17 AUGUST 1861, Page 22

as fresh as ever, for it furnishes the key to

events still recorded in arfin Michna, a butcher, ennobled by Ferdinand for his cruelty,

the telegrams of the day. It is the only narrative which explains in popular language and within reasonable compass the true relation ll

of the Imperial House of Austria to its provinces, the true reasons for and accepted by seven hundred and fifty proprietors Their property the inextinguishable hatred borne towards Austria by the Liberals was instantly confiscated, and the Jesuits calculated the spoil at of Europe. Without such aids the best informed amongst us are forty-three millions of florins: apt to forget, in the rushing tide of European history, that the

problem of Europe, the present position of Austria, presents, except wretched beings were, in truth, outrages on human nature. Thus the villagers, IR its minor incidents, nothing, whatever new.. The reigning House their wives and children, were driven to mass by letting loose ball-dogs on them, has always been in conflict with some one of its own provinces, has or mating thern with huntsmen's whips. Not only was a formal and public shin- always been menacing fire and sword to some one section of its own ration demanded of them, bat they were compelled to spit on the chalice, the subjects, has always had on its conscience the stain of days like those symbol of their faith, and trample it under foot. Many of the apostate lords,

which followed the movement of 1818. From 1598 and the first tortured their vassals, thrashing them with sticks or the flat of their sabres, in

proclamation of the Emperor Ferdinand II., the House of Austria order to make them kneel before the Holy Sacrament. They forced their menthe has carried on an unbroken war to the knife with every mani- open with the butt of their fusils, or iron wedges, in order to thrust in the host festation of human freedom. The concordat of 1855, which re- and make them communicate with only one element. A noble of the name bf placed the Austrian kingdoms at the feet of Rome, was but au Kinko Csernohorsky, and well worthy to bear that barbarous name, entered on,

ordinar horseback into the church of Kermin, galloped up to the altar, seized the cap Hungary, which seems now inevitable, will be but an ordinary inci- ins: My horse is as good as you: like you, he is a Utraquist.' After these dent in its unchanging petit ical system. Favoured by the strange unity insolent words lie fell, sword in hand, on the faithful, wounded a large number, of temperament often seen in families which are cursed with a trace killed several, and dragged others out of the church as prisoners of war."

of hereditary insanity, emperor after emperor has devoted himself to The Lutheran clergy and their daughters were surrendered at once the same evil task with a pitiless constancy, an unflinching determi- to the Walloons, who were ordered to shoot all peasants supposed nation to suffer all rather than endure any check on his own will which hostile to the Catholic creed: These practices continued without almost extorts from the student a groan of admiration. There is not abatement for six-and-twenty years, until, at last, a final decree was in history such another example of resistance to an inevitable law, issued, three clauses of which we give just as they stand :

nor, we believe, such another career of almost successful crime. " Art. 1. Every individual notprofessing the Catholic faith is forbidden to M. Michiels relates the facts with that burning.irritation which the carry on any trade or lucrative profession, or gain money by his labour. history of this House invariably excites in a humanized mind, but he " Art. 2. Any one who gives a shelter to an Evangelical priest will die on has gone back to original sources for his authority, and his fearful the scaffold, and forfeit all his property ; any one who allows a heretic priest to indictment is backed by a cloud of impartial witnesses. It is from " Art. 15. The poor taken care of in the hospitals must embrace the Catholic

the notes of the judge, and not from the tales of the victims, that he religion before All Saints-day, in default of which they will be turned out, no bas drawn his conclusions, and the events which a Papal nuncio matter what their physical condition may be ; and in future none but the orthodox reeords with a suave approval furnish the groundwork of charges win be received. SUCH ARE THE INTENTIONS ASH THE IMMUTABLE WILL OS which explain—if oppression can explain—why a House which in six HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY."

himdred years has steadily grown in importance is still as ever in The ruined province was bestowed on a new nobility; houses like conflict with the people it unctuously vows to protect. Gallas, Coloredo, Martinitz, Slawata, and Lichtenstein being invested

The key-note of Austrian history is the Irate of the House of Raps- with enormous estates, and supplying to this day the real strength of burg to the ideas of the Reformation, a hate which in 1598 induced the House of Austria. Thus was Bohemia recovered to the true Church the Emperor Ferdinand to utter the horrible aspiration, "Sooner a and profound loyalty to the House of -Hapsburg. The same system desert thane country peopled by heretics !" which, in 1861, induces an was carried out in Austria and Moravia, though with this difference, Austrian archduke to resist the claim of the Protestants to hold pro- that in those provinces the Protestants were few, and not as in Bo- party within the Tyrol, and which in all that long space has slumbered hernia owners of the kingdom ; and then, his own states cleansed of but once, and then in a prince who contended for liberty with as heresy, the emperor commenced the work of extirpation in Germany. savage a spirit of intolerance as the rest of his race for repression. The events of the Thirty Years' War are well known. Wallenstein The conflict began, as we have said, in 1598, when the Emperor Fer- and Tilly, ravaging friendly and hostile provinces equally, kept np dinand H., the pupil and hope of the Jesuits, mounted the throne. armies by plunder, and finally extirpated. the Protestant faith from One-half of his subjects were Lutherans, and the people of his the territories now included in Catholic Germany. During the war capital being almost exclusively of the Reformed faith, which the emperor's provinces were ravaged over and over, till credible, again was victorious in Bohemia and Hungary, his counsellors ad- because Catholic, witnesses declare that suicide became a habit vased moderation; but the emperor had no fear. He had with among the peasantry, that the people suffering the extreme of hunger him, as his successor has now, the organized strength of the were guilty of cannibalism, and that at last even the ordinary laws of priesthood, a soldiery drawn from classes beneath religious in- human nature gave way, and a consequence ensued which we verily finance, and the awful power of letting loose the whole of the enor- believe is without a parallel in the history of human oppression.

mous class who will follow any cause which offers impunity for " A final circumstance will suffice to depict the condition of Germany at this the licentious and a career for the cruel. The mode of action period. The excessive despair had so ulcerated the hearts of the people, and then, as now, was to crush the people province by province. Or- turned theta from all natural affections, that men abstained from their wives, ganized bands of priests, armed with the imperial authority, and

supported by troops of soldiers, were sent first through the villages of not care to share it with any one? All Bohemia, and, moreover, nearly the who's Styria. The Lutheran churches were then torn down, the Lutheran of Germany, seemed penetrated with a similar disgust during this frightful cemeteries turned into the public place of execution, the Lutheran struggle. The Germanic race seemed resolved to die out, and not leave such

pastors strangled, imprisoned, or banished. If a village resisted, boundless misery as a legacy for future generations. A whole nation desired to

the soldiers were quartered in it, with orders to ill-treat the inhabitants, pulpit to make use of their rights, and not thwart the intentions of nature. Even a punishment which then, as now, was sufficient to overcome anything more, the Franconian Diet, with the approval of the Archbishops of Bamberg- save despair. The educated classes fled almost en masse, the hardier and Wurtzburg, formed, on the 15th Febr2ary,1650, at Nuremberg, a legislative Lutherans were banished, and the remainder, well aware that Europe decision which allowed priests to marry, 'ad authorized polygamy. I have the

would lend them no aid, gave up the struggle, and, outwardly at least, text of this singular document before me, and will translate it, as a proof of such conformed. The same process was repeated in every province, ex- " Art. 1. During an interval of ten years, reckoning from this day, no man cept Bohemia and Hungary, until at last the former kingdom, mad- will be admitted into a monastery who has not reached his sixtieth year_ dened by the spectacle of its impending fate, rose in rebellion. The " All priests and curates not belonging to a religious house or chapter, are insurrection was suppressed in a twelvemonth, and the emperor bound to marry without delay. issued a decree of pardon and oblivion, so wide that Mansfeldt, who " Art. 3. Any man is allowed to marry two wives ; bat husbands are advised,

had command of the troops of his rival, the count palatine, left the persons is entrusted to them, they must in return behave discreetly and pm- country, confiding in its security. The instant he had gone, three dentin provide for them sufficiently in the first instance, and then take measures months after the ndecree of amnesty, forty-eight nobles and leaders to prevent hatred springing up between them"' were seized, carried into the great hall of the Palace at Prague, and This emperor, with the most excellent-designs, could never car. ry informed that their sentence was death without trial. Two days out his system in Hungary. In vain the Spanish ambassaaor, m a- • secret mums/ of the Allariali Government and of is glitelllatiC Persecution of speech in the cabinet the minute of which has been press ed, offered

' Fecemi la Divine Potestate, after they were led to the scaffold, singing psalms, and beheaded, La Somma Sapienza e'l Primo Amore.' their limbs being scattered over Prague. Some of them, including John of Jessen, the first of German anatomists, had their tongues

pation than to observe the relations between ' my first," my second,' my third,' plucked out before execution, and one, the only Catholic executed, and ' my whole,' carefully abstaining from the word itself, I tell you that two had his fingers out off, under the formal sentence. All this while pennyworth of gin will give me an easier and pleasanter ancestitesia than all your the emperor, prostrated before the shrine of Maria of Zell, posinve philosophy V • earnestly interceded with God for the men he had sentenced to We have taken no extract from Mr. Manrice's argument as to death and torture. Next day, the three municipal advocates were the deep organic relation between a divine Morality and a Revelation publicly flogged, and the registrar who had received the count of The essay is as profound as any in this series. Indeed the palatine had his tongue nailed to h gibbet. These, however, were .hest. sviitersin this series would be eager to acknowledge that they trifles. An over Bohemia the same scenes were enacted, the have learnt their best thoughts through Mr. Maurice. But the essay charters of the country torn up by the emperor's own hand, the as- toe compressed already for further analysis within newspaper limits. tional language suppressed, and the whole of the nobles deliberately ruined, on a plan regularly sanctioned by the emperor. Bands of SECRET HISTORY OF THE AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT.* soldiers scattered over the country received formal permission to IT is two years since this book was first published, but its interest is Viunder, a privilege used so fully that the instigator of these measures,

as fresh as ever, for it furnishes the key to events still recorded in arfin Michna, a butcher, ennobled by Ferdinand for his cruelty, allowed that ten years of defeat could not have produced such rain. A solemn offer of pardon was then made to all who would claim it, . of the Imperial House of Austria to its provinces, the true reasons for and accepted by seven hundred and fifty proprietors Their property w the inextinguishable hatred borne towards Austria by the Liberals was instantly confiscated, and the Jesuits calculated the spoil at

" If the most considerable persons were treated in this way, the citizens, work-

men, and peasants were still less spared. The measures employed against these

which followed the movement of 1818. From 1598 and the first tortured their vassals, thrashing them with sticks or the flat of their sabres, in

ordinar horseback into the church of Kermin, galloped up to the altar, seized the cap y expression of its religious policy ; the military occupation of full of consecrated wine, and poured the liquid down his horses throat, shout. Hungary, which seems now inevitable, will be but an ordinary inci- ins: My horse is as good as you: like you, he is a Utraquist.' After these dent in its unchanging petit ical system. Favoured by the strange unity insolent words lie fell, sword in hand, on the faithful, wounded a large number, of temperament often seen in families which are cursed with a trace killed several, and dragged others out of the church as prisoners of war."

nor, we believe, such another career of almost successful crime. " Art. 1. Every individual notprofessing the Catholic faith is forbidden to M. Michiels relates the facts with that burning.irritation which the carry on any trade or lucrative profession, or gain money by his labour. history of this House invariably excites in a humanized mind, but he " Art. 2. Any one who gives a shelter to an Evangelical priest will die on has gone back to original sources for his authority, and his fearful the scaffold, and forfeit all his property ; any one who allows a heretic priest to preach, baptize, or marry in his house, will pay a fine of one hundred florins. indictment is backed by a cloud of impartial witnesses. It is from " Art. 15. The poor taken care of in the hospitals must embrace the Catholic

mous class who will follow any cause which offers impunity for " A final circumstance will suffice to depict the condition of Germany at this the licentious and a career for the cruel. The mode of action period. The excessive despair had so ulcerated the hearts of the people, and then, as now, was to crush the people province by province. Or- turned theta from all natural affections, that men abstained from their wives, and lived in gloomy and tragic chastity. In France, the Mareehal de Gassion

was urged to renounce celibacy: 'I esteem life so little,' he replied, 'that 1 do supported by troops of soldiers, were sent first through the villages of not care to share it with any one? All Bohemia, and, moreover, nearly the who's Styria. The Lutheran churches were then torn down, the Lutheran of Germany, seemed penetrated with a similar disgust during this frightful cemeteries turned into the public place of execution, the Lutheran struggle. The Germanic race seemed resolved to die out, and not leave such

pastors strangled, imprisoned, or banished. If a village resisted, boundless misery as a legacy for future generations. A whole nation desired to commit suicide. It was found necessary to exhort married people from the

would lend them no aid, gave up the struggle, and, outwardly at least, text of this singular document before me, and will translate it, as a proof of such importance as this must be communicated to the reader in its entirety: conformed. The same process was repeated in every province, ex- " Art. 1. During an interval of ten years, reckoning from this day, no man dened by the spectacle of its impending fate, rose in rebellion. The " All priests and curates not belonging to a religious house or chapter, are insurrection was suppressed in a twelvemonth, and the emperor bound to marry without delay. issued a decree of pardon and oblivion, so wide that Mansfeldt, who " Art. 3. Any man is allowed to marry two wives ; bat husbands are advised,

and they will often be reminded of it from the pulpit, that if the fate of two had command of the troops of his rival, the count palatine, left the persons is entrusted to them, they must in return behave discreetly and pm- country, confiding in its security. The instant he had gone, three dentin provide for them sufficiently in the first instance, and then take measures months after the ndecree of amnesty, forty-eight nobles and leaders to prevent hatred springing up between them"' were seized, carried into the great hall of the Palace at Prague, and This emperor, with the most excellent-designs, could never car. ry informed that their sentence was death without trial. Two days out his system in Hungary. In vain the Spanish ambassaaor, m a- • secret mums/ of the Allariali Government and of is glitelllatiC Persecution of speech in the cabinet the minute of which has been press ed, offered Protestants. By Alfred Michiels. Chapman and Hall. bias forty thousand troops, and advised that the. Hunga ans should

be provoked to insurrection and their leaders gradually extirpated The Magyars comprehended the House, and under Bethlem Gabor three times dictated peace to Vienna, a peace of course each time unblushingly violated. They kept, however, their hands to their swords, and Ferdinand and his son passed away without being able to put the preconceived design in force. It was not till 1661 that the fitting opportunity occurred, and then it was eagerly seized. A. disgraceful treaty with Turkey at once opened the frontier of Hun- gary to the Turks, and released the imperial troops who were poured into Hungary, and the process was at once commenced. Almost every man of eminence was accused of treason; two commissioners were sent to Presburg with written orders "to punish conspirators," says the edict, " without observing any legal form," and they did their work well. Nobles and pastors were the great objects of attack, three hundred of them perishing in the dungeons of Presburg alone, until at length--

"A decree of the 6th of June, 1671, openly revealed the intentions of the court. The emperor declared in it that, as force of arms had rendered him absolute master of the country, the national charter was, consequently, annulled, and the will of the prince would be henceforth the sole law. The troops would hold military occupation of the fortresses, towns, villages, and hamlets; the captains and soldiers would be quartered on the inhabitants, who would supply them with light, wood, salt, straw, hay, and oats. Men of every description—nobles, citizens, or countrymen—would henceforth all pay personal taxes, while a heavy impost was laid on all articles of consumption."

The old policy—the despatch of priests supported by soldiers through the villages—was continued, all heretics were deprived of property, and at last, on 5th May, all heretic pastors, schoolmasters, and precentors were summoned to Presburg. Four hundred obeyed the summons, of whom three' hundred were condemned to death, distributed dirough the empire, sold as slaves, and sent to the galleys. In vain the Hungarians revolted. They were beaten again and again, the emperor declaring openly, " Faciam Hungarian captivam, postai mendicarn, deinde Catholicam." His agent, Antonio Caraffa, a Neapolitan—the Austrian Government invariably resting when brain was required upon Italian aid—invented a conspiracy, and at last assembled the most prominent Hungarians at Eperies:

"The most noble persons, the men of highest reputation, and the brave cap- tains who had fought in the war of independence, were led on to the scaffold, either together or separately, with victims of a lower class. Some were dragged out and lengthened on ladders expressly made to dislocate the limbs; others had their heads bound with cords or fillets of metal, until their eyes started from the sockets.' They were hanged by the hands to gibbets, and enormous weights attached to their feet, while the hangman burned their armpits with wax tapers, or shook over the unhappy men torches of pitch and resin which bedewed them with a liquid shower of fire. They were tortured with red-hot pincers, and steel blades or nails raised to a white heat were thiust beneath the nails on their fingers and toes. Many, half roasted and half lacerated, died under the torture. Leopold's delegate offered six hundred florins to any one who in- vented a new punishment, and one of these tortures, the most atrocious of all those described by the historians, makes our hair stand on end. Large wires at a white heat were introduced into the natural passages of the body, after the victims had been stripped of their clothing !"t One of the victims went to the Diet and showed the unhealed marks of the torture, while the relatives of the sufferers betook them to the emperor. He granted all their requests, but Antonio Caraffa, wearied with the letters of pardon brought him, produced an auto- graph letter from Leopold annulling beforehand all such papers, and, after nine months of executions, was removed, receiving in reward the governorship of Upper Hungary and the Golden Fleece, an order so respected in Europe, that Philip the Second of Spain doubted whether he could justifiably assassinate William the Silent while still a member of it. And all this occurred among a generation who were the contemporaries of Somers and Locke, and after England had expelled a sovereign whose worst acts were mercies by the side of the Austrian clemency.

We have no patience for further analysis ; suffice it to say that the Fathers of St. Ignatius, the moving spring of Austrian politics, held power for one hundred and fifty years, never changing their policy, and have regained it now, that the concordat of 1855 is almost in terms identical with the first proclamation of Ferdinand II., and that the line of Hungarian oppressors stretches from Caraffa to liaynau.

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as fresh as ever, for it furnishes the key to