[New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3425, April 9, 1852] 

When at last the concentrated army of Windischgratz com- 
menced the attack upon Vienna, the forces that could be brought 
forward in defense were exceedingly insufficient for the purpose. 
Of the National Guard, only a portion was to be brought to the 
entrenchments. A Proletarian Guard, it is true, had at last been 
hastily formed, but owing to the lateness of the attempt to thus 
make available the most numerous, most daring and most 
energetic part of the population it was too little inured to the use 
of arms and to the very first rudiments of discipline, to offer a 
successful resistance. Thus the Academic Legion, three to four 
thousand strong, well exercised and disciplined to a certain 
degree, brave and enthusiastic, was, militarily speaking, the only 
force which was in a state to do its work successfully. But what 
were they, together with the few reliable National Guards, and 
with the confused mass of the armed proletarians, in opposition to 
the far more numerous regulars of Windischgratz, not counting 
even the brigand hordes of Jellachich, hordes that were, by the 
very nature of their habits, very useful in a war from house to 
house, from lane to lane? And what, but a few old, outworn, 
ill-mounted and ill-served pieces of ordnance had the insurgents 
to oppose to that numerous and perfectly appointed artillery, of 
which Windischgratz made such an unscrupulous use? 

The nearer the danger drew, the more grew the confusion in 
Vienna. The Diet, up to the last moment, could not collect 
sufficient energy to call in for aid the Hungarian army of Perczel, 
encamped a few leagues below the capital. The Committee * passed 
contradictory resolutions, they themselves being, like the popular 
armed masses, floated up and down with the rising and alternately 
receding tide of rumors and counter-rumors. There was only one 

thing upon which all agreed—to respect property; and this was 
done in a degree almost ludicrous for such times. As to the final 
arrangement of a plan of defense, very little was done. Bem, the 
only man present who could have saved Vienna, if any could, then 
in Vienna an almost unknown foreigner, a Slavonian by birth, 
gave up the task, overwhelmed as he was by universal distrust. 
Had he persevered, he might have been lynched as a traitor. 
Messenhauser, the commander of the insurgent forces, more of a 
novel writer than even of a subaltern officer, was totally 
inadequate to the task; and yet, after eight months of revolution- 
ary struggles, the popular party had not produced or acquired a 
military man of more ability than he. Thus the contest began. The 
Viennese, considering their utterly inadequate means of defense, 
considering their utter absence of military skill and organization in 
the ranks, offered a most heroic resistance. In many places the 
order given by Bem, when he was in command, “to defend that 
post to the last man,” was carried out to the letter. But force 
prevailed. Barricade after barricade was swept away by the 
imperial artillery in the long and wide avenues which form the 
main streets of the suburbs; and on the evening of the second 
day’s fighting the Croats occupied the range of houses facing the 
glacis of the Old Town. A feeble and disorderly attack of the 
Hungarian army had been utterly defeated; and during an 
armistice, while some parties in the Old Town capitulated, while 
others hesitated and spread confusion, while the remnants of the 
Academic Legion prepared fresh entrenchments, an entrance was 
made by the Imperialists, and in the midst of this general disorder 
the Old Town was carried. 

The immediate consequences of this victory, the brutalities and 
executions by martial law, the unheard-of cruelties and infamies 
committed by the Slavonian hordes let loose upon Vienna, are too 
well known to be detailed here. The ulterior consequences, the 
entire new turn given to German affairs by the defeat of the 
revolution in Vienna, we shall have reason to notice hereafter. 
There remain two points to be considered in connection with the 
storming of Vienna. The people of that capital had two allies: the 
Hungarians and the German people. Where were they in the hour 
of trial? 

We have seen that the Viennese, with all the generosity of a 
newly-freed people, had risen for a cause which, though ultimately 
their own, was, in the first instance and above all, that of the 
Hungarians. Rather than suffer the Austrian troops to march upon 
Hungary, they would draw their first and most terrific onslaught 

upon themselves. And while they thus nobly came forward for the 
support of their allies, the Hungarians, successful against Jellachich, 
drove him upon Vienna, and by their victory strengthened the force 
that was to attack that town. Under these circumstances, it was the 
clear duty of Hungary to support, without delay and with all 
disposable forces, not the Diet at Vienna, not the Committee of 
Safety or any other official body at Vienna, but the Viennese 
Revolution. And 1 Hungary should even have forgotten that Vienna 
had fought the first battle of Hungary, she owed it to her own safety 
not to forget that Vienna was the only outpost of Hungarian 
independence, and that after the fall of Vienna nothing could meet 
the advance of the Imperial troops against herself. Now, we know 
very well all the Hungarians can say and have said in defense of their 
inactivity during the blockade and storming of Vienna: the 
insufficient state of their own force, the refusal of the Diet or any 
other official body in Vienna to call them in, the necessity to keep on 
constitutional ground, and to avoid complications with the German 
Central Power. But the fact is, as to the insufficient state of the 
Hungarian army, that in the first days after the Viennese Revolution 
and the arrival of Jellachich, nothing was wanted in the shape of 
regular troops, as the Austrian regulars were very far from being 
concentrated; and that a courageous, unrelenting following up of 
the first advantage over Jellachich, even with nothing but the 
Landsturm that had fought at Stuhlweissenburg, would have 
sufficed to effect a junction with the Viennese, and to adjourn to that 
day six months every concentration of an Austrian army. In war, and 
particularly in revolutionary warfare, rapidity of action until some 
decided advantage is gained is the first rule, and we have no 
hesitation in saying that upon merely military grounds Perczel ought 
not to have stopped until his junction with the Viennese was 
effected. There was certainly some risk, but who ever won a battle 
without risking something? And did the people of Vienna risk 
nothing when they drew upon themselves—they, a population of 
four hundred thousand—the forces that were to march to the 
conquest of twelve millions of Hungarians? The military fault 
committed by waiting until the Austrians had united, and by making 
the feeble demonstration at Schwechat which ended, as it deserved to 
do, in an inglorious defeat—this military fault certainly incurred 
more risks than a resolute march upon Vienna against the disbanded 
brigands of Jellachich would have done.*’ 

But, it is said, such an advance of the Hungarians, unless 
authorized by some official body, would have been a violation of the 
German territory, would have brought on complications with the 
Central Power at Frankfort, and would have been, above all, an 
abandonment of the legal and constitutional policy which formed the 
strength of the Hungarian cause. Why, the official bodies in Vienna 
were nonentities! Was it the Diet, was it the popular Committees, 
who had risen for Hungary, or was it the people of Vienna, and they 
alone, who had taken to the musket to stand the brunt of the first 
battle for Hungary’s independence? It was not this nor that official 
body in Vienna which it was important to uphold—all these bodies 
might, and would have been, upset very soon in the progress of the 
revolutionary development—but it was the ascendency of the 
revolutionary movement, the unbroken progress of popular action 
itself, which alone was in question, and which alone could save 
Hungary from invasion. What forms this revolutionary movement 
afterward might take, was the business of the Viennese, not of the 
Hungarians, so long as Vienna and German Austria at large 
continued their allies against the common enemy. But the question 
is, whether in this stickling of the Hungarian Government for some 
quasi-legal authorization, we are not to see the first clear symptom of 
that pretense to a rather doubtful legality of proceeding, which, if it 
did not save Hungary, at least told very well, at a later period, before 
the English middle-class audiences. 

As to the pretext of possible conflicts with the Central Power of 
Germany at Frankfort, it is quite futile. The Frankfort authorities 
were de facto upset by the victory of the counter-revolution at Vienna; 
they would have been equally upset had the revolution, there, found 
the support necessary to defeat its enemies. And lastly, the great 
argument that Hungary could not leave legal and constitutional 
ground, may do very well for British free traders, but it will never be 
deemed sufficient in the eyes of history. Suppose the people of 
Vienna had stuck to “legal and constitutional” means on the 13th of 
March and on the 6th of October, what then of the “legal and 
constitutional”” movement, and of all the glorious battles which, for 
the first time, brought Hungary to the notice of the civilized world? 
The very legal and constitutional ground, upon which it is asserted 
the Hungarians moved in 1848 and °49, was conquered for them by 
the exceedingly illegal and unconstitutional rising of the people of 
Vienna on the 13th of March. It is not to our purpose here to discuss 
the revolutionary history of Hungary, but it may be deemed proper 
if we observe that it is utterly useless to professedly use merely legal 
means of resistance against an enemy who scorns such scruples; and 

if we add, that had it not been for this eternal pretense of legality, 
which Gorgey seized upon and turned against the Government, the 
devotion of Gorgey’s army to its General, and the disgraceful 
catastrophe of Vilagos, would have been impossible.** And when, at 
last, to save their honor, the Hungarians came across the Leitha, in 
the latter end of October 1848, was that not quite as illegal as any 
immediate and resolute attack would have been? 

We are known to harbor no unfriendly feelings toward Hungary. 
We stood by her during the struggle; we may be allowed to say, that 
our paper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, has done more than any 
other to render the Hungarian cause popular in Germany, by 
explaining the nature of the struggle between the Magyar and 
Slavonian races, and by following up the Hungarian war in a series of 
articles which have had paid them the compliment of being 
plagiarized in almost every subsequent book upon the subject, the 
works of native Hungarians and “eye-witnesses” not excepted. We 
even now, in any future continental convulsion, consider Hungary as 
the necessary and natural ally of Germany. But we have been severe 
enough upon our own countrymen to have a right to speak out upon 
our neighbors; and then,we have here to record facts with historical 
impartiality, and we must say, that in this particular instance, the 
generous bravery of the people of Vienna was not only far more 
noble, but also more far-sighted than the cautious circumspection of 
the Hungarian Government. And, as Germans, we may further be 
allowed to say, that not for all the showy victories and glorious battles 
of the Hungarian campaign would we exchange that spontaneous, 
single-handed rising and heroic resistance of the people of Vienna, 
our countrymen, which gave Hungary the time to organize the army 
that could do such great things. 

The second ally of Vienna was the German people. But they were 
everywhere engaged in the same struggle as the Viennese. Frank- 
fort, Baden, Cologne, had just been defeated and disarmed. In 
Berlin and Breslau* the people were at daggers drawn with the 
army, and daily expected to come to blows. Thus it was in every local 
center of action. Everywhere questions were pending that could only 
be settled by the force of arms; and now it was that for the first time 
were severely felt the disastrous consequences of the continuation of 
the old dismemberment and decentralization of Germany. The 
different questions in every State, every province, every town were 
fundamentally the same; but they were brought forward everywhere 
under different shapes and pretexts, and had everywhere attained 

different degrees of maturity. Thus it happened, that while in every 
locality the decisive gravity of the events at Vienna was felt, yet 
nowhere could an important blow be struck with any hope of 
bringing the Viennese succor or making a diversion in their favor; 
and there remained nothing to aid them but the Parliament and 
Central Power of Frankfort; they were appealed to on all hands, but 
what did they do? 

The Frankfort Parliament and the bastard child it had brought to 
light by incestuous intercourse with the old German Diet, the 
so-called Central Power, profited by the Viennese movement to show 
forth their utter nullity. This contemptible Assembly, as we have 
seen, had long since sacrificed its virginity, and young as it was, it was 
already turning gray-headed and experienced in all the artifices of 
prating and pseudo-diplomatic prostitution. Of the dreams and 
illusions of power, of German regeneration and unity, that in the 
beginning had pervaded it, nothing remained but a set of Teutonic 
clap-trap phraseology that was repeated on every occasion, and a 
firm belief of each individual member in his own importance, as well 
as in the credulity of the public. The original naiveté was discarded; 
the representatives of the German people had turned practical men, 
that is to say, they had made it out that the less they did, and the 
more they prated, the safer would be their position as the umpires of 
the fate of Germany. Not that they considered their proceedings 
superfluous; quite the contrary, but they had found out that all really 
great questions, being to them forbidden ground, had better be let 
alone; and there, like a set of Byzantine doctors of the Lower 
Empire,’ they discussed, with an importance and assiduity worthy of 
the fate that at last overtook them, theoretical dogmas long ago 
settled in every part of the civilized world, or microscopical practical 
questions which never led to any practical result. Thus, the Assembly 
being a sort of Lancastrian School * for the mutual instruction of 
members, and being, therefore, very important to themselves, they 
were persuaded it was doing even more than the German people had 
a right to expect, and looked upon every one as a traitor to the 
country who had the impudence to ask them to come to any result. 

When the Viennese insurrection broke out, there was a host of 
interpellations, debates, motions, and amendments upon it, which of 
course led to nothing. The Central Power was to interfere. It sent 
two Commissioners, Messrs. Welcker, the ex-Liberal, and Mosle, to 
Vienna. The travels of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza form matter 
for an Odyssey in comparison to the heroic feats and wonderful 

adventures of these two knights-errant of German Unity. Not daring 
to go to Vienna, they were bullied by Windischgratz, wondered at by 
the idiot Emperor,’ and impudently hoaxed by the Minister Stadion. 
Their despatches and reports are perhaps the only portion of the 
Frankfort transactions” that will retain a place in German literature; 
they are a perfect satirical romance, ready cut and dried, and an 
eternal monument of disgrace for the Frankfort Assembly and its 
government. 

The left side of the Assembly had also sent two Commissioners to 
Vienna, in order to uphold its authority there— Messrs. Frébel and 
Robert Blum. Blum, when danger drew near, judged rightly that 
here the great battle of the German Revolution was to be fought, and 
unhesitatingly resolved to stake his head on the issue. Frdbel, on the 
contrary, was of opinion that it was his duty to preserve himself for 
the important duties of his post at Frankfort. Blum was considered 
one of the most eloquent men of the Frankfort Assembly; he 
certainly was the most popular. His eloguence would not have stood 
the test of any experienced Parliamentary Assembly; he was too fond 
of the shallow declamations of a German dissenting preacher, and 
his arguments wanted both philosophical acumen and acquaintance 
with practical matter of fact. In politics, he belonged to “Moderate 
Democracy,” a rather indefinite sort of thing, cherished on account 
of this very want of definiteness in its principles. But with all this, 
Robert Blum was by nature a thorough, though somewhat polished, 
plebeian, and in decisive moments his plebeian instinct and plebeian 
energy got the better of his indefinite and therefore indecisive 
political persuasion and knowledge. In such moments he raised 
himself far above the usual standard of his capacities. 

Thus, in Vienna, he saw at a glance that here, and not in the midst 
of the would-be elegant debates of Frankfort, the fate of his country 
would have to be decided; he at once made up his mind, gave up all 
idea of retreat, took a command in the revolutionary force, and 
behaved with extraordinary coolness and decision. It was he who 
retarded for a considerable time the taking of the town and covered 
one of its sides from attack by burning the Tabor Bridge over the 
Danube. Everybody knows how after the storming he was arrested, 
tried by a court martial, and shot. He died like a hero. And the 
Frankfort Assembly, horror-struck as it was, yet took the bloody 
insult with a seeming good grace. A resolution was carried, which, by 

the softness and diplomatic decency of its language, was more an 
insult to the grave of the murdered martyr than a damning stain 
upon Austria. But it was not to be expected that this contemptible 
Assembly should resent the assassination of one of its members, 
particularly of the leader of the Left. 

London, March, 1852