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

The great cause of the students alarm was the appointment of Windischgrätz to take the command of the forces in Bohemia. His proceedings during the March movement in Vienna were well known; and the fear caused by his arrival was still further increased by the threatening position that he had taken up; for he had mounted his cannon on two sides of the city; namely, on the commanding fortress of the Wissehrad, on the South, from which he could have swept a poor and crowded part of Prague; and in the Joseph's barrack, on the North-East. The members of the Town Council tried to check the demonstrations of the students, and to persuade them to appeal to Windischgrätz in a more orderly manner. In order to give dignity to the proceedings, the Burgomaster consented to accompany the students on the proposed deputation. Windischgrätz, however, answered that he was responsible to the King, and not to the Council; though, when Count Leo Thun appealed to him, he consented to withdraw the cannon from the Joseph's barrack, declaring that there was no need for its presence there; but that he had been determined not to yield to the students.

While the students succeeded in further irritating against them a man whose haughty and overbearing spirit was naturally disposed to opposition, they were still more rash and unfortunate in their relations with some whom they had had greater hopes of conciliating. The aristocratic leaders of the Bohemians, while asserting the independence of Bohemia, and the need for protecting Slavonic liberties, were most anxious to make as many concessions to German feeling as could be made consistently with these objects. One of the noblemen, who had been fiercest in his denunciations of the rising of May 15th, even thought it well to send to Vienna a long explanation and modification of his protest; while Palacky and other leading nationalists inaugurated a feast of reconciliation in which many of the German Bohemians took part. So successful had this policy appeared to be that the town of Saatz, which had been the first to express alarm at the Bohemian attitude towards the Germans, declared on May 20 its sympathy with the Prague address to the Emperor, and its desire for union between the German and Bohemian elements in Bohemia. But the students seemed doomed to weaken the effect produced by their more moderate countrymen. They combined a strong Czech feeling with a great desire for democratic government; and while they thought they could enlist the sympathies of the Vienna students by the latter part of their creed, they seemed to be unaware that Germanism was to the students of Vienna what Czechism was to them. On June 5th, the very same day on which the Slavonic Congress was deciding to send its petition to the Emperor, more than a hundred students of Prague started on a deputation to their comrades in Vienna. But on their way, they thought it necessary to attack and insult the German flag, wherever it was displayed. They arrived in Vienna to find the Viennese students suspicious even towards those who had been their champions, and still smarting from the recollection of a struggle between their Legion, and the National Guard, who had attempted to suppress them. It was while they were in this state of irritation, that the Czech students appeared in the Hall of the University; and, unfortunately, at the same time, there arrived from Prague the representatives of two German Bohemian Clubs. Schuselka, Goldmark, and other Viennese leaders, urged a reconciliation between the two races; but the news of the insults to the German flag so infuriated the Viennese students, that they drove the Czechs from the Hall, and ordered them to leave Vienna within twenty-four hours.

The unfortunate deputation returned to Prague to find that the Slavonic Congress was approaching its final acts, and was preparing two appeals, one to the Emperor, and one to the Peoples of Europe. The latter appeal was based on a general complaint of the oppressions from which the Slavs suffered. It demanded the restoration of Poland, and called for a European Congress to settle international questions; "since free Peoples will understand each other better than paid diplomatists." In the appeal to the Emperor, the Congress went into greater detail, as to the special demands of the different Slavonic races of Austria. The Bohemians, indeed, mainly expressed their thanks for the independence which now seemed legally secured. The Moravians suggested an arrangement which would combine the common action of Moravia and Bohemia with a provision for Moravian local independence. The Galicians pointed out how much they had been left behind by the other Austrian provinces in the struggle for freedom, and proposed an arrangement for securing equality between the Polish and Ruthenian languages in Galicia, and for granting to Galicia the same provincial freedom that had already been secured to Bohemia. The Slovaks of North Hungary demanded protection for their language against the Magyar attempt to crush it out; equal representation in the Hungarian Assembly; official equality between the Slovak, Ruthenian, and Magyar languages; and freedom for those Slovaks who had recently been arrested and imprisoned by the Magyars, for defence of their national rights. The Serbs, of course, demanded the acceptance of the programme put forward at Carlowitz; and the Croats the recognition of the legality of the acts of Jellaciç, and of the municipal independence of the Assembly of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. Lastly, the Slovenes desired that the provinces of Steiermark, Krain, Carinthia, and some neighbouring districts, should be formed into a separate kingdom, in which the Slovenian language should be the official one. All the Slavs combined in the desire that Austria should be a federal State, and in the protest against that absorption in Germany, the fear of which had led to the calling of the Congress.

But sober and rational as was the tone of the Slavonic Congress, as a whole, there were turbulent spirits in Prague, who were determined that the matter should not end peaceably. The extremer representatives of Polish feeling desired the separation of Poland, and disliked any plan which would reconcile Galicia to remaining part of Austria. On the other hand, there had appeared in Prague at this period an adventurer named Turansky, who while professing to be a champion of the Slovaks of North Hungary, seems undoubtedly to have acted as an "agent provocateur." Such men as these were easily able to act upon the excited feelings of the students; and were further aided in stirring up violent feeling by a strike among the cotton workers which was just then going on.

Finally, the outburst came on June 12. The Slavonic Congress at Prague, already preparing to break up, met on that day to celebrate a last solemn mass. Once more they all gathered in front of the statue of S. Wenzel; but now the numbers were so great that they spread down the whole length of the Wenzels Platz. In spite of the peaceable intentions of the majority, a number of the workmen had come bearing arms. The mass went off quietly enough; but several of those who had attended it, had had their national feelings excited to the utmost; and, as they left the Wenzels Platz, they marched back singing Bohemian songs, and howling against Windischgrätz. As they passed under the Pulverthurm into the narrow and busy Zeltnergasse, which leads to the Grosser Ring, some soldiers, as ill luck would have it, came out of the neighbouring barrack. The house of Windischgrätz was in the street, and the crowd were hooting against him. Under these circumstances a collision was unavoidable. The crowd were dispersed by the soldiers; some of the students attempted to rally them, and were arrested; the workmen then tried to rescue the students; the soldiers charged, and drove them back under the Pulverthurm, and round into the wider street of Am Graben, and right up to the National Museum, which was the head-quarters of the Swornost. After a fierce struggle the soldiers stormed the Museum, and captured many of the students; but the panic had now spread to other parts of the town. Sladkowsky, at the head of the workmen, broke into the depôt of the Town Watch, and seized arms; while others rushed into the country districts round Prague, and spread the rumour that the soldiers were trying to take away all that the Emperor had granted, and to restore the feudal dues.

In the meantime the leaders of the March movement were greatly startled at hearing of the outbreak. Some of them had already been alarmed at the growing tendency to disturbances in Prague; several of them hastened out to check the riots, and some of them even fought against the insurgents. Count Leo Thun, the Governor of Prague, hastened down to the Grosser Ring to try to still the disturbance; but the students seized him, and carried him off prisoner into the Jesuit College near the Carlsbrücke. They seem to have had very little intention of violence; but they thought to secure by this means his promise of help in a peaceful settlement of the contest. He refused, however, to promise anything while he was kept a prisoner. Some of the students went to the Countess to try to get her to persuade her husband to yield; but though she was so alarmed for his safety that her hair turned white from fear, she firmly refused to comply. Meanwhile, one of the more moderate men went to Windischgrätz to entreat him to give up the students who had been taken prisoners, on condition of the barricades being removed. But Windischgrätz demanded that Count Leo Thun should first be set free. While the discussion was going on, the fight was still raging in the Zeltner Gasse; and Princess Windischgrätz coming to the windows was struck by a shot which mortally wounded her. Windischgrätz hastened to the room where his wife was dying, while the soldiers guarded the house against further attacks. With all his hardness, Windischgrätz was entirely free from the blood-thirstiness of Radetzky and Haynau; and under this terrible provocation he seems to have exercised a wonderful self-restraint. While the Burgomaster and some members of the Town Council were exerting themselves to restore order, Windischgrätz sent an offer to make peace, if Count Leo Thun were released, if guarantees were given for the peace of the town, and if Count Leo Thun and he were allowed to consult together about the restoration of order; and he even promised to await the deliberations of the Town Council on this subject.

But the fight was raging so hotly that the Town Council were unable, for some time, to deliberate. At last, however, temporary suspension of firing was secured, and the Burgomaster, with the assistance of Palacky, Szaffarik and others organized a new deputation to Windischgrätz. Windischgrätz insisted on his former terms; and at last Count Leo Thun was set free, giving a general promise to use his efforts for securing peace. The students, however, put forward the conditions, that Bohemia should be under a Bohemian commander who should be in most things independent of Vienna; that Bohemian soldiers, alone, should be used in the defence of Bohemia; that the officers and soldiers should take their oath to the Constitution, both of Bohemia and of Austria; that the gates of Prague should be defended by the citizens and students alone; and lastly that Windischgrätz should be declared the enemy of all the Peoples of Austria, and tried by a Bohemian tribunal. As Windischgrätz was, obviously, one of the people to whom these conditions would be referred, it was not very likely that the last of these requests would be complied with. He seems still, however, to have retained some desire for concession; and on June 15 he withdrew his soldiers from the other parts of the town to the North side of the river. But new acts of violence followed; and Windischgrätz began to cannonade the town. Again the Burgomaster appealed to him; and he consented to resign in favour of Count Mensdorff, on condition that the barricades should be instantly removed. On the 16th the town seemed to have become quiet; but the barricades were not yet removed; the soldiers indignantly demanded that Windischgrätz should be restored to his command, as the conditions of his resignation had not been fulfilled; and the first act of Windischgrätz, on reassuming power, was to threaten to bombard the town, if it did not surrender by six o'clock a.m. on the 17th.

The wiser students saw the uselessness of further resistance, and began to remove the barricades; but some stray shots from the soldiers, whether by accident or intention, hit the mill near one of the bridges; some women in the mill raised the cry that they were being fired on; the mill hands returned the fire, and Windischgrätz began at once to bombard the town. The barricades were quickly thrown up again; for four hours the bombardment continued; and, while the students were fiercely defending the Carlsbrücke against the soldiers of Windischgrätz, the fire, which had been lighted by the bomb-shells, was spreading from the mill to other parts of the town. Of such a contest there could be but one result. In the course of the 17th several thousand people fled from Prague; and on the 18th Windischgrätz entered the town in triumph, and proclaimed martial law.

The conspiracy had collapsed; but, except Peter Faster, who escaped from the town during the siege, none of the leaders of the March movement were at first suspected of any share in the Rising. Indeed, it was well known that many of them had exerted themselves to suppress it. But Turansky, the agitator above mentioned, suddenly gave himself up to the authorities, and offered to reveal a plot, in which he declared that Palacky, Rieger, and other Bohemian leaders were implicated. The evidence broke down; but it gave excuse for the continuance of the state of siege, for the arrest of many innocent men, and for the refusal to summon the Bohemian Assembly, which was to have met in that very month. This imaginary plot was used as the final pretext for the complete suppression of Bohemian liberty. Turansky was believed, rightly or wrongly, to have been sent by Kossuth to stir up the insurrection; that he had desired the failure of the movement which he stirred up was evident enough; and thus there arose an ineffaceable bitterness between the Bohemians and the Magyars. There also arose out of these events further cause for the bitterness between the Bohemians and the Germans. For, while Prague was still burning, and Windischgrätz was still enforcing martial law, a band of Vienna students arrived in Prague, to congratulate Windischgrätz on his victory over the liberties of Bohemia. The long-simmering hatred between the Germans and Bohemians seems to have found its climax in that congratulation; and from that time forth, whatever might be the political feeling of the leaders on either side, common action between Bohemians and Germans became less and less possible.

As for the effect of the fall of Prague on the position of the Slavonic races in Austria, they were deprived by that event of their last help of a free centre of national life round which their race could gather. For Prague had supplied such a centre in a way in which none of the other Slavonic capitals ever could supply it. Its fame rested on a past, which was connected with struggles for freedom against German tyranny, and the leading facts of which were clear and undisputed; while its geographical position prevented it from coming into collision with the other Slavonic races. Agram and Carlowitz might at times look upon each other as rivals; but Prague had no interest in preferring one to the other, or in destroying the independence of either, while the connection in language between the Bohemians and the Slovaks of North Hungary ensured the sympathy of the former for any attempts at resistance to Magyar supremacy. Lastly, wedged in as Bohemia is between the Germans of the Archduchy of Austria, and that wider Germany with which so many of the Austrians desired to unite, it could never cherish those separatist aspirations which would have prevented Lemberg, for instance, from ever becoming the centre of an Austrian Slavonic federation. Thus the fall of Bohemian liberty prepared the way for a complete change in the character of the Slavonic movement. The idea of a federation of the different Slavonic races of the Empire might be still cherished by many of the Slavonic leaders; and, for a short time, the struggle of the Slavonic races against Magyar and German supremacy might retain its original character of a struggle for freedom. But it was unavoidable that this movement should now gradually drift into an acceptance of the leadership of those courtiers and soldiers, who hated the Germans and Magyars as the opponents, not of Slavonic freedom, but of Imperial despotism.