[Campaign around Verona, April-May.]

At this point the dominant interest in Austrian affairs passes from the capital and the northern provinces to Radetzky's army and the Italians with whom it stood face to face. Once convinced of the necessity of a retreat from Milan, the Austrian commander had moved with sufficient rapidity to save Verona and Mantua from passing into the hands of the insurgents. He was thus enabled to place his army in one of the best defensive positions in Europe, the Quadrilateral flanked by the rivers Mincio and Adige, and protected by the fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnano. With his front on the Mincio he awaited at once the attack of the Piedmontese and the arrival of reinforcements from the north-east. On the 8th of April the first attack was made, and after a sharp engagement at Goito the passage of the Mincio was effected by the Sardinian army. Siege was now laid to Peschiera; and while a Tuscan contingent watched Mantua, the bulk of Charles Albert's forces operated farther northward with the view of cutting off Verona from the roads to the Tyrol. This result was for a moment achieved, but the troops at the King's disposal were far too weak for the task of reducing the fortresses; and in an attempt that was made on the 6th of May to drive the Austrians out of their positions in front of Verona, Charles Albert was defeated at Santa Lucia and compelled to fall back towards the Mincio. [425]

[Papal Allocution, April 29.]

[Naples in May.]

A pause in the war ensued, filled by political events of evil omen for Italy. Of all the princes who had permitted their troops to march northwards to the assistance of the Lombards, not one was acting in full sincerity. The first to show himself in his true colours was the Pope. On the 29th of April an Allocution was addressed to the Cardinals, in which Pius disavowed all participation in the war against Austria, and declared that his own troops should do no more than defend the integrity of the Roman States. Though at the moment an outburst of popular indignation in Rome forced a still more liberal Ministry into power, and Durando, the Papal general, continued his advance into Venetia, the Pope's renunciation of his supposed national leadership produced the effect which its author desired, encouraging every open and every secret enemy of the Italian cause, and perplexing those who had believed themselves to be engaged in a sacred as well as a patriotic war. In Naples things hurried far more rapidly to a catastrophe. Elections had been held to the Chamber of Deputies, which was to be opened on the 15th of May, and most of the members returned were men who, while devoted to the Italian national cause were neither Republicans nor enemies of the Bourbon dynasty, but anxious to co-operate with their King in the work of Constitutional reform. Politicians of another character, however, commanded the streets of Naples. Rumours were spread that the Court was on the point of restoring despotic government and abandoning the Italian cause. Disorder and agitation increased from day to day; and after the Deputies had arrived in the city and begun a series of informal meetings preparatory to the opening of the Parliament, an ill-advised act of Ferdinand gave to the party of disorder, who were weakly represented in the Assembly, occasion for an insurrection. After promulgating the Constitution on February both, Ferdinand had agreed that it should be submitted to the two Chambers for revision. He notified, however, to the Representatives on the eve of the opening of Parliament that they would be required to take an oath of fidelity to the Constitution. They urged that such an oath would deprive them of their right of revision. The King, after some hours, consented to a change in the formula of the oath; but his demand had already thrown the city into tumult. Barricades were erected, the Deputies in vain endeavouring to calm the rioters and to prevent a conflict with the troops. While negotiations were still in progress shots were fired. The troops now threw themselves upon the people; there was a struggle, short in duration, but sanguinary and merciless; the barricades were captured, some hundreds of the insurgents slain, and Ferdinand was once more absolute master of Naples. The Assembly was dissolved on the day after that on which it should have met. Orders were at once sent by the King to General Pepe, commander of the troops that were on the march to Lombardy, to return with his army to Naples. Though Pepe continued true to the national cause, and endeavoured to lead his army forward from Bologna in defiance of the King's instructions, his troops now melted away; and when he crossed the Po and placed himself under the standard of Charles Albert in Venetia there remained with him scarcely fifteen hundred men.

[Negotiations as to Lombardy.]

[Reconquest of Venetia, June, July.]

It thus became clear before the end of May that the Lombards would receive no considerable help from the Southern States in their struggle for freedom, and that the promised league of the Governments in the national cause was but a dream from which there was a bitter awakening. Nor in Northern Italy itself was there the unity in aim and action without which success was impossible. The Republican party accused the King and the Provisional Government at Milan of an unwillingness to arm the people; Charles Albert on his part regarded every Republican as an enemy. On entering Lombardy the King had stated that no question as to the political organisation of the future should be raised until the war was ended; nevertheless, before a fortress had been captured, he had allowed Modena and Parma to declare themselves incorporated with the Piedmontese monarchy; and, in spite of Mazzini's protest, their example was followed by Lombardy and some Venetian districts. In the recriminations that passed between the Republicans and the Monarchists it was even suggested that Austria had friends of its own in certain classes of the population. This was not the view taken by the Viennese Government, which from the first appears to have considered its cause in Lombardy as virtually lost. The mediation of Great Britain was invoked by Metternich's successors, and a willingness expressed to grant to the Italian provinces complete autonomy under the Emperor's sceptre. Palmerston, in reply to the supplications of a Court which had hitherto cursed his influence, urged that Lombardy and the greater part of Venetia should be ceded to the King of Piedmont. The Austrian Government would have given up Lombardy to their enemy; they hesitated to increase his power to the extent demanded by Palmerston, the more so as the French Ministry was known to be jealous of the aggrandisement of Sardinia, and to desire the establishment of weak Republics like those formed in 1796. Withdrawing from its negotiations at London, the Emperor's Cabinet now entered into direct communication with the Provisional Government at Milan, and, without making any reference to Piedmont or Venice, offered complete independence to Lombardy. As the union of this province with Piedmont had already been voted by its inhabitants, the offer was at once rejected. Moreover, even it the Italians had shown a disposition to compromise their cause and abandon Venice, Radetzky would not have broken off the combat while any possibility remained of winning over the Emperor from the side of the peace-party. In reply to instructions directing him to offer an armistice to the enemy, he sent Prince Felix Schwarzenberg to Innsbruck to implore the Emperor to trust to the valour of his soldiers and to continue the combat. Already there were signs that the victory would ultimately be with Austria. Reinforcements had cut their way through the insurgent territory and reached Verona; and although a movement by which Radetzky threatened to sever Charles Albert's communications was frustrated by a second engagement at Goito, and Peschiera passed into the besiegers' hands, this was the last success won by the Italians. Throwing himself suddenly eastwards, Radctzky appeared before Vicenza, and compelled this city, with the entire Papal army, commanded by General Durando, to capitulate. The fall of Vicenza was followed June. July. by that of the other cities on the Venetian mainland till Venice alone on the east of the Adige defied the Austrian arms. As the invader pressed onward, an Assembly which Manin had convoked at Venice decided on union with Piedmont. Manin himself had been the most zealous opponent of what he considered the sacrifice of Venetian independence. He gave way nevertheless at the last, and made no attempt to fetter the decision of the Assembly; but when this decision had been given he handed over the conduct of affairs to others, and retired for awhile into private life, declining to serve under a king. [426]

[Battle of Custozza July 25.]

[Austrians re-enter Milan, Aug. 6.]

Charles Albert now renewed his attempt to wrest the central fortresses from the Austrians. Leaving half his army at Peschiera and farther north, he proceeded with the other half to blockade Mantua. Radetzky took advantage of the unskilful generalship of his opponent, and threw himself upon the weakly guarded centre of the long Sardinian line. The King perceived his error, and sought to unite with his the northern detachments, now separated from him by the Mincio. His efforts were baffled, and on the 25th of July, after a brave resistance, his troops were defeated at Custozza. The retreat across the Mincio was conducted in fair order, but disasters sustained by the northern division, which should have held the enemy in check, destroyed all hope, and the retreat then became a flight. Radetzky followed in close pursuit. Charles Albert entered Milan, but declared himself unable to defend the city. A storm of indignation broke out against the unhappy King amongst the Milanese, whom he was declared to have betrayed. The palace where he had taken up his quarters was besieged by the mob; his life was threatened; and he escaped with difficulty on the night of August 5th under the protection of General La Marmora and a few faithful Guards. A capitulation was signed, and as the Piedmontese army evacuated the city Radetzky's troops entered it in triumph. Not less than sixty thousand of the inhabitants, according to Italian statements, abandoned their homes and sought refuge in Switzerland or Piedmont rather than submit to the conqueror's rule. Radetzky could now have followed his retreating enemy without difficulty to Turin, and have crushed Piedmont itself under foot; but the fear of France and Great Britain checked his career of victory, and hostilities were brought to a close by an armistice at Vigevano on August 9th. [427]

[The Austrian Court and Hungary.]

The effects of Radetzky's triumph were felt in every province of the Empire. The first open expression given to the changed state of affairs was the return of the Imperial Court from its refuge at Innsbruck to Vienna. The election promised in May had been held, and an Assembly representing all the non-Hungarian parts of the Monarchy, with the exception of the Italian provinces, had been opened by the Archduke John, as representative of the Emperor, on the 22nd of July. Ministers and Deputies united in demanding the return of the Emperor to the capital. With Radetzky and Windischgraetz within call, the Emperor could now with some confidence face his students and his Parliament. But of far greater importance than the return of the Court to Vienna was the attitude which it now assumed towards the Diet and the national Government of Hungary. The concessions made in April, inevitable as they were, had in fact raised Hungary to the position of an independent State. When such matters as the employment of Hungarian troops against Italy or the distribution of the burden of taxation came into question, the Emperor had to treat with the Hungarian Ministry almost as if it represented a foreign and a rival Power. For some months this humiliation had to be borne, and the appearance of fidelity to the new Constitutional law maintained. But a deep, resentful hatred against the Magyar cause penetrated the circles in which the old military and official absolutism of Austria yet survived; and behind the men and the policy still representing with some degree of sincerity the new order of things, there gathered the passions and the intrigues of a reaction that waited only for the outbreak of civil war within Hungary itself, and the restoration of confidence to the Austrian army, to draw the sword against its foe. Already, while Italy was still unsubdued, and the Emperor was scarcely safe in his palace at Vienna, the popular forces that might be employed against the Government at Pesth carne into view.

[The Serbs in Southern Hungary.]

[Serb Congress at Carlowitz, May 13-15.]

In one of the stormy sessions of the Hungarian Diet at the time when the attempt was first made to impose the Magyar language upon Croatia the Illyrian leader, Gai, had thus addressed the Assembly: "You Magyars are an island in the ocean of Slavism. Take heed that its waves do not rise and overwhelm you." The agitation of the spring of 1848 first revealed in its full extent the peril thus foreshadowed. Croatia had for above a year been in almost open mutiny, but the spirit of revolt now spread through the whole of the Serb population of Southern Hungary, from the eastern limits of Slavonia, [428] across the plain known as the Banat beyond the junction of the Theiss and the Danube, up to the borders of Transylvania. The Serbs had been welcomed into these provinces in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the sovereigns of Austria as a bulwark against the Turks. Charters had been given to them, which were still preserved, promising them a distinct political administration under their own elected Voivode, and ecclesiastical independence under their own Patriarch of the Greek Church. [429] These provincial rights had fared much as others in the Austrian Empire. The Patriarch and the Voivode had disappeared, and the Banat had been completely merged in Hungary. Enough, however, of Serb nationality remained to kindle at the summons of 1848, and to resent with a sudden fierceness the determination of the Magyar rulers at Pesth that the Magyar language, as the language of State, should thenceforward bind together all the races of Hungary in the enjoyment of a common national life. The Serbs had demanded from Kossuth and his colleagues the restoration of the local and ecclesiastical autonomy of which the Hapsburgs had deprived them, and the recognition of their own national language and customs. They found, or believed, that instead of a German they were now to have a Magyar lord, and one more near, more energetic, more aggressive. Their reply to Kossuth's defence of Magyar ascendency was the summoning of a Congress of Serbs at Carlowitz on the Lower Danube. Here it was declared that the Serbs of Austria formed a free and independent nation under the Austrian sceptre and the common Hungarian Crown. A Voivode was elected and the limits of his province were defined. A National Committee was charged with the duty of organising a Government and of entering into intimate connection with the neighbouring Slavic Kingdom of Croatia.

[Jellacic in Croatia.]

At Agram, the Croatian capital, all established authority had sunk in the catastrophe of March, and a National Committee had assumed power. It happened that the office of Governor, or Ban, of Croatia was then vacant. The Committee sent a deputation to Vienna requesting that the colonel of the first Croatian regiment, Jellacic, might be appointed. Without waiting for the arrival of the deputation, the Court, by a patent dated the 23rd of March, nominated Jellacic to the vacant post. The date of this appointment, and the assumption of office by Jellacic on the 14th of April, the very day before the Hungarian Ministry entered upon its powers, have been considered proof that a secret understanding existed from the first between Jellacie and the Court. No further evidence of this secret relation has, however, been made public, and the belief long current among all friends of the Magyar cause that Croatia was deliberately instigated to revolt against the Hungarian Government by persons around the Emperor seems to rest on no solid foundation. The Croats would have been unlike all other communities in the Austrian Empire if they had not risen under the national impulse of 1848. They had been murmuring against Magyar ascendency for years past, and the fire long smouldering now probably burst into flame here as elsewhere without the touch of an incendiary hand. With regard to Jellacic's sudden appointment it is possible that the Court, powerless to check the Croatian movement, may have desired to escape the appearance of compulsion by spontaneously conferring office on the popular soldier, who was at least more likely to regard the Emperor's interests than the lawyers and demagogues around him. Whether Jellacic was at this time genuinely concerned for Croatian autonomy, or whether from the first, while he apparently acted with the Croatian nationalists his deepest sympathies were with the Austrian army, and his sole design was that of serving the Imperial Crown with or without its own avowed concurrence, it is impossible to say. That, like most of his countrymen, he cordially hated the Magyars, is beyond doubt. The general impression left by his character hardly accords with the Magyar conception of him as the profound and far-sighted conspirator—he would seem, on the contrary, to have been a man easily yielding to the impulses of the moment, and capable of playing contradictory parts with little sense of his own inconsistency. [430]

[Affairs of Croatia April 14-June 16.]

Installed in office, Jellacic cast to the winds all consideration due to the Emperor's personal engagements towards Hungary, and forthwith permitted the Magyar officials to be driven out of the country. On the 2nd of May he issued an order forbidding all Croatian authorities to correspond with the Government at Pesth. Batthyany, the Hungarian Premier, at once hurried to Vienna, and obtained from the Emperor a letter commanding Jellacic to submit to the Hungarian Ministry. As the Ban paid no attention to this mandate, General Hrabowsky, commander of the troops in the southern provinces, received orders from Pesth to annul all that Jellacic had done, to suspend him from his office, and to bring him to trial for high treason. Nothing daunted, Jellacic on his own authority convoked the Diet of Croatia for the 5th of June; the populace of Agram, on hearing of Hrabowsky's mission, burnt the Palatine in effigy. This was a direct outrage on the Imperial family, and Batthyany turned it to account. The Emperor had just been driven from Vienna by the riot of the 15th of May. Batthyany sought him at Innsbruck, and by assuring him of the support of his loyal Hungarians against both the Italians and the Viennese obtained his signature on June 10th to a rescript vehemently condemning the Ban's action and suspending him from office. Jellacic had already been summoned to appear at Innsbruck. He set out, taking with him a deputation of Croats and Serbs, and leaving behind him a popular Assembly sitting at Agram, in which, besides the representatives of Croatia, there were seventy Deputies from the Serb provinces. On the very day on which the Ban reached Innsbruck, the Imperial order condemning him and suspending him from his functions was published by Batthyany at Pesth. Nor was the situation made easier by the almost simultaneous announcement that civil war had broken out on the Lower Danube, and that General Hrabowsky, on attempting to occupy Carlowitz, had been attacked and compelled to retreat by the Serbs under their national leader Stratimirovic. [431]

[Jellacie, the Court, and the Hungarian Government.]

It is said that the Emperor Ferdinand, during deliberations in council on which the fate of the Austrian Empire depended, was accustomed to occupy himself with counting the number of carriages that passed from right and left respectively under the windows. In the struggle between Croatia and Hungary he appears to have avoided even the formal exercise of authority, preferring to commit the decision between the contending parties to the Archduke John, as mediator or judge. John was too deeply immersed in other business to give much attention to the matter. What really passed between Jellacic and the Imperial family at Innsbruck is unknown. The official request of the Ban was for the withdrawal or suppression of the rescript signed by the Emperor on June 10th. Prince Esterhazy, who represented the Hungarian Government at Innsbruck, was ready to make this concession; but before the document could be revoked, it had been made public by Batthyany. With the object of proving his fidelity to the Court, Jellacic now published an address to the Croatian regiments serving in Lombardy, entreating them not to be diverted from their duty to the Emperor in the field by any report of danger to their rights and their nationality nearer home. So great was Jellacic's influence with his countrymen that an appeal from him of opposite tenor would probably have caused the Croatian regiments to quit Radetzky in a mass, and so have brought the war in Italy to an ignominious end. His action won for him a great popularity in the higher ranks of the Austrian army, and probably gained for him, even if he did not possess it before, the secret confidence of the Court. That some understanding now existed is almost certain, for, in spite of the unrepealed declaration of June 10th, and the postponement of the Archduke's judgment, Jellacic was permitted to return to Croatia and to resume his government. The Diet at Agram occupied itself with far-reaching schemes for a confederation of the southern Slavs; but its discussions were of no practical effect, and after some weeks it was extinguished under the form of an adjournment. From this time Jellacic held dictatorial power. It was unnecessary for him in his relations with Hungary any longer to keep up the fiction of a mere defence of Croatian rights; he appeared openly as the champion of Austrian unity. In negotiations which he held with Batthyany at Vienna during the last days of July, he demanded the restoration of single Ministries for War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs for the whole Austrian Empire. The demand was indignantly refused, and the chieftains of the two rival races quitted Vienna to prepare for war.

[Imminent breach between Austria and Hungary.]

[Jellacic restored to office, Sept. 3. He marches on Pesth.]

The Hungarian National Parliament, elected under the new Constitution, had been opened at Pesth on July 5th. Great efforts had been made, in view of the difficulties with Croatia and of the suspected intrigues between the Ban and the Court party, to induce the Emperor Ferdinand to appear at Pesth in person. He excused himself from this on the ground of illness, but sent a letter to the Parliament condemning not only in his own name but in that of every member of the Imperial family the resistance offered to the Hungarian Government in the southern provinces. If words bore any meaning, the Emperor stood pledged to a loyal co-operation with the Hungarian Ministers in defence of the unity and the constitution of the Hungarian Kingdom as established by the laws of April. Yet at this very time the Minister of War at Vienna was encouraging Austrian officers to join the Serb insurgents. Kossuth, who conducted most of the business of the Hungarian Government in the Lower Chamber at Pesth, made no secret of his hostility to the central powers. While his colleagues sought to avoid a breach with the other half of the Monarchy, it seemed to be Kossuth's object rather to provoke it. In calling for a levy of two hundred thousand men to crash the Slavic rebellion, he openly denounced the Viennese Ministry and the Court as its promoters. In leading the debate upon the Italian War, he endeavoured without the knowledge of his colleaugues to make the cession of the territory west of the Adige a condition of Hungary's participation in the struggle. As Minister of Finance, he spared neither word nor act to demonstrate his contempt for the financial interests of Austria. Whether a gentler policy on the part of the most powerful statesman in Hungary might have averted the impending conflict it is vain to ask; but in the uncompromising enmity of Kossuth the Austrian Court found its own excuse for acts in which shamelessness seemed almost to rise into political virtue. No sooner had Radetzky's victories and the fall of Milan brought the Emperor back to Vienna than the new policy came into effect. The veto of the sovereign was placed upon the laws passed by the Diet at Pesth for the defence of the Kingdom. The Hungarian Government was required to reinstate Jellacic in his dignities, to enter into negotiations at Vienna with him and the Austrian Ministry, and finally to desist from all military preparations against the rebellious provinces. In answer to these demands the Diet sent a hundred of its members to Vienna to claim from the Emperor the fulfilment of his plighted word. The miserable man received them on the 9th of September with protestations of his sincerity; but even before the deputation had passed the palace-gates, there appeared in the official gazette a letter under the Emperor's own hand replacing Jellacic in office and acquitting him of every charge that had been brought against him. It was for this formal recognition alone that Jellacic had been waiting. On the 11th of September he crossed the Drave with his army, and began his march against the Hungarian capital. [432]

[Mission of Lamberg, He is murdered at Pesth, Sep. 28.]

The Ministry now in office at Vienna was composed in part of men who had been known as reformers in the early days of 1848; but the old order was represented by Count Wessenberg, who had been Metternich's assistant at the Congress of Vienna, and by Latour, the War Minister, a soldier of high birth whose career dated back to the campaign of Austerlitz. Whatever contempt might be felt by one section of the Cabinet for the other, its members were able to unite against the independence of Hungary as they had united against the independence of Italy. They handed in to the Emperor a memorial in which the very concessions to which they owed their own existence as a Constitutional Ministry were made a ground for declaring the laws establishing Hungarian autonomy null and void. In a tissue of transparent sophistries they argued that the Emperor's promise of a Constitution to all his dominions on the 15th of March disabled him from assenting, without the advice of his Viennese Ministry, to the resolutions subsequently passed by the Hungarian Diet, although the union between Hungary and the other Hereditary States had from the first rested solely on the person of the monarch, and no German official had ever pretended to exercise authority over Hungarians otherwise than by order of the sovereign as Hungarian King. The publication of this Cabinet memorial, which appeared in the journals at Pesth on the 15th of September, gave plain warning to the Hungarians that, if they were not to be attacked by Jellacic and the Austrian army simultaneously, they must make some compromise with the Government at Vienna. Batthyany was inclined to concession, and after resigning office in consequence of the Emperor's desertion he had already re-assumed his post with colleagues disposed to accept his own pacific policy. Kossuth spoke openly of war with Austria and of a dictatorship. As Jellacic advanced towards Pesth, the Palatine took command of the Hungarian army and marched southwards. On reaching Lake Baloton, on whose southern shore the Croats were encamped, he requested a personal conference with Jellacic, and sailed to the appointed place of meeting. But he waited in vain for the Ban; and rightly interpreting this rejection of his overtures, he fled from the army and laid down his office. The Emperor now sent General Lamberg from Vienna with orders to assume the supreme command alike over the Magyar and the Croatian forces, and to prevent an encounter. On the success of Lamberg's mission hung the last chance of reconciliation between Hungary and Austria. Batthyany, still clinging to the hope of peace, set out for the camp in order to meet the envoy on his arrival. Lamberg, desirous of obtaining the necessary credentials from the Hungarian Government, made his way to Pesth. There he found Kossuth and a Committee of Six installed in power. Under their influence the Diet passed a resolution forbidding Lamberg to assume command of the Hungarian troops, and declaring him a traitor if he should attempt to do so. The report spread through Pesth that Lamberg had come to seize the citadel and bombard the town; and before he could reach a place of safety he was attacked and murdered by a raging mob. It was in vain that Batthyany, who now laid down his office, besought the Government at Vienna to take no rash step of vengeance. The pretext for annihilating Hungarian independence had been given, and the mask was cast aside. A manifesto published by the Emperor on the 3rd of October declared the Hungarian Parliament dissolved, and its acts null and void. Martial law was proclaimed, and Jellacic appointed commander of all the forces and representative of the sovereign. In the course of the next few days it was expected that he would enter Pesth as conqueror.

[Manifesto of Oct. 3.]

[Tumult of Oct. 6 at Vienna. Latour murdered.]

In the meantime, however confidently the Government might reckon on Jellacic's victory, the passions of revolution were again breaking loose in Vienna itself. Increasing misery among the poor, financial panics, the reviving efforts of professional agitators, had renewed the disturbances of the spring in forms which alarmed the middle classes almost as much as the holders of power. The conflict of the Government with Hungary brought affairs to a crisis. After discovering the uselessness of negotiations with the Emperor, the Hungarian Parliament had sent some of its ablest members to request an audience from the Assembly sitting at Vienna, in order that the representatives of the western half of the Empire might, even at the last moment, have the opportunity of pronouncing a judgment upon the action of the Court. The most numerous group in the Assembly was formed by the Czech deputies from Bohemia. As Slavs, the Bohemian deputies had sympathised with the Croats and Serbs in their struggle against Magyar ascendency, and in their eyes Jellacic was still the champion of a national cause. Blinded by their sympathies of race to the danger involved to all nationalities alike by the restoration of absolutism, the Czech majority, in spite of a singularly impressive warning given by a leader of the German Liberals, refused a hearing to the Hungarian representatives. The Magyars, repelled by the Assembly, sought and found allies in the democracy of Vienna itself. The popular clubs rang with acclamations for the cause of Hungarian freedom and with invectives against the Czech instruments of tyranny. In the midst of this deepening agitation tidings arrived at Vienna that Jellacic had been repulsed in his march on Pesth and forced to retire within the Austrian frontier. It became necessary for the Viennese Government to throw its own forces into the struggle, and an order was given by Latour to the regiments in the capital to set out for the scene of warfare. This order had, however, been anticipated by the democratic leaders, and a portion of the troops had been won over to the popular side. Latour's commands were resisted; and upon an attempt being made to enforce the departure of the troops, the regiments fired on one another (October 6th). The battalions of the National Guard which rallied to the support of the Government were overpowered by those belonging to the working men's districts. The insurrection was victorious; the Ministers submitted once more to the masters of the streets, and the orders given to the troops were withdrawn. But the fiercer part of the mob was not satisfied with a political victory. There were criminals and madmen among its leaders who, after the offices of Government had been stormed and Latour had been captured, determined upon his death. It was in vain that some of the keenest political opponents of the Minister sought at the peril of their own lives to protect him from his murderers. He was dragged into the court in front of the War Office, and there slain with ferocious and yet deliberate barbarity. [433]

[The Emperor at Olmuetz.]

[Windischgraetz marches on Vienna.]

The Emperor, while the city was still in tumult, had in his usual fashion promised that the popular demands should be satisfied; but as soon as he was unobserved he fled from Vienna, and in his flight he was followed by the Czech deputies and many German Conservatives, who declared that their lives were no longer safe in the capital. Most of the Ministers gathered round the Emperor at Olmuetz in Moravia; the Assembly, however, continued to hold its sittings in Vienna, and the Finance Minister, apparently under instructions from the Court, remained at his post, and treated the Assembly as still possessed of legal powers. But for all practical purposes the western half of the Austrian Empire had now ceased to have any Government whatever; and the real state of affairs was bluntly exposed in a manifesto published by Count Windischgraetz at Prague on the 11th of October, in which, without professing to have received any commission from the Emperor, he announced his intention of marching on Vienna in order to protect the sovereign and maintain the unity of the Empire. In due course the Emperor ratified the action of his energetic soldier; Windischgraetz was appointed to the supreme command over all the troops of the Empire with the exception of Radetzky's army, and his march against Vienna was begun.

[Windischgraetz conquers Vienna, Oct. 26-Nov. 1.]

To the Hungarian Parliament, exasperated by the decree ordering its own dissolution and the war openly levied against the country by the Court in alliance with Jellacic, the revolt of the capital seemed to bring a sudden deliverance from all danger. The Viennese had saved Hungary, and the Diet was willing, if summoned by the Assembly at Vienna, to send its troops to the defence of the capital. But the urgency of the need was not understood on either side till too late. The Viennese Assembly, treating itself as a legitimate and constitutional power threatened by a group of soldiers who had usurped the monarch's authority, hesitated to compromise its legal character by calling in a Hurgarian army. The Magyar generals on the other hand were so anxious not to pass beyond the strict defence of their own kingdom, that, in the absence of communication from a Viennese authority, they twice withdrew from Austrian soil after following Jellacic in pursuit beyond the frontier. It was not until Windischgraetz had encamped within sight of Vienna, and had detained as a rebel the envoy sent to him by the Hungarian Government, that Kossuth's will prevailed over the scruples of weaker men, and the Hungarian army marched against the besiegers. In the meantime Windischgraetz had begun his attack on the suburbs, which were weakly defended by the National Guard and by companies of students and volunteers, the nominal commander being one Messenhauser, formerly an officer in the regular army, who was assisted by a soldier of far greater merit than himself, the Polish general Bem. Among those who fought were two members of the German Parliament of Frankfort, Robert Blum and Froebel, who had been sent to mediate between the Emperor and his subjects, but had remained at Vienna as combatants. The besiegers had captured the outskirts of the city, and negotiations for surrender were in progress, when, on the 30th of October, Messenhauser from the top of the cathedral tower saw beyond the line of the besiegers on the south-east the smoke of battle, and announced that the Hungarian army was approaching. An engagement had in fact begun on the plain of Schwechat between the Hungarians and Jellacic, reinforced by divisions of Windischgraetz's troops. In a moment of wild excitement the defenders of the capital threw themselves once more upon their foe, disregarding the offer of surrender that had been already made. But the tide of battle at Schwechat turned against the Hungarians. They were compelled to retreat, and Windischgraetz, reopening his cannonade upon the rebels who were also violators of their truce, became in a few hours master of Vienna. He made his entry on the 31st of October, and treated Vienna as a conquered city. The troops had behaved with ferocity during the combat in the suburbs, and slaughtered scores of unarmed persons. No Oriental tyrant ever addressed his fallen foes with greater insolence and contempt for human right than Windischgraetz in the proclamations which, on assuming government, he addressed to the Viennese; yet, whatever might be the number of persons arrested and imprisoned, the number now put to death was not great. The victims were indeed carefully selected; the most prominent being Robert Blum, in whom, as a leader of the German Liberals and a Deputy of the German Parliament inviolable by law, the Austrian Government struck ostentatiously at the Parliament itself and at German democracy at large.

[The Parliament at Kremsier, Nov. 22.]

[Schwarzenberg Minister.]

In the subjugation of Vienna the army had again proved itself the real political power in Austria; but the time had not yet arrived when absolute government could be openly restored. The Bohemian deputies, fatally as they had injured the cause of constitutional rule by their secession from Vienna, were still in earnest in the cause of provincial autonomy, and would vehemently have repelled the charge of an alliance with despotism. Even the mutilated Parliament of Vienna had been recognised by the Court as in lawful session until the 22nd of October, when an order was issued proroguing the Parliament and bidding it re-assemble a month later at Kremsier, in Moravia. There were indications in the weeks succeeding the fall of Vienna of a conflict between the reactionary and the more liberal influences surrounding the Emperor, and of an impending coup d'etat: but counsels of prudence prevailed for the moment; the Assembly was permitted to meet at Kremsier, and professions of constitutional principle were still made with every show of sincerity. A new Ministry, however, came into office, with Prince Felix Schwarzenberg at its head. Schwarzenberg belonged to one of the greatest Austrian families. He had been ambassador at Naples when the revolution of 1848 broke out, and had quitted the city with words of menace when insult was offered to the Austrian flag. Exchanging diplomacy for war, he served under Radetzky, and was soon recognised as the statesman in whom the army, as a political power, found its own peculiar representative. His career had hitherto been illustrated chiefly by scandals of private life so flagrant that England and other countries where he had held diplomatic posts had insisted on his removal; but the cynical and reckless audacity of the man rose in his new calling as Minister of Austria to something of political greatness. Few statesmen have been more daring than Schwarzenberg; few have pushed to more excessive lengths the advantages to be derived from the moral or the material weakness of an adversary. His rule was the debauch of forces respited in their extremity for one last and worst exertion. Like the Roman Sulla, he gave to a condemned and perishing cause the passing semblance of restored vigour, and died before the next great wave of change swept his creations away.

[Ferdinand abdicates, Dec. 2. Francis Joseph Emperor.]

[Dissolution of the Kremsier Parliament, March 7, 1849.]

[The Unitary Constitutional Edict, March, 1849.]

Schwarzenberg's first act was the deposition of his sovereign. The imbecility of the Emperor Ferdinand had long suggested his abdication or dethronement, and the time for decisive action had now arrived. He gladly withdrew into private life: the crown, declined by his brother and heir, was passed on to his nephew, Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen. This prince had at least not made in person, not uttered with his own lips, not signed with his own hand, those solemn engagements with the Hungarian nation which Austria was now about to annihilate with fire and sword. He had not moved in friendly intercourse with men who were henceforth doomed to the scaffold. He came to the throne as little implicated in the acts of his predecessor as any nominal chief of a State could be; as fitting an instrument in the hands of Court and army as any reactionary faction could desire. Helpless and well-meaning, Francis Joseph, while his troops poured into Hungary, played for a while in Austria the part of a loyal observer of his Parliament; then, when the moment had come for its destruction, he obeyed his soldier-minister as Ferdinand had in earlier days obeyed the students, and signed the decree for its dissolution (March 4, 1849). The Assembly, during its sittings at Vienna, had accomplished one important task: it had freed the peasantry from the burdens attaching to their land and converted them into independent proprietors. This part of its work survived it, and remained almost the sole gain that Austria derived from the struggle of 1848. After the removal to Kremsier, a Committee of the Assembly had been engaged with the formation of a Constitution for Austria, and the draft was now completed. In the course of debate something had been gained by the representatives of the German and the Slavic races in the way of respect for one another's interests and prejudices; some political knowledge had been acquired; some approach made to an adjustment between the claims of the central power and of provincial autonomy. If the Constitution sketched at Kremsier had come into being, it would at least have given to Western Austria and to Galicia, which belonged to this half of the Empire, a system of government based on popular desires and worthy, on the part of the Crown, of a fair trial. But, apart from its own defects from the monarchical point of view, this Constitution rested on the division of the Empire into two independent parts; it assumed the separation of Hungary from the other Hereditary States; and of a separate Hungarian Kingdom the Minister now in power would hear no longer. That Hungary had for centuries possessed and maintained its rights; that, with the single exception of the English, no nation in Europe had equalled the Magyars in the stubborn and unwearied defence of Constitutional law; that, in an age when national spirit was far less hotly inflamed, the Emperor Joseph had well-nigh lost his throne and wrecked his Empire in the attempt to subject this resolute race to a centralised administration, was nothing to Schwarzenberg and the soldiers who were now trampling upon revolution. Hungary was declared to have forfeited by rebellion alike its ancient rights and the contracts of 1848. The dissolution of the Parliament of Kremsier was followed by the publication of an edict affecting to bestow a uniform and centralised Constitution upon the entire Austrian Empire. All existing public rights were thereby extinguished; and, inasmuch as the new Constitution, in so far as it provided for a representative system, never came into existence, but remained in abeyance until it was formally abrogated in 1851, the real effect of the Unitary Edict of March, 1849, which professed to close the period of revolution by granting the same rights to all, was to establish absolute government and the rule of the sword throughout the Emperor's dominions. Provincial institutions giving to some of the German and Slavic districts a shadowy control of their own local affairs only marked the distinction between the favoured and the dreaded parts of the Empire. Ten years passed before freedom again came within sight of the Austrian peoples. [434]

[Hungary.]

[The Roumanians in Transylvania.]

The Hungarian Diet, on learning of the transfer of the crown from Ferdinand to Francis Joseph, had refused to acknowledge this act as valid, on the ground that it had taken place without the consent of the Legislature, and that Francis Joseph had not been crowned King of Hungary. Ferdinand was treated as still the reigning sovereign, and the war now became, according to the Hungarian view, more than ever a war in defence of established right, inasmuch as the assailants of Hungary were not only violators of a settled constitution but agents of a usurping prince. The whole nation was summoned to arms; and in order that there might be no faltering at headquarters, the command over the forces on the Danube was given by Kossuth to Goergei, a young officer of whom little was yet known to the world but that he had executed Count Eugene Zichy, a powerful noble, for holding communications with Jellacic. It was the design of the Austrian Government to attack Hungary at once by the line of the Danube and from the frontier of Galicia on the north-east. The Serbs were to be led forward from their border-provinces against the capital; and another race, which centuries of oppression had filled with bitter hatred of the Magyars, was to be thrown into the struggle. The mass of the population of Transylvania belonged to the Roumanian stock. The Magyars, here known by the name of Szeklers, and a community of Germans, descended from immigrants who settled in Transylvania about the twelfth century, formed a small but a privileged minority, in whose presence the Roumanian peasantry, poor, savage, and absolutely without political rights, felt themselves before 1848 scarcely removed from serfdom. In the Diet of Transylvania the Magyars held command, and in spite of the resistance of the Germans, they had succeeded in carrying an Act, in May, 1848, uniting the country with Hungary. This Act had been ratified by the Emperor Ferdinand, but it was followed by a widespread insurrection of the Roumanian peasantry, who were already asserting their claims as a separate nation and demanding equality with their oppressors. The rising of the Roumanians had indeed more of the character of an agrarian revolt than of a movement for national independence. It was marked by atrocious cruelty; and although the Hapsburg standard was raised, the Austrian commandant, General Puchner, hesitated long before lending the insurgents his countenance. At length, in October, he declared against the Hungarian Government. The union of the regular troops with the peasantry overpowered for a time all resistance. The towns fell under Austrian sway, and although the Szeklers were not yet disarmed, Transylvania seemed to be lost to Hungary. General Puchner received orders to lead his troops, with the newly formed Roumanian militia, westward into the Banat, in order to co-operate in the attack which was to overwhelm the Hungarians from every quarter of the kingdom. [435]

[The Austrians occupy Pesth, Jan. 5, 1849.]

On the 15th of December, Windischgraetz, in command of the main Austrian army, crossed the river Leitha, the border between German and Magyar territory. Goergei, who was opposed to him, had from the first declared that Pesth must be abandoned and a war of defence carried on in Central Hungary. Kossuth, however, had scorned this counsel, and announced that he would defend Pesth to the last. The backwardness of the Hungarian preparations and the disorder of the new levies justified the young general, who from this time assumed the attitude of contempt and hostility towards the Committee of Defence. Kossuth had in fact been strangely served by fortune in his choice of Goergei. He had raised him to command on account of one irretrievable act of severity against an Austrian partisan, and without any proof of his military capacity. In the untried soldier he had found a general of unusual skill; in the supposed devotee to Magyar patriotism he had found a military politician as self-willed and as insubordinate as any who have ever distracted the councils of a falling State. Dissensions and misunderstandings aggravated the weakness of the Hungarians in the field. Position after position was lost, and it soon became evident that the Parliament and Government could remain no longer at Pesth. They withdrew to Debreczin beyond the Theiss, and on the 5th of January, 1849, Windischgraetz made his entry into the capital. [436]

[The Hungarian Government at Debreczin.]

[Kossuth and Goergei.]

The Austrians now supposed the war to be at an end. It was in fact but beginning. The fortress of Comorn, on the upper Danube, remained in the hands of the Magyars; and by conducting his retreat northwards into a mountainous country where the Austrians could not follow him Goergei gained the power either of operating against Windischgraetz's communications or of combining with the army of General Klapka, who was charged with the defence of Hungary against an enemy advancing from Galicia. While Windischgraetz remained inactive at Pesth, Klapka met and defeated an Austrian division under General Schlick which had crossed the Carpathians and was moving southwards towards Debreczin. Goergei now threw himself eastwards upon the line of retreat of the beaten enemy, and Schlick's army only escaped capture by abandoning its communications and seeking refuge with Windischgraetz at Pesth. A concentration of the Magyar forces was effected on the Theiss, and the command over the entire army was given by Kossuth to Dembinski, a Pole who had gained distinction in the wars of Napoleon and in the campaign of 1831. Goergei, acting as the representative of the officers who had been in the service before the Revolution, had published an address declaring that the army would fight for no cause but that of the Constitution as established by Ferdinand, the legitimate King, and that it would accept no commands but those of the Ministers whom Ferdinand had appointed. Interpreting this manifesto as a direct act of defiance, and as a warning that the army might under Goergei's command make terms on its own authority with the Austrian Government, Kossuth resorted to the dangerous experiment of superseding the national commanders by a Pole who was connected with the revolutionary party throughout Europe. The act was disastrous in its moral effects upon the army; and, as a general, Dembinski entirely failed to justify his reputation. After permitting Schlick's corps to escape him he moved forwards from the Theiss against Pesth. He was met by the Austrians and defeated at Kapolna (February 26). Both armies retired to their earlier positions, and, after a declaration from the Magyar generals that they would no longer obey his orders, Dembinski was removed from his command, though he remained in Hungary to interfere once more with evil effect before the end of the war.

[The Austrians driven out of Hungary, April.]

The struggle between Austria and Hungary had reached this stage when the Constitution merging all provincial rights in one centralised system was published by Schwarzenberg. The Croats, the Serbs, the Roumanians, who had so credulously flocked to the Emperor's banner under the belief that they were fighting for their own independence, at length discovered their delusion. Their enthusiasm sank; the bolder among them even attempted to detach their countrymen from the Austrian cause; but it was too late to undo what had already been done. Jellacic, now undistinguishable from any other Austrian general, mocked the politicians of Agram who still babbled of Croatian autonomy: Stratimirovic, the national leader of the Serbs, sank before his rival the Patriarch of Carlowitz, a Churchman who preferred ecclesiastical immunities granted by the Emperor of Austria to independence won on the field of battle by his countrymen. Had a wiser or more generous statesmanship controlled the Hungarian Government in the first months of its activity, a union between the Magyars and the subordinate races against Viennese centralisation might perhaps even now have been effected. But distrust and animosity had risen too high for the mediators between Slav and Magyar to attain any real success, nor was any distinct promise of self-government even now to be drawn from the offers of concession which were held out at Debreczin. An interval of dazzling triumph seemed indeed to justify the Hungarian Government in holding fast to its sovereign claims. In the hands of able leaders no task seemed too hard for Magyar troops to accomplish. Bem, arriving in Transylvania without a soldier, created a new army, and by a series of extraordinary marches and surprises not only overthrew the Austrian and Roumanian troops opposed to him, but expelled a corps of Russians whom General Puchner in his extremity had invited to garrison Hermannstadt. Goergei, resuming in the first week of April the movement in which Dembinski had failed, inflicted upon the Austrians a series of defeats that drove them back to the walls of Pesth; while Klapka, advancing on Comorn, effected the relief of this fortress, and planted in the rear of the Austrians a force which threatened to cut them off from Vienna. It was in vain that the Austrian Government removed Windischgraetz from his command. His successor found that a force superior to his own was gathering round him on every side. He saw that Hungary was lost; and leaving a garrison in the fortress of Buda, he led off his army in haste from the capital, and only paused in his retreat when he had reached the Austrian frontier.

[Declaration of Hungarian Independence, April 19.]

The Magyars, rallying from their first defeats, had brilliantly achieved the liberation of their land. The Court of Vienna, attempting in right of superior force to overthrow an established constitution, had proved itself the inferior power; and in mingled exaltation and resentment it was natural that the party and the leaders who had been foremost in the national struggle of Hungary should deem a renewed union with Austria impossible, and submission to the Hapsburg crown an indignity. On the 19th of April, after the defeat of Windischgraetz but before the evacuation of Pesth, the Diet declared that the House of Hapsburg had forfeited its throne, and proclaimed Hungary an independent State. No statement was made as to the future form of government, but everything indicated that Hungary, if successful in maintaining its independence, would become a Republic, with Kossuth, who was now appointed Governor, for its chief. Even in the revolutionary severance of ancient ties homage was paid to the legal and constitutional bent of the Hungarian mind. Nothing was said in the Declaration of April 19th of the rights of man; there was no Parisian commonplace on the sovereignty of the people. The necessity of Hungarian independence was deduced from the offences which the Austrian House had committed against the written and unwritten law of the land, offences continued through centuries and crowned by the invasion under Windischgraetz, by the destruction of the Hungarian Constitution in the edict of March 9th, and by the introduction of the Russians into Transylvania. Though coloured and exaggerated by Magyar patriotism, the charges made against the Hapsburg dynasty were on the whole in accordance with historical fact; and if the affairs of States were to be guided by no other considerations than those relating to the performance of contracts, Hungary had certainly established its right to be quit of partnership with Austria and of its Austrian sovereign. But the judgment of history has condemned Kossuth's declaration of Hungarian independence in the midst of the struggle of 1849 as a great political error. It served no useful purpose; it deepened the antagonism already existing between the Government and a large part of the army; and while it added to the sources of internal discord, it gave colour to the intervention of Russia as against a revolutionary cause. Apart from its disastrous effect upon the immediate course of events, it was based upon a narrow and inadequate view both of the needs and of the possibilities of the future. Even in the interests of the Magyar nation itself as a European power, it may well be doubted whether in severance from Austria such influence and such weight could possibly have been won by a race numerically weak and surrounded by hostile nationalities, as the ability and the political energy of the Magyars have since won for them in the direction of the accumulated forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[Russian intervention against Hungary.]

It has generally been considered a fatal error on the part of the Hungarian commanders that, after expelling the Austrian army, they did not at once march upon Vienna, but returned to lay siege to the fortress of Buda, which resisted long enough to enable the Austrian Government to reorganise and to multiply its forces. But the intervention of Russia would probably have been fatal to Hungarian independence, even if Vienna had been captured and a democratic government established there for a while in opposition to the Court at Olmuetz. The plan of a Russian intervention, though this intervention was now explained by the community of interest between Polish and Hungarian rebels, was no new thing. Soon after the outbreak of the March Revolution the Czar had desired to send his troops both into Prussia and into Austria as the restorers of monarchical authority. His help was declined on behalf of the King of Prussia; in Austria the project had been discussed at successive moments of danger, and after the overthrow of the Imperial troops in Transylvania by Bem the proffered aid was accepted. The Russians who then occupied Hermannstadt did not, however, enter the country as combatants; their task was to garrison certain positions still held by the Austrians, and so to set free the Emperor's troops for service in the field. On the declaration of Hungarian independence, it became necessary for Francis Joseph to accept his protector's help without qualification or disguise. An army of eighty thousand Russians marched across Galicia to assist the Austrians in grappling with an enemy before whom, when single-handed, they had succumbed. Other Russian divisions, while Austria massed its troops on the Upper Danube, entered Transylvania from the south and east, and the Magyars in the summer of 1849 found themselves compelled to defend their country against forces three times more numerous than their own. [437]

[The summer campaign in Hungary, July-August, 1849.]

[Capitulation of Vilagos, August 13.]

[Vengeance of Austria.]

When it became known that the Czar had determined to throw all his strength into the scale, Kossuth saw that no ordinary operations of war could possibly avert defeat, and called upon his countrymen to destroy their homes and property at the approach of the enemy, and to leave to the invader a flaming and devastated solitude. But the area of warfare was too vast for the execution of this design, even if the nation had been prepared for so desperate a course. The defence of Hungary was left to its armies, and Goergei became the leading figure in the calamitous epoch that followed. While the Government prepared to retire to Szegedin, far in the south-east, Goergei took post on the Upper Danube, to meet the powerful force which the Emperor of Austria had placed under the orders of General Haynau, a soldier whose mingled energy and ferocity in Italy had marked him out as a fitting scourge for the Hungarians, and had won for him supreme civil as well as military powers. Goergei naturally believed that the first object of the Austrian commander would be to effect a junction with the Russians, who, under Paskiewitsch, the conqueror of Kars in 1829, were now crossing the Carpathians; and he therefore directed all his efforts against the left of the Austrian line. While he was unsuccessfully attacking the enemy on the river Waag north of Comorn, Haynau with the mass of his forces advanced on the right bank of the Danube, and captured Raab (June 28th). Goergei threw himself southwards, but his efforts to stop Haynau were in vain, and the Austrians occupied Pesth (July 11th). The Russians meanwhile were advancing southwards by an independent line of march. Their vanguard reached the Danube and the Upper Theiss, and Goergei seemed to be enveloped by the enemy. The Hungarian Government adjured him to hasten towards Szegedin and Arad, where Kossuth was concentrating all the other divisions for a final struggle; but Goergei held on to his position about Comorn until his retreat could only be effected by means of a vast detour northwards, and before he could reach Arad all was lost. Dembinski was again in command. Charged with the defence of the passage of the Theiss about Szegedin, he failed to prevent the Austrians from crossing the river, and on the 5th of August was defeated at Czoreg with heavy loss. Kossuth now gave the command to Bern, who had hurried from Transylvania, where overpowering forces had at length wrested victory from his grasp. Bern fought the last battle of the campaign at Temesvar. He was overthrown and driven eastwards, but succeeded in leading a remnant of his army across the Moldavian frontier and so escaped capture. Goergei, who was now close to Arad, had some strange fancy that it would dishonour his army to seek refuge on neutral soil. He turned northwards so as to encounter Russian and not Austrian regiments, and without striking a blow, without stipulating even for the lives of the civilians in his camp, he led his army within the Russian lines at Vilagos, and surrendered unconditionally to the generals of the Czar. His own life was spared; no mercy was shown to those who were handed over as his fellow-prisoners by the Russian to the Austrian Government, or who were seized by Haynau as his troops advanced. Tribunals more resembling those of the French Reign of Terror than the Courts of a civilised Government sent the noblest patriots and soldiers of Hungary to the scaffold. To the deep disgrace of the Austrian Crown, Count Batthyany, the Minister of Ferdinand, was included among those whose lives were sacrificed. The vengeance of the conqueror seemed the more frenzied and the more insatiable because it had only been rendered possible by foreign aid. Crushed under an iron rule, exhausted by war, the prey of a Government which knew only how to employ its subject-races as gaolers over one another, Hungary passed for some years into silence and almost into despair. Every vestige of its old constitutional rights was extinguished. Its territory was curtailed by the separation of Transylvania and Croatia; its administration was handed over to Germans from Vienna. A conscription, enforced not for the ends of military service but as the surest means of breaking the national spirit, enrolled its youth in Austrian regiments, and banished them to the extremities of the empire. No darker period was known in the history of Hungary since the wars of the seventeenth century than that which followed the catastrophe of 1849. [438]

[Italian affairs, August, 1848-March, 1849.]

[Murder of Rossi, Nov. 15. Flight of Pius IX.]

[Roman Republic, Feb. 9, 1849.]

[Tuscany.]

The gloom which followed Austrian victory was now descending not on Hungary alone but on Italy also. The armistice made between Radetzky and the King of Piedmont at Vigevano in August, 1848, lasted for seven months, during which the British and French Governments endeavoured, but in vain, to arrange terms of peace between the combatants. With military tyranny in its most brutal form crushing down Lombardy, it was impossible that Charles Albert should renounce the work of deliverance to which he had pledged himself. Austria, on the other hand, had now sufficiently recovered its strength to repudiate the concessions which it had offered at an earlier time, and Schwarzenberg on assuming power announced that the Emperor would maintain Lombardy at every cost. The prospects of Sardinia as regarded help from the rest of the Peninsula were far worse than when it took up arms in the spring of 1848. Projects of a general Italian federation, of a military union between the central States and Piedmont, of an Italian Constituent Assembly, had succeeded one another and left no result. Naples had fallen back into absolutism; Rome and Tuscany, from which aid might still have been expected, were distracted by internal contentions, and hastening as it seemed towards anarchy. After the defeat of Charles Albert at Custozza, Pius IX., who was still uneasily playing his part as a constitutional sovereign, had called to office Pellegrino Rossi, an Italian patriot of an earlier time, who had since been ambassador of Louis Philippe at Rome, and by his connection with the Orleanist Monarchy had incurred the hatred of the Republican party throughout Italy. Rossi, as a vigorous and independent reformer, was as much detested in clerical and reactionary circles as he was by the demagogues and their followers. This, however, profited him nothing; and on the 15th of November, as he was proceeding to the opening of the Chambers, he was assassinated by an unknown hand. Terrified by this crime, and by an attack upon his own palace by which it was followed, Pius fled to Gaeta and placed himself under the protection of the King of Naples. A Constituent Assembly was summoned and a Republic proclaimed at Rome, between which and the Sardinian Government there was so little community of feeling that Charles Albert would, if the Pope had accepted his protection, have sent his troops to restore him to a position of security. In Tuscany affairs were in a similar condition. The Grand Duke had for some months been regarded as a sincere, though reserved, friend of the Italian cause, and he had even spoken of surrendering his crown if this should be for the good of the Italian nation. When, however, the Pope had fled to Gaeta, and the project was openly avowed of uniting Tuscany with the Roman States in a Republic, the Grand Duke, moved more by the fulminations of Pius against his despoilers than by care for his own crown, fled in his turn, leaving the Republicans masters of Florence. A miserable exhibition of vanity, riot, and braggadocio was given to the world by the politicians of the Tuscan State. Alike in Florence and in Rome all sense of the true needs of the moment, of the absolute uselessness of internal changes of Government if Austria was to maintain its dominion, seemed to have vanished from men's minds. Republican phantoms distracted the heart and the understanding; no soldier, no military administrator arose till too late by the side of the rhetoricians and mob-leaders who filled the stage; and when, on the 19th of March, the armistice was brought to a close in Upper Italy, Piedmont took the field alone. [439]

[The Match campaign, 1849.]

[Battle of Novara, March 23.]

The campaign which now began lasted but for five days. While Charles Albert scattered his forces from Lago Maggiore to Stradella on the south of the Po, hoping to move by the northern road upon Milan, Radetzky concentrated his troops near Pavia, where he intended to cross the Ticino. In an evil moment Charles Albert had given the command of his army to Chrzanowski, a Pole, and had entrusted its southern division, composed chiefly of Lombard volunteers, to another Pole, Ramorino, who had been engaged in Mazzini's incursion into Savoy in 1833. Ramorino had then, rightly or wrongly, incurred the charge of treachery. His relations with Chrzanowski were of the worst character, and the habit of military obedience was as much wanting to him as the sentiment of loyalty to the sovereign from whom he had now accepted a command. The wilfulness of this adventurer made the Piedmontese army an easy prey. Ramorino was posted on the south of the Po, near its junction with the Ticino, but received orders on the commencement of hostilities to move northwards and defend the passage of the Ticino at Pavia, breaking up the bridges behind him. Instead of obeying this order he kept his division lingering about Stradella. Radetzky, approaching the Ticino at Pavia, found the passage unguarded. He crossed the river with the mass of his army, and, cutting off Ramorino's division, threw himself upon the flank of the scattered Piedmontese. Charles Albert, whose headquarters were at Novara, hurried southwards. Before he could concentrate his troops, he was attacked at Mortara by the Austrians and driven back. The line of retreat upon Turin and Alessandria was already lost; an attempt was made to hold Novara against the advancing Austrians. The battle which was fought in front of this town on the 23rd of March ended with the utter overthrow of the Sardinian arrny. So complete was the demoralisation of the troops that the cavalry were compelled to attack bodies of half-maddened infantry in the streets of Novara in order to save the town from pillage. [440]

[Abdication of Charles Albert.]

Charles Albert had throughout the battle of the 23rd appeared to seek death. The reproaches levelled against him for the abandonment of Milan in the previous year, the charges of treachery which awoke to new life the miserable record of his waverings in 1821, had sunk into the very depths of his being. Weak and irresolute in his earlier political career, harsh and illiberal towards the pioneers of Italian freedom during a great part of his reign, Charles had thrown his whole heart and soul into the final struggle of his country against Austria. This struggle lost, life had nothing more for him. The personal hatred borne towards him by the rulers of Austria caused him to believe that easier terms of peace might be granted to Piedmont if another sovereign were on its throne, and his resolution, in case of defeat, was fixed and settled. When night fell after the battle of Novara he called together his generals, and in their presence abdicated his crown. Bidding an eternal farewell to his son Victor Emmanuel, who knelt weeping before him, he quitted the army accompanied by but one attendant, and passed unrecognised through the enemy's guards. He left his queen, his capital, unvisited as he journeyed into exile. The brief residue of his life was spent in solitude near Oporto. Six months after the battle of Novara he was carried to the grave.

[Beginning of Victor Emmanuel's reign.]

It may be truly said of Charles Albert that nothing in his reign became him like the ending of it. Hopeless as the conflict of 1849 might well appear, it proved that there was one sovereign in Italy who was willing to stake his throne, his life, the whole sum of his personal interests, for the national cause; one dynasty whose sons knew no fear save that others should encounter death before them on Italy's behalf. Had the profoundest statesmanship, the keenest political genius, governed the counsels of Piedmont in 1849, it would, with full prescience of the ruin of Novara, have bidden the sovereign and the army strike in self-sacrifice their last unaided blow. From this time there was but one possible head for Italy. The faults of the Government of Turin during Charles Albert's years of peace had ceased to have any bearing on Italian affairs; the sharpest tongues no longer repeated, the most credulous ear no longer harboured the slanders of 1848; the man who, beaten and outnumbered, had for hours sat immovable in front of the Austrian cannon at Novara had, in the depth of his misfortune, given to his son not the crown of Piedmont only but the crown of Italy. Honour, patriotism, had made the young Victor Emmanuel the hope of the Sardinian army; the same honour and patriotism carried him safely past the lures which Austria set for the inheritor of a ruined kingdom, and gave in the first hours of his reign an earnest of the policy which was to end in Italian union. It was necessary for him to visit Radetzky in his camp in order to arrange the preliminaries of peace. There, amid flatteries offered to him at his father's expense, it was notified to him that if he would annul the Constitution that his father had made, he might reckon not only on an easy quittance with the conqueror, but on the friendship and support of Austria. This demand, though strenuously pressed in later negotiations, Victor Emmanuel unconditionally refused. He had to endure for a while the presence of Austrian troops in his kingdom, and to furnish an indemnity which fell heavily on so small a State; but the liberties of his people remained intact, and the pledge given by his father inviolate. Amid the ruin of all hopes and the bankruptcy of all other royal reputations throughout Italy, there proved to be one man, one government, in which the Italian people could trust. This compensation at least was given in the disasters of 1849, that the traitors to the cause of Italy and of freedom could not again deceive, nor the dream of a federation of princes again obscure the necessity of a single national government. In the fidelity of Victor Emmanuel to the Piedmontese Constitution lay the pledge that when Italy's next opportunity should arrive, the chief would be there who would meet the nation's need.

[Restoration in Tuscany.]

[Rome and France.]

[French intervention determined on.]

The battle of Novara had not long been fought when the Grand Duke of Tuscany was restored to his throne under an Austrian garrison, and his late democratic Minister, Guerazzi, who had endeavoured by submission to the Court-party to avert an Austrian occupation, was sent into imprisonment. At Rome a far bolder spirit was shown. Mazzini had arrived in the first week of March, and, though his exhortation to the Roman Assembly to forget the offences of Charles Albert and to unite against the Austrians in Lombardy came too late, he was able, as one of a Triumvirate with dictatorial powers, to throw much of his own ardour into the Roman populace in defence of their own city and State. The enemy against whom Rome had to be defended proved indeed to be other than that against whom preparations were being made. The victories of Austria had aroused the apprehension of the French Government; and though the fall of Piedmont and Lombardy could not now be undone, it was determined by Louis Napoleon and his Ministers to anticipate Austria's restoration of the Papal power by the despatch of French troops to Rome. All the traditions of French national policy pointed indeed to such an intervention. Austria had already invaded the Roman States from the north, and the political conditions which in 1832 had led so pacific a minister as Casimir Perier to occupy Ancona were now present in much greater force. Louis Napoleon could not, without abandoning a recognised interest and surrendering something of the due influence of France, have permitted Austrian generals to conduct the Pope back to his capital and to assume the government of Central Italy. If the first impulses of the Revolution of 1848 had still been active in France, its intervention would probably have taken the form of a direct alliance with the Roman Republic; but public opinion had travelled far in the opposite direction since the Four Days of June; and the new President, if he had not forgotten his own youthful relations with the Carbonari, was now a suitor for the solid favours of French conservative and religious sentiment. His Ministers had not recognised the Roman Republic. They were friends, no doubt, to liberty; but when it was certain that the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Neapolitans, were determined to restore the Pope, it might be assumed that the continuance of the Roman Republic was an impossibility. France, as a Catholic and at the same time a Liberal Power, might well, under these circumstances, address itself to the task of reconciling Roman liberty with the inevitable return of the Holy Father to his temporal throne. Events were moving too fast for diplomacy; troops must be at once despatched, or the next French envoy would find Radetzky on the Tiber. The misgivings of the Republican part of the Assembly at Paris were stilled by French assurances of the generous intentions of the Government towards the Roman populations, and of its anxiety to shelter them from Austrian domination, President, Ministers, and generals resolutely shut their eyes to the possibility that a French occupation of Rome might be resisted by force by the Romans themselves; and on the 22nd of April an armament of about ten thousand men set sail for Civita Vecchia under the command of General Oudinot, a son of the Marshal of that name.

[The French at Civita Vecchia, April 25, 1849.]

[Oudinot attacks Rome and is repelled, April 30.]

Before landing on the Italian coast, the French general sent envoys to the authorities at Civita Vecchia, stating that his troops came as friends, and demanding that they should be admitted into the town. The Municipal Council determined not to offer resistance, and the French thus gained a footing on Italian soil and a basis for their operations. Messages came from French diplomatists in Rome encouraging the general to advance without delay. The mass of the population, it was said, would welcome his appearance; the democratic faction, if reckless, was too small to offer any serious resistance, and would disappear as soon as the French should enter the city. On this point, however, Oudinot was speedily undeceived. In reply to a military envoy who was sent to assure the Triumvirs of the benevolent designs of the French, Mazzini bluntly answered that no reconciliation with the Pope was possible; and on the 26th of April the Roman Assembly called upon the Executive to repel force by force. Oudinot now proclaimed a state of siege at Civita Vecchia, seized the citadel, and disarmed the garrison. On the 28th he began his march on Rome. As he approached, energetic preparations were made for resistance. Garibaldi, who had fought at the head of a free corps against the Austrians in Upper Italy in 1848, had now brought some hundreds of his followers to Rome. A regiment of Lombard volunteers, under their young leader Manara, had escaped after the catastrophe of Novara, and had come to fight for liberty in its last stronghold on Italian soil. Heroes, exiles, desperadoes from all parts of the Peninsula, met in the streets of Rome, and imparted to its people a vigour and resolution of which the world had long deemed them incapable. Even the remnant of the Pontifical Guard took part in the work of defence. Oudinot, advancing with his little corps of seven thousand men, found himself, without heavy artillery, in front of a city still sheltered by its ancient fortifications, and in the presence of a body of combatants more resolute than his own troops and twice as numerous. He attacked on the 30th, was checked at every point, and compelled to retreat towards Civita Vecchia, leaving two hundred and fifty prisoners in the hands of the enemy. [441]

[French policy, April-May.]

Insignificant as was this misfortune of the French arms, it occasioned no small stir in Paris and in the Assembly. The Government, which had declared that the armament was intended only to protect Rome against Austria, was vehemently reproached for its duplicity, and a vote was passed demanding that the expedition should not be permanently diverted from the end assigned to it. Had the Assembly not been on the verge of dissolution it would probably have forced upon the Government a real change of policy. A general election, however, was but a few days distant, and until the result of this election should be known the Ministry determined to temporise. M. Lesseps, since famous as the creator of the Suez Canal, was sent to Rome with instructions to negotiate for some peaceable settlement. More honest than his employers, Lesseps sought with heart and soul to fulfil his task. While he laboured in city and camp, the French elections for which the President and Ministers were waiting took place, resulting in the return of a Conservative and reactionary majority. The new Assembly met on the 28th of May. In the course of the next few days Lesseps accepted terms proposed by the Roman Government, which would have precluded the French from entering Rome. Oudinot, who had been in open conflict with the envoy throughout his mission, refused his sanction to the treaty, and the altercations between the general and the diplomatist were still at their height when despatches arrived from Paris announcing that the powers given to Lesseps were at an end, and ordering Oudinot to recommence hostilities. The pretence of further negotiation would have been out of place with the new Parliament. On the 4th of June the French general, now strongly reinforced, occupied the positions necessary for a regular siege of Rome.

[Attempted insurrection in France, June 13.]

[The French enter Rome, July 3.]

Against the forces now brought into action it was impossible that the Roman Republic could long defend itself. One hope remained, and that was in a revolution within France itself. The recent elections had united on the one side all Conservative interests, on the other the Socialists and all the more extreme factions of the Republican party. It was determined that a trial of strength should first be made within the Assembly itself upon the Roman question, and that, if the majority there should stand firm, an appeal should be made to insurrection. Accordingly on the 11th of June, after the renewal of hostilities had been announced in Paris, Ledru Rollin demanded the impeachment of the Ministry. His motion was rejected, and the signal was given for an outbreak not only in the capital but in Lyons and other cities. But the Government were on their guard, and it was in vain that the resources of revolution were once more brought into play. General Changarnier suppressed without bloodshed a tumult in Paris on June 13th; and though fighting took place at Lyons, the insurrection proved feeble in comparison with the movements of the previous year. Louis Napoleon and his Ministry remained unshaken, and the siege of Rome was accordingly pressed to its conclusion. Oudinot, who at the beginning of the month had carried the positions held by the Roman troops outside the walls, opened fire with heavy artillery on the 14th. The defence was gallantly sustained by Garibaldi and his companions until the end of the month, when the breaches made in the walls were stormed by the enemy, and further resistance became impossible. The French made their entry into Rome on the 3rd of July, Garibaldi leading his troops northwards in order to prolong the struggle with the Austnans who were now in possession of Bologna, and, if possible, to reach Venice, which was still uncaptured. Driven to the eastern coast and surrounded by the enemy, he was forced to put to sea. He landed again, but only to be hunted over mountain and forest. His wife died by his side. Rescued by the devotion of Italian patriots, he made his escape to Piedmont and thence to America, to reappear in all the fame of his heroic deeds and sufferings at the next great crisis in the history of his country.

[The restored Pontifical Government.]

It had been an easy task for a French army to conquer Rome; it was not so easy for the French Government to escape from the embarrassments of its victory. Liberalism was still the official creed of the Republic, and the protection of the Roman population from a reaction under Austrian auspices had been one of the alleged objects of the Italian expedition. No stipulation had, however, been made with the Pope during the siege as to the future institutions of Rome; and when, on the 14th of July, the restorations of Papal authority was formally announced by Oudinot, Pius and his Minister Antonelli still remained unfettered by any binding engagement. Nor did the Pontiff show the least inclination to place himself in the power of his protectors. Fie remained at Gaeta, sending a Commission of three Cardinals to assume the government of Rome. The first acts of the Cardinals dispelled any illusion that the French might have formed as to the docility of the Holy See. In the presence of a French Republican army they restored the Inquisition, and appointed a Board to bring to trial all officials compromised in the events that had taken place since the murder of Rossi in November, 1848. So great was the impression made on public opinion by the action of the Cardinals that Louis Napoleon considered it well to enter the lists in person on behalf of Roman liberty; and in a letter to Colonel Ney, a son of the Marshal, he denounced in language of great violence the efforts that were being made by a party antagonistic to France to base the Pope's return upon proscription and tyranny. Strong in the support of Austria and the other Catholic Powers, the Papal Government at Gaeta received this menace with indifference, and even made the discourtesy of the President a ground for withholding concessions. Of the re-establishment of the Constitution granted by Pius in 1848 there was now no question; all that the French Ministry could hope was to save some fragments in the general shipwreck of representative government, and to avert the vengeance that seemed likely to fall upon the defeated party. A Pontifical edict, known as the Motu Proprio, ultimately bestowed upon the municipalities certain local powers, and gave to a Council, nominated by the Pope from among the persons chosen by the municipalities, the right of consultation on matters of finance. More than this Pius refused to grant, and when he returned to Rome it was as an absolute sovereign. In its efforts on behalf of the large body of persons threatened with prosecution the French Government was more successful. The so-called amnesty which was published by Antonelli with the Motu Proprio seemed indeed to have for its object the classification of victims rather than the announcement of pardon; but under pressure from the French the excepted persons were gradually diminished in number, and all were finally allowed to escape other penalties by going into exile. To those who were so driven from their homes Piedmont offered a refuge.

[Fall of Venice, Aug. 25.]

[Sicily conquered by Ferdinand, April, May.]

Thus the pall of priestly absolutism and misrule fell once more over the Roman States, and the deeper the hostility of the educated classes to the restored power the more active became the system of repression. For liberty of person there was no security whatever, and, though the offences of 1848 were now professedly amnestied, the prisons were soon thronged with persons arrested on indefinite charges and detained for an unlimited time without trial. Nor was Rome more unfortunate in its condition than Italy generally. The restoration of Austrian authority in the north was completed by the fall of Venice. For months after the subjugation of the mainland, Venice, where the Republic had again been proclaimed and Manin had been recalled to power, had withstood all the efforts of the Emperor's forces. Its hopes had been raised by the victories of the Hungarians, which for a moment seemed almost to undo the catastrophe of Novara. But with the extinction of all possibility of Hungarian aid the inevitable end came in view. Cholera and famine worked with the enemy; and a fortnight after Goergei had laid down his arms at Vilagos the long and honourable resistance of Venice ended with the entry of the Austrians (August 25th). In the south, Ferdinand of Naples was again ruling as despot throughout the full extent of his dominions. Palermo, which had struck the first blow for freedom in 1848, had soon afterwards become the seat of a Sicilian Parliament, which deposed the Bourbon dynasty and offered the throne of Sicily to the younger brother of Victor Emmanuel. To this Ferdinand replied by a fleet to Messina, which bombarded that city for five days and laid a great part of it in ashes. His violence caused the British and French fleets to interpose, and hostilities were suspended until the spring of 1849, the Western Powers ineffectually seeking to frame some compromise acceptable at once to the Sicilians and to the Bourbon dynasty. After the triumph of Radetzky at Novara and the rejection by the Sicilian Parliament of the offer of a separate constitution and administration for the island, Ferdinand refused to remain any longer inactive. His fleet and army moved southwards from Messina, and a victory won at the foot of Mount Etna over the Sicilian forces, followed by the capture of Catania, brought the struggle to a close. The Assembly at Palermo dispersed, and the Neapolitan troops made their entry into the capital without resistance on the 15th of May. It was in vain that Great Britain now urged Ferdinand to grant to Sicily the liberties which he had hitherto professed himself willing to bestow. Autocrat he was, and autocrat he intended to remain. On the mainland the iniquities practised by his agents seem to have been even worse than in Sicily, where at least some attempt was made to use the powers of the State for the purposes of material improvement. For those who had incurred the enmity of Ferdinand's Government there was no law and no mercy. Ten years of violence and oppression, denounced by the voice of freer lands, had still to be borne by the subjects of this obstinate tyrant ere the reckoning-day arrived, and the deeply rooted jealousy between Sicily and Naples, which had wrought so much ill to the cause of Italian freedom, was appeased by the fall of the Bourbon throne. [442]

[Germany from May, 1848.]

[The National Assembly at Frankfort.]

[Archduke John chosen Administrator, June 29.]

We have thus far traced the stages of conflict between the old monarchical order and the forces of revolution in the Austrian empire and in that Mediterranean land whose destiny was so closely interwoven with that of Austria. We have now to pass back into Germany, and to resume the history of the German revolution at the point where the national movement seemed to concentrate itself in visible form, the opening of the Parliament of Frankfort on the 18th of May, 1848. That an Assembly representing the entire German people, elected in unbounded enthusiasm and comprising within it nearly every man of political or intellectual eminence who sympathised with the national cause, should be able to impose its will upon the tottering Governments of the individual German States, was not an unnatural belief in the circumstances of the moment. No second Chamber represented the interests of the ruling Houses, nor had they within the Assembly itself the organs for the expression of their own real or unreal claims. With all the freedom of a debating club or of a sovereign authority like the French Convention, the Parliament of Frankfort entered upon its work of moulding Germany afresh, limited only by its own discretion as to what it should make matter of consultation with any other power. There were thirty-six Governments in Germany, and to negotiate with each of these on the future Constitution might well seem a harder task than to enforce a Constitution on all alike. In the creation of a provisional executive authority there was something of the same difficulty. Each of the larger States might, if consulted, resist the selection of a provisional chief from one of its rivals; and though the risk of bold action was not denied, the Assembly, on the instance of its President, Von Gagern, a former Minister of Hesse-Darmstadt, resolved to appoint an Administrator of the Empire by a direct vote of its own. The Archduke John of Austria, long known as an enemy of Metternich's system of repression and as a patron of the idea of German union, was chosen Administrator, and he accepted the office. Prussia and the other States acquiesced in the nomination, though the choice of a Hapsburg prince was unpopular with the Prussian nation and army, and did not improve the relations between the Frankfort Assembly and the Court of Berlin. [443] Schmerling, an Austrian, was placed at the head of the Archduke's Ministry.

[The National Assembly. May-Sept.]

In the preparation of a Constitution for Germany the Assembly could draw little help from the work of legislators in other countries. Belgium, whose institutions were at once recent and successful, was not a Federal State; the founders of the American Union had not had to reckon with four kings and to include in their federal territory part of the dominions of an emperor. Instead of grappling at once with the formidable difficulties of political organisation, the Committee charged with the drafting of a Constitution determined first to lay down the principles of civil right which were to be the basis of the German commonwealth. There was something of the scientific spirit of the Germans in thus working out the substructure of public law on which all other institutions were to rest; moreover, the remembrance of the Decrees of Carlsbad and of the other exceptional legislation from which Germany had so heavily suffered excited a strong demand for the most solemn guarantees against arbitrary departure from settled law in the future. Thus, regardless of the absence of any material power by which its conclusions were to be enforced, the Assembly, in the intervals between its stormy debates on the politics of the hour, traced with philosophic thoroughness the consequences of the principles of personal liberty and of equality before the law, and fashioned the order of a modern society in which privileges of class, diversity of jurisdictions, and the trammels of feudalism on industrial life were alike swept away. Four months had passed, and the discussion of the so-called Primary Rights was still unfinished, when the Assembly was warned by an outbreak of popular violence in Frankfort itself of the necessity of hastening towards a constitutional settlement.

[The Armistice of Malmoe, Aug. 26.]

[Outrages at Frankfort, Sept. 18.]

The progress of the insurrection in Schleswig-Holstein against Danish sovereignty had been watched with the greatest interest throughout Germany; and in the struggle of these provinces for their independence the rights and the honour of the German nation at large were held to be deeply involved. As the representative of the Federal authority, King Frederick William of Prussia had sent his troops into Holstein, and they arrived there in time to prevent the Danish army from following up its first successes and crushing the insurgent forces. Taking up the offensive, General Wrangel at the head of the Prussian troops succeeded in driving the Danes out of Schleswig, and at the beginning of May he crossed the border between Schleswig and Jutland and occupied the Danish fortress of Fredericia. His advance into purely Danish territory occasioned the diplomatic intervention of Russia and Great Britain; and, to the deep disappointment of the German nation and its Parliament, the King of Prussia ordered his general to retire into Schleswig. The Danes were in the meantime blockading the harbours and capturing the merchant-vessels of the Germans, as neither Prussia nor the Federal Government possessed a fleet of war. For some weeks hostilities were irresolutely continued in Schleswig, while negotiations were pursued in foreign capitals and various forms of compromise urged by foreign Powers. At length, on the 26th of August, an armistice of seven months was agreed upon at Malmoe in Sweden by the representatives of Denmark and Prussia, the Court of Copenhagen refusing to recognise the German central Government at Frankfort or to admit its envoy to the conferences. The terms of this armistice, when announced in Germany, excited the greatest indignation, inasmuch as they declared all the acts of the Provisional Government of Schleswig-Holstein null and void, removed all German troops from the Duchies, and handed over their government during the duration of the armistice to a Commission of which half the members were to be appointed by the King of Denmark. Scornfully as Denmark had treated the Assembly of Frankfort, the terms of the armistice nevertheless required its sanction. The question was referred to a committee, which, under the influence of the historian Dahlmann, himself formerly an official in Holstein, pronounced for the rejection of the treaty. The Assembly, in a scene of great excitement, resolved that the execution of the measures attendant on the armistice should be suspended. The Ministry in consequence resigned, and Dahlmann was called upon to replace it by one under his own leadership. He proved unable to do so. Schmerling resumed office, and demanded that the Assembly should reverse its vote. Though in severance from Prussia the Central Government had no real means of carrying on a war with Denmark, the most passionate opposition was made to this demand. The armistice was, however, ultimately ratified by a small majority. Defeated in the Assembly, the leaders of the extreme Democratic faction allied themselves with the populace of Frankfort, which was ready for acts of violence. Tumultuous meetings were held; the deputies who had voted for the armistice were declared traitors to Germany. Barricades were erected, and although the appearance of Prussian troops prevented an assault from being made on the Assembly, its members were attacked in the streets, and two of them murdered by the mob (Sept. 17th). A Republican insurrection was once more attempted in Baden, but it was quelled without difficulty. [444]