it is probable that the junction of the two armies might have been effected before the decisive action was fought. But before Görgei, or any part of his force, could reach Temesvár, the contest was over. In the course of the night of the 10th of August a despatch arrived at Arad, from Guyon, stating that Dembinski's army no longer existed. On the afternoon of that day, and some hours before the arrival of this intelligence, a private conference had taken place between Kossuth and Görgei in the fortress of Arad, at which they discussed the conduct to be pursued under either of the events then impending over them. "Kossuth wished to know what I intended to do, in case the news he had received of the victory of Dembinski's army at Temesvár should be confirmed the junction of the army under my orders with Dembinski's effected-and the chief command over both armies were to devolve upon me." In that case"-I replied-" I should combine the whole of our forces, and direct my attack against the Austrians alone."-"But if the Austrians have been victorious at Temesvár?" Kossuth finally asked. "Then I will lay down my arms," was my answer. "And I shoot myself!" replied Kossuth.'-ii. p. 378. A few hours later Kossuth sent for my information a report of General Guyon relative to the issue of the battle fought at Temesvár. According to this report, written by Guyon himself, Dembinski's army no longer existed. By this final result of Dembinski's retrograde operation from Szöreg to Temesvár (instead of to Arad) the last probability of successful offensive operations against the Austrians was destroyed. The further continuance of our active resistance to the armies of the allies could now at most promote personal, no longer any national interests. Therefore, directly after the receipt of Count Guyon's report to Kossuth, I resolved, with the army under my command, which had been strengthened in Arad by a division of reserve, to lay down our arms, that a bloodless end might be put as speedily as possible to a contest henceforth without purpose, and that the country, which I could no longer save, might at least be freed from the horrible misery of war. 'I took this resolution with the full conviction of performing no half deed in executing it: for the army under my command was now the principal army of Hungary, and its conduct must prospectively the more certainly become the guide for all the isolated lesser bodies of active forces still existing elsewhere in the country-not excepting the garrisons of the fortresses-as Kossuth himself agreed with my resolution to lay down our arms, and there was consequently no reason to apprehend that he would agitate against a general imitation of the example I was determined to set. 6 My supposition that Kossuth would agree to the laying down of our arms was by no means an arbitrary one. At the moment when I explained to Kossuth that I was determined to lay down our arms as soon as the news which I had received about the defeat of Dembinski's army army was confirmed, he was in the strictest sense of the word master of my life. The interview at which I made this declaration took place, as is known, in his own apartment in the fortress of Arad. The commander of the fortress was Damjanics. Since the Comorn differences he was among my decided adversaries. The garrison of the fortress consisted of troops that scarcely knew me by name. There could not exist the slightest sympathy on the part of these troops for my person. The suite with which I had hastened on Kossuth's summons into the fortress consisted of one adjutant. Kossuth nevertheless allowed me unobstructed to return from the fortress to the head-quarters in Alt-Arad. He had not even attempted to dissuade me in any way from the eventual resolution of laying down our arms. It is true he had declared he was resolved to shoot himself if I laid down our arms. This declaration, however, considering the little personal sympathy I had shown him since the 14th of April 1849, could not be expected to shake me in my resolu tion; I considered this pathetic declaration, rather, only as a natural consequence of Kossuth's repeated asseverations, that he could neither live out of Hungary nor in it if it sunk into slavery. If Kossuth had been decidedly opposed to the laying down of our arms, he could not possibly have allowed me to quit the fortress of Arad.'-vol. ii. p. 381-383. It was therefore with a distinct knowledge of Görgei's intention that Kossuth and his colleagues formally transferred the supreme, civil, and military power to Görgei on the following day, whilst they provided for their own safety by flying to the Turkish frontier. With these facts before us, the charge of treachery which the spirit of disappointed faction has attempted to attach to Görgei's surrender at Vilagos, cannot be supported. As long as there was a possibility of carrying on the war with a chance of success, he had done his part towards it. As early as the 19th of July Count Rudiger, commanding a division of the Russian forces, had made overtures to Görgei for a negotiation, which was declined in suitable language, though even Kossuth and Count Casimir Batthyany were at that time ready to have placed the Duke of Leuchtenberg, or any other Russian prince, upon the Hungarian throne. But when the combination of the two armies was rendered absolutely impracticable by the defeat of the more considerable body of troops under Bem, Dembinski, and Meszáros, and when Görgei found himself surrounded by overwhelming forces, whilst his own army hardly exceeded 25,000 men, with no basis of operations and no attainable object before it: when, in short, that contingency had happened upon which Kossuth had said that he should blow out his brains, but upon which he did in reality lay down the government and take to flight, flight, without even handing over the insignia of office to his successor—it is a gross injustice to charge Görgei with the loss of a cause which was already ruined. It has not been our purpose on this occasion to renew the discussion on the political causes of the Hungarian contest, which we conceive to have been singularly misconceived by a certain class of enthusiastic politicians in this country; and we have here confined ourselves to the narrative of military operations, which command in many respects our admiration. Had these courageous efforts really been those of a whole people struggling to defend their ancient constitution against the aggressive forces of modern despotism, we know of no contest in history which would more have deserved our sympathy. But the Hungarian insurrection is to be traced to a totally different origin. It was closely connected, as we have shown in a former article, with the revolutionary outbreak in Vienna of March, 1848, which convulsed the Austrian monarchy. It destroyed the ancient constitution of the realm by the first blow it inflicted; and the subsequent policy of the provisional government was dictated by the artifices of a mountebank, rather than by the heroism and firmness of a patriot. Kossuth's two great civil resources were an unlimited issue of paper-money and a wholesale recognition of tenant-right. His eloquence undoubtedly exercised extraordinary influence over a people as ignorant, as imaginative, and as servile as the natives of Hungary; but Kossuth himself appears frequently to have laboured under the intoxication of oratory, and to have mistaken words for things. He either had no plan at all for the permanent emancipation of his country, or the plan he did pursue was utterly inconsistent with the genius, the resources, and the position of Hungary. It was held to be so by all that was most rational in the councils of his own government and most valuable in the army; and if an exterminating angel had swept every Russian and Austrian soldier from the plains of Hungary in a single night, it would still have been impossible to construct or maintain a stable government for that country and its dependencies on the principles which M. Kossuth had adopted. After what had occurred, the only rational object of the war was to bring the Austrian authorities to treat on moderate terms for the constitutional independence of the kingdom, retaining its ancient and indissoluble connexion with the Imperial Crown. That object Görgei appears to have kept steadily in view, and success itself could have effected no other arrangement. On the other hand the Imperial Ministers, and especially Prince Windischgrätz and Prince Schwarzenberg, may justly be reproached with having ignored this obvious distinction, and driven the war to to its last fatal consequences, including the humiliation of a foreign intervention. They failed to take advantage of the division which obviously prevailed among the leaders of the insurrection, and sought rather to plunge them all in one common crime, for which many of the noblest and least guilty were made to suffer even to the death, whilst those of meaner minds or more crafty resources had contrived their own escape from the catastrophe which had become inevitable. ART. IV.-1. Narrative of an Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea, in 1846 and 1847. By John Rae. 1850. 2. Arctic Searching Expedition: Journal of a Boat Voyage. By Sir John Richardson. 2 vols. 1851. 3. Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal. By Lieut. S. Osborn. 1852. 1852. 4. Journal of a Voyage in 1850-1, performed by the Lady Franklin and Sophia, under command of Mr. Wm. Penny. By P. C. Sutherland, M.D. 2 vols. 5. Papers and Despatches relating to the Arctic Searching Expeditions of 1850-1-2. Collected by James Mangles, R.N. 1852. 6. Second Voyage of the Prince Albert, in Search of Sir John Franklin. By Wm. Kennedy. 1853. 7. Parliamentary Papers. 1848-53. 8. Chart of Discoveries in the Arctic Sea. By John Arrowsmith. THESE HESE books and papers comprise most of the discoveries made in Arctic regions since we noticed Sir John Barrow's volume of Voyages in 1846. Franklin had sailed in the previous year, and in saying that we should wait his re-appearance with the anxiety of the princess for the diver, we much rather anticipated that we should soon have to welcome him with the goblet of gold, than that a seventh year should find us deploring his continued absence, with no better clue to his fate than dismal conjecture could supply. There was nothing in the nature of his enterprise to excite much fear for its result. The several Arctic expeditions sent out since 1818 had returned in safety. Their records are full of peril, but full also of the resources of skill and courage by which peril may be overcome. When this voyage was proposed by Barrow to the Royal Society, he urged that there could be no objection with regard to any apprehension of the loss of ships or men,' as it was remarkable. that neither sickness nor death had occurred in most of the voyages voyages made into the Arctic regions, north or south.' Franklin was well experienced in the navigation of frozen seas; his officers and crews were picked men; and the strength of his ships - the Erebus and Terror-had been thoroughly testedthe first in the Expedition of Sir James Ross to the South Pole -the second in the voyage of Back to Repulse Bay. He sailed, full of confidence in the success of his mission, on the 19th of May, 1845, and though nearly thirty vessels have since been despatched in search of him, besides parties who have explored the North American coast, all that we yet know of him is, that he passed his first winter in a secure harbour at the entrance of Wellington Channel. Whether, when released from the ice in 1846, he advanced or receded, is not certainly known. In the absence of decisive evidence, the best authorities are at fault. One witness stated before the last Arctic committee, it was 'all guess-work.' The travelling parties who from Beechey Island surveyed every coast for hundreds of miles, found not a cairn or post erected by the missing expedition. Since Franklin entered Lancaster Sound, not one of the cylinders which he was directed to throw overboard has been recovered, nor has a fragment of his equipment been found on any shore. It has hence been inferred that he must have left the harbour with the full intention of proceeding homewards. Captain Austin believes that the ships did not go beyond Beechey Island, but were lost in the ice, either by being beset when leaving winter quarters, or when attempting their return to England, Commander Phillips is of the same opinion. But if Franklin did resolve to return thus early, what could have become of the ships and men? That both vessels should be totally lost is contrary to all experience and probability, and that not a man should survive, is more unlikely still. One of the most experienced Arctic seamen living, who wen six voyages in whalers before he sailed with Parry, and has since been in the expeditions of the two Rosses, states that though it is possible-and he admits the supposition as but a possibility-the ships may have been walked over by the ice in Baffin's Bay,' yet that 'the men on such occasions are always saved,' by jumping on the ice and making their way to the land or to the next ship.* The harbourage chosen for the ships was so secure, that it is unlikely they could have been carried out from the Straits at the mercy of the ice, as were the ships of In a recent Dundee newspaper we observe an account of a whale-ship, employed in the Greenland fishery for the last sixty-nine years. She was lost at last, not by the ice of the northern sea, but by being stranded on a reef near her port, when returning with a full cargo. VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXIV. 2 D Sir |