The measure of the crimes of the Austrian house was, however, filled up, when, after[*] its defeat, it applied for help to the Emperor of Russia; and, in spite of the remonstrances and protestations of the Porte, and of the consuls of the European powers at Bucharest, in defiance of international rights, and to the endangering of the balance of power in Europe, caused the Russian troops, stationed at Wallachia, to be led into Transylvania, for the destruction of the Hungarian nation.
[Footnote *: The Russian army entered Transylvania on January 3d, 1849; this is the army which was driven out again. But the main Russian armies were only on the move in April, and took two months longer to enter Hungary. These were applied for late in March.]
Three months ago we were driven back upon the Theiss; our just arms have already recovered all Transylvania; Klausenburg, Hermanstadt, and Kronstadt are taken; one portion of the troops of Austria is driven into Bukowina; another, together with the Russian force sent to aid them, is totally defeated, and to the last man obliged to evacuate Transylvania, and to flee into Wallachia. Upper Hungary is cleared of foes.
The Servian rebellion is further suppressed; the forts of St. Thomas and the Roman intrenchment have been taken by storm, and the whole country between the Danube and the Theiss, including the country of Bacs, has been recovered for the nation.
The commander-in-chief of the perjured house of Austria has himself been defeated in five consecutive battles, and has with his whole army been driven back upon and even over the Danube.
Founding a line of conduct upon all these occurrences, and confiding in the justice of an eternal God, we in the face of the civilized world, in reliance upon the natural rights of the Hungarian nation, and upon the power it has developed to maintain them, further impelled by that sense of duty which urges every nation to defend its existence, do hereby declare and proclaim in the name of the nation regally represented by us, the following:—
1st. Hungary, with Transylvania, as legally united with it, and the possessions and dependencies, are hereby declared to constitute a free, independent, sovereign state. The territorial unity of this state is declared to be inviolable, and its territory to be indivisible.
2d. The house of Hapsburg-Lorraine—having by treachery, perjury, and levying of war against the Hungarian nation, as well as by its outrageous violation of all compacts, in breaking up the integral territory of the kingdom, in the separation of Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, Fiume, and its districts, from Hungary—further, by compassing the destruction of the independence of the country by arms, and by calling in the disciplined army of a foreign power, for the purpose of annihilating its nationality, by violation both of the Pragmatic Sanction and of treaties concluded between Austria and Hungary, on which the alliance between the two countries depended—is, as treacherous and perjured, for ever excluded from the throne of the united states of Hungary and Transylvania, and all their possessions and dependencies, and are hereby deprived of the style and title, as well as of the armorial bearings belonging to the crown of Hungary, and declared to be banished for ever from the united countries and their dependencies and possessions. They are therefore declared to be deposed, degraded, and banished for ever from the Hungarian territory.
3d. The Hungarian nation, in the exercise of its rights and sovereign will, being determined to assume the position of a free and independent state among the nations of Europe, declares it to be its intention to establish and maintain friendly and neighbourly relations with those states with which it was formerly united under the same sovereign, as well as to contract alliances with all other nations.
4th. The form of government to be adopted for the future will be fixed by the Diet of the nation.