Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall)
History
Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1
Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall)
Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall), 1818-1905; United States -- Politics and government
history that at such a time, that under such circumstances, England
plunged into the horrors and calamities of war, nay, that she took
upon herself to make this war prolonged and universal, for the mere
purpose of upholding the inviolability of those rotten treaties in
favor of Austria, good for nothing on earth except to spread darkness
and to perpetuate servitude?
"There you have that Austria in Piedmont carrying on war in a manner
that recalls to memory the horrors of the long gone-by ages of
barbarism. You may read in the account furnished to the daily papers,
by their special correspondents, that the rigorously disciplined
soldiers of Austria were allowed to act the part of robbers let loose
upon an unoffending population, to offer violence to unprotected
families, to outrage daughters in the presence of their parents, and
to revel in such other savage crimes as the blood of civilized men
curdles at hearing and the tongue falters in relating. Such she was
always--always. These horrors but faintly reflect what Hungary had
to suffer from her in our late war. And shall it be said that England,
the home of gentlemen, sent her brave sons to shed their blood and to
stain their honor in fighting side by side with such a _soldatesca_ for
those highwayman compacts of 1815 to the profit of that Austria?"
With the treaty of Villafranca, July 11, 1859, Kossuth abandoned all
hope of the independence of Hungary. There can be no doubt that, from
the first, Napoleon intended to abandon Kossuth and his cause when he
had made use of his influence in England and in Italy for his own
purposes. The armistice and the peace with Austria were inaugurated by
Napoleon; and when, at the last moment, Emperor Francis Joseph raised
difficulties upon some points in the treaty, Prince Napoleon, who was
a party to the conference, threatened him with a revolution in Italy
and in Hungary. As to Kossuth, his only solace was in the reflection
that he had stayed the tendency to revolution on the soil of Hungary,
and thus his countrymen had been saved from new calamities.
Thenceforward Kossuth had before him only a life of exile; but he
reserved for his children the right, and he set before them the duty,
of returning to their native land.
I am giving large space to the visit of Kossuth in the belief that the
country is moving away from the doctrines of self-government as a
common right of mankind, as they were taught by him and as they were
accepted generally until we approached the end of the nineteenth
century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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