The Sun.
London, England, 1849-10-24 00:00:00

VINDICTIVE EXECUTIONS IN

HUNGARY.
(From the Leeds .21fercury.)
When the gallant Hungarians yielded to necessity,
and abandoned the defence of their native soil against
its invaders, the finest possible opportunity was af-
forded the young Emperor of Austria to remove, or
at least:greatly diminish, the hostile feeling of the
whole nation whom he professed an anxiety to amal-
gamate with the reit of his subjecta; Hungary lay
at his feet ; her noblest sons had surrendered uncon-
ditionally; and by the universal disarmament of their
followers, it was impossible that a fresh revolution
could be suddenly undertaken. Under such circum-
stances, while the public opinion of Europe would
have honoured all measures the tendency of which
was peaceably to cement that union for the accom-
plishment
of which such costly efforts had been made
by the Imperial Government, it could not but regard
as infinitely the most efficacious a magnanimous
exercise of mercy towards the men whom patriotism,
(mistaken though it might have been) and no
lower motive, had led to an armed resistance
of the novel project. It could not, indeed, be
expected that no punishment would be inflicted upon
these parties, but all the circumstances of the case
demanded the suspension of that punishment until a
legal trial had issued in the conviction of the accused,
and also the proportioning of its degree to the claims
of sound policy and real necessity. In a young
Sovereign especially, who had so lately ascended the
throne, one might have looked for proofs of a desire
to combine humanity with firmness in dealing with
those who were defenceless. Unhappily for his con-
quered subjects, and unhappily for his own character,
the advisers of Francis Joseph induced him, when the
war was ended, to place in the hands of General
Haynau unlimited power over the lives and fortunes
of those whom but for foreign help that commander
could never have subdued in the field. This abandon-
ment of its own responsibility and functions by
the Austrian Government, in favour of a
man whose name had become execrable for cruelty
the world over, was either a grievous error or a delibe-
rate crime. In either case, but especially in the latter,
(which we believe to have been the fact) that Govern-
ment laid itself open to the charge of countenancing
any future indulgence of Haynau's natural propensity
for blood; and by putting it within his power to
perpetrate the atrocious acts of which he has since
been guilty, his employers have made themselves
partakers of an infamy which will be indelible. The
news of the Week from Hungary is most painful to
read, even at this distance. In that unhappy country,
and throughout the Austrian empire, the events that
have transpired have caused men's blood to boil and
their ears to tingle. Military commissions appointed
by Haynau, and of course consisting of his creatures,
have sat in judgment at Arad and in Pesth on upwards
of a dozen of the Hungarian leaders who had fallen
into their hands ; and these men, distinguished only
for patriotic valour, have been sentenced to an igno-
minious death by the very officers with whom they
were lately at war, and whose inflamed passions
rendered them the least fit of all parties for the
discharge of judicial functions. The consequence
could only have been one, via.: this hasty
verdict of guilty, followed by a sentence of death
upon the accused. The doom pronounced has been
executed, and in many instances with the bitter addi-
tion of degradation to punishment, by being changed
from shooting with powder and ball (the ordinary
capital penalty inflicted on military men) intohanging,
which is never adopted but with the vilest criminals.
Partizans of the Austrian Government—of whom,
happily, there are scarcely any in this free country—
may attempt a feeble apology for it by referring to
the powers given to Haynau, and laying the blame of
undue severity on that officer. We have shown that
such a defence is inadmissible ; but were it even
conceded that apprehension of future revolt might
palliate this wholsale extermination of the patriot
chiefs, one event has taken place, which the very
organs of the Austrian Government condemn, and the
civilized world execrates. This is the murder of Count
Louis Batthyany at Pesth, by order of Haynau's
court-martial there. The circumstances of this case
are as follows :—Count Louis Batthyany, a member of
one of the noblest Hungarian families, was named by
the Archduke Palatine Prime Minister of his native
country early in 1848, and for several months
endeavoured by his influence with the Austrian Court
and with his fellow-countrymen, to reconcile the
differences which had sprung up between them,
though a jealous regard for the rights of Hungary as
a separate kingdom prevented his assenting to any
conditions inconsistent with those rights. He was,
in fact, his country's champion, and yet with the
strongest desire that her liberties should be secured
constitutionally rather than by warlike measures.
Under his auspices the celebrated Kossuth rose into
notice. At length the Count's hopes were dashed to
the ground by the unlawful dissolution of the Hunga-
rian Diets, and when the breach with the Court appeared
irreparable, in consequence of its evident resolution to
carry its point at all risks, Batthyany, along with
other magnates and multitudes besides, took up arms.
Windischgratz was dispatched to quell the revolution
—with what want of success is well known. Before
the disgraceful defeats of that General, however, Louis
Batthyany, on behalf of the patriots, demanded a
parley on the 4th of December last. The interview
took place, and was ineffectual ' • but when leaving
Pesth, Batthyany was seized and thrown into prison.
Ile was subsequently carried to Austria or Moravia,
and kept in close confinement; and not until the fol-
lowing October was there any public step taken
against him. At the beginning of this month he was
conveyed back to the Hungarian capital, and there
condemned by court-martial to be publicly hanged on
the 6th instant. This date was doubtless fixed by
Haynau in consequence of its being the anniversary of
the revolution at Vienna, and under the idea of striking
terror in the Austrian capital as well as throughout
Hungary. The courage of the unhappy noble-
man was not sufficient to brave the gallows, and
he therefore attempted suicide. The wounds were,
however, not fatal, but they were such as to pre-
clude the possibility of his being hung ; and
consequently he was shot in the presence of a
dense and deeply-sympathising crowd, proclaiming
with his latest breath his love for Hungary. As we
have said, this atrocious murder produced, when first
heard of at Vienna, a perfectly appalling effect: its
influence in Hungary will not be spent for many
years to come, and that influence will be the very
reverse of what the authors of the deed anticipated.
The executions at Pesth are still proceeding, but
every drop of blood which is now shed will be the
seed of a yet more bitter and resolute hatred among
the Hungarians of the Power which sanctions its
effusion. The atrocities of Haynau inspire us with
joy that Kossuth and his companions are not within
his clutches—an event which could not now occur
without bringing double dishonour on the Power
which should give them up. It is apparently true
that Bem's hatred of Russia has led him to the un-
justifiable step of professing Mahommedanism, in
which he has been joined by a few of his associates;
but the great body of the exiles at Widdin have
heartily responded to the impassioned appeal of
Kossuth to remain faithful to the Christian religion.
Most happy should we be to know that these high-
minded patriots had escaped wholly from their pre-
sent position and found refuge in our own country.
There is yet no reply afforded by political events
to the questions respecting their ultimate destination,
and the mutual relations of the Powers which take
opposing interest in their fate.
(From the Liverpool Mercury.)
The cold-blooded murders which, at Pesth and
Arad, are being perpretrated by the agents of the
ruffian crew whom, under the abstract appellative
of " Austria," the Times has, for the last twelve
months, been hounding on in their infamous, but alas!
too successful efforts to crush, by the help of Russian
bayonets, the liberties of Hungary, will serve to open
the eyes of such as may have been blinded through
the studied misrepresentations of our contemporary
and his coadjutors, to the real merits of the Hun-
garian struggle, which he who runs may now read
in the character of the tyrant Camarilla, as developed
in its deeds. It is as vain for, absolutist journals to
attempt to make subordinate officers the convenient
scapegoats who are to bear all the responsibilities for
atrocities that lie at the door of the Austrian Cabinet,
as it is to charge ,on the Neapolitan police—which'
they hesitate not to do—the wholesale political arrests
that are daily taking place at Naples, by order of the
King and his Government. There is no disguising the
fact that the despot power which calls itself " Austria"
has forfeited all moral claim to the title. The
blood of Count Louis Batthyany cries to heaven for
vengeance on the house of Hapsburg, and the prayer
breathed by the expiring patriot, " Eljen a haze !"-.;•
long live my country !—can only find its response in
the downfall of a dynasty, whose last bloody
acts
fill
to overflow the cup of its oppression,
Nearly a score of Hungarian e:nd injustice.
have already
perished by rope or rifle; and "Austria's" tiger-thirst
for blood is still unappeased. The butcher Haynau
and:,his sanguinary satellites are sharp practioners. b
They dispatch business y dispatching their prisoners,
and execute judgment , by executing generals. The
members of the Austrian Camarilla have studied thot
little purpose the maxims of Machiavelli, else
they have learned of him that " it never yet was a
wise thing to make men desperate, for one who bath
no hope of good bath no fear of evil." Hungary, as
she sees her best and bravest made food for the gibbet,
will have small faith in the constitutional promises
of the conquerors who turn their hour of victory to
the uses of horror. All historical analogy warrants
the inference that the hideous and hateful course
pursued by Francis Joseph and his advisers is of all
others the one most calculated to make the Hungarian
nation borrow courage of despair,: and demonstrate,
by a renewed and universal call to arms, that they
prefer the perils of the field to the iniquities and
miseries of martial law. For, in truth, this " execu-
tion," as it is called, of Count Louis Batthyany (to
I any nothing of' the other crimes for which "Austria

stands amenable) is one of the most flagrant and
I diabolical acts of inhumanity and injustice that was
I ever perpetrated by the worst of tyrants, in the worst
of times. Prime Minister of Hungary, during his
term of office Batthyany was distinguished by the
highest qualities of statesmanship; but, above all, by
a tenderness and moderation of temper and feeling
which sensitively shrunk from achieving even the
cherished independence of his country by the sword,
until all peaceful means of securing the issue had
been exhausted. The sentiment which prompted all
his actions was that which Schiller puts into the
mouth of a patriot Swiss on the brink of his country's
struggle with this same House of Hapsburg :
's Eh' ihr zum Schwerte greift, bedenkt es wohl!
Ihr liiinnt es friedlich mit dem Kaiser schlich ten."
Battybany was not taken as a prisoner of war, but
kidnapped as an envoy of peace. Ten months ago,
as member of a deputation from the Diet then as-
sembled at Pesth, he voluntarily entered the tent of
Windischgratz, the bearer of a proposition for an
amicable adjustment of the national quarrel. It was
not to be expected, however, that an Austrian general
should respect a flag of truce; and Batthyany was,
accordingly, contrary to all the usages of civilized
warfare, arrested and hurried away to an Austrian
dungeon, his release from which, after about a year's
immurement, was but the prelude to his being sent
to Pesth, there to be dealt with according to the tender
mercies of Haynau. The completion of the tragedy
we know. A drum-head court-martial sentenced him
to a felon's fate ; the rope, however, being cheated of
its prey, and powder and lead substituted as ?he in-
strument of death, in consequence of an ineffectual
attempt at suicide having so far disfigured the pri-
soner's person as to render inexpedient his
exposure on a public scaffold. We shall be much
surprised if the detestable policy of the Austrian
Camarilla do not precipitate a crisis in Hungary. It
is a mistake to suppose that the nation is subdued.
Externally, indeed, resistance is at an end for the pre-
sent; but the spirit that spurned the yoke still burns
in the breasts of the Hungarians. They but bide
their time. Russian physical force was never destined
to settle the question of Hungary's independence,
which is only postponed to a more convenient
season. In this respect the Hungarian question does
not differ from any of the other great national ques-
tions that have agitated Europe during the revolu-
tionary period. Outwardly things seem to have
returned to their former position, and the status quo
appears to be fairly re-established. But it is all a
vain show. Nothing has been really settled. All is
yet in ferment. The Roman question, the Sicilian
question, the Austro-Italian question, the Scheswig-
Holstein question, the German question, and even the
question of a French Republic remain to be solved.
Europe still slumbers on the brink of a smouldering
volcano, and is liable, at any moment, to be startled
by the fury of a fresh eruption.