The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany Part 12

In Venice, too, the same kinds of demonstrations of popular feeling took place during January and February which had shown themselves in Milan. Whenever German music was performed in public all the Italians left the place. Men went about in black gloves; women refused to appear in gala costume at public ceremonies; and even those who went to the theatre attended there not so much for the sake of the performance as to applaud pa.s.sages about a betrayed country, or to get up cheers for the Neapolitan Const.i.tution.

Such was the state of feeling when, on March 16, a boat arrived from Trieste, bringing news from Vienna. The chief informant brought with him the fragments of a portrait of Metternich which had been torn to pieces as a symbol of his fall. Then the Venetians rose and demanded the release of Manin and Tommaseo. The Governor referred the pet.i.tioners to the criminal court; but the crowd resolved to take matters into their own hands, and broke into the prison to rescue the two leaders. Manin, however, refused to leave the prison until the president of the tribunal had signed the order for his release. The president readily complied with this request; and Manin and Tommaseo were carried home on the shoulders of the people. The Venetians then proceeded to attack the fortress; the Croat soldiers rushed out to repel them, and succeeded in driving them back. But the next day there was a new gathering in the streets. Palffy, the Military Governor of Venice, appealed to Manin to preserve order; but Manin replied that he could only do so if a civic guard were granted, and if the soldiers were recalled to their barracks. The head of the police remonstrated against the proposal for the Civic Guard, and asked that it should, at any rate, be placed under his authority. Thereupon Manin seized his gun and said that if the police interfered with the Civic Guard he would himself head a revolt. Palffy was a Hungarian, and so was Zichy, the Civil Governor of Venice; and neither of them were disposed to push matters to extremities. Although, therefore, Palffy was at first inclined to make difficulties, and to appeal to the Governor of Lombardy for orders, he yielded at last, and the munic.i.p.al authorities began to organize the Civic Guard.

But the fears of the Venetians were not yet over. Marinovich, the Governor of the Castle, was a hard man, who had irritated the workmen of the a.r.s.enal against him; and the authorities had persuaded him to resign his command and to leave Venice. But, on March 22, while Manin and his friends were deliberating on the next step to be taken, a messenger came to announce to them that Marinovich had suddenly returned to the a.r.s.enal, and had there been attacked and killed by the workmen. Thereupon Manin at once decided that the Civic Guard should be sent to seize the a.r.s.enal. The Admiral Martini tried to offer opposition; but Manin succeeded in entering with some of the guard, and then rang the workmen's bell and demanded arms for the workmen of the a.r.s.enal. It was well for the Venetians at this time that there was so great a hostility between Magyars and Croats. On a previous day, the Croats had desired to fire on the unarmed crowd; but a Hungarian officer, named Winckler, had thrown himself in their way, and had declared that they should fire first at him. When the news came of Marinovich's death, Zichy proposed that the Croats should act with the Civic Guard; but the Croat soldiers refused, desiring instead to bombard the town. This latter proposition, however, was defeated, not only by the Hungarian officers, but by many of the soldiers; for the garrison contained many Italians, who seized this opportunity for joining the cause of their countrymen. During the confusion that arose from this division of opinion, the head of the Civic Guard went to Palffy to demand that the defence of the town should be placed in the hands of the citizens. Palffy hesitated; but, in the meantime, Manin was proclaiming the Venetian Republic in the Piazza of San Marco.

Palffy consented to resign his authority to Zichy, and by 6.30 p.m.

Zichy had signed the evacuation of Venice by the Austrian troops.

Palffy now desired to leave Venice as soon as possible. The chief of the Civic Guard tried to prevent his escape; but Manin trusted to Palffy's honour, and allowed him and some of his followers to depart in a steamer which was to stop at Pola with despatches, ordering the recall of the Venetian fleet which was stationed there. But no sooner was Palffy safely out of Venice than he compelled the captain to change his course, to sail to Trieste, and to surrender to the Austrian authorities. Of course, Manin had made a mistake in trusting so implicitly to the honour of an enemy. Perhaps we should thank G.o.d that there are people who are capable of those mistakes. Manin, at least, does not seem to have changed his line of conduct in consequence; for when, a few days later, a steamer full of Austrian private citizens came near Venice, and the Venetians wished to go out to attack them, Manin prevented them from doing so, saying, "Let us leave such conduct to Metternich."

Thus, then, in this wonderful month of March, 1848, the whole system of Metternich had crumbled to the ground. The German national feeling, which he had hoped to crush out, was steadily ripening and embodying itself in a definite shape. The feeling for that "Geographical Expression" Italy had proved strong enough to drive Radetzky from Milan and Palffy from Venice. The rivalry between the Bohemians and Germans of the Austrian Empire seemed, for the moment, to have been merged in a common desire for liberty; and the Hungarian opposition, which Metternich had hoped to manipulate, had shaken him from power and from office, and had secured liberty to Vienna and practical independence to Hungary. Of the terrible divisions and rivalries which were to undermine the new fabric of liberty, the story will have to be told in the succeeding chapters. But the vigour, heroism, and self-sacrifice which had been brought to light in this early part of the movement will always make the March Risings of 1848 memorable in the history of Europe.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The word "Anschluss" seems hardly to imply so complete a union as was afterwards aimed at by the German party in Vienna.

[10] This pet.i.tion must be given at length in order that students of the Revolution may realize the peculiar character of the Bohemian movement, since this is the only one of the March risings in which the claim of an oppressed people to live in peaceable equality beside their former oppressors was, for the time, successfully established.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE RACES--APRIL TO JUNE, 1848.

Apparent unanimity between races of Austrian Empire in the March risings.--Unreality of this appearance.--Local aspirations.--The Serbs of Buda-Pesth.--The Magyar politics in Pesth.--The first Hungarian Ministry.--Szemere's Press Law and its failure.--The answer of the Ministry to the Serb pet.i.tion.--Position and History of the Serbs in Hungary.--Treatment by Magyars and Austrian Kings.--Growth of Serb literature.--The deputations from Neusatz and Carlowitz.--Velika-Kikinda.--Position and character of Rajacic.--Of Stratimirovic.--The summoning of the Serb a.s.sembly.--Croatian movement revived.--The Croats and the "twelve points."--Joseph Jellacic.--Pillersdorf and the Bohemian deputation.--The meeting at the Sophien-Insel.--The second pet.i.tion.--The Germans of Bohemia and Moravia.--Opening of the Vor-Parlament at Frankfort.--Blum's influence.--Struve's proposals and their effect.--The Slavonic question at Frankfort.--The Polish phase of it.--The Bohemian question evaded by the Vor-Parlament.--The Committee of Fifty and Palacky.--The discussion between the National Committees in Prague.--Schilling's insults.--The appeal to the Austrian Government and its failure.--The summons of the Slavonic Congress.--The difficulties in Vienna.--The April Const.i.tution.--The Galician movement.--The rising of May 15 and the flight of the Emperor.--Effect of the May movement on Bohemian feeling--on Hungarian feeling.--The Serb meeting of May 13.--The Roumanian meeting of May 15.--The Saxon opposition to the Union.--The alliance between the Magyars and the Szekler.--The fall of Transylvanian independence.--The first collision with the Roumanians.--Their position, and character of their rising.--Alliance between Croats and Serbs.--The attack on Carlowitz of June 11.--The Slavonic Congress at Prague.--The difficulties in Prague.--Windischgratz and the Town Council.--The quarrel between the students of Prague and the students of Vienna.--The Slavonic pet.i.tion.--The rising of June 12.--The fall of Prague and its consequences.

Few points were more remarkable in the March Risings of 1848 than the apparent reconciliation between those champions of freedom who had been separated from each other by antagonism of race. Gaj and his friends had hastened to Vienna to join in the general congratulations to that city on its newly won freedom. The Slavonic students of Prague had been equally sympathetic; and members of the different races of Hungary had expressed their satisfaction in the successes of Kossuth.

But this sudden union was necessarily short-lived; for it sprang from a hope which could not be realized; the hope, namely, that the Germans and Magyars would join in extending to each of the Slavonic races of the Empire those separate national freedoms which those two great ruling races had secured for themselves. Thus proposals soon began to be made for the formation of a district which was to be called Slovenia, after the Slovenes who inhabited the province of Krain, and other south-western provinces of the Austrian Empire. At the same time, the Slovaks of North Hungary desired to be formed into a separate province, in which they could freely use the Slovak language and profess the Lutheran creed, undisturbed by Magyar language or Magyar Calvinism. Lastly, on March 15, Ivan Kukuljevic, who, next to Gaj, was the most distinguished of the Croatian patriots, carried, in the Agram a.s.sembly, an address to the Emperor, asking him to summon the old parliament of the three kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. But, though all these demands contained within them the seeds of future quarrels, the first actual outbreak was not to come either from Slovenes, Slovaks, or Croats. The first token of the "rift within the lute," which, if it could not "make the music" of Liberty "mute," would at least weaken its sound and introduce discord into its harmony, showed itself in connexion with a branch of the Slavonic race to which little allusion has yet been made.

Those who have visited Buda-Pesth will remember how, when they had left the modern magnificence of Pesth and crossed the suspension-bridge which joins it with Buda, they have come to a pause at the foot of the steep rock which confronts them. Then, if, instead of ascending to the fortress of Buda, they turned southwards along the sh.o.r.es of the Danube, in a short time they would have found themselves in a district in complete contrast with the rest of the capital, where an air of poverty, hardly found elsewhere in the town, is combined with an originality and picturesqueness of decoration which is neither German nor Magyar. Little cottages, coloured yellow, blue, or white, are built up against the rock in all kinds of irregular ways; in some places the rooms are below the street, and the gay appearance is increased by signs outside the shops, showing what articles can be procured there. The bright handkerchiefs on the heads of the women, and the gay colours worn by both s.e.xes, give a somewhat Eastern aspect to the streets and market-place. Such is the Raitzenstadt, the quarter of the Serbs, long looked down upon by their Magyar countrymen. There, on March 17, the representatives of about a hundred districts of the neighbourhood gathered to prepare a pet.i.tion for leave to use their national language in national affairs. This roused the fierce opposition of the Magyar youth of Pesth; and the Committee of Safety which had just been formed found itself unable to protect the Serbs from violence. If, indeed, the spirit of Kossuth's speech of March 3 had been still triumphant, compromises might have been found which would have hindered the claims of the Serbs from provoking actual war. But the sudden outburst of statesmanlike feeling which produced that speech was not of long duration; and, even if Kossuth had desired to conciliate the subject-races of Hungary, there were those at his back who would never have consented to such tolerance.

The fiery youth of Pesth supplied an element to the Magyar revolution very different from that which generally found expression in the Diet at Presburg; and this element had been so necessary to Kossuth's purposes that it was impossible to disregard its influence. Three days before the Serb meeting a great gathering had been held in a cafe at Pesth, which had been followed on the 15th by a march of the Hungarian students, headed by the poet Petofy, to the Town Council, to demand the concession of twelve points. Some of these points were being secured on that very day by the deputation which had gone to Vienna; others were already conceded in principle by the Diet at Presburg; one of them, the proposal for the union of Transylvania with Hungary, was to be the seed of future mischief, but was, at present, acceptable to all parties of the Magyars. It was not so much, then, by political theories that the youth of Pesth were distinguished from the quieter spirits of Presburg; it was rather the fiery manner in which they made their demands, and the dogmatic intolerance with which they insisted on particular formulas.

Moreover, the Presburg policy, if one may so call it, was weakened in its effect by that attempt to reconcile hopeless opposites which is the great difficulty of all moderate parties. Count Louis Batthyanyi, when he was appointed as the first responsible Minister of Hungary, thought himself bound to form his Ministry, so far as possible, by a combination of the different representatives of the rival parties; and he not only hoped to find a basis for common action between the growing Conservatism of Szechenyi and the growing Radicalism of Kossuth, but he even gave a place in his Ministry to Count Esterhazy, who sympathized to some extent with the Camarilla at Vienna. Baron Eotvos, who had been the champion of centralization when Kossuth was arguing for County Government, was also a member of this Ministry; while Meszaros, the War Minister, might be supposed to combine opposite principles in his own person; for, while he had contributed to Kossuth's paper, the "Pesti Hirlap," his last public action had been to serve under Radetzky in his attempt to suppress the liberties of Milan. Batthyanyi, indeed, hoped that, by introducing Deak into the Ministry, he should secure an influence which should reconcile these various incongruous elements; but such a task was beyond even Deak's powers. By his honourable abstention from the Diet of 1843, he had deprived himself of his former influence; and, though he accepted the place offered him by Batthyanyi, and honestly tried to work with his different colleagues, yet, as the movement became more and more revolutionary, he fell further into the background.

The weakness of this Coalition Ministry was first brought into prominence by Bartholomaus Szemere, a cold, hard man, who had had little previous influence on politics. He was appointed to draw up the new regulations with regard to freedom of the Press; and produced a law which was of so reactionary a character that the students of the Pesth University burnt it publicly in front of the Town Hall, and sent a deputation to the Diet to entreat them to repeal the law and to change the seat of government to Pesth. Batthyanyi consented to the repeal of the law; but rejected, for a time, the other proposal of the students; and the Ministry remained at Presburg, weakened by the sense that the strongest element of Magyar feeling was centred in Kossuth and the Pesth party, and that this feeling would eventually overpower the more moderate patriots. Under these circ.u.mstances it was natural that the weak Ministry at Presburg should sacrifice to their fiery opponents the claims of those races with which neither party had any deep sympathy; and when, on March 24, the Serb pet.i.tion came before the Ministry, they answered that the Hungarians would not endure that any nationality except the Hungarian should exist in Hungary.

But the Serbs of the Raitzenstadt were but the feeble representatives of a much more powerful body, which was scattered over various parts of Hungary and found its chief centre in the province of Slavonia. It was during the sixteenth century that the great immigration of the Serbs into Hungary had taken place. All the important history of this race had been connected with their struggle against the Turks; and it was as fugitives from Turkish tyranny that they took refuge in Hungary. They arrived just about the time when Hungary had accepted the rule of the House of Austria, and, finding that Ferdinand I. was more zealous than his Magyar subjects in resistance to the Turks, and that some of the Magyars were even willing to call in the Turks to their a.s.sistance, the Serbs naturally became the champions of the House of Austria against the Magyars. As a reward for this loyalty, the Austrian rulers granted various privileges to their new subjects; and, in 1690, Leopold I. gave special invitation to the Serbs to come over from the Turkish provinces and to settle in the district a.s.signed to them. To those who lived in that district was granted the right of choosing the Patriarch of their own Church, their own Voyvode, or military leader, and their own magistrates; while those living actually on the frontier were placed under a special military government which was administered from Vienna, and were rewarded for their military services by freedom from taxation. The Magyars, indeed, did not abandon the hope of drawing the Serbs to their side; and when, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Rakoczi[11] attempted to set up an independent princ.i.p.ality in Transylvania, he appealed to the Serbs to a.s.sist him in his attempt. But their grat.i.tude to the House of Austria, strengthened in this instance by a dislike to the Calvinism of Rakoczi, kept them firm in their championship of the Austrian cause.

The House of Austria, on the other hand, showed as little grat.i.tude to the Serbs in the early part of the eighteenth century as they did to the Magyars in the nineteenth; and Joseph I. and Charles VI. steadily violated the promises which had been made by Leopold. The concession of religious liberty was found to be not inconsistent with a vigorous Jesuit propaganda for the crushing out of the Greek faith. A small emeute in a Serb town gave excuse for further interferences with liberty; and, as the Magyars gained in strength, Charles VI. resorted to the mean device of submitting to the Diet of Presburg the list of privileges which he had granted to the Serbs, and asking if the Diet would be pleased to approve them; and, on receiving the refusal which he had expected, he declared that he could not uphold these privileges against the wish of the Hungarian Diet. The Serbs in Hungary were, in many cases, reduced to the position of serfs; the districts of the Banat and Batschka, which had formed part of the Serb settlement, were given up to Hungary in 1741 by Maria Theresa; the Voyvodeschaft was abolished, and so, at a later period, was the Patriarchate also. Maria Theresa, indeed, would have desired to redress some of the grievances of the Serbs; but the need which she felt for the help of the Magyars, first in the War of Succession, and afterwards in the Seven Years'

War, compelled her to disregard the interests of the subject-races when they clashed with those of her more powerful allies. In spite, therefore, of several insurrections and continual meetings of Congresses, the Serbs failed to recover their former privileges; and a few concessions which were made to them by Leopold II. were speedily withdrawn by Francis.

During the latter part of the eighteenth century a new hope came to the Serbs in the growing development of their national literature. A school was founded at Carlowitz by the Patriarch of the Serbs; printing-presses were set up, and writers were gradually produced by this education, one of whom, named Obradovic, composed the first essay in the Serb dialect: while Karadzic, another writer, gathered up the old songs, proverbs, and stories of the country and tried to reduce the dialect into grammatical forms. The movement of Szaffarik and Kollar in North Hungary gave new hopes to the Serbs and other Slavs in the development of their literature; and it was whilst this feeling was growing that Gaj put forward his plan for the Illyrian language.

Gaj's movement was, to some extent, an apple of discord among the Serb national party; for, while some of them were eager to join in any union of the Slavs, many of the more powerful of the clergy objected altogether to the abandonment of the old Cyrillic alphabet which had been introduced by the Bishops Cyril and Methodius, who converted the Slavs to Christianity. And while, as was mentioned in a former chapter, Gaj was suspected by the Roman Catholics of wishing to swamp them in a union with the members of the Greek Church, the Greek clergy among the Serbs, on the other hand, feared a movement which seemed likely to have its centre in the Roman Catholic province of Croatia. Thus there had grown up two centres of the Serb movement in two towns situated within a few miles of each other. Neusatz, or Novi Sad, the most important town of Slavonia, was the centre of the literary and trading part of the Serb community; and Carlowitz, or Karlovci, was the head-quarters of the Metropolitan, and the centre of the clerical section of the Serb national party.

It was from Neusatz, then, that, on April 8, 1848, a deputation arrived at Presburg and declared that, while they were in sympathy with the March movement, and had no desire to separate from Hungary, they yet wished for protection for their national language and customs. They therefore demanded the re-establishment of the Patriarchal dignity and of the office of Voyvode; requesting, further, that the power of the latter officer should be extended over the territories which the Serbs had reconquered from the Turks. Kossuth answered that the Magyars would do their best to respect national feeling, and to give the Serbs a share in the freedom which the Magyars had won; but that only the Magyar language could bind the different nationalities together.

Batthyanyi echoed the words of Kossuth in an even stronger form.

"Then," the Serbs answered, "we must look for recognition elsewhere than at Presburg." "In that case," answered Kossuth, "the sword must decide." "The Serbs," retorted one of the deputation, "were never afraid of that." And so the glove was thrown down. A few days later came a deputation from Carlowitz with the same object; for the clergy, however little sympathy they might feel with Gaj's movement, feared, as heartily as the citizens of Neusatz could do, the interference of the Magyars with Serb independence. The Magyars seem to have learned already the tyrannical arts of Metternich; for they met the pet.i.tion of the clergy with the threat that they would extend to the Roumanians the liberties granted to the Serbs; and they were, no doubt, proportionately disappointed when the deputation answered that they were perfectly ready to share their rights with the Roumanians.

The quarrel thus begun soon led to an actual outbreak. In the town of Velika-Kikinda, in the Banat, there had arisen one of those disturbances which are the natural marks of a revolutionary period.

The peasantry, excited by the changes in their position, had begun to expect still further advantages. A worthless adventurer had become a candidate for one of the village judgeships, and had promised that, if elected, he would recover for the peasantry, without compensation to the present possessors, all the lands that their lords had taken from them. He was elected, but was, of course, unable to carry out his promises; and the disappointed peasantry rose in indignation and made a riot. The soldiers were called out to suppress the movement, but were repelled and disarmed; the magistrates' houses were broken open, and two of them were killed. Thereupon the Magyars sent down a Commissioner to inquire into the riot; the people were ready to surrender the murderers to justice; but the Commissioners seized the opportunity to declare that all the Serb villages in the neighbourhood were concerned in a communistic rising; and, in consequence, they placed them under martial law.

The Serbs now despaired of getting any justice from the Magyars, and determined to appeal from them to the Emperor. They desired, however, still to act legally; and they therefore resolved that the pet.i.tion to the Emperor should be drawn up by an a.s.sembly which had been convoked in a legal manner. The only official leader to whom they could appeal was their Metropolitan, Rajacic. He was an old man, and unwilling to bestir himself in politics. He hesitated, therefore, to comply with the request of his countrymen; but a man of more determined spirit was ready to take the lead among the Serbs. This was George Stratimirovic, one of those erratic characters who add picturesqueness to a revolutionary movement. He came from a Serb family which had settled in Albania; but he had been brought up in Vienna in a military school, and had entered the Austrian Army, which he had been compelled to leave on account of an elopement. Since that time he had started a popular journal, and had joined in the Serb deputation to the Hungarian Diet. His fiery and determined character had attracted the more vigorous politicians among the Serbs; and, though only twenty-six years of age, he was chosen President of the National Serb Committee which was now being formed. The impulse given to the movement by Stratimirovic was further quickened by the alarm which was roused among the Serbs by the appointment of a new Governor to the fortress of Peterwardein, which overlooked Neusatz. This decided the National Committee to act at once; and, gathering together the Serbs from those other provinces of Hungary which had once been under their rule, they organized in Neusatz a deputation which was to rouse Rajacic to a sense of his duty. Along the road to Carlowitz they marched with banners and flags, singing the old national airs, and telling of the exploits of Voyvodes and Patriarchs who had saved their country in former times.

Rajacic was greatly impressed by this deputation; and, after notifying his decision to the Count Palatine, as the legal ruler of Hungary, he summoned the a.s.sembly to meet on the 13th of May.

In the meantime, the att.i.tude of the Croatians was alarming the Hungarian Diet. As mentioned above, they had determined from the first to claim a separate a.s.sembly for Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, and also a separate national guard. Kossuth and some of his friends seemed more disposed, at this time, to make concessions to the Croats than to the Serbs. But the bitter struggles of 1843 to 1846 had destroyed the hope of smoothing over the breach with soft words; and, even while Kossuth was promising to sanction the use of the Croatian language in Croatian affairs and to protect their nationality, he was at the same time denouncing their separatist tendencies as shown in their desire for a separate a.s.sembly. The Croatians, on their part, resented fiercely the visit of certain youths from Pesth, who came to demand their acceptance of the "twelve points." The growing sympathy between the different subject-races of Hungary had led the Croats to protest against the proposal to absorb Transylvania in Hungary. The question of the abolition of the forced labour of the peasants, and of the introduction of peasant proprietorship, was complicated in Croatia by the existence of village communities which managed the land on the old tribal system; and therefore the Croats maintained that it was impossible to pa.s.s the same land laws for Hungary and for Croatia.

The question of religious equality was connected in the minds of the Croats with the fear of an invasion by Magyar Protestants to denationalize Croatia. But the great cause of the Croatian dislike to the "twelve points" lay not so much in their objection to any particular reform as in their resentment at the arrogant attempt to thrust upon them whole-sale formulas concocted at Buda-Pesth. On the other hand, the Magyars considered that they had a special grievance, both against the Croats and against the Emperor, in the sanction which Ferdinand had given on March 23, without waiting for Magyar approval, to the election of Joseph Jellacic as Ban of Croatia. Jellacic was colonel in one of the regiments stationed on that military frontier which was specially under the control of Vienna; and he was chiefly known for his share in a not very successful campaign in Bosnia; while rumour connected his appointment with the favour of the Archd.u.c.h.ess Sophia. This appointment, therefore, was doubly distasteful to the Hungarian Diet, as being at once an exercise of court influence and an a.s.sertion of the independence of Croatia against the power of the Magyars.

But while these various causes were working together to undo the harmony which had been established in the beginning of March, another race struggle was coming to a head, in a different part of the Austrian Empire, which was to have as vital an effect on the history of that Empire as any produced by the struggle between the Magyars and the subject-races of Hungary. We left the Bohemian deputation enjoying their welcome from Ferdinand and Kolowrat in Vienna, and sending happy messages to their fellow citizens in Prague; and on March 24 Pillersdorf, who was now the most important Minister at Vienna, announced the concession by the Emperor of most of the demands of the people of Prague. There were, however, three exceptions on very vital points. The Emperor declared that the equalization of nationalities was already secured by a previous ordinance, and therefore needed no new legislation; that the special law court for Bohemia, which the pet.i.tioners wished to see established in Prague, must be left to the consideration of the Minister of Justice; and that the proposal to reunite Moravia and Silesia to Bohemia must be decided by the local a.s.semblies of the respective provinces.

Some of the quieter citizens of Prague were willing to accept this answer; but the more determined patriots called upon their friends to attend a meeting on the Sophien-Insel, a green island which lies just below the Franzensbrucke in Prague, and which is used by the citizens as a great place for holiday gatherings. Here the more vigorous spirits of Prague uttered their complaints against the Emperor's answer. They pointed out that the local Estates, to which Ferdinand wished to refer some of the questions submitted to him, were mediaeval bodies, having no real representative character; and that only an a.s.sembly freely elected by the whole people would be competent to decide on these questions; that, as to the ordinance to which the Emperor referred for securing equality between Bohemians and Germans, that ordinance had ceased for two hundred years to have any effect; and that a law pa.s.sed in a formal manner was therefore necessary as a guarantee for the desired equality; while with regard to the question of the union between Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, the claim for that union rested on the historical, national, and geographical connections between those lands. The pet.i.tioners, accompanied by the national guard, then marched to the house of the Governor of Bohemia, and induced him to sign their new pet.i.tion. On April 8 Ferdinand answered this pet.i.tion in a letter, promising complete equality between the German and Bohemian languages in all questions of State Administration and public instruction. He further promised that a Bohemian a.s.sembly should be shortly elected on the broadest basis of electoral qualifications, and should have the power of deciding on all the internal affairs of Bohemia. Responsible central boards were to be set up; and the new a.s.sembly was to consider the question of the establishment of independent district law courts, and the abolition of the old privileged tribunals; while the question of the union between Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia was to be decided by a general a.s.sembly, in which all three provinces would be represented. Public offices and legal boards in Bohemia were to be filled exclusively by men who knew both the German and Bohemian languages; and the Minister of Public Instruction was to make provision for the thorough education of Bohemian and German teachers.

There seemed to be nothing in these concessions which was likely to irritate either the German or the Bohemian party; but the work of Germanizing Bohemia, so ruthlessly inaugurated by Ferdinand II. after the Battle of the White Hill in 1620, could not be entirely undone by the March insurrection of 1848. Several towns in Bohemia had been completely Germanized, and they looked with the greatest suspicion on the movement for restoring the Bohemian language to its natural place as an educational and literary power; while they regarded, with hardly less suspicion, any attempt to weaken the hold of Vienna on Prague, or to restore in any degree a Bohemian national life. The towns of Saatz and Reichenberg, particularly, seem to have retained the German impress most thoroughly, and were extremely jealous of the claim of Prague to take the lead in a Bohemian movement. In Moravia the German party were able to appeal to some feeling of provincial independence against the absorption of that province in Bohemia; while the Germans who had been born in Bohemia, but who had subsequently settled in Vienna, naturally caught the infection of that intense German feeling which connected itself with the March movement in Lower Austria. It must not be supposed, however, that this division of feeling ran strictly parallel with the lines of hereditary descent. Men of undoubtedly German name and German origin had accepted heartily the language and traditions of the conquered people; while names that were as certainly Slavonic were found among the leaders of the German party. Another element of confusion of the party lines arose from the change which had come over the religious feelings of the two races respectively. In Prague at any rate, especially among the aristocracy, the championship of that cause of Bohemian independence which had been dear to the followers of John Huss, and to the subjects of the Winter King, was often connected in 1848 with strong Roman Catholic sympathies. This irregularity in the division of parties might have been expected to soften the bitterness of the growing antagonisms; and, if the discussion of the question at issue had been confined to the Germans and Bohemians of the Austrian Empire, there seems some reason to hope that, under freer inst.i.tutions, the bitterness of local and national divisions might have been weakened, and a satisfactory solution of the claims of the different races might have been arrived at.

But a new element of discord was now to be introduced into the struggle; and the great movement for the unity and freedom of Germany became for a time a source of tyranny, and a new and more fatal cause of division between the races of the Western half of the Austrian Empire. This collision is the more to be regretted because, until its occurrence, the leaders of the German movement had exhibited the same dignity and moderation of temper which had been shown in the early phases of the Bohemian movement. On March 31, the very day of the meeting in the Sophien-Insel, the representatives of the German nation arrived in Frankfort, to open that Preparatory Parliament which was to be the first step towards German unity. One who saw this opening scene has thus described it:--"Under a wavy sea of German flags, through a crowd of green trees of freedom, covered with flowers and crowns, walked the members of the Preparatory Parliament. They were surrounded and accompanied by thousands of excited women, as they went from the Imperial Hall of the Roman Emperors to their work in that Church of St. Paul, which from thenceforth for nearly a year would contain the best men of Germany, the holiest hopes of the nation."

Nor were their early efforts unworthy of the nation whom they represented; for it seemed likely that the wisest men would be able to get their due influence in the a.s.sembly. And this was the more remarkable, because the ease with which they had accomplished the first steps of their work seems to have led many of the a.s.sembly to fear that there was some deeper plot in the background; and both in the city and among the members of the a.s.sembly a rumour spread that troops were on the march to put down their meeting. A panic seized the Deputies, and bitter reproaches were interchanged. Violence seemed likely to follow, when Robert Blum came forward to reconcile the opposing factions. "Gentlemen," said he, "from whence shall we get freedom, if we do not maintain it in our dealings with each other, in our most intimate circle?" He went on then to point out, that the immediate causes of quarrel were mere matters of form and not of principle; and that it was the duty of the a.s.sembly to maintain the reputation of the German people for calm decision. For any tumults that were made in that Parliament would be settled out of doors not by shouts, but by fists, and perhaps by other weapons. "We will first,"

he continued, "reverence the law which we ourselves have made, to which we voluntarily submit. If we do that, gentlemen, then not only will the hearts of our people beat in response to us, but other nations too will stretch out their arms in brotherly love to the hitherto scorned and despised Germans, and will greet in the first representative body, which has come here, the full-grown true men, who are as capable of obtaining freedom as they have shown themselves worthy of it." The influence of his clear voice, powerful figure, and determined manner added to the natural effect of his eloquence in bringing the a.s.sembly to a wiser state of mind.[12] Another sign of the power which these men showed, of responding to appeals which were addressed to their higher instincts, was given in answer to one of the Baden representatives, who called on them to accept as their fundamental maxim that "Where the Lord does not build with us, there we build in vain." At these words all the a.s.sembly rose to their feet.

The same triumph of gentle and moderating influences was shown in their reception of a programme presented to them by Struve on behalf of the Committee of Seven. This programme contained fifteen propositions, in which the desire for liberty and national life which animated all sections of the a.s.sembly was combined with Republican aspirations, so strong among the Baden leaders, and with those Socialistic proposals which were as yet entirely in the background of German politics. Thus, for instance, the list begins with a proposal for the amalgamation of the army with the Civic Guard, in order to give a really national character to the army; while another clause proposes equality of faiths, freedom of a.s.sociation, and the right of communities to choose their own clergy and their own burgomasters. On the other hand, the 12th clause aims at the settlement of the misunderstandings between labour and capital by a special Ministry of Labour, which should check usury, protect workmen, and secure them a share in the profits of their work; while the 15th clause proposes the abolition of hereditary monarchies, and the introduction into Germany of a Federal Republic on the model of the United States of America.

This medley of various ideas which Hecker and Struve desired to force upon the a.s.sembly was finally referred to a Committee, which in the end would sift out what was practicable and embody it in a law. Even in the burning question of the relations between the Frankfort Parliament and their antiquated rival the Bundestag, Blum's influence was used in moderating the violence of the disputes between those who wished to drive the older inst.i.tution to extremities and those who wished to make for it a golden bridge by which it could pa.s.s naturally into greater harmony with modern ideas.

So far, then, the German national movement had, on the whole, been guided wisely and moderately; but when the discussions began about the basis of the election of the future a.s.sembly there quickly appeared that German national arrogance which was destined to inflame to so intolerable an extent the antagonism of feeling between the rival races in Bohemia. It was, indeed, unavoidable that the German movement in Austria should be met by some expression of friendliness and some attempt at common action on the part of the Frankfort Parliament; but the desire to welcome all Germans into the bosom of the newly-united Germany became at once complicated with the question of the best way of dealing with those districts where Slavs and Germans were so closely mixed together. This question, indeed, would in all probability have been summarily answered by the German Parliament in favour of absolute German supremacy and of the absorption of Bohemia in Germany; but the Slavonic question in the South could not be considered apart from that other phase of it, which was concerned with the mutual relation between Poles and Germans in the Polish districts of the Kingdom of Prussia. Even the most extreme champions of German supremacy were influenced in their decision of this _North_ Slavonic question by their desire to restore an independent Poland as a bulwark against Russian oppression; and they could not deny that the claims of the Poles to the possession of Posen, at any rate, were as justifiable morally and historically as their claims to that part of their country which had been absorbed by Russia. They were desirous, therefore, of making concessions to Slavonic feeling in Posen; and this desire was increased by the connection which Mieroslawsky had established between the struggle for Polish freedom in Posen and that for German freedom in other parts of Prussia. Under these circ.u.mstances they could not wholly disregard in Bohemia the feeling which they humoured in Posen; and thus it came to pa.s.s that the Preparatory Parliament, unwilling either to abandon German supremacy or to violate directly the principle of unity and autonomy of race, came to the conclusion so common to men under similar difficulties, to throw the burden of the decision on others. They therefore pa.s.sed a vague resolution which might be differently interpreted by different readers, while they left the practical decision of the question to the Committee of Fifty which was to govern Germany from the dissolution of the Preparatory Parliament on April 4 till the meeting of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly on May 8.

It was this Committee, therefore, which undertook the decision of the relations to be established between Bohemia and the new free Germany.

The new body proved bolder than the Preparatory Parliament; for it took a step which, though it may have been intended in a conciliatory spirit, yet involved the distinct a.s.sertion of the claim to treat Bohemia as part of Germany. They invited the Bohemian historian Palacky to join with them in their deliberations, and thus to sanction the proposal that Bohemia should send representatives to the German Parliament. Palacky answered by a courteous but firm refusal of the proposal, based partly on the grounds of previous history, partly on the needs of Bohemia, and partly on the necessity of an independent Austrian Empire to the safety and freedom of Europe. He pointed out that the supposed union between Bohemia and Germany had been merely an alliance of princes, never of peoples, and that even the Bohemian Estates had never recognized it. He urged that Bohemia had the same right to independence which was claimed by Germany; but that both would suffer if extraneous elements were introduced into Germany. He urged that an independent Austria was necessary as a barrier against Russia, but that Germany could be united only by a Republican Government; and, therefore, Austria, which must necessarily remain an Empire, could not consent to a close union with Germany without breaking to pieces.

In spite, however, of this rebuff, the German leaders at Frankfort were so eager to secure their purpose in this matter that they sent down messengers to Prague to confer with the Bohemian National Committee. A long discussion ensued, turning partly on the independence of the Austrian State, partly on the nationality of Bohemia. The Bohemians urged that the Germans were endeavouring to force upon them traditions which they had rejected for themselves; that the Frankfort Parliament had repudiated the old Bund on account of its unrepresentative character; and yet they demanded that Bohemia should recognise a union which rested on the arrangements which had been destroyed, a union about which the Bohemians had never been consulted as a nation. The Germans, on their side, attempted to advance certain arguments of expediency in favour of a closer union between Bohemia and Germany. But a certain Dr. Schilling, who does not seem to have been one of the original messengers from Frankfort, declared, with brutal frankness, the real grounds of the German proposal. If Austria did not become German, he said, the Germans of Austria would not remain Austrian. The five million Germans in Austria would not stay to be oppressed by the twelve million Slavs. The freedom and culture of Bohemia was, he declared, entirely German. The idea of freedom could not be found among the Slavs; and it was therefore necessary, in the general interests of freedom, that Bohemia should be absorbed in Germany.

Palacky bitterly thanked Schilling for the frankness of his speech; and expressed his regret at hearing that the Germans would not stay where they could not rule, and where they were obliged to be on an equality with others; while another of the Bohemians exclaimed that the Bohemians had shown their love of liberty by their resistance to the attempts to Germanize them. But Schilling seemed entirely unable to appreciate the feelings of his opponents; and, with a nave contempt for logic, he declared that, _because_ Nationality was just now the leading idea of the Peoples, _therefore_ all the Slavs who belonged to the German Bund must be absorbed in Germany! Kuranda, the former champion of Viennese liberty, tried to soften the effect of Schilling's insults. He abandoned any claim based on the old German Bund, and declared that the a.s.sembly at Frankfort was not so much a German Parliament as a Congress of Peoples, a beginning of the union of humanity. But this ingenious change of front could not destroy the effect of Schilling's words; and perhaps the Bohemians could not understand why a Congress of the Peoples should find its centre at Frankfort any more than at Prague.

But though the Bohemians had failed to convince the German Committee that Bohemia had as much right as Germany to a separate existence, they still hoped that the Austrian Government would protect them from an attack which seemed directed both against their national rights and against the integrity of the Austrian Empire. So they despatched to the Minister of the Interior a protest against the proposal to hold elections for the Frankfort Parliament in Bohemia. Such elections, they declared, would lead to a breach of the peace of the country, to Communistic and Republican agitations, and to attempts to break up the Austrian Empire. The Bohemian a.s.sembly, they urged, would disavow the legal right of such representatives when they were elected; and thus any really satisfactory alliance between Austria and Germany would be hindered by this attempt. The Ministers in Vienna were, no doubt, troubled in their mind about this question of the relations between Germans and Bohemians. On the one hand, they desired to conciliate a people whose national interests led them to seek protection in a union with the rest of the Austrian Empire. But, on the other hand, they felt it difficult to disregard the intense German feeling which was growing in Vienna, and which was shared by important towns in Bohemia.

Therefore, after, no doubt, considerable deliberation, the Ministry resolved to announce to the Bohemians that they might either vote for the representatives in the Frankfort Parliament or abstain from voting, as seemed best to them. This seems, of all conclusions, the most unreasonable which could have been arrived at. The union with Germany might or might not be defensible; but it was obviously a step which must be taken by the whole nation or by none. Of all possible political arrangements, none could be more intolerable than the permission to certain citizens of a country to retain their civil rights and residence in that country, and at the same time to be free to claim, _according to their own fancy_, the special protection secured by citizenship in another State.

The National Committee of Prague, finding that the Government at Vienna were unable or unwilling to protect them, resolved on stronger measures of self protection; and on May 1 they issued an appeal to all the Slavs of Austria to meet on the 31st of the same month in Prague, to protest against the desire of the Frankfort Parliament to absorb Austria in Germany. This appeal was signed by Count Joseph Matthias Thun, whose relative, Count Leo Thun, had taken an active part in forming the National Committee; by Count Deym, who had headed the first deputation to Vienna; by Palacky and his son-in-law Dr. Rieger; by the philologer Szaffarik, and by less well known men. But at the same time the Bohemian leaders were most anxious to try to maintain the connection with Austria and to observe a strictly deferential att.i.tude towards the Emperor. They therefore appealed again to the Emperor and his Ministers to withdraw the indirect sanction which they had given to the proposed Bohemian elections to the Frankfort Parliament. They pointed out that Austria had never belonged, in regard to most of her provinces, to the German Bund; and that the question of whether or no Bohemia should join herself to Germany was clearly one of those internal questions with reference to which she had been promised the right of decision. They further urged that the Emperor had acted on a different line with regard to the union between Moravia and Bohemia; and although the claim for this latter union rested on old treaties and laws, he had decided that it should only be restored by a vote of the respective provincial a.s.semblies, and the Bohemians had been perfectly willing to accept a compromise on the subject. How much more reasonable then was it that the Bohemians should claim the right of deciding on the question of an entirely new relation between their country and Germany? Again they warned him of the violence which might be the consequence of such elections; and they entreated him to consider also that any attempt on the part of the Frankfort Parliament to make a Const.i.tution for all the lands of the Bund, would be a violation of the independence of the Emperor of Austria and of all his subjects. This last argument might, at an earlier stage, have produced an effect on some at least of the Ministers to whom it was addressed; for they had already announced that Austria could not be bound by the decisions of the Frankfort Parliament. But affairs in Vienna were at this time hastening towards a change, which was materially to affect the relations of that city with the other parts of the Empire.

The Ministry, which had been formed after the fall of Metternich, was little likely to satisfy the hopes of the reformers. Kolowrat and Kubeck, who had been supposed to be rather less illiberal than Metternich, but who had worked with him in most of his schemes, were prominent in this Ministry; and another member of it was that Ficquelmont who had hoped to pacify Milan by help of dancers and actresses. Only one member of the Ministry, the Freiherr von Pillersdorf, had any real reputation for Liberalism; and even he had been a colleague of Metternich, and had done little in that position to counteract Metternich's policy. Finding it impossible, therefore, to put any confidence in the official rulers of their country, the Viennese naturally turned their attention to the formation of some Government in which they could trust. On March 20 a special legion had been formed composed of the students of the University; and a Committee was soon after chosen from those professors and students who had played a leading part in the Revolution. This Committee, which was at once the outcome and the guide of the Students' Legion, became the centre of popular confidence and admiration. Thus then there arose, in the very first days of the Revolution, a marked division of interest and feeling between the real and nominal rulers of Vienna. Some such antagonism is perhaps the scarcely avoidable result of a revolution achieved by violence, especially when the change of persons and forms produced by that revolution is so incomplete as it was in Vienna. Those who, by mere official position, are allowed to retain the leadership of followers with whom they have no sympathy, are constantly expecting that reforms which were begun in violence must be necessarily continued by the same method; while the actual revolutionary leaders can hardly believe in their own success, and are constantly suspecting that those who have apparently accepted the new state of things, are really plotting a reaction.

In Vienna these mutual suspicions had probably stronger justification than they have in most cases of this kind. The courtiers, who had plotted against Metternich, had as little desire for free government as the Jacobins who overthrew Robespierre; and Windischgratz was gradually gathering round him a secret council, who were eventually to establish a system as despotic as that of Metternich. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the gallant lads who had marched in procession to the Landhaus on March 13, and who had defied the guns of Archduke Albert, were unwisely disposed to prefer violent methods of enforcing their opinions. Thus, when, on March 31, a law regulating the freedom of the Press was issued, as distasteful to the Viennese as Szemere's had been to the Hungarians, the Viennese students at once proposed to follow the example of the students of Pesth, and burn the law publicly. Hye persuaded them to abandon this attempt; and he, with Fischhof, Kuranda, Schuselka and other trusted leaders, went on a deputation to Pillersdorf, to entreat him to withdraw the law.

Pillersdorf a.s.sured them that this law was only a provisional one, and that amendments would soon be introduced into it; but, a few days later, Count Taaffe, another member of the Ministry, publicly contradicted Pillersdorf's statement, and spoke of the Press law as being a permanent one, though he promised that it should be mildly administered. Perhaps the students may be excused if they felt no great respect for such a Ministry. Nor were their feelings conciliated by what they considered a growing tendency on the part of the Ministry to make concessions of local liberties to the provinces.

After the first enthusiasm for Kossuth had a little subsided, the Viennese began to reflect that the concession of a separate ministry to Hungary might be a dangerous source of weakness to the central Government; while the growing demands of the Bohemians seemed likely to injure both the position of Vienna, and the cause of German unity.

But the Viennese were in many cases aiming at the two incompatible objects of maintaining the position of Vienna as the capital of the Austrian Empire, and gaining for it a new position as the second or third town of United Germany. But a more reasonable cause of discontent arose from the fact that, while parliaments were conceded to Hungary and Bohemia, the Const.i.tution which had been promised in March to the Austrian Empire was as yet unrealized.

Dr. Schutte, a Westphalian by birth, organized a demonstration in favour of a ma.s.s pet.i.tion. Schutte was arrested by the police, and banished from Vienna as a foreign agitator; and, while this irritated the students still further, the Ministry on their side were alarmed at finding that they had failed to secure the one advantage which they had hoped to reap from the power of the students. The men who had succeeded in retaining office after the March Rising, had trusted that the intellectual youths, who had fought for freedom of the Press and freedom of teaching, would have discouraged the coa.r.s.e socialistic agitations of the workmen, and have separated themselves altogether from their movements. But, though the extremer forms of Socialism found little favour among the leaders of the University, the sympathy between the students and the workmen grew ever closer. If the workmen complained of an employer, the students went to him and warned him to behave better; if any poor man needed money, the students organized the collection; if the cause of a workman was suffering by the undue length of a trial, the students called upon the judges to do their duty; if the workmen wished to state some special grievance in the form of a pet.i.tion, the students composed the pet.i.tion for them, or found a lawyer who would do it gratuitously. Reductions of the hours of labour and higher wages frequently resulted from these efforts.

This combination naturally alarmed the authorities, and they showed their fears both by coercion and concession. On the one hand they arrested Schutte and other agitators; on the other hand they consented on April 25 to issue the long promised Const.i.tution. The Const.i.tution, however, at once disappointed the pet.i.tioners. The proposed Parliament was to consist of two Chambers; the Upper Chamber to be composed of Princes of the royal House, of nominees of the Emperor, and of 150 landlords chosen by the landlords; and the a.s.sent of both Chambers and of the Emperor was to be necessary before the pa.s.sing of a law. This Const.i.tution was objected to both by the students and the workmen; the former condemning it on the ground of its aristocratic character, the latter becoming discontented when they found that the issue of this doc.u.ment did not free them from the payment of rent.