The revolution of February, 1848, which broke out in Paris, changed, as if by magic, the relative positions of Austria and Hungary. Metternich’s system of government, which was opposed to granting liberty to the people, collapsed at once. The storm of popular indignation swept it away like a house built of cards. At the first news of the occurrences in Paris Kossuth asked in the Lower House for the creation of a responsible ministry. Kossuth’s motion was favorably received by the Lower House, but in the Upper House it was rejected, the government not being yet alive to the real state of affairs, and still hoping by a system of negation to frustrate the wishes of the people. But very soon the revolution reared its head in Vienna itself, and the wishes of the Hungarian people, uttered at Buda-Pesth, received thereby a new and powerful advocate.
At that time the Hungarian Diet still met at Presburg, but the two sister cities of Buda and Pesth formed the real capital of the country, and were the centre of commerce, industry, science, and literature. Michael Vörösmarty, the poet laureate of the nation, lived in Pesth, and there the twin stars of literature, Alexander Petöfi and Maurus Jókai, shone on the national horizon. Jókai, who is still living and enjoys a world-wide fame as a novelist, and Petöfi, the eminent poet, who was destined to become the Tyrtæus of his nation, were then both young men, full of enthusiasm and intrepid energy, and teeming with great ideas. About these two gathered the other writers and youth of the university, and all of them, helping each other, contrived, upon hearing the news of the sudden revolutions in Paris and Vienna, to enact in Buda-Pesth the bloodless revolution of the 15th of March, 1848, which obtained the liberty of the press for the nation, and at the same time, in a solemn manifesto, gave expression to the wishes of the Hungarians in the matter of reform. The only act of violence these revolutionary heroes were guilty of was the entering of a printing establishment, whose proprietor, afraid of the government, had refused to print the admirable poem of Petöfi, entitled Talpra Magyar (Up Magyar), and doing the printing there themselves. The first verse of this poem, which subsequently became the war song of the national movement, runs in a literal translation thus:
Arise, oh Magyar! thy country calls.
Here is the time, now or never.
Shall we be slaves or free?
We swear by the God of the Magyars,
We swear, to be slaves no longer!
This soul-stirring poem was improvised by Petöfi under the inspiration of the moment, and at the same establishment where it was first printed was also printed a proclamation which contained twelve articles setting forth the wishes of the people.
