The first Hungarian Revolution holds a profoundly important place in the hearts and heads of Hungarians, and is celebrated as a national holiday. The events were the product of mounting social and political tensions after the Congress of Vienna of 1815.
Pervasive in pre-1848 Europe was conflict over organized religion. During the „Pre-March” period, the Austrian Empire moved away from Enlightenment ideas, restricted freedom of the press, and limited many university activities, including banning fraternities.
Conflicts between debtors and creditors in agricultural production as well as over land use rights in parts of Hungary (and France) led to conflicts that occasionally erupted into violence, often against the state. The revolution started on March 15, 1848, with demonstrations in Pest and Buda followed by various insurrections throughout the kingdom, which enabled Hungarian reformists to declare Hungary’s autonomy within the Habsburg Empire, under the governor Lajos Kossuth and the first Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány.
March 15th was legendary poet Sándor Petőfi’s day. Among the various leaders of the revolution, called Márciusi Ifjak („Youths of March”), Petőfi was the key actor in starting the revolution in Pest. He was the co-author and, respectively, author of the two most important written and recited documents: the “12 Points”, demands to the Habsburg overlord, and the “National Song”.
When the news of the revolution of Vienna reached them on the 15th, Petőfi and his friends decided to change the date of the National Assembly they had planned (as a rally where a petition to the Hungarian noblemen’s assembly would have been approved by the people), from the original March 19th to the 15th. This was a lucky decision, given that the authorities knew about their plans and planned to arrest the revolutionaries on the 18th.
On the morning of the 15th, the revolutionary youth around Petőfi began to march around the city of Pest, reading the poem and the 12 points to the gathered crowd of thousands. Thereafter, they toured printing presses, declaring an end to all forms of censorship, and printing Petőfi’s poem together with the 12 Points. The mayor and the representatives of Emperor Ferdinand were pressed by the crowds to sign the 12 Points, and had no choice but to oblige. As one point was freedom for political prisoners, the crowd then moved on to greet newly freed revolutionary poet Mihály Táncsics.
Faced with revolution at home in Vienna too, Austria first accepted Hungary’s autonomy. However, after the Austrian revolution was beaten down, and Franz Joseph replaced his uncle Ferdinand I as Emperor, Austria again refused to accept Hungarian autonomy, and a civil war followed. During the subsequent fighting, the Magyars, and with them foreign revolutionaries that came to fight after their own revolutions were crushed, had to fight against the Austrian Army, but also against the Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Romanians and Transylvanian Germans living on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, who had their own ethnic-national movements, and were unwilling to accept Hungarian dominance.
Initially, the Hungarian forces defeated Austrian armies (at Pákozd in September 1848 and at Isaszeg in April 1849), during which they even declared Hungary’s total independence of Austria in April 1849. Because of the success of the Hungarian resistance, Franz Joseph had to ask for help from „The Gendarme of Europe”, Czar Nicholas I, and Russian armies invaded Hungary, causing antagonism between the Hungarians and the Russians.
The war led to the October Crisis in Vienna, when insurgents attacked a garrison on its way to Hungary. After Vienna was recaptured by imperial forces, 70,000 troops were sent to Hungary to crush the last challenge to the Austrian Empire. Julius Freiherr von Haynau, the leader of the Austrian army, ordered the execution of 13 leaders of the Hungarian army in Arad and Prime Minister Batthyány in Pest. By August of 1849 the revolution had been crushed and Lajos Kossuth went into exile, although sporadic fighting continued late into the year. Thus ended the most important struggle for Hungarian independence to this day.
