The moment was propitious. The Austrians had been beaten in a great battle (at Isaszeg) on April 7; and most of the fortresses, except Buda, had been recaptured. Görgei himself seemed satisfied. The elated Magyars dreamed even of a swift campaign against Vienna, and of bringing the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be acceptable to all his subject races. But their dream, if ever attainable, was spoiled by delay. Görgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before he marched farther west, and only on May 21 did he succeed in storming its citadel. By that time a new peril, more terrible than any previous, loomed up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, had besought Russia to help her, and the Czar, glad of an excuse for interfering, was marshaling his troops on the Hungarian frontier.
No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset this threatened intervention. France and England would not even recognize their republic, although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately sympathized with their cause. From Venice alone, the little republic round whose neck the Austrian noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to their army nor a florin to their purse. Desperate, but not yet willing to surrender, the Magyars nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth proclaimed a crusade, a levy in mass; every man to arm himself, were it only with a scythe or a bludgeon; perpetual prayers to be offered up in the churches; the enemy to be harassed at all places, to be hindered by the destruction of bridges and stores, and, wherever possible, by open fighting.
Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like this, is amazed that any people could be roused to make that last stand. Plainly enough, the Magyars had three soldiers against them to every one of theirs; ammunition and victuals were failing them; their treasury was empty; their armies could expect no reinforcements: to what end, therefore, protract a hopeless war? Reasoning thus, we miss the secret, not only of the revolutionists of 1848–49, but of all who have ever been kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held dearer than life. The Magyars would never have gone thus far,—never have felt during that May-month the fleeting exhilaration of victory,—had they not been fired by a passion which not disaster but death alone could quench.
The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar government held a council of war, at which it was proposed to consolidate the various armies, and to defeat first the Austrians coming from the west and then the Russians coming from the north and east,—a sensible plan, frustrated, however, by delays, some of which were unavoidable. The Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements from Italy, and commanded by Marshal Haynau, who came red-handed from Brescia, advanced into Hungary, and defeated Görgei on the river Waag (June 20–21). The Magyar government and Diet departed for the second time, in melancholy procession, from their capital. By the middle of July one hundred and fifty thousand Russians—eighty thousand of whom were led by the wolfish Paskevitch—had penetrated into the heart of the country. Inevitably, the Magyar forces would be driven in and caught between the victorious enemies: nevertheless, they would not yet submit.
Internal discord alone tarnished the record of the last days of the Hungarian Republic. On July 1, Kossuth removed Görgei for insubordination, but Görgei’s officers and men protested so loudly that Kossuth thought it discreet to reinstate him. Three weeks later, a fraction of the Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality of all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, and then, warned by the rumble of hostile cannon, it dissolved forever.
For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth hurrying hither and thither to proclaim hope where no hope was; conferring with nonplussed but still resolute generals; dragging after him, like his shadow, those printing-presses for bank-notes, now worth no more than blank paper. Finally, at Arád, he resigned the presidency, and appointed Görgei dictator with full powers. At Világos, on August 13, Görgei surrendered his exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to Rüdiger, the Russian general. Thus was consummated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat, branded as Görgei’s treason, but what, to an impartial observer, appears an inevitable act. Görgei’s course throughout the war cannot be commended: inordinate personal ambition, not treason, was its motive; he may have thought to play the part of Monk, but more likely he had taken Napoleon for his model; one thing alone is certain,—he did not intend that Kossuth should reap the glory of victory, if victory came. In surrendering at Világos he did what every commander is justified in doing, when further resistance could only entail fresh losses without any hope of altering the result.
Learning the capitulation of the main army, the other generals one by one submitted. Klapka alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn until September 27, when hunger and an empty magazine forced him to surrender. With the hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol of that revolution which, bursting forth at Palermo in January, 1848, had spread through Europe, shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in down-trodden people the belief that a new epoch, a Golden Age of Liberty, had come. Hopes as splendid as men ever cherished had now been shattered, and in their stead only the bitterest memories remained; for as each people pondered in sorrow and oppression the events of those twenty months, it was tormented by the reflection that its own dissensions, not less than the might of its enemies, had wrought its ruin.
Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to encourage the stray bodies of Magyar troops to give themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary with a severity which matched the persecutions of the French Reign of Terror. In every city Marshal Haynau set up his shambles; in every parish he plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confiscation, overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar cause; death awaited the leaders. On October 6, at Arád, fourteen generals were hanged or shot, and that same day Count Louis Batthyányi was shot at Pesth. Görgei was spared, thanks to the personal intervention of Czar Nicholas.
Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took refuge in Turkey. The Sultan protected him, in spite of the threats of Russia and Austria,—protected him because the Turkish religion forbade the betrayal of a refugee,—but kept him for nearly two years in half bondage. Then the Magyar hero, at the instance of the American Congress, was permitted to embark on an American man-of-war. He came to the United States, where he was greeted with an enthusiasm which no other foreigner except Lafayette had stirred. He got boundless sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum of money for prosecuting the emancipation of Hungary; but the times were unfavorable, and the lot of the Magyars concerned very little the rulers of European diplomacy after 1850. Returning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation his sole aim. He strove to interest the great powers in Hungary’s fate; he strove, through secret emissaries, to provoke the Magyars themselves to rebel. The former were deaf; the latter, taught by terrible experience, deemed it folly to attack Austria again in the field. Through the persistent and judicious political agitation led by the sagacious Francis Deák, they achieved, in 1867, a recognition of their constitutional rights, and a full measure of home rule.
Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be reconciled. He lived in exile at Turin, a forlorn old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the memories of exploits which once had amazed the world. There he died on March 20, 1894, having survived all his contemporaries, friends and foes alike, who had beheld the rise and splendor and eclipse of his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of a haughty and valiant people at one of the heroic crises of their history was his mission. His genius, his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his countrymen; his glory, being a part of the glory of a whole race, is secure. That race, which Arpád led into the heart of Europe, showed, at Kossuth’s summons, a thousand years later, that it had not lost the traits which had once distinguished it on the shores of Lake Baikal and along the upper waters of the Yenisei.