of unification, which after the victory of Kápolna they thought it safe to proclaim. On the 7th of March the diet of Kremsier Proclamation of a united empire. was dissolved, and immediately afterwards a proclamation was issued in the name of the emperor Francis Joseph establishing a united constitution for the whole empire, of which Hungary, cut up into half a dozen administrative districts, was henceforth to be little more than the largest of several subject provinces. The news of this manifesto, arriving as it did simultaneously with that of Görgei’s successes, destroyed the last vestiges of a desire of the Hungarian revolutionists to compromise, and on the 14th of April, on the motion of Kossuth, the diet proclaimed the independence of Hungary, declared the house of Habsburg as false and perjured, for ever excluded from the throne, and elected Kossuth president of the Hungarian Republic. This was an execrable blunder in the circumstances, and the results were fatal to the national cause. Neither the government nor the army could accommodate itself to the new situation. From henceforth the military and civil authorities, as represented by Kossuth and Görgei, were hopelessly out of sympathy with each other, and the breach widened till all effective co-operation became impossible.
Meanwhile the humiliating defeats of the imperial army and the course of events in Hungary had compelled the court of Vienna to accept the assistance which the emperor Nicholas I. of Russia had proffered in the loftiest spirit of the Holy Alliance. The Austro-Russian Intervention of Russia. alliance was announced at the beginning of May, and before the end of the month the common plan of campaign had been arranged. The Austrian commander-in-chief, Count Haynau, was to attack Hungary from the west, the Russian, Prince Paskevich, from the north, gradually environing the kingdom, and then advancing to end the business by one decisive blow in the mid-Theissian counties. They had at their disposal 375,000 men, to which the Magyars could only oppose 160,000. The Magyars, too, were now more than ever divided among themselves, no plan of campaign had yet been drawn up, no commander-in-chief appointed to replace Görgei, whom Kossuth had deposed. Haynau’s first victories (June 20-28) put an end to their indecisions. On the 2nd of July the Hungarian government abandoned Pest and transferred its capital first to Szeged and finally to Arad. The Russians were by this time well on their way to the Theiss, and the terrible girdle which was to throttle the liberties of Hungary was all but completed. Kossuth again appointed as commander-in-chief the brave but inefficient Dembinski, who was utterly routed at Temesvár (Aug. 9) by Haynau. This was the last great battle of the War of Independence. The final catastrophe was now unavoidable. On the 13th of August Görgei, who had been appointed dictator by the panic-stricken government two days before, surrendered the remnant of his hardly pressed army to the Russian General Rüdiger at Világos. The other army corps and all the fortresses followed his example, Komárom, heroically defended by Klapka, being the last to capitulate (Sept. 27). Kossuth and his associates, who had quitted Arad on the 10th of August, took refuge in Turkish territory. By the end of the month Paskevich could write to the Emperor Nicholas: “Hungary lies at the feet of your Imperial Majesty.”
From October 1849 to July 1850 Hungary was governed by martial law administered by “the butcher” Haynau. This was a period of military tribunals, dragooning, wholesale confiscation and all manner of brutalities.[1] From The “Bach System.” 1851 to 1860 pure terrorism was succeeded by the “Bach System,” which derives its name from the imperial minister of the interior, Baron Alexander von Bach. The Bach System did not recognize historical Hungary. It postulated the existence of one common indivisible state of which mutilated Hungary[2] formed an important section. The supreme government was entrusted to an imperial council responsible to the emperor alone. The counties were administered by imperial officials, Germans, Czechs and Galicians, who did not understand the Magyar tongue. German was the official language. But though reaction was the motive power of this new machinery of government, it could not do away with many of the practical and obvious improvements of 1848, and it was not blind to some of the indispensable requirements of a modern state. The material welfare of the nation was certainly promoted by it. Modern roads were made, the first railways were laid down, the regulation of the river Theiss was taken in hand, a new and better scheme of finance was inaugurated. But the whole system, so to speak, hung in the air. It took no root in the soil. The Magyar nation stood aloof from it. It was plain that at the first revolutionary blast from without, or the first insurrectionary outburst from within, the “Bach System” would vanish like a mirage.
Meanwhile the new Austrian empire had failed to stand the test of international complications. The Crimean War had isolated it in Europe. The Italian war of 1859 had revealed its essential instability. It was felt at court that some concessions were now due to the subject The October Diploma, 1860. nationalities. Hence the October Diploma (Oct. 20, 1860) which proposed to prop up the crazy common state with the shadow of a constitution and to grant some measure of local autonomy to Hungary, subject always to the supervision of the imperial council (Reichsrath).[3] This project was favoured by the Magyar conservative magnates who had never broken with the court, but was steadily opposed by the Liberal leader Ferencz Deák whose upright and tenacious character made him at this crisis the oracle and the buttress of the national cause. Deák’s standpoint was as simple as it was unchangeable. He demanded the re-establishment of the constitution of 1848 in its entirety, the whole constitution and nothing but the constitution.
The October Diploma was followed by the February Patent (Feb. 26, 1861), which proposed to convert the Reichsrath into a constitutional representative assembly, with two chambers, to which all the provinces of the empire were to send deputies. The project, elaborated by The February Patent, 1861. Anton von Schmerling, was submitted to a Hungarian diet which assembled at Pest on the 2nd of April 1861. After long and violent debates, the diet, on the 8th of August, unanimously adopted an address to the crown, drawn up by Deák, praying for the restoration of the political and territorial integrity of Hungary, for the public coronation of the king with all its accompaniments, and the full restitution of the fundamental laws. The executive retorted by dissolving the diet on the 21st of August and levying the taxes by military execution. The so-called Provisorium had begun.
But the politicians of Vienna had neither the power nor the time to realize their intentions. The question of Italian unity had no sooner been settled than the question of German unity arose, and fresh international difficulties once more inclined the Austrian government towards The Austro-Prussian War of 1866. moderation and concession. In the beginning of June 1865, Francis Joseph came to Buda; on the 26th a provisional Hungarian government was formed, on the 20th of September the February constitution was suspended, and on the 14th of December a diet was summoned to Buda-Pest. The great majority of the nation naturally desired a composition with its ruler and with Austria, and this general desire was unerringly interpreted and directed by Deák, who carried two-thirds of the deputies along with him. The session was interrupted by the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, but not before a
- ↑ The crowning atrocities, which the Magyars have never wholly forgiven, were the shooting and hanging of the “Arad Martyrs” and the execution of Batthyány. On October 6, 1849, thirteen generals who had taken part in the war, including Damjanics and Counts Vécsey and Leiningen, were hanged or shot at Arad. On the same day Count Louis Batthyány, who had taken no part in the war and had done his utmost to restrain his countrymen within the bounds of legality, was shot at Pest.
- ↑ Transylvania, Croatio-Slavonia with Fiume and the Temes Banat were separated from the kingdom and provided with local governments.
- ↑ This Reichsrath was a purely consultative body, the ultimate control of all important affairs being reserved to the emperor. Its representative element consisted of 100 members elected by the provinces.
