The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by unspeakable atrocities, was openly fomented by Austrian agents; likewise the outbreak in Transylvania. Hungary’s embarrassments increased; she had still to accept Ferdinand’s assurances of good faith, for he was her legal king; but now she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial government, was instigating her enemies. The newly elected National Assembly convened at Pesth, the ancient capital, early in July. The royal address condemned by implication Jellachich and all rebels, but the insurrection grew in violence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth made in the Assembly the most effective speech of his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said to have moved stocks and stones by their voice; yet not on this account must we disbelieve the record. For posterity can never supply the one thing needful to the consummate orator’s success,--it can never supply the state of mind of his audience. We shall always find that the epoch-making speech was addressed to listeners every one of whom had long been burning to hear just those words. This is why so many of the orations that altered history look faded on the printed page; this is why we must in many cases judge the orator as we judge the singer or the actor,--by the effect he produces on his contemporaries. Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first orators of the century, though a later generation is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who heard him, even those who heard him speak in a language not his own, and who had listened to Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they never heard his equal. Upon his own countrymen, to whom his words came charged with the associations which belong to one’s mother-tongue, his eloquence was irresistible. In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, after long years, can feel the glow. The occasion itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized that the crisis of the revolution was at hand,--that Hungary must either turn back, or dare to plunge into an unknown and perilous sea. All were waiting for the decisive word. Kossuth, just risen from a bed of sickness, with tottering steps mounted the tribune. He was a man of medium height; his hair was brown, his eyes blue; he wore a full mustache and cut his beard sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe beneath his smooth-shaven chin. At first, as he spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though they enhanced the solemnity of his words, made his hearers dread a collapse; but presently he seemed to be fired with the strength which burned in his subject, and they listened for two hours, spell-bound and electrified.