All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. Assuming the Imperial assurances to be honest, they passed a reform bill abolishing the privileges of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the state for the loss they sustained in the emancipation of their serfs. Bills authorizing equal taxation, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the abolition of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to one million two hundred thousand voters, were adopted with but little discussion. Religious toleration—except for Jews—became the law of the land.
The Magnates having made this unparalleled sacrifice, King Ferdinand came over to Presburg and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the Constitution. The Cabinet proceeded to organize its administration,—a task which would have been sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now extraordinary and urgent matters pressed upon it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats rose in rebellion. Most alarming was the situation in Croatia, where the Slavs were agitating for separation from Hungary. Baron Jellachich, who had just been appointed Ban or Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In June the Magyar ministers hurried to Innspruck—whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled after a second outbreak in Vienna—to protest against these rebellious acts. The Emperor assured them that he had given the Ban no sanction; that he had, indeed, dismissed him from the Imperial service. It happened that Jellachich was at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his mind an unwritten commission to serve Austria against Hungary.
The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the outbreak in Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she had still to accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was her legal king; but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial government, was instigating her enemies.
The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the ancient capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by implication Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in violence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly the most effective speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to have moved stocks and stones by their voice; yet not on this account must we disbelieve the record. For posterity can never supply the one thing needful to the consummate orator’s success,—it can never supply the state of mind of his audience. We shall always find that the epoch-making speech was addressed to listeners every one of whom had long been burning to hear just those words. This is why so many of the orations that altered history look faded on the printed page; this is why we must in many cases judge the orator as we judge the singer or the actor,—by the effect he produces on his contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first orators of the century, though a later generation is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even those who heard him speak in a language not his own, and who had listened to Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard his equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged with the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his eloquence was irresistible.
In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,—that Hungary must either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and perilous sea. All were waiting for the decisive word.
Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was brown, his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-shaven chin. At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers dread a collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the strength which burned in his subject, and they listened for two hours, spell-bound and electrified.
“I feel,” he said to them, “as if God had put in my hands the trumpet to rouse the dead, that, if sinners and weak, they may sink back into death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, they may waken to eternity.” He then went on to review the quarrel with Croatia, declaring that to that country Hungary had, from immemorial time, accorded all the privileges which she herself enjoyed, and that recently she had conceded to the Croats a wider use of their native language. “I can understand a people,” he said ironically, “who, deeming the freedom they possess too little, take up arms to acquire more, though they play, indeed, a hazardous game, for such weapons are two-edged; but I cannot understand a people who say, ‘The freedom you offer us is too great,—we will not accept your offer, but will go and submit ourselves to the yoke of Absolutism.’” Kossuth next touched on the situation in the South, and showed wherein it differed from that in the Southwest. He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful pretensions of Croatia, and thereby to annul the pledges of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous cloud on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a Russian army along the Pruth. When, after this review, he solemnly announced, “The fatherland is in danger,” not a deputy was surprised, not a head shook incredulously. At last he asked for authority to levy two hundred thousand soldiers, and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins, setting forth the means by which he planned to meet this extraordinary measure as eloquently as he had set forth its need.
He had held the Assembly captivated for two hours; now, as he was closing, his strength failed, and he could not speak. The deputies, too, were speechless. For a brief moment intense silence reigned between him and them. Then Paul Nyáry, who only yesterday had attacked the policy of the Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking God to be his witness, and exclaimed, “We grant everything!” In a flash four hundred hands were raised, and four hundred voices repeated Nyáry’s covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had recovered strength to say that his request should not be taken as a demand for a vote of confidence. “We ask your vote for the preservation of the country; and, sirs, if any breast sighs for freedom, if any desire waits for fulfilment, let that breast suffer a little longer, let it have patience until we have saved the fatherland. You have all risen to a man, and I bow before the great-heartedness of the nation, while I ask one thing more: let your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates of hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary!”
In March, under the magic of Kossuth’s irresistible oratory, the Magyars had boldly demanded their constitutional rights; now in July, thrilled by the same magic, they pledged themselves to defend their independence to the death.
The summer passed amid recruiting of Honvéds, volunteer “defenders of the fatherland,” the attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues of the Imperial Court to browbeat the Hungarian Cabinet. In September, Jellachich, at last avowedly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade Hungary.