Prompt measures were now taken by the Hungarians to restore the old status of the country, and laws were made which conferred upon the peasants freeholds of land and all other reforms for which they had for so long been agitating.
The London Hungarian Committee, to whose paper I have before referred, tells us that before the French Revolution had broken out this Bill had passed both Houses. "The Austrian Cabinet, seeing their overwhelming unanimity, felt that resistance was impossible"; consequently this Reform Bill of April, 1848, was considered by all Hungarian patriots as their Magna Charta.
Nevertheless it was their fate very shortly after to appreciate the truth of this hard fact, that it is one thing to make a Charter and another thing to keep it. Austria had many ways up her sleeve of breaking the spirit of the letter. First she saw to it that Hungary had no properly equipped home regiments for her defence, and next she dissolved the Hungarian Diet, and again tried to fuse Hungary into the Austrian Empire. Then at last the Hungarians determined at once, by force, to end the contemptible, practical joke which Austria was engaged in playing off upon their country. They gathered an army together, but their utmost efforts could only raise one not half the size of that of their opponents, and consequently the result of the battle was defeat for themselves. Later on, when Kossuth had managed to collect more arms and men, battles on a much larger scale were fought; and after the Austrians had been defeated more than a dozen times, the whole of their armies were driven ignominiously out of Hungary. It was after this series of victories that Kossuth was made his country's governor, and the whole nation declared as one man that the House of Hapsburg had for ever forfeited any claim to the Crown.
It was now that, had England attempted mediation for Hungary (according to Francis Newman), "we should have saved Austria from the yoke of Russia, and have at least put off the Crimean war," because, when Russia had come to the assistance of Austria in her final difficulties with Hungary, after she had been driven out of that country, "if England and France had not fought it, nothing short of an equivalent war must have been fought against Russia by other Powers … because the security of all Europe is endangered by the virtual vassalage of Austria to Russia… for Austria is now so abhorred in Hungary that she cannot keep her conquest except by Russian aid." [Footnote: Reminiscences of Two Wars and Two Exiles.]
In 1848 Kossuth's envoy, Pulszky, was sent to England, and, quite ignorant of the wheels within wheels which hampered the political movements of Lord Palmerston, was amazed that he himself found a repulse awaiting him at the English Minister's hands. Lord Palmerston asserted that the rights or wrongs of Hungary were practically a dead letter to England, who had never thought of that country as existing apart from Austria. He considered "a strong Austria was a European necessity"; but notwithstanding all he said then and later, the impression made itself felt on men's minds that there was a "power behind the throne" in all his speeches, and none knew what that hidden power was. To-day we all know that it was the foreign counsellorhood of Baron Stockmâr, who advised Prince Albert in those days. As Newman says: "It is now open to believe that Stockmâr and his Austrian policy … sometimes drove Palmerston to despair, and our diplomacy into heartlessness."
[Illustration: LOUIS KOSSUTH]
This elucidation of the whole puzzle throws fresh light on that attitude of Lord Palmerston which so completely mystified Kossuth.
"I cannot understand," he said, "what is the policy of Palmerston's heart. He talks one way, yet acts another way—always against the interests and just rights of Hungary."
Kossuth's next step was to take refuge in Turkey, and here he at once set to work to learn the language, and succeeded so well that he wrote a grammar, which was afterwards used in the Turkish schools. It was said to have been due to Lord Palmerston, by the way, that the Sultan refused to give him up to Austria and Russia. But at any rate the Sultan seemed to owe the decision which guided this refusal in large measure to his own loyalty to those who had sought shelter with him during civil war. At any rate, Kossuth reported that he certainly said, "I will accept war rather than give up the Hungarian fugitives." Eventually an American ship conveyed Kossuth out of Turkey, and he landed at Marseilles. Of course, by then the monarchy had been overthrown in France, and Louis Napoleon-with whom Kossuth was later on to be closely connected—was President.
In October, 1851, Kossuth crossed to England. Newman tells us that though "he was enthusiastically received by the whole nation," yet that "he was slandered, feared, despised, and disliked by those esteemed highest and noblest in England." But, at any rate, he was given a hearty welcome in America, for he did not stay long in England when he saw that those in authority did not warmly espouse his cause.