For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth hurrying hither and thither to proclaim hope where no hope was; conferring with nonplussed but still resolute generals; dragging after him, like his shadow, those printing-presses for bank-notes, now worth no more than blank paper. Finally, at Arád, he resigned the presidency, and appointed Görgei dictator with full powers. At Világos, on August 13, Görgei surrendered his exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to Rüdiger, the Russian general. Thus was consummated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat, branded as Görgei’s treason, but what, to an impartial observer, appears an inevitable act. Görgei’s course throughout the war cannot be commended: inordinate personal ambition, not treason, was its motive; he may have thought to play the part of Monk, but more likely he had taken Napoleon for his model; one thing alone is certain,--he did not intend that Kossuth should reap the glory of victory, if victory came. In surrendering at Világos he did what every commander is justified in doing, when further resistance could only entail fresh losses without any hope of altering the result. Learning the capitulation of the main army, the other generals one by one submitted. Klapka alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn until September 27, when hunger and an empty magazine forced him to surrender. With the hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol of that revolution which, bursting forth at Palermo in January, 1848, had spread through Europe, shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in down-trodden people the belief that a new epoch, a Golden Age of Liberty, had come. Hopes as splendid as men ever cherished had now been shattered, and in their stead only the bitterest memories remained; for as each people pondered in sorrow and oppression the events of those twenty months, it was tormented by the reflection that its own dissensions, not less than the might of its enemies, had wrought its ruin. Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to encourage the stray bodies of Magyar troops to give themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary with a severity which matched the persecutions of the French Reign of Terror. In every city Marshal Haynau set up his shambles; in every parish he plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confiscation, overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar cause; death awaited the leaders. On October 6, at Arád, fourteen generals were hanged or shot, and that same day Count Louis Batthyányi was shot at Pesth. Görgei was spared, thanks to the personal intervention of Czar Nicholas.