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

Thus, then, in this wonderful month of March, 1848, the whole system of Metternich had crumbled to the ground. The German national feeling, which he had hoped to crush out, was steadily ripening and embodying itself in a definite shape. The feeling for that "Geographical Expression" Italy had proved strong enough to drive Radetzky from Milan and Palffy from Venice. The rivalry between the Bohemians and Germans of the Austrian Empire seemed, for the moment, to have been merged in a common desire for liberty; and the Hungarian opposition, which Metternich had hoped to manipulate, had shaken him from power and from office, and had secured liberty to Vienna and practical independence to Hungary. Of the terrible divisions and rivalries which were to undermine the new fabric of liberty, the story will have to be told in the succeeding chapters. But the vigour, heroism, and self-sacrifice which had been brought to light in this early part of the movement will always make the March Risings of 1848 memorable in the history of Europe.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE STRUGGLE OF THE RACES—APRIL TO JUNE, 1848.

Apparent unanimity between races of Austrian Empire in the March risings.—Unreality of this appearance.—Local aspirations.—The Serbs of Buda-Pesth.—The Magyar politics in Pesth.—The first Hungarian Ministry.—Szemere's Press Law and its failure.—The answer of the Ministry to the Serb petition.—Position and History of the Serbs in Hungary.—Treatment by Magyars and Austrian Kings.—Growth of Serb literature.—The deputations from Neusatz and Carlowitz.—Velika-Kikinda.—Position and character of Rajaciç.—Of Stratimiroviç.—The summoning of the Serb Assembly.—Croatian movement revived.—The Croats and the "twelve points."—Joseph Jellaciç.—Pillersdorf and the Bohemian deputation.—The meeting at the Sophien-Insel.—The second petition.—The Germans of Bohemia and Moravia.—Opening of the Vor-Parlament at Frankfort.—Blum's influence.—Struve's proposals and their effect.—The Slavonic question at Frankfort.—The Polish phase of it.—The Bohemian question evaded by the Vor-Parlament.—The Committee of Fifty and Palacky.—The discussion between the National Committees in Prague.—Schilling's insults.—The appeal to the Austrian Government and its failure.—The summons of the Slavonic Congress.—The difficulties in Vienna.—The April Constitution.—The Galician movement.—The rising of May 15 and the flight of the Emperor.—Effect of the May movement on Bohemian feeling—on Hungarian feeling.—The Serb meeting of May 13.—The Roumanian meeting of May 15.—The Saxon opposition to the Union.—The alliance between the Magyars and the Szekler.—The fall of Transylvanian independence.—The first collision with the Roumanians.—Their position, and character of their rising.—Alliance between Croats and Serbs.—The attack on Carlowitz of June 11.—The Slavonic Congress at Prague.—The difficulties in Prague.—Windischgrätz and the Town Council.—The quarrel between the students of Prague and the students of Vienna.—The Slavonic petition.—The rising of June 12.—The fall of Prague and its consequences.

Few points were more remarkable in the March Risings of 1848 than the apparent reconciliation between those champions of freedom who had been separated from each other by antagonism of race. Gaj and his friends had hastened to Vienna to join in the general congratulations to that city on its newly won freedom. The Slavonic students of Prague had been equally sympathetic; and members of the different races of Hungary had expressed their satisfaction in the successes of Kossuth. But this sudden union was necessarily short-lived; for it sprang from a hope which could not be realized; the hope, namely, that the Germans and Magyars would join in extending to each of the Slavonic races of the Empire those separate national freedoms which those two great ruling races had secured for themselves. Thus proposals soon began to be made for the formation of a district which was to be called Slovenia, after the Slovenes who inhabited the province of Krain, and other south-western provinces of the Austrian Empire. At the same time, the Slovaks of North Hungary desired to be formed into a separate province, in which they could freely use the Slovak language and profess the Lutheran creed, undisturbed by Magyar language or Magyar Calvinism. Lastly, on March 15, Ivan Kukuljeviç, who, next to Gaj, was the most distinguished of the Croatian patriots, carried, in the Agram Assembly, an address to the Emperor, asking him to summon the old parliament of the three kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. But, though all these demands contained within them the seeds of future quarrels, the first actual outbreak was not to come either from Slovenes, Slovaks, or Croats. The first token of the "rift within the lute," which, if it could not "make the music" of Liberty "mute," would at least weaken its sound and introduce discord into its harmony, showed itself in connexion with a branch of the Slavonic race to which little allusion has yet been made.

Those who have visited Buda-Pesth will remember how, when they had left the modern magnificence of Pesth and crossed the suspension-bridge which joins it with Buda, they have come to a pause at the foot of the steep rock which confronts them. Then, if, instead of ascending to the fortress of Buda, they turned southwards along the shores of the Danube, in a short time they would have found themselves in a district in complete contrast with the rest of the capital, where an air of poverty, hardly found elsewhere in the town, is combined with an originality and picturesqueness of decoration which is neither German nor Magyar. Little cottages, coloured yellow, blue, or white, are built up against the rock in all kinds of irregular ways; in some places the rooms are below the street, and the gay appearance is increased by signs outside the shops, showing what articles can be procured there. The bright handkerchiefs on the heads of the women, and the gay colours worn by both sexes, give a somewhat Eastern aspect to the streets and market-place. Such is the Raitzenstadt, the quarter of the Serbs, long looked down upon by their Magyar countrymen. There, on March 17, the representatives of about a hundred districts of the neighbourhood gathered to prepare a petition for leave to use their national language in national affairs. This roused the fierce opposition of the Magyar youth of Pesth; and the Committee of Safety which had just been formed found itself unable to protect the Serbs from violence. If, indeed, the spirit of Kossuth's speech of March 3 had been still triumphant, compromises might have been found which would have hindered the claims of the Serbs from provoking actual war. But the sudden outburst of statesmanlike feeling which produced that speech was not of long duration; and, even if Kossuth had desired to conciliate the subject-races of Hungary, there were those at his back who would never have consented to such tolerance.

The fiery youth of Pesth supplied an element to the Magyar revolution very different from that which generally found expression in the Diet at Presburg; and this element had been so necessary to Kossuth's purposes that it was impossible to disregard its influence. Three days before the Serb meeting a great gathering had been held in a café at Pesth, which had been followed on the 15th by a march of the Hungarian students, headed by the poet Petöfy, to the Town Council, to demand the concession of twelve points. Some of these points were being secured on that very day by the deputation which had gone to Vienna; others were already conceded in principle by the Diet at Presburg; one of them, the proposal for the union of Transylvania with Hungary, was to be the seed of future mischief, but was, at present, acceptable to all parties of the Magyars. It was not so much, then, by political theories that the youth of Pesth were distinguished from the quieter spirits of Presburg; it was rather the fiery manner in which they made their demands, and the dogmatic intolerance with which they insisted on particular formulas.

Moreover, the Presburg policy, if one may so call it, was weakened in its effect by that attempt to reconcile hopeless opposites which is the great difficulty of all moderate parties. Count Louis Batthyanyi, when he was appointed as the first responsible Minister of Hungary, thought himself bound to form his Ministry, so far as possible, by a combination of the different representatives of the rival parties; and he not only hoped to find a basis for common action between the growing Conservatism of Szechenyi and the growing Radicalism of Kossuth, but he even gave a place in his Ministry to Count Esterhazy, who sympathized to some extent with the Camarilla at Vienna. Baron Eötvös, who had been the champion of centralization when Kossuth was arguing for County Government, was also a member of this Ministry; while Meszaros, the War Minister, might be supposed to combine opposite principles in his own person; for, while he had contributed to Kossuth's paper, the "Pesti Hirlap," his last public action had been to serve under Radetzky in his attempt to suppress the liberties of Milan. Batthyanyi, indeed, hoped that, by introducing Deak into the Ministry, he should secure an influence which should reconcile these various incongruous elements; but such a task was beyond even Deak's powers. By his honourable abstention from the Diet of 1843, he had deprived himself of his former influence; and, though he accepted the place offered him by Batthyanyi, and honestly tried to work with his different colleagues, yet, as the movement became more and more revolutionary, he fell further into the background.

The weakness of this Coalition Ministry was first brought into prominence by Bartholomaus Szemere, a cold, hard man, who had had little previous influence on politics. He was appointed to draw up the new regulations with regard to freedom of the Press; and produced a law which was of so reactionary a character that the students of the Pesth University burnt it publicly in front of the Town Hall, and sent a deputation to the Diet to entreat them to repeal the law and to change the seat of government to Pesth. Batthyanyi consented to the repeal of the law; but rejected, for a time, the other proposal of the students; and the Ministry remained at Presburg, weakened by the sense that the strongest element of Magyar feeling was centred in Kossuth and the Pesth party, and that this feeling would eventually overpower the more moderate patriots. Under these circumstances it was natural that the weak Ministry at Presburg should sacrifice to their fiery opponents the claims of those races with which neither party had any deep sympathy; and when, on March 24, the Serb petition came before the Ministry, they answered that the Hungarians would not endure that any nationality except the Hungarian should exist in Hungary.

But the Serbs of the Raitzenstadt were but the feeble representatives of a much more powerful body, which was scattered over various parts of Hungary and found its chief centre in the province of Slavonia. It was during the sixteenth century that the great immigration of the Serbs into Hungary had taken place. All the important history of this race had been connected with their struggle against the Turks; and it was as fugitives from Turkish tyranny that they took refuge in Hungary. They arrived just about the time when Hungary had accepted the rule of the House of Austria, and, finding that Ferdinand I. was more zealous than his Magyar subjects in resistance to the Turks, and that some of the Magyars were even willing to call in the Turks to their assistance, the Serbs naturally became the champions of the House of Austria against the Magyars. As a reward for this loyalty, the Austrian rulers granted various privileges to their new subjects; and, in 1690, Leopold I. gave special invitation to the Serbs to come over from the Turkish provinces and to settle in the district assigned to them. To those who lived in that district was granted the right of choosing the Patriarch of their own Church, their own Voyvode, or military leader, and their own magistrates; while those living actually on the frontier were placed under a special military government which was administered from Vienna, and were rewarded for their military services by freedom from taxation. The Magyars, indeed, did not abandon the hope of drawing the Serbs to their side; and when, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rakoczi[11] attempted to set up an independent principality in Transylvania, he appealed to the Serbs to assist him in his attempt. But their gratitude to the House of Austria, strengthened in this instance by a dislike to the Calvinism of Rakoczi, kept them firm in their championship of the Austrian cause.