Fall of the Camphausen Ministry

Breslau, June 17. From two members of the Slav Congress, one of whom left Prague on Tuesday at 12 noon, the other on Wednesday at 5 a.m., we learned the following details of the latest events, which also refute several false items drawn from yesterday’s *Breslauer Zeitung* and all those taken from the *Allgemeine Oesterreichische* and *Wiener Zeitung*:

The reactionary aristocracy, the bureaucracy and the German party had long regarded the Slav Congress as a thorn in their side, as is also demonstrated by the articles on it sent from Prague to various German papers.

As is well known, the programme submitted to the Congress by the Czechs was rejected; on the other hand, the plan drawn up by Dr. Libelt was generally adopted.

According to this plan, a manifesto was to be issued to Europe first of all, in which the Congress’s purpose would be openly stated, and it would be shown that the Slav Congress neither harboured any intentions against Germany nor was engaged in Russian Panslavist schemes. The Congress then intended to address a petition to the Emperor of Austria, setting forth its purpose and seeking confirmation. Only finally were the results of its labours to be published. The sessions in recent days lasted late into the night. The last session took place on Monday morning.

With regard to the accusation directed against Dr. Libelt in yesterday’s *Breslauer Zeitung* in an article from Prague, we note that the matter is exactly the reverse. Libelt in fact proposed that the Congress should address a petition to the Magyars, calling upon them to reach a peaceful settlement with the Hungarian Slavs and to grant them the same freedoms that they themselves enjoy and still strive for. Yet the Illyrians and Serbs would not agree to this, knowing full well that they, the South Slavs, as well as the northern Hungarian Slavs, the Slovaks, would obtain no concessions from the Magyars by peaceful means, since it is sufficiently well known how the Magyars have for years been working to suppress the Slav nationalities in Hungary, seeking to extort ever more freedoms from the Austrian government for themselves alone, and have in general done most to shake the Austrian state edifice. In Prague, moreover, there is reliable proof that 30,000 Hungarian ducats were earmarked for the last movement in Vienna.

The cannons mounted in some places also aroused misgivings, as no valid reason could be found for this measure.

At the Slav ball given on Saturday, the Provincial President, Count Leo Thun, the Commanding General, Prince Windischgrätz, Archduke Ferdinand Karl and other members of the aristocracy were present.

That the events of the 12th, etc., were not brought about by the Swornost, as several newspapers maintain, is also evident from the fact that the majority of the leading spokesmen of the Czechs, all of whom are members of the Swornost, had left Prague in the last few days in order to conduct the elections in the province as election commissioners appointed by the Provincial President. Even the workers, of whom people were apprehensive, gave assurances that they would remain quiet so that the Slav Congress could conclude its sessions undisturbed, which would have happened in the course of this week had not the authorities, as a result of the fatal events of the 12th, forced the out-of-town members to leave Prague on the 13th. The Illyrians moved that the Congress continue its sessions in Agram.

It is false that Princess Windischgrätz was killed by a shot from the hotel ‘Zum Engel’, opposite her residence. The shot came either from a neighbouring house or from the street. Hardly had the rifle been fired than people shouted that someone had fired from the ‘Engel’. Soldiers rushed into the hotel, but an officer ran after them and called to them to turn back, as the murderer had already been seized. A shot also fell near the two hotels ‘Zum Stern’ and ‘Zum schwarzen Roß’. Immediately the grenadiers standing not far away surged forward, firing into the hallway of the house and through the windows into the rooms. A Russian clergyman found seven bullets in his room. At the search that took place soon afterwards, during which the Major of the National Guard, Count Franz Thun, in a somewhat brutal manner looked in vain for weapons in both hotels, it transpired that nobody had fired from either of these hotels. Both the landlord and the German servants declared themselves ready to attest by oath that no one had fired from the windows. The opposing party merely sought a pretext to blacken the members of the Slav Congress living in these two hotels before the troops by means of some false accusation. Here, too, it seems to have been aimed particularly at the Poles. Thus two Poles, Messrs Lubomirski and Romanowicz from Galicia, were unmolested by the soldiers standing in the street when they went to visit another Pole, Dr. Helvel from Cracow, who was staying in the ‘Engel’; but hardly had the two gentlemen entered the house than the soldiers rushed after them and took them to the main guardhouse. One of these gentlemen, L., was badly mistreated by the soldiers. Under escort, L. was taken to the railway station. A German gentleman who was in the same carriage as our own reporter, who left Prague on the 13th, took the liberty of asserting that a captain had arrested two armed Poles staying there in front of the hotel ‘Zum Stern’, whereas all the Poles lodging there were quietly inside the hotel; furthermore, 60 (!) Poles had fired from the house of the wholesaler … and so forth. It is now a generally accepted view that all evil must be laid at the door of the Poles, that they cause every disturbance of the public peace and similar absurdities.

Equally false is the report given by the *Allgemeine Oesterreichische Zeitung* that right at the beginning of the fighting on the Graben, the Museum, the seat of the Swornost, from which all manner of furniture was hurled down to erect barricades, was stormed. The matter is not so. In the Czech National Museum, where the Slav Congress held its sessions and had just concluded them at about 12 o’clock, some thirty-six polytechnic students, who, armed with halberds, usually kept guard there, locked themselves inside the Museum after they had spotted the advancing grenadiers with loaded rifles and had begun to erect a barricade. The soldiers fired into the Museum; in order to parley they climbed in through the window and soon returned with the news that the polytechnic students would leave the Museum if the soldiers withdrew.

The other traveller, who left Prague on the morning of the 14th at 5 a.m., brought the news that the fighting had recommenced on the afternoon of the 13th, that during the night the people stormed the Sand Gate, that the Provincial President Thun had tendered his resignation; Windischgrätz is also said to have stepped down. General Auersperg, Count Franz Thun, Major of the National Guard (who had shaved off his beard so as not to be recognised), left Prague by rail. The Czech rural population hurried from all sides to the aid of the Praguers, stopping the railway train in order to seize suspicious gentlemen. A very large number of soldiers remained [on the field]. When the grenadiers, followed by uhlans, charged towards the Rossmarkt, they were met by a fearful hail of stones and forced to retreat. The troops stationed in Prague consist of Bohemian cuirassiers, grenadiers, infantry and artillery (Czechs and Germans mixed), of Hohenegg infantry (Poles from the Bochnia and Sandez districts) and uhlans (Poles from Galicia).

The Viennese papers, hostile to the Czechs, present the events from their party standpoint. We shall wait and see what the Prague papers, Czech and German, will report to us about these events.