Those who know anything of the heroic tragedy that makes up much of
the history of Hungary, should not fail to visit the extensive and
well laid out cemetery (Kerepesi Köztemetö) with its memorials of
the illustrious dead. There is the handsome Kossuth Mausoleum in
which was buried in 1894 the remains of one of the chief leaders of
the revolution. Louis Kossuth, who died in exile at the great age of
ninety-two, had refused to accept the Compromise of 1866, from which
his country may be said to date its renaissance, and never returned to
Hungary after the tragic failure of the War of Independence. His stern
republicanism--possibly, too, his defeated ambition, for there are not
wanting critics of the man memorials to whom are to be seen in every
town--could allow of no compromise with the Habsburg dynasty.
Some of his fellows were more far-sighted, and among them Francis
Déak, who, no less sincere in his patriotism, worked untiringly at
home as a simple citizen to bring about the welfare of his country by
peaceful methods, rather than by any further appeal to the arbitrament
of arms. Though much blamed for his share in the Compromise, Déak may
be regarded as one of the chief agents of the renaissance. When at
the time of the coronation of Francis Joseph as king of Hungary, it
was proposed that Déak should accept a high position, he replied with
a simple dignity that “It was beyond the king’s power to give him
anything but a clasp of the hand.”
The Déak Mausoleum stands not far away from that of the fellow-worker
who, though with like aims, would have chosen other methods than his
for their attainment. Not far from the Kossuth memorial, too, is that
of Count Louis Batthány, another of the leaders of the revolution and
first constitutional Prime Minister of Hungary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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