Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 404, June, 1849

Wearied by contentions, in which his character and feelings unfitted him to take a part; distracted by diverse counsels; involved by a series of intrigues, from which he could not escape, in conflicting engagements; dreading the new order of things, and diffident of his own ability to perform the duties it demanded of him, the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated; and by a family arrangement the crown of Austria was transferred, not to the next heir, but to the second in succession. The crown of Hungary, as we formerly stated, had been settled by statute on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg; but no provision had been made for the case which had now arisen. The Hungarians held that their king had no power to abdicate; that so long as he lived he must continue to be their king; that if he became incapable of performing the regal functions, the laws had reserved to the diet the power to provide for their due performance; that the crown of Hungary was settled by statute on the heirs of the House of Hapsburg, and the Emperor Francis Joseph was not the heir. The laws of Hungary required that her king should be legitimately crowned according to the ancient customs of the kingdom, and should take the coronation oath before he could exercise his rights or authority as sovereign. If he claimed the crown of Hungary as his legal right, he was bound to abide by the laws on which that right was founded. But these laws required that he should be crowned according to the customs of Hungary, and that he should bind himself by a solemn oath to maintain the constitution and the laws, including those passed in March, sanctioned and put into operation in April 1848. In short, that he should concede what Hungary was contending for.

The abdication of the Emperor Ferdinand, and the accession to the Imperial throne of his youthful successor, presented another opportunity of which the Austrian government might have gracefully availed itself, to terminate the differences with Hungary. The young emperor was fettered by no engagements, involved in none of the intrigues that entangled his unwary predecessor, and entailed so great evils upon the country. He was free to take a constitutional course in Hungary, to confirm the concessions which had been voluntarily made, and which could not now be recalled – to restore to the Imperial government a character for good faith; and thus to have won the hearts of the Hungarians. Supported by their loyal attachment to their king, he might have peacefully worked out the reforms in the government of his empire which the times and the circumstances demanded or justified. But Count Stadion, the real head of the new ministry, though possessed of many eminent qualities as a statesman, was deeply imbued with the old longing after unity in the system of government: he hoped to effect, by means of a constitution devised and framed for that purpose, the amalgamation of the different parts of the empire, which abler men had failed to accomplish under an absolute monarchy, in circumstances more favourable to success. The opposition that was inevitable in Hungary he proposed to overcome by force of arms; and, at a moment when a desire for separate nationality was the predominant feeling in the minds of all the different races in the empire, he had the hardihood to imagine that he could frame a constitution capable of overcoming this desire, and of fusing them all into one. It was considered an advantage that the emperor, unfettered by personal engagements to Hungary, was free to prosecute its subjugation, to subvert its constitution, and to force the Hungarians to accept in its place the constitution of Count Stadion, with seats in the Assembly at Vienna for their representatives, under one central government for the united empire. This may have been a desirable result to obtain; it might, if attainable, have been ultimately conducive to the strength of the empire and the welfare of all classes; but it was not to claim the hereditary succession to a throne secured and guarded by statutes – it was rather to undertake the conquest of a kingdom.

Windischgratz and Jellachich occupied Pesth without opposition, set aside the constituted authorities, and governed the country, as far as their army extended, by martial law. The Committee of Defence retired beyond the Theis to Debreczin, in the heart of the Majjar country, and appealed to the patriotism of the Hungarians. The army was rapidly recruited, and was organised in the field, for the campaign may be said to have endured throughout the whole winter. From time to time it was announced from Vienna that the war was about to be terminated by the advance of the imperial army, and the dispersion or destruction of Kossuth's faction. The flight of Kossuth, and his capture as a fugitive in disguise, were reported and believed. The delay in the advance of the imperial army was attributed to the rigour of the season and the state of the roads; and, when these impediments no longer existed, to the incapacity of Windischgratz, who was roughly handled by the government press of Vienna. The true cause was carefully concealed. The resistance was not that of a faction, but of a nation. That fact has been fully established by the events in this unfortunate, unnecessary, and unnatural war.

The Austrian armies employed in Hungary have probably exceeded one hundred and fifty thousand regular troops, aided by irregular bands of Croats and Serbes, and latterly by a Russian corps of ten thousand men. They established themselves both in Transylvania and in Hungary, and were in possession of the whole of the fertile country from the frontiers of Austria to the Theis, which flows through the centre of the kingdom. From Transylvania, both the Austrian and the Russian forces have been driven into Wallachia. From the line of the Theis the imperial army has been forced across the Danube, on which they were unable to maintain their positions. The sieges of Komorn and Peterwardein, the two great fortresses on the Danube, of which the capture or surrender has so often been announced, have been raised; and the question is no longer whether Debreczin is to be occupied by the Emperor's forces, but whether Vienna is safe from the Hungarians. Opposed to the admirable army of Austria, these results could not have been obtained unless the great body of the nation had been cordially united, nor even then, unless by a people of great energy, courage, and intelligence.

Had the government of Austria known how to win the hearts of the Hungarians for their sovereign – had they but preserved the good faith and the sanctity of the monarchy in Hungary, how secure and imposing might the position of the Emperor have now been, in the midst of all the troubles in Germany! Hungary desired no revolution; she had peacefully obtained, by constitutional means, all she desired. Her revolution had been effected centuries ago; and, with indigenous institutions, to which her people were warmly attached, she would have maintained, as she did maintain, her internal tranquillity and her constitutional monarchy, whatever storms might rage around her.

The resources that Hungary has put forth in this contest have surprised Europe, because Europe had not taken the trouble to calculate the strength and the resources of Hungary. With a compact territory, equal in extent to Great Britain and Ireland, or to Prussia, and the most defensible frontier of any kingdom on the continent of Europe; with a population nearly equal to that of England, and not much inferior to that of Prussia;6 with a climate equal to that of France, and soil of greater natural fertility than any of these; with a representative government long established, and free indigenous institutions, which the people venerate; with a brave, energetic, and patriotic population, predisposed to military pursuits, jealous of their national independence, and of their personal liberty – ambitious of military renown, proud of their traditionary prowess, and impressed with an idea of their own superiority to the surrounding populations – Hungary, as all who know the country and the people were aware, would be found a formidable antagonist by any power that might attack her. But, paradoxical and incredible as it may appear, we believe it is not the less true, that, little as Hungary was known in most of the countries of Europe, there was hardly a capital, in that quarter of the globe, where more erroneous notions regarding it prevailed than in Vienna. In other places there was ignorance; in the capital of Austria there was the most absurd misapprehension. Though generally a calm, sensible man, possessing a considerable amount of general information, an Austrian, even after he has travelled, appears to be peculiarly incapable of understanding a national character different from his own: this is true even in respect to other Germans; and neither the proximity of the countries, nor the frequent intercourse of their inhabitants, seems to have enabled him to form any reasonable estimate of the Hungarian character or institutions. We might adduce curious evidence of this ignorance, even in persons of distinction; but we shall content ourselves with quoting Mr Paget's observations on the subject, in June 1835: —

"The reader would certainly laugh, as I have often done since, did I tell him one half of the foolish tales the good Viennese told us of the country we were about to visit – no roads! no inns! no police! We must sleep on the ground, eat where we could, and be ready to defend our purses and our lives at every moment. In full credence of these reports, we provided ourselves most plentifully with arms, which were carefully loaded, and placed ready for immediate use… It may, however, ease the reader's mind to know, that no occasion to shoot anything more formidable than a partridge or a hare presented itself, and that we finished our journey with the full conviction, that travelling in Hungary was just as safe as travelling in England.

Why, or wherefore, I know not, but nothing can exceed the horror with which a true Austrian regards both Hungary and its inhabitants. I have sometimes suspected that the bugbear with which a Vienna mother frightens her squaller to sleep must be an Hungarian bugbear; for in no other way can I account for the inbred and absurd fear which they entertain for such near neighbours. It is true, the Hungarians do sometimes talk about liberty, constitutional rights, and other such terrible things, to which no well-disposed ears should be open, and to which the ears of the Viennese are religiously closed."

There were, no doubt, elements of discord in Hungary, of which Austria, on former occasions as well as now, took advantage; but their value to her in the present war has been greatly overrated. The population of the kingdom, like that of the empire, is composed of various races, amongst which there are differences of language, religion, customs, and sentiments. Of the 14,000,000 of people who inhabit Hungary, not more than 5,000,000 are Majjars, about 1,262,000 are Germans, 2,311,000 Wallacks, and, of the remaining 5,400,000, nine-tenths or more are Sclaves. The Sclaves are therefore as numerous as the Majjars; and, although these races had at all times combined against foreign enemies, it was probable that they would not unite in a domestic quarrel, as that with Austria might be considered. When a great part of the colonists of the military frontier, chiefly Croats and Serbes, took part against the government of Hungary, and asserted a Sclave nationality as opposed to the Hungarian nationality, it was too hastily assumed, by persons imperfectly informed, that the whole Sclavonic population, equalling the Majjars in number, would be available to Austria in the war. But the Sclaves of Hungary are a disunited race, divided into nine different tribes, the greater part of which have nothing in common except their origin. Most of these tribes speak languages or dialects which are mutually unintelligible; and the Sclaves of different tribes are sometimes obliged to use the Majjar tongue as their only means of communication. Some belong to the Roman Catholic Church, some to the Greek; others are Protestants – Lutheran or Calvinist: and some, while they have submitted to the see of Rome, retain many of their Greek forms and services, adhere to the Greek calendar, and constitute a distinct communion. The Slovacks of Northern Hungary, numbering 1,600,000, are partly Roman Catholics, partly Protestants – and have no intercourse or community of language or feeling with the Sclaves of Southern and Western Hungary, from whom they are separated by the intervention of the Majjar country. The Ruthenes, also in Northern Hungary, are distinct from the Slovacks, occupy a different portion of the slopes and spurs of the Carpathians, and have no connexion with the Sclaves on the right bank of the Danube, from whom they are separated by the whole breadth of Hungary and Transylvania at that point – they amount to about 400,000. The Croats, not quite 900,000 in number, are partly Roman Catholics and partly belong to the Greek Church. When religious toleration was established in Hungary, they exercised the power enjoyed by the provincial assembly to exclude Protestants from the country. The Shocks of Sclavonia Proper, and the Rasciens of that province and of the Banat, amounting respectively to above 800,000, and nearly half a million, are tribes of the Serbe stock, of whom the greater part adhere to the Greek Church, and whose language is different from that of the Croats, the Slovacks, and the Ruthenes. The Bulgarians, about 12,000, the Montenegrins, about 2000, and the Wends from Styria, about 50,000, are small distinct tribes, speaking different languages, and divided by religious differences. But the whole of these Sclavonic tribes have this in common, that they are all animated by a feeling of hatred to the German race; and more than half of the Sclave population of Hungary has joined the Hungarians against Austria.

There was also a belief that the Hungarians had oppressed the Sclaves, and that the whole Sclave race would therefore combine to put down their oppressors. This was another misapprehension. Great efforts have been made by some of their poets and their journalists to persuade the Sclaves that they were oppressed; and the Croat newspapers and pamphlets of M. Gay, and the Austrian journals, have circulated this belief over Germany, whence it was disseminated over Europe; but there seems to have been no foundation for the charge. The Sclaves enjoyed the same rights and privileges as the Hungarians; they were protected by the same laws; they have shared equally with the Hungarians in all the concessions obtained by the Diet of Hungary, to which the Sclaves sent their own representatives, from the sovereign; they bore less than their due proportion of the public burdens, and they were left in the enjoyment of their own internal and municipal administration. Croatia, where the movement in favour of what was called Illyrian nationality originated fifteen or sixteen years ago, and where it was fostered, curiously enough, by the patronage of two imperial governments – Croatia does not appear to have any reason to complain of Hungarian oppression. The Croats had their own provincial assembly or diet, which regulated the internal affairs of the province, their own county assemblies, their own Ban or governor, they elected their own county and municipal officers; a great part of the province was organised as a part of the military frontier, and was therefore removed from the control of the Hungarian Diet, and brought more directly under the authorities at Vienna. The only specific charge, so far as we have been able to discover, that they brought against the Hungarians was, that the Majjars desired to impose their language upon the Croats. The history of the matter is this, – Latin had been the language of public business, of debates, and of the decisions of courts of law in Hungary, till the attempt of Joseph II. to substitute the German excited a strong national movement in favour of the Majjar. From 1790 this movement has been persevered in with the greatest steadiness; and in 1830 an act was passed by the Diet, and sanctioned by the king, which decreed that, after the 1st of January 1844, no one could be named to any public office who did not know the Majjar. This completed the series of measures which substituted that language for the Latin, a language unintelligible to the great body of the people. If a living was to be substituted for a dead language, no other than the Majjar could well be selected. Besides being greatly more numerous than any other tribe speaking one language, the Majjars were the wealthiest, the most intelligent and influential; and their language was spoken not only by their own race, but by a large proportion of the other inhabitants of the country – probably by six or seven times as many persons as used any other Hungarian dialect. The Croats, whose language was not that of any other tribe, could not expect it to be chosen, and all that was required of them to employ the Majjar where they had hitherto employed the Latin language, and nowhere else. The county of Agram, the most important and populous of the three counties of Croatia, repudiated the notion of a separate Illyrian nationality, of which, however, the county town was the centre; and clung to Hungary as the safeguard of its liberty. The truth is that the Croats, of whose hostility to the Hungarians we have heard so much, are nearly equally divided between Hungary and Austria; and, but for the military organisation which places so large a portion of that people at the disposal of Austria – and that the most formidable portion – the agitators for Illyrian nationality would probably have been put down by their own countrymen. The Slovacks, a people of Bohemian origin, refugees from religious persecution, have joined the Hungarians. A great part of the people of Sclavonia Proper have refused to take part against Hungary. The tribes that have engaged most extensively and violently in hostilities against the Hungarians have been the people of Servian race, and of the Greek church, in the counties of the Lower Danube, and in Croatia. Amongst the Hungarian Sclaves of the Greek church, it is well known that foreign influence has long been at work, for which the Greek priesthood are ready instruments. The hopes of these tribes have been turned towards the head of their church, and the sympathies of thirty millions of Eastern Sclaves who belong to the same church.

Though feelings of nationality and of race have been developed in Hungary, as elsewhere, to an extent hitherto unexampled, they have there to contend with the craving for liberty, which has at the same time acquired intensity, and which amongst the Sclaves has been fostered and inflamed by the efforts of those who, for the purpose of exciting them against the Majjars, would persuade them that they were the victims of oppression. The more intelligent and influential are now convinced, that it is to Hungary – to which they owe the liberty they enjoy – and not to anarchy, or to Austria, against the attacks of whose government Hungary has so long defended their freedom and her own, that they must look for advancement.

The relative positions of the peasants and the nobles, and the antagonism of these classes, enabled Austria to exercise great influence and even power in Hungary. The peasant population, amounting to three millions or more, now emancipated from their disabilities and exclusive or disproportionate burdens, and raised to the rank and wealth of freeholders and proprietors, by the liberality of the nobles, have an equal interest with them in defending the institutions to which they owe their elevation.

The elements of discord, although they were such as enabled agitators to raise a part of the Sclaves against the Hungarians, when it was resolved to retract the concessions that had been made to them, would hardly have been found available for that purpose, had not the instigators of the revolt acted in the name of the King of Hungary, and of more than one imperial government; nor even then, perhaps, had they not been enabled to dispose of the resources of the military frontier. Now that the Hungarians have obtained important successes, it is probable that the Sclaves will all join them. The movement of these tribes against the Hungarians, which was caused by other influences in addition to that of Austria, has thus tended to lead the imperial government into hostility with Hungary, without contributing much to its strength.

When the Austrian government resolved to subjugate Hungary, it was presumed that they undertook the conquest of that country relying on their own resources. But the success of the enterprise was so doubtful, and a failure so hazardous to the empire, that we never could believe it possible that it had been undertaken without an assurance of support. It is true that the imperial government might at that time have expected an adjustment of their differences with Sardinia; but Venice still held out, peace with Sardinia had not been concluded, the state of Italy was daily becoming more alarming, and the Austrian cabinet knew that they could maintain their hold of Lombardy, and reduce Venice, only by means of a powerful army. They were aware that the condition of Galicia, and even of Bohemia, was precarious, and that neither could safely be denuded of troops. The state of affairs in Germany was not such as to give them confidence, still less to promise them support; and the attitude they assumed towards the assembly at Frankfort, though not unworthy of the ancient dignity of Austria, was not calculated to diminish her anxiety. Even in the Hereditary States all was not secure. They were aware that old sentiments and feelings had been shaken and disturbed; that, although order had for the time been restored, by the fidelity and courage of the army, men's minds were still unsettled; and that, both in the capital and in the provinces, there were factions whose sympathies were not with the imperial government, and which, in case of disasters, might again become formidable. The capital alone required a garrison of twenty thousand men, to keep it in subjection – to preserve its tranquillity. Putting aside, therefore, every consideration as to the justice of the war, and looking merely to its probable consequences, it is obvious that, without such a preponderance of power and resources as would not only insure success, but insure it at once – by one effort – it would have been madness in Austria, for the purpose of forcing her constitution upon the Hungarians, to engage in a contest in which she staked her power – her existence – and which could not fail to be dangerous to her if it became protracted.

Let us then examine the resources of both parties, and see what was the preponderance on the side of Austria, which would justify her in undertaking so hazardous an enterprise, on the supposition that she relied solely on her own resources.

The Austrian empire contains a population of 36,000,000; of these about 7,000,000 are Germans – about 15,500,000 are Sclaves, – nearly 8,000,000 are of Italian and Dacian races, and about 5,600,000 of Asiatic races, including 5,000,000 of Majjars. If from these 36,000,000 we deduct the population of Hungary, 14,000,000, of Lombardy and Venice, 4,876,000 – or, together, nearly 19,000,000, hostile to Austria – and the population of Galicia, 4,980,000, which did not contribute to her strength, to say nothing of Bohemia or Vienna, or Crakow, there will remain to Austria, to carry on the war, only 12,144,000. But, as probably two millions of the Sclaves and other tribes of Hungary, including the military frontier, may have been reckoned as on her side, that number may be deducted from Hungary and added to Austria. There will then remain to Hungary a population of 12,000,000, concentrated in their own country for its defence, and to Austria about 14,000,000, whose military resources must be distributed over her whole dominions – from the frontiers of Russia to those of Sardinia, from the frontiers of Prussia to the confines of Turkey – to re-establish her authority in Lombardy, to reduce Venice to submission, to hold the Sardinians and the Italian republicans in check, to control and overawe Galicia and Crakow, to garrison Vienna and maintain tranquillity at home, and, finally, to conquer 12,000,000 of Hungarians. It is true she had a noble army, and Hungary then had almost none, except such levies as she had hastily raised, and which were as yet without skilful commanders. But Austria knew by experience the difficulties and hazards of a war in Hungary. Her government must have known the resources of the country, the courage and patriotism of its inhabitants, and the success that had attended their resistance to her forces on more than one former occasion. Surrounded by difficulties at home, in Italy, and in Germany, with full one half of the population of the empire hostile to the government, she was undertaking an enterprise which her forces, in circumstances far more favourable to success, had repeatedly failed to accomplish.