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Presentation of a committee of the Hungarian Diet to Ferdinand, September 9, 1848


[Source: Henry M. De Puy, Kossuth and His Generals (Buffalo: Phinney & Co., 1852), pp. 153-156.]

[p. 153]

[...] When, on the 9th of September, a committee of the Hungarian Diet presented to the king the bills that had been passed by his direction, to raise troops and money to suppress the rebellion of the Croats, they addressed him in the following language: [Introductory text in Kossuth and His Generals --jpn] In the names of the United States of Hungary and Transylvania we appear before your Majesty. With our constant loyalty, tried for centuries, we claim the support of our crowned king for the inviolate preservation of the rights of the country.

A Ferdinand was the first of your Majesty's house, on whose brow Hungary placed voluntarily its holy crown -- Transylvania did the same for Leopold I. Hungary is not a conquered province: it is a free country, whose constitutional rights and independence your Majesty has secured and sealed by the inaugural oath. The laws which your Majesty, on the 11th of April of this year, sanctioned with your benignant approbation, only fulfilled the long cherished wishes of the Hungarian nation. With gratitude and with a vigor doubled by the extension of freedom, this nation was ready, with unaltered attachment, to shield the throne of your Majesty against the dangers which from more than one side threatened it.

But now several parts of the kingdom are disturbed by a rebellion, whose leaders plainly assert that they rise in the interest of the reigning house, and are


[p. 154]

rebels in your Majesty's name, against the freedom and independence, which your Majesty lawfully guaranteed to the Hungarian nation.

One part of the Hungarian army sheds its blood in Italy, for the interests of the monarchy, and reaps there, on every battle-field, laurels of triumph; while another part of the same army is being instigated to refuse obedience to the legal government of the kingdom.

This sedition in the lower parts of Hungary is reducing peaceful villages to ashes, and causing the massacre of innocent children and women in a more than barbarous manner. At the same time, a rebellion from Croatia threatens Hungary with hostile invasion, and, without any cause, has occupied the Hungarian port of Fiume, and the Sclavonian counties. The moving power of these seditions can be no other than the attempt of a reactionary party to destroy the consistency and integrity of Hungary, to annihilate the freedom of the nation, and to cancel the laws sworn to by the ancestors of your Majesty and by your Majesty yourself.

Called upon by your Majesty to provide for the defense of the country, the Hungarian Diet assembled two months ago. This Diet now requests your Majesty to support it with the whole weight of your sovereign authority in the grand task of preserving the country unimpaired, which is identical with the unimpaired preservation of the throne itself. [....]

Sire! the present moments are of so weighty an importance to the Hungarian constitution, that the loyal nation must dread more than ever, the dangers of delay.


[p. 156]

With the loyalty of faithful subjects we, therefore, entreat your Majesty to comply with our requests, and most especially to come to Hungary without deferring. We entreat this, with so much more energy, as we are deeply convinced of the pernicious effect of delay. If our entreaties are disregarded, the public trust will be shaken in the Hungarian ministry of your Majesty, and the ministry will thus be paralyzed in the application of lawful means, to uphold order and restore peace.

On the immediate decision of your Majesty it depends to avert incalculable dangers. May your Majesty support with the weight of your sovereign authority, and thus assist the deliverance of the country! and the Hungarian nation will ever faithfully stand by the throne of your Majesty.


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