No. III. Proclamation to the Croato-Slavonians. When, in the days of March, the loud voice of the people clamoured for deliverance from the secular oppression of the old system, our good monarch listened, and spoke at once of freedom, of equality, of rights, for all the populations of his vast and powerful empire. A happy, a brilliant future, seemed assured to us; but, unluckily, we-Croats, Slavonians, and the other Servian, Rouman, and German members of the same family-we were soon made aware of the precise contrary. An arrogant, selfish, ambitious faction in Hungary profited by the excitement inseparable from such changes, to wrest from our most gracious sovereign concessions, by which the most precious of all our possessions, liberty, became their privilege, and that of the Magyar race alone; by which all the other subjects of the Hungarian Crown were to be doomed to slavery. And this same faction also, by the establishment of a separate ministry, annihilated in fact the unity of the Hungarian provinces with the Empire, guaranteed by the Pragmatic Sanction. The existence of the kingdom of Croatia was straightway denied ; the kingdom of Slavonia was declared a county of Hungary; the use of the Magyar language was prescribed, and established in all the provinces, even in the more southern ones, almost entirely peopled by the Servians. The consequence was, the discontent of a race distinguished for services done to the country, and for its bravery; a discontent augmented to desperation, so soon as the Hungarian ministry began to give the support of force to the work of injustice. These were the fruits, to us, of our newly obtained freedom! Here were the " equal rights" set down by the law of nature, and sanctioned by the sacred word, the law of our most excellent monarch! This was the reward for the thousand services that our race has, through centuries, done to the Hungarian Crown, and to the United-Monarchy, for the rivers of blood that it has poured forth for the defence of a common fatherland! This to a nation, which, in our immediate times counted, on the battle fields of Italy, 35,000 of its sons in the ranks of the Austrian army, until its struggles to preserve the honour of the Austrian name had decimated its numbers. I will not speak of the manifold direct and indirect attacks upon the Croato-Serbo-Slavonian race; of the thousand suspicions, and disdains, and slights; of the endless persecutions, which in a thousand forms menaced me, as Ban of the three united kingdoms, threatening my honour and my life. I advert to them simply, because not alone I, but in me, the good right of the nation was thereby attacked. Constant deputations of our people begged repeatedly, at the foot of our good monarch's throne, for protection, for justice. Ill luck watched over us, and all our prayers were in vain. At length, in gracious consideration of these sad circumstances, his Majesty fixed upon the Archduke John to be the intermediary and the adjuster of the differences between Croatia, Slavonia, and the Hungarian ministry. In obedience to most high commands, I also went to Vienna, readily lending my hand to the work of peace and conciliation. But this step, too, was useless. I demanded, in the name of the Croato-Slavonian nation, the maintenance of the Pragmatic Sanction, the which establishes (Croato-Slavonian Provincial Diet, of the 9th March, 1712, sanctioned expressly by the Emperor Charles VI.) "that the kingdoms of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, subjected to the rule, not only of the male, but also of the female descendants of the Imperial House, shall however only be held to obey those who shall be possessed not alone of Austria, but also of Styria, Carmiole, and Carinthia, and who shall reside in the above-mentioned Austria:" which further ordains (Art. XI. 1723) "that the German and the Hungarian hereditary possessions shall be governed indivisibly, inseparably, and by a common Government.' To be true to this, I demanded that there should be a Central Ministry of War, of Finance, and of Foreign Affairs I demanded, on the ground of its being just, and according to the sacred word of His Majesty, the equal rights of our nationality I demanded the accomplishment of the promises made to and hopes entertained by the Servian nation in Hungary. : As the Hungarian Minister-President would not agree to any compact on these bases, I had no resource but to await the decision of the Hungarian Diet upon our last conciliatory propositions. But this most important question, upon the solution of which depended not only the welfare of Hungary, and all the populations belonging to the Hungarian Crown, but also the maintenance of the United Empire, this question never was brought under discussion, but on the contrary, the aggressions of the Hungarian Ministry still continued. Misguided sons of our own fatherland, under the protection of the Magyar party, laboured that material order in Croatia might be disturbed; in Slavonia, ministerial Commissaries backed by military force, constrained the populations to elect deputies for the Diet of Pesth; in Trieste a vessel is fitted out to disturb the Croatian Coast; another similarly equipped and armed pursues upon the Danube a work of wanton destruction; detachments of troops formed of the mobilized National Hungarian guard cross the frontier, and invade the territory subjected to the Banal authority; the most frightful war rages with increased terrors in the Banat; and in order that the worst might be done, the emissaries of the Magyars were instructed to excite the Bosnians, so that their wild savagehordes might carry desolation and ruin with fire and sword into a land whose inhabitants had for centuries truly and honestly watched over the distant borders of the Empire, giving their lives to ward off from Hungary, Austria, and thereby from all Europe, the two fearful evils of the East: barbarity and the plague. I am a lover of the people, I am a lover of freedom, I am a lover of Austria! devoted to my constitutional Emperor and King, I reject with undisturbed tranquillity of conscience all accusations and suspicions, whether of "reaction," "Panslavism" or what not; and declare in the face of all Austrian nations, that, bound by the resolutions of the Croato-Slavonian people taken in their provincial Diets, and by my own internal convictions, I neither can nor will give up one iota of the conditions recognized as the basis and foundation of a future pacification. We desire a united, powerful, free Austria-therefore one indispensable condition is, the centralization of the Ministries of War, Finance, and of Foreign Affairs. We demand the equal rights of all nations living under the Crown of Hungary; these have been promised to all, in the March-days, by the sacred word of our gracious Monarch. In accordance with a determination solemnly adopted by the Croato-Slavonian Diet, we will not separate our affairs from those of our brothers in blood and language, the Servians of Hungary. Nations, like individuals, have their honour, which to them, as to the individual, must rank far higher than life. The Servians have one desire with us; they desire to remain true and faithful to their Emperor and King; they, like us, will rest inflexibly attached to the great Empire of Austria. Now, as the Hungarian Ministry thinks it cannot consent to our proposition, as it persists in its separatist tendencies, that is to say, -as it contemplates the decline and fall of the great and fair United Empire: honour and duty command us to risk everything, and appeal to arms;-we must with strength, with possessions, with life, devote ourselves to the good right, to the holy cause! God save our Constitutional Emperor and King, Ferdinand! JELLACIC, BAN. Proclamation to the Magyar Nation. Magyars! Brothers! True to the resolves of my nation and to duties sworn, I stand here with arms in hand, on the frontiers of your home, and speak to you an earnest word in a most earnest hour. In darkness and servitude lived for centuries the nations of the earth. Our great and fair empire groaned under the spirit-quelling pressure of heavy institutions; then all at once light broke upon Austria's hard-bound lands, and her kind-hearted Emperor himself undid the prison-bolts, gave freedom to his people, and spoke the word of equal rights for all nations. But brothers! the will of our King, the just desires and wishes of the people were not fulfilled; for in the very moment when not you alone, Magyars, but all of us in the Empire, received the gifts of Liberty, in the very moment when the Constitutional Emperor and King, according to the already consented Constitution of Hungary, could make no further concessions without the free agreement of his free subjects, and without the concordance of his responsible Central Ministry-in that very moment, guilty hands are outstretched to seize our common good,-Freedom! This Your Ministry, not at the head of the Magyar nation, but at the head of a faction, asks freedom for itself, and forges chains for us: it has, in fact, even now, torn itself asunder from the great Austrian Empire, upon whose integrity the fate of millions hangs, and has destroyed that treaty common to all, the Pragmatic Sanction. Ministry has, by its aggressiveness, occasioned everywhere confusion, opposition, desperation, and our fatherland is already stained with the blood of warring brothers. The mediation of His Imperial Highness, the Archduke John, desired by our Most Gracious Sovereign the Emperor and King, begged for by the Hungarian Ministry, produced, although met on our side by a ready wish for peace, no result, and six weeks are now gone by without this most important question,-important for the welfare of Hungary, as also for that of the whole united Empire,-having been proposed to the discussion of the Diet in Buda-Pest, by the Hungarian Ministry. This situation can last no longer, and, forced to the last resource, nothing remains for us but to set our lives upon the obtention of Freedom and Order in the land. Brothers! not against you do we go forth, but against that faction which, in its self-willedness, has brought us all upon the brink of ruin. We would wish to realise the ideas of freedom, equality, and fraternity; we desire to be neither oppressors nor oppressed, but to live in a happy equality of rights, side by side, whether by name Magyars, Slavonians, Germans, or Roumans. Receive us, therefore, as friends, and be assured that I will main tain aid and protection to every one,-protection for his property and for his life, who does not meet me as a foe. What is needed for my troops will be negociated with your local authorities, and exchanged either for payment in coin, or, should money fail, for equally valuable, legally recognized notes. Therewith do I place my trust in God, hoping His help, and the aid of all well-thinking persons in this most just and holy cause of freedom and of my country. God save our Constitutional Emperor and King, Ferdinand! On the banks of the Drave, Sept. 10, 1848. JELLACIC, BAN. No. IV. LE CHŒUR DES JACQUES. Souffres, que rien ne te rebute; A de lâches séductions. Attends, pour sortir de l'abîme, Le flot des révolutions. (La Jacquerie, par Bravard). Air-Le peuple est Roi! le peuple est Roi! Refrain. Nargue aux Rois et nargue aux Cosaques: La misère a repris les rangs! La moisson s'approche-et les Jacques Vont moissonner chez les tyrans. |