CHAPTER VI
Attitude of the Hungarians towards Francis Joseph—They denounce him as a traitor, and banish him from Hungary—Contempt of Austrians for Hungarians—The conquest of Hungary with Russian help—Repression and atrocities—Women flogged by order of Marshal Haynau—Marshal Haynau himself flogged by Barclay and Perkins’ draymen in London, and spat upon by women in Brussels—Popular song written on that occasion.
The state of things which Francis Joseph found on his accession was this: In Vienna, all was over except the shooting and the shouting. Tyrol—the Vendée of Austria—was, as it always had been, loyal. In Bohemia, Windischgraetz had crushed the insurrection as he might have cracked a nut. But Italy and Hungary were still formidable, and had to be reconquered.
In Italy there was a renewal of the fighting; and the work done at Custozza had to be done over again at Novara—Charles Albert then taking a leaf out of the book of the Emperor Ferdinand and abdicating in favour of his son, the famous Victor Emmanuel. In Hungary, the work of conquest had hardly even been begun; and though Jellaçiç had held the Hungarians up at the gates of Vienna, they were in a position to hold him up many times before he could get to the gates of Buda-Pesth. So that the position was extremely critical.
It had been hastily assumed that Francis Joseph would be popular in Hungary. He had once been sent there, as a boy, to represent the Emperor at some public function, had made a fluent speech in the Hungarian language, and had been vociferously cheered. No doubt the precocious bonhomie of his manner had made a favourable impression; but that was not enough at a time when the old Hungarian privileges and the new Hungarian constitution were at issue. The affability of the sovereign was no substitute for the rights of his subjects; and the Hungarians would only consent to love, and be loyal to, the Austrian Emperor “on terms.”
And those terms could not be granted. Francis Joseph, brought up in the school of Metternich, would hardly have been disposed to grant them if his hands had been free; and the men who stood by him—and over him—such men as Windischgraetz and Felix Schwarzenberg—would not have let him grant them if he had wanted to. As they had already saved Vienna for him, so they now proposed to save Austria and Hungary for him—but in their own way, and not in his. Knowing what they wanted, they told him what he wanted; and they had control of the machinery. In order to understand their proceedings, we must define their attitude, noting that they were, in the first place, aristocrats, and, in the second place, Teutons.