, believing resistance 
 hopeless against such overwhelming odds, 
 saw no alternative but making the best 
 terms they could with Prince Windisch- 
 gratz, who led them to believe in his wil- 
 lingness to negotiate. Kossuth, although 
 convinced both that effective resistance could 
 be made, and that the Austrians would only 
 treat for the purpose of gaining time to en- 
 force unconditional submission, deferred to 
 the express wish of the majority, which, by 
 virtue of his powers as President of the 
 
96 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Committee of Defence, he was not bound to 
 consult, and agreed that they should send a 
 deputation to endeavour to make terms ; 
 but determined at the same time to retire 
 with the Diet to Debretzin, behind the 
 marshes of the Theiss, to prepare in any 
 event for the defence of the country. 
 
 Count Louis Bathyanyi, who had retired 
 from Pesth on the 28th of September, had, 
 after the unquestionable nomination of Jel- 
 lachich, on the 3d of October, by the Em- 
 peror, to extinguish the liberties of the 
 country he ravaged, offered his services to 
 M. Kossuth. The Count had repaired to 
 the army, but, compelled by injuries through 
 a fall from his horse to abandon his active 
 duties, had resumed his seat in the Diet. 
 Desponding where Kossuth saw hope, and 
 credulous where he saw none, Bathyanyi 
 was chosen to head the deputation sent to 
 
OF HUNGARY. 97 
 
 the camp of the Field-Marshal, and started 
 with his companions on his mission, whilst 
 Kossuth with the Diet quitted Pesth on the 
 3d of January, 1849, to retire to Debretzin, 
 behind the marshes of the Theiss. 
 
98 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 BATHYANYI TREACHEROUSLY 
 DETAINED. 
 
 When Bathyanyi reached the head-quarters 
 of Prince Windischgratz he discovered, as 
 Kossuth had anticipated, that the Prince 
 was only seeking to gain time. When 
 Bathyanyi therefore determined to retire, 
 although he had come over with a flag of 
 truce, he was politely detained. When 
 Windischgratz had made further progress, 
 his captive was rigorously treated; at a 
 subsequent period he was tried and con- 
 demned to four years' imprisonment, and 
 then, after the surrender of Comorn, tried 
 over again on the same charges, sentenced 
 to be hanged, and, having ineffectually 
 opened the jugular vein, he was dragged 
 out in that condition and shot. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 99 
 
 GORGEY INTRIGUES AGAINST THE 
 DIET. 
 
 Gorgey manoeuvres to get beyond the reach 
 of Kossuth and of the Diet. His treason- 
 able proclamation — Unable to influence 
 his troops— promotes his creatures, and 
 forms a Party. Despairing of the cause, 
 approaches the frontier for the supposed 
 purpose of laying down his arms. Guyon 
 delivers the army, by storming and carry- 
 ing the Braniszko Pass. 
 
 Gorgey, with his force which, after garri- 
 soning Comorn, amounted to 25,000 men, 
 ascended the bank of the Danube as far as 
 Waitzen, and then continuing in a north- 
 ward direction, struck into the mountain 
 country. Gorgey being cut off from all 
 
 f 2 
 
100 
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 communication with the Executive, attempt- 
 ed to put into execution his design of form- 
 ing a military party, and of establishing 
 through it a Dictatorship. He addressed a 
 proclamation to his troops, in which he de- 
 clared that " as the Executive and the Diet 
 had left JPesth without advising him, the 
 army would act in future for itself." 
 
 But, though Gorgey was a man of de- 
 cided ability, he had lived so much in 
 Austria that he did not understand his own 
 countrymen, and had totally mistaken the 
 spirit of his troops. The army, which re- 
 mained thoroughly parliamentary, received 
 in silence or with marked disapprobation 
 the undutiful and factious suggestion he had 
 made. Guyon, his second in command/, 
 and Nagy-Sandor, the commander of his 
 cavalry, said openly at his table, -" We hear 
 there is some one amongst us disposed to 
 
OF HUNGARY. .101 
 
 play the Caesar; lie will be in no want of a 
 Brutus if he does." Gorgey, discovering 
 his mistake, did not attempt in a direct 
 manner to push matters further, but now 
 turned his attention to forming a military 
 party. For this purpose he selected those 
 officers whose political morality had been 
 tainted in the Austrian ranks, foreigners, 
 soldiers of fortune, and weak or ambitious 
 men, who were led away by the idea of 
 sharing in an arbitrary military rule. He 
 placed these men upon his staff, and gave 
 them commands of regiments, squadrons, 
 and battalions, where they could dissemi- 
 nate his ideas. His ordinary conversation 
 was to ridicule and epigrammatise the Exe- 
 cutive and the Diet, and these or any other 
 impressions he wished to convey, were 
 eagerly repeated by his creatures and ad- 
 mirers. This military or Gorgey party per- 
 
102 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 haps never exceeded 150 officers, and never, 
 up to the last moment, succeeded in per- 
 verting the fidelity of the men ; but it did 
 succeed in deceiving, to a great extent, the 
 Diet, the generals of the other armies, and 
 Kossuth himself. The fact was, that from 
 the position of these officers, it was princi- 
 pally with them that they came in contact, 
 and from them that the erroneous impres- 
 sion was derived that the army was de- 
 votedly attached to Gorgey. 
 
 After some unsuccessful skirmishes with 
 the enemy, Gorgey divided his army into two 
 corps, and gave to both an eastward and 
 parallel direction — he in person marching 
 along the frontier with 15,000 men, whilst 
 Guyon with 10,000 took the lower road. 
 At this period Gorgey seems to have been 
 disgusted with his want of success in carry- 
 ing the army with him, and discouraged by 
 
OF HUNGARY. 103 
 
 circumstances which might have disheartened 
 a braver man. A glance at Map No. 2 will 
 show that an enemy was in his rear, and 
 that whilst the vast army of Windischgratz 
 was moving on his flank at the foot of 
 the mountain region (as it swept on from 
 the Danube to the Theiss), another army 
 under Schlick in front, occupied the passes 
 and positions which must arrest the pro- 
 gress of the Hungarian army. Under 
 these circumstances, Gorgey had determined 
 to give up the contest and lay down his 
 arms ; and as he dared not surrender to 
 Austria, with whom he entered here into ne- 
 gotiations, there is strong reason to believe 
 that he contemplated dashing across Gallicia 
 and surrendering to the Russians, and that 
 he first entered into communication with 
 them merely for that purpose. No other 
 supposition will account for his conduct at 
 
104 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 this period. Guy on sent in vain to point 
 out to him how he might destroy a hostile 
 corps within reach of his line of march, 
 and afterward, when Gorgey refused to attend 
 to his suggestion, under numerous disad- 
 vantages attacked and dispersed it, capturing 
 a thousand men. Guyon divined the truth, 
 and had become satisfied that nothing could 
 be hoped from Gorgey. Before him was the 
 Braniszko Pass, occupied by 15,000 men, 
 who, it was supposed, could have defended 
 such a position against 100,000. Never- 
 theless, with his 10,000 men, the only chance 
 of the salvation of the army was in carrying 
 these positions, which both corps would have 
 been insufficient to attack. Guyon did not 
 hesitate. The Hungarians, according to 
 their custom, stormed with great gallantry, 
 but were repulsed with great loss from these 
 terrible positions. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 105 
 
 Guyon, finding the case desperate, led in 
 front his men again into the fire, whilst he 
 pitilessly mowed down his own fugitives by 
 the grape of his otherwise useless artillery in 
 the rear. In fhis manner the Braniszko 
 Pass was carried, and the enemy defeated 
 and dispersed. When the intelligence 
 reached Gorgey, he observed, "We have 
 more luck than wit," but could no longer 
 think of proposing to his army to surrender, 
 if indeed, which is unlikely, be entertained 
 any longer the idea. Meanwhile, Klapka 
 advancing, had stormed and carried the 
 bridge of Hidas Nemethi ; so that Schlick, 
 who was retreating with the army in reserve 
 at Kaschau, and the wreck of that defeated 
 at Braniszko, had but one line of retreat 
 from which Gorgey could have cut him oft*. 
 At Torna, Colonel Pillar, who had been sent 
 down by Gorgey, allowed Schlick, however, 
 
106 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 to escape him, and this general, one of the 
 ablest in the Austrian army, was enabled, by 
 his skill and his good fortune, to effect his 
 junction, on the 27th of February, with the 
 main army of Prince Windischgratz, which 
 had been engaged since the preceding day 
 with the main Hungarian army, of which 
 the chief command had been given to the 
 Polish General Dembinski, and whom 
 Gorgey's corps had already joined. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 107 
 
 DEMBINSKI AND THE BATTLE OF 
 KAPOLNA. 
 
 Character of Bembinski. Battle of Kapolna. 
 Windischgratz announces a complete vic- 
 tory, but on the fourth day obliged to re- 
 tire. Gorgey, after disobeying the orders 
 of his Commander-in-Chief, holds a court 
 martial on him and arrests him. Szemere 
 confirms the decree. Decision of Kossuth. 
 
 Henry Dembinski had served in Napoleon's 
 wars, and been named captain by him on 
 the field of battle. In the Polish war of 
 1831, he made head with a small force for a 
 whole day, against the army of Diebitch, 
 and was famous for a very masterly retreat 
 he made through Lithuania, and which is 
 
1Q8 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 justly celebrated among feats of that de- 
 scription in military history. Kossuth had 
 been anxious to secure the service of a mili- 
 tary celebrity for his country, and the more 
 readily — considering the proximity of Aus- 
 trian, and indeed of Russian Poland — ac- 
 cepted Dembinski in his character of Pole. 
 But time seems to have impaired the talents 
 and even memory of this general, and to 
 have made him querulous and violent. It 
 was said of him, that he had been so praised 
 for his retreat in Lithuania, seventeen years 
 before, that he could think of nothing but 
 retreating. 
 
 Such was the man under whom, with 
 Gorgey's corps for his right wing, Kiapka's 
 for his left, and himself in the centre, was 
 fought the battle of Kapolna, between the 
 two main armies and the two Commanders- 
 in-Chief. - 
 
OF HUNGARY. 109 
 
 On the 26th, the village of Kapolna was 
 attacked by the Austrians, who during the 
 day, twice took it and were twice driven out 
 of it, leaving behind them eight cannon. 
 On the 27th, Schlick forced his way down 
 through the Sirok pass, and joined Win- 
 dischgratz, and Klapka was driven from his 
 position ; reserves coming up, the day was 
 restored, and both sides retired, but Prince 
 Windischgratz hearing that Dembinski had 
 retreated, concluded that the last army of 
 the Hungarians was beaten, put a price on 
 the head of Kossuth, and of the members 
 of the Diet ; and sent off the joyful intelli- 
 gence to the Imperial Court at Olmutz. 
 Following up what he conceived to be his 
 success, the masses of his cavalry were 
 routed the next day by the Hussars, who 
 captured their artillery. From eight to 
 twelve thousand men were killed and 
 
110 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 wounded on both sides, during this long 
 battle, which resulted in arresting the pro- 
 gress of the main Austrian army, although 
 Dembinski crossed the Theiss, and made 
 amongst its marshes a retreat, which would 
 have proved highly dangerous, had the 
 Austrians, instead of preparing to retire, 
 been in a condition to pursue. 
 
 Much mystery hangs over the circum- 
 stances connected with the battle of Kapolna. 
 Gorgey and Klapka both allege that Dem- 
 binski gave orders to the left wing intended 
 for the right, and to the right wing intended 
 for the left, over which, reciprocally, they 
 had no control ; whilst Dembinski charges 
 Gorgey with abandoning the positions as- 
 signed to him, and acting in opposition to 
 the orders he received, whereby the fate of 
 the battle was compromised. As far as can 
 be judged, blame attaches both to Dembinski 
 
OF HUNGARY. Ill 
 
 and to Gorgey, who never again attempted a 
 decisive blow. Gorgey said aloud to his 
 officers and men, during the battle and sub- 
 sequent retreat, "this is what happens 
 through being commanded by foreigners 
 and old women." When the army reached 
 Tissa Fured, he convened a court martial to 
 deliberate on the propriety of informing 
 Dembinski that he had lost the confidence 
 of the army, requesting him to resign, and 
 declaring to him that he was a prisoner if 
 he did not. 
 
 Bartholomew Szemere was at this time 
 with the army as Plenipotent Commissary 
 of the Executive and of the Diet. Hearing 
 of the court martial, and fearing that the 
 army would come to a decision which would 
 place it in collision with the government, he 
 presented himself at the door of the council 
 chamber, took his seat and sanctioned the 
 
112 
 
 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 proceedings, thereby compromising Kossuth 
 and the Diet. Dembinski refusing to re- 
 sign, was placed under arrest. Kossuth, on 
 receiving this intelligence, immediately came 
 to the camp from Debretzin to decide upon 
 the case. Gorgey commenced by saying : 
 " If I were Dembinski and Dembinski were 
 Gorgey, and that he had behaved to me as 
 I have to him, I am free to confess that I 
 would have shot him — you may judge, 
 therefore, of the exigencies of a case which 
 forced me to such a dereliction of my mili- 
 tary duty." Kossuth did not restore to 
 Dembinski his command, but neither did 
 he confer it upon Gorgey, as that General 
 had expected. 
 
 Kossuth had by this time discovered that 
 Gorgey was ambitious. When the news 
 had reached the Diet at Debretzin, that 
 Gorgey's army, of which no tidings had 
 
OF HUNGARY. 113 
 
 been heard for several weeks, was coming 
 down victorious from the Braniszko Pass, 
 and through Kaschau in pursuit of Schlick, 
 its enthusiasm knew no bounds, especially 
 as the arrival of the victorious troops would 
 afford a seasonable reinforcement against 
 the overwhelming force with which Win- 
 dischgratz was rapidly drawing nearer to 
 the Theiss. 
 
 When it became known a little later, 
 that Gorgey was not in the battle, a vote 
 of thanks was passed to Guyon, and it 
 was decreed that the action should be com- 
 memorated by a marble column, on which 
 his name should be inscribed in bronze ; 
 but still the credit of combination was given 
 to his superior in command. When Kos- 
 suth, however, saw Guyon, that general 
 charged Gorgey with being either a traitor 
 or a coward, and requested to be sent any- 
 
114 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 where, so that he should not have to serve 
 under Gorgey's orders. 
 
 Kossuth, who had become by this time 
 acquainted with the factious proclamation 
 which Gorgey had issued on quitting Pesth, 
 exercised all his influence to induce Guyon 
 to use discretion, offered him the command 
 of Comorn, then invested by the Austrians, 
 which he accepted, and into 'which, after 
 many adventures, he made his way. Dread- 
 ing the effect which a schism might have 
 at this critical juncture, and believing that 
 Gorgey had a greater influence than after- 
 ward appeared to have been the case, with 
 his army, Kossuth thought, by gratifying 
 the ambition of that leader, to ensure his 
 patriotic co-operation. With this view, he 
 sent for and addressed him to this effect, 
 "I now know you to be ambitious, but if 
 you are ambitious, I have no ambition be- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 115 
 
 yond that of seeing my country indepen- 
 dent, and therefore, if instead of striving to 
 make a party, you will devote your energies 
 and talents solely to the task of securing its 
 independence, and tell me what you want, 
 whether to be made president, whether even 
 to be made constitutional king, I myself 
 will make a party for you, and the party 
 I make will be no contemptible one, be- 
 cause it will comprise three-fourths of the 
 nation." 
 
 But Gorgey either could not understand 
 such abnegation, or his envy would not per- 
 mit him to be beholden for anything to 
 Kossuth ; at any rate, instead of responding 
 frankly to this appeal, he replied, " That he 
 was misjudged, that he would co-operate as 
 heartily as he could, and all he asked, if he 
 was so fortunate as to secure the national 
 independence, was, a professor's chair of 
 
116 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 chemistry at Pesth." Nevertheless, Kos- 
 suth took the precaution of this time ac- 
 companying the army, to the chief command 
 of which he appointed General Vetter, a 
 scientific soldier. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 117 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE ARMY OF 
 PRINCE WINDISCHGRATZ. 
 
 Kossuth marches with the army, Austrians 
 driven from the Theiss to the Danube in 
 a series of battles — Ottinger defeated at 
 Szolnok — Windischgratz twice at Hatvan 
 — at Tapio-Becze — at Issaseg and at 
 Godollo — Kossuth returns to the Diet to 
 prepare the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 A few days after, Generals Damianiczs and 
 Vecsey crossed the Theiss at Szolnok, and 
 signally defeated, on two successive days, 
 the corps of General Ottinger. The result 
 of this defeat was, that the main Hungarian 
 army marched down and crossed the Theiss 
 at Cibakhaza (which is in the vicinity of 
 Szolnok,) for the purpose of pushing along 
 
118 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the lower road a little south of the railway 
 line to Pesth, while Gorgey was instructed 
 to move in a parallel direction, a little north- 
 ward of the line, by which eventually the 
 Hungarians marched to the Danube. 
 
 This design was however abandoned, for 
 reasons which the limits of this work do 
 not permit the writer to detail, and the 
 whole army (with the exception of a small 
 corps under Asboth, which was directed to 
 advance slowly along the railroad,) recrossed 
 the Theiss, struck northward, and again 
 crossing it, followed along the line of Win- 
 dischgratz's retreat. At this time, Vetter 
 fell ill, and consequently, Gorgey, as senior 
 general, virtually assumed the command ; 
 but Kossuth himself marched with the 
 army, and here followed that series of vic- 
 tories, by which the hosts of Windischgratz 
 were destroyed, in a series of pitched battles 
 
OF HUNGARY. 119 
 
 between the Theiss and Danube. On the 
 approach of the Hungarians, they were first 
 attacked by the Austrians at Hatvan, on the 
 2d of April. The Austrians were repulsed 
 in the first day's battle, and attacked and 
 routed by the Hungarians in the second. At 
 Tapio-Bicze, the corps of Klapka was at first 
 defeated, but Damianiczs coming up, carried 
 the positions of the enemy ; Windischgratz 
 now prepared to make a stand in the strong 
 positions of Issaseg, whose heights, covered 
 by the intervening forests, and defended 
 by batteries of 120 guns, were considered 
 inexpugnable. After being three times re- 
 pulsed, the Hungarians, on the 5th, carried 
 the forest, dashed through the burning vil- 
 lage, and stormed and captured battery 
 after battery. 
 
 On the following day, the Austrians, after 
 a feeble resistance, abandoned Godollo, and 
 
120 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 retired precipitately upon Pesth. Here 
 Kossuth occupied the room prepared for 
 the now crest-fallen Prince, Field-marshal 
 Alfred Windischgratz, " the conqueror of 
 Bohemia and Vienna/' and slept at night 
 in the bed he had quitted in the morning. 
 It was now understood, that the power of 
 the Austrians was thoroughly broken, and 
 that if vigorously followed up, nothing could 
 prevent the victorious Hungarian army from 
 entering Vienna. 
 
 It has been mentioned, that on the second 
 day of the battle of Kapolna, Prince Win- 
 dischgratz prematurely despatched to the 
 court at Olmiitz an account of his decisive 
 victory, and on this intelligence, the Austrian 
 cabinet acted prematurely, by declaring the 
 total abrogation of the Hungarian Constitu- 
 tion, and independence, and its annexation 
 to the Austrian Empire. At this period 
 
OF HUNGARY. 121 
 
 the intrigues of the Archduchess Sophia, 
 had succeeded in inducing the Emperor 
 Ferdinand to abdicate (a third of the four 
 sovereigns unseated by the great year of 
 revolutions), and the heir apparent to resign 
 his claims in favour of her youthful son, 
 who had been proclaimed Emperor. 
 
 To this imperial aggression Kossuth de- 
 termined to reply by what is commonly 
 termed the Declaration of Independence, 
 but which should rather be stvled the de- 
 position of the House of Hapsburg, because 
 it only reiterates as a known fact, and does 
 not attempt to establish an independence, 
 which, up to the proclamation from Olmiitz, 
 Austria had never ostensibly ceased to re- 
 cognize, or ventured to deny. 
 
 This step required, of course, the sanction 
 of the Diet, and the presence of Kossuth at 
 Debretzin. Kossuth therefore now left for 
 
 G 
 
122 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 that city. Before quitting the army he 
 acquainted it with his intention, which was 
 received with universal approbation. Gorgey 
 assented, Szemere made no opposition, Count 
 Casimir Bathyanyi (cousin of Count Louis) 
 diffidently dissented, but afterwards partici- 
 pated as minister for foreign affairs in Kos- 
 suth's government. Gorgey, as soon as 
 Kossuth had departed, expressed himself, 
 however, adverse to the measure ; Szemere, 
 always bold in principles and timid in 
 action, subsequently followed his example ; 
 Bathyanyi has since recorded his protest to 
 that effect. 
 
 Nevertheless, this measure, which both 
 houses of the Diet passed by a large ma- 
 jority, was the boldest, most judicious, and 
 popular ever proposed and carried by Kos- 
 suth, except the emancipation of the pea- 
 santry. It was seizing the opportunity le- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 1.23 
 
 gitimately to break for ever that connection 
 between Hungary and the House of Haps- 
 burg, which had been a permanent calamity 
 to the country through three centuries, and 
 which, on no other occasion, could have 
 been so irrevocably dissevered. 
 
 Slaves as the Hungarians have always 
 been to legality, they would not have con- 
 sidered that bond broken by mere cruelty 
 or oppression ; but the avowed attempt to 
 incorporate them with Austria, and the 
 solemn declaration of the deposition of the 
 House of Hapsburg, made by the legiti- 
 mately appointed representatives of the na- 
 tion, was conclusive, and no human power 
 could now ever reconcile the Hungarians to 
 that perjured family. 
 
 This step was to Hungary w^hat the exe- 
 cution of Charles the First of England had 
 been to kingly power in Europe. Up to 
 
 62 
 
124 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 that time, many, and indeed most, kings 
 had suffered violent deaths at the hands of 
 their subjects ; but the slayer had been 
 always regarded as a regicide assassin, or 
 the royal victim as an usurper. 
 
 It was the first occasion on which the 
 principle " of right divine" was set at de- 
 fiance, and irrecoverably shaken, by the 
 execution of the sovereign as a king for 
 treason toward his people. 
 
 So in the past history of Hungary there 
 had been many and successful rebellions 
 and proclamations of principles, more or less 
 republican, and Austria had temporized and 
 negociated, but it was the first time that 
 the deposition of the Imperial family for 
 ever had been decreed. This explains the 
 seeming anomaly, that a few politicians, who 
 would venture on resistance, and even talk, 
 like Szemere, about republican institutions, 
 
OE HUNGARY. 125 
 
 before Kossuth had proposed them, were 
 wanting in boldness to identify themselves 
 with a measure by which they would have 
 been irredeemably compromised. 
 
 On the 14th of April the Diet decreed, 
 for the subjoined and other reasons, more 
 fully specified in the Declaration of the De- 
 position of the House of Hapsburg — 
 
 " That Hungary, with all its legal pro- 
 vinces and counties, should be proclaimed 
 as a free, independent, and self-subsistent 
 State, whose integrity and unity can never 
 be attacked. 
 
 " That the dynasty of Hapsburg-Lorrain, 
 which treacherously and perfidiously took 
 up arms against the Hungarian nation, 
 tried to divide the country, to annihilate the 
 constitution, to produce hatred between dif- 
 ferent races, and which was even so shame- 
 less as to call in a foreign power (Russia) 
 
126 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 to massacre its subjects, which in this way- 
 has torn in pieces the Pragmatic sanction, 
 which has violated every mutual treaty, — 
 this faithless dynasty of Hapsburg-Lorrain 
 should be deposed for ever as ruler in Hun- 
 gary and all its legal provinces and coun- 
 tries, — should be exiled and banished for 
 ever from all the territories of Hungary, and 
 should never be allowed the privilege of 
 Hungarian citizenship. This banishment 
 should be proclaimed in the name of the 
 whole Hungarian nation. 
 
 " That the Hungarian nation being, by a 
 holy, unalienable right, self-subsistent, free, 
 and independent, may proclaim its decided 
 will to keep peace and friendship with all 
 nations of the w r orld, so long as its rights 
 are not violated ; to keep particularly peace 
 and friendship with those people who were 
 before united with Hungary, under the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 127 
 
 same ruler; also with the neighbouring 
 Turkish and Italian countries, and to make 
 treaties and alliances with them, founded on 
 mutual interests. 
 
 " That the future system of government, 
 with its particularities, shall be deliberated 
 and decided by the National Assembly. 
 Until the new principles of government are 
 deliberated upon and accepted, a president 
 and responsible ministers should be elected 
 and invested with the executive power." 
 
 That president was Kossuth, elected to 
 the office by the style of governor of Hun- 
 gary, and invested by the Diet with Dicta-; 
 torial powers, which, unhappily for his 
 country, he subsequently too much hesitated, 
 to exercise. 
 
 Before quitting the army at Godollo, 
 Kossuth had given his instructions to Gor-r 
 gey, who had to some extent reassured hkqi 
 
128 THE PAS f | AND FUTURE 
 
 by his conduct, and on whose fidelity Kos- 
 suth thought that the frank proposition he 
 made enabled him to rely, although now 
 convinced that his military capacity was 
 rather administrative than executive. Kos- 
 "suth had perceived that the various battles 
 had been rather gained by the enthusiasm 
 of the men, and by tactics on the field, than 
 by those stratagetical combinations by which 
 whole armies are cut off, and Gorgey had 
 modestly admitted " that he was not a 
 general yet, though he hoped some day to 
 become one," and willingly accepted the 
 ministry of war, for which he was admirably 
 qualified, retaining only his command until 
 a Commander-in-Chief could be selected. 
 During the time that Kossuth accompanied 
 the army, he endeavoured, with some suc- 
 cess, to make him believe that he requited 
 by his fidelity the trust which had been re- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 129 
 
 posed in him : — One morning, for instance, 
 Kossuth found him stretched, sleeping on 
 his cloak, across the threshold of his (Kos- 
 suth's) apartment; and on wakening him 
 up, the general remarked, with simulated 
 effusion, " Where could I be better, than 
 guarding the safety of Hungary's defender?" 
 
 At this time, besides that the presence of 
 Kossuth was imperatively required at De- 
 bretzin, nothing remained but vigorously to 
 follow up into the Austrian territory the 
 shattered remains of the invading army ; 
 and he therefore gave to Gorgey, without 
 attempting to prescribe the details of their 
 execution, the following general orders, viz : 
 
 Firstly, to relieve the garrison of Comorn, 
 closely invested since December, and to raise 
 the siege. Secondly, taking with him a part 
 of that garrison, to follow up the main 
 Austrian army to Pesth, if it went towards 
 
 g 3 
 
130 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Pesth ; but if, as there was every reason to 
 suppose, it retreated across the frontier, to 
 pursue it without intermission to Vienna. 
 In this case he was to leave 12,000 men 
 to observe the Austrian garrison in Buda 
 (opposite to and indeed suburb of the city 
 of Pesth), and who, if that garrison did not 
 surrender, were to besiege it. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 13.1 
 
 WRECK OF THE ARMY OF WIN- 
 DISCHGRATZ— DRIVEN 0VERTHE 
 FRONTIER. 
 
 Austrians defeated in four actions by Aulich 
 — Defeated at Waiizen and at Gros- 
 Szarlo. Defeated by the garrison of 
 Comorn — -defeated at Szony and driven 
 across the frontier. Gorgey, to protract 
 the campaign, does not pursue them, but 
 besieges Buda in disobedience to his orders, 
 loses thereby nearly seven weeks, allows 
 the Austrians to rally and the Russians to 
 come down. 
 
 Aulich, in following up the Austrians 
 whom he easily defeated in four successive 
 actions, had reached Pesth. Kossuth, after 
 quitting the army, had written to recom- 
 
132 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 mend to him, if it did not interfere with 
 the instructions of Gorgey, his commander, 
 to seize the island below Pesth, on the 
 Danube, and erect there batteries, as Jel- 
 lachich, who was in Pesth, would probably 
 retire that way. At the same time he ad- 
 vised Gorgey of the counsel he had given. 
 Gorgey, however, frustrated this arrange- 
 ment, and Jellachich, as Kossuth had fore- 
 seen, escaped with 7,000 men down the 
 Danube upon rafts. The rest of the Aus- 
 trian forces evacuated Pesth, leaving only in 
 Buda a garrison of 6,000 men under Hentze. 
 The main Hungarian army now pushed 
 forward to relieve Comorn. General Gotz, 
 at Waitzen, had drawn up 12,000 men, but 
 General Damianicz attacked them with the 
 vanguard which he commanded, and drove 
 them from their positions. Reinforcements 
 having come up he carried the town itself 
 
OF HUNGARY. 133 
 
 by storm, again attacked them outside the 
 town, where they had formed in battle, and 
 drove them across the river with the loss of 
 their baggage, artillery, 500 prisoners, and 
 Gotz, their general, left dead upon the field. 
 The Hungarian army now made a sweep 
 northward to enable it to cross the river 
 Gran (which empties itself into the Danube), 
 which the Austrians made no attempt to 
 defend, though they were discovered on the 
 19th of April, drawn up in battle before 
 the town of Gros-Szarlo to the number of 
 34,000 men, under the command of Wohlge- 
 muth and Benedek. They were immediately 
 attacked by Damianicz and Klapka, with 
 20,000 men. Gros-Szarlo was stormed and 
 taken, an attempt to turn the Hungarian 
 flank repulsed, and the Austrians driven 
 from their position with a loss of many 
 guns, 3000 prisoners, and 3000 killed. 
 
134 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Amongst the latter were many grenadiers 
 of the guard, whose duty is to watch over 
 the personal safety of the Emperor, but 
 who had been sent from Olmiitz to the 
 number of 8,000 — to such straits was the 
 Imperial cabinet already driven — and had 
 arrived upon the field in time to make 
 the abortive attempt to turn the Hungarian 
 flank, which has been mentioned. 
 
 General Guyon, who, with a handful of 
 horsemen, had cut his way into Comorn, 
 and was now in command of that fortress, 
 sallied on the approach of the main army, 
 and defeating the Austrians, whom he 
 drove to Aranyos, clearing the left bank 
 of the Danube. There remained only to 
 attack the Austrians on the other side of 
 the river. 
 
 In anticipation of Gorgey's arrival, Guyon 
 had thrown over a bridge, upon which Gor- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 135 
 
 gey refused to trust his men, though Guyon 
 crossed over it with troops and heavy guns, 
 In this manner much time was lost, w T hilst 
 a new bridge was being constructed. It 
 w r as not till the night of the 25th that the 
 Hungarians stormed and carried old and new 
 Szony, opposite to Comorn, and on the 26th 
 that the corps of Damianicz, Klapka, and 
 Nagy-Sandor, with his cavalry, passed over 
 and immediately attacked the Austrian Field 
 Marshal, Welden. During the battle, Gor- 
 gey, with his best troops, remained on the 
 other side of the river. Welden was driven 
 from his positions with the loss of his camp, 
 a portion of his artillery, 4,000 dead, and 
 several thousand prisoners. The same day 
 he retreated, by forced marches, across the 
 Austrian frontier. 
 
 If at this time Gorgey had acted in obe- 
 dience to the instructions given him by 
 
136 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Kossuth, he might have crossed the Austrian 
 frontier on the 29th, and at latest have been 
 before Vienna on the 2d of May. There 
 remained indeed now no force in the Aus- 
 trian Empire, except the army of Radetsky 
 in Italy, which could have offered any serious 
 opposition to his march. 
 
 But this termination of the struggle 
 would have cut short the ambitious hopes 
 of Gorgey, and was repugnant to the envious 
 feeling which he entertained toward the 
 governor of Hungary. It is evident from 
 his subsequent conduct that he determined 
 to protract the campaign, whether in the 
 belief that opportunities would be thereby 
 still afforded him of establishing a military 
 dictatorship, or that he had already made 
 that compact with the Russians, which there 
 is some reason to believe he only entered 
 into a little later. 
 
OP HUNGARY. 137 
 
 With the obvious view, from whatever 
 motive, of protracting the campaign, Gor- 
 gey sent forward one corps to Raab, and 
 another into the Schutt island, and after 
 losing a week at Comorn marched upon 
 Pesth. 
 
 He had received express orders to leave 
 12,000 men before Buda, and to march 
 forward with all his forces in pursuit of the 
 Austrians ; instead of this, he sent 12,000 
 men forward, and marched on Buda with 
 35,000 men, inclusive of 7000 Hussars, 
 quite useless in a siege, but without bringing 
 with him an indispensable battering train, 
 although there were many hundred heavy 
 guns in Comorn. 
 
 Hentze, the Austrian commander of Buda, 
 who had 6,000 men, and 274 pieces of 
 cannon, refused to surrender, and bombarded 
 Pesth. Gorgey having made an ineffectual 
 
138 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 attempt to storm Buda, wrote to Kossuth 
 that he had no heavy guns, and was about 
 to raise the siege. He was answered by 
 Kossuth, that since he had set down before 
 the place, to avoid the injurious moral effect 
 of abandoning it in the hands of the enemy, 
 he must take it ; and he was asked, if he 
 had no heavy guns, why he did not get them 
 from Comorn ? 
 
 The heavy guns were brought — the walls 
 battered in breach — Buda stormed and 
 taken on the 21st of May — Hentze mortally 
 wounded, and 5000 prisoners captured, 
 although a portion of Pesth had been de- 
 stroyed, and one of the last acts of Hentze 
 had been to attempt wantonly to blow up 
 the magnificent chain bridge which connects 
 Pesth with Buda — an attempt only frus- 
 trated by the death of the Austrian engineer. 
 
 Gorgey afterward speciously alleged, and 
 
OF HUNGARY. 139 
 
 many of his partizans and admirers have 
 repeated after him, that this delay before 
 Pesth was fatal to the cause, but that he 
 undertook the siege by the especial com- 
 mand of Kossuth, a part of whose second 
 order they quote to that effect. 
 
 Gorgey, before marching on Pesth, before 
 Comorn, and on the Schutt Island, lost six 
 weeks irretrievable to the cause, having only 
 attacked beyond the Waag and Neuhausler, 
 Danube, on the 16th of July, the recruited 
 forces of the Austrians, whom, by this time, 
 the Russians had come down through Aus- 
 tria to assist, and whose frontier he should 
 have crossed at the end of April. Here, as 
 far as Gorgey is concerned, ends the second 
 invasion. 
 
 After his return to Comorn, he wasted 
 his time in petty conflicts with small Aus- 
 trian corps on the Schutt Island, which he 
 
140 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 might, at any time, have cleared at once. 
 It was his custom to engage the enemy with 
 a very inferior force, and after a day's de- 
 sultory fighting, to enter personally into 
 action, surrounded by a brilliant staff, and 
 at the head of some picked regiments, the 
 cry being raised by his partizans, " Hurrah 
 for victory ! here comes Gorgey ;" when, of 
 course, the enemy was easily discomfited. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 141 
 
 THE SOUTHERN ARMY. 
 
 The Squthern Austrian army defeated by 
 Perczel — lines of St. Tamas stormed and 
 carried. The enemy driven to the frontier 
 fortresses by the Magyars. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the south, very sanguinary 
 engagements had taken place between the 
 Magyars, under Percszel, and the Southern 
 Austrian army, of which the most formidable 
 part consisted of Turkish Serbians. 
 
 Turkish Serbia is nominally a Turkish 
 province, but the Porte has conceded to it a 
 constitution, in virtue of which, on conside- 
 ration of a small tribute of about 125,000 
 dollars, it is allowed to govern itself as it 
 chooses. A Turkish garrison occupies the 
 
142 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 citadel of Belgrade, and two . other points 
 upon the river; but without the precincts 
 of these fortifications, no Turk is allowed to 
 hold property, nor even to take up his re- 
 sidence on the Serbian territory. 
 
 This constitution, the Turkish govern- 
 ment, according to its custom, has scrupu- 
 lously respected; one of the chief reasons 
 that the Turkish empire has held together 
 being, that it never, like all the other con- 
 tinental governments of Europe, attempts to 
 retract and to resume concessions it has 
 been forced to make, and that it is a ruling 
 principle of its policy to respect, what is 
 termed there, " the right of insurrection/ 5 
 The Serbians are about one million in num- 
 ber, ruled by a native prince and native 
 Senate. The whole population may be con- 
 sidered prosperous. Every man is armed. 
 . In character they are brave and enterprising, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 143 
 
 although no match for the Magyars — 
 shrewd, selfish, and filled with political am- 
 bition. Knichanin, who soon after led the 
 Serbian sympathisers, was Commander-in- 
 Chief of the small regular army kept up by 
 the Serbian government. 
 
 It was soon obvious, that although usually 
 many times more numerous than the Mag- 
 yars, this southern army stood no chance 
 with them in the field. It, therefore, en- 
 trenched and fortified, in strong positions, 
 like those of the lines of St. Tamas, on the 
 canal which unites the Danube and the 
 Theiss, or the famous position of Titel, at 
 the point of confluence of the Theiss into 
 the Danube, covered by an inaccessible 
 marsh, in which the remains of this southern 
 army, when finally routed and dispersed, 
 took refuge, and from whence it could never 
 be expelled. When the Austrian army 
 
144 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 ventured into the open field, it was easily 
 defeated. When it retired behind its en- 
 trenchments, these were stormed by Perczel, 
 who was frequently repulsed with loss. "At 
 length, after carrying several strong posi- 
 tions, he took by storm the famous lines of 
 San Tamas, slaughtering 6,000 Serbians in 
 the trenches. In the South, therefore, ex- 
 cept on two or three frontier points, where 
 protected by fortresses or fortifications, this 
 southern army had been driven, like the 
 army of Windischgratz, from the Hungarian 
 territory. Bern had already expulsed both 
 the Austrian and Russian armies from Tran- 
 sylvania, in one of the most marvellous 
 campaigns recorded in the military annals. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 145 
 
 BEM'S CAMPAIGN IN TRANSYL- 
 VANIA. 
 
 Bem daringly attempted, with 4,000 men, 
 the conquest of Transylvania, defended by 
 15,000 Austrian regulars and 30,000 Wal- 
 lachian insurgents, to whose aid 10,000 or 
 12,000 Russians were called in shortly 
 after. A few hundred men, under General 
 Czetz, had obstinately maintained them- 
 selves in a strong position near Thorda, one 
 of the western passes, which facilitated to 
 some extent his movement, and he knew 
 that he could count on the warlike spirit of 
 the Szeklers, if he could reach them ; but 
 their country is situated at the south-eastern 
 extremity of Transylvania. Descending 
 
 H 
 
146 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 through the passes of Nagy Banya, toward 
 the end of December, 1848, he defeated 
 one of Puchner's generals at Sibo and at 
 Deecz, and marched on Clausenburg, which 
 Puchner evacuated on his approach, to con- 
 centrate his forces and overwhelm the in- 
 vader. Bern, instead of following him up, 
 marched to Bistriz, where he attacked and 
 defeated Urban, and drove him over the 
 frontier, and then came down to Herman- 
 stadt in the south, which, with a far inferior 
 force, he tried to carry by assault against 
 Puchner's army. Repulsed with loss, he 
 retired toward Visagna, and pushed forward 
 a small corps as far as Muhlenbach near 
 Carlsburg. Attacked by overwhelming 
 forces he was defeated at Visagna, one wing 
 of his army cut off and dispersed, whilst the 
 corps he had detached to Muhlenbach was 
 overpowered by the garrison of Carlsburg, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 147 
 
 which massacred both the prisoners and the 
 fugitive Magyar families. Cut off on all 
 sides, and reduced to 1,200 men, Bern was 
 summoned to lay down his arms. But he 
 had sent to Hungary for reinforcements, 
 which he calculated must at this time be 
 coming through the Maros passes ; he there- 
 fore turned westward, carried Muhlenbach 
 by storm, and entrenched himself a little 
 further on, till the reinforcements which 
 Kossuth had sent could join him. The van- 
 guard of these reinforcements having reached 
 him, he dispatched Colonel Count Bethlen, 
 who had commanded one wing of his army 
 in most of the actions fought, to bring up 
 the remainder. Bethlen, who started on an 
 English hunter, and went straight across the 
 country, promised to reach the reinforcing 
 army before midnight. Bern calculated that 
 they might be upon the ground by eight in 
 
 h 2 
 
148 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 the morning, and attacked in consequence ; 
 but the road was blocked up by many 
 thousand waggons full of fugitives, so that 
 Bethlen, though he started with the troops 
 at the hour agreed upon, was several hours 
 longer on the road than had been calculated. 
 In the mean time Bern had been over- 
 whelmed, had lost a part of his artillery, 
 and was forced precipitately to retreat, 
 which he did till he met Bethlen with his 
 troops, which now raised the force of Bern 
 to 6,000 men. With these, turning fiercely 
 on the enemy, he repulsed him. Bern had 
 his finger smashed by a bullet in this action, 
 and in passing through the next village, 
 after the enemy was repulsed, called out 
 from his horse, " For some fellow to come 
 and cut that off for him !" 
 
 Following up Puchner, Bern now defeated 
 him with great slaughter at Piski, and forced 
 
OF HUNGARY. 149 
 
 him to retire in confusion upon Her- 
 manstadt, which it was now expected that 
 Bern would again attack. Instead of march- 
 ing toward Hermanstadt, however, Bern 
 passed under the guns of Carlsburg, struck 
 northward till he reached Gorfalva, and 
 placed himself in communication with the 
 Szeklers. Meanwhile, from 10,000 to 12,000 
 Russians had entered through the southern 
 passes, and Urban, with a large force, had 
 re-entered Transylvania through the pass of 
 Bistriz, where he easily defeated a small 
 body left by Bern in observation. 
 
 Bern immediately marched on Bistriz, 
 defeated Urban, again drove him across the 
 frontier, and returned to the environs of 
 Megyes and Gorfalva. 
 
 Meanwhile, Puchner, whose whole force 
 was disposable by the arrival of the Rus- 
 sians, and who knew that Urban had enter- 
 
150 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 ed by the Bistriz pass, but was ignorant of 
 his defeat — so rapid had been Bern's move- 
 ments — now manoeuvred to turn Bern's 
 position, and to get in his rear, exercising 
 much ingenuity to cut himself off from his 
 own basis of operation. Bern no sooner 
 perceived the error than he came down by 
 forced marches upon Hermanstadt, garri- 
 soned by 6,000 Russians, and took the city 
 by assault, capturing or killing half their 
 number, and obliging the remainder to 
 escape during the night through the pass 
 of the Rothenthurm into Wallachia, with 
 the loss of their baggage and artillery. 
 
 Puchner, terrified by the intelligence that 
 whilst he was pottering about to cut Bern 
 off, that general had defeated Urban in the 
 north and the Russians in the south, now 
 retreated in great discouragement upon 
 Cronstadt, where Bern and his victorious 
 
OF HUNGARY. 151 
 
 army arrived on the 19th of March, and 
 drove Austrians and Russians together, pre- 
 cipitately out of Transylvania, which he had 
 cleared of 55,000 enemies in an eleven 
 weeks' campaign. Bern was seconded by 
 three admirable officers, General Czetz, Colo- 
 nel Gall, and Count Bethlen. 
 
 Such, in the north-west and centre, in 
 the south and in the east, was the result of 
 the second invasion of Hungary, which, like 
 the first, left the Austrian Empire at the 
 mercy of that country, an opportunity of 
 which Hungary was prevented from profit- 
 ing by the perverseness of one of her own 
 children. 
 
152 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 THIRD INVASION. 
 
 With 375,000 men against 140,000. 
 Austria, to obtain the aid of Russia, 
 surrenders her Independence to the Tsar. 
 Hesitation of Russia — Nicholas only de- 
 termined to intervene, when assured of 
 the connivance of Gorgey. 
 
 The third invasion of Hungary took place 
 in consequence of a compact, constituting 
 one of the most remarkable political events 
 of modern times, and involving no less than 
 the surrender of Austrian independence to 
 Russia, together with the independence of 
 all the other European despotisms. 
 
 Previously, Austria and Russia, though 
 making common causes to oppress liberty, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 153 
 
 and retard progress, had been opposed oil 
 many points, where their interests were at 
 variance. Prussia maintained an indepen- 
 dent action, by leaning alternately on one 
 or the other of these adverse powers. The 
 petty German powers could coquette al- 
 ternately with Prussia and with Austria. 
 Naples, Tuscany, Modena, and the Papacy, 
 or rather it should be said, the Jesuits, who, 
 by this time, had recovered their influence, 
 forfeited since the death of the last pope, 
 looked exclusively to Austria for protection. 
 With the surrender of Austrian indepen- 
 dence, that of all these governments became 
 forfeited to Russia, so that at this moment 
 she commands as absolutely at Rome, in 
 Vienna, in Berlin, and at Naples, as in her 
 own provinces of Moscow or Kazan. It 
 was not without a struggle, that the Princes 
 of the House of Hapsburg consented to 
 
 h 3 
 
154 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 decline into hereditary pro-consuls of the 
 Russian Empire ; but there was no alter- 
 native. An unexpected good fortune only 
 had prevented the victorious Magyars from 
 marching to Vienna, possessing themselves 
 of the resources of the Empire, and opening 
 a communication with Italy. Possessed of 
 arms sufficient, they would have had within 
 a month 300,000 men in the field, against 
 whom there was nothing to make head, but 
 Radetsky's army in Italy, whose rear, with 
 such an opportunity, the Italians would have 
 again assailed. 
 
 Neither was this protectorate so easily 
 conceded. Great as were the prospects it 
 afforded to the ambition of the Tsar, it was 
 accompanied by corresponding perils. Rus- 
 sia is not the power which it is the constant 
 aim of her diplomacy to make the world 
 believe she is. A glance at map No. 5, will 
 
OF HUNGARY. 155 
 
 suggest some idea of the dangers which 
 beset, and of the causes of weakness which 
 enfeeble her. She is said to have a million 
 of men on paper — in reality they do not 
 amount to 600,000. 
 
 So great and incorrigible is the peculation 
 pervading all branches of the service, and so 
 fatally does it operate on the providing and 
 provisioning of the troops, that a Russian 
 regiment starting from the centre of the 
 Empire, often loses more men before reach- 
 ing an enemy's country, than British regi- 
 ments lost, on the average, during five years' 
 campaigning in the Iberian peninsula. 
 
 Russia has never, since 1815 (and then 
 all the nations of Europe were with their 
 governments against Napoleon), been able 
 to send more than 200,000 men across her 
 frontier, nor to assemble 100,000 on one 
 battle field. 
 
156 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 It would not do to send any but the best 
 troops into Hungary, and, if these were 
 beaten, the war would be transferred into 
 Poland, where 13,000,000 of Poles would 
 seize the opportunity to rise against the 
 hated rule of Russia. 
 
 Furthermore, a widely ramified conspiracy 
 was known to have been organized, and set 
 on foot, amongst the Russian nobles. It 
 may appear strange to western readers, that 
 a conspiracy could be known to exist in 
 Russia, and yet remain unpunished. But, 
 in a country where, among certain classes, 
 every tenth man is through choice or com- 
 pulsion a police spy, the art of conspiring 
 has been pushed to such perfection, that the 
 discovery of what is called "an outer circle/' 
 gives no clue to more important members 
 and leaders ; and hence, in hopes of getting 
 at the latter, the humbler class of the in- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 157 
 
 itiated have sometimes been left undisturbed 
 by the police for years, 
 
 Many Russian officers of high rank after- 
 ward offered the Hungarian government to 
 pass over with their troops, in the event of 
 their leader being defeated in a decisive 
 battle ; and the proof of the existence of the 
 conspiracy mentioned, may be found in the 
 sentences of death and exile to Siberia, pub- 
 lished in the " Gazette de St. Petersburg" 
 in the ensuing winter. 
 
 For these reasons, at an imperial council, 
 over which the Emperor Nicholas in person 
 presided, all his councillors, excepting two, 
 voted against intervention in Hungary, as 
 periling the existence of the Empire, and 
 Eield-marshal Prince Paskiewitch, who was 
 destined to command the Russian expedi- 
 tion, was one of those most warmly op- 
 posed to it. 
 
158 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 The Emperor, however, remarked, that not- 
 withstanding the excellent arguments they 
 set forth, he had determined upon inter- 
 vention, for reasons known only to himself. 
 
 Experience had long since taught him, 
 that although he possessed wonderful facili- 
 ties for discovering the secrets of other 
 cabinets, he had never been able to count 
 on preserving those of his own. 
 
 Now, there is the strongest ground, based 
 on circumstantial evidence, for believing 
 that these " reasons " to which the Emperor 
 Nicholas alluded, were an understanding 
 which he had already entered into with 
 Gorgey. 
 
 Gorgey's frequent intercommunication 
 with the Russian Generals, during the en- 
 suing campaign ; his despatches to Paskie- 
 witch, discovered on the person of a female 
 relative repairing to the Russian head- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 159 
 
 quarters, were not required to prove, beyond 
 all doubt, that such a compact did exist, 
 because this is abundantly established by 
 his general conduct, by his movements, and 
 by that of the enemy, which cannot pos- 
 sibly be accounted for on any other sup- 
 position. 
 
 It may perhaps be advisable at once, to 
 state here, in extenuation of his guilt, which, 
 even with this palliation, is sufficiently great 
 to hand his name down as a by- word of ex- 
 ecration to posterity, that there is every 
 reason to believe that Gorgey was not ac- 
 tuated by any mercenary motives in his 
 betrayal, and that he neither stipulated for, 
 nor received his " thirty pieces of silver?' 
 It is also more than probable, that he had 
 no idea of giving his country and com- 
 panions in arms, to be bound and manacled 
 by Russia, whilst Austria glutted her revenge 
 
160 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 upon them, but was himself, to a great ex- 
 tent, deceived by Russian diplomacy, which 
 held out to him the prospect of a constitu- 
 tional, or at least independent monarchy, 
 under a Russian prince, to which he thought 
 to play the part of a sort of Monk. 
 
 At any rate, from the moment of the 
 march of the Russians to the relief of Aus- 
 tria, every move he made was — as far as 
 his fear of being treated by his own army, 
 like Dumourier, permitted — -exactly what 
 his adversaries could have desired. 
 
Or HUNGARY. 161 
 
 DEFENCE FRUSTRATED BY TREA- 
 SONABLE DISOBEDIENCE OF 
 GORGEY. 
 
 Forces brought to bear against Hungary.* 
 Gorgey makes a desultory attack on the 
 
 frontier- — ordered by Kossuth to march 
 immediately against Paskiewitch — Re- 
 mains behind, on the contrary , to let the 
 Austro-Russian army come up with him — 
 
 fights a bloody battle at Acz under suspi- 
 cious circumstances — again attacks the 
 enemy without other object than to allow 
 Paskieioitch to come up — Hungarian paper 
 money. 
 
 In estimating the forces, moral and material, 
 brought to bear against Hungary in the 
 third invasion, the complicity of Gorgey 
 
162 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 with the invaders is an element which, 
 above all, should be taken into account, be- 
 cause without that advantage over the Hun- 
 garians, I think that a succinct narration of 
 the campaign will satisfactorily show the 
 reader, that the third combined inroad of 
 Austrians and Russians would have resulted 
 in the same confusion and disaster as the 
 first and second invasions. 
 
 The third invasion of Hungary took 
 place with from 375,000 to 400,000 men, 
 of whom, nearly 300,000 were regular 
 troops, out of which 150,000 were Rus- 
 sians. The rest consisted of Turkish Ser- 
 bians, Hungarian Serbians, Transylvanian 
 Wallacks, Sclavonians, and Croats. 
 
 Tp oppose these forces, the Hungarians 
 had now 140,000 armed men, of whom 
 50,000 might not only be termed dis- 
 ciplined and veteran soldiers, having fought 
 
OF HUNGARY. 163 
 
 victoriously through the last campaigns, 
 but constituted the finest troops on the 
 continent of Europe. They were in pos- 
 session of the strong fortress of Peter- 
 wardein, and the impregnable fortress of 
 Comorn — Arad surrendered during the 
 campaign to the besieging Hungarian army. 
 Hungary was now assailed from four dif- 
 ferent quarters. — From the Austrian frontier 
 (opposite Vienna), by 75,000 Austrians, 
 under the command of the young Emperor 
 and Marshal Haynau, and by 25,000 Rus- 
 sians under Paniutin. From the frontier of 
 Austrian Poland, by the Russian Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, Field-marshal Prince Pas- 
 kiewitch, who marched down through the 
 passes of Dukla with 80,000 men. In the 
 south by Jellachich, who, between regular 
 troops, insurgents, Turkish Serbians, and 
 the garrisons of Esseg and Temesvar, had 
 
164 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 upward of 100,000 men. On the eastern 
 or Transylvanian side, by 35,000 Russians, 
 under Rudiger and Luders, by 20,000 Aus- 
 trians and 30,000 Wallachians, making 
 85,000 men. This is without taking into 
 account various irregular corps, brought 
 successively to reinforce the various armies, 
 or employed for a time. 
 
 The great northern passes through the 
 Carpathians, by which the main Russian ex- 
 pedition was descending, can only be pro- 
 perly commanded from Dukla, on the Galli- 
 cian side. Kossuth had been inclined to 
 seize and occupy this position, and to carry 
 the w^ar into Gallicia ; but a timid party in 
 the Diet alleged, that Dukla being in Aus- 
 trian Poland, which adjoined Russian Po- 
 land, it would be affording Russia a pretext 
 to interfere. At this time, Cavaignac, the 
 French president, was receiving assurances, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 165 
 
 that the Russian intervention in Transylvania 
 had only taken place on the demand of the 
 inhabitants, and without the authorization of 
 the Russian cabinet ; and Sir Stratford Can- 
 ning, the British Ambassador at Constanti- 
 nople, had been assured by the Russian 
 Ambassador, Mr. Titof — and repeated to 
 his fellow diplomatists his conviction of the 
 truth of the assurance — that Russia had no 
 intention of interfering in Hungary. 
 
 Whether or not Russia adopted this de- 
 termination, Kossuth, in the first instance, 
 counted on overturning the Austrian Em- 
 pire, before the armies of the Tsar could have 
 been brought into the field. When the 
 delays of Gorgey had allowed Austria to 
 recruit her strength, and Russian troops to 
 come down to her assistance, he still reckoned 
 confidently on the one invincible army he 
 had got together, (w T hich, after all, never was 
 
166 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 fairly beaten, but betrayed), and on a general 
 system of defence, which had been success- 
 ful in the second invasion, and which there 
 is every reason to conclude would have been 
 so in the third, but for the disobedience and 
 treachery which frustrated the combination. 
 
 The third invasion may, properly speak- 
 ing, be considered to begin w T ith the attack, 
 tardily and desultory made by Gorgey, wdth 
 a part of his force, near the frontier, between 
 six and seven weeks after he should have 
 been there, and when, instead of finding 
 20,000 or 30,000 broken-spirited and ha- 
 rassed troops to oppose him, he had near 
 120,000 Russians and Austrians to con- 
 tend with. 
 
 Gorgey, from the 16th of June to the 
 20th, had pushed forward, across the rivers 
 Waag and Neuhausler-Danube, small corps, 
 which were in general successively repulsed, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 167 
 
 and gave the enemy due warning, and full 
 time, to concentrate forces which enabled 
 them, four-fold, to overmatch the Hungarians 
 in the field — Gorgey himself, the last days 
 operating with his picked troops, and being 
 victorious where he fought, at Szered, from 
 whence, however, on the following day, over- 
 whelming numbers obliged him to retreat. 
 
 The repulse of this attack, on what may 
 be termed the Austrian frontier line, was 
 followed by the Austrians and Russians as- 
 suming the offensive, a few days later, by 
 attacking Raab, which, after a hard days 
 fighting, its garrison of 6,000 evacuated, 
 retreating on Comorn, whilst Kmetty, one 
 of the bravest of the Hungarian generals, 
 was cut off with 5,000 men, and obliged to 
 retreat upon the Hungarian army of the 
 south. 
 
 Now, Gorgey, who had so long delayed 
 
168 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 attacking the frontier line of the Austrians, 
 when ordered to do so, actually fought what 
 may be termed the battle of Szered, when 
 positively commanded by the , government 
 not to give battle there. 
 
 That is to say, that as soon as Kossuth 
 found that Gorgey had delayed to cross the 
 frontier till Russian reinforcements had 
 come down, and that he was assured that 
 Paskiewitch was about to invade Hungary 
 from Gallicia, he (Kossuth) had formed 
 fresh combinations, in pursuance of which 
 Gorgey had been ordered to fall back. 
 When the disobedience of Gorgey had 
 rendered this impossible, Kossuth peremp- 
 torily commanded him to retire on Pesth 
 by forced marches, with all his troops, take 
 there the railroad to Szolnok, where he 
 would find an army under Perczel, and with 
 this combined force fall upon Paskiewitch, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 109 
 
 as he was descending from the passes of the 
 northern hill country. 
 
 Gorgey, at the time he received this or- 
 der, had under his controul more than half 
 of the military force of Hungary in numbers, 
 and three-fourths of its strength. After 
 leaving a sufficient garrison to defend Co- 
 morn, he might have marched with from 
 60,000 to 70,000 fighting men, and at Szol- 
 nok have united with from 30,000 to 40,000 
 more, of whom half were efficiently armed, 
 and all would have proved useful auxiliaries. 
 
 By obeying the instructions (or rather, it 
 should now be said, the peremptory com- 
 mands) of Kossuth, he w r ould, therefore, 
 have been able to fall, with a great supe*. 
 riority of force, upon that very army of 
 Paskiewitch, w r hich subsequently, with little 
 more than half of his chosen troops, (dis- 
 heartened by three sanguinary and bootless 
 
 i 
 
170 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 battles, and a discouraging defeat,) he easily 
 drove before him, when forced to attack it. 
 
 Can it reasonably be doubted that a 
 serious and vigorous attack, by 100,000 
 men, unconquered and undiscouraged, would 
 have failed to destroy Paskiewitch ? and 
 Paskiewitch beaten, the victorious Magyars 
 would have turned round on the Austro- 
 Russian army of Haynau, and Paniutin, 
 which it will be seen too that they proved 
 at Acz their ability to defeat, with little 
 more than half its numbers. 
 
 The whole conduct of Gorgey, from the 
 time of the first appearance of the Russians 
 in Hungary, however perplexing it may 
 have appeared at the time to his companions 
 in arms, bears, when afterward reviewed 
 with a comparison of dates and facts, in 
 every act the impress of unmistakeable con- 
 nivance with the enemy. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 171 
 
 From this time, whilst affecting to treat 
 the Austrian s with a contempt, which was 
 the popular feeling in his army, accustomed, 
 so invariably to beat them with anything 
 like equal numbers — he spoke of the in- 
 vasion of the Russians in the most dis- 
 couraging manner, magnified their numbers, 
 power, and resources, and represented the 
 contest against them as a conflict against 
 hope. At the same time he expressed his 
 opinion that the Russians were not so hostile 
 to the Hungarians, nor so friendly to Aus- 
 tria as they seemed, and hints were thrown 
 out of a constitutional and independent 
 monarchy under a prince of Leuchtenberg, 
 or the Grand Duke Constantine. Russian 
 officers, on various pretexts, came frequently 
 to his quarters with flags of truce, and did 
 all in their power to confirm these reports, 
 which were easily spread far and wide, and 
 
 i 2 
 
172 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 went far to paralyse the influence of Kos- 
 suth in rousing up the country. To all the 
 orders, prayers, and .threats of Kossuth and 
 the Diet, he replied by protestations of 
 fidelity and obedience, and promises that he 
 would march in the direction commanded 
 on the following day. 
 
 After the battle of Szered he retired to 
 Comorn, where, twelve days subsequently, 
 he was found by the Austro-Russian army, 
 amounting to 70,000 men commanded by 
 Haynau and Paniutin, and which the young 
 Emperor Francis Joseph accompanied. 
 
 The Austro-Russians attacked the Hun- 
 garian entrenched camp which was on the 
 right bank of the Danube, opposite Comorm 
 and carried the outworks of Monostor, and 
 the village of Szony, by a surprise which it 
 was difficult to account for. The Hungarian 
 army was very eager to recover these posi- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 173 
 
 tions, but was only brought by degrees into 
 the field, and never to a greater number 
 than 40,000, against an enemy who left no 
 effort unattempted to retain the advantage 
 he had gained. 
 
 By degrees, however, every point was re^ 
 taken by the Hungarians, and after the last 
 reserve of the Austrians and Russians had 
 been engaged, Gorgey pushing on with the 
 artillery and cavalry, threw the enemy's 
 centre into confusion, and obliged him to a 
 precipitate retreat. Two Austrian batteries 
 were captured, (the Hungarians had lost 
 one, early in the day,) with many prisoners, 
 and although Gorgey made no serious at- 
 tempt to pursue, the Austrians and Russians 
 retired in disorder, as far as Dotis, three or 
 four leagues from the field. The young 
 Emperor, who was said to have borne him- 
 self well in the beginning of the day, fled 
 
174 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 when it turned against Mm, to Raab, and 
 never was seen afterward on a field of battle. 
 Seven thousand men were killed or wounded 
 on both sides, in this sanguinary action ; but 
 as Gorgey had behaved with great gallantry, 
 and was wounded, his army forgot to in- 
 quire, " How the Austrians and Russians 
 came to venture to attack, and how to suc- 
 ceed in carrying the intrenchments which 
 they carried ? How Gorgey had not brought 
 his whole force into the field, that is to say 
 the whole garrison of Comorn, which would 
 have given him upward of 60,000 men ? 
 and lastly, why he had not followed up, and 
 utterly dispersed the Austro-Russian army, 
 as he might have done ?" 
 
 After messengers and commissaries des- 
 patched in vain, there arrived, at length, on 
 the night of the battle, at head-quarters, an 
 order from Kossuth, superseding Gorgey, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 175 
 
 and appointing General Messoros to the 
 command. But a council of the dupes and 
 partizans of Gorgey having been assembled, 
 it was decided by them that they would 
 only serve under Gorgey, and they conveyed 
 to him their resolution to that effect. Gor- 
 gey transmitted this to the Government 
 with fresh assurances of his fidelity and 
 zeal, as a plea for not resigning his com- 
 mand, but promised, nevertheless, imme- 
 diately to march against Paskiewitch. 
 
 After nine days' further delay on pretext 
 of his wound, which was a mere graze, he 
 attacked Haynau's army to the south of 
 Comorn, and retired again to that fortress 
 on the 11th of July, after a desultory battle 
 at Cszem. 
 
 Two days after,* Gorgey, at length, 
 
 * That is to say, nineteen days after he might 
 have been at Pesth* 
 
170 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 marched in the direction prescribed to him 
 along the left bank of the river. By this 
 time Paskiewitch, with the main Russian 
 army, had descended safely from the passes 
 of the Carpathians, and was rapidly ap- 
 proaching Pesth, where no obstacle existed 
 to his junction with the Austro-Russian 
 army under Haynau and Paniutin. 
 
 During the second invasion, after the 
 declaration of the expulsion of the House 
 of Hapsburg at Debretzin, Kossuth had re- 
 turned with the Diet to Pesth, forced to 
 take this step, which he considered in- 
 judicious, by the necessity of watching 
 Gorgey. 
 
 After the third invasion had taken place, 
 Gorgey, many days before Haynau and 
 Paniutin could have reached Pesth, sent 
 to inform Kossuth and the Diet, that he 
 (Gorgey) could not answer for the safety of 
 
OF HUNGARY. 177 
 
 that city, for four and twenty hours. In 
 consequence of this intimation, the govern- 
 ment removed to Szegedin — a premature 
 removal, which had a very fatal effect upon 
 the campaign, by interrupting at an im- 
 portant moment the working of the Bank 
 note presses, whereby the government fell 
 in arrears in a manner it could never sub- 
 sequently recover. 
 
 One of the great means by which Kossuth 
 had been able so wonderfully to organize 
 resistance, was due to the credit he had 
 secured, before the revolution, to the Hun- 
 garian paper, by making the condition of 
 the national finance clear to the popular 
 intelligence. Every man knew and knows, 
 in Hungary, that it is based (and to what 
 amount) on the national property, which an 
 enemy may seize, but cannot carry away, 
 nor alienate for w r ant of purchasers, w ho, 
 
 i 3 
 
178 THE PAST AND FUTTJTtE 
 
 from the experience of centuries, will be 
 satisfied with nothing short of a title de- 
 rived from the Diet. 
 
 The unknown and unlimited issues of the 
 Austrian paper, every one in Hungary knew, 
 on the contrary, to be only based, at best, 
 on the power of the Austrian government 
 to collect taxes, whilst the excess of its 
 expenditure, the hopeless disorders of its 
 finances, and the frequent depreciation of 
 formerly issued paper, helped to discredit it. 
 The choice of the population was, it must 
 be observed, limited between these papers, 
 and not between either and a metallic cur- 
 rency — there was, therefore, no hesitation, 
 and up to the last moment of the contest, 
 the credit of the small Hungarian notes 
 remained unimpaired, but the supply being 
 insufficient, through the limited number of 
 presses, and the circumstance narrated, the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 179 
 
 larger notes fell to a discount, because they 
 could not be changed into smaller. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that although 
 after the subjugation of Hungary it was 
 made felony to hold the Kossuth notes, 
 they were, and are, still bought up at 20 
 per cent, by the peasantry, who, unable to 
 obtain silver or bullion, use the Austrian 
 notes for circulation, but collect the Kos- 
 suth notes to hoard, whenever, even at a 
 personal risk, they can be obtained, being 
 sure of the eventful worthlessness of the 
 one, and confident of the ultimate liquida- 
 tion of the other. 
 
180 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 MISCHIEVOUS RETREAT OF 
 GORGEY. 
 
 Gorgey obliged to attack Paskieioitch and 
 the Russian army, forces it to retire — 
 retreats, leaving Nagy-Sa?idor to be over- 
 whelmed, but tv/io arrests the tohole Rus- 
 sian army — makes a circuitous march of 
 300 miles to the Maros — advocates a 
 Russian Prince and constitutional mo- 
 narchy — seeks to demoralize his army by 
 starvation and fatigue — cattses Nagy- 
 Sandor s corps to be cut to pieces. 
 
 When Gorgey did begin his march it was 
 (after leaving behind him Klapka, and 
 25,000 men in Comorn,) only with between 
 30,000 and 35,000 men, and without giving 
 notice of his march to the government, 
 
OF HUNGARY. 181 
 
 whereby Dembinski's army, now comprising 
 that of Perczel, was prevented from coming 
 to his aid, although easily within reach 
 when Gorgey came up with Paskiewdtch at 
 Waitzen, at the bend of the Danube. 
 
 The army of Paskiewitch had only been 
 opposed by 12,000 men under Vysocki, 
 who had been obliged to fall back, uniting 
 his army to that of Perczel, of the whole 
 of which Dembinski had again taken the 
 command. 
 
 Gorgey being obliged at Waitzen to 
 attack, the van guard of Paskiewitch was 
 impetuously driven back by the Magyars. 
 The Russian Field Marshal retired as far as 
 Duna-Kesi, half way to Pesth, which, by 
 this time, Haynau's Austro-Russian army 
 had reached unmolested. 
 
 The next day, Gorgey struck northward 
 into the mountain country he had entered 
 
182 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 during the last invasion, but leaving behind 
 him, to be cut off, Nagy-Sandor, with the 
 rear guard, which, Paskiewitch coming up 
 with his whole force, engaged. 
 
 Nagy-Sandor defended himself so gal- 
 lantly, that Paskiewitch admits in his bul- 
 letin, that he believed himself opposed to 
 the whole Hungarian army. At nightfall, 
 after great loss, the Hungarian General 
 succeeded in retreating after Gorgey. 
 
 Every movement of Gorgey from this 
 time, was obviously calculated to enable 
 him to fulfil his contract with the Russians, 
 by weakening, demoralizing, and breaking 
 the spirit of his army, but the spirit of that 
 army was not easily broken. It consisted 
 of the veterans of former campaigns, who 
 had never been, and never were to the last, 
 defeated in fair fighting, and who were 
 accompanied by eight regiments of probably 
 
OF HUNGARY. 183 
 
 the finest cavalry in the world, supported 
 by one hundred and forty guns. 
 
 Indeed, after three hundred miles of 
 harassing, and incessant marching by a cir- 
 cuitous route — after discouragement, star- 
 vation, the abandonment of isolated corps, 
 and the dissemination of fallacious promises 
 — -it remained still unsafe to venture to 
 propose to his troops a surrender, till he 
 could announce to them that Kossuth had 
 resigned, and that the army of the south 
 had been destroyed. 
 
 The particulars of this march are briefly 
 as follows : Gorgey advanced from Waitzen 
 to Loconz, and then eastward and south- 
 ward toward Tokay, describing an arc from 
 the former place to the latter, whilst the 
 main Russian army (after detaching strong 
 corps to pursue him) marched in a line 
 which would represent its chord. During 
 
184 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 this time he was constantly harassed by, 
 and skirmishing with the Russians, but was 
 obliged to refuse an armistice for four and 
 twenty hours, which would have enabled 
 the main Russian army to cut him off from 
 the passage of the Theiss, either because 
 some of his creatures who sought only for 
 a military despotism, or others who now 
 expected to see the vague promises of 
 Russia put into execution, grew suspicious 
 — or possibly that he himself still believed 
 in and held out for such a result. Directly 
 after this refusal, he dismissed, however, 
 the chief of his staff, and appointed his own 
 brother in his place. About this time, 
 General Nagy-Sandor surprised one of Gor- 
 gey's relatives repairing to the Russian 
 head-quarters, and took from her papers 
 proving the understanding between the 
 Russian and Austrian commanders and 
 
OF HUNGARY. 185 
 
 chief ; but the effect of this discovery was 
 neutralized by the allegation that Russia 
 was proposing to interfere against Austria, 
 and for the purpose of placing on the 
 throne a Russian prince, who undertook 
 to guarantee the constitution of 1848. 
 
 The Theiss was reached and crossed, 
 before the arrival of the main Russian army 
 to intercept that of Gorgey, who then 
 marched upon Gros-Wardein, whilst he 
 detached Nagy-Sandor to Debretzin ; and 
 as he had been doing day by day, by frac- 
 tions of his army, now left that General's 
 entire corps to be finally cut off and over- 
 whelmed, after a gallant resistance, by the 
 main army of Paskie witch, which had fol- 
 lowed on his traces, whilst he (Gorgey) 
 remained at Vamoz-Perez, within two hours 
 of the fight, without marching to his assist- 
 ance. In this manner, passing through 
 
186 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Gros-Wardein, he arrived in the vicinity of 
 Arad, whither Kossuth had at this time re- 
 tired with the government, in consequence 
 of events which I will now briefly narrate. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 187 
 
 RETREAT OF DEMBINSKI— BATTLE 
 OF TEMESVAR. 
 
 Dembinshi retires from Szegedin, which he 
 ought to have defended — marches on Tern- 
 esvar instead of Arad — his army de- 
 moralized by retreat — Bern, appointed to 
 the chief command, immediately gives bat- 
 tle — battle nearly won — Hungarians forced 
 to retreat from the field of Temesvar. The 
 army disperses after the battle, in con- 
 sequence of a panic in passing through a 
 wood. 
 
 On quitting Pesth, Kossuth and the Diet 
 had retired to Szegedin, where an army of 
 upward of 60,000 men was assembled 
 under the command of Dembinski. 
 
 This army consisted of the corps which 
 
188 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 had been concentrated from the north and 
 south — that is to say, Vysockis's, Perczel's, 
 and the army of the south, to which fresh 
 levies had been added. 
 
 Jellachich, at the outset of this campaign, 
 had defeated Perczel, and penetrated some 
 way northward, when he was attacked and 
 defeated, with the loss of 7000 men, by 
 Generals Vetter and Guyon. Guyon, after 
 the Ban had again rallied and recruited 
 his forces, had subsequently attacked, de- 
 feated, and put him ignominiously to flight 
 at Panczsova, within sight of the cities of 
 Semlin and Belgrade, and finally driven him 
 beyond the Drave to Mitrovicz, upon the 
 Turkish frontier. In this manner the 
 southern army had become disposable. At 
 Szegedin, which was strongly intrenched, 
 Dembinski, under whose command these 
 combined armies were now united, was pro- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 
 
 189 
 
 tected on his right by the Maros river, on 
 his front by the Theiss, on his left by the 
 fortress of Peterwardein, and on his rear by 
 the Hungarian forces besieging Temesvar 
 and Arad, which latter place about this time 
 had surrendered, and to which the govern- 
 ment retired. 
 
 Haynau and Paniutin, with the Austro- 
 Russian army, whom we last left in Pesth, 
 marched on their part down to Szegedin, 
 whilst Paskiewitch was pursuing Gorgey 
 behind the Theiss. 
 
 Dembinski, who had every element where- 
 with to have made at Szegedin a successful 
 stand, after a faint resistance, declared his 
 positions untenable, and unaccountably re- 
 treated. 
 
 In case of retreating, he had orders to 
 fall back upon Arad (which was a fortress 
 in the hands of the Hungarians), there to 
 
190 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 effect his junction with Gorgey ; instead of 
 which he disobediently retired upon Temes- 
 var, a hostile fortress, and further from the 
 point of junction. Whether, distrusting 
 Gorgey, he suspected that Paskiewitch would 
 be let in upon his (Dembinski's) rear, 
 whether he thought that his treatment at 
 Kapolna authorised the disobedience, or 
 whether he concluded this to be a favourable 
 opportunity for carrying out his former plan 
 of an inroad into the Bukowinia, and that, 
 as Gorgey had done twice before, he was 
 manoeuvring to avoid Kossuth and the Diet, 
 his conduct was equally censurable, and his 
 retreat from Szegedin proved morally and 
 materially more demoralizing to his army 
 than a defeat ; men and horses being un- 
 provided with food and forage, whilst the 
 vast stores of provisions which Kossuth had 
 collected at Szegedin were abandoned to 
 the invader. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 191 
 
 About the time that Dembinski was 
 making his disastrous retreat on Temesvar, 
 and thereby ruining the army, Bern had 
 come to Kossuth to seek reinforcements. 
 Though he had 20,000 men wherewith to 
 defend Transylvania, against 85,000 in- 
 vaders, he had not met with the same good 
 fortune as in his first campaign. Hurrying, 
 with an inadequate force, to Bistriz, where he 
 heard the Russians had entered, he defeated 
 the first corps, but was in turn, upon the 
 following day, with his weakened force, de- 
 feated by the overpowering numbers of a 
 second army. Driven southward, he had 
 made a rapid march on Hermanstadt, which 
 he again took by storm. But his generals 
 were unfortunate. Colonel Kiss was killed 
 at the pass of the Rothenthurm, and the pass 
 w r as carried, and other defeats and discom- 
 fitures ensued. Still, Bern held strong po- 
 
192 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 sitions, and the enemy had greatly suffered, 
 so that with 15,000 men reinforcement, and 
 some fresh military stores, Bern yet calcu- 
 lated on being able to clear the country, 
 and these he came to ask of Kossuth, who 
 seized the opportunity to appoint him to 
 the supreme command of Dembinski's and 
 of Gorgey's armies. 
 
 Bern repaired to the environs of Temesvar, 
 and on assuming the command of Dem- 
 binski's army, immediately gave battle. In 
 the condition of that army it was necessary 
 to fight, and to fight without delay, but not 
 to go into action as Bern did, so hurriedly 
 that he had not time to make himself ac- 
 quainted with the true condition of the 
 force of which he had assumed command. 
 
 The battle of Temesvar, which decided 
 the fate of Hungary (at least for a season), 
 began by Bern's marching to attack the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 193 
 
 Austro-Russian army, under Haynau and 
 Paniutin. 
 
 Bern had the misfortune to have the com- 
 mander of his right wing, Colonel Gall, 
 killed when leading up ten or twelve raw 
 battalions with which he was ordered to ad- 
 vance, and which the officer who succeeded 
 him inopportunely halted. 
 
 Bern, in the meanwhile, was not in a 
 position from whence he could see or remedy 
 the error, but went with his chief artillery 
 force, steeple-chasing with his left wing and 
 driving the enemy recklessly from position 
 to position before him. The Austrian and 
 Russian cavalry and cavalry-reserves were 
 brought forward, and to the number of 
 twelve thousand, attempted to retrieve the 
 day, but were charged by General Guyon, 
 with seven thousand Hussars, and driven 
 back in the utmost disorder. Meanwhile 
 
 K 
 
194 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Bern continued to advance till four o'clock 
 in the afternoon, when it was no longer 
 doubted that the victory was won. Haynau 
 and his staff, it is said, had fled already 
 from the field, when suddenly Bern's cannon 
 was silenced. He had gone into action 
 without discovering that his ammunition 
 had been sent off the preceding night by 
 mistake to Arad. Prince Lichtenstein per- 
 ceived and took advantage of these accidents, 
 and retrieved the day. Guy on made a last 
 attempt by charging with his Hussars on 
 one hundred and twenty cannon, now con- 
 centrated by the Austro-Russians. His 
 men rode gallantly almost up to the de- 
 structive batteries, wavered for a moment, 
 broke, and all was lost. Men and horses 
 had been four and twenty hours without 
 food or forage, and it is his opinion that with 
 a single draught of wine a-piece, he would 
 
OF HUNGARY. 195 
 
 have carried it, and thus, at the eleventh 
 hour, turned the day. 
 
 As it was — the Hungarian army retreated 
 unpursued, the result being rather a victory 
 they had failed to win than a battle they 
 had lost, the enemy having suffered too 
 severely, to follow them. Bern and Dem- 
 binski, who was on the field as a volunteer, 
 were both wounded in the action. The re- 
 treat took place that night through a wood, 
 always a dangerous operation with troops 
 not in a high state of discipline. After 
 penetrating some distance, on arriving at a 
 cross road, an alarm of " The enemy !" was 
 given, and a sudden panic seized the army, 
 which dispersed into the forest, and which 
 could not be rallied, the famished soldiers 
 pushing on in all directions to seek food. 
 
 So completely was the army scattered 
 that on the following morning Guyon wrote 
 
 k 2 
 
196 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 to Kossuth, saying that not a thousand men 
 could be got together, and urging at the 
 same time the arrival of Gorgey. 
 
 But the Austrians and Russians moved 
 with so much caution, and had suffered so 
 much, that five days after the battle nearly 
 all the soldiers dispersed in the forest, being 
 unpursued and duly recruited from their 
 privation, reassembled at Lugos, with all 
 their horses and cannon, except a battery 
 stuck fast in a marsh. This army was, 
 however, destined to be finally dissolved by 
 another panic, occasioned by a fatal event, 
 of which their first dispersion had been the 
 opportunity. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 197 
 
 GORGEY OBTAINS THE DICTATOR- 
 SHIP. 
 
 Gorgey profits by the dispersion of the army 
 at Temesvar to demand a transference to 
 himself of the powers conferred on Kos- 
 suth by the Diet. This demand supported 
 by Kossuth 9 s ministry. Kossuth, without 
 means to continue the defence, resigns his 
 authority conditionally to Gorgey. 
 
 After the loss of the battle of Temesvar, it 
 had been the intention of Bern to retreat 
 into Transylvania with the government, the 
 Diet, Gorgey's army, and the fugitives from 
 the wood of Temesvar, of whom he reckoned 
 that at least 30,000 would be rallied. This 
 would have placed at the command of Bern 
 upwards of 50,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, 
 
198 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 and 200 or 250 cannon, with which — hold- 
 ing as he still did, the strategic keys of the 
 country— he could instantly have swept out 
 the already weakened enemy, and have 
 closed up the passes of the mountains. 
 
 A glance at map No. 1, will show that 
 Transylvania is one great natural fortress, 
 surrounded by a wall of mountains, through 
 which there are only half-a-dozen passes. 
 But, like all vast fortresses, it requires a 
 sufficient garrison, which such an army 
 would have furnished. As we have seen 
 that nearly the whole army did subsequent- 
 ly rally at Lugos, his force would really 
 hpve been near 100,000 men. He pro- 
 posed to winter in Transylvania (inhabited 
 by a warlike and willing population, which 
 would largely have recruited the army), and 
 contained within itself ample resources 
 wherewith to feed and refit it. When re- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 199 
 
 fitted and reorganized, the campaign would 
 have reopened in the spring, the garrisons 
 of Arad, Peterwardein, and Comorn holding 
 out until that time, and the latter operating 
 on the frontier, as at this time it was ac- 
 tually doing, and even marching upon 
 Vienna, which, but for Gorgey's surrender, 
 it would undoubtedly have occupied. 
 
 This retreat into Transylvania had ori- 
 ginally been planned by Kossuth as an 
 ultimate resource, in case of defeat. When 
 he ordered Dembinski and Gorgey to con- 
 centrate on Arad, by a timely operation 
 the united armies, or a chief part of the 
 united armies, could have fallen in superior 
 force either on Paskiewitch or on Haynaff, 
 who were advancing on different sides, and 
 having beaten one, have turned against 
 the other. 
 
 The Hungarian army could, if beaten, 
 retreat into Transylvania ; whereas, if either 
 
200 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 of the invading armies were beaten, it is 
 difficult to see how Paskiewitch could have 
 retreated, and impossible to point out how 
 Haynau and Paniutin would have escaped 
 destruction, except by retiring over the 
 Turkish frontier, where the Hungarians 
 would have demanded and obtained their 
 disarmament, or whither they would have 
 followed them. 
 
 Both Paskiewitch and Haynau, although 
 peculiarly, and even timidly cautious, neg- 
 lected all prudence in their strategic move- 
 ments in this invasion, and Haynau's advance 
 was made into a hostile country, as will be 
 perceived by reference to map No. 4, in 
 utter contempt of the first principles of the 
 military art. That is to say, that he pushed 
 on, leaving his lines of communication with 
 Austria, which was his basis of operations, 
 liable to be cut off by an army of between 
 
OF HUNGARY. 201 
 
 25,000 and 80,000 men in Comorn, as 
 accordingly happened, so that if beaten, as 
 he probably would have been but for one 
 of the several accidents that turned the 
 tables in his favour at Temesvar, not a man 
 of his army could have escaped by the 
 route they came. 
 
 But this is not all. Vienna itself was 
 left so insufficiently protected, that when 
 Klapka sallied from Comorn on the 5th of 
 August with 20,000 men, and pushed on to 
 Raab, dispersing the Austrian army of ob- 
 servation, capturing 3,000 prisoners, and 
 all their artillery, together with 2,500 head 
 of cattle and other stores intended for the 
 supply of Haynau's army, there remained 
 only 8,000 men to oppose him in the Aus- 
 trian capital, which, but for the intelligence 
 that reached him of the turn events had 
 taken in the south, he would, without 
 
 k 3 
 
202 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 doubt, have occupied eight-and-forty hours 
 afterwards. 
 
 What is the solution of this seeming 
 rashness in generals whose chief faults were 
 a superabundant caution ? Simply that 
 acting in concert with Gorgey, they used 
 every exertion, and ran every risk, to profit 
 by a decisive opportunity, which would be 
 lost for ever when he was removed from the 
 command. Notwithstanding all these ex- 
 ertions, and all the efforts of Gorgey, the 
 fulfilment of his compact was not so easy. 
 He had corrupted or cajoled many of his 
 officers, he had brought his army down to 
 the Maros, starved, exhausted, harassed, 
 disheartened, and decimated by long marches 
 and desultory combats, and yet neither he 
 nor his accomplices and partisans dared 
 propose surrender nor any kind of negotia- 
 tion with the enemy to his soldiers, unless 
 
OP HUNGARY. 203 
 
 he had the sanction of Kossuth or the Diet. 
 He had done all that he could, by a vast 
 circuitous march of three hundred miles, 
 instead of effecting the junction by a cross 
 cut of a little more than a hundred ; he had 
 tarried, to allow Paskiewitch to come up, 
 under every pretext which he could safely 
 venture to set forth to his army ; but after 
 all, here was that army within reach of 
 Kossuth, and it required the defeat and 
 accidental dispersion of Bern's army to 
 enable the traitor to put his purpose into 
 execution. 
 
 When Kossuth received Guyon's letter, 
 after the dispersion, to the effect that not a 
 thousand men could be got together, the 
 Governor of Hungary had every reason to 
 rely on the accuracy of this intelligence. 
 Guyon's character was that of daring in- 
 flexibility. He was the first to cross the 
 
204 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Austrian frontier when the army marched 
 upon Vienna, and he fought his way out 
 of Hungary, refusing to listen to any terms 
 but those of the full independence and 
 whole constitution. He was the last man 
 likely to take a discouraging view% or to 
 exaggerate a reverse, and the fugitives did, 
 in the sequel, only unexpectedly reassemble 
 because the Austro-Russians as unexpect- 
 edly neglected to pursue or to molest them. 
 Kossuth had therefore reason to believe 
 that every thing now depended on Gorgey 
 and his army. There w r as a force in Arad, 
 a force in Peterwardein, 30,000 men in 
 Comorn, or operating near it; there were 
 the fugitives of Temesvar to be rallied, and 
 the troops of Bern in Translyvania, consti- 
 tuting, with Gorgey's army, 140,000 fight- 
 ing men ; but none of these, except the 
 garrison of Arad, could be utilised or even 
 
OF HUNGARY. 205 
 
 reached by Kossuth without Gorgey's co- 
 operation. 
 
 It was by this utter helplessness that 
 Gorgey profited to declare that he could 
 secure, by negotiation, the independence 
 and constitution if Kossuth would transfer 
 to him the dictatorship of the country, but 
 that he neither could nor would do so on 
 any other. Gorgey was stern, hostile, and 
 inexorable. Kossuth had endeavoured to 
 take from him the command — he would 
 make no explanations. He had proposed 
 his terms — he would accept no others. 
 
 Gorgey had been long in negotiation with 
 the Russians. He had fully persuaded his 
 officers that Russia was willing to establish 
 constitutional monarchy under a Russian 
 prince, and turn her arms, if necessary, 
 against Austria. Strong opinions were ex- 
 pressed in favour of his demands, by officers 
 
206 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 of rank, by members of the Diet, and by 
 Kossuth's ministry, which met in the morn- 
 ing, expressed itself to that effect, and on 
 being convened in the afternoon by Kossuth, 
 declared to him their opinion (excepting 
 Bathyanyi and Szemere, who were not pre- 
 sent),* " that under existing circumstances, 
 the interests of the country required that he 
 should comply with Gorgey's demand, and 
 resign into the hands of that general the 
 Dictatorial powers confided to him by the 
 Diet." 
 
 Kossuth hereupon transferred these 
 
 * M. Szemere, who was one of -his ministers, 
 complains that the ministry was not consulted. He 
 was not consulted, because he could not be found. 
 M. Buckovich, one of his colleagues, declares that 
 he had already left for Turkey. This, M. Szemere 
 has since denied, asserting that he was in the city, 
 but had only changed his quarters, a sufficient ad- 
 mission to exonerate Kossuth from neglecting to 
 consult a man he could not find. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 207 
 
 powers to Gorgey, on the express condition 
 that he should use them to obtain, by negotia- 
 tion, an honourable peace for the country, or 
 to conduct to the utmost its defence. 
 
 After thus returning to a private station, 
 he retired into Turkey. His powers he had 
 surrendered to a jealous rival, whom his 
 presence in the country could only have dis- 
 quieted at a moment when every energy was 
 required undivided to extricate the country 
 from its peril, whilst if negotiation was to 
 secure the independence of the country and 
 its constitution, it could only be on a mo- 
 narchic basis, and under a Russian prince ; 
 and though Kossuth, compelled by the de- 
 sperate circumstances in which he was placed, 
 was willing to withdraw to leave room for 
 such a compromise, he would neither live 
 under nor identify himself with it. 
 
208 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 GORGEY SURRENDERS UNCONDI- 
 TIONALLY. 
 
 Kossuth retires into Turkey. — Gorgey imme- 
 diately surrenders to the Russians, and, as 
 chief of the state, requires the Hungarian 
 Generals and Commanders of fortresses to 
 lay down their arms, assuring them that he 
 has made good terms with the Tsar ; thereby 
 entices his companions in arms to the 
 shambles. 
 
 Kossuth knew that as matters stood, Gorgey 
 alone had the power of continuing the de- 
 fence, and certainly at the head of his army, 
 and with Dictatorial powers, possessed 
 better chances of making favourable terms 
 than Kossuth without an army, or than 
 
OF HUNGARY. 209 
 
 Gorgey himself at the head of an army, but 
 opposed by Kossuth. Gorgey 's envy and 
 ambition once satisfied, Kossuth did not 
 doubt that he would exert himself to the 
 utmost to save his country, which he never 
 conceived the possibility of his having be- 
 trayed so infamously. 
 
 Strange as the infatuation seems, there 
 were scarcely half-a-dozen in the armyor 
 the Diet, even amongst those who have 
 since decried, who did not share in it, as is 
 attested by the generals and officers, who 
 fell victims of their misplaced confidence. 
 
 No sooner did Gorgey find himself in- 
 vested with executive power, than he laid 
 down his arms to the Russians, without fur- 
 ther Joss of time than was required for the 
 whole force of Paskiewitch to come up on 
 one side, and Haynau and Paniutin's on 
 the other, for which purpose he marched 
 
210 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 and countermarched during a couple of 
 days, and then surrendered with his whole 
 force unconditionally, at Villagos, on the 
 13th of August. At the same time he 
 wrote to all the other generals and com- 
 manders of corps and fortresses, ordering 
 them, as Chief of the Executive Govern- 
 ment, to follow his example in fulfilment of 
 the advantageous conditions he had made. 
 His injunction was universally obeyed. 
 With the exception of the garrison of Co- 
 morn, of the Polish and Italian legions, and 
 of a small corps which followed Guyon, — 
 generals and colonels, with their corps, and 
 who might have resisted or escaped, and 
 members of the Diet and of the government 
 in the same predicament, laid down jtheir 
 arms, or lingered confidently till in the 
 power of their enemy. 
 
 The army which had fought at Temesvar 
 
OF HUNGARY. 211 
 
 and rallied at Lugos, dispersed again to a 
 man, on hearing of Gorgey's surrender, 
 never to reassemble. So with the remaining 
 forces of Bern in Transylvania, whilst Arad 
 and then Temesvar were given up on Gor- 
 gey's requisition. 
 
 For the first few days, — that is to say, 
 until all the dupes that could be caught 
 were netted, — the Hungarian officers were 
 treated with every kindness and considera- 
 tion by the Russian General, then they were ' 
 handed over to the Austrians. Several w r ere 
 executed, all ill-treated, and the officers 
 thrown into prison ; but the knowledge that 
 Comorn still held out, and was full of Aus- 
 trian prisoners of high rank, restrained their 
 cruelties till the surrender of that fortress. 
 
 Comorn is the most formidable stronghold 
 in Europe, inclusive even of Gibraltar and 
 Malta. It contained a garrison of 30,000 
 
212 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 men, with 1,300 pieces of cannon of dif- 
 ferent calibres, and was provisioned for a 
 twelvemonth. Klapka, who was in com- 
 mand, after two successful sallies had made 
 a third, already mentioned, in which he had 
 destroyed the Austrian corps of observation, 
 and which had brought him, on the 10th, to 
 Raab, whence he projected marching on 
 Vienna, which was only defended by twelve 
 battalions, when the news of the defeat of 
 Temesvar induced him to retrace his steps. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 213 
 
 COMORN CAPITULATES.— PRO- 
 SCRIPTION BEGINS. 
 
 Gorgey by his treason having violated the 
 conditions on which Kossuth delegated his 
 powers, Kossuth resumes them, makes an 
 effort to save Comorn. — Comorn capitu- 
 lates. — Hungarian Generals and States- 
 men hanged and shot. 
 
 Kossuth had not reached Orsova, upon the 
 frontier, before the account of Gorgey's 
 treason overtook him, from whence, together 
 with Bern, Dembinski, Kmetty, Guyon, and 
 five thousand fugitives, he passed through 
 Wallachia, to Vidin, in Bulgaria, beyond the 
 Turkish frontier. 
 
 Meanwhile, Gorgey had ordered the gar- 
 
214 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 rison of Comorn to surrender, which it re- 
 fused at first to do, though entering into 
 negotiation with the Austrians. There 
 were unfortunately amongst the officers 
 some dupes of Gorgey's party, who were 
 anxious to make terms, and as nothing was 
 heard of Kossuth, and as Gorgey had re- 
 ceived from him full powers, the fortress 
 was given up to the Austrians, with the sti- 
 pulation that the garrison should be allowed 
 to secure a portion of its pay, and should 
 be permitted to retire unmolested. 
 
 Kossuth, having heard of these negoti- 
 ations, and considering that the power de- 
 legated to Gorgey had reverted back to him, 
 on account of the non-compliance of the 
 traitor with the conditions stipulated, had, 
 however, dispatched a commissioner with 
 powers and instructions to protract to the 
 utmost the defence of Comorn. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 215 
 
 These powers, which he could only give 
 as Governor of Hungary, were countersigned 
 by Count Casimir Bathyanyi. The com- 
 missioner was on his way to Comorn when 
 that fortress surrendered. The soldiers of 
 the garrison broke their muskets and tore 
 their flags, out of rage and grief at this hu- 
 miliation. Austria, of course, violated the 
 capitulation, and forced the privates and 
 many officers into the ranks. 
 
 Thirteen Hungarian leaders and generals 
 of note were directly after this surrender 
 hanged or shot ; although they had had, for 
 months, in their power fourteen hundred 
 Austrian officers of all ranks as prisoners, 
 without injuring one of them, Gorgey being 
 the only man who ever put a prisoner 
 (Count Zichy) to death. 
 
 Amongst the victims were some men of 
 large fortune, w T hom the victors were anx- 
 
216 THE PAST AND FUTTJEE 
 
 ious to despoil. Louis Bathyanyi, for his 
 estate worth 3,000,000 of dollars ; General 
 Kiss, condemned by Haynau, who was his ' 
 debtor for 60,000 dollars ; Veczey, whose 
 father (still living) had saved the life of the 
 late emperor; Aulich, the soldier and phi- 
 losopher ; the gallant Nagy San dor, and the 
 fearless Danicanicz, who being reserved to 
 be hanged last, said with composure, " Why 
 last here ? was I not always first upon the 
 battle-field ?" 
 
 Louis Bathyanyi, who, when Comorn fell, 
 had been tried over again, after being sen- 
 tenced to four years' imprisonment, on the 
 charge of being accessory to the murder of 
 Count Latour, of which he was notoriously 
 as innocent as of the death of Washington, 
 was condemned to be hanged. Llis wife 
 introduced a lancet into his prison, with 
 which he made an ineffectual attempt to 
 
OF HUNGARY. 217 
 
 sever the jugular vein. Discovered before 
 he had bled to death, his wound was bans 
 daged up, and he w^as hurriedly dragged out 
 and shot, the gallows probably not being 
 ready. He gave the word to fire, and fell 
 shouting, " Long live Hungary I" The 
 arrest of Bathyanyi had been a violation of 
 the law of nations — his sentence was a ca- 
 lumnv — his execution an assassination. 
 
 Many others were put to death. Women 
 of all ranks were stripped and scourged be- 
 fore the soldiery. Officers from the rank of 
 colonels downwards were shut up for life, 
 or forced into the Austrian ranks as pri- 
 vates, subject, at the caprice of officers and 
 sergeants, to degrading punishment. 
 
 Gorgey alone escaped scatheless. Im- 
 mense pains were taken by the Russian 
 agents to get him represented as a patriot, 
 who had done the best possible for the 
 
218 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 country under desperate circumstances. 
 Russia was prompted to the effort by the 
 hope that he might still prove useful to her 
 designs at some future period ; but Hun- 
 gary scouted the attempt, and the whole 
 nation, with the exception of a few of his 
 dupes or partisans in foreign lands, devoted 
 his name with one accord to execration. 
 Austria would willingly have glutted her 
 vengeance on him, urged especially by the 
 Zichy family, who were very influential ; 
 but, knowing that if he retired into Russia, 
 his character as a Russian agent would be 
 too palpable, Russia forbids her vassal to in- 
 jure him, whilst insisting that he shall re- 
 side in safety in the Austrian dominions ; 
 where he drags on, at Clagenfurth, a soli- 
 tary existence, hated by the government and 
 abhorred as a traitor by the people. 
 
 That he is not without some remorse for 
 
OF HUNGARY. 219 
 
 the country he has betrayed, and for the 
 brave companions-in-arms, whose confidence 
 enabled him to decoy them into the sham- 
 bles, would appear from the following anec- 
 dote : 
 
 When he surrendered at Villagos, there 
 was upon his staff a young musician of 
 some celebrity, who had followed his for- 
 tunes to the wars, and to whom he was 
 much attached. On taking leave of him he 
 emptied into his hand the gold he had in 
 his pockets, and then added a bunch of 
 trinkets, amongst which was a keepsake 
 from his wife, which the " artist " recog- 
 nized and insisted on returning, saying, 
 4 " What will your wife say if you lose it ?" 
 to which Gorgey replied, gloomily, " Whet 
 will my wife or any one else care, on for the 
 future, about what is done by such a wretch 
 as I have become?" 
 
 l 2 
 
220 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 It has been contradictorily asserted by 
 the opponents of Kossuth, that having 
 140,000 men under arms, he could have 
 protracted the struggle, and, at the same 
 time, that Gorgey was so surrounded, that 
 he could not continue it, the vanguard of 
 the Austro-Russian army having reached 
 Villagos the evening of the very day he laid 
 his arms down to Paskiewitch. 
 
 As far as Kossuth is concerned, I have 
 already endeavoured to show that of this 
 force one army was dispersed, the other 
 under the command of Gorgey, and the re- 
 maining forces beyond reach, without the 
 co-operation of that general. 
 
 With regard to Gorgey's surrender — in- 
 dependent of the fact that if he had been 
 really obliged to yield, he had been manoeu- 
 vring during weeks to bring himself into 
 that position — it is true that on the day he 
 
OF HUNGARY. 221 
 
 actually surrendered, retreat was impossible, 
 but it was feasible at the time that Kossuth 
 transferred to him his powers. Gorgey had 
 then still two routes open, and two courses 
 before him ; one to Transylvania, the other 
 to Comorn across the Theiss, the passage 
 towards that fortress having been left com- 
 paratively open by the eagerness of the two 
 great armies of Paskiew^tch and Haynau to 
 surround him. 
 
 Thus terminates the brief narration which 
 my space allows of events connected with 
 the past struggle of Hungary ; but that 
 struggle can hardly, I conceive, be under- 
 stood and followed bv the reader, without 
 impressing on him a conviction that Hun- 
 gary, armed or unarmed, prepared or un- 
 prepared, is far more than a match, through 
 the spirit of her people, for Austria; and 
 
222 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 that even when Russia intervened, the 
 Hungarian arms, without the treachery of 
 G or gey, would probably have overmatched 
 both the Austrian and Russian. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 223 
 
 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF HUNGARY. 
 
 Comparison of the prospects of Hungary in 
 her past straggle and in a future contest. 
 Increase of Kossuth's i?ifuence in Hun- 
 gary. Races formerly hostile now friendly. 
 Reasons why altered in feeling. Serbia, 
 Moldo- Wallachia. 
 
 This conviction with regard to its past, can 
 but place in a more hopeful light the future 
 efforts of that country ; but a close inves- 
 tigation of the subject will show that 
 numerous obstacles which militated against 
 its success then, have been removed, and 
 that many causes not then existing, or ex- 
 isting only to oppose, now concur to operate 
 in its favour. 
 
 When Hungary was first invaded in 1848, 
 her objects were purely defensive, and beyond 
 
224 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 defence her purpose long remained indefinite. 
 Her councils were divided, and her actions 
 paralyzed by a conservative — and subse- 
 quently by Gorgey's military — party. The 
 whole force of disciplined men did not ex- 
 ceed 10,000, and there were not 30,000 
 firelocks in the country. There was not an 
 officer above the rank of subaltern in 
 whom reliance could be placed, nor any, 
 except a few Poles, with any military expe- 
 rience. The revolutionary movement in 
 Europe of 1848, failed because there was 
 no kind of concert between the successful 
 revolutionists, whilst the closest unity of 
 purpose and of action prevailed on the side 
 of Despotism. Hungary not only shared 
 the disadvantages of this want of concert, 
 but the most serious part of her contest 
 took place after the other revolutions had 
 been put down, when absolutism and reac- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 225 
 
 tion had thoroughly combined their forces 
 and were enabled to bring them all to bear 
 against her. 
 
 The Hungarians, whatever they might 
 boastfully assert, did not yet know T that they 
 were more than a match for the whole Aus- 
 trian Empire. The division of the Diet, in 
 consequence of which Count Louis Bathv- 
 anyi unhappily repaired to the head- quarters 
 of Prince Windischgratz, attests that a 
 majority of its legislators did not then think 
 they could even resist her. AVhen the Rus- 
 sians entered, their inroad was preceded by 
 the most exaggerated and discouraging re- 
 ports, industriously spread by Gorgey and 
 his creatures, which frustrated all the efforts 
 of Kossuth, and paralysed resistance among 
 the very people who had learned at this 
 time to laugh to scorn the power of Austria, 
 which they had so easily broken. 
 
 l 3 
 
226 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Hungary, at this period, was opposed, 
 within her own territory, by the various 
 races we have seen arrayed against her in 
 that struggle — beyond, she had the warlike 
 Serbians to contend with. The Hungarian 
 patriots had not yet come to any under- 
 standing with the Moldo-Wallachians, or 
 with Turkey. 
 
 In the north of Europe, the attention of 
 Sweden, like that of Germany, was absorbed 
 in the Schleswig - Holstein quarrel, and 
 throughout Europe and Great Britain, a 
 strong current of re-action had set in against 
 the cause of civil and religious liberty, by 
 its confusion with socialistic and commu- 
 nistic principles, which absolutism and its 
 organs, profiting by the follies and excesses 
 of political sects, had temporarily succeeded 
 in effecting. 
 
 How stands the case in 1852? 
 
OF HUNGARY. 227 
 
 In 1852, the whole Hungarian nation — 
 I mean the nation in Hungary, not the 
 wrecks of the temporising party, or of Gor- 
 gey's coterie — looks with undivided and un- 
 limited confidence toward Kossuth. The 
 result of successive events, and the convic- 
 tion they imposed, has destroyed the tem- 
 porising Conservative party — the Gorgey 
 party was annihilated by his treason and 
 the merciless butchery and proscription to 
 which it led. 
 
 When the war terminated in Hungary, 
 there were in that country 140,000 armed 
 and disciplined men, accustomed to war- 
 fare, and who had proved themselves, upon 
 innumerable battle-fields, the finest troops 
 in Europe. Where are they now ? Either 
 at home, ready to resume arms at tire first 
 signal, or in the Austrian ranks with arms 
 in their hands. The temper of these troops 
 
228 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 may be judged from the fact that the young 
 Emperor personally addressed one of these 
 regiments which had been embodied many 
 years before the war, to the effect that " they 
 had been led away, he believed, by evil ad- 
 visers, but he was confident that in future 
 they would show as much valour in his 
 service as they had displayed against him." 
 This appeal, notwithstanding all the efforts 
 of the Colonel and of the officers, was met 
 at first by a dead silence, and then bv a 
 simultaneous shout — " It is too late/' The 
 Emperor turned his horse about in disgust 
 and alarm and retired. At a sham fight in 
 Italy, some confusion having arisen, and 
 night having overtaken the army, the con- 
 duct of whole battalions was so disorderly, 
 and such threatening cries were heard, that 
 the Emperor and his staff fled precipitately. 
 In Hungary, at this moment, there exists 
 
OP HUNGARY. 229 
 
 among all classes of the people an overween- 
 ing contempt for the Austrians, and a cor- 
 responding terror prevails in the Austrian 
 ranks of the Hungarians, at whose hands 
 they have met so many, and such terrible 
 defeats. Every man, woman, or child you 
 meet in Hungary will tell you that if they 
 had only to contend with the Austrians, 
 they would drive them out to-morrow. If 
 it is objected : " How ? you are unarmed ;" 
 they reply, confidently : " With scythes and 
 sticks ; they have arms, and we can take 
 them from them." 
 
 During the war Kossuth had about 
 400,000 volunteers on the lists ; a compa- 
 rison of the present spirit, judged by certain 
 districts ascertainable, would now give him 
 half a million. 
 
 It is to be remarked that no temptations 
 of pay or military advancement would give 
 
230 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 all the Despotisms in Europe united, 50,000 
 volunteers. The Russian recruits, for in- 
 stance, are sent to their regiments hand- 
 cuffed together, and till it was made felony 
 there in Austria and in Prussia, adult males 
 used to chop off the fore finger of the right 
 hand, and knock out the front teeth, to dis- 
 able them from pulling a trigger, or biting 
 off a cartridge end. 
 
 For the Russian army, which really is 
 much less efficient than the Austrian, a 
 much higher respect is entertained in Hun- 
 gary — a relic of the superstitious terrors, 
 by which its own agents, and Gorgey and 
 his creatures, had prepared the way for in- 
 tervention, but which have since vanished 
 before actual contact and observation. 
 
 Since the Hungarians have seen and 
 measured their strength with the Russians, 
 and had time to reflect over the result of 
 
OF HUNGARY. 231 
 
 their experience, they have noted the exces- 
 sive timidity and caution of the Russian 
 generals, the inferiority of the Russian 
 troops to the Hungarian, wherever, without 
 too great disparity of numbers, they were 
 brought into collision. They have per- 
 ceived the liability of the Russians to epi- 
 demics, occasioned by marches and fatigues, 
 arising from the want of stamina, conse- 
 quent on insufficient nourishment, and lastly, 
 they have discovered that instead of pouring 
 in by hundreds of thousands succeeding in- 
 terminably to each other, as had been 
 popularly circulated, Russia was never able 
 to send more than 155,000 men during the 
 two invasions across the Hungarian frontier, 
 or even to assemble more than 80,000 men 
 upon one point in Hungary, or 65,000 men 
 upon one battle-field after a few marches 
 had been made. 
 
232 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Hungary had only 30,000 firelocks in the 
 whole country when she began the contest. 
 There are now between 50,000 and 60,000, 
 with at least fifty pieces of cannon buried 
 in various parts. 
 
 The Wallachians in Transylvania, the 
 Serbians, the Croatians and Sclavonians, by 
 the providential impolicy of Austria, have, 
 since the termination of the contest, not only 
 experienced the illusory nature of her pro- 
 mises, but been deprived of the few privi- 
 leges they held before, whilst at the same 
 time, these populations have discovered that 
 the Magyars, before the civil war began, 
 had given them all the rights and liberties 
 they were contending for. 
 
 Far and wide throughout the east of 
 Europe, all nations and all races have learned 
 to respect the warlike prowess of the Mag- 
 yars, and amidst the customary want, of 
 
OF HUNGARY. 233 
 
 political good faith, and in contrast to the 
 shameless perfidy of Austria, so deeply 
 rooted a conviction has spread in the integ- 
 rity of Kossuth's word, that it had become 
 proverbial even amongst those hostile to him. 
 
 " If Kossuth had only passed his word, 
 he would have kept it, but even at Arad he 
 said might God cause his arm to rot and 
 drop from his body before ever he made a 
 concession to a Serbian," observed a Turkish 
 Serbian leader, who had carried arms against 
 the Hungarians, (repeating one of the po- 
 pular falsehoods circulated by the Austrian 
 and Russian agents at the time, but since 
 dissipated), whilst at the same time he spat 
 upon the ground to show his contempt for 
 Austria and Jellachich. 
 
 As far as Turkish Serbia was concerned, 
 though it had learned to respect the Mag- 
 yars, and to despise Austria, its old preju- 
 
234 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 dices against Turkey and the influence of 
 the Greek priesthood, has inclined it to lean 
 on Russia, but the conduct of Russia in the 
 neighbouring principality of Wallachia has 
 entirely alienated this confidence, and the 
 popular feeling in Serbia has since inclined 
 to a policy based on the maintenance of its 
 relations with the Porte. 
 
 Moldavia and Wallachia, or Moldo-Wal- 
 lachia, are two separate provinces nominally 
 Turkish, inhabited by a Wallack population 
 of the Greek persuasion, and despotically 
 governed by two tributary princes under 
 joint Russian and Turkish protectorate. 
 
 Moldavia and Wallachia originally made 
 a compact with the Porte, similar to that in 
 force at present between Turkey and Serbia. 
 It was long respected, but was to some ex- 
 tent infringed toward the period of the de- 
 cline of the Ottoman power, whilst Russia 
 
OF HUNGARY. 235 
 
 set herself up as the champion and protec- 
 torate of the coreligionary population, ac- 
 quired great influence through the Greek 
 clergy, became very popular, and was enthu- 
 siastically aided by the Moldo-Wallachians 
 in her wars with Turkey. Of late years the 
 Russian protectorate has however changed 
 to a real occupation, the Turkish supremacy 
 being only nominal. The Tsar, under 
 various pretexts, has constantly kept up these 
 armies, really nominated their princes, and 
 carried on the government of the country. 
 The former predilection of the inhabitants 
 since they have experienced the weight of 
 the Russian rule, has been changed to the 
 most profound aversion. The mass of the 
 population is in a state of stringent serfdom, 
 and all influence and most of the property 
 has passed from the hands of the middle 
 classes and old native nobility into the hands 
 
236 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 of foreign families — Greeks from the Fanar, 
 the most corrupt class in existence, thus re- 
 warded for forwarding the interests of Russia 
 in the Turkish court, provinces, and capital. 
 Profiting by the events of 1848, the whole 
 population (including even the Greek clergy) 
 rose, with only the exception of the great 
 foreign proprietors and Russian creatures > 
 and expelled their prince, abolished serfdom, 
 and appointed a provisional government, and 
 a representative assembly. 
 
 The Turkish Commissary very willingly 
 sanctioned these proceedings, but Russia 
 marched a large army into Wallachia, obliged 
 the Porte to disavow its Commissary, re- 
 stored the banished prince, abolished the 
 new constitution, and re-established serfdom. 
 
 The Russian army was not only supported, 
 as usual, at the charge of Wallachia, but its 
 corrupt and underpaid officers both used 
 
OF HUNGARY. 237 
 
 every opportunity to extort from the Walla- 
 chians, and purloined the provisions and pay 
 of their soldiers, who consequently fell back 
 for support on the population. For instance, 
 the Russian officers claim the right of trans- 
 port for their provisions, forage, and bag- 
 gage. It is customary for them, on this 
 pretext, to seize waggoners with their teams 
 and yokes of oxen, and wantonly detain 
 them for days, or take them several weeks' 
 journey from their homes, unless they pay 
 to be released, for which purpose they are 
 commonly obliged to sell one or several head 
 of their cattle. At the same time a Turkish 
 army was sent into Wallachia to assert the 
 protectorate of Turkey, and observe the 
 Russians. 
 
 As the Turkish army is highly disciplined, 
 and better paid and found than any other 
 in Europe, its conduct was very orderly. It 
 
238 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 was supported at its own charge, paid very 
 liberally for every thing, and the well-fed 
 Turkish soldiers might be seen disdainfully 
 dividing their broken victuals between the 
 dogs and the half-starved Russian soldiers. 
 
 Wallachia adjoins Serbia, and it was these 
 facts had so profound an effect on that 
 shrewd and observant people, as to overturn 
 all Russian intrigue had been, for years, la- 
 bouring to effect. " The Russians have re- 
 established serfdom in Wallachia ; we know 
 it, we have seen it," say the Serbians : " why 
 should they not, had they the power, impose 
 it here?" 
 
 The result has been, that in Hungary it 
 may be confidently reckoned that, with the 
 exception of a part of the military frontier 
 of Croatia, one moiety of the populations 
 and races, formerly hostile, will actively take 
 part with — the other at least take no part 
 
OF HUNGARY. 239 
 
 against — the Magyars. Here, as through- 
 out Eastern Europe, the oppressed and 
 outraged masses look to Kossuth as their 
 deliverer. 
 
240 THE PAST AND FTJTUEE 
 
 PROSPECTS OP HUNGARY. 
 
 How is Kossuth to reach Hungary ? Upwards 
 of 400 miles of frontier , and 400 miles 
 of sea-coast inhabited by sympathizing 
 populations. Feeling of the Turks and 
 Albania?is toward Hungary. State of 
 Turkey. 
 
 Beyond the Hungarian territory the sym- 
 pathy and co-operation of the Wallachians 
 and Serbians is secured, and secured without 
 giving umbrage to the Porte. So, that now 
 when it is asked, " How can Kossuth ever 
 introduce arms, &c, into Hungary, when it 
 has only one port, Piume, closely watched 
 by the Austrians ?" it may be replied, 
 " Look at the whole coast of Croatia and 
 
OF HUNGARY. 241 
 
 Dalmatia, from Fiume down to Cattaro and 
 beyond Scutari, with its countless islands — 
 well, there is not a spot of that coast, ex- 
 tending 400 miles, whose inhabitants do not 
 sympathize with Kossuth ; there is not a 
 fisherman or a sailor, who navigates those 
 seas, who is not deeply interested in the 
 success of the cause he advocates. Cast 
 your eyes now on the map, and follow with 
 your finger the frontiers of eastern and south- 
 ern Hungary, from the pass of Bistriz, in 
 Transylvania, to Belgrade, stretching another 
 four or five hundred miles, and there is not 
 a spot it will pass over where his cause has 
 not active or devoted friends." 
 
 But how are these sympathising popula- 
 tions to be reached? By whom are the 
 intervening territories inhabited? By Al- 
 banians and by Turks, devoted and fanatical 
 Mahomedans, who look on war with Russia 
 
 M 
 
242 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 as a holy war — who, for the first time in 
 their history, in the persons of the fugitive 
 Magyars, have fraternized with Christians — 
 whose oriental imagination has never been 
 impressed, since the time of the prophet, 
 but with two infidel names, that of Napoleon 
 and of Kossuth — Kossuth, whom they were 
 anxious to convert to their faith, as the 
 greatest glory that could have gladdened 
 Islam, — men who would not raise their eyes 
 to look on a Christian prince or ambassador, 
 but who, nevertheless, allowed their women 
 to troop out and gaze on him, and gave up 
 to him, in the villages through which he 
 passed, to do him unprecedented honour, 
 the apartments of the harem. 
 
 When the extradition of Kossuth and the 
 refugees was pressed by an autograph letter 
 of the Tsar's, and the threat of immediate 
 invasion, there was but one cry through the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 243 
 
 empire, from the seraglio to the hamlet, 
 and the Yuruk's tent, of " Sooner risk 
 everything than give up our guests." The 
 noble conduct of the Sultan is well known. 
 The Sultan's brother-in-law, a Circassian, 
 then commander-in-chief, rose from his 
 divan, in the council, and appealed against 
 the proposition to heaven and to the pro- 
 phet. 
 
 In Albania the feeling may be judged 
 from the fact that twentv Hungarian de- 
 serters, dismissed bv Sardinia after her 
 defeat, had arrived at a port adjacent to 
 Scutari with English passports. The Aus- 
 trian consul claimed them as his subjects, 
 and as they were basely given up by the 
 English vice-consul of that port (not of 
 Scutari), a Levantine, they were sent on in 
 chains to Scutari. 
 
 Here another English vice-consul de- 
 
 M 2 
 
244 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 manded their release, and the Austrian 
 insisted on dispatching them to Cattaro as 
 his subjects ; but the perplexed pacha was 
 soon relieved of his anxiety by the armed 
 Albanian population, who declared, that if 
 the captives were not immediately released, 
 they would force the prison and set up the 
 head of the Austrian consul over it. These 
 rude and fanatical men, through whose 
 quarters Christians dare not pass, released, 
 cherished, provided, and forwarded the exiles 
 on their way, who were going to join in a 
 contest in which their hosts took absorbing 
 interest. 
 
 When the surrender of Gorgey was 
 known, old men, botK amongst Turks and 
 Albanians, tore their beards, and foretold a 
 judgment on the faithful, for not having 
 taken part opportunely in the war. 
 
 Turkey is commonly judged — and its 
 
OF HUNGARY. 245 
 
 government, to some extent, misjudges its 
 own strength — by recollection of the time 
 when its irregulars and Janissaries could no 
 longer cope with the disciplined armies of 
 Europe, or of the period of still greater 
 weakness which succeeded, when these na- 
 tional levies were superseded by regular 
 troops, whose efficiency religious and other 
 prejudices long impeded. But these pre- 
 judices have passed away, and Turkey has 
 now on foot 160,000 brave and well-dis- 
 ciplined troops, full of courage and confi- 
 dence, and whom (although deficient in 
 artillery, cavalry, and superior officers) Bern, 
 as far as the infantry — the soul of armies — 
 was concerned, pronounced very superior to 
 the Austrian or Russian. 
 
 Kossuth, in his speeches at Harrisburg, 
 has ably explained that Turkey has already 
 no reason to dread Russia by land, and that 
 
246 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 it Is only for Constantinople that she fears, 
 having no adequate fleet to oppose the 
 Russian fleet in the Black Sea (inefficient 
 as that is), which in a few hours can embark 
 30,000 men at Sebastopol. Of the two 
 straits which give ingress and egress to the 
 sea of Marmara and city of Constantinople 
 — that is to say, the Bosphorus and the 
 Dardanelles — Russia has obliged her to 
 fortify the latter, which would only enable 
 her to bolt the door against her friends, 
 whilst leaving the Bosphorus open to her 
 enemy; and English, French, and other 
 legations, have consented quietly to this 
 arrangement, whilst encouraging the belief 
 in their own countries that Turkey was 
 protected against Russia by their mediation. 
 Some of the elements of strength for 
 Hungary, in a future contest, had no exist- 
 ence during her past struggle, others only 
 
OF HUNGARY. 247 
 
 required combination, for which subsequent 
 time and circumstances have been afforded. 
 Kossuth, since his landing in England, has 
 made, in a foreign tongue, more speeches in 
 a given time than any man living ever made 
 before. This— a small portion of his oc- 
 cupations — affords some measure of his 
 activity. It may be supposed that, during 
 nearly two years' detention in Turkey, he 
 was not idle. Indeed, it may be asserted 
 that Austria, which by shutting him up in 
 a prison in Buda, gave him the opportunity 
 to learn that language in which he is moving, 
 so eloquently and profoundly, the whole 
 Anglo-Saxon race, in a like manner, by ex- 
 erting her influence to prolong his forced 
 sojourn in the Turkish territories, afforded 
 him the means of furthering his country's 
 cause in a way which probably neither the 
 cabinet of Vienna nor of St. Petersburg 
 ever contemplated. 
 
248 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 PROSPECTS OF HUNGARY. 
 
 Europe in 1847 and 1852. Italy, The 
 " Invisible Government." 
 
 The future prospects of Hungary, though 
 only intelligible by reference to her past 
 struggle, and by a due consideration of the 
 circumstances under which it was made, 
 require, to be fully appreciated, that the 
 reader should take a bird's-eye view of the 
 present political condition of other parts of 
 Europe, and a brief retrospect of some of 
 their antecedents, and above all, that he 
 should cast his eye over the Russian des- 
 potism, map in hand, to espy the "feet of 
 clay' beneath its "front of brass!' 
 
Of HUNGARY. 249 
 
 If we contemplate the continent of Europe 
 generally, we must remember how firmly, 
 in the beginning of 1847, despotism was 
 seemingly everywhere seated. There had 
 never been revolutions in Austria or in 
 Prussia. Those who had ventured to fore- 
 tell such an event, would have been looked 
 upon as visionaries. No Italians, since the 
 middle ages, had ever fought, and no one 
 would believe that they ever would fight. 
 
 Switzerland had indeed bestirred herself, 
 but Louis Philippe and Austria were talking 
 of putting her down. Indications of the 
 coming change there were in the atmosphere, 
 aud reasons why it must take place, but 
 neither one-hundredth part so palpable, nor 
 one-hundredth part so obvious, as now in- 
 dicate the gathering storm, and exist in- 
 evitably to determine its bursting over 
 Europe. 
 
 m 3 
 
250 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Yet, in 1848, every throne on the continent 
 of Europe was shaken. Three Kings and 
 one Emperor (of France, Bavaria, Sardinia, 
 and Austria) were forced to abdicate. 
 France, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, 
 Naples, and the petty states of Germany 
 and Italy, were revolutionized, and almost 
 every great city in Europe. Paris, Vienna, 
 Berlin, Dresden, Frankfort, Prague, Pesth, 
 Rome, Naples, Messina, Florence and Pa- 
 lermo were in the hands of the people. The 
 prestige of absolute power in many of the 
 States where revolution had never been 
 before triumphant, cannot be so great after 
 that event as before it. These numerous 
 cities, only recovered by the sword, and kept 
 in obedience by a state of siege and martial 
 law, cannot be as easy to hold in subjection 
 now as formerly. 
 
 We have seen, after the apparent calm of 
 
OF HUNGARY. 251 
 
 1847, what events were brought forth by 
 
 1848. Can any one believe that there is 
 more security in 1852 ? We are often told 
 of the hundreds of thousands to which the 
 hosts of absolutism amount, and they are 
 complacently paraded in newspaper para- 
 graphs before us. It had as many bayonets 
 then as now — as many as its means would 
 support — no more. They were felt not to 
 be superfluous, and proved really insufficient 
 to prevent the catastrophe to w T hich allusion 
 has been made. If power was recovered by 
 the princes of Europe, it was only because 
 they worked in concert, and the revolution 
 without it. Now that the revolution is 
 working in concert, will not these forces at 
 least find full employment ? Even if Ger- 
 many does not move, will not Germany 
 occupy armies ? Even if Poland remain 
 quiescent, must not vast hosts be required 
 to watch her ? 
 
252 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 There is another misconception which it 
 is, perhaps, necessary here to notice, as to 
 the disposable repressive force which the 
 European absolutists can command, de- 
 rived from recollections of the campaigns of 
 the allied armies, when hundreds of thou- 
 sands were poured forth by Russia, Austria, 
 and Prussia, to overwhelm Napoleon, and 
 when a quarter of a million of men were 
 embattled on the field of Leipsic. These, it 
 may be answered, are feats impossible of 
 repetition. When they occurred, the popu- 
 lations of those countries were tired of the 
 domination of Napoleon, and promised free- 
 dom by their sovereigns. Five regiments 
 would have sufficed to keep these vast 
 regions quiet, so that the whole military 
 force of these powers was available for 
 purposes of aggression: 1848 and 1849 
 have proved that it is now inadequate to 
 vindicate their authority at home. 
 
OP HUNGARY. 253 
 
 South of Austria, and part of Austria 
 itself, we have Italy. Italy succumbed in 
 the last struggle, chiefly for the reasons 
 which occasioned revolution to succumb 
 generally in Europe, to re-action. Milan 
 drove out Radetsky and the Austrians with 
 more bravery than the French had driven 
 out the troops of Charles the Tenth, in 
 1830. Italy had shown a spirit which even 
 her friends dared hardly to have hoped she 
 would display, and had her armies in the 
 field. But Italy was divided not only be- 
 tween the Pope, Charles Albert, and Mazzini, 
 but by her local traditions and ambitions. 
 There were partisans of a kingdom of north- 
 ern Italy, there were Genoese, Venetians, 
 Neapolitans, and Lombards, all anxious for 
 the independence and supremacy of their 
 states and cities. But when monarchy had 
 lost divided Italy in a three days' campaign 
 
254 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 with an army of 100,000 men, Mazzini 
 stepped forward in Rome, the most mag- 
 nificent theatre in the world, and with a 
 mere handful (14,000) redeemed the honour 
 of Italy by a defence more gallant than 
 Rome had ever made since its foundation, 
 and scarce surpassed by any modern times 
 have witnessed. The political effect of this 
 great moral protest defies all calculation. 
 Its immediate result was to convert nineteen- 
 twentieths of the active spirits of Italy into 
 fervent partisans of Italian unity, and from 
 that time to the present, their undeviating 
 motto has been — " One Italy, with Rome for 
 Capital, Republic as a form of government, 
 and Mazzini for leader." The siege of 
 Rome furthermore brought out the warlike 
 temper of the inhabitants of Romagna, pre- 
 viously unsuspected by themselves, and 
 Italy, instead of being reckoned in a muster- 
 
OP HUNGARY. 255 
 
 roll of the forces of revolution, as a country 
 which has nothing but its aspirations, its 
 artists, and its singers, must now be ac- 
 counted as a land which can furnish men 
 who overcame and scattered at Rome, in 
 every fair hand-to-hand encounter, the 
 veteran troops of France. 
 
 Consequent upon the singular harmony 
 w r hich has grow^n out of the great disasters 
 occasioned by disunion, there has been 
 established in Italy an organization unpre- 
 cedented for its completeness, universality, 
 and success. Throughout the peninsula, 
 but especially in Romagna, Lombardy, 
 Tuscany, and the chief part of Naples, an 
 " Invisible government" popularly so called, 
 shares the administration of the country 
 with its enraged authorities. It issues its 
 edicts to prevent smoking, for instance, and 
 thereby injure the revenue, and prove the 
 
256 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 unanimity of public feeling, and smoking 
 ceases ; it proscribes certain foreign tex- 
 tures or garments, and they are abandoned. 
 It has for two years printed and dis- 
 tributed weekly its journal and its flying 
 sheets with almost the regularity of a 
 newspaper, yet the police has been unable 
 ever to seize types, editors, printers or dis- 
 tributors. It organizes its army ; it is 
 known to have its corps, commanders, 
 battalions, companies, officers, non-commis- 
 sioned officers and privates, chosen, de- 
 signated, and pledged to act on the first 
 signal. It has its regular and more recently 
 established taxes, collected by the secret 
 societies, who in the spring of the present 
 year had already transmitted to London 
 400,000 dollars, and who had larger sums 
 to follow. It has its stores of ammunition 
 and of safely landed arms to which the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 257 
 
 popular contributions have been devoted ; 
 the total number of muskets now at the 
 disposal of the Invisible government not 
 being less than 150,000. Above all, it is 
 under such controul, that the masses can be 
 restrained until the moment opportune for 
 action with simultaniety and effect. 
 
 Mazzini is to Italy what Kossuth is to 
 Hungary, and Kossuth and Mazzini act in 
 such strict unison, that the former has 
 declared Italy to be only, in the coming 
 contest, a right wing of that army, of which 
 Hungary constitutes the centre. 
 
 This national organization pervades the 
 troops > post-office, police, and even officials 
 of the Vatican. The immense majority of 
 the lower clergy (starving now, but whose 
 stipends Mazzini and the Roman Republic 
 increased, whilst they cut down the revenues 
 of cardinals and bishops) join in this move- 
 
258 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 ment, and amongst eighteen conspirators 
 arrested in Lombardy, it turned out that 
 seventeen were priests. 
 
 Now Austria leaves in Italy no Italian 
 troops and as few Hungarians as possible, 
 but still her army is so saturated with them, 
 that she has no less there than 30,000 
 Hungarians — men in whose ranks are colo- 
 nels and commissioned officers (degraded 
 after Gorgey's surrender to privates), and 
 who have fought against Austria for the 
 Hungarian Commonwealth, through the 
 eventful campaigns which in the preceding 
 pages have briefly been narrated. She has 
 beside, her Polish regiments in Italy, and 
 her Italian regiments in Germany and Hun- 
 gary. Formerly these were mere sabres 
 and bayonets; now, as Kossuth expresses it, 
 they are sabres and bayonets which think. 
 
 There had arisen since 1848, one great 
 
OF HUNGARY. 259 
 
 obstacle to the cause of free government 
 and progress, to which allusion has been 
 made — its insidious identification with 
 socialism and communism. This obstacle 
 Kossuth succeeded in removing, in spite of 
 all attempts at calumny and misrepresenta- 
 tion, by making his political principles so 
 clear, through his persevering eloquence, that 
 the whole world knows that he advocates 
 a decentralised republican system, on the 
 model of the constitution of the United 
 States, in contradistinction to the centralized 
 Irench school, with its socialistic tendencies ; 
 with which, whatever may be the case in 
 Trance, neither Hungary, Italy, nor the 
 greatest part of Europe can have any pos- 
 sible concern. 
 
260 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 PROSPECTS OF HUNGARY : MAP 5. 
 
 Russia. Its financial weakness. Its fleet. 
 Causes of enfeeblement in the hostile 
 nations or races over whom its rule ex- 
 tends, and which encircle its southern and 
 western frontier. Poland. Baltic pro- 
 vinces. Finland. Sweden. Circama. 
 
 In the first instance it should be remem- 
 bered, that although far more heavily taxed, 
 the whole Russian population of 67,000,000 
 does not furnish quite one-third the ordinary 
 revenue of either Prance or of Great Britain ; 
 and that although Russia made a great 
 parade of her millions in the bank of 
 Prance and the bank of England, it was 
 declared by Mr. Cobden shortly afterwards, 
 
OF II UX GARY. 
 
 261 
 
 that she could not make two campaigns 
 without resorting to a loan. The event 
 more than justified his anticipations ; for 
 humiliating as it was to the Tzar, he ivas 
 obliged, after one campaign in Hungary, to 
 ask succour of the money market. What is 
 more, the shares were taken by certain capi- 
 talists before the loan was published ; but 
 as these capitalists, who bought to sell at a 
 profit, lost by their speculation, it is doubt- 
 ful whether Russia would ever get another 
 — the attempted loan of Austria, when the 
 state of her finances was understood, having 
 been a perfect failure. 
 
 But though Russia, keeping up a larger 
 army than she can afford, and a prodigious 
 police and spy system, which wastes and 
 eats up the resources of the country- — is 
 obliged to underpay officials and officers at 
 home, w r ho live by plundering her oppressed 
 
26.2 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 population and half-starved soldiers ; still 
 she spares no expense on her diplomacy or 
 secret service money, and thus every where 
 (as Ave have seen in the narration of her in- 
 tervention in Hungary) succeeds in dis- 
 seminating abroad exaggerated impressions 
 of her real strength. Every confidential 
 diplomatic agent — M. Bodisco, for instance 
 — has at his disposal an unlimited credit, 
 and can spend privately ten, a hundred 
 thousand, a million of dollars, to produce an 
 adequate political result. 
 
 Of the Russian army I have spoken — one 
 word about the Russian fleets. Russia has 
 fifty sail of the line, and 50,000 soldiers of 
 marine, yet her navy is actually the weakest 
 in Europe except that of Turkey. She has 
 not, to fight and navigate her northern and 
 southern fleets, more than 3,000 sailors. 
 When a Russian man-of-war or squadron 
 
OF HUNGARY. 263 
 
 comes westward, it is always manned by 
 these picked crews. It may safely be as- 
 serted, that in a maritime contest, she would 
 stand no chance with the single cities of 
 New York or Liverpool, or even probably of 
 Hull or Boston ; and she has literally no 
 crews who could bring her Baltic fleet safely 
 round to the Black sea, nor her Black sea 
 fleet safely round to the Baltic. 
 
 I would beg the reader, in conclusion, to 
 refer to Map No. 5, and cast his eye over 
 that gigantic empire, whose presiding -des- 
 potism — diametrically antagonistic to the 
 cause Kossuth personifies, andwhose eventual 
 existence incompatible with his success — is 
 the keystone which supports all other des- 
 potisms which over-arch the European world, 
 
 and darken it with the shade of suffering 
 
 and of evil. 
 
 In the west, we have Poland. One frac- 
 
2fi4 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 tion has been given to Prussia and called 
 simply Posen, another to Austrian and called 
 Gallicia, and Russia has incorporated two- 
 thirds of the remainder with her Russian 
 territories, so that the only Poland proper 
 has not now, perhaps, 5,000,000 of inhabi- 
 tants. 
 
 But these nominal divisions are a farce, 
 useful possibly to impose upon the west, 
 but which do not prevent, and cannot hide, 
 the great reality, that living contiguously to 
 each other, and divided only by imaginary 
 lines traced by diplomatists upon a map, 
 are twenty millions speaking one language, 
 belonging to one race, following one creed, 
 unanimous in their determination to be re- 
 united, and in their hatred of the Tsar. 
 
 A little northward, we come to the Baltic 
 provinces. Are their inhabitants loyal sub- 
 jects on whom Russia can rely? On the 
 
OF HUNGARY. 265 
 
 contrary the peasantry are Kours or Let- 
 tonians, who hate Russia and the Tsar, and 
 the nobility and burghers are Swedes or 
 Germans, who would seize eagerly any fair 
 opportunity to detach their country from 
 his rule. 
 
 Next we have Finland, all except one 
 small portion, a Swedish province, severed 
 from Sweden within this century. Its popu- 
 lation is Lutheran; polite education has 
 always been in Swedish, and literature and 
 historic association connect its inhabitants 
 with that country. Russia they so much 
 abhor that even in that part of Finland 
 east of Vyborg — conquered since the time 
 of Peter the Great, and on which St. Peters- 
 burg itself is built — seven miles only from 
 the capital, the Russian language is still un- 
 learned after an annexation of one hundred 
 and forty years. 
 
266 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 Finland is an inaccessible country of 
 lakes, rocks, and rivers, all lines of military 
 communication being limited to the seabord, 
 and liable to be cut off by a fleet. 
 
 West of Finland, beyond the Russian 
 frontier, is Sweden, as anxious to recover 
 Finland as Finland to be re-united to her. 
 "There is not in Sweden," as Kossuth has 
 expressed it in his address to the Stockholm 
 committee, who celebrated his liberation by 
 a public banquet, " there is not a Swedish 
 homestead from the borders of Lapland to 
 the Sound, in the breasts of whose inhabi- 
 tants the recollection of that spoliation of 
 Finland, does not rankle." Sweden, con- 
 tains the most warlike population in Europe, 
 although it is poor and thinly scattered. 
 An excellent militia system of alternating 
 regular service, gives her the command of 
 120,000 disciplined soldiers. Freedom of 
 
OF HUNGARY. 207 
 
 speech and of the press exists with repre- 
 sentative forms of government, and so 
 strong is the feeling of animosity to Russia 
 with all classes, that in a general contest, or 
 where any combination against that despo- 
 tism afforded a fair opportunity or diversion, 
 no government could stand which refused 
 to go to war. 
 
 If we look at Russia proper we have, on 
 the one side, the nobility and landed pro- 
 prietors, some members of nearly every 
 family of which belonged to the conspiracy 
 to overturn despotic government, which 
 broke out on the accessation of Nicholas. 
 In 1849, as shown in the foregoing pages, 
 this class was again conspiring. On the 
 other hand — the slave peasantry, goaded 
 continually into local rebellions, but peace- 
 ful and inoffensive, regarding with aversion 
 war and all its panoply, and accustomed to 
 
 N 2 
 
268 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 be punished for grave felonies indifferently 
 witlii Siberia or enlistment. 
 
 South we have the little Russians, or 
 Cossacks, a more warlike race, but whom 
 Russia has not ventured to discipline. Pro- 
 found dissatisfaction is manifested amongst 
 this people, and liberal ideas are gradually 
 breaking in amongst them. After the sur- 
 render of Gorgey many Hungarian officers 
 owed their escape from Hungary to the 
 connivance of the Cossacks. 
 
 There remains the Caucasus. Its indo- 
 mitable inhabitants — certainly the bravest 
 of the human race, and physically repre- 
 senting amongst men what the thorough 
 bred horse does in his species — have always 
 successfully defended their mountains against 
 the power of Russia. 
 
 Beyond lies Georgia, the Russian Italy, 
 to which the passage lies through two nar- 
 
OF HUNGARY. 269 
 
 row passes — the passes of the Iron gate 
 and of the Terek — the only precarious roads 
 which Russia has succeeded in securing 
 through this great hostile rampart, which 
 bars her passage into southern Asia. 
 
 The western half of Circassia, inhabited 
 by the two most warlike tribes — the Tchez- 
 kesses or Circassians proper, and the Aba- 
 zeks — Russia has for many years ceased 
 molesting, to direct her efforts eastward of 
 the western passage, w r here several inferior 
 tribes raised the banner of resistance under 
 the famous Schamyl. 
 
 In two successive campaigns (previous to 
 3 848), the Emperor Nicholas made a de- 
 termined effort, with all the means he could 
 command, to subdue this country, and des- 
 patched Prince Worontzow, with extra- 
 ordinary power and resources for that pur- 
 pose. Worontzow penetrated to Schamyl's 
 
270 THE PAST AND FUTURE 
 
 village, but lost one-half of his army in the 
 retreat to which he was compelled. The 
 second expedition, undertaken to avenge 
 the first, was still more disastrous. A 
 large part of the army perished, 200 officers 
 remained in the hands of the Circassians, 
 who swept over the border with 10,000 
 horsemen and laid siege to a fortress where 
 no Circassian had been seen for five-and- 
 twenty years. This check the Russians 
 have not recovered, their outposts being 
 further removed now than they have been 
 for many seasons. Circassia is an impreg- 
 nable fortress, which may laugh to scorn all 
 the efforts of Russia, whilst properly led 
 and organized, the Circassians could easily 
 close up the passes, conquer Georgia, and 
 supply a force of 50,000 warriors to invade 
 the territories of Russia and occupy her 
 armies. 
 
OF HUNGARY. 271 
 
 Kossuth, I have said, has not been idle. 
 If he seeks strength in combinations with 
 Russia's natural enemies, a glance will 
 show, that vast as her size is, they encircle 
 her in a mighty curve which reaches from 
 the shores of Lapland to the Caspian Sea. 
 
- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 For further information on the subjects inci- 
 dentally mentioned in these pages, I would 
 refer the reader to Golovine's Custines, Thomp- 
 son's and HorerV Russia — to the Revelations 
 of Russia and Eastern Europe, to the Port- 
 folio, to Urquhart's Turkey and Spirit of the 
 East, to Paget's Hungary, to De Gerando's 
 Hungary, to Cyprien Roberts' Sclavonians of 
 Turkey, to Mazzini's writings, to Giobertis' 
 book upon the Jesuits, to Father GavazziV 
 
 published Oration, to Madame Pultsky's book, 
 
 n3 
 
274 NOTES. 
 
 and particularly to the speeches of Kossuth, 
 which will shortly be published, with correc- 
 tions, and which eontain in themselves a history 
 of European politics. 
 
 In his speech at Winchester, he shows that 
 the Hungarians were simply contending for 
 rights and liberties, more ancient and less 
 ample than those the English expulsed the 
 Stuarts to assert, and points out that, like his 
 fellow-countrymen, he had no aim beyond as- 
 suring the constitutional form and limitation of 
 a monarchic form of government. 
 
 In his address to the operative classes in 
 Copenhagen fields (London), he declared that, 
 although this had been their sole aim when war 
 was forced upon them — in consequence of the 
 events of that war crowning three centuries of 
 perfidy and oppression, and rendering it ob- 
 vious imbecility to enter into any further com- 
 pact with the House of Hapsburg — republican 
 institutions would alone satisfy the Hungarian 
 people, and that it was his determination, when- 
 ever the opportunity was afforded him, to intro- 
 duce those institutions on the United States' 
 model. 
 
NOTES. 275 
 
 In his speeches at Manchester and Birming- 
 ham, he points out " That the true concern of 
 every nation with the condition of another must 
 depend on selfish views of material interest, on 
 philanthropic principles, or on considerations 
 compounded, in varying proportions, of both 
 these incentives to sympathy or action." 
 
 Treating the question from an English point 
 of view, and solely as regards material advan- 
 tage, he shows that the British community is 
 deeply interested in the spread of free govern- 
 ment, because its trade is greater or less with 
 nations according as they enjoy free institutions, 
 or are oppressed by despotism. So, that the 
 commerce of England with the non-manufac- 
 turing absolutism of Russia, had only averaged 
 seven pence per head of the population, whilst 
 with manufacturing but republican America, it 
 had been seven shillings, or twelve times greater ; 
 and that striking as this difference was, it had 
 been still further increasing, the British trade 
 with Russia having sunk down to six pence, 
 whilst that of the United States had risen to ten % 
 shillings. That these, although extreme, were 
 
276 NOTES. 
 
 not exceptional cases, nations being unvaryingly 
 prosperous in proportion to the liberties they 
 enjoyed, and the trade of the British people 
 with them being, even notwithstanding pro- 
 tective tariffs, precisely in the ratio of their 
 prosperity. 
 
 Now, that which is true with regard to Great 
 Britain is equally true with respect to the United 
 States. The exports of the United States to 
 Great Britain (in the year ending 1848) averaged 
 per head of the population two and two-third 
 dollars ; to France and Belgium between sixty 
 and seventy cents ; to Austria five cents, and a 
 fraction less than one and three-fourth cents to 
 the Russian Empire. 
 
 Kossuth, in his letter to the Philadelphia mass 
 meeting, says that Philadelphia is the first 
 manufacturing city of the Union, but exports 
 to foreign countries none of its proceeds. Why 
 so ? Because the only markets open in Europe 
 are not fitted to these products, whilst despotism 
 closes the markets for which they are fitted. 
 Restricted markets, for instance, are opened for 
 highly finished cutlery, steam engines, or loco- 
 motives, which England can supply at cheaper 
 
NOTES. 277 
 
 rates ; but oppression and concomitant poverty 
 prevent all trade with at least one hundred and 
 ten millions of the population of Eastern Europe, 
 who have shown that they would eagerly pur- 
 chase and prefer American made axes, steam 
 engines, and locomotives, to hew down their 
 forests and traverse their level plains and mag- 
 nificent watercourses, on which all enterprise 
 now slumbers, the whole Russian Empire not 
 having a fraction of the railway lines laid down 
 in the small State of Belgium. 
 
 As there is every reason why, but for the 
 poverty attendant on bad government, the east- 
 ern portion of the European continent should 
 trade more largely with the United States than 
 the western, it may fully be presumed that the 
 overturn of despotism in these regions, inhabited 
 by one hundred and twenty millions of people, 
 and the establishment there of free government, 
 would rapidly raise the commerce of the United 
 States with those countries above the average 
 of France and Belgium, which would give three 
 or four fold its trade to the entire continent of 
 Europe, or twenty-five times its whole present 
 trade with Russia, Austria and Prussia. The 
 
278 NOTES, 
 
 United States is, therefore, materially interested 
 in those events. The philanthropic point of 
 view is the same for all nations. It is proved, 
 argues Kossuth, by an almost unvarying scale, 
 that according as a people is more or less liber- 
 ally governed, so is the quality of its food better 
 or worse, and its material comforts augmented 
 or diminished, and that coincident with this aug- 
 mentation or diminution, human life is length- 
 ened or abridged. The average of life in Russia 
 is very little more than half of what it is in 
 Great Britain, and follows in intermediate coun- 
 tries precisely the ascending or descending scale 
 of their liberality of government and physical 
 well-being. 
 
 It may, therefore, he concludes, fairly be pre- 
 sumed that if the vast regions of Russia were 
 blessed with free representative and responsible 
 government, upwards of one million of human 
 beings would not annually die who now perish 
 the victims of a system. What war, he asks, 
 was ever so bloody as the sacrifices required by 
 such a Moloch ? 
 
 In his address to the Swedes will be found 
 
NOTES. 279 
 
 some account of the politics of the North, in 
 his speeches at Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, &c, his 
 views with regard to the state of France, Italy, 
 and Europe generally. 
 
NATIONAL PROPERTY AND HUN- 
 GARIAN LOAN. 
 
 Mention has been made of the national pro- 
 perty of Hungary, and of the charges on it, 
 inclusive of the paper issued by the national 
 government of Hungary. This national pro- 
 perty consists of salt and other mines — princi- 
 pally unworked or inefficiently worked — and of 
 lands the most fertile in Europe, but chiefly un- 
 cultivated. Though at present in the possession 
 of the Austrian government, it hardly derives 
 any revenue except from the actually productive 
 mines, and cannot alienate this property. As 
 the greatest portion of it yields no present re- 
 turn, but on the contrary requires some invest- 
 ment of capital to render it productive, no one 
 will buy them unless a good title could be given, 
 
NOTES, 281 
 
 or the permanency of Austrian rule insured. 
 Even if they did yield a return the purchaser 
 would be deterred by the example of the Aus- 
 trian commanders, who can find no husbandmen 
 to till the confiscated estates conferred upon 
 them, unless through violence, and who then had 
 their standing crops destroyed by fire, or their 
 harvest burned in the barn. But no title is 
 legal, or has ever, in the long run, held good in 
 Hungary unless derived from the Diet ; and no 
 one, even amongst the creatures of Austria, has 
 sufficient faith in the present order of things to 
 risk a shilling on the event. 
 
 Of this national property, the mines are com- 
 puted in round numbers, to be saleable (under a 
 national government) for 125,000,000 dollars ; 
 the lands for 100,000,000 dollars more. The 
 whole is charged with something less than 
 65,000,000 dollars, viz : 40,000,000 dollars com- 
 pensation due to the landlords for the emanci- 
 pation of the peasantry, and 35,000,000 dollars 
 notes issued by Kossuth to carry on the war, 
 from which deduct 10,000,000 dollars stupidly 
 collected and burned by the Austrians. 
 
 The land owners and holders of notes in Hun- 
 
282 NOTES. 
 
 gary are, therefore, pecuniarily interested to the 
 extent of 65,000,000 dollars in the restoration 
 of a national government, and there remains 
 160,000,000 dollars worth of national property 
 on which Governor Kossuth bases the national " 
 Hungarian loan in the United States. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 J. BILLING, 
 
 PRINTER, AND STEREOTYPER. 
 
 WOKING, SURREY. 
 
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