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. APPENDIX. 459 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! 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. This 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. Le peuple a quitté la charrue, Nargue, &c. La faim le chasse du village, Nargue, &c. D'étrangers la frontière est pleine; Nargue, &c. Toujours servir, mais c'est terrible! Vint prier au seuil du manoir; Mais la porte en resta fermée Pour nous le ciel est toujours noir ! Nargue, &c. |