by Mike Rapport
The storm that would break over Hungary in September was now gathering, both in Transylvania and along the Military Frontier. Tensions in the former became increasingly strained when the Magyars brushed off the Blaj programme and when Transylvania was declared part of the Kingdom of Hungary. The Transylvanians were left with a tough choice: they could push for union with Moldavia and Wallachia, but this would spark a conflict with the Sultan, the principalities’ ultimate sovereign, or with the Tsar, who was their ‘protector’; alternatively, they could declare their loyalty to the Habsburgs and in return secure a separate Romanian crown within the Austrian Empire. This latter choice had been mooted by the three Hurmuzaki brothers in Bukovina, a territory that bordered on Hungary but was ruled directly from Vienna. Yet, for now, this idea had no mass support and it fell on deaf ears.115 In the summer of 1848 the more attractive option was union with the two Danubian principalities. Moreover, it seemed viable - briefly - because in June a revolution in Bucharest had toppled the ruling Wallachian prince, Gheorgiu Bibescu, and established a liberal provisional government. On 7 August, one of the leaders of the Romanian movement in Transylvania, Dimitrie Golescu ‘the Black’, mused over a map of all the Romanian lands, from the Black Sea to the fringes of Transylvania: ‘You know, they might make a handsome little kingdom, of nice round shape, which nature itself seems to have designed . . . I do not know why I believe that this idea, which last year would have seemed utopian, to-day looks within our reach.’116 Weeks earlier, the reason had been the revolution in Bucharest. There, Romanian liberals, all of them from noble (boier) families, and many of them Paris-educated, aspired to national freedom and unity and seethed at Russian dominance. The more radical among them had also launched a critique of the society in which they lived. Many felt that the boiers exploited the peasantry (who were mostly enserfed) in order to live a life of ‘sensualism, vice, and egoism’ (as Golescu’s cousin, Alexandru, put it).117 In 1843 such critics, like Constantin Rosetti and Ion Brătianu, had established an organisation named Frăţa (Brotherhood) in Bucharest to coordinate the activities of liberal intellectuals and revolutionary conspirators in the army. Its ultimate aim was to be ready for the revolution, whenever it came. Its very secrecy - and the close surveillance of the authorities - prevented it from flourishing, but its members would emerge as the liberal leadership in 1848. Meanwhile, the boiers themselves had grievances, particularly in Moldavia, where they resented the dictatorial ways of the ruling prince, Mihail Sturdza, while merchants and manufacturers groaned under his onerous taxation. In Wallachia the boiers sought to persuade Prince Bibescu of the need for political and social reform, including the abolition of serfdom, driven as they were by an acute awareness that the countryside was becoming restless. During the ‘Hungry Forties’, peasants dragged their feet over their obligations to their landlords. By 1848 they were refusing outright to perform their labour services. Rural riots erupted more frequently and increasing numbers of serfs fled to freedom across the frontiers.118
In the Moldavian capital, Iaşi, at the end of March 1848, the liberal opposition, led by Alexandru Cuza, petitioned Sturdza for moderate reforms to boost the economy - they did not even demand the abolition of serfdom - and for a parliament with more power than the existing General Assembly currently enjoyed. When Sturdza accepted most but not all of the petition, the liberals confronted the prince at his palace and tried to cajole him. Steeled by the Russian consul’s assurance of military support - and profoundly irritated by the swaggering behaviour of one of the liberal delegates, who ostentatiously took out his watch and informed the prince that he had half an hour to make his decision - Sturdza left the palace, called out the army and crushed the opposition, killing several people and arresting over two hundred people. Their hands tied behind their backs, the liberal leadership was dragged through the streets and ‘beaten like dogs’. They were then hauled to the frontier town of Galaţi and expelled into Turkey.119
With Moldavia firmly pressed under Sturdza’s iron heel, the revolution gathered momentum in Wallachia. In March, the liberals, including Rosetti, Golescu the Black and Ion Ghica, established a revolutionary committee to plan an uprising. There was to be no mild-mannered petition here because, unlike in Moldavia, the opposition could rely on an important middling strata of boiers and a large commercial middle class, who were resentful of their social superiors and frustrated by government policy. Still, while hotter heads wanted to rise up immediately, the calmer spirits prevailed to prepare the ground first. Prince Bibescu’s determination to resist revolution, meanwhile, was being bolstered by a thinly veiled warning from the Russian government that it was ‘in the interests of Wallachia as well as your own’ to prevent any outbreaks of ‘the plague that is now afflicting Europe’.120 The Russians sent General Duhamel to advise Bibescu, but - fearing a permanent Russian military presence - the Prince rejected the offer of twenty thousand troops. By the beginning of June the revolutionary committee was ready. Curious ‘wedding invitations’ were sent out to liberal-minded boiers informing them of a ‘celebration’ at Islaz, a frontier town on the Danube, in the province of Oltenia. There, on 9 June, Orthodox priests, resplendent in their heavy robes, celebrated Mass before a proclamation was read out to units of the Wallachian army and an excited crowd of townsfolk and peasants. They were, said one of the priests, ‘tailoring the garments of freedom’.
The ‘Islaz Constitution’ included the classic demands of European liberalism: the abolition of censorship, equal civil rights, fair taxation, the extension of the franchise and the election of the ruling prince for a five-year term, free education for all (boys and girls), the abolition of serfdom (with land being given to the freed peasants, while compensating the landlords), freedom for all gypsies (who were enslaved), the emancipation of the Jews, and the abolition of the nobility. A constituent assembly would meet to draft a constitution based on these principles. A Wallachian provisional government was proclaimed, but the Islaz programme did not demand full Romanian independence. Instead, it called for an end to Russian ‘protection’ and autonomy with ties to the Ottoman Sultan: throughout the summer, the Romanian revolutionaries worked hard to win the blessing of Constantinople. They were shrewd enough to understand that, wedged between the three great empires of Austria, Russia and Turkey, their incipient state would need the support of at least one if it were to survive.
News of the uprising in Oltenia was the electrical charge that jolted the Bucharest revolutionaries into action. The original insurrection had been planned for 10 June, but Prince Bibescu had struck first and pre-emptively arrested some of the revolutionary committee. Yet the loyalty of the army was in doubt: many officers had swallowed liberal ideas and there were rumours that the revolutionary forces from Oltenia were already marching on the capital. On 11 June the pealing of church bells brought the city’s population flooding on to the streets and converging on the palace, some brandishing copies of the Islaz programme. As expected, the army stood aside, while the liberal leaders who had escaped arrest were allowed to enter the palace and thrust the new ‘constitution’ under Bibescu’s nose. Powerless to resist, the Prince signed the document and grudgingly appointed a new provisional government. When he asked who was to be the new police minister, Brătianu pointedly told him that it was to be Rosetti, ‘the one who’s in jail’. A bristling Bibescu abdicated two days later and fled with other conservative boiers to Braşov, just across the border in Transylvania. On 15 June a massive public assembly on the Field of Liberty outside Bucharest acclaimed the new constitution. Elections were to be held for a parliament that was to meet on 6 September. The new government promised to abolish serfdom within three months, provided that the peasants ensured - for one last time - that the harvest on the landlords’ fields was collected. The result was rural chaos, as the peasants immediately refused to perform any more services. Tragically, the Romanian revolution was crushed before the abolition of serfdom could get off the ground.121
Tsar Nicholas and
the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid were both anxiously watching these developments. The former was actually playing a double-game: while hostile to the revolution and determined to pulverise liberalism, he also saw an opportunity to strengthen the Russian presence in the principalities. The Russians had long harboured ambitions to secure the Bosphorus, which would provide them with a secure and certain outlet into the Eastern Mediterranean. That meant pushing Russian power southwards through the Black Sea region, and the anti-Russian tenor of the Romanian revolution had thrown down the gauntlet to these strategic interests. The Russians even sent a disingenuous proposal to Bibescu in his Transylvanian refuge, outlining a new constitution for Moldavia and Wallachia, on condition that the Tsar’s son would be proclaimed King, which would effectively eliminate Turkish influence. Bibescu was also none too subtly told that, if he refused this generous offer, the Russians would impose it by ‘100,000 bayonets’. 122 Faced with the very real prospect of a Russian invasion, the Romanian revolutionaries sought salvation through diplomacy: the provisional government sent diplomatic agents across Europe to gain the recognition of the great powers. Ion Ghica went to Constantinople armed with a Romanian promise to honour all obligations to the Sultan in return for Turkish support. But in 1848 there was not much the other European governments could offer against Russian military might.
On 7 July, Russian forces tramped into Moldavia. The Wallachian government was so alarmed by this invasion of the neighbouring principality that it fled into the mountains, allowing power in Bucharest to fall back into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries. Only Brătianu’s energetic efforts to raise the population prevented them from holding on to power for more than a couple of days. At this stage, the Tsar’s move was intended to pressure the Ottoman government into rejecting the overtures of the Romanian revolutionaries. For now, the Russians left Wallachia alone, so the provisional government returned to Bucharest, shaken, more than a little embarrassed, but still intact. The Turks, however, responded to the Russian gambit by sending their own forces across the Danube at the end of the month, while the Sultan’s envoy Suleiman Pasha travelled to Bucharest to negotiate with the Romanians over the terms of their autonomy. The result was the creation of a short-lived ‘princely lieutenancy’, with a liberal cabinet but owing theoretical loyalty to the Sultan. With this agreement, Suleiman made a triumphant entry into Bucharest at the head of two hundred Turkish cavalrymen, cheered by a crowd waving both Romanian and Turkish flags.123
At the very moment of the liberals’ apparent salvation, however, Abdülmecid bent to Russian diplomatic pressure and to the whispers of conservative boiers who had made their way to Constantinople. He repudiated Suleiman at the beginning of September, replacing him with the conservative martinet Fuad Pasha, who left for Wallachia with more Turkish troops, but their task this time was not merely protective. On 13 September, Ottoman forces battered their way into Bucharest, which was stubbornly defended by all the forces that the provisional government could muster, including the city’s fire brigade. After ferocious fighting, the liberal government capitulated and the Turks imposed a conservative boier as the new ruling prince. A few days later, the remaining revolutionary forces in Oltenia, facing overwhelming numbers, also surrendered. The Tsar, however, had little faith in the Sultan’s ability to suppress the revolution effectively. On 15 September, therefore, Russian troops poured into Wallachia, sweeping aside the Ottoman army and entering Bucharest. The administration was thoroughly purged and the frontier with Transylvania - where the revolution still had energy - was sealed by a cordon sanitaire of Russian troops.124
So, by the time Dimitrie Golescu had pondered the aesthetically pleasing shape of a united Romania, its fate had already been sealed, at least in 1848. Yet the revolution had at least made unification seem possible and, in the process, it had raised the stakes considerably across the Carpathians - in Transylvania. Early in June the Austrian government discussed ways in which not only the southern Slavs but the Romanians could be mobilised against Hungarian nationalism. War Minister Latour mooted the possibility of an alliance with the Romanians, which might eventually allow the Austrian Empire to extend its influence as far as the Black Sea, while also counterbalancing Magyar power in Central Europe. For now, however, his colleagues felt that the government’s position was too weak for such an adventure, which explains its rejection of Transylvanian Romanian demands later that month. None the less, with the revolution in the principalities on the verge of being extinguished, the only realistic hope left for the Transylvanian Romanians was an alliance with the Habsburg dynasty against the Magyars. Unless the Hungarians came to terms themselves (which at this stage remained a possibility, if a forlorn one), the Romanians might have been rewarded for their loyalty to Austria with autonomy inside the empire. By September, when the Austrian government felt stronger vis-à-vis its opponents elsewhere, it was ready to provide the Romanians with military backing against the Magyars, who were all too aware that trouble was brewing in Transylvania.
The Hungarians also faced a threat along the Military Border, where the southern Slavs were marshalling their forces. The determined Jelačić paid little heed to his formal dismissal as ban of the region on 10 June and was determined to prove his worth to the Habsburgs as well as to his own people. Only five days previously, resplendent in a red overcoat and carrying a scimitar, he had told the opening session of the Croatian parliament, or Sabor, that ‘in the unhappy case that the Hungarians continue to prove themselves to act not as brothers . . . but as oppressors, let them know . . . that we are ready with sword in hand!’125 Meanwhile the ‘hawks’ in the Austrian government continued to back him. On 24 June Latour - blithely shrugging off the reprimand he had earlier received for sending weapons to the Croats - sent money to Jelačić, since Kossuth, as Hungarian finance minister, had bluntly refused to provide him with funds: ‘I would merit to be spat upon by the nation, if I had given money to the enemy,’ he said.126 Baron Franz Kulmer, who was the Sabor’s representative at the imperial court, quietly wrote to Jelačić reassuring him that ‘everybody here is in your favour. The June 10 decree is null and void because it was not countersigned by any of the ministers.’127
Yet the first victim of Jelačić’s determination to serve Habsburg interests was Croatian liberalism. On 9 July he prorogued the Sabor. At the end of the month, the Habsburg Archduke John attempted to prevent the outbreak of war between the Hungarians and the Croats by mediation. Nothing came of the resulting meeting between Batthyány and Jelačić, but the latter made the most of the opportunity to make firmer arrangements with the imperial army command in Vienna. The Hungarian government made a shrewd attempt to woo the Croatian borderers away from Jelačić by promising them land reform, whereupon he trumped them with reforms of his own, including the right to dissolve the zadruga and to parcel out the land privately. He also raised more units for the army, redeploying forces from civil Croatia and the Ottoman frontier. The Hungarian efforts at compromise were not entirely disingenuous: since the spring, Batthyány’s ministers had privately agreed that they should work hard to avoid giving Jelačić any pretext for a full break with Hungary. As late as the end of August, even Kossuth was willing to allow Croatia to secede provided (and here was the crucial point) Jelačić and the Croats were working ‘in the spirit of nationalism and not reaction . . . if they want to secede let them go ahead, let them be free and happy, but let them not bring blood and misfortune on the two countries for a foreign, reactionary power’.128
Jelačić had been appointed, however, precisely because he was a loyal Habsburg instrument. He allegedly told Batthyány at their fruitless meeting in Vienna that ‘you want Hungary to be a free and independent Hungary and I pledged myself to support the political unity of the Austrian empire. If you do not agree to that, only the sword can decide between us.’129 Meanwhile, he gathered his forces. After his victory over the Piedmontese at Custozza, Radetzky released some of his Croatian units in Italy for service with Jelači
ć, so by early September the latter had fifty thousand men under arms. In Vienna Latour ordered Austrian military depots in Styria to be given extra supplies. Meanwhile, the Serbs had sent plea after plea to Jelačić to come to their aid against the Hungarians, so the pressure was mounting on him to take the offensive. He never received any clear order to do so from the Emperor: the court was still publicly trying to stop the war between Croats and Hungarians. It may have been that, while the Emperor’s supporters wanted Jelačić to destroy the revolution in Hungary, they were also worried that he might grow too powerful if he did so. Some Croatian historians have suggested that the Habsburgs wanted both sides to wear themselves out, making it easier for the court to restore its authority later.130 In the end Jelačić needed no signal: while Batthyány and Ferenc Deák (the Hungarian justice minister) were still in Vienna trying to prevent a final breach with Austria, the imperial government issued a formal manifesto that declared the Emperor’s opposition to Hungarian independence: a ‘Hungarian Kingdom separate from the Austrian Empire was a political impossibility’. 131 On 4 September, Ferdinand formally reinstated Jelačić to all his former powers. This was a sufficient nod of support and, on 11 September, the ban’s army crossed the Drava: Hungary and Croatia were now at war.
While Jelačić and the Viennese government were making their complex manoeuvres, the government in Budapest worked feverishly to organise the Hungarian army. The immediate spur was the Serbian insurrection in Voivodina, to which Batthyány reacted by forming ‘regular’ or ‘mobile’ National Guard units on 16 May, to be recruited from volunteers serving for three years. The advantage of this new force was that it was unambiguously under Hungarian government control, unlike the regiments of the imperial-royal army, which continued to receive orders from Vienna. The new mobile National Guard battalions were to be recruited from all men aged between eighteen and forty, without property qualifications, so this was to be no bourgeois militia aimed at protecting property, but a true citizens’ army, with an oath to ‘defend the homeland, the royal throne and the constitution’. Their official name was soon supplanted by the more popular term honvéd, meaning ‘defender of the homeland’. As prime minister, Batthyány was commander-in-chief of the new force, which allowed him to side-step the imperial command structure. By mid-August, the government had recruited close to ten thousand into the Honvéd batallions.132 Yet the summer left many Hungarians with a dark sense of foreboding. Petőfi, fretting that government preparations to meet the gathering threat were too feeble, penned the gloomy lines: