CHAPTER II.

SKETCH OF THE CONDITION OF HUNGARY PREVIOUS TO 1848.

NGARY, with Transylvania and Croatia, is about the e of Great Britain and Ireland, and contains nearly 000,000 of inhabitants. It is inhabited by three diset races of men. The Magyars, in number 5,000,000, descendants of the ancient Huns, are the gentry and les of the country. The Sclavonian population, who in Hungary called Slovacs, number 6,000,000, and a part of the great Sclave family who occupy the ater portion of the east and north of Europe—a family ich numbers among its members Russia, Poland, the ater part of the Austrian dominions, and the greater t of Turkey in Europe. The eastern portion of the ntry is inhabited by the Roumans or Wallachs, in nber about 3,000,000. They are the descendants of Dacian colonies of Trajan, and speak a dialect the ater part of which is of Latin origin. There are 00,000 Jews, Gipsies, and Germans, who may be conered as colonists rather than natives. The Magyars ng the gentry, the Slovacs and Roumans are the yeomen the country. These races speaking different languages

very generally have used the Latin tongue as the means of intercommunication. Almost every one understood and spoke it after a sort: it was the language of the Diet. The debates were held in it, and it was the language employed in communicating with the government at Vienna. The Magyar migration took place about the end of the ninth century, under their leader Arpad. His descendants ruled Hungary as Dukes till the reign of St Stephen, to whom the Pope gave the title of King and Apostle in consequence of his zeal in converting his countrymen from their pagan superstitions. This, with much difficulty and after many relapses, was at length effected. The crown remained with the descendants of Arpad as long as his race lasted. Upon their dying out it became elective in the fourteenth century, and has remained so ever since.

Much intestine trouble was the result. One prince being elected, half a dozen were dissatisfied at non-election, and separately or together fell on the successful candidate of the people. The Turks, taking advantage of these differences, invaded Hungary and completed its misfortunes. Eventually Ferdinand the First of Austria was elected King of Hungary, and the crown of St Stephen has ever since remained with his descendants; but they have gained no other rights thereby than those of constitutional and elected monarchs. Each was elected by the Diet, and before coronation was obliged to take an oath to observe the Hungarian constitution.

In the reign of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, he settled the succession to his paternal dominions, including Hungary, by the Pragmatic Sanction, upon his daughter Maria Theresa and her descendants, who were to be elected to the crown of Hungary, and swear to observe the constitution. By this Hungarian rights were guaranteed; and should the elected monarch break his coro

nation-oath, it was declared lawful for the Hungarian people to resist him by force of arms. The Pragmatic Sanction was the sole tie which bound Hungary to the Austrian monarch; and that tie being broken through, the constitution being interfered with, the emperor might be lawfully resisted, and could no more treat those resisting him as rebels, than he could by the laws of nations so treat any foreign nations with whom he might happen to quarrel. Hungary never became a component part of the Austrian empire; it preserved its own laws and its own constitution. It was no more Austrian than England was Hanoverian when George of Brunswick succeeded to the English throne. The emperor was in Hungary not obeyed as Emperor of Austria, but as King of Hungary; his orders were addressed to the chancery of that state, to which none but natives could be admitted, and who were bound to obey no orders not warranted by their national laws. He had no power to alter anything belonging to their government without the recommendation of the parliament of Hungary, the Magyars or nobles being the only persons who had any voice in them.*

In considering the struggle which took place in 1848

The Sclave and Rouman populations had no share whatever in the government; a distinction which should be clearly borne in mind. In ignorance of this much democratic flattery has been lavished on some of the Hungarian refugees, both here and in America, although the representatives of aristocracy and the opponents of those classes not noble. At the same time it is to be remembered that they, although an aristocracy, are in proportion a very numerous one; that they are in number at least a third of the entire population; and though many of them are poor, indeed there is an entire class of pauper nobles, yet each man among them is as proud a gentleman as the greatest magnate of the land, and has as keen a sense of honour. Daring, ardent, and impatient of control; impetuous, patriotic, loving freedom, but wanting in steady industry and perseverance, they still show those qualities which in former days made their ancestors, the Huns of Attila, the scourge of Europe, from the fierceness of their passions and their warlike disposition. They have hitherto in every age been the bulwark of the empire. To sum up their character in a few

and 1849, it must never be lost sight of that the only connexion between Hungary and Austria was, that the king of the one and the emperor of the other happened to be the same person. The house of Hapsburg had no right over it, but by the voluntary election of the nobles, which had been first obtained by one of the fortunate matrimonial alliances of that fortunate house of whom the epigrammatist has written :

"Bella gerant alii, ut tu felix Austria nube

Nam quæ Mars aliis dat tibi regna Venus."

Austria was in fact an assembly of kingdoms—a sort of United States-each governed by its own laws; some absolute, some aristocratic, of which the emperor was king, prince, or duke. They were united in him, but between each other distinct and separate.

That these different races of men should at various times have shown such devotion to their sovereign, and that often under such trying circumstances, is probably owing to that which was the hereditary policy of Austria, in lulling the jealousies and stilling the rivalries of her incongruous elements. The original dominions of Austria were so small, her power so weak, that, unable to force obedience in her provinces, she resorted to the easier, more politic, as well as more Christian system of conciliation, convincing them, by her attention to their wants, that their best safeguard was in her welfare. Under this words, they are as gallant a body of patriotic gentlemen as are to be met with in Europe. Possibly some of those who profess to regard history as little more than an old almanac, will somewhat wonder to find that they have been led away into bestowing their most lusty cheers on persons differing from themselves in every respect. Possibly, too, when it is known that if the Hungarian fought against Austria, it was in defence of established rights, guaranteed by treaties which had been invaded, and not for the purpose of encroaching on the authority of their lawful sovereign, they may gain the sympathy of those who have very much more in common both in feelings, in actions, and in traditions, than the persons by whom they have been hitherto adulated.

system no people, how homogeneous soever, have given proof of such devotion to their country and to their sovereign. "It was to the gallantry of the Hungarians that Maria Theresa owed the crown which was saved to her from French and Bavarian ambition. It was the steadiness of the Bohemians that enabled Marshal Daun to repel the armies of Frederick of Prussia within sight of Vienna. But for the patriotism of Hungary, Austria had fallen to rise no more at Austerlitz; and to the loyalty of the Tyrolese she owed her safety after the dreadful disaster of Wagram." Scarce any country contains such a variety of races; none have found in their inhabitants such invariable devotion, and under such trying misfortunes. It needed no prophet to foresee that it would be in an evil hour for her welfare that a policy so enlightened was discarded; that the love of her subjects would be turned to hatred, their trust in her changed to suspicion, and their obedience cold. The attempt to fit incongruous nations of different traditions, habits, and feelings with the same procrustean polity, is as absurd as to clothe a regiment of men of different sizes in a uniform of invariable dimensions. Such however was the attempt of Austria, not taken up as a momentary whim, but obstinately persevered in. The outbreak of Hungary in 1848 was her reward.

Hungarian dissatisfaction was a matter of gradual growth, and had arisen from this attempt by the Austrian cabinet to govern that country directly, instead of by means of legal institutions and recognised authorities. Instead of the emperor as a constitutional king remaining content to exercise his lawful prerogatives through the medium of the established national laws, the representative system, and a national administration, he pursued a system of central aggression which was met by a steady unflinching opposition on the part of Hungary.

VOL. II.

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