The first government of Hungary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The 15th March, the ‘Ides of March’ is, in Hungary, the day on which we all wear tricolour cockades on the streets, in commemoration of the 1848 Uprising against the Hapsburg Empire, which began in Pest on that day. The 6th October, though not a national holiday, is equally as significant an event, as it was on this day in 1849, az aradi vértanúk napja, that thirteen generals were executed in the town of Arad in Transylvania (pictured above) on the orders of the Austrian Field-Marshal Haynau. I was once pulled up by a Hungarian history teacher for clinking a beer-glass, because that was what the Austrian officers were said to have done as they hung or shot the thirteen. Although the ‘thirteen’ are remembered as the symbolic martyrs of the War of Independence, there were a great many other civilians who lost their lives under Haynau’s reign of terror which had begun with the surrender of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army at Világos in August (see below). More than another hundred died and many thousands were imprisoned, while the ordinary Hungarian soldiers were enlisted in the imperial army and forced to serve in the far-flung corners of the empire. Also on 6th October 1849, the Austrians executed Count Lajos Batthyány (below), the Prime Minister of the short-lived Republic, who had been a moderating influence on his revolutionary cabinet.
English: Count Lajos Batthyány de Németújvár (1807–1849), Hungarian landowner, politician and the first prime minister between 1848–1849. Magyar: Németújvári gróf Batthyány Lajos (1807–1849), magyar földbirtokos, politikus és 1848–1849 között az első felelős magyar miniszterelnök. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Since the end of the Hungarian People’s Republic in 1989 and the beginning of the (Third) Republic of Hungary in October of that year, the commemoration of the events of 1848-9 have played a significant role in the re-mythologising of Hungarian history, in which even the Ruritanian and pro-fascist Horthy Government can be rehabilitated. Apparently, Horthy did not co-operate in sending half a million Hungarian Jews to the gas-chambers, and did not stand by while the fascist Arrow Cross Party roamed the streets shooting those Jews who remained in the capital and could be found, dumping their bodies in the Danube. These were, according to recent public statements, actions committed purely by the tiny occupying forces of the German Army and SS, and are to be commemorated in the same way as the hundred thousand deaths under forty years of systematic Soviet rule and large-scale occupation by the Red Army.
In this context, it’s worth taking a little time to look at the historical reality of the events of 1848-9, and the broader European context for the Hungarian Revolution, so conveniently omitted from the leaders’ speeches in recent years. The Dictionary Definition of the 1848 Revolution, or forradalom reads as follows:
‘The historical upheaval when the modern, unified Hungarian nation (magyar nemzet) was born, specifically, the war of Independence (szabadságharc) which erupted six months after the momentous day of March 15 (Március 15) and which, despite its defeat, remained in the national consciousness as something illustrious (which it was), and which Jokai (who participated personally) called “times that changed one’s soul”; it is such an unequivecocally uplifting and ceremonious occasion in the history of Hungary, that every government, regardless of persuasion, has tried to turn it to its advantage by interpreting it to meet its own ends.” (Bart, István: ‘Hungary and the Hungarians: The Keywords’: Budapest, 1999.)
To many of the ‘bourgeois’ Europeans in 1848 it seemed likely that Britain’s exceptionally liberal political system (one in five of men in England and Wales had the vote after 1832; one in eight in Scotland and Ireland) had something to do with its economic success, and that prosperity could come through reform. This was the argument put forward by many who wanted to liberalise the old, autocratic regimes of ‘the continental powers’. Nowhere was this ‘Victorian’ idea of progress better symbolised on the continent than in Budapest, whose very name became synonymous with the linking of the two banks of the Danube into the eventual capital by the building of the Chain Bridge under the direction of the opulent Count István Széchenyi (1791-1860), a brilliant and fanatical supporter of progress promoted from above who also founded the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and improved navigation conditions on Hungary’s two main rivers, the Danube and the Tisza. The Lánchíd was actually designed and constructed by two British engineers and inaugurated in 1848 (picture below). In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, there had also been a rise in the use of the Hungarian language among the social elites, which up to that point had used German, and this was accompanied by the broadening of the foundations of both nationalist ideology and bourgeois economic development. Kossuth symbolised the former route to freedom as a member of the lesser gentry and the chief speaker of the opposition progressive liberals in the ‘lower table’ of the Imperial Diet at Pozsony (Bratislava). The conservatives held power at ‘the upper table’ however, though here too there were powerful advocates of change, led by Count Lajos Batthyány, the chairman of the opposition party. Their chief economic demand, the liberation of the serfs, was to be the means by which they would win their power struggle, but until March 1848 this seemed a long way off and it was the the spilling over of the wave of revolutions from western Europe into the Hapsburg Empire which suddenly made all things possible to the liberal Hungarian politicians.
In 1989, another year of popular revolution throughout Europe, in which Viktor Orbán first came to prominence, my visit to the Historical Exhibition of the National Museum of Hungary was accompanied by a commentary on the last gallery, referring to its contents as ‘the relics of the bourgeois revolution of 1848 and the struggle for freedom…the last wave of European revolutions‘. This ‘wave’ broke into one of anti-Vienna radicalisation among the Hungarian middle classes, forcing the Emperor, Ferdinand V, to give his sanction to the the acts of Parliament, ‘guaranteeing the basic conditions of national independence and bourgeois development’. In the first show-case, therefore, alongside the portraits of the leaders of the March 15th Uprising, including Sándor Petőfi, seen below, were various artefacts of the other European revolutions of that year.
In reality, it was in France where the revolutionary movement first took hold and was strongest, establishing Louis-Philippe as ‘the Citizen King’ in 1830. The Belgians followed suit and also established a constitutional monarchy: Meanwhile, writing from a Britain which was, in Disraeli’s phrase, in danger of becoming ‘Two Nations’, Marx and Engels had begun to write ‘The Communist Manifesto’, arguing for international revolution led by the urban proletariat, which would take over from the bourgeoisie in the developed industrial economies. One of Marx’s arguments was that the proletariat would get poorer, and this became convincing during the ‘slump’ of 1846. As factories closed, the number of unemployed workers in the industrial centres of Europe rose rapidly, so that in Paris alone, 120,000 were without jobs by the end of 1847.
From the start of 1848, it was clear that it was going to be a busy year. In January, the Sicilians set up their own government, independent from Naples, and there was unrest in Schleswig-Holstein on the death of the King of Denmark. However, it was the events of February in France which really lit the fuse of revolution in Europe. Louis-Philippe’s ‘public order’ clamp-downs on the opposition led to serious riots, and on the second day (23rd February), nervous troops opened fire, killing twenty. The next morning there were 100,000 angry citizens on the streets, barricades went up with the tricoluer rising above them and a new generation of French citizens found themselves singing ‘the Marseillaise’. Louis-Philippe ‘gracefully lowered himself into the dustbin of history’, to be replaced by a mixed bag of opposition deputies, left-wing journalists and socialist theoreticians, who proclaimed the Second Republic. Paris cheered and the autocrats of Europe trembled, suddenly finding virtues in liberal politicians they had previously tried to ignore. In March 1848, the Kings of Prussia, Holland and Piedmont-Sardinia, the Austrian Emperor and the Pope all agreed to liberal constitutions. The German princes also agreed to the calling of a national parliament, which came into existence in Frankfurt at the end of the month. From the Pyrenees to Poland, liberalism had triumphed. South of the Alps, Italian patriotism had scored successes in Venice and Milan, and King Charles Albert had declared war on Austria on March 24th, the same day that Schleswig-Holstein declared independence from Denmark.
So it was that on 13th March, Vienna had become the scene of fervent revolutionary activity, as had Pest, Milan and Venice a few days later. This sudden turn of international events created an opportunity for the Hungarian liberals to make an immediate bid for domestic political power, even without first ensuring the support of the peasant masses. Kossuth, to his credit, seized the moment and, with his colleagues, issued a twelve-point programme including the abolition of serfdom. When news of the Vienna disturbances had reached Pest, the poet Petőfi had rallied a group of revolutionary intellectuals around him, who in turn mobilised the people of the city. Without waiting for the censors, they printed and published The Twelve Points as well as Petőfi’s Nemzeti dal (‘National Song’), thereby establishing the freedom of the press in a single day. They then forced the Municipal Council of Pest (see the picture below) to grant their demands and freed Mihály Táncsics, the radical peasant leader, from prison. On the 18th March the Diet, meeting at Pozsony, enacted legislation to put itself on a representative basis, created an autonomous government for Hungary, as a step towards total independence within the Empire, established equality before the law for nobles and non-nobles alike, abolished censorship, set up a National Guard, introduced general taxation, abolished church tithes and reunited Hungary with Transylvania. By enacting this legislation, the Diet made it possible for Hungarians of various classes to embark upon a path of prosperity despite their different interests, through the creation of a liberal, bourgeois society.
Széchenyi epitomised the other path to bourgeois freedom, which ran in parallel to Kossuth’s political route. The two men had never disagreed about major goals, only about the paths leading to them. Széchenyi was afraid that Kossuth’s route would lead to all his progressive projects burning in a sea of flames. He believed that the obstacles to progress could be removed by patient argument. While he could argue, Kossuth could inspire, and inspiration became indispensable ammunition in the heady days of March 1848. However, as István Lázár has pointed out, ‘it is not certain that all this vindicates the inspirer against the arguer…’
The twin of the Twelve Points, Sándor Petőfi’s ‘National Song’, written in the course of the night of March 15th, 1848, opens on this high-sounding note:
Artist Mihály Zichy’s rendition of Sándor Petőfi reciting the Nemzeti dal to the crowd on March 15, 1848. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Rise Hungarians, your country calls!
The time is now, now or never!
Shall we be slaves or free?
This is the question, choose!
To the God of the Hungarians
We swear,
We swear we shall slaves
No longer be!”
At the time, it could only partially fill a role as the Hungarian “Marseillaise” in the 1848-9 War of Independence, because it had no memorable music composed for it, perhaps because it was written and published in such a hurry. So, when it was performed by actors, singers and zealous patriots, it was recited rather than sung, with the crowd shouting the refrain aloud, but not singing it. In 1848, the rapid publication and distribution of revolutionary documents were essential to prove the connection between word and deed. If the abolition of censorship was the first of The Twelve Points, demonstrators proved there was no time lag by seizing the best-known press in Pest and immediately printing the prose and poetic proclamations, flooding the streets with leaflets.
Against the backdrop of pan-European revolution, prospects for the Austrian Empire looked grim, and the hopes for Hungarian freedom were high. The Czechs were calling for a pan-Slav conference and those who had forced Metternich into exile were still on the streets of Vienna. The Italian states were in open revolt against Hapsburg rule, and Ferdinand V was forced to retire to Innsbruck, to be replaced by his young nephew, Franz Joseph. The Austrian armies regained control over their Italian states and in Prague, so that their forces could be redirected against the Hungarians.
However, the invasion of Hungary ended in humiliating defeat and by early 1849 virtually the whole country was under the control of the patriot leader Kossuth. Franz Joseph made a successful appeal to his fellow-autocrat, the Tsar, and Russian contingents swelled the ranks of the Austrian forces on Hungary’s borders. Then the tide of affairs began to turn against the revolutionaries across the continent. Garibaldi’s forces were defeated at San Marino, and with the defeat of the Neopolitans in May, Hungary was recovered for the Hapsburgs by the combined forces of Austria and Russia in August. Only the Venetian Republic, which had successfully withstood Radetzky’s bombardment, held out longer, finally being starved into surrender.
Near the central wall in the National Museum were the armchairs of the first autonomous government of Hungary, upholstered with velvet. Above them hung the portraits of the cabinet members with the Premier, Lajos Batthyány, in the centre. This has now been replicated in statue form in the Cathedral city of Kalocsa, on the Danube (see my picture below). On a little stand in the centre one could read the most significant document of the fight for freedom, the Declaration of Independence issued on 14th April, 1849. This effectively deposed the Hapsburgs from the Hungarian throne in perpetuity and elected Lajos Kossuth as the Governer-President, or ‘Regent’ of the Republic. Next to it were documents chronicling the country’s struggle for survival in the face of counter-revolutionary attacks, Kossúth’s activities in organising the Army and governing the state. There were also the arms and equipment belonging to Kosuth and the commander-in-chief Artúr Görgey. Two banners hoisted above the show-cases were flanked by a map showing the glorious campaign of the Spring of 1849 which had resulted in the liberation of almost the whole territory of Hungary from Austrian occupation, an area including the mountainous region of Transylvania, as well as the whole of the Carpathian basin. Only by enlisting the support of the Romanovs could the Austrian autocrats reverse such losses. Further displays recalled the great battles fought by legendary generals such as János Damjanich and József Bem, as well as the heroism of territorials who successfully organised independent guerilla bands in support of the regular army.
The exhibition also dealt with the nationalities issue within the Hungarian territories, since some of the non-Magyar peoples sided with the Emperor and attacked the Magyars. They had good reason to do so, since their their towns and villages had been plundered by the Magyar revolutionaries, with thousands of civilians being ruthlessly killed. Belated attempts were made to make peace with the nationalities, including the left wing of the Romanian National Movement, and the leaders of the Croatian and Serbian liberals. Their leaders’ portraits were also on display in the National Museum. However, the liberal leaders of the Hungarian Revolution completely disregarded the opinion of its own left-wing, that, if they were to prevent a victory by the forces of reaction, they would have to recognise the separate nationhood of the non-Magyar peoples by granting them territorial autonomy in a confederated republic. Thus, the narrow nationalism of the political elite, and their failure to meet the radical demands of the peasants, put forward by Táncsics, were factors in the Fall of the Revolution. In today’s Magyarorszag, not much emphasis is given to the way the revolution achieved the freedom of the press, including the abolition of censorship. When I visited the Gallery, the nineteenth century printing press stood at the centre of the exhibition as a reminder of this revolutionary gain.
Finally, the exhibition featured an inkstand from the manor-house in Világos, where Görgey signed the unconditional surrender on 11th August 1849. The surrender is depicted in the pictures below, as is the execution of the thirteen valiant ‘Honved’ generals executed at Arad and the execution of Lajos Battyány, the same day, the 6th October, another day commemorated in Hungary as marking the end of Hungary’s short-lived freedom, which nevertheless lasted far longer than the revolutions elsewhere, almost twenty months in all. Neither were these the last of the executions. The retaliation of the Hapsburgs surpassed all former reactions and dungeons were filled by people who were literally left to rot. The final exhibits were the carvings made by the men and the embroidery done by women prisoners. On leaving the exhibition, the visitor can read the words of Lajos Kossuth, etched above the door: “It is my wish that if everything will be lost in Hungary, at least one thing should remain: the liberation of the people from the burden of villeinage…” Kossuth managed to escape to the United States, where he was hailed as a hero of liberty, with statues of him being erected.
A daguerreotype of Sándor Petőfi, one of the first of its kind in Hungary, from 1847. It can be considered a faithful representation of the poet’s features, which were over-romanticised in later portraits, such as the one above. He fell on the battlefield at Segesvár.
The capture of Buda Castle, May 21st, 1849. During the seesawing battles that took place in the War of Independence from Vienna to Transylvania, Buda, Pest and Óbuda fell to the Austrians without direct combat, and the Hungarian government fled to Debrecen. However, the rebel army laid siege to it at the beginning of May, 1848, and captured it on 21st, without real casualties. It was retaken in July. Although the inhabitants of the capital played a major role in the events of March, 1848, they seem to have endured the subsequent events with little involvement, other than providing soldiers.
The surrender at Világos, painted 1851. In mid-August 1849, after the collapse of political confidence in Kossuth, Görgey, commander-in-chief, surrendered not only his own forces, but aklso the remaining scattered forces, to the Russian armies near Arad in Transylvania. He was given a personal amnesty, but the Austrian general, Haynau, camped nearby, carried out mass reprisals on the Hungarian troops.
Today, we live in an age of argument in Europe, not an age of revolutions, so that the ability, quietly and diplomatically, to ‘stay at the table’ is needed and valued more than the ability to make oratorical declarations, recite songs and make grand gestures in public. The route taken by the two counts, Széchenyi and Batthány, may be more useful to Hungary today than that of Kossuth and Petőfi, just as patriotic, but perhaps more productive of progress. There’s a season for songs, poems and speeches, for ardent rhetoric and oratory, but there’s also a season for bridge-building, peace-making and wise compromises. Perhaps, in the Autumn of 2013, the time for the latter has arrived again.
I keep asking, if Hungary is no longer a Republic, since the new constitution was passed in 2011, what is it? I thought the point of the 1989 Constitution was to show, not only that it wanted to disassociate itself from its recent past as a ‘Soviet satellite’ but also with the past of Hapsburg imperialism and autocracy, as well as the authoritarian rule of Admiral Horthy. Yet, having abandoned its status as a ‘Republic’, it now lacks a defining adjective. It is simply a ‘land’. A land of myths and fairy-tales? Ireland may be voting to abolish its Senate, but I cannot imagine it abandoning its constitution as a Republic and I doubt if I could find an Irish person who could. Neither, however, in the present international climate, do they pretend that they can do without the help of their trading partners in Britain and Europe.
Hungary’s history is different, of course, but not so different that lessons cannot be drawn from the attitude of other countries towards the European Union. I have been a friend of Hungary since 1987/88, and entered one country and left another in the Autumn of 1989, when the new Republic was declared. Those were ‘interesting times’, perhaps too interesting for many ordinary Hungarian families. As a member of a Hungarian family for the past 24 years, one which chose to return in hard times in Hungary two years ago, I understand why Hungarian pride is hurting again. However, will a new ‘Magyarok’ mythology help heal the wounds and seal the scars left by the past century, or merely serve to reopen them?
I have to admit that Mrs Thatcher showed herself to be a good friend of the ‘bourgeois revolutionaries’ of Hungary in 1989, even if she didn’t much care for Walesa and his proletarian Poles. Many of my Magyar friends visited Britain at this time, or shortly before, when travel restrictions were eased by the last ‘Communist’ government. They were struck by the ease with which a once strong leader, the ‘iron lady’, could be so easily toppled from power when she became too dictatorial in the new atmosphere which was emerging in Europe and further afield at that time. It seems to me that In the current ‘austere’ atmosphere of retrenchment, all European countries need all the ‘friends’ they can get and none of them, quite literally, can afford to make enemies. Bi-lateral relationships are no longer enough. Take car manufacture. British jobs depend on Japanese and Chinese companies assembling parts produced elsewhere in Europe in Britain, where there is a highly-skilled workforce. Hungarian jobs depend on German companies manufacturing parts in Hungary, where semi-skilled labour is cheaper and production costs are lower. Is that ‘slavery’? Or is it a sign that twenty-first century Hungary is becoming ‘the manufacturing centre of central Europe’ in an inter-dependent single market? Integration and independence need not be polar opposites, after all.
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Andrew James 
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