The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany / With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years

by C. Edmund Maurice

At the same time, there were elements in Hungary which might give Metternich some hopes that he could drain out the forces of Hungarian liberty. The Magyar nobles were drawn more and more to Vienna; and a process of Germanization was going on of so effective a kind that many of the nobles had almost forgotten their own language. Thus, though the Magyar aristocracy had more often acted as champions of independence than the nobles of any other country in Europe, they were gradually being drifted away from the main body of the people, and were becoming absorbed in the ranks of Austrian officialism. But when the Spanish Revolution of 1820 began to stir men's minds, the discussions in the Hungarian county assemblies took a wider range, and representations were made to Francis which he could not long resist. He did not at first, indeed, realize the full force of the opposition, and in 1822 he tried to levy new taxes on the Hungarians without summoning the Diet. But this attempt failed, and in 1825 the Diet at Presburg was once more called together.

It seemed, indeed, to some of those who afterwards played a prominent part in the struggles of 1848 as if little was gained by this Diet; and as if it was even less satisfactory than its predecessor of 1791. But a movement was inaugurated on this occasion which, though it may have contained in it the seeds of future misunderstanding, and even of civil war, was yet in its beginning as noble in its intention as it was necessary to the welfare of Hungary; and, had it been pursued in the spirit of its first leader, might have produced in time all the blessings which have since been secured to Hungary, without any of those terrible divisions and bitternesses that hinder those blessings from producing their full effect.

The leader of this new movement was Count Stephen Szechenyi, a member of one of the great families of Hungary. His father had held office at the Court of Vienna, but had grieved over the process of denationalization which was going on among the nobles of Hungary.

Count Stephen was early trained to sympathize with the desire for the restoration of Hungarian life. He saw that the withdrawal of the great nobles from Hungary to Vienna led to the mismanagement of their estates, the growth of an evil class of money-lenders, and the separation between the aristocracy and the rest of the nation.

The abandonment of the Magyar language was, in his eyes, the great source of all evil; and the Diet of 1825 afforded him the first opportunity of protesting against it. While the Hungarian nobles talked German in private, they used Latin in the management of public affairs; and Szechenyi, as a protest against this practice, spoke in the Magyar language in bringing forward a question in the House of Magnates.

But, before the Diet had risen, he gave a much more solid proof of his zeal for his native tongue. On November 3rd, 1825, he offered, in the House of Magnates, to give a whole year's income, 60,000 gulden, to found a Society for promoting the Study of the Magyar Language. His example was followed, with more or less zeal, by other nobles; and in 1827 a Hungarian Academy was established by Royal Decree.

The movement which Szechenyi had stirred up was in danger of being brought to ridicule by some of its supporters, for Count Dessewfy actually proposed that a law should be passed forbidding the marriage of any Hungarian maiden who did not know her native tongue; but this was resisted as too strong a measure.

But though Szechenyi opposed these wilder schemes of his supporters, he was none the less ready to use all possible attractions for carrying out his chief object, the drawing Hungarian nobles back to their country. As one of these means, he established a horse-race at Pesth, and founded a union for training horses. He promoted, too, the material advantages of Hungary by introducing steamships on the Danube.

The work to which he devoted most attention was the erection of a suspension bridge, to connect Pesth with Buda. Szechenyi's enthusiasm in this matter seemed to many ludicrously disproportionate to the result to be obtained; but the fact was that he intended this work to give the opportunity for the first blow at that great injustice, the exemption of the Hungarian nobles from taxation. If he could induce the Magnates to consent that the burden of so important a national undertaking should fall in part upon them, they might be willing hereafter to accept a more just distribution of the whole burdens of the State.