PEAKE'S AUSTRIA DURING ITS REVOLUTIONARY
cnisIs.* THESE volumes are chiefly useful as furnishing the reader with a connected view of the events that took place in the Austrian empire during and in consequence of the revolutionary ferment of 1848. France was, perhaps is still, so completely Paris, that anything which occurred in the Provinces is insignificant for its operation on public affairs, and mostly rises no higher than a riot. Unity of place gives unity or at least consecutiveness of action : the foreign correspondence of a daily journal forms as good a his- tory as may be. The Prussian Revolution was also confined to the capital, from the indifference or hostility of the country-people ; neither was it distinguished by any striking succession of events, nor has it led to any remarkable results. The affairs of Italy were rather separate than complex. The Roman revolution was quite distinct from the war of Sicily ; that of Lombardy and Piedmont even from Venice. Austria was from the nature of her empire very • The Empire of Austria during its Revolutionary Crisis. By William Peake, Esq. In two volumes. Published by Newby. -multiplex : revolutions in Vienna, riots in Prague, revolts and wars in Hungary, Venice, and Lombardy, all opposed to the house of Hapsburg, if not all of them to Austrian rule, show the anoma- lous nature of the Austrian empire' and, in the final result, the wonderful tenacity of Austrian life. Merlotti, in his late work on Italy, ascribes the triumph of Austria over all her difficulties to the ability of her administrative officers, or what is depreciatingly called her bureaucracy ; but she has really ex- hibited the same discordancy of parts, yet the same vitality, for nearly a thousand years. The Emperor of Germany, during the middle ages, had difficulties as great to contend with from his own Electors, the Popes, and the Italian factions, as the Emperor of Austria during the present century. The immediate cause of the late recovery of the Empire was military force and skill, and the resolution to use them without scruple : the cause of that tenacity of life which has endured so many shocks through so many ages, in spite of a cumbrous and anomalous organization, is not so easily resolved.
Mr. Peake's book forms a succinct account of what took place in Germany, Hungary, and Italy, especially of the riots at Vienna ; for they seem to have become revolutions only through incapacity and goodnatured infirmity of purpose. New its matter cannot be called ; for we have had many books on the affairs of Italy and Hungary by persons who were actually engaged in the action, and the doings in Vienna have been slightly sketched by a few superficial observers. Mr. Peake's book, however, gives a clear summary of affairs both in Italy and Hungary, introducing civil and political as well as military matter; and by ascribing i events to their causes and condensing his narrative, he imparts to his work an air of history. The narrative of doings at Vienna is the fullest and completest we have seen, and has the appearance of having been written by an observer ; though this may perhaps be owing to Mr. Peake's authorities. The sources of his inspi- ration are evidently Austrian. He falls into the notion of the widespread outbreak throughout the Continent in 1848 having been the result of conspiracy ; the most respectable of the con- spirators being needy exiles, and the bulk of them ruffians or outcasts at home. The only conspiracy, properly so called, was community of feeling with the exiles and the cause for which they were exiled ; and this was owing to the mental (rather than bodily) oppression exercised by the governments that were shaken or overturned.
Besides the direct account of events, the book contains some incidental sketches of Austrian economy both in the army and civil government.
"With respect to the officers, the whole corps of the Imperial army know no other nationality than that of their flag, which unites them by the closest ties : although officers of every province of the empire are to be met with in every regiment, and they are generally good linguists, yet to insist that they should all understand the language of their soldier% would amount to a total dissolution of the Austrian army. Every officer can make his orders under- stood to the soldier by means of his sergeant, who is always of the same na- tionality as the soldier ; besides this, in every regiment a certain number of officers of the same nationality as the soldier is to be met with, so that, in case of need, the road is open to a direct communication between all the officers and their men ; but further to facilitate this most desirable connex- ion, all officers appointed to a regiment make it their first study to become acquainted with the prevailing dialects spoken by the men."
This does not seem a very good mode of forming an united army ; yet the result shows that the Austrian soldiery can resist the evil effects of disaster in the field and apparent dissolution of the government : the workings of discipline and the pay-sergeant III on men who have neither family nor country. The cause of the rapid overthrow of governments on the Conti- nent, and the rapid reestablishment of what is called order, is not the want of gradations of ranks ; for in Germany at least there are a richly-estated nobility, professional men of various pursuits, wealthy merchants, and what we mean by the middle class, to- gether with " peasant proprietors," and, as we are told, a highly- educated people, though less so in Austria than in Prussia. But none of these classes possess political power, or, as a consequence, know how to use it, or are competent to manage any public busi- ness; • they neither can do good nor prevent evil from being done. The deputies sent to the Diet by a system akin to universal suf- frage, might have sufficed to settle the constitution of a new colony, where no large interests beyond their own experience were imme- diately at issue, and common sense with right feeling could act on a tabula rasa. They were not, however, the kind of men to deal with the complications of the Austrian monarchy.
"The members for the new Diet elected in the provinces now slowly ar- rived at Vienna ; and it was not a little curious for the citizens to notice the kind of men delegated. They were of all ages, ranks, habits, and costumes— many of them ignorant of the German language—simple in manners and patriarchal in appearance ; the swarthy countenance and sunburnt hands, the dark flashing eye, the long black hair reaching to the waist, the square- shouldered figure, the sheepskin bunda richly worked at the back, the huge round-brimmed hat, loose canvass trousers and hob-nailed shoes; marked the delegates from Hungary, Transylvania, and the Banat : and their wonder- ing looks, as they passed through the streets, raised a smile on many coun- tenances.
"Sixteen of this class arrived together at one of the hotels ; and being in- formed that there was not accommodation for so large a party, they replied —'Why not ? we only want two rooms : shake down a load of straw, and bring us meerschaums, we are content'; and this was actually done. "The inhabitants of a district having been remonstrated with on the doubtful character of one of their chosen delegates, they excused themselves by saying- " 'Oh he was always a good-for-nothing, i
idle, thievish fellow, and was of no use to us. We could do no good with him; so we thought it best to get rid of him by sending him to you.'
"In Vienna, the delegates were chosen mostly from among the lawyers, medical and literary men ; in Prague, from the booksellers and authors. The whole Diet was chosen from the middle classes—they possessed, indeed, plenty of crude idea, but no knowledge whatever of legislation."
Mr. Peake's narrative of the bombardment and assault of the city by Windischgratz exhibits its horrors more fully than any pre- vious account. This is part of the rigour inflicted on Vienna by the " paternal government." " On the 31st October, at three o'clock, the principal attack of the troops took place against that part of the city called the Burg (palace). The troops, after having taken the suburbs by storm, advanced to the glacis ; and now a tremendous cannonade was opened against the city : the population was seized with the utmost fear; grenades, bombs, shells, congreve rockets, and shot of six and twelve pounds, flew through the city like hail ; houses fell, conflagrations broke out, and most of the inhabitants rushed for shelter to the cellars or caves under-ground. The noise of the cannonade was aug- mented by the crash of the fall of walls and stacks of chimnies ; the streets were completely empty, but here and there were seenpiles of arms, military clothing and decorations thrown from the various windows ; so that some of the principal streets looked as if they were depositories of military stores. One man, at the first floor of a corner-house in the Kiirnthnerstrasse, was watching the motion of the balls in the air, with his arms folded on the sill of the window, when a ball dropped and crushed them both. Four balls en- tered the roof of the hotel Archduke Charles, and would have caused a con- flagration had they not been instantly cooled water : many of the houses in this street were kept from burning only by the constant application of water by their occupants. The residences of the Diplomatic Corps suffered much ; cannon-balls and shells entered the windows of the Prussian Em- bassy ; the French Embassy received many balls ; the English Embassy lost a huge stack of chimmes ; the Turkish Embassy had been previously riddled with shot, for that was situated in the Leopoldstadt, and it would have been entirely destroyed had not the maitre-d'hOtel dressed himself in haste in his master's clothes, and, rushing into the street, declared to the assaulting Croatians that he was the Ambassador, and that his house was therefore sacred. The houses near the Karnthner gate were dreadfully cut about by the cannonade. On one of the houses (and there were ten or twelve in the row between the gate and the palace of Count Kolorat similarly punished) sixty-three indentations from cannon-balls were counted ; the wood-work was burnt and crushed, the roof on fire, and the stone and ce- ment, of which the houses were built, crumbled and broken away. The palace of Count Kolorat, at the corner, was a complete prey to the flames.
_ The Imperial library, forming part of the palace, was burning, and the roof and tower of the church of Saint Augustine were completely destroyed.
" One of the communal guards hung out from the walls near the Burg= thor a white flag, which caused a cessation of firing from the military; they advanced to enter the gate, but vollies of musketry and cannon-shot proved the treachery of the act and exasperated the troops beyond measure. act of perfidy was the last committed ; for the troops having now burst° the gate by cannon, rushed in and took possession of whole ground up to the doors of the palace, which were now similarly cannonaded and stormed. A little later the troops effected an entrance at the Karnthner gate, took possession of that part of the city, and, the Leopoldstadt and Landstrasse pouring in their contingents, the whole city was invested and occupied : the troops aided in extinguishing the fires, amid the acclamations of the people, who received them as liberators from the hateful tyranny under which they had been kept by the Democrats for so long a period. The military occupied all the public squares and bivouacked in the streets by thousands, and can- non was posted at every opening. Thus was the combat concluded and the city taken: the loss of tW. insurgents was computed at two thousand men, and the military could scarcely have sustained an inferior loss."
This stern process seems to have succeeded for the present: Vienna is crushed into quiet, Hungary is subdued and its consti- tution destroyed, Italy is enslaved. But how long will it last ? The rapid outbreaks of Vienna, Milan, and Venice, show what the feelings of the people were before : have the devastation of their homes, the destruction of their property, and the bloodshed of their fellow-citizens, rendered them more attached to the double- headed eagle ? Are the highspirited Hungarians likely to forget the military murder of their nobility' the floggings of women, the attempted destruction of their nationality ? Just now, indeed, all looks triumphant; but James the Second never seemed stronger than after " the Bloody Assizes." A few years are as nothing in the life of a nation or a dynasty, and we are yet perhaps only at the " beginning of an end.
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