Revolt
Further information: April lawsThe Revolution started on March 15, 1848.
The bloodless mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda forced the Imperial governor to accept all twelve of their demands. After that, there were many insurrections throughout the Kingdom; on the pressure, the Governor-General's officers, acting in the name of the King appointed Hungary's new parliament with Lajos Batthyány as its first Prime Minister. The new government approved a sweeping reform package, referred to as the "April laws", which created a democratic political system. The newly established government also demanded that the Habsburg Empire spend all taxes they received from Hungary in Hungary itself, and that the Parliament should have authority over the Hungarian regiments of the Habsburg Army.
In the summer of 1848, Hungarian Government ministers, seeing the civil war ahead, tried to get the Habsburgs' support against the conservative Josip Jelačić. They offered to send troops to northern Italy. By the end of August 1848, the Imperial Government in Vienna officially ordered the Hungarian Government in Pest not to form an Army. Jelačić, being a Count in Croatia and Dalmatia, which were at that time part of Hungary, had a different view. He invaded Hungary to dissolve the Hungarian Government, without any order by the Austrian throne.
Hungary now had war raging on three fronts: Jelačić's Croatian troops to the South, Romanians in Banat and in Transylvania to the East, and Austria to the West.
Hungarian liberals in Pest saw this as an opportunity. In September 1848, the Diet made concessions to the Pest Uprising, so as not to break up the Austro-Hungarian Union. But the counter-revolutionary forces were gathering. After many local victories, the combined Bohemian and Croatian armies entered Pest on 5 January 1849 to put down the revolt.
Austria had its own problems with the revolution in Vienna that year. So at first it acknowledged Hungary's government. The Austrian monarchy also made other concessions to subdue the Vienna masses: On 13 March 1848, Prince Klemens von Metternich was made to resign his position as the Austrian Government's Chancellor. He then fled to London for his own safety.
After the Austrian revolution in Vienna was beaten down, the kamarilla orchestrated Franz Joseph I of Austria to replace his uncle Ferdinand I of Austria, who was not of sound mind. With Franz Joseph on throne, Austria now again refused to accept the Hungarian government. In the end, the final break between Vienna and Pest occurred when Field-Marshal Count Franz Philipp von Lamberg was given control of every army in Hungary (including Jelačić's). He went to Hungary where he was mobbed and viciously murdered, upon which the Imperial court, without authority for such, ordered the Hungarian Parliament and Government dissolved, and uniliterally appointed Jelačić – the same illegal invader referred to above – to take Lamberg's place as Palatine and commander-in-chief.
War between Austria and Hungary had officially begun.
Read more about this topic: Hungarian Revolution Of 1848
Famous quotes containing the word revolt:
“I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“I was always a feminist, for I liked intellectual revolt as much as I disliked physical violence. On the whole, I think women have lost something precious, but have gained, immeasurably, by the passing of the old order.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)