Revolutions - 7.15- Slaves No More

Episode Date: November 15, 2017

On your feet, Magyar, the homeland calls! The time is here, now or never! Shall we be slaves or free? This is the question, choose your answer.

Hello and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 7.15, Slaves No More. Okay, so I'm sorry that this episode is a few days late, as I posted over at Revolutionspodcast.com, my kids gave me a wicked cold at the end of last week that thrashed my voice and rendered me unable to record. So, I apologize for that. And without further ado, let's just get back into it. So last time, we watched the revolution of 1848 hit Austria. As you probably noticed, after word of the revolution in France reached Vienna,

events in Vienna mirrored the revolution in France. Days of rising tensions, petitions, and demonstrations culminated with street fighting, the fall of Mernich, and the capital being taken over by the civilian National Guard. But the Viennese revolution stopped short of the French Revolution, Rather than continuing on to overthrow the Hapsburg dynasty, the insurrectionary Viennese pulled back the reins on March the 15th, 1848, after Emperor Ferdinand issued a proclamation promising them a constitution. For the Viennese, that was victory enough.

Their object was reform, not revolution. Their object was a constitutional monarchy, not a republic. And having achieved their objectives, they push no further. But that was last week. This week, we will stay in the Habsburg realms and get going with the Hungarian Revolution, which is erupting simultaneously, and it too begins with news of the revolution in France, and it too would culminate on March the 15th, 1848. So to catch up with the Hungarians, we need to reach back a bit into the Hungarian political

scene of the mid to late 1840s. Now Hungary, remember, was the largest subunit of the Austrian Empire, and it had long been governed by a constitutional aristocracy composed of the 5% or so of the population that enjoyed noble status. These Hungarian nobles had a love-hate relationship with their Habsburg masters. Basically, it was love when Vienna respected Hungarian autonomy and hate when Vienna tried to impose centralized absolutism. After the fall of Napoleon, many educated Hungarians had reacted to Metternich's absolutist tendencies, by embracing a patriotic interest in Hungarian language, culture, and history. Well, through the 1830s and 1840s, the Habsburg regime was becoming increasingly rickety,

and Vienna did not believe they were strong enough to impose their will on Hungary without running things through the ancient national diets. So with these diets being called, a full-blown liberal opposition began to assert itself, often now driven by patriotic Hungarian nationalism. These budding Hungarian nationalists almost never spoke of outright independence, but instead pushed for de facto Hungarian self-rule inside the larger Habsburg Empire. Now, obviously, there were lots of Hungarian politicians and leaders running around out there, but to keep things simple, I have so far introduced you to the two major polls of liberal

Hungarian politics. First was the brilliant polymath Isht von Secheny. One of the great landed magnates and a relentless advocate of steady reform in nearly every aspect of life, from bridge building to river navigation to tax policy to cultural improvement to civil rights, Cicheney believed that Hungary would not take its rightful place as a powerful modern nation until it had elevated its economy and culture to meet the standards of her western neighbors. The other poll, meanwhile, was Lyos Cuch. 15 years younger than Secheney and the son of middle-class common nobles,

Koschut had spent his life as a radical activist, lawyer, and journalist, and believed that the greatness of Hungary would only be unleashed once the chains of Habsburg political oppression had been shed. So in contrast to Secheney's demand for slow, plotting steps, Koschut pushed for overnight change, arguing that radical political reform was the only way to achieve the kind of economic and cultural progress that Saychani himself wanted. So the two men spent most of the 1840s arguing with each other in books and in the press,

and their arguments defined the two wings of the liberal opposition in Hungary. Now, of critical importance for understanding how the Hungarian revolution is going to play out, one topic Sechaney and Koschut profoundly disagreed on was the matter of Hungarian nationalism. Seychini was a promoter of Hungarian culture. but he was also conscious of the multi-ethnic composition of the larger kingdom of Hungary. The ethnic Magyars dominated numerically and economically and politically, but Hungary included large numbers of Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, and Romanians. Cicheney believed that insisting too much on Magyar supremacy would alienate the minority nationalities

and create destabilizing resentment. He also believed that going in too hard for Hungarian nationalism would, lead Vienna to tighten their grip on Hungary, probably after being begged to do so by the minority nationalities threatened by Magyar tyranny. Koschut profoundly disagreed with all of this, and he was one of the principal proponents of Magyarization, forcing the people of the Kingdom of Hungary to uniformly adopt the Magyar language and culture. Now, if you'll recall, what you probably don't, but Koschut himself was a multi-ethnic mix of Magyar, German, and Slovak, and so he was not a blood nationalist. For Koschut, your ancestry didn't matter, your ethnicity didn't matter.

It only mattered that you were born in Hungary and lived in Hungary. But he believed that a nation could only thrive if it shared a common culture and language, and he determined that Magyar was superior to the rest and should therefore become that common culture and language. his motto was one country, one nation, one people. Basically, I don't care if you're ethnically German or Slav or Romanian, as long as you speak Hungarian and adopt a Hungarian way of life. Now, Koshut was not fanatical about this, and he allowed that communities would be able to continue to maintain their own traditions in their private lives, but in the public sphere,

it had to be one country, one nation, one people. And as we will see, the run-eastern, and as we will see, battle over Magyarization will be profoundly important to the course of the Hungarian revolution. By the late 1840s, the European-wide economic recession had increased the agitation by liberals and nationalists in Hungary, and Vienna recognized that they might have to do something before this all got out of hand. Now, of late, I have portrayed old Mehernik as a reactionary anti-reformer, and mostly that's true, both in theory and in practice. But if you remember from all the way back in episode 6.8c, when I first introduced Madernick, he did have shreds of savvy nimbleness in there somewhere. Surveying the increasingly rickety state of the Austrian Empire at the

end of the 1840s, Madernick saw trouble brewing in the biggest component of the Habsburg imperial realms and decided that between the brand of radical Hungarian nationalism embodied by Koschut and the more cautious liberal reformist tendencies of Sechaney, that the latter was by far the lesser of two evils. So while Koschut and his allies faced increasing censorship and surveillance, in 1846, more conservative Hungarian liberals were given permission to organize an overtly political party that they called the Conservatives. The creation of this party was meant to lay the groundwork for a new national diet that would convene at the end of 1847. Mannerick wanted to make sure it was packed with conservatives rather than radicals, and he very shrewdly identified the issue

of Magyarization as a wonderful opportunity to wield both the carrot and the stick. Mernick let it be known that Vienna was toying with the idea of further empowering and elevating the ethnic minorities inside the old Hungarian lands, that Austria would, in effect, act as the guarantor of their rights and property and culture from aggressive Magyar nationalists. but if the liberals in Hungary were to, say, keep their demands moderate, then perhaps Vienna would not feel so inclined to actively intervene. At the same time, he started buying off some of these more conservative leaders with cushy local administration jobs that would trace their chain of command up through the Austrian bureaucracy,

rather than through the local Hungarian diets, which still met in each of the 50 counties in Hungary and had a lot of local power. long dominated by the common nobility, these local diets had become a breeding ground for Koschut-style radicals. Metternich hoped that a new network of quasi-intendance would lead to that breeding ground being neutralized. Smelling a rat in all of this, Koschut and the other radicals formed their own group, called the Party of United Opposition.

Composed of mostly common nobles, but funded by more radically inclined magnates, the party of United Opposition wanted to increase the separation between Hungary and Austria, rather than bind them closer together. But though they came together in late 1846, they were divided into their own factions and had trouble reconciling their visions for the future of Hungary. So-called centralists believe that Hungary must embrace modern centralized government and administration in order to shed the last vestiges of feudal systems of power. Opposing them were municipalists who believed that the local county diets were the bulwark of liberty. Koschut himself was a fierce municipalist, both for personal and practical reasons.

He believed that threatening to take away power from the common local nobility would doom the whole liberal project. But in June of 1847, the two sides finally hammered out a shared platform that included among its demands national sovereignty for Hungary inside the Habsburg Empire. the unification of all lands claimed by the Hungarian crown, which most especially meant achieving full reintegration with Transylvania. They also wanted progressive legislation to promote social and economic progress, and then finally they wanted a bill of rights. Now, of course, there's no way that this platform is going to get past the censors, and after it was formally suppressed,

Koschut had to have it printed and distributed in secret, aided by the moment. Aided by the money and the printing press of one of his principal patrons, the liberal magnate Laios Bateni, who will pop back up at the end of today's episode. Campaining on the principles of this now underground platform of the United Opposition, Koschut ran for a speech in the upcoming diet, and though he was specifically targeted for defeat by his enemies, as he was rightly seen as a troublesome agitator, Kosut won a spot. He would be joined there by his old rival, Sey Chan. who chose to give up his seat in the rich upper house,

and instead ran for a seat in the lower house, where he might be able to keep the genie of the radical Hungarian nationalists in a bottle. The national diet opened in Presburg, that is modern Bratislava, on November the 11th, 1847, and the opening was presided over by the emperor himself in his role as King of Hungary. Showing right off the bat how contentious the issue of Magyarization was, when the emperor offered a few words in Magyar as a way of a bit of friendly reconciliation. Delegates who had been elected from the Croatian realms of the Kingdom of Hungary took a fence and almost walked out.

But after this hiccup, the imperial government tried to take the wind out of the sales of radical Hungarian nationalists by preemptively offering many of the more conservative reforms that the Hungarians had been getting ready to demand. the biggest one being dropping a huge tariff barrier that stood between Hungary and the rest of the empire. But with the radical sensing they were about to lose the initiative, they demanded that the diet proceed in the traditional order. Of first, the Hungarians making their grievances known to the king, and then the king's representatives responding. Koschut was, of course, hoping that by getting everyone into a non-stop complainathon, that by the time they were done, the Habsburgs would have to do a lot better than their mild package of reforms. He successfully induced the lower house to go along with this, and rather than voting on the

government's package, they instead proceeded to debate what they would put in their address to the king. They would stand as their formal list of demands. But the radicals then even successfully derailed the project of working methodically through the draft of an address, and instead, the diet collapsed into an almost totally random assortment of grievance. and counter- grievances. Should the nobles be taxed? Should Magyar be the language of official business? Should non-nobles be given political rights? Should peasants be given any rights at all? Everything seemed to be on the table, and no one seemed to be in control of what was on the menu. By early February 1848, though, it seemed like the conservatives were going to come out on top.

Still believing that the local county diets were the principal source of political sovereignty in Hungary, Couchute forced a vote to get rid of those quasi-intendants who had been appointed by the Austrians. But he narrowly lost this vote, in part, thanks to crossover from Croatian delegates who did not like Couchute's Magyar nationalism. With Couchute wounded, the diet was now clearly moving in the direction of accepting the government's initial proposals when, that's right, word of the revolution in France landed in Pressburg and changed everything. Now, as we saw last time, news reached Vienna on February the 29th, and it reached Pressburg the following day. And when he found out, Koschut immediately put pen to paper and crafted what we called last time the inaugural address of the revolution. Recognizing intuitively that the fall of the regime in France destabilized all of Europe in favor of more radical demands, Koschut walked

into the diet on March the 3rd, 1848, and demanded not just reforms for Hungary, but a wholesale rebuild of the entire Austrian Empire. As we saw, Koshute professed loyalty to the emperor, but demanded parliamentary rule for the constituent nationalities of the empire and constitutional government for the Austrians. At home, he called for the virtual independence of Hungary, the taxation of the nobles, and throwing open political rights to the non-noble middle classes. This speech was to fire up not just his Hungarian compatriots, but also men and women across the empire and beyond. The Hungarian diet was one of the few representative bodies in Central Europe with real power. And because Hungary itself already had a tradition of national sovereignty, and because Koshute himself was a great writer and orator,

this speech from a minor Hungarian noble spread as fast as it could be translated and copied, and it raced from town to town, city to city. But though he was daring and about to be world famous, Koschut was not at all universally beloved, and even as they cheered his words, many in the national diet made one of their central goals over the next few weeks and months to not let Lyoshe Koshute make himself dictator of Hungary.

The day after Koshut gave his speech, the lower house of the diet convened again and voted to scrap everything else they had been working on and simply adopt Koshute's speech as their official address. to the king. To help his own cause along, Koshute then sent a draft of the speech back to Allies in Budapest, and told them to draw up a petition based on the speech and then circulate it for signatures. Once they had enough names, they could turn around and present it to the Diet as the will of the people, which he could then use to further leverage the Emperor. So what we will do now

is leave Koshut and the Diet in Pressburg, and instead follow that copy of his speech further down the Danube to Budapest, where the Hungarians will discover one of the great recurring patterns in all unfolding revolutions. Because though Koshchut had spent the last few years as the embodiment of the most radical edge of politics, turns out he was simply the most radical edge of acceptable politics. With revolution in the air, even more radical factions in Budapest cropped up that shifted where the center of politics was. And the dynamic was about to turn into radicals in Budapest, pressing the diet in Pressburg to go faster and further, and the diet in Presburg trying to get the radicals in Budapest to slow down, slow down, and Koschut is going to

wind up going from radical edge to liberal middle. And crazily enough, even though I just wrote a whole episode about how the French Revolution was hanging over Europe, I somehow missed until I was putting the notes together for this week's show that Koschut himself had occasionally been working on his own history of the French Revolution that he never finished. It was strong in its denunciations of Bourbon absolutism, but it was also strong in its condemnation of the Jacobin Terror. I find it very hard to believe that his thoughts about the French Revolution were not now in the forefront of his mind, as Budapest tried to take the ball and run with it. So to introduce the Budapest side of the equation, let's do a better job introducing Budapest, or, as it was at the time,

two different cities, Buddha and Peshd, each on opposite sides of the Danube River and not yet linked by a permanent bridge, though the first permanent bridge was at that moment under construction, thanks to the efforts of Cichini. The ancient home of the monarchy was in Buddha, and it sat on the west bank of the river and tended to be richer and more conservative than Pesh, which lay across the river on the east bank. The population of Buddha in 1848 was about 35,000 and was built into hills, so there was not much further room for it to expand. Peshd, on the other hand, sat on the Great Flat Plains, and through the first half of the 19th century had become something of a boomtown. The population in the 1780s was maybe 25,000, but by 1848, it was well over 100,000. Pest teamed with artisans, workers, common nobles, middle-class non-noble professionals, artists, and writers and poets. The stuff revolutions are made of.

Pesh also tended to be very Magyar in its composition, with even minority groups who moved to the city, adopting Hungarian language and culture, all of which combined to make Pest, Magyar nationalist politically, liberal progressive economically, and quite a bit more willing to pursue a fully revolutionary. revolutionary program than the guy serving in the diet up in Pressburg. Exemplifying the radical politics of Peshd was a young man named Shandor Patoffi. Born in 1823, Patoffi was just 25 years old when the revolution broke out, but he was already a popular and influential poet. The son of a butcher, and ethnically probably a Slovak, Petofi only received a minimal amount of formal education, forced out of school at the age of 15 due to lack of family funds. But still interested in literature and the arts, he spent his time in a traveling theater and then tried to make ends meet as a journalist, but neither panned out. And he migrated up to Pesh to find a publisher for a series of poems he had written based on Hungarian folklore.

The quintessential starving artist, Patofi finally found some success in Pesh, where he was. his poems found a publisher and an enthusiastic audience. Thanks to this success, he became a core member of the more avant-garde art and literature scene in Pest, a scene that was culturally progressive and politically radical. With others in this set, Patofi helped found what became known as the Society of Ten, which was kind of analogous to the groups like young Italy and young Europe that Giuseppe Metzini was forming in the West. Though they were never in formal context, the Society of Ten was a bunch of young men dedicated to radical politics and revolutionary change. Their end goal was a free and democratic Magyar nation state.

These young radicals would meet regularly at the Café Pilvox, which was then on its way to becoming the legendary ground zero for the Hungarian revolution. Knowing that Petofi had a penchant for radical politics and a gift for writing in theater, when Koschut's speech came down to the same, the river in the first week of March 1848, Petofi and the Society of Ten were tasked with Turning Koschut's long address into a concise petition for people to sign. As Petofi got to work, the other radicals in Pesch got to work arranging a great banquet modeled on the ones they had heard about in Paris, and they set the date for this hastily arranged banquet on March the 19th.

They plucked that date because a huge fair was already scheduled for Pesh that day, and and something like 40,000 people from across the kingdom were expected to be in the city. With an organized banquet circulating the petition, they were sure to collect thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of signatures. On March the 11th, Patofi emerged with his draft of the petition, and, already caught up in the moment, he went beyond the strict confines of Koschut's program and added a few additional demands, turning this all into what became known as the 12 points, probably the document of the Hungarian Revolution, much like the American Declaration of Independence

or the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. It's not that long, so I'm just going to read the translation in full. What the Hungarian nation wants, let there be peace, liberty, and Concord. One, we demand the freedom of the press, the abolition of censorship. Two, independent Hungarian government in Budapest. 3. An annual National Assembly in Peshd. 4. Civil and religious equality before the law.

5. A national army. 6. Universal and equal taxation. 7. The abolition of the Avidicum. The Avidicum was a law that said that only the nobility could own agricultural lands. 8. Juries and courts

based on an equal legal representation. 9. A national bank. 10. The army must take an oath to the Constitution. Send our soldiers home and take foreign soldiers away. 11. Setting free the political prisoners. And 12. Union.

That is, union with Transylvania. Then it finished with a nod to the old French revolutionary slogan. Equality, liberty, and brotherhood. Now, before we go on, I'll point out that this declaration addresses what. That's right, the political question. It said nothing about the social question. Workers, artisans, peasants, ethnic minorities, all of whom have their own grievances, none of which were addressed. These were political radicals making political demands.

The rest would have to just be worked out later. Now, while the guys in Pest were getting ready for the banquet and petition, their cause was greatly aided by that most mysterious and powerful of social engines, the rumor mill. As people and letters traveled up and down the Danube over the next few days, the fact that 40,000 people would soon be coincidentally descending on Pesth for a long-planned fare turned into the radicals in Pesth have managed to raise a peasant army 40,000 strong, this exaggerated rumor would hit both Presbyrd and Vienna hard, and furrow. alter the course of events. Now dealing with unrest in their own capital, many at the Habsburg

court became awfully receptive to the idea that they would need to offer concessions to keep hungry from like declaring independence. Meanwhile, Koshute took the rumor rightfully as his cue to press for making Hungarian demands even stronger. So as we saw last week, the Viennese revolution broke out on March the 13th, 1848, egged on by Koshute's speech. When word reached Pressburg the next morning, the upper house voted to ratify Koschut's speech as the address to the king, and then they agreed to a large joint delegation from both houses, taking steamships up to Vienna to press forcefully for their demands, now that Menernick was out of the way. Meanwhile, the news of Menernick's fall kept going down the river and reached Budapest, later in the afternoon

on March the 14th. As soon as they heard the news, Potofi and his fellow radicals made a swift and momentous decision. Forget the banquet. Forget the petition. Let's just, right now, seize the moment, and declare all the 12 points to be in effect, and then force the Hapsburg to recognize what we will tell them has already been done. So on the morning of March the 15th, 1848, they all gathered in the Café Pilvox where the 12 points were read aloud. Then Patoffi led them in a recitation of a new poem he had composed for the occasion called the National Song, which immediately joined the 12 points in the pantheon of the Hungarian Revolution. If the 12 points are the Declaration of the Rights of Man, then the national song is La Marseillaise. It begins, on your feet, Magyar,

the homeland calls. The time is here, now or never, shall we be slaves or free? This is the question. Choose your answer. And then it wraps up with the answer. By the the god of the Hungarians we vow. We vow that we will be slaves no more. Suitably energized, they then burst out onto the streets of Pesh and marched around rising up the people. First, they went to the university, and with the addition of students and others joining the parade, they all soon numbered in the thousands. Then a group led by Potofi descended on a heretofore in inaccessible printing press, took it over, and ran off copies of the 12 points in the national song, and distributed them across the city.

Then at three o'clock, some ten thousand gathered in the rain in front of the National Museum, where Potofi addressed them, again reading off the twelve points in the national song. Then he led them to the nearby city hall, where the Peshd City Council was in session. The mob invaded the city hall and demanded the city council sign off on the twelve points. With no other alternative, the official signed off, and an ad hoc committee of public safety was formed, composed of Potofi and three of his radical friends, six liberal members of the Pesh City Council,

and three nobles who were allies of Koshuth. With Pesh now in revolutionary hands, even more people flocked to the scene, and fully 20,000 proceeded to march across the floating pontoon bridge to Buddha, where the Vice-Regal Council met, and the Vice-Regal Council was the direct representatives of the Habsburgs in the city. Like the Pesh City Council, the Vice-Regal Council, capitulated immediately. They ordered the army garrison to not leave their barracks,

they signed off on the 12 points, and ordered all political prisoners freed. This last bit, though, turned out to be more of a symbolic victory than anything else, because not unlike the fall of the Bastille, when the political prisoners were freed, victims of Austrian tyranny each and every one, it turned out there was actually only one. There was just one guy. But that guy was hoisted on the crowd's shoulders and paraded through town in triumph, and, you know, congratulations to him. Having succeeded in their bloodless and triumphant capture of both Buddha and Peshd, and with the 12 points and the national song saturating the city, it was March the 15th that was destined to become a major national holiday in Hungary. Meanwhile, back up in Presbyr, the diet met one more time and voted

to make additional demands of the emperor. The most important being that hungry, that hungry Hungary must have its own ministry under a Hungarian prime minister, and that the principal arch-royal representative in Hungary, called the Palatine, would have plenipotentiary powers. That is, he would factor into the Hungarian governmental system more as an ambassador than as a representative of a ruler. These final demands approved, a delegation of about 150 Hungarian leaders, plus their staff, boarded two steam ships for Vienna. Cichene and Couchute were obviously the most prominent among them.

While on the ship, and almost on his own initiative, Koschut then said about redrafting the diet's demands, making them all not a request of the emperor, but an already accomplished fact. All that was required from the emperor was his signature, and included now for the first time, was the name of the man who would become Hungary's first first. Prime Minister. No, not Koshute himself, that was never going to fly, but rather the great

liberal magnate and Koshut's patron, Laiosch, Batani. The party of Hungarian leaders arrived in Vienna on the afternoon of March the 15th, either just before or just after the Emperor's declaration promising Vienna a constitution was announced. Emerging from the two ships decked out in their most ostentatious outfits of Hungarian nobility, the people of Vienna dubbed them the Argonauts, and they were cheered in the streets as they made their way from the docks into the city. Koschut was obviously the most famous among them, and the people insisted on unhorsing his carriage and pulling him themselves. Now, there was so much else going on in the palace that day that the Hungarian delegation

was scheduled for a meeting with the emperor the following day. So at noon on March the 16th, without yet knowing of the events that had unfolded in Budapest the day before, the Hungarian delegates received an audience with the emperor. Now, Ferdinand, remember, was not really built for anything more than a few ceremonial functions, and the last few days had drained him to the point where he could quite sadly not even keep his head up. So the real action turned to the Conference of State. Conservatives in the conference, who had just lost out on trying to protect Matternick and lost out on trying to prevent a constitution for the Austrians,

now stamped their feet and upbraided the Hungarians for their insolent demands. But by now, the Hungarians had a powerful ally inside the court. Archduke Stephen, the Palatine of Hungary, was absolutely convinced that granting Hungarian demands was the only way to keep them inside the empire. They had all heard about the 40,000-man peasant army. It was a real and dangerous threat that could not be ignored. After a meeting that stretched long into the night, the conference came back and said, we will grant all your demands, except you will not have an independent

ministry, and the emperor will retain a true veto over new Hungarian laws. This created a new crisis, as even the cautious, say Cheney stepped forward and said, no, that is not enough anymore. You cannot turn this back, and if you try, it will be a disaster for everyone. So while the conference and the Hungarian delegates continued to argue with each other. Archduke Stephen decided to break the deadlock by going directly to the emperor and basically bully him into granting verbal permission for the Hungarians to form their own government. He then came back and said, The argument is over. I have permission from the emperor for Bhatani to form an independent Hungarian government. So that's what we're going to do. So before anyone could stop them,

the Hungarians went back to their ships and sailed back for home, ready to start a new chapter in the history of their ancient kingdom, for the first time in centuries, truly plotting their own course and controlling their own destiny. Unfortunately, though, this did not mark the dawning of a new age, but rather the beginning of a brief and exuberant window of self-determination that would be slammed shut one year, six months, and 19 days later, as we shall see. But next week, we must keep moving, because the March Revolution of 1848 is now breaking out everywhere in Europe, and just as news of the French Revolution had led to a wave of reformist demonstrations

in Germany, word of the fall of Metternich, my God, Metternich has fallen, led to a further wave of increasingly revolutionary demands, a call for United Germany, and in Berlin, some of the most intense fighting of the whole revolution. So, I guess I will see you in just a few days now to pick up the story in Germany, but between now and then, I will go to Chicago. Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. I will be at the Skokie Old Orchard Barnes & Noble, and then on Friday night at 6 p.m., I'll be at the seminary co-op. And I will see you there.