Kossuth

Kossuth, LOUIS, the leader of the Hungarian revolution, was born in 1802 at Monok, in the county of Zemplin, in Hungary. His family was of noble rank, but his parents were poor. He studied law at the Protestant college of Sarospatak, and practised for a time. In 1832 he commenced his political career at the diet of Presburg as the deputy of absent magnates, and as editor of a journal which, owing to the state of the law, was not printed, but transcribed and circulated. The subsequent publication of a lithographed paper led, in May 1837, to Kossuth's imprisonment. He was liberated in 1840, and became the editor of the Pesti Hirlap, a newspaper in the modern sense of the word, in which he advocated views too extreme for many of the liberals amongst the nobles, but which took strong hold of the youth of the country. In 1847 he was sent by the county of Pesth as deputy to the diet, and soon became the leader of the opposition. He advocated the emancipation of the peasants, the abolition of all feudal rights and privileges, the freedom of the press, &c., and, after the French revolution of 1848, openly demanded an independent government for Hungary and constitutional government in the Austrian hereditary territories. To his speeches must in great part be ascribed not only the Hungarian revolution, but the insurrection in Vienna in March 1848. On the resignation of the ministry in September 1848 he found himself at the head of the Committee of National Defence, and pro- secuted with extraordinary energy the measures necessary for carrying on the war. As a reply to an imperial decree, dated 4th March, abolishing the Hungarian constitution, he induced the National Assembly at Debreczin, in April 1849, to declare that the Hapsburg dynasty had forfeited the throne. He was now appointed provisional governor of Hungary; but being disappointed in his hopes for the intervention of the Western Powers, and finding the national cause jeopardised by the interference of Russia, he endeavoured to arouse the people to a more desperate effort. The attempt was vain. Finding that the dissensions between himself and Görgei (q.v.) were damaging the national cause, he resigned his dictatorship in favour of the latter. After the defeat at Temesvar on 9th August 1849 he found himself compelled to flee into Turkey, where he was made a prisoner; but, though his extradition was demanded both by Austria and Russia, the Porte resisted their claims. In September 1851 he was liberated by the influence of England and the United States, and, the Republican government of France refusing him a passage through their territory, he sailed in an American frigate to England, where he was received with every demonstration of public respect and sympathy. In December of the same year he landed in the United States, where he met with a most enthusiastic reception. He returned in June 1852 to England, and there he chiefly resided, until Sardinia and France prepared for war with Austria; when, on condition of something definite being done for Hungarian independence, he proposed to Napoleon to arrange a Hungarian rising against Austria. He secured England's neutrality in the event of the war extending to Hungary. The peace of Villafranca bitterly disappointed Kossuth, but did not dishearten him. He made two other attempts (in 1860-61, in conjunction with Cavour and with the help of Napoleon; in 1866, with the aid of Victor Emmanuel) to bring about a rising against Austrian rule in his native country, but without final success. When in 1867 Deák effected the reconciliation of Hungary with the dynasty, and initiated a modus vivendi between the two parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Kossuth retired from active political life. He afterwards lived mostly in Turin, and, although never tired of denouncing the political and economical alliance between Hungary and Austria, abstained from conspiring or agitating against it; but he refused to avail himself of the general amnesty (1867), and to return to his native land to take the oath of fealty to the dynasty he had once dethroned. In 1880-82 he published three volumes of Memories of my Exile (Eng. ed. vol. i. 1880); others followed in 1890. He died in Turin, 20th March 1894, and on 1st April was buried amidst national solemnities in the Protestant church at Budapest. See his letters (1862 and 1872), and works on him (in German) by Horn (1851), Frei (1849), and Somogyi (1894).