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

For while the Serbs were still discussing their grievances and the remedies for them, the Roumanians were meeting in their village of Blasendorf to make their protest against Magyar rule. They, like the other Peoples of the Empire, had been disposed to sympathise with the March movement; but when it became known that the Magyars at Pesth had put forward as one of their twelve points the union of Transylvania with Hungary, the Roumanians became alarmed. Had the Transylvanian Diet met under the extended suffrage now granted in Hungary, the Roumanians would have had a majority in the Diet; and the influence of this majority would have been far more important under the new parliamentary system than in the old days of centralised officialism. If, on the other hand, they were to be absorbed in Hungary, they naturally feared that the fanaticism of the Magyars in enforcing the use of the Magyar language, would be directed with even greater vigour against the despised Roumanians, than it had been against Serbs and Croats; and that the Greek Church to which the Roumanians belonged, and which had always been at a disadvantage in Transylvania, would be crushed, or, at any rate, discouraged. The tradition of their Roman descent recorded in the Libellus Wallachorum, had given some of them hopes for leadership in Transylvania, and had strengthened, even in the less ambitious, the desire for a dignified equality. Animated by these motives, they met on May 15 at Blasendorf.

This little capital of the Roumanian race lies in one of the large open plains of Transylvania. It is still little more than a straggling village of low huts; but it is apparently as important to the Roumanians as Carlowitz is to the Serbs and Hermannstadt to the Saxons. Crowds of the strange figures, whom one may still see in the villages of Transylvania, flocked in to this meeting, covered with their rough sheep-skins and dark, flowing hair, and showing in their handsome faces at once the consciousness of the new life that was awakening, and their pride in those dim traditions of the past, which were supposed to unite them with the glories of ancient Rome. Even here, too, there were found some of the ruling race, who were prepared to make common cause with this, the most despised and oppressed of the races of Hungary; for a Magyar noble named Nopcsa was prominent in the meeting. But now, as ever, the chief hope for the Roumanians was in their clergy, and specially in their bishops; and Lemenyi, the bishop of the United Greeks,[13] appeared side by side with the more popular and influential Schaguna. Speaker after speaker dwelt on the great traditions of the Roumanian nation, and their determination to obtain an equality with the Magyar, Szekler, and Saxon. They avowed their loyalty to Ferdinand, and declared that they had no desire to oppress any other nation; but that they would not suffer any other nation to oppress them; that they would work for the emancipation of industry and trade, for the removal of the feudal burdens, for the securing of legal justice, and for the welfare of humanity, of the Roumanian nation, and of the common fatherland. They then proceeded to ask for a separate national organization, for the use of the Roumanian language in all national affairs, and for representation in the Assembly in proportion to their numbers. They further demanded a Roumanian national guard to be commanded by Roumanian officers. They claimed to be called by the name of Roumanian, instead of the less dignified epithet of Wallach. They also asked for an independent position for their Church; for the foundation of a Roumanian University; for equality with the other races of Hungary in the endowment of their clergy and schools. These were the chief points of their petition; but along with these came the demands for the ordinary freedoms of the time, and for the redress of special local grievances. At the close of the petition, came the prayer which specially explained the urgency of their meeting at that time. They entreated that the Diet of Transylvania should not discuss the question of the proposed union with Hungary until the Roumanians were fully represented in the Diet. This petition Schaguna carried to Vienna on behalf of the meeting.

In the meantime the Saxons were preparing to express their opposition to the proposed union with Hungary in a separate protest of their own. The peculiar organization which the Saxons had enjoyed had become very dear to them; and they had hoped to retain their old institutions under the new Government. But when they appealed to the Hungarian Ministry, Deak told them that they had no right to make conditions; and it soon became evident that, in the larger matter of the union of Transylvania with Hungary, they would have as little chance of a fair hearing as in the smaller question of their own race organization. Count Teleki, the Governor of Transylvania, had announced, on May 2, that the union was practically settled already; and that only questions of detail had now to be arranged. This direct attack on the legal power of the Transylvanian Diet naturally alarmed the Saxons, and Count Salmen, the Comes der Sachsen or Chief Magistrate of the Saxon colony, organized the opposition to the proposed union. Hitherto the Saxons, with the exception of a few generous-minded men like Roth, had been as bitterly scornful of the Roumanians as any Magyar or Szekler could be; but now the sense of a common danger drew these races together; and the Saxons offered to allow the Roumanians to hold office in the Saxon towns and villages, and to be admitted to apprenticeships by the tradesmen of those towns. The opposition of the Saxons to the Magyars was, no doubt, strengthened by the sympathy of the former with that German feeling which would lead to the strengthening of the influence of Vienna; and they declared that they would rather send representatives to a Viennese Assembly than to a Diet at Presburg.

And while, on the one hand, common danger to their liberties was drawing together the Saxons and the Roumanians, the sympathies of race and a common antipathy to aliens was drawing together the Magyar and the Szekler. As early as May 10 Wesselenyi issued an appeal to the Szekler to arm themselves as guardians of the frontiers, and to be prepared to suppress any rising of the Roumanians; and on May 19 Batthyanyi appealed to them to march to Szegedin. But it was not to the Szekler alone that the Magyars trusted to enforce their will on the Transylvanian Diet. The fiery young students of Pesth hastened down, on May 30, to Klausenburg, where the deputies were gathering for the final meeting of the Diet. A Roumanian deputation, coming to entreat the Parliament not to decide till the Roumanians were adequately represented in it, were contemptuously refused a hearing, and one of their leaders was roughly pushed back. Banners were displayed bearing the words, "Union or Death!" and the young lawyers from Pesth filled the galleries of the Assembly, and even crowded into the Hall. The Saxon representatives, more used to quiet discussion, or to commercial transactions, than to the fiery quarrels in which the Magyar and Szekler delighted, tremblingly entered the Hall; and, unable to gain courage for their duties, they gave way to the storm, and voted for the union. Thus ended the local independence of Transylvania, which was to be revived twelve years later by the Germanizing Liberalism of Schmerling, and then to be finally swept away in the successful movement for Hungarian Independence.

The bitterness roused by the passing of the Act of Union was not long in leading to actual bloodshed. The immediate quarrel, however, arose out of a matter connected, not with the race contest, but with the new land laws of the country. The Hungarian Diet had decided that the peasant should not only be freed from his dependence on the landlord, but should be also considered by his previous payment of dues to have earned the land on which he had worked. Naturally, disputes arose as to the extent of the land so acquired; and in more than one case the peasants were found to be claiming more than their own share. It was to redress a blunder of this kind that, on June 2, a party of National Guards, composed partly of Szeklers and partly of Magyars, entered the Roumanian village of Mihalzi (Magyar, Mihacsfalva). The exact circumstances of such a collision as that which followed will always be told differently by the most honest narrators; but it seems probable that the Roumanians, in some confused way, connected this visit with the recent struggle about the Union; and it is certain that the race-hatred between the Szekler and the Roumanians soon became inflamed. The National Guard fired, and several of the Roumanians fell. The others fled; but their previous resistance soon produced a rumour of a general Roumanian insurrection. The Magyars were seized with a panic; the Roumanian National Committee was dissolved, and several of their clergy and other leaders were imprisoned. Had the Roumanians been now organized by Austrian officers it is possible that less might have been heard of the savagery of the new warfare. Had some of their own leaders, who afterwards tried to control them, been ready at this time to take the lead, many of the actual cruelties might never have taken place. But just at this time the Emperor answered the deputation of May 15 by referring the Roumanians to the Magyar Ministry for the redress of their grievances, and declaring that equality could only be carried out by enforcing the Act of Union. This rebuff was accompanied by a letter from Schaguna written somewhat in the same sense; and thus, finding that some of their leaders had deserted them; that others were imprisoned; that the Emperor was discouraging their complaints; that the Magyars were denouncing them as rebels, and the Szekler making raids on their territory, the Roumanians began to defend themselves by a warfare which rapidly became exceptionally barbarous and savage.

In the meantime the other subject races of Hungary were preparing in their own way for resistance to the Magyars. The Croatian Assembly at Agram, finding themselves discouraged by the Emperor, were disposed to strengthen their union with the Serbs of Slavonia; and, on June 6, Gaj and Jellaciç both supported proposals at Agram for uniting the Serbs and Croats under one rule. Rajaciç, who happened to be passing through Agram, heartily responded to these proposals; and it was resolved that the relations between the Ban of Croatia and the Voyvode of the Serbs should be left to be settled at a later period. But the Serbs, though heartily desiring sympathy with the Croats, were not disposed to trust to alliances, however welcome, or to Constitutional arrangements, however ingenious, for the settlement of their grievances against the Magyars; for they, too, had been forced to abandon peaceable discussions for actual warfare. Crnojeviç, not having been found sufficiently stern in the Magyar service, was being driven into more violent courses by the addition of a fiercer subordinate; and the cruelties inflicted on the Serbs of the Bacska had so roused their kinsmen in other parts of Hungary that an old officer of the military frontier had crossed the Danube at the head of his followers and seized the town of Titel.

At the same time the Serbs sent a deputation to Hrabowsky, the Governor of Peterwardein, to complain of the cruelties of the Magyar bands. Hitherto Hrabowsky had seemed to hesitate between the two parties; but he now grew angry in the conference with the Serb deputation, and disputed the right of the Serbs to stay in Hungary. The Serbs, alarmed at these threats, began once more to gather at Carlowitz; and they now tried to draw recruits from friendly neighbours. Stratimiroviç had succeeded in persuading some of the regiments from the frontier to take up the Serb cause; but he perhaps relied still more on the help of those Serbs from the principality of Servia, who were now flocking in across the border to defend their kinsmen against the Magyars. Of the leaders of these new allies the most important was General Knicsanin, who helped to organize the forces in Carlowitz. The Serbs of Carlowitz had, however, not yet entered upon actual hostilities, when, on June 11, during one of the meetings of their Assembly, Hrabowsky suddenly marched out of Neusatz, dispersed a congregation who were coming out of a chapel half way on the road between Neusatz and Carlowitz, and reached the latter town before the Serbs were aware of his intention. The Serbs, though taken by surprise, rushed out to defend their town, with a Montenegrin leader at their head. The contest continued for several hours; but at last Hrabowsky and his soldiers were driven back into Neusatz. Two days later ten thousand men were in arms in Carlowitz to defend their town and their race.

But while the Slavs in Hungary were girding themselves for this fierce war, they had not forgotten the more peaceable union proposed to them by the Bohemians; and on May 30 representatives from the different Slavonic races of the Empire had been welcomed in Prague by Peter Faster and other Bohemian leaders. On June 1 the National Committee of Prague, while deliberating on the future Constitution of Bohemia, were joined by several of their Slavonic visitors; and out of this combination the Congress was formed. It was speedily divided into three sections: one representing Poles and Ruthenians, one the Southern Slavs (that is not only the Serbs and Croats, but also the Slovenes of Krain and the adjoining provinces), and the third the Bohemians, Moravians, Silesians, and the Slovaks of North Hungary. Many of the members of the Congress appeared in old Bohemian costumes, and from the windows of the town waved the flags of all the different Slavonic races. At 8 a.m. on June 2 the members of the Congress went in solemn procession through the great square called the Grosser Ring, so soon to be the scene of a bloody conflict, to the Teynkirche, the church in which Huss preached, and where his pulpit still stands. In front of the procession went the Students' Legion, singing patriotic songs; two young men followed, one in the Polish dress, the other bearing a white, blue, and red flag, which was supposed to symbolize the union of the Slavonic peoples. A division of the Swornost corps followed these; then came the Provisional Committee, and then the representatives of the three sections of the Congress. The Poles were led by Libelt, a leader in the recent rising in Posen, and the Bohemians by the philologist Szaffarik. At the altar, which was sacred to the bishops Cyril and Methodius, the presiding priest offered thanks to God for having put unity and brotherly love into the hearts of the Slavs; and he prayed that the Lord of Hosts would bless the work to the salvation of the nation, as well as of the whole fatherland. From the church they proceeded to the hall in the Sophien-Insel. That hall had been decked with the arms of the different Slavonic races. At the upper end of it was a table covered with red and white, the Bohemian colours; and the choir began the proceedings with an old national song. The Vice-President, after formally opening the Assembly, resigned his seat to Palacky, who had been chosen President.

Palacky then rose and addressed the meeting. He spoke of the gathering as the realisation of the dreams of their youth, which a month ago they could hardly have hoped for. "The Slavs had gathered from all sides to declare their eternal love and brotherhood to each other. Freedom," he continued, "which we now desire, is no gift of the foreigner, but of native growth, the inheritance of our fathers. The Slavs of old time were all equal before the law, and never aimed at the conquest of other nations. They understood freedom much better than some of our neighbours, who cannot comprehend the idea of aiming at freedom without also aiming at lordship. Let them learn from us the idea of equality between nations. The chief duty of our future is to carry out the principle of 'What thou wouldst not that men should do unto thee, that do not thou to another.' Our great nation would never have lost its freedom if it had not been broken up, and if each part had not gone its own separate way, and followed its own policy. The feeling of brotherly love and freedom could secure freedom to us. It is this feeling and Ferdinand that we thank for our freedom." For himself, Palacky continued, he could say, "Lord now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation which Thou hast prepared for us before the face of the whole world. A light for the enlightenment of the peoples, and the glory of the Slavonic race." Then, addressing the Assembly, he concluded with these words: "Gentlemen, in virtue of the office entrusted to me by you, I announce and declare that this Slavonic Assembly is open; and I insist on its right and duty to deliberate about the welfare of the fatherland, and the nation, in the spirit of freedom, in the spirit of unity and peace; in the name of our old, renowned Prague, which protects us in its bosom; in the name of the Czech nation, which follows our proceedings with hearty sympathy; in the name of the great Slavonic race, which expects from our deliberations its strengthening and eternal regeneration. So help us God." Other speeches followed from representatives of the different Slavonic races; and petitions to the Emperor were prepared in favour of the demands made by the Serbs at Carlowitz, and of the rights of the Poles and Ruthenians; while plans were drawn up for the equalization of the rival languages in the schools.

But while these peaceable discussions were proceeding in the Slavonic Congress, more fiery elements were at work in other parts of the city. During the months of April and May there had been signs of various kinds of discontent among different sections of the population. Workmen's demonstrations about wages had attracted some attention; while one public gathering, approaching to a riot, had secured the release of an editor, supposed to have been unjustly arrested, and had hastened the resignation of Strobach, the Mayor of Prague. But the most fiery agitations were those which had been stirred up among the students by a man named Sladkowsky, with the object of weakening as far as possible the German element in Prague. So alarming did these demonstrations become that Count Deym resigned his seat on the National Committee; and Count Leo Thun, the Governor of Prague, threatened to dissolve the Swornost in order to hinder further disorder; but the opposition to this proposal was so strong that he was obliged to abandon it.