MY LIFE AND ACTS IN HUNGARY IN THE YEARS 1848 AND 1849. BY ARTHUR GÖRGEI VOLUME, I. LONDON: DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. MDCCCLII. PREFACE. THE resistance of Hungary to Austria and Russia was broken. Kossuth and Szemere and their partisans saved themselves, like the Poles, on a neutral territory. I rejected flight; and the majority of the unfortunate combatants for Hungary against New Austria followed my example. Hereupon I was pardoned, and meanwhile banished to Carinthia. The decision on the fate of my compa- nions, however, was left to the Master of the Ordnance, Baron Haynau. The striking contradiction between my pardon and the subsequent executions might have induced the rela- tives of some of those who were awaiting the decision of their case to suppose that it would be possible for me, by some means, to save these unfortunate men; for, immediately after the first executions at Arad and Pesth, I was requested by letters from various quarters to exert my presumed influence with the government of Austria in favour of one or other of the politically compromised persons who had come into the power of Baron Haynau. The failure of these applications needs scarcely to be mentioned. I had positively no influence at all to exert. I had, on the contrary, to perceive that it was my duty to suppress even the anxious cry for pardon, so long as Baron Haynau remained the absolute master VI of life and death to my companions in war. My inter- cession could but kindle still higher the pious zeal of the Baron. Not until there was a pause in the execution of the capital sentences pronounced at Arad and Pesth, and it seemed to be indicated by this circumstance that Baron Haynau no longer ruled with unlimited sway in my country, could I venture to beg attention to the logical consequences of my being pardoned, without having to fear at the same time that my intercession would com- pletely endanger the lives of those whose deliverance it implored. I was on the point of handing my petition, addressed to his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, to the local mi- litary authority of Klagenfurt to be kindly forwarded, when the rumour, that the Monarch would perhaps visit Carinthia also on his state-progress in May 1850, roused in me the desire, as will easily be conceived, to make my request orally to his Majesty. The rumour, indeed, was well founded; but an audience was refused me, and I was referred with my petition to the Minister of the Interior. Re-encouraged in some degree by the assurances with which Herr von Bach dismissed me, I thought it best to present through him my petition to the Monarch. This I did in the following letter: To his Excellency the Minister Alexander von Bach. "Your comrades will not be deceived, if they expect the clemency of his Majesty" — were the last consolatory words with which your Excellency was pleased to dismiss me yesterday. How deeply they penetrated into my afflicted soul, how quickly they revived my well-nigh extinguished belief in the prevalence VII of forgiving sentiments in the breast of the offended earthly dig- nities, let the enclosure declare to your Excellency. It is a feeble attempt to implore the pardon of his Majesty for those who are not in the fortunate position of being able to do so for themselves. But I know not the language which has power to reach the heart of his Majesty; your Excellency, on the contrary, cannot be a stranger to it. My words are perhaps too bold; perhaps the use I make in the enclosed document of the reminiscences of a mournful past is calculated to thwart my purpose. It cannot be concealed from your Excellency's sound judgment, whether both are fitted to be of use to my unfortunate companions, or whether the mischief of a contrary effect may perhaps threaten them from my ignorance of the bearing of this step. And thus my anxious uncertainty about the consequences of the enclosed most submissive petition will excuse me for daring once more to approach your Excellency with the respectful prayer, that your Excellency would be pleased most kindly to decide, on a humane consideration of that which it was not permitted me personally to lay before his Majesty, whether the petition most respectfully enclosed in the original is worthy to be presented to his Majesty by your Excellency's gracious intermediation. Klagenfurt, 21st of May, 1850. My petition to his Majesty the Emperor of Austria was as follows: YOUR MAJESTY! When, on the 13th of August last year, I laid down our arms before the troops of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, I begged that my unfortunate companions might be spared, as well as the deeply distressed people of Hungary, freely giving up myself in expiation of what had been done. I despised flight, and purposely avoided, after as well as before the laying down of our arms, any expression or action tending to my own safety; for I VIII wished at least to share the fate of my companions, if my prayer should not be granted; since my companions were guilty of no act for which they deserved a more rigorous fate than myself. The laying down of our arms was resolved upon in a military council, at which I was not even present. I merely undertook to execute this resolution: and nevertheless, I was pardoned, while a part of the members of this military council lost their lives, another part their property and liberty. I it was especially whose independent acts, favoured by the fortune of war, so long hostilely delayed the realisation of your Majesty's great idea of a united free Austria: and notwithstanding, your Majesty was pleased to grant pardon to me, while my former inferiors — the tools of my daring hand — were given up to the inexorable severity of the courts-martial. In vain I sought for a point of view, regarded from which my fate and that of my unfortunate companions might be made to agree. I found none; and abandoned myself to the torturing thought, that the act of Világos, by its consequences speedily and bloodlessly terminating the Hungarian revolution, had been ac- counted meritorious in me exclusively, and had been rewarded with my pardon. Deeply afflicting as this supposition is to me, I firmly cling, to it, because it has become to me the ground of hope, that those of my former companions who are still alive might not much longer be deprived of your Majesty's most high pardon, if my ingenuous words were permitted to re-echo in your Majesty's soul. The surrender at Világos, with all its consequences, would have been impracticable without the magnanimous co-operation of all those on whom your Majesty's courts-martial have since either inflicted death, or the severest imprisonment. The dead — they rest in peace; neither affected any more by fear or hope. But the living — they still hope. The pardon which has been extended to me, their leader, continually encourages them to hope. For them I venture my prayer, whose boldness the sacred interests of humanity may justify, the oppressive burden of my grief may excuse. IX Mercy for them implores the man who could never hope or pray for mercy for himself, although sacred duties forbade him to reject it when freely offered. Mercy for those whom death has not yet removed beyond the influence of your Majesty's clemency. For all, who, by love to their country, in the midst of great bewildering events, enticed from the path of duty, partly too late entered on the honourable way of return, partly could not again enter on it through insurmountable obstacles; and whose faithful love to their fatherland justifies the sure expectation, that they would repay with threefold interest their sacred debt to the great common fatherland by a devoted co-operation in healing the wounds they had once helped to inflict. The gloomy prisons, unbarred at your Majesty's gracious nod; the purification-commissions relieved from their melancholy duty by the merciful words, "forgiven and forgotten" — would restore to thousands their liberty, their home, their respectable position in society, — to the common fatherland a great number of intelligent faithful citizens, — to the state many a capable tried servant. The apprehension of a shameful abuse of your Majesty's pardon is contradicted by every trait in the general national character of the Magyars; and even in the non-Magyars among my unfortunate companions, this apprehension vanishes at the remembrance of their voluntary submission. A single stroke of the pen would gain for your Majesty millions of thankfully devoted hearts — a secure refuge at any time — and thousands of millions of timorous, though voiceless, complaints would become most joyously-sounding wishes for blessings on Francis Joseph the magnanimous. Four or five weeks later, several of my companions in arms were pardoned; those, namely, who, like myself, belonged to the category of the so-called "quitted" of- ficers, that is, those who had quitted the rank of officers in the Austrian army before the breaking out of the war between Hungary and Austria, but on their departure X had given a written promise never to fight against the armies of his Majesty the Emperor of Austria. The publication of this act of mercy induced me to address the following letter to the Minister of the Interior: To his Excellency the Minister of the Interior, Alexander von Bach. His Majesty's recent act of mercy, to which all those officers owe their deliverance from the dungeons, who as "quitted" royal imperial officers had taken service in the revolutionary Hungarian army, and were for this reason condemned by the courts-martial, has surprisingly revealed the beautiful meaning of those consolatory words with which your Excellency dismissed me.