The Magyar Struggle

* Cologne, January. While in Italy the first counter-stroke against the counter-revolution of last summer and autumn is already beginning, the final struggle to suppress the movement that arose directly out of the February revolution is being completed on the Hungarian plains. The new Italian movement is the prelude to the movement of 1849, the war against the Magyars the afterpiece of the movement of 1848. This afterpiece will probably extend into the new drama that is secretly preparing.

Heroic, like the first rapidly successive scenes of the ’48 revolutionary tragedy, like the fall of Paris and Vienna, pleasingly heroic after the partly feeble, partly petty intervening scenes between June and October, is also the afterpiece. The last act of 1848 merges into the first of 1849 through terrorism.

For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation encircled by the counter-revolutionary superior forces dares to oppose to the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury the revolutionary passion, to oppose the *terreur rouge* to the *terreur blanche*. For the first time in a long time we find a truly revolutionary character, a man who dares to take up the gauntlet of the struggle of desperation in the name of his people, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person – Ludwig Kossuth.

The superior forces are fearful. All Austria, led by 16 million fanaticised Slavs, against 4 million Magyars.

The mass uprising, the national manufacture of arms, the assignats, the summary trial of anyone hindering the revolutionary movement, the revolution in permanence – in short, all the main features of the glorious year 1793 we find again in the Hungary armed, organised, and enthused by Kossuth. This revolutionary organisation, which, so to speak, must be ready within 24 hours on pain of ruin, was lacking in Vienna; otherwise Windischgrätz would never have got in. We shall see whether he gets into Hungary, despite this revolutionary organisation.

Let us take a closer look at the struggle and the contending parties.

The Austrian monarchy arose out of the attempt to unite Germany into a single monarchy in the same way as the French kings down to Louis XI had done in France. The attempt failed owing to the miserable local narrow-mindedness of the Germans as well as the Austrians and to the corresponding petty shopkeeper spirit of the House of Habsburg. Instead of the whole of Germany, the Habsburgs obtained only those south German lands that lay in direct struggle with isolated Slav tribes or in which a German feudal nobility and a German bourgeoisie jointly ruled over subjugated Slav tribes. In both cases the Germans of each province needed support from outside. This support was provided to them through the association against the Slavs, and this association came into being through the union of the provinces in question under the Habsburg sceptre.

Thus German Austria came into being. One need only look up in the first available compendium how the Austrian monarchy came into being, how it split apart again and again came into being, everything in the struggle against the Slavs, to see how accurate this account is.

Next to German Austria lies Hungary. In Hungary the Magyars carried on the same struggle as the Germans in German Austria. The German wedge thrust forward among Slav barbarians in the Archduchies of Austria and Styria gave its hand to the Magyar wedge, likewise thrust forward among Slav barbarians, on the Leitha. Just as in the south and north, in Bohemia, Moravia, Carinthia and Carniola, the German nobility ruled over Slav tribes, Germanised them and thereby drew them into the European movement, so in the south and north, in Croatia, Slavonia and the Carpathian lands, the Magyar nobility likewise ruled over Slav tribes. The interests of both were the same, the opponents of both were natural allies. The alliance of the Magyars and the Austrian Germans was a necessity. All that was lacking was a great fact, a mighty attack upon both, to make this alliance indissoluble. This fact came with the conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks. The Turks threatened Hungary and, in the second instance, Vienna, and Hungary was for centuries indissolubly linked to the House of Habsburg.

But the common enemies of both gradually became weak. The Turkish empire fell into impotence and the Slavs lost the strength to rise up against the Magyars and Germans. Indeed, a part of the German and Magyar nobility ruling in the Slav countries adopted Slav nationality, and with that the Slav nations themselves became interested in the preservation of a monarchy which had all the more to protect the nobility against the developing German and Magyar bourgeoisie. The national antagonisms vanished, and the House of Habsburg adopted a different policy. The same House of Habsburg that had climbed to the German imperial throne on the shoulders of the German philistines became, more decisively than any other dynasty, the representative of the feudal nobility vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie.

In this sense Austria participated in the partition of Poland. The great Galician starostas and voivodes, the Potockis, Lubomirskis and Czartoryskis, betrayed Poland to Austria and became the most loyal props of the House of Habsburg, which in return guaranteed their property against the attacks of the lower nobility and the bourgeoisie.

But the bourgeoisie of the towns gained ever more wealth and influence, and the agriculture progressing with industry gave the peasants a changed position vis-à-vis the landlords. The movement of the burghers and peasants against the nobility became ever more threatening. And since the movement of the peasants, who everywhere are the bearers of national and local narrow-mindedness, is necessarily local and national, the old national struggles emerged again along with it.

In this state of affairs Metternich performed his masterstroke. With the exception of the most powerful feudal barons, he deprived the rest of the nobility of all influence on state leadership. He deprived the bourgeoisie of its power by winning over to himself the most powerful financial barons – he had to do it, the finances forced him to. Thus, supported by the high feudal aristocracy and the high finance, as well as by the bureaucracy and the army, he achieved, more completely than any of his rivals, the ideal of absolute monarchy. He kept the burghers and peasants of each nation in check by means of the nobility of the same nation and the peasants of every other nation; he kept the nobility of each nation in check by its fear of the burghers and peasants of its own nation. The various class interests, national narrow-mindednesses and local prejudices, complicated as they were, completely held each other in check and allowed the old rogue Metternich the freest play. How far he went in this setting of peoples against each other is proved by the Galician scenes of murder, where Metternich suppressed the democratic Polish movement, begun in the interest of the peasants, by means of the Ruthenian peasants themselves, who were fanaticised religiously and nationally.

The year 1848 first brought the most fearful confusion to Austria by letting all these different tribes, which had up to then enslaved each other through Metternich, go free for a moment. Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Moravians, Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, Romanians, Illyrians, Serbs came into conflict with each other, while within each of these nations the individual classes also fought one another. But soon order came into this chaos. The combatants divided into two great camps; on the side of the revolution the Germans, Poles and Magyars; on the side of the counter-revolution the rest, all the Slavs with the exception of the Poles, the Romanians and the Transylvanian Saxons.

Where does this division according to nations come from; what facts underlie it?

This division corresponds to the whole previous history of the tribes in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these great and small nations.

The whole previous history of Austria proves it down to the present day, and the year 1848 has confirmed it. Among all the nations and nationlets of Austria, only three were the bearers of progress, which actively intervened in history, which are still viable now – the Germans, the Poles, the Magyars. Therefore they are now revolutionary.

All other big and small tribes and peoples, for the time being, have the mission to perish in the revolutionary world storm. Therefore they are now counter-revolutionary.

As for the Poles, we refer to our article on the debate on Poland in Frankfurt. To tame their revolutionary spirit, Metternich had already appealed to the Ruthenians, a tribe differing from the Poles by a somewhat different dialect and notably by the Greek religion, which had always belonged to Poland and only learned through Metternich that the Poles were its oppressors. As if in old Poland the Poles themselves had not been oppressed just as much as the Ruthenians, as if under Austrian rule Metternich had not been their common oppressor!

So much for Poles and Ruthenians, who, moreover, by history and geographical location are so greatly separated from Austria proper that we had to get them out of the way first of all in order to straighten out the rest of the jumble of peoples.

Let us note, however, beforehand, that the Poles display great political insight and a truly revolutionary spirit when they now appear in league with their old enemies, the Germans and Magyars, against the Panslavist counter-revolution. A Slav people that loves freedom more than Slavdom thereby alone proves its vitality, thereby already secures its future.

Now to Austria proper.

Austria, south of the Sudetes and Carpathians, the upper Elbe valley and the middle Danube region, forms a land exclusively inhabited by Slavs in the early Middle Ages. These Slavs belong, by language and customs, to the same tribe as the Slavs of Turkey, the Serbs, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, and Thracian and Macedonian Slavs, to the tribe of the so-called South Slavs in contrast to the Poles and Russians. Apart from these related Slav tribes, the immense territory from the Black Sea to the Bohemian Forest and the Tyrolean Alps was inhabited only, in the south of the Balkans, by isolated Greeks, in the lower Danube region by scattered, Romance-speaking Wallachians.

Between this compact Slav mass, the Germans from the west and the Magyars from the east wedged themselves in. The German element conquered the western part of Bohemia and advanced on both sides of the Danube as far as beyond the Leitha. The Archduchy of Austria, a part of Moravia, the greater part of Styria were Germanised, and thus separated the Czechs and Moravians from the Carinthians and Carniolans. Similarly, Transylvania and central Hungary up to the German border were completely cleared of Slavs and occupied by the Magyars, who here separated the Slovaks and some Ruthenian areas (in the north) from the Serbs, Croats, and Slavonians, and subjected all these peoples. The Turks finally, following the example of the Byzantines, subjugated the Slavs south of the Danube and the Save, and the historical role of the South Slavs was played out forever.

The last attempt of the South Slavs to intervene independently in history was the Hussite War, a Czech national peasant war under a religious banner against the German nobility and German imperial supremacy. The attempt failed, and the Czechs have since remained uninterruptedly tied to the tow-rope of the German Empire.

On the other hand, their vanquishers, the Germans and Magyars, took over the historical initiative in the Danube regions. Without the Germans and especially without the Magyars, the South Slavs would have become Turkish, as a part of them indeed became – indeed Mohammedan, as the Slav Bosniaks still are today. And that is a service for which the Austrian South Slavs themselves, even with the exchange of their nationality for the German or Magyar one, did not pay too dearly.

The Turkish invasion of the 15th and 16th centuries was the second edition of the Arab invasion of the 8th century. The victory of Charles Martel was won again and again under the walls of Vienna and on the Hungarian plains. As then at Poitiers, as later at Wahlstatt during the Mongol invasion, here again the whole of European development was threatened. And when it was a matter of saving this, should it depend on a couple of long-decayed, powerless nationalities, such as the Austrian Slavs, who moreover were saved along with it?

As externally, so internally. The driving class, the bearer of the movement, the bourgeoisie, was everywhere German or Magyar. The Slavs have had difficulty, and the South Slavs have been able to bring about a national bourgeoisie only in very isolated places. And with the bourgeoisie, industrial power and capital were in German and Magyar hands respectively, German culture developed, and the Slavs also came intellectually under the suzerainty of the Germans, even as far as Croatia. The same thing happened, only later, and therefore to a lesser extent, in Hungary, where the Magyars jointly with the Germans took over the intellectual and commercial direction. However, the Hungarian Germans, despite retaining the German language, have become true Magyars in sentiment, character, and customs. Only the newly introduced peasant colonists, the Jews, and the Saxons in Transylvania make an exception and insist on the retention of an absurd nationality in the midst of a foreign land.

And if the Magyars had lagged somewhat behind the Germano-Austrians in civilisation, they have, in recent times, brilliantly made up for this through their political activity. From 1830 to 1848, there was more political life in Hungary alone than in all Germany, and the feudal forms of the old Hungarian constitution were better exploited in the democratic interest than the modern forms of the south German constitutions. And who stood here at the head of the movement? The Magyars. Who supported the Austrian reaction? The Croats and Slavonians.

Faced with this Magyar movement, as well as with the reawakening political movement in Germany, the Austrian Slavs founded a separate league: Panslavism.

Panslavism did not arise in Russia or Poland, but in Prague and Agram. Panslavism is the alliance of all the small Slav nations and nationlets of Austria and, in the second line, of Turkey for the struggle against the Austrian Germans, the Magyars, and eventually the Turks. The Turks come in only incidentally and can, as a likewise quite run-down nation, remain entirely out of the question. Panslavism is, by its fundamental tendency, directed against the revolutionary elements of Austria, and therefore reactionary from the outset.

Panslavism immediately proved this reactionary tendency by a double treachery: by sacrificing the only Slav nation that had so far acted in a revolutionary manner, the Poles, to its petty national narrow-mindedness, and by selling itself and Poland to the Russian Tsar.

The direct aim of Panslavism is the establishment of a Slav empire from the Erzgebirge and the Carpathians to the Black, Aegean, and Adriatic Seas, under Russian suzerainty, an empire that, besides the German, Italian, Magyar, Wallachian, Turkish, Greek, and Albanian languages, would also embrace about a dozen Slav languages and main dialects. The whole held together not by the elements that have hitherto held Austria together and developed it, but by the abstract quality of Slavdom and the so-called Slav language, which is indeed common to the majority of the inhabitants. But where does this Slavdom exist except in the heads of some ideologists, where the “Slav language” except in the fantasy of Messrs. Palacký, Gaj, and their associates, and approximately in the Old Slav litany of the Russian Church, which no Slav any longer understands? In reality, all these peoples have the most diverse stages of civilisation, from the modern industry and culture of Bohemia, developed (by Germans) to a fairly high degree, down to the almost nomadic barbarism of the Croats and Bulgarians, and in reality, therefore, all these nations have the most opposite interests. In reality, the Slav language of these ten to twelve nations consists of as many dialects, mostly incomprehensible to each other, which can even be reduced to different main stems (Czech, Illyrian, Serbian, Bulgarian); which through the complete neglect of all literature and the crudeness of most peoples have become mere patois and which, with few exceptions, have always had a foreign, non-Slav language as their written language above them. The Panslavist unity is thus either a pure fantasy, or else – the Russian knout.

And what nations are to stand at the head of this great Slav empire? Precisely those that for a thousand years have been scattered, splintered, had the supply of vital and development-capable elements forced upon them by other non-Slav peoples, who were saved by the victorious arms of non-Slav peoples from sinking into Turkish barbarism, small tribes, everywhere separated from each other, powerless, robbed of their national strength, numbering from a couple of thousand to not two million! So weak have they become that, e.g., the tribe that was the strongest and most formidable in the Middle Ages, the Bulgarians, are now known in Turkey only for their gentleness and faint-heartedness, and take their pride in calling themselves dobre chrisztian, good Christian! Where is there a single one of these tribes, not excepting the Czechs and Serbs, that possesses a national historical tradition which lives in the people and goes beyond the pettiest local struggles?

The time of Panslavism was in the 8th and 9th centuries, when the South Slavs still possessed the whole of Hungary and Austria and threatened Byzantium. If they could then not resist the German and Magyar invasion, could not win independence and form a stable empire, even when their two enemies, the Magyars and Germans, were tearing each other to pieces, how do they want to do it now, after a thousand years of subjugation and denationalisation.

There is no country in Europe that does not possess in some corner or other one or more ruins of peoples, remnants of a former population, driven back and subjugated by the nation which later became the bearer of historical development. These remnants of a nation mercilessly crushed by the course of history, as Hegel says, these refuse of peoples, always become and remain, until their complete extermination or denationalisation, the fanatical bearers of counter-revolution, just as their entire existence in general is already a protest against a great historical revolution.

Thus in Scotland the Gaels, the supporters of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745.

Thus in France the Bretons, the supporters of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800.

Thus in Spain the Basques, the supporters of Don Carlos.

Thus in Austria the Panslavist South Slavs, who are nothing more than the refuse of peoples of a highly entangled thousand-year development. That this likewise highly entangled refuse of peoples sees its salvation only in the reversal of the entire European movement, which for it should not go from west to east, but from east to west, that the liberating weapon, the bond of unity for it is the Russian knout – that is the most natural thing in the world.

The South Slavs, then, had already clearly expressed their reactionary character before 1848. The year 1848 brought it openly to light.

When the February storm broke out, who made the Austrian revolution? Vienna or Prague? Buda-Pesth or Agram? The Germans and Magyars or the Slavs?

It is true: among the more educated South Slavs there existed a small democratic party that, without wishing to give up its nationality, nevertheless wanted to place it at the service of liberty. This illusion, which also succeeded in arousing sympathies among the West European democrats, sympathies that were fully justified as long as the Slav democrats fought alongside them against the common enemy – this illusion was shattered by the bombardment of Prague. From that event onwards, all the South Slav tribes, following the example of the Croats, placed themselves at the disposal of the Austrian reaction. Those leaders of the South Slav movement who still go on fantasising about the equality of nations, a democratic Austria, etc., are either obtuse fanatics, like many newspaper scribblers, or scoundrels, like Jellachich. Their democratic protestations mean no more than the democratic protestations of the official Austrian counter-revolution. In practice, the restoration of South Slav nationality begins with the most brutal raging against the Austrian and Magyar revolution, with the first great service of love they render to the Russian Tsar.

Apart from the high nobility, the bureaucracy and the soldiery, the Austrian camarilla found support only among the Slavs. The Slavs decided the fall of Italy, the Slavs stormed Vienna, it is the Slavs who are now falling upon the Magyars from all sides. At their head, as spokesmen, the Czechs under Palacký, as sword-bearers, the Croats under Jellachich.

That is the thanks for the fact that the German democratic press everywhere sympathised in June with the Czech democrats, when they were cut down by canister-shot by Windischgrätz, the same Windischgrätz who is now their hero.

Let us summarise:

In Austria, apart from Poland and Italy, the Germans and Magyars, in 1848 as for a thousand years already, have assumed the historical initiative. They represent the revolution. The South Slavs, towed for a thousand years in the wake of the Germans and Magyars, rose in 1848 to restore their national independence only in order thereby at the same time to suppress the German-Magyar revolution. They represent the counter-revolution. They were joined by two other nations that also long ago fell into decay, devoid of all historical power of action: the Saxons and Rumanians of Transylvania.

The House of Habsburg, which founded its power by uniting the Germans and Magyars in the struggle against the South Slavs, is now eking out the last moments of its existence by uniting the South Slavs in the struggle against the Germans and Magyars.

That is the political side of the question. Now for the military side.

The territory exclusively inhabited by the Magyars does not make up even one third of the whole of Hungary and Transylvania. From Pressburg onwards, north of the Danube and the Theiss, to the ridge of the Carpathians, live several million Slovaks and a few Ruthenians. In the south, between the Save, Danube and Drave, live Croats and Slavonians; further east, along the Danube, a Serbian colony of over half a million. These two Slav strips are joined by the Wallachians and Saxons of Transylvania.

Thus, from three sides the Magyars are surrounded by natural enemies. The Slovaks, who hold the mountain passes, would be dangerous adversaries in their regions excellently suited to partisan warfare, if they were less indifferent in their attitude.

As it is, however, from the north the Magyars have merely to withstand the attacks of the armies that have broken in from Galicia and Moravia. In the east, on the other hand, the Rumanians and Saxons rose en masse and joined the local Austrian army corps. Their position is excellent, partly on account of the mountainous nature of the country, partly because they hold most of the towns and fortresses.

In the south, finally, the Serbs of the Banat, supported by German colonists, by Wallachians, and likewise by an Austrian corps, are covered by the immense morass of Alibunar and almost unassailable.

The Croats are covered by the Drave and Danube, and since they have at their disposal a strong Austrian army with all resources, they advanced onto Magyar territory even before October and now hold their defensive line on the lower Drave with little difficulty.

And from the fourth side, finally, from Austria, Windischgrätz and Jellachich are now advancing in a closed column. The Magyars are encircled on all sides, encircled by an enormous superior force.

The struggle recalls the struggle against France in 1793. With the only difference that the thinly populated and only semi-civilised Magyar country has by far fewer resources at its disposal than the French Republic had at that time.

The arms and munitions manufactured in Hungary must necessarily be of very poor quality; the manufacture, especially of artillery, cannot possibly proceed rapidly. The country is far from being as large as France, and every inch of lost terrain is therefore a much greater loss. Nothing remains to the Magyars but their revolutionary enthusiasm, their bravery, and the energetic, rapid organisation that Kossuth was able to give them.

But Austria has not won yet. “If we do not beat the Imperials on the Leitha, we shall beat them on the Rabnitz; if not on the Rabnitz, we shall beat them at Pesth; if not at Pesth, we shall beat them on the Theiss, but beat them we shall.” So said Kossuth, and he is doing his utmost to keep his word.

Even with the fall of Buda-Pesth the Magyars still retain the great Lower Hungarian heath, a terrain that is as if made for a cavalry partisan war and which offers numerous almost impregnable points between the swamps where the Magyars can entrench themselves. And the Magyars, who are almost all mounted, possess all the qualities for waging this war. If the imperial army ventures into this waste region, where it must draw all its provisions from Galicia or Austria because it finds nothing, nothing at all, it is impossible to see how it is to hold its ground. In closed corps it will achieve nothing; and if it breaks up into flying columns, it is lost. Its ponderousness would deliver it helplessly into the hands of the swift Magyar mounted bands, even without the possibility of pursuit where it should be victorious; and every scattered imperial soldier would find in every peasant, every herdsman, a mortal enemy. The war in these steppes resembles the Algerian war, and the clumsy Austrian army would need years to end it. And the Magyars are saved if they hold out for just a few months.

The cause of the Magyars stands by no means as badly as the paid black-yellow enthusiasm would have us believe. They are not yet defeated. If they do fall, however, they will fall gloriously as the last heroes of the revolution of 1848, and only for a short time. Then for a moment the Slav counter-revolution, with all its barbarism, will inundate the Austrian monarchy, and the camarilla will see what it has in its allies. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be freed, and take bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians.

The general war that will then break out will shatter this Slav separatist league and annihilate all these petty bull-headed nations down to their very name.

The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but whole reactionary peoples to disappear from the face of the earth. And that, too, is a step forward.