Meanwhile, political and social agitation was swelling. The King, thinking a European war over the Eastern Question imminent, summoned another Diet to vote him a fresh subsidy and more soldiers. But the Diet, indignant and headstrong, refused all help till Kossuth and some other political prisoners should be released. The King yielded. Kossuth came forth a national hero.
After several months spent in recuperating his health, Kossuth, in January, 1841, established the Pesti Hirlap, or Pesth Gazette. That Government acquiesced in this project showed how far the tide of Liberalism had risen. It showed, too, that Government was astute,—hoping in this way to rob Kossuth of his martyr’s halo; deeming it wiser to let him publish openly than surreptitiously; trusting, above all, to the sharpness of its censors’ eyes and scissors. Kossuth, on his side, was equally cunning, versed in the art of dressing his opinions in such guise that the censor could not object to them, though they carried a meaning which his readers knew how to interpret according to his intention. He wrote on all topics with a vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him tens of thousands of admirers. Like any Magyar patriot, he could count on one of the most powerful of allies,—the race hatred between his countrymen and the Austrians. The very word “German” signified, in the Magyar language, vile, base, despicable. There was a Magyar proverb to the effect that “German is the only language God does not understand.” Innumerable illustrations of this antipathy might be cited, but the following, which Paget tells, will serve as well as another: The proprietor of a theatre produced what he considered a fine piece of scenery, in which was represented a full moon, with round, fat, clean-shaved face. When it rose, the audience hissed, and shouted, “Down with the German moon!” The manager took the hint; next night there rose a swarthy-cheeked, black-moustachioed orb. Hurrahs burst from every mouth, and all cried, “Long live our own true Magyar moon!”
Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle the fuel which ages of hatred had been storing. He had the gift peculiar to really great popular leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and passion; so it mattered little that he dealt in generalizations. Speaking broadly, he preached the abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of the Magyar nationality. The former purpose brought him and the Liberals into conflict with the conservative aristocracy; the latter inflamed against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred of their subject peoples.
For the spirit of nationality had awakened these also. The Slavs of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia dreamed of establishing a great Slavic kingdom in Southeastern Europe; they, too, were putting forth a literature. Their Illyrism—to their prospective nation they gave the name “Illyria”—clashed with the recrudescent Magyarism. When the Hungarian Diet decreed that the Magyar language should be taught in their schools, and that every official must use it, they protested as strenuously as the Magyars themselves had protested when Austria tried to impose the German language and German officials on them. “The Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,” exclaimed Gaj, the poet and spokesman of Illyrism, to the Hungarian Diet: “I did not make this ocean, I did not stir up its waves; but take care that they do not go over your heads and drown you.” Nevertheless, the law was passed. In the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, in the East the Wallachs of Transylvania, feeling the first tingle of national aspirations, resented this encroachment. Austria—whose motto was, Divide et impera—found her advantage in embittering tribe with tribe and class with class.
For three years and a half Kossuth’s Gazette had an unprecedented influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and expected to found another journal which should draw off the Gazette’s patrons. Government, however, refused to grant him a license. Accordingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another form. In the assembly of the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless eloquence the great political questions; outside, he organized an economical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which stunted her industrial and commercial development. Kossuth created a league whose members vowed for five years to use only Hungarian products. He projected a railway to Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged the establishment of savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.
Thus through all the arteries of the body politic new blood was throbbing. Give a people a great idea, and they will find how to apply it to every concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely undermining feudalism; their race was growing more and more restive at Austria’s obstinate delays. When Austria removed the native county sheriffs and put German administrators in their stead, all the Magyar factions joined in denouncing such an assault on their national life. The county system had been the safeguard of Hungary’s political institutions for well-nigh eight hundred years; the sheriff was the foremost official in the county, to whose guidance its interests and civic activity were intrusted. To make an alien sheriff was therefore to check national agitation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance and resentment, though the platform of the Liberals, drawn up by the judicial Deák, wore on its surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot canvass, Kossuth was elected to represent Pesth in the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions sufficed to establish his preëminence as an orator, and his leadership of the Liberal party.
During the winter months of 1847–48 but little was done, though much was discussed. As usual, the Magnates resisted the reforms aimed at their class; as usual, Government temporized and postponed. Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 1848, news reached Presburg of the revolution in Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kindling as it passed the fires of revolt. At Presburg, on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and interrupted a debate on the financial difficulties with Austria. That question of finance, he said, could never be settled separately; in it was involved the whole question of Austria’s disregard of Hungary’s rights. Hungary must have her own laws, her own ministry; taxation must be equal; the franchise must be extended. More than that, he added, Hungary could never prosper until every part of the Empire should be governed by uniform constitutional methods.
Kossuth’s “baptismal speech of the revolution” took the Lower House by storm. An address to the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless reluctance on the part of the Magnates, a large committee, headed by Kossuth and Count Louis Batthyányi,—the Liberal leader in the Upper House,—carried twelve days later to Vienna. The delegates found the Austrian capital in an uproar. On March 13 Metternich, deserted by the aristocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupulously for fifty years, had been hounded from office. The people, after a bloody struggle, had possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth as a deliverer; for his “baptismal speech” had made their aims articulate.
The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the deputation very graciously, and promised to grant their petition. Exulting, they returned to Presburg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthyányi held the premiership, and Kossuth the portfolio of finance. Soon, very soon, tremendous difficulties beset them: Radicals clamored for a republic; the subject races revolted; the Imperial government proved perfidious.
The key to Austria’s subsequent conduct is this: Austria, at heart a coward, had long been able to play the bully; now, however, her outraged peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their mercy; the bully cringed, promised, conceded; concession brought a temporary respite from danger; thereupon she began to think she had been unduly terrified and to regret her concessions; so she cautiously put out feelers of arrogance, to resume her rôle of bully. When she met sharp resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await a better opportunity. Throughout this crisis, Emperor Ferdinand, at his best a man of mediocre capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, and a Court clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and the Empire.