Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848Marx, Karl
History
Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848
Marx, Karl
Germany -- History -- Revolution, 1848-1849
unrelenting following up of the first advantage over Jellachich, even
with nothing but the _Land Sturm_ that had fought at Stuhlweissenburg,
would have sufficed to effect a junction with the Viennese, and to
adjourn to that day six months every concentration of an Austrian
army. In war, and particularly in revolutionary warfare, rapidity of
action until some decided advantage is gained is the first rule, and
we have no hesitation in saying that upon _merely military grounds_.
Perczel ought not to have stopped until his junction with the Viennese
was affected. There was certainly some risk, but who ever won a battle
without risking something? And did the people of Vienna risk nothing
when they drew upon themselves--they, a population of four hundred
thousand--the forces that were to march to the conquest of twelve
millions of Hungarians? The military fault committed by waiting until
the Austrians had united, and by making the feeble demonstration at
Schwechat which ended, as it deserved to do, in an inglorious
defeat--this military fault certainly incurred more risks than a
resolute march upon Vienna against the disbanded brigands of
Jellachich would have done.
But, it is said, such an advance of the Hungarians, unless authorized
by some official body, would have been a violation of the German
territory, would have brought on complications with the central power
at Frankfort, and would have been, above all, an abandonment of the
legal and constitutional policy which formed the strength of the
Hungarian cause. Why, the official bodies in Vienna were nonentities!
Was it the Diet, was it the popular committees, who had risen for
Hungary, or was it the people of Vienna, and they alone, who had taken
to the musket to stand the brunt of the first battle for Hungary's
independence? It was not this nor that official body in Vienna which
it was important to uphold; all these bodies might, and would have
been, upset very soon in the progress of the revolutionary
development; but it was the ascendancy of the revolutionary movement,
the unbroken progress of popular action itself, which alone was in
question, and which alone could save Hungary from invasion. What forms
this revolutionary movement afterwards might take, was the business of
the Viennese, not of the Hungarians, so long as Vienna and German
Austria at large continued their allies against the common enemy. But
the question is, whether in this stickling of the Hungarian government
for some quasi-legal authorization, we are not to see the first clear
symptom of that pretence to a rather doubtful legality of proceeding,
which, if it did not save Hungary, at least told very well, at a later
period, before the English middle class audiences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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