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Table of Contents
Python Data Analysis - Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Why subscribe?
Customer Feedback
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Downloading the example code
Downloading the color images of this book
Errata
Piracy
Questions
1. Getting Started with Python Libraries
Installing Python 3
Installing data analysis libraries
On Linux or Mac OS X
On Windows
Using IPython as a shell
Reading manual pages
Jupyter Notebook
NumPy arrays
A simple application
Where to find help and references
Listing modules inside the Python libraries
Visualizing data using Matplotlib
 Summary
2. NumPy Arrays
The NumPy array object
Advantages of NumPy arrays
Creating a multidimensional array
Selecting NumPy array elements
NumPy numerical types
Data type objects
Character codes
The dtype constructors
The dtype attributes
One-dimensional slicing and indexing
Manipulating array shapes
Stacking arrays
Splitting NumPy arrays
NumPy array attributes
Converting arrays
Creating array views and copies
Fancy indexing
Indexing with a list of locations
Indexing NumPy arrays with Booleans
Broadcasting NumPy arrays
Summary
References
3. The Pandas Primer
Installing and exploring Pandas
The Pandas DataFrames
The Pandas Series
Querying data in Pandas
Statistics with Pandas DataFrames
Data aggregation with Pandas DataFrames
Concatenating and appending DataFrames
Joining DataFrames
Handling missing values
Dealing with dates
Pivot tables
 Summary
References
4. Statistics and Linear Algebra
Basic descriptive statistics with NumPy
Linear algebra with NumPy
Inverting matrices with NumPy
Solving linear systems with NumPy
Finding eigenvalues and eigenvectors with NumPy
NumPy random numbers
Gambling with the binomial distribution
Sampling the normal distribution
Performing a normality test with SciPy
Creating a NumPy masked array
Disregarding negative and extreme values
Summary
5. Retrieving, Processing, and Storing Data
Writing CSV files with NumPy and Pandas
The binary .npy and pickle formats
Storing data with PyTables
Reading and writing Pandas DataFrames to HDF5 stores
Reading and writing to Excel with Pandas
Using REST web services and JSON
Reading and writing JSON with Pandas
Parsing RSS and Atom feeds
Parsing HTML with Beautiful Soup
Summary
Reference
6. Data Visualization
The matplotlib subpackages
Basic matplotlib plots
Logarithmic plots
Scatter plots
Legends and annotations
Three-dimensional plots
Plotting in Pandas
Lag plots
 Autocorrelation plots
Plot.ly
Summary
7. Signal Processing and Time Series
The statsmodels modules
Moving averages
Window functions
Defining cointegration
Autocorrelation
Autoregressive models
ARMA models
Generating periodic signals
Fourier analysis
Spectral analysis
Filtering
Summary
8. Working with Databases
Lightweight access with sqlite3
Accessing databases from Pandas
SQLAlchemy
Installing and setting up SQLAlchemy
Populating a database with SQLAlchemy
Querying the database with SQLAlchemy
Pony ORM
Dataset - databases for lazy people
PyMongo and MongoDB
Storing data in Redis
Storing data in memcache
Apache Cassandra
Summary
9. Analyzing Textual Data and Social Media
Installing NLTK
About NLTK
Filtering out stopwords, names, and numbers
The bag-of-words model
Analyzing word frequencies
 Naive Bayes classification
Sentiment analysis
Creating word clouds
Social network analysis
Summary
10. Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning
Preprocessing
Classification with logistic regression
Classification with support vector machines
Regression with ElasticNetCV
Support vector regression
Clustering with affinity propagation
Mean shift
Genetic algorithms
Neural networks
Decision trees
Summary
11. Environments Outside the Python Ecosystem and Cloud
Computing
Exchanging information with Matlab/Octave
Installing rpy2 package
Interfacing with R
Sending NumPy arrays to Java
Integrating SWIG and NumPy
Integrating Boost and Python
Using Fortran code through f2py
PythonAnywhere Cloud
Summary
12. Performance Tuning, Profiling, and Concurrency
Profiling the code
Installing Cython
Calling C code
Creating a process pool with multiprocessing
Speeding up embarrassingly parallel for loops with Joblib
Comparing Bottleneck to NumPy functions
Performing MapReduce with Jug
 Installing MPI for Python
IPython Parallel
Summary
A. Key Concepts
B. Useful Functions
Matplotlib
NumPy
Pandas
Scikit-learn
SciPy
scipy.fftpack
scipy.signal
scipy.stats
C. Online Resources
Python Data Analysis -
Second Edition
Python Data Analysis -
Second Edition
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Credits

Author Copy Editor

Armando Fandango Safis Editing

Reviewers
Project Coordinator
Joran Beasley
Shweta H Birwatkar
Ratan Kumar

Commissioning Editor Proofreader

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About the Author
Armando Fandango is Chief Data Scientist at Epic Engineering and
Consulting Group, and works on confidential projects related to
defense and government agencies. Armando is an accomplished
technologist with hands-on capabilities and senior executive-level
experience with startups and large companies globally. His work
spans diverse industries including FinTech, stock exchanges,
banking, bioinformatics, genomics, AdTech, infrastructure,
transportation, energy, human resources, and entertainment.

Armando has worked for more than ten years in projects involving
predictive analytics, data science, machine learning, big data,
product engineering, high performance computing, and cloud
infrastructures. His research interests spans machine learning, deep
learning, and scientific computing.

I would like to thank my wife for supporting me while I was writing

this book. I would like to thank Dr. Paul Wiegand at UCF for always
inspiring me to pursue great opportunities. I am highly indebted to
the team at Packt: Tushar, Sumeet, Amrita, Deepti, and many others
who made this work possible for the readers.
About the Reviewers
Joran Beasley received his degree in computer science from the
University of Idaho. He has been programming desktop applications
in Python professionally for monitoring large-scale sensor networks
for use in agriculture for the last 7 years. He currently lives in
Moscow, Idaho, and works at METER Group. as a software engineer.

I would like to thank my wife, Nicole, for putting up with my long

hours hunched over a keyboard, and her constant support and help
in raising our two wonderful children.

Ratan Kumar has been programming software in various

languages and technologies for the past 4 years. Having used
Python in the fields of web services for personal as well as
professional projects since 2013, he finds it to be one of the most
elegant, productive, and easy to pick up programming languages.
Ratan is currently based in Bangalore, where he is part of the core
team at smallcase, which simplifies stock market investments.
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condone his great crime. Queen Victoria, the typical British matron,
exchanging visits with the Imperial adventurer made an edifying
spectacle! Presently the land-greed of England and the gloire-thirst
of France brought the sons of the Britons who had whipped the
great Napoleon at Waterloo into an alliance with the sons of the
Frenchmen who had there been whipped; and in the summer of
1854 British and French fleets swept through the Bosphorus and
across the Black Sea, and landed two armies near Sebastopol. Of the
Crimean war which ensued, we need say no more than that it was
immoral in conception, blundering in execution, and ineffectual in
results. Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with just what he had
sought. He extracted from it large quantities of gloire. Marshal’s
bâtons and military promotions, the parade of returning troops, the
assembling at Paris of the European envoys who were to agree on a
treaty of peace,—what did all this show but that Europe had
accepted Napoleon III at his own valuation? In Russia’s wilderness
of snow the great Napoleon had been ruined; now his nephew
posed as the humbler of Russia. The great Napoleon had been
finally crushed by England: now his nephew had enticed good, pious
England into an alliance, and thereby he had surely avenged his
uncle. The last European compact, humiliating to France, had been
signed at Vienna: the new compact, signed at Paris, bore witness to
the supremacy of France.

That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the Third’s career. It
saw him the recognized arbiter of Europe. The world, which
worships success, forgot that the suave, impassive master of the
Tuileries had been Louis the Ridiculed, a political vagabond and
hapless pretender, only ten years before. Now, as arbiter, he would
meddle when he chose, and the world should not gainsay him.
Moreover, he believed his power so secure that he was willing to
forgive those whom he had injured. He had gained what he wanted:
why, therefore, should they reject his amnesty?

Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his ends, Napoleon III

had, nevertheless, curious streaks of disinterestedness in his nature.
What but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free Italy from her
bondage to Austria? He might add thereby to his personal renown,
but the French people, who must pay the bills and furnish the
soldiers, were offered no adequate compensation. Whatever his
motives, he crossed the Alps in the spring of 1859, joined the
Piedmontese, and defeated the Austrians in two great battles. But
after Solferino he paused, grew anxious, and drew back. Many
reasons were hinted at: he had been horrified at the sight of twelve
thousand corpses festering in the midsummer heat on the
battlefield; he perceived that the campaign must last many months
before the Austrians could be dislodged from the Quadrilateral; he
dreaded to create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a menace
to France; he was worried at the mobilization of the Prussian army,
foreboding a war on the Rhine. Motives are usually composite:
perhaps, therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve to quit
Italy with his mission only half achieved. But of all his schemes, that
Italian expedition has alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.

Possessing a great talent for scenic display, Napoleon dressed his

victories so as to get the fullest spectacular effect from them. He
could pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset the gloire of
his uncle’s Marengo with that of his own Magenta. He had more
bâtons and dukedoms to bestow,—more trophies to deposit in the
Invalides. The gazettes, the official historians, the court writers, the
spell-bound populace, acclaimed the new triumphs. Europe became
too small for Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the First had
meddled in Egypt, and Palestine, and the West Indies; his nephew
must do likewise, and seek new worlds to conquer over sea.

Already, however, sober observers noted other symptoms, and

soon the list of Imperial reverses grew ominously long. Early in
1860, Central Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom:
Napoleon had insisted that it should form a new state for his cousin
Plon-Plon. That autumn, Sicily and Naples united themselves to
Italy: Napoleon had wished and schemed otherwise. That same year,
too, England compelled him to renounce his protectorate over Syria.
Then he planned a French empire in Mexico; sent French troops over
under Bazaine; set up Maximilian, who appeared to have grafted
Napoleonism on our continent. But in 1867 he recalled his army,
—“spontaneously” as he said. The world smiled when it reflected
that the spontaneity of his withdrawal had been superinduced by a
curt message from the United States and the massing of United
States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he would have kept
Prussia and Austria from robbing Denmark; but as he had only
words to risk, they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia and
Austria went to war, expecting that Austria would be the victor, he
had arranged to take a slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia.
But Prussia was victorious, and so quickly that Napoleon could not
save his reputation even as mediator.

At last Europe realized that his nod was not omnipotent,—that

Prussia, his enemy, could raise herself to a power of the first rank,
not only without but against his sanction. Napoleon also realized that
his prestige was tottering. He must have some compensation for
Prussia’s aggrandizement. But when he asked for a strip of
Rhineland, Bismarck replied: “I will never cede an inch of German
soil.” Napoleon, not ready for war, cast about for some other screen
to his humiliation; for even in his legislature men now dared to taunt
him with allowing Germany to grow perilously strong. To this taunt
one of the Imperial spokesmen retorted, “Germany is divided into
three fragments, which will never come together.” A day or two later
Bismarck published the secret treaties by which North and South
Germany had bound themselves to support each other in case of
attack.

Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the tiny grandduchy of

Luxemburg, which had long been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The
King of Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety million
francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck said no. He would consent
to withdraw his troops, to destroy the fortifications, and to convert
Luxemburg into a neutral state; more than that he would not allow.
And with that Napoleon had to content himself, and to persuade the
French—as best he could—that he had frightened the Prussians out
of the grandduchy.

In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: “From a distance, the French

Empire seems to be something; near by, it is nothing.” About the
same time Napoleon, who had had much friendly intercourse with
the Prussian statesman, said: “M. de Bismarck is not a serious man.”

Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to
Paris to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and
seemed, a symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The
projectors knew that the immense preparations would enable the
government to employ many workmen, who might otherwise be
unruly, and that the vast concourse of visitors would bring money to
the tradespeople and keep them from grumbling. The ostensible
purpose, however, was to dazzle both Frenchmen and strangers by a
view of Imperial magnificence; and it was fully achieved.

Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had
never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked,
were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified
themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,—
were these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings
been transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches,
new quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace,
symmetry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the
cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the products of industry, the
triumphs of the arts of peace, were not allowed to obscure the
military glories of the Second Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a
“Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept the Crimean prowess in memory; a
“Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta Boulevard” bore witness to the
Italian triumphs. And there were pageants, military, courtly, artistic;
balls, at which, among the picked beauties of the world, the Empress
Eugénie shone most beautiful; banquets, at which Napoleon sat at
the head of the table, with monarchs at his right hand and his left
deferentially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose that the
master of those magnificent revels had been lately frustrated by M.
de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million whose presence in
Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy.

History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there

not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave
in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was
not another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon
less than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of
1867 was the last triumph of Imperial France.

Imperialism had made a great show, reproducing, so far as it

could, the glamour of the First Empire. Judge how potent that First
Empire must have been, when mere imitation of it could thus
hypnotize France and delude Europe! But Imperialism, generated by
a crime and vitalized by corruption and deceit, was not all France.
Honest France, excluded in the beginning, could not, would not, be
lured in later. Napoleon would have conciliated, but the men whom
he needed to conciliate would not even parley. To offset Victor Hugo
and patriots of his rigid defiance, the Emperor had the outward
acquiescence of Prosper Mérimée, the worldly courtier; of Alfred de
Musset, the weak-willed, debauched poet; and of such as they. But
he had the conscience of France against him; to offset that he
leagued himself with Jesuits and Clericals. Having exhausted the
expedients of force, he had tried the arts of flattery; he had
intimidated, he had blandished; he had made vice easy and
attractive, in order that, though he could not win over the stubborn
to his cause, their character might be softened through
voluptuousness. Whosoever could be corrupted—let us give him full
credit—he did corrupt in masterful fashion; but conscience, in France
as elsewhere, is incorruptible.

Despite his complicated machinery for gagging conscience,

protests began to be made boldly. One such protest, uttered towards
the end of 1868, rang throughout France; and well it might, so
audacious was the eloquence of the protester. Several newspapers
had opened a subscription for a monument to Baudin, a Republican
killed in the coup d’état. The proprietors of these newspapers were
arrested. One of them, Delescluze, had for his advocate Léon
Gambetta, a vehement young lawyer from the South. Before the
judge, and the prosecuting attorneys, and the police—all myrmidons
of the Emperor—he arraigned the Empire, closing with these words:
“Here for seventeen years you have been absolute masters
—‘masters at discretion,’ it is your phrase—of France. Well, you have
never dared to say, ‘We will celebrate—we will include among the
solemn festivals of France—the Second of December as a national
anniversary!’ And yet all the governments which have succeeded
each other in the land have honored the day of their birth; there are
but two anniversaries—the 18th Brumaire and the 2d of December—
which have never been put among the solemnities of origin, because
you know that, if you dared to put these, the universal conscience
would disavow them!” Gambetta’s invective did not save his client
from prison, but his arraignment of the Empire echoed throughout
France.

And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism abated in

language none of its pretensions, it showed in deeds many signs of
nervousness. No longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet
the enormous extravagances of Hausmann, the remodeler of Paris.
It even talked Liberalism, and set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with
Ollivier at its head. “All the reform you may give us, we accept,” said
Gambetta bluntly; “and we may possibly force you to yield more
than you intend; but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply
use as a bridge to carry us over to another form of government.”
Evidently the conscience of France, expressing itself through the
Republican spokesman, could not be placated or seduced.

A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre Bonaparte, the

Emperor’s cousin, shot in cold blood a journalist, Victor Noir. Two
hundred thousand persons followed the victim’s hearse; two
hundred thousand voices shouted through the streets of Paris,
“Vengeance! Down with the Empire! Long live the Republic!” In April
the ministers proposed further reforms, and called for another
plebiscite, that worn-out Napoleonic device for deceiving public
opinion. Seven and a third million votes were dutifully registered for
the Empire, and only a million and a half against it; but the
Imperialists did not exult,—a majority of voters in Paris, and forty-six
thousand soldiers, had voted no.

To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napoleon had lavished

so much pomp,—that, indeed, was hard; but the disaffection in the
army meant danger. One desperate remedy remained,—a foreign
war. Victory would bring to Imperialism sufficient prestige to
postpone for several years the impending collapse; meanwhile,
public attention would be diverted from grievances at home.

Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded should not lack

opportunity. The Spaniards having elected an obscure German prince
to be their king, the French ministers announced that they would
never suffer him to reign. Of his own motion, the German prince
declined the election, but the French were not appeased. They
would humble the King of Prussia by forcing from him a meek
promise. King William refused to be bullied; the French ministers
proclaimed that France had been insulted. Not Imperialists only, but
Frenchmen of all parties clamored for satisfaction. That love of
gloire, that mercurial vanity which, twenty years before, had made
them an easy prey to Louis Napoleon, now made them abettors of
his breakneck venture. He appealed to their patriotism, the last
refuge of a scoundrel, and they were beguiled.

War came, the Emperor being, by common report, most reluctant

to consent to its declaration. He was its first victim. Five weeks after
taking the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred and ninety
thousand men at Sédan. The corruption which through twenty years
he had fostered, in all parts of the state where he expected to profit
by it, had gangrened the army also, that branch which a military
tyrant needs to have honestly administered. And now in his need the
army failed him. He had been caught, as every one is caught who
imagines that he can be wicked with impunity and still keep virtue
for an ally when he needs her. From top to bottom his war
department was rotten. Conscripts had, by bribe, evaded service;
generals had sworn to false muster-rolls; ministers had connived
with dishonest contractors. At Sédan, Napoleon paid the penalty of
the corruption which he had erected into a system; at Sédan,
moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and imitations which
he had made the business of his life. Just as Prussian Blücher
paralyzed the last rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so
Prussian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon the Little at
Sédan.

Men forget, even when they do not forgive. Frenchmen, furious at

the humiliation of Sédan, cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But
after a quarter of a century, although they have not forgiven him,
they have come to look on him as victim rather than as villain. Later
writers have held him up to be pitied. They describe his long years
of suffering from the stone; they paint him during that month of
August, 1870, as a poor, abject creature of circumstances, driven to
bay by an irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by his own
officers and troops. They show him to us, speechless and in agony,
lifted from his horse at Saarbrücken; or huddled into a third-class
railway carriage with a crowd of common soldiers escaping from the
oncoming Prussians; or sitting, as cheerless as a death’s-head, at a
council of war; now lodged in mean quarters; now passing gloomily
down regiments on their way to defeat, and never a voice to cry
Vive l’Empereur; ever growing more and more haggard and nervous
with worry, disaster, and endless cigarettes; continually pelted with
telegrams from Empress Eugénie at Paris, “Do this—do that, or the
Empire is lost;” until that final early morning interview with Bismarck
in the weaver’s cottage at Donchéry. Latter-day Frenchmen,
beholding such misery, have forgotten that Napoleon himself was
chiefly responsible for it, and have ceased to execrate.

In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck wrote to his wife the
day after the surrender, a description of the meeting of Napoleon
and his conqueror:—

“Vendresse, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning at five o’clock,

after I had been negotiating until one o’clock, A. M., with Moltke
and the French generals about the capitulation to be concluded,
I was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am acquainted,
to tell me that Napoleon wished to speak with me. Unwashed
and unbreakfasted, I rode towards Sedan, found the Emperor in
an open carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three in
attendance on horseback, halted on the road before Sédan. I
dismounted, saluted him just as politely as at the Tuileries, and
asked for his commands. He wished to see the King. I told him,
as the truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fifteen miles
away, at the spot where I am now writing. In answer to
Napoleon’s question where he should go, I offered him, as I was
not acquainted with the country, my own quarters at Donchéry,
a small place in the neighborhood, close by Sédan. He accepted
and drove, accompanied by his six Frenchmen, by me and by
Carl (who in the mean time had ridden after me), through the
lonely morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the spot, he
began to be troubled on account of the possible crowd, and he
asked me if he could alight in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I
had it inspected by Carl, who brought word it was mean and
dirty. ‘N’importe’ (No matter), said N., and I ascended with him
a rickety, narrow staircase. In an apartment ten feet square,
with a deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat for an
hour; the others were below. A powerful contrast with our last
meeting in the Tuileries in ’67. Our conversation was difficult, if I
wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect
painfully the man whom God’s mighty hand had cast down. I
had sent Carl to fetch officers from the town, and to beg Moltke
to come.”

That morning the terms of capitulation were drawn up, and the
next day Napoleon went a prisoner to Wilhelmshöhe, whence, in due
time, he was allowed to depart for England. At Chislehurst, on
January 9, 1873, he died, having lived to see not only the extinction
of French Imperialism and of the temporal Papacy, but also the
creation of the German Empire and the union of Italy. To prevent all
of these things had been his aim.

In a life like Garibaldi’s we see what a disinterested genius can do

by appealing to men’s noble motives: the career of Louis Napoleon
illustrates not less clearly what a man with talents and without
scruples can accomplish by appealing to the instincts of vainglory
and selfishness and terror; to the instinct which bullies weak nations
and hoists the flag where it does not belong; to the instinct which
has not the courage to acknowledge an error, but is quick to impute
injuries, and declares that there shall be one conscience for
politicians and another for citizens. Let us not flatter ourselves that
only the French have cherished these stupendous delusions; let us
rather take warning by the retribution exacted from them.

“Forgetful is green earth: the Gods alone

Remember everlastingly; they strike
Remorselessly, and ever like for like.
By their great memories the Gods are known.”
 KOSSUTH
The history of Hungary is in this respect unique: it records the
career of an alien tribe which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to
the heart of Europe, founded there a nation, and this nation, after
the friction of a thousand years, still preserves its racial
characteristics. In 894 Duke Arpád led his horde of Magyars—whose
earlier kinsmen were Huns and Avars—up the valley of the Danube.
Long were they a terror to Europe; then, gradually, they had to
content themselves with Hungary as their home. They became
Christians; they adopted a monarchical government; alongside of
their Aryan neighbors, they took on mediæval civilization. Europe,
unable to expel or to destroy, acknowledged them as citizens. The
time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting fivescore years,
defended Europe against the invasion of another horde of Asiatic
barbarians; till, unsupported by their neighbors, the Magyars
succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohács in 1526. Afterwards,
for one hundred and fifty years, Hungary herself writhed in the
hands of the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she had a
different oppressor,—Austria.

The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and after the battle of

Mohács the Magyars chose for their king the sovereign of the
Austrian states. The succession continued in the House of Hapsburg,
becoming in fact hereditary; but, before the Magyars accepted him
as king, each Hapsburg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian
Diet, and must swear to uphold the Hungarian Constitution. When,
however, the expulsion of the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth
century, left the Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their authority,
they set about curtailing the ancient liberties of Hungary.
Throughout the eighteenth century that process went on: the
Magyars protested; the Emperor-King encroached, or, when the
protests threatened to pass into insurrection, he paused for a while
and gave fair promises.

Such was the situation when the French Revolution, followed by

Napoleon’s colossal ambition, startled Europe. During the quarter
century of upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their grievances into
Vienna, remained loyal to their King. After Napoleon’s downfall, the
Old Régime being firmly reëstablished, Emperor Francis not only
failed to keep his promises towards Hungary, but revived the old
policy of Austrianization, which meant the substitution of German for
Magyar officials, and the removal of the chief branches of
government to Vienna. Again the protests became angry, until
Francis, baffled and alarmed, convened the Diet. With the year
1825, when that Diet met, began the modern struggle of Hungary to
recover that home rule which one after another of her Hapsburg
kings had solemnly sworn to respect, and had as perfidiously
disregarded. Thus the seed of the Magyar revolution was sown, like
that of so many others, in a demand for the restoration of
acknowledged rights, and not in a demand for innovation. Home
rule,—Hungary to govern herself, instead of being bullied by
foreigners who happened to be also subjects of her Emperor-King,—
that seemed an object as simple and definite as it was just.
Experience soon showed, however, that this cause was not simple;
that it no more could be attained alone than gold can be taken from
quartz without crushing the quartz and separating the silver and
lead, and the crushed quartz itself, from the desired gold. For
Hungary was imbedded in an old civilization, which must be broken
up before home rule, and many another modern ideal, could be
attained.

Imagine a country having an area about as large as the State of

Colorado, inhabited by people sprung from four different races,—the
Magyar, the Slav, the German, and the Italian: imagine, further,
these races subdivided into eight different peoples,—Magyars,
having poor kinsmen called Szeklers; Slavs, sending forth four
different shoots, Slovaks in the North, Croats in the Southwest,
Serbs in the South, and Wallachs in the East; imagine this motley
population holding various creeds,—Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic,
Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian: imagine not merely each race, but
each people, cherishing its own language, its own customs, its own
ambitions, which inevitably clashed with those of its neighbors: and
having imagined all this, you have not yet come to the end of
Hungary’s complex organism. Beside the conflicts of race and creed,
there were political and social complications.

The dominant race was the Magyars, who numbered, however,

only a third of the total population; their prevailing system was the
feudal. A few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a considerable
body of small nobles and a multitude of artisans, tradesmen, and
peasants made up the social strata. Every Magyar who could trace
descent to Arpád and his followers—though he were but a peasant
in condition—was a noble: members of all the other races had no
political rights. Hungary proper comprised fifty-two counties, each of
which had its local congregation or assembly, which met four times a
year, and sent suggestions or bills of grievances to the Central Diet,
composed of the Table of Magnates and the Table of Deputies. A
Palatine or Viceroy, representing the Sovereign, was the actual head
of the kingdom. Outside of Hungary proper, the Croats had their
local Diet at Agram, and Transylvania had hers; both also chose
representatives to the Hungarian Diet. In a measure, therefore, we
may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting, however, that it was a
federation in which one race, the Magyars, domineered. The Latin
language was the common medium of communication between
Hungary and Austria, and among the diverse peoples.

The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 was the use by
Count Stephen Széchenyi of the Magyar language instead of the
Latin. Széchenyi, having traveled in Western Europe, came back
imbued with large schemes of progress. He helped to introduce
steamboats on the Danube; he founded a Magyar Academy; he
proposed to join Buda and Pesth by a suspension bridge. By
stimulating the material welfare of his country, he hoped that many
of the social abuses would vanish without a struggle. And now his
use of the Magyar language was a symptom of the awakening of the
spirit of nationality,—one of the controlling motives in the history of
Europe during the nineteenth century. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the
arousing of that spirit was evidenced not only by an intenser political
life, but also by a literary revival.

In direct reforms the Diet of 1825 accomplished little,—the

Austrian government being still adroit in postponing a settlement,—
but it was important in so far as it revealed the presence of new
forces, whose nature was as yet undetermined. By the time another
Diet assembled, in 1832, several questions had taken a definite
shape. Foremost, of course, was Hungary’s demand of home rule, in
which all Magyars stood side by side; but when it came to internal
affairs, they inevitably disagreed. The advanced Liberals proposed to
emancipate the serfs, to extend the suffrage, and to abolish many of
the privileges of the aristocracy. How grievous was the condition of
the Hungarian serf may be inferred from the fact that, in spite of an
improvement decreed by Maria Theresa, he was still bound to
contribute to his landlord the equivalent of more than one hundred
days’ labor a year; he had no civic rights, and no other chance of
redress than in the manorial court presided over by his master. The
nobles, on the other hand, paid no taxes, ruled the county
assemblies, appointed magistrates, and, except in case of a foreign
invasion, rendered no military service, in return for all their
exorbitant immunities.

That Magyar aristocracy has played so prominent a part in the

history of Hungary that we may pause a moment to describe it. In
1830 the Magyar magnate was still the most picturesque noble in
Europe. Like the Spanish grandee and the Venetian senator of an
earlier time, he represented one of the highest expressions of the
privileged classes. He was haughty, but warm-hearted; emotional,
but brave: appeal to his honor, to his magnanimity, and—as Maria
Theresa found—he would forget his grievances, disregard his
interests, and devote himself body and soul to your cause. He might
be ignorant, a spendthrift, an exacting master, but in his capacity for
generosity he was—by whatever standard—truly a noble. In old
times his forefathers had assembled every year, or when an
emergency required, on the plain of Rákos,—a host of gallant
warriors, in brilliant armor and gorgeous cloaks and trappings. There
they deliberated—perhaps chose a king or deposed one—and then
each rode home with his retinue, to live in a splendor half-barbaric
for another year. In his dress the Magyar had an Oriental love of
color, and in his music there is a similar glow, a similar charm.

As late as 1840 both the magnates and the lesser nobility clung to
their national costume as loyally as to their national constitution. “It
now consists of the attilla” writes Paget at that date, “a frock coat,
reaching nearly to the knee, with a military collar, and covered in
front with gold lace; over this is generally worn, hanging loosely on
one shoulder, the mente, a somewhat larger coat, lined with fur, and
with a fur cape. It is generally suspended by some massive jeweled
chain. The tight pantaloons and ankle-boots, with the never-failing
spurs, form the lower part. The kalpak, or fur cap, is of innumerable
forms, and ornamented by a feather fastened by a rich brooch. The
white heron’s plume, or aigrette, the rare product of the Southern
Danube, is the most esteemed. The neck is opened, except for a
black ribbon loosely passed round it, the ends of which are finished
with gold fringe. The sabre is in the shape of the Turkish scimitar;
indeed, richly ornamented Damascus blades, the spoils of some
unsuccessful Moslem invasion, are very often worn, and are highly
prized.

“The sword-belt is frequently a heavy gold chain, such as our

ancient knights wore over their armor. The colors, as in many
respects the form, of the Hungarian uniform, depend entirely on the
taste of the individual, and vary from the simple blue dress of the
hussar, with white cotton lace, to the rich stuffs, covered with pearls
and diamonds, of the Prince Esterházy.

“On the whole, I know of no dress so handsome, so manly, and at

the same time so convenient. It is only on gala days that gay and
embroidered dresses are used; on ordinary occasions, as sittings of
the Diet, county meetings, and others in which it is customary to
wear uniform, dark colors with black silk lace, and trousers, or
Hessian boots, are commonly used.”[1]

John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (new edition,

[1]
New York, 1850), i, 249, 250.

Such, in its dress, was the Magyar aristocracy which the reformers
set themselves to overcome; and in their character those Magyar
nobles—were they magnates or simply gentlemen—cherished a
tenacity of class unsurpassed by any other aristocrats in Europe.
Nevertheless, the reformers boldly put forth a programme which
involved the complete social and political reorganization of the
country,—even throwing down a challenge to the aristocracy to
surrender privileges in which these deemed their very existence
rooted. Parties had begun to array themselves on these lines when
Louis Kossuth entered public life.

Born at the village of Monok, Zemplen County, on April 27, 1802,

Kossuth had for his father a lesser noble, Slavic in origin, Lutheran in
faith, and lawyer by profession. The son received a good education,
and began to practice law, which led easily to politics. He sat in his
county assembly, was early conspicuous as an advocate of popular
rights and as an eloquent speaker. Thus equipped, he took his seat
in the Diet of 1832, where, as proxy to a magnate, he had a voice
but no vote. There seemed slight chance of his emerging from his
proxy’s obscurity, but to genius all conditions are fluid. Kossuth
conceived the plan of publishing the reports of the debates in the
Diet. The government permitted no newspapers, and trimmed all
other publications to suit its views; but the members of both Houses
could speak freely, without danger of arrest for any of their
utterances in the Diet. To circulate their speeches would, therefore,
as Kossuth saw, put within reach of the Hungarians a mass of
political reading not otherwise obtainable. Hardly had he begun to
publish, ere government signified its desire of buying his press.
Deprived of this, he employed secretaries who wrote out his
abstracts of the proceedings and sent them through the mails to
their destination. Government ordered its postmen to confiscate and
destroy. Still unvanquished, Kossuth dispatched his budgets by
special messengers. Government was foiled. By these devices,
before the close of the Diet in 1836, Kossuth—the obscure
magnate’s proxy—had become one of the most widely known men in
the kingdom. The reports were literally his reports, giving not only
the tenor of the chief debates, but also his comments thereon.

He now proposed to edit in similar fashion the proceedings of the

quarterly meetings of the fifty-two county assemblies; but
Government, no longer restrained by his inviolability as member of
the Diet, arrested him. He spent two years in prison, denied books
and all intercourse with his friends, before his case came to trial:
then he was sentenced to a further confinement of four years,
during which his great solace was the study of Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, political and social agitation was swelling. The King,

thinking a European war over the Eastern Question imminent,
summoned another Diet to vote him a fresh subsidy and more
soldiers. But the Diet, indignant and headstrong, refused all help till
Kossuth and some other political prisoners should be released. The
King yielded. Kossuth came forth a national hero.

After several months spent in recuperating his health, Kossuth, in

January, 1841, established the Pesti Hirlap, or Pesth Gazette. That
Government acquiesced in this project showed how far the tide of
Liberalism had risen. It showed, too, that Government was astute,—
hoping in this way to rob Kossuth of his martyr’s halo; deeming it
wiser to let him publish openly than surreptitiously; trusting, above
all, to the sharpness of its censors’ eyes and scissors. Kossuth, on
his side, was equally cunning, versed in the art of dressing his
opinions in such guise that the censor could not object to them,
though they carried a meaning which his readers knew how to
interpret according to his intention. He wrote on all topics with a
vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him tens of thousands
of admirers. Like any Magyar patriot, he could count on one of the
most powerful of allies,—the race hatred between his countrymen
and the Austrians. The very word “German” signified, in the Magyar
language, vile, base, despicable. There was a Magyar proverb to the
effect that “German is the only language God does not understand.”
Innumerable illustrations of this antipathy might be cited, but the
following, which Paget tells, will serve as well as another: The
proprietor of a theatre produced what he considered a fine piece of
scenery, in which was represented a full moon, with round, fat,
clean-shaved face. When it rose, the audience hissed, and shouted,
“Down with the German moon!” The manager took the hint; next
night there rose a swarthy-cheeked, black-moustachioed orb.
Hurrahs burst from every mouth, and all cried, “Long live our own
true Magyar moon!”

Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle the fuel which ages of
hatred had been storing. He had the gift peculiar to really great
popular leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and passion; so it
mattered little that he dealt in generalizations. Speaking broadly, he
preached the abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of the
Magyar nationality. The former purpose brought him and the Liberals
into conflict with the conservative aristocracy; the latter inflamed
against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred of their subject
peoples.

For the spirit of nationality had awakened these also. The Slavs of
Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia dreamed of establishing a great
Slavic kingdom in Southeastern Europe; they, too, were putting forth
a literature. Their Illyrism—to their prospective nation they gave the
name “Illyria”—clashed with the recrudescent Magyarism. When the
Hungarian Diet decreed that the Magyar language should be taught
in their schools, and that every official must use it, they protested as
strenuously as the Magyars themselves had protested when Austria
tried to impose the German language and German officials on them.
“The Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,” exclaimed Gaj, the
poet and spokesman of Illyrism, to the Hungarian Diet: “I did not
make this ocean, I did not stir up its waves; but take care that they
do not go over your heads and drown you.” Nevertheless, the law
was passed. In the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, in the
East the Wallachs of Transylvania, feeling the first tingle of national
aspirations, resented this encroachment. Austria—whose motto was,
Divide et impera—found her advantage in embittering tribe with
tribe and class with class.

For three years and a half Kossuth’s Gazette had an

unprecedented influence in Hungary; but in the summer of 1844,
disagreeing with his publisher over a matter of salary, he resigned,
and expected to found another journal which should draw off the
Gazette’s patrons. Government, however, refused to grant him a
license. Accordingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another form.
In the assembly of the County of Pesth, he discussed with matchless
eloquence the great political questions; outside, he organized an
economical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with a tariff which
stunted her industrial and commercial development. Kossuth created
a league whose members vowed for five years to use only
Hungarian products. He projected a railway to Fiume, to secure an
outlet for exporting Hungarian goods. He urged the establishment of
savings banks and of mercantile corporations. And for a brief time,
under this patriotic stimulus, trade flourished.

Thus through all the arteries of the body politic new blood was
throbbing. Give a people a great idea, and they will find how to
apply it to every concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely
undermining feudalism; their race was growing more and more
restive at Austria’s obstinate delays. When Austria removed the
native county sheriffs and put German administrators in their stead,
all the Magyar factions joined in denouncing such an assault on their
national life. The county system had been the safeguard of
Hungary’s political institutions for well-nigh eight hundred years; the
sheriff was the foremost official in the county, to whose guidance its
interests and civic activity were intrusted. To make an alien sheriff
was therefore to check national agitation at its source. Accordingly,
the Diet which met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance and
resentment, though the platform of the Liberals, drawn up by the
judicial Deák, wore on its surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot
canvass, Kossuth was elected to represent Pesth in the Chamber of
Deputies. A few sessions sufficed to establish his preëminence as an
orator, and his leadership of the Liberal party.

During the winter months of 1847–48 but little was done, though
much was discussed. As usual, the Magnates resisted the reforms
aimed at their class; as usual, Government temporized and
postponed. Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 1848, news
reached Presburg of the revolution in Paris, and of the flight of Louis
Philippe. That news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kindling
as it passed the fires of revolt. At Presburg, on March 3, Kossuth
rose in the Diet and interrupted a debate on the financial difficulties
with Austria. That question of finance, he said, could never be
settled separately; in it was involved the whole question of Austria’s
disregard of Hungary’s rights. Hungary must have her own laws, her
own ministry; taxation must be equal; the franchise must be
extended. More than that, he added, Hungary could never prosper
until every part of the Empire should be governed by uniform
constitutional methods.

Kossuth’s “baptismal speech of the revolution” took the Lower

House by storm. An address to the Throne was framed, which, after
fruitless reluctance on the part of the Magnates, a large committee,
headed by Kossuth and Count Louis Batthyányi,—the Liberal leader
in the Upper House,—carried twelve days later to Vienna. The
delegates found the Austrian capital in an uproar. On March 13
Metternich, deserted by the aristocracy on whose behalf he had
labored unscrupulously for fifty years, had been hounded from
office. The people, after a bloody struggle, had possession of the
city, and they welcomed Kossuth as a deliverer; for his “baptismal
speech” had made their aims articulate.

The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the deputation very

graciously, and promised to grant their petition. Exulting, they
returned to Presburg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthyányi
held the premiership, and Kossuth the portfolio of finance. Soon,
very soon, tremendous difficulties beset them: Radicals clamored for
a republic; the subject races revolted; the Imperial government
proved perfidious.

The key to Austria’s subsequent conduct is this: Austria, at heart a

coward, had long been able to play the bully; now, however, her
outraged peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their mercy; the
bully cringed, promised, conceded; concession brought a temporary
respite from danger; thereupon she began to think she had been
unduly terrified and to regret her concessions; so she cautiously put
out feelers of arrogance, to resume her rôle of bully. When she met
sharp resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await a better
opportunity. Throughout this crisis, Emperor Ferdinand, at his best a
man of mediocre capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy,
and a Court clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and the Empire.

All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. Assuming the Imperial
assurances to be honest, they passed a reform bill abolishing the
privileges of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the state
for the loss they sustained in the emancipation of their serfs. Bills
authorizing equal taxation, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the
abolition of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to one million
two hundred thousand voters, were adopted with but little
discussion. Religious toleration—except for Jews—became the law of
the land.
 The Magnates having made this unparalleled sacrifice, King
Ferdinand came over to Presburg and dissolved the Diet in a speech
approving its action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the
Constitution. The Cabinet proceeded to organize its administration,—
a task which would have been sufficient at any time to keep it busy,
but now extraordinary and urgent matters pressed upon it. The
Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats rose in rebellion. Most alarming was the
situation in Croatia, where the Slavs were agitating for separation
from Hungary. Baron Jellachich, who had just been appointed Ban or
Viceroy of Croatia, abetting the insurrection, strengthened the Croat
army. In June the Magyar ministers hurried to Innspruck—whither
the Emperor and Camarilla had fled after a second outbreak in
Vienna—to protest against these rebellious acts. The Emperor
assured them that he had given the Ban no sanction; that he had,
indeed, dismissed him from the Imperial service. It happened that
Jellachich was at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the
notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his mind an unwritten
commission to serve Austria against Hungary.

The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable

atrocities, was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the
outbreak in Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she
had still to accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was
her legal king; but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual
Imperial government, was instigating her enemies.

The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the

ancient capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by
implication Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in
violence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly
the most effective speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous
before the record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to
have moved stocks and stones by their voice; yet not on this
account must we disbelieve the record. For posterity can never
supply the one thing needful to the consummate orator’s success,—it
can never supply the state of mind of his audience. We shall always
find that the epoch-making speech was addressed to listeners every
one of whom had long been burning to hear just those words. This
is why so many of the orations that altered history look faded on the
printed page; this is why we must in many cases judge the orator as
we judge the singer or the actor,—by the effect he produces on his
contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first
orators of the century, though a later generation is little thrilled by
his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even those who heard
him speak in a language not his own, and who had listened to
Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard his
equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged
with the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his
eloquence was irresistible.

In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can
feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy
realized that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,—that Hungary
must either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and
perilous sea. All were waiting for the decisive word.

Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps

mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was
brown, his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard
sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-
shaven chin. At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures,
though they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers
dread a collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the
strength which burned in his subject, and they listened for two
hours, spell-bound and electrified.

“I feel,” he said to them, “as if God had put in my hands the

trumpet to rouse the dead, that, if sinners and weak, they may sink
back into death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, they may
waken to eternity.” He then went on to review the quarrel with
Croatia, declaring that to that country Hungary had, from
immemorial time, accorded all the privileges which she herself
enjoyed, and that recently she had conceded to the Croats a wider
use of their native language. “I can understand a people,” he said
ironically, “who, deeming the freedom they possess too little, take up
arms to acquire more, though they play, indeed, a hazardous game,
for such weapons are two-edged; but I cannot understand a people
who say, ‘The freedom you offer us is too great,—we will not accept
your offer, but will go and submit ourselves to the yoke of
Absolutism.’” Kossuth next touched on the situation in the South,
and showed wherein it differed from that in the Southwest. He told
how the Camarilla had sought to compel the ministers to
acknowledge the unlawful pretensions of Croatia, and thereby to
annul the pledges of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous cloud
on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a Russian army
along the Pruth. When, after this review, he solemnly announced,
“The fatherland is in danger,” not a deputy was surprised, not a head
shook incredulously. At last he asked for authority to levy two
hundred thousand soldiers, and to raise a loan of forty-two million
florins, setting forth the means by which he planned to meet this
extraordinary measure as eloquently as he had set forth its need.

He had held the Assembly captivated for two hours; now, as he

was closing, his strength failed, and he could not speak. The
deputies, too, were speechless. For a brief moment intense silence
reigned between him and them. Then Paul Nyáry, who only
yesterday had attacked the policy of the Cabinet, rose, lifted his right
hand as if invoking God to be his witness, and exclaimed, “We grant
everything!” In a flash four hundred hands were raised, and four
hundred voices repeated Nyáry’s covenant. When quiet came again,
Kossuth had recovered strength to say that his request should not
be taken as a demand for a vote of confidence. “We ask your vote
for the preservation of the country; and, sirs, if any breast sighs for
freedom, if any desire waits for fulfilment, let that breast suffer a
little longer, let it have patience until we have saved the fatherland.
You have all risen to a man, and I bow before the great-heartedness
of the nation, while I ask one thing more: let your energy equal your
patriotism, and the gates of hell itself shall not prevail against
Hungary!”

In March, under the magic of Kossuth’s irresistible oratory, the

Magyars had boldly demanded their constitutional rights; now in
July, thrilled by the same magic, they pledged themselves to defend
their independence to the death.

The summer passed amid recruiting of Honvéds, volunteer

“defenders of the fatherland,” the attempt to quell the insurrection in
Transylvania and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues of the
Imperial Court to browbeat the Hungarian Cabinet. In September,
Jellachich, at last avowedly in the service of Austria, prepared to
invade Hungary.

The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconciliation, quitted the

country. The Viennese Cabinet appointed Count Lamberg to assume
full control of the military affairs in the kingdom; the Hungarians
pronounced his appointment unconstitutional, and they were right.
On his arrival at Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash crime
caused some of the Liberals to withdraw horrified. Batthyányi
resigned the premiership, and a Committee of National Defense, in
which Kossuth predominated, was chosen. On October 2, the
Camarilla, grown truculent, dispatched Recsey to dissolve the
Hungarian Assembly, and bade Hungary to submit to Jellachich. The
Magyars heeded neither command. Having equity and law on their
side, they acted henceforth on the assumption that the orders which
emanated from Vienna could not be attributed to Ferdinand without
imputing perjury to him.

War could no longer be avoided. The Committee of National

Defense displayed great energy in organizing resistance. Kossuth’s
eloquence went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left the
plough, the well-to-do tradesman deserted his shop, the lawyer
dropped his brief, to become volunteers in the service of their
country. A third outbreak at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying off to
Olmütz, and seemed for a moment to assure the final triumph of the
revolution. During the three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian
army under Prince Windischgrätz—he who said that “human beings
begin with barons”—could be brought up, the Hungarians debated
whether they should go to the assistance of the Viennese, for they
wished to be strictly legal. At last they found justification in the plea
that they had a right to pursue Jellachich, who was marching to join
Windischgrätz, across the Austrian frontier. But they decided too
late. Their troops were beaten at Schwechat, on the outskirts of
Vienna, just as Windischgrätz was successfully storming the city
(October 29).

For six weeks thereafter Windischgrätz devoted himself to

stamping out the rebellion in Vienna, and in preparing for a
campaign against Hungary. On December 2 poor, weak-witted
Ferdinand abdicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph succeeded him
as emperor. This change betokened the returning confidence of the
Court party. They now felt sure of crushing the revolution, and of
restoring the Old Régime; but they had no intention that, when the
rest of Austria was re-subjected to their despotism, Hungary alone
should enjoy a constitutional government. Yet this had been
promised by Ferdinand, and he had scruples against openly violating
his oath. Therefore, by removing him and substituting Francis
Joseph, they had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this
scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend; their Constitution was
their life, and that Constitution recognized no king who had not been
crowned by the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their rights
inviolate.

Ten days before Christmas, Windischgrätz opened his campaign.

Five armies besides his own invaded Hungary from five different
directions. The Magyars had employed the six weeks’ lull in
defensive preparations. They gave Arthur Görgei, an ex-officer thirty-
one years old,—able, stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious,—the
command of the Army of the Upper Danube. He proposed to
abandon the frontier and to mass the Hungarian forces in the
interior, where they could choose their own ground; but the
Committee of Defense insisted that every inch of Hungarian soil
should be contested. A fortnight’s operations proved the wisdom of
Görgei’s plan: the Magyars were easily driven back, and on New
Year’s eve the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda-Pesth. The
following day, January 1, 1849, a melancholy procession of
ministers, deputies, state officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set
out from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown of St.
Stephen, the public coffers and archives, and the printing-presses for
bank-notes. Debreczin, a town forty leagues inland, became the
temporary capital. At Buda-Pesth, Windischgrätz celebrated his
triumph by holding a Bloody Assize. To envoys from the fugitive
government who asked him to state his conditions, he only replied,
“I do not treat with rebels.”

Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly succeeded by a

mood of desperation,—such a mood as made France invincible in
1792. Again did Kossuth’s eloquence pass like the breath of life over
the land; again did his energy direct the equipment of new recruits
and fill the gaps of the regiments already in the field. Had the
deputies at Debreczin voted as they wished, they would have voted
for peace; but they knew that the majority of their countrymen
would reject any peace which Austria was likely to offer, and they
were ashamed to appear less daring than Kossuth.

The enthusiasm, we might call it the recklessness, with which the

Magyars rallied to repel invasion, became a people who counted
John Hunyádi and Francis Rakóczy among their national heroes.
Thanks to their patriotic fervor, the Hungarian cause, which seemed
about to collapse at the beginning of January, seemed about to
prevail at the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wallachs and
Austrians in Transylvania; Görgei had redeemed Northern Hungary;
Klapka and Damjanics had brought Windischgrätz to bay in the
midlands.
 Well had it been for Hungary if these astonishing successes had
prevented internal discord, for twofold dissensions now threatened
to sap the growing strength. From one side, the generals chafed at
being subordinate to the civilian Committee of Defense; on the
other, a large body of soldiers and of civilians were angry at the
evident drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a republic. Görgei,
the most conspicuous of the generals, led this opposition. He
declared in a manifesto that the army would fight to maintain
against every foreign enemy the Constitution granted by Ferdinand,
but that they would favor no attempt to convert the constitutional
monarchy into a republic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in
their patriotism, could not refrain from meddling; they suffered from
the delusion common to such committees, and believed that they
knew better than the trained men of war how war should be waged.
They felt, too, political responsibilities which made them all the more
active; and they had, as was natural, their favorites among the
officers. Had the government been strong, it would have cashiered
Görgei; being weak, and solicitous of conciliating so important a
man, it tolerated him. But when a government and its generals
distrust each other,—as we learned in our civil war,—conciliation can
satisfy neither. If Görgei lost a battle, his enemies charged him with
lukewarmness or disobedience; he retorted by blaming the
committee for failing to support him or for breaking in upon his
plans. We need not sift the recriminations in detail: it suffices for us
to know that, from January on, Görgei and Kossuth, and their
respective partisans, worked thus at odds.

Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels had but slight

effect. The average Magyar was simply bent on avenging his long
score of oppression against Austria. He realized that his own
existence depended on that of Hungary, and to him Kossuth’s
eloquence was like a trumpet-call of duty. That in performing his
duty the Magyar might lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors,
made duty doubly attractive.
 In the early spring, Austria closed the way to compromise by
proclaiming a new charter for the whole Empire. This charter
declared that all the provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a
common equality, deprived of local rights, and governed by a central
administration at Vienna.

The Magyars, then, had nothing to hope. Whether they submitted

to Austria or were conquered by her, their ancient Constitution would
be blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. Accordingly, on
April 14, 1849, they proclaimed the independence of Hungary, calling
God and man to witness the wrongs she had suffered from the
House of Hapsburg, and setting forth the illegality, truculence, and
perfidy of Austria during the past thirteen months. A diet was to be
summoned, which should determine the form of government that
Hungary would permanently adopt; meanwhile Kossuth was chosen
president-governor, and by appointing Görgei commander-in-chief he
hoped to heal old wounds.

The moment was propitious. The Austrians had been beaten in a

great battle (at Isaszeg) on April 7; and most of the fortresses,
except Buda, had been recaptured. Görgei himself seemed satisfied.
The elated Magyars dreamed even of a swift campaign against
Vienna, and of bringing the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be
acceptable to all his subject races. But their dream, if ever
attainable, was spoiled by delay. Görgei insisted that Buda must be
retaken before he marched farther west, and only on May 21 did he
succeed in storming its citadel. By that time a new peril, more
terrible than any previous, loomed up. Austria, in despair of
subjugating Hungary, had besought Russia to help her, and the Czar,
glad of an excuse for interfering, was marshaling his troops on the
Hungarian frontier.

No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset this threatened

intervention. France and England would not even recognize their
republic, although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately sympathized
with their cause. From Venice alone, the little republic round whose
neck the Austrian noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt
recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to their army nor a
florin to their purse. Desperate, but not yet willing to surrender, the
Magyars nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth proclaimed a
crusade, a levy in mass; every man to arm himself, were it only with
a scythe or a bludgeon; perpetual prayers to be offered up in the
churches; the enemy to be harassed at all places, to be hindered by
the destruction of bridges and stores, and, wherever possible, by
open fighting.

Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like this, is amazed

that any people could be roused to make that last stand. Plainly
enough, the Magyars had three soldiers against them to every one
of theirs; ammunition and victuals were failing them; their treasury
was empty; their armies could expect no reinforcements: to what
end, therefore, protract a hopeless war? Reasoning thus, we miss
the secret, not only of the revolutionists of 1848–49, but of all who
have ever been kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held
dearer than life. The Magyars would never have gone thus far,—
never have felt during that May-month the fleeting exhilaration of
victory,—had they not been fired by a passion which not disaster but
death alone could quench.

The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar government held

a council of war, at which it was proposed to consolidate the various
armies, and to defeat first the Austrians coming from the west and
then the Russians coming from the north and east,—a sensible plan,
frustrated, however, by delays, some of which were unavoidable.
The Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements from Italy, and
commanded by Marshal Haynau, who came red-handed from
Brescia, advanced into Hungary, and defeated Görgei on the river
Waag (June 20–21). The Magyar government and Diet departed for
the second time, in melancholy procession, from their capital. By the
middle of July one hundred and fifty thousand Russians—eighty
thousand of whom were led by the wolfish Paskevitch—had
penetrated into the heart of the country. Inevitably, the Magyar
forces would be driven in and caught between the victorious
enemies: nevertheless, they would not yet submit.

Internal discord alone tarnished the record of the last days of the
Hungarian Republic. On July 1, Kossuth removed Görgei for
insubordination, but Görgei’s officers and men protested so loudly
that Kossuth thought it discreet to reinstate him. Three weeks later,
a fraction of the Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality
of all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, and then, warned
by the rumble of hostile cannon, it dissolved forever.

For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth hurrying hither and
thither to proclaim hope where no hope was; conferring with
nonplussed but still resolute generals; dragging after him, like his
shadow, those printing-presses for bank-notes, now worth no more
than blank paper. Finally, at Arád, he resigned the presidency, and
appointed Görgei dictator with full powers. At Világos, on August 13,
Görgei surrendered his exhausted army of twenty-three thousand
men to Rüdiger, the Russian general. Thus was consummated what
the Magyars, frenzied by defeat, branded as Görgei’s treason, but
what, to an impartial observer, appears an inevitable act. Görgei’s
course throughout the war cannot be commended: inordinate
personal ambition, not treason, was its motive; he may have thought
to play the part of Monk, but more likely he had taken Napoleon for
his model; one thing alone is certain,—he did not intend that
Kossuth should reap the glory of victory, if victory came. In
surrendering at Világos he did what every commander is justified in
doing, when further resistance could only entail fresh losses without
any hope of altering the result.

Learning the capitulation of the main army, the other generals one
by one submitted. Klapka alone maintained an heroic defense at
Comorn until September 27, when hunger and an empty magazine
forced him to surrender. With the hauling down of the red-white-
and-green flag from the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol
of that revolution which, bursting forth at Palermo in January, 1848,
had spread through Europe, shaking the thrones of monarchs, and
kindling in down-trodden people the belief that a new epoch, a
Golden Age of Liberty, had come. Hopes as splendid as men ever
cherished had now been shattered, and in their stead only the
bitterest memories remained; for as each people pondered in sorrow
and oppression the events of those twenty months, it was tormented
by the reflection that its own dissensions, not less than the might of
its enemies, had wrought its ruin.

Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to encourage the stray

bodies of Magyar troops to give themselves up, proceeded to punish
Hungary with a severity which matched the persecutions of the
French Reign of Terror. In every city Marshal Haynau set up his
shambles; in every parish he plied his scourge. Imprisonment,
torture, confiscation, overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar
cause; death awaited the leaders. On October 6, at Arád, fourteen
generals were hanged or shot, and that same day Count Louis
Batthyányi was shot at Pesth. Görgei was spared, thanks to the
personal intervention of Czar Nicholas.

Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took refuge in Turkey. The

Sultan protected him, in spite of the threats of Russia and Austria,—
protected him because the Turkish religion forbade the betrayal of a
refugee,—but kept him for nearly two years in half bondage. Then
the Magyar hero, at the instance of the American Congress, was
permitted to embark on an American man-of-war. He came to the
United States, where he was greeted with an enthusiasm which no
other foreigner except Lafayette had stirred. He got boundless
sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum of money for prosecuting the
emancipation of Hungary; but the times were unfavorable, and the
lot of the Magyars concerned very little the rulers of European
diplomacy after 1850. Returning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation
his sole aim. He strove to interest the great powers in Hungary’s
fate; he strove, through secret emissaries, to provoke the Magyars
themselves to rebel. The former were deaf; the latter, taught by
terrible experience, deemed it folly to attack Austria again in the
field. Through the persistent and judicious political agitation led by
the sagacious Francis Deák, they achieved, in 1867, a recognition of
their constitutional rights, and a full measure of home rule.

Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be reconciled. He lived in

exile at Turin, a forlorn old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the
memories of exploits which once had amazed the world. There he
died on March 20, 1894, having survived all his contemporaries,
friends and foes alike, who had beheld the rise and splendor and
eclipse of his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of a haughty
and valiant people at one of the heroic crises of their history was his
mission. His genius, his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his
countrymen; his glory, being a part of the glory of a whole race, is
secure. That race, which Arpád led into the heart of Europe,
showed, at Kossuth’s summons, a thousand years later, that it had
not lost the traits which had once distinguished it on the shores of
Lake Baikal and along the upper waters of the Yenisei.
 GARIBALDI
When men look back, two or three hundred years hence, upon the
nineteenth century, it may well be that they will discern its salient
characteristic to have been, not scientific, not inventive, as we
popularly suppose, but romantic. Science will soon bury our present
heaps of facts under larger accumulations, from the summit of which
broader theories may be scanned; to-morrow will make to-day’s
wonderful invention old-fashioned and insufficient: but the romance
with which this later time has been charged will exercise an
increasing fascination over poets and novelists and historians, as the
years roll on. Oblivion swallows up material achievements, but great
deeds never grow old. That many of our writers should not have
heard this note of the age argues that they, rather than the age, are
prosaic and commonplace. For to what other period shall we turn for
a richer store of those vicissitudes and contrasts in fortune which
make up the real romance, the profound tragedy, of life? Everywhere
the dissolution of a society rooted in mediæval traditions is
accompanied by confusion and struggle,—the birth-pangs of a new
order. Classes whose separation seemed permanent are thrown
together, and antagonistic elements are strangely mixed; there is
strife, and doubt, and excess; sudden combinations are suddenly
rent by discords; anachronisms flourish side by side with
innovations; new institutions wear old names, and old abuses mask
in new disguises.

In such a crisis, two facts are prominent: the unusual range of

activity offered to the individual—may he not traverse the whole