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 first point of difference between Kossuth and Görgei related to exactly one of those matters in which military and political feeling seem most necessarily and reasonably to come into collision. This was the choice of Bem as a general in the Hungarian army. Bem had succeeded in escaping secretly from Vienna and coming to Hungary. He had, indeed, offered his services to the Hungarians at an earlier period, but Pulszky had persuaded him that he could best serve the cause of Hungary in Vienna; and now that that city had fallen, he hastened back to Kossuth. Kossuth and Bem seem always to have recognized in each other that common faith in the people, and power of calling out popular enthusiasm, which, in different ways, was the great strength of both of them. Bem's conduct in the defence of Vienna had given sufficient pledge of his zeal against the power of Austria, a zeal which had produced such effect on the imagination of his enemies that it was said by the Vienna wits that Francis Joseph ordered the bells of Vienna to be muffled because they would ring out "Bem, Bem!" But Görgei disliked Bem for the very reason for which Kossuth approved of him. He considered him a knight errant who followed revolutionary methods of warfare which were quite unknown to correct military tacticians; and he soon found that his own estimates of the different officers under him were quite opposed to those formed by Bem. Kossuth therefore wisely decided that Görgei and Bem could not work together, and he despatched Bem to take the command in Transylvania.

On the next question at issue the balance of opinion will probably be in favour of Görgei. The volunteers who had been raised by the national Government were naturally objects of special favour to them; but they had in some cases shown themselves disorderly; and this disorder was, no doubt, considerably increased by the return to their country of Hungarian soldiers who had been stationed in Galicia and other parts of the Empire. These soldiers had, in many cases, thrown off the authority of their officers, and asserted their national rights at the expense of military discipline. Görgei tried to make special arrangements for so redistributing these recruits as to utilize their services while preventing the growth of any such feelings of insubordination as might be likely to spring from their previous mutiny. In these methods of re-organization the Committee of Defence saw a tendency to discourage patriotic feeling; and Görgei found himself opposed in matters where he justly felt that he should have been allowed some freedom of action.

But an even more important question of controversy was the general plan of the campaign. Kossuth and the Committee of Defence were extremely anxious to defend the Western frontier of Hungary, partly in order to weaken the fears produced by the battle of Schwechat; partly, as Görgei believed, to make it easier to draw the line between Hungary and Austria, and so break off political connection between them. Görgei, on the other hand, held that, since Hungary was now threatened on north, south, and west, and, since Windischgrätz's army was better disciplined than the Hungarian soldiers, a defence of the frontier was impossible, and that it would be better to retreat to Raab and defend the principal passes across the White Mountains, while removing the seat of Government beyond the Theiss. In this plan he was at first over-ruled. But his ideas received apparent justification in the defeats which he suffered from Windischgrätz; and, on December 19 he was actually compelled to retreat to Raab.

Then followed an episode which has brought much discredit on Kossuth. He issued a sensational address, declaring that the Committee of Defence would be buried under the ruins of Buda rather than desert the capital. Görgei ridiculed the idea of the defensibility of Buda-Pesth; but the Committee of Defence insisted; and Görgei was preparing for battle, when, early in January, 1849, the news suddenly arrived in his camp that the Committee of Defence had left Pesth without waiting for the siege, and had retired to Debreczin. But, if Kossuth had been to blame in these earlier matters of controversy, Görgei now took a step which certainly seems to justify all Kossuth's subsequent suspicions. Görgei was, at this time, stationed at Waitzen, a little north of Pesth; and he there issued a declaration to the army condemning the policy of the Committee of Defence, and calling upon the officers to declare that the army was fighting for the maintenance of the Constitution of Hungary as sanctioned by King Ferdinand V.;[21] that it will oppose all those who may attempt to overthrow the Constitutional Monarchy by untimely Republican intrigues; and that it will only obey orders received from the responsible Minister of War, appointed by the King.

A few weeks later Görgei was again defeated by Windischgrätz, who, after the battle, offered him an amnesty, and free life out of Austria. In answer to this offer, Görgei sent a copy of the proclamation drawn up at Waitzen, declaring that this was the ultimatum, both of his army and of himself. By this act it is evident that he called the attention of the General against whom he was nominally fighting to the internal party divisions of Hungary. However brilliant Görgei's military abilities might be, and however unfairly he had been interfered with by the Committee of Defence, it cannot be wondered at that, after this act of treachery, they looked upon him with distrust. In the following month Görgei was deprived of his command and superseded by the Polish General Dembinski.

In the meantime a struggle of far greater moral importance, though possibly of less value to military science, was being carried on in Transylvania. The Roumanian movement had been undergoing the same change, which had already passed over the national movements of the Serbs and Croats. As early as June, 1848, the Croatian Assembly had expressed their sympathy with the struggle of the Roumanians; and even from the Italians some utterances of sympathy had been heard, in favour of their kinsmen in Transylvania. The rejection of their petition by the Emperor, and the consequent persecution by the Magyars had led the Roumanians to rely upon themselves; and had induced some of their leaders to look for help rather to the new State which was trying to struggle into existence in Wallachia and Moldavia, than to the Austrian Government. In September, however, a new element was introduced into the struggle by the passing of a Conscription law by the Hungarian Diet. While the Roumanians resented this, as an attempt to make them serve under the military leadership of their persecutors, they also saw that an attempt to enforce a law, passed without the sanction of the Emperor, was a direct defiance of his authority; and at a meeting in the town of Orlat, they protested against this conscription, and declared their preference for the Austrian army, as against the Hungarian. They now openly announced their separation from Hungary, and demanded to be formed into an independent nation. The Hungarians met this demand by authorizing their Commissioner Berczenczei to summon the Szekler to a public meeting, nominally to plan the defence of their country, but really as a counterblast to the demands of the Roumanians.

But the Roumanians felt that it was necessary to strengthen themselves by an appeal to a recognized authority; and they saw that the desultory and barbarous warfare, which they had hitherto carried on, would never suffice to win them the rights which they had now resolved to claim; they therefore made advances to Field-Marshal Puchner, the General of the Austrian forces in Transylvania. Latour had for some time past been trying to stir up Puchner to action; but Puchner had hesitated to listen either to the Austrian Minister, or to the Roumanian leaders. He seems to have been a man of much higher type than most of the Austrian generals who were engaged in the struggles of this period; and he shrank alike from the underhand intrigues of Latour, and from the dreadful cruelties of Roumanian warfare. The latter feeling would have had special force with him at this period; because the most urgent appeals for his help came from Urban, a former officer in the Austrian army, who had been the most notorious for his brutalities of all the leaders of the Roumanians. But, while Puchner was unwilling to commit himself definitely to the Roumanian cause, he opposed himself to the reckless persecution which the Magyar Commissioner Vay had carried on against all who had helped in organizing the petition of the Roumanians; and Puchner had even gone to Karlsburg, and successfully petitioned for the release of some of the Roumanian prisoners. He had hoped, however, to combine this merciful and moderate policy with the recognition of Vay's authority, and even with a kind of co-operation with him. But the fiercely revolutionary character, which the Hungarian Diet began to assume after the death of Latour, compelled Puchner into more decided opposition to their proceedings.

On the 8th of October, Kossuth issued an order to the towns of Hungary, in which he told them that anyone who did not hang out the Hungarian flag, and express in writing his devotion to the Hungarian cause, and his willingness to obey the committee appointed by the Government, should be shot as a traitor; and this savage proclamation was followed the next day by a command from Commissioner Vay, to the tax collectors of Transylvania, that they should no longer send the taxes to the central office at Hermannstadt, but to the office in Klausenburg, which had hitherto been considered subordinate. As Hermannstadt was at once the military head-quarters of the Austrian army and the chief town of the Saxon settlement in Transylvania, this was a direct attack both on the Imperial power, and on the influence of the Saxons. A few days later the Szekler, in the meeting which had recently been summoned, denounced Puchner for his attempt to hinder that meeting, and formally repudiated his authority.

Puchner now felt that the time had come for action; and, on the 18th of October, he issued from Hermannstadt an appeal to all the inhabitants of Transylvania, and especially to the official boards. In this he declared that, since the Count Palatine and his Ministers had resigned their offices, there had been no legal Government in Hungary. The Government of Kossuth, which wrongfully claimed to act for the Emperor, was substituting terror for equality, and had falsely spread the rumour that the Government desired to use the Roumanians to oppress the Magyar and Szekler. In order, then, to put an end to anarchy, and to protect the country from terrorism, he, Puchner, had resolved to take advantage of the Imperial Manifesto of October 3, which had placed Hungary under military Government; and he called upon all boards to act with him in restoring order, and upon the volunteers and national guards to place themselves under his command.