Revolutions - 7.26- The Battle For Vienna

Episode Date: February 12, 2018

After the Emperor declared war on Hungary, Vienna launched an uprising in October 1848.

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.26, the Battle for Vienna. Over the last few episodes, we've started tracking the big sweeping turn of 1848 as the revolution bends towards counter-revolution. The events of March 1848 had the forces of absolutism and conservatism running scared, faced with armed insurrection, barricades and fighting in the streets, the crowned heads of Central Europe did what it took to survive. They installed liberal ministries. They promised constitutions. They allowed elections to democratic assemblies. But over the summer of 1848, that old entropy of victory we've seen so often

here on the podcast began to rear its ugly head. The divisions within the forces of revolution, between the liberals and the radicals and the socialists, led to an opportunity for the forces of absolutism and conservatism to regroup and strike back. In the Habsburg territories, two major lines of tension combined to wreck the revolution in Vienna, one between the liberals and radicals in the imperial capital, and another between the Hungarians and the Austrians. In October 1848, these two lines of tension would both snap and create one of the great climactic moments of 1848.

The final battle for Vienna and for the revolution in Austria was a very important. about to begin. But to get to the battle in Vienna, we must first head to Budapest. By the beginning of September 1848, the Ministry of Lyosh Batanyi had been in power for nearly six months, which is a pretty good run, considering how every other new government we've seen has resigned almost as quickly as they were formed. Now, like most liberals in 1848, the Batonji government believed that the victories they had secured back in March and April. Victories that culminated with the April laws were just about as much as they could possibly hope to extract from the revolution. They were now interested in consolidation and conciliation.

Implementing the April laws was going to be an immense chore, and they did not want a permanent breach with Vienna, or, God forbid, open war with the Austrians. So Batanyi and his colleagues, including Lyoskoshchut, focused scrupulously on working with the Austrians to forge a new order in Hungary, and they used their liaison, Archduke St. Stephen, the sympathetic palatine and chief representative of the imperial court, to make sure that the new relationship between Budapest and Vienna was built on a solid, permanent, and mutually acceptable

foundation. But this ran the government a foul of more radical voices in Budapest, like that of Shandor Potofi, who had to now lodge his complaints out in the streets because he had been denied a seat in the new Hungarian parliament. These radical voices denounced the liberals for abandoning forward progress, and they accused Batani and Archduke Stephen of conspiring to betray the revolution. And then, like their radical counterparts in Frankfurt, they started calling for a second revolution. To put further pressure on the government, the radicals organized a big banquet scheduled for September the 8th, where they would demand the resignation of Batani and all the other ministers except for Laoschkoshchut and one other guy who they happened to approve of.

This banquet was explicitly modeled on the French campaigns from earlier in the year, and just while we're here, can we please just remind ourselves that we're all in this inescapable black hole of a revolutionary year because some Democratic reformers in Paris wanted to get together and eat bad food, drink cheap champagne, and listen to terrible speeches, and Francois Guizot just couldn't abide by it. And so now Hungary's on the brink of war in Vienna's about to get blasted to smithereens. Oh, 1848, you are a good year. Anyway, on September the 2nd, Laoschusseus gave a speech in the parliament where he implored the radicals to postpone the banquet. He warned that relations were strained with Austria, and if the radicals got too out of hand, that it would give Vienna an excuse to do something extreme, like order a military invasion of Hungary, and then where would they all be? And because Coschut's voice at least still carried some weight, the radicals agreed to postpone the banquet. Except as it turns out, the Austrians didn't really need the excuse. Remember, when we left off two episodes ago,

Prime Minister Batanii was back in Vienna assiduously working to try to consolidate and conciliate, but instead the emperor had done what? That's right. He reappointed the fiercely anti-Majjar, Yosep Yelichichich, as ban of Croatia, and he published a decree that said Austria and Hungary could never be separate from each other. and all but gave Yelichich permission to go bring the Hungarians to heal by force. So, despite all the Hungarian efforts to stave off war, Yelichich led fully 50,000 soldiers into Hungary on September the 11th, 1848.

He announced, while he did so, that he was doing this to save Hungary from the yoke of rebel government. Though it's not like he was too scrupulous about trying to act as a restrained army of liberation and they're to free the people not oppress them. Yellow Cheat showed little interest in strict discipline, and his men mostly roamed free, looting and pillaging the countryside, and generally abusing the Magyar peasants and townspeople. So rather than marching in a tight, restrained column,

the incoming Croats just kind of spread themselves out across the countryside. This helps explain why their forces weren't concentrated when the time came to actually fight, and also why the Magyar didn't exactly greet them as liberators. The invasion by the Croats spelled the end for the Batani ministry. They had not only staked their reputations to the idea that Austria could be reasoned with, they had staked the safety of Hungary to that idea. And they really had believed it. They really had believed that having extracted the liberal reforms codified in the April laws, that if they went no further than that, it would

all work out that Austria would accept it. Now, that was all exposed as a dangerous fantasy. So, admitting failure, almost all of them resigned. And that brings us to the rather sad end of the road for Ishtvon Seyny. Currently, Minister of Public Works, Sechaney resigned with the rest, and he despaired at the final result of the 30 years he had spent counseling slow and steady and productive reform. He had gotten swept up in the events of March. He had even enthused at what Koschut had managed to accomplish. But now he was faced with a grim reality.

that even the modest reforms he had believed in were unacceptable to Vienna, that he too, loyal, patriotic, and steadfast subject of the emperor, was now a treasonous rebel. In these crisis days of early September, Cicheney stopped sleeping. He was nearly catatonic in cabinet meetings. He took to blaming himself for everything, for the ruination that was about to be visited upon the nation he so loved

and had fought so hard for for so long. Eventually friends and family and doctors, convinced Secheney to retire to a country estate, to get away from politics and get away from the capital. Say Cheney finally agreed, but his despair reached such an acute pitch that two suicide attempts followed before he allowed himself to be checked into a sanitarium. And though he would live through this episode, as I've hinted, eventually his demons will overcome him. So at this critical moment, Hungary is now without a central executive government. Archduke Stephen called on Batani to remain his prime minister and convene a new cabinet. But Batanii had an extremely difficult

time finding men who had the confidence of both the Hungarians and the Austrians, because even now he was trying to prevent a permanent schism. But the imperial court, now feeling self-confident for the first time in months, kept indicating to Batonyi that none of the men he suggested would be acceptable to them. So for two weeks there would be no government at all. And into that void stepped Lyoskosh and the energetic nationalist radical faction of the Hungarian parliament that, though it had been small and muted in the early days of their sessions, were now coming to life. With everyone else seemingly in shock on September the 21st, this wing of the parliament formed a six-member committee of national defense, with Koschut acting as president.

The first order of business for the Committee of National Defense was obviously National Defense, and the state of the Hungarian army was not particularly impressive in September of 1848. The Parliament had been debating raising a new national army all summer, and though they had approved a measure to recruit 200,000 new men, very few concrete steps had been taken to accomplish that goal, especially because they didn't know whether these new recruits would be enrolled in the official royal army, that is the official imperial army, or into the battalions of the patriotic volunteer groups.

the National Guard that in Hungary became known as the Hanved. With the official army politically suspect, the Parliament finally voted at the end of August to send most of their new recruits into the Hanved battalions. But still, come September the 11th, there were not that many recruits. And the reports that I've seen is that the army around Budapest was only about 5 or 6,000 strong.

And on top of that, when Yelichichin invaded, the Hungarian general in charge of these forces said that he refused to fight a fellow imperial officer and he resigned. So Koschut and the Committee of National Defense pushed hard to fulfill the decree of August about forming a new national army, go out and recruit as many Hanved volunteers as they could find. They also openly encouraged Hungarian soldiers in the Imperial Army to desert and rally to the Hungarian national colors. With an enemy army on the way, the citizens of Budapesthush dug earthworks and trenches outside the walls of the city, and then Koschut himself went out on what can only be described as an evangelical recruiting mission,

going from town to town and using every ounce of his fiery oratory to get as many people to join the patriotic national army as possible. And he did manage to race 16,000 men by the end of the month. Meanwhile, but Tonyi, still maybe prime minister, asked Palatine Stephen to take over as commander-in-chief of the forces. This would hopefully give the Hungarian some moral and political cover, but Stephen now had orders not to oppose Yelichich, and after one attempt to broker an armistice, Archduke Stephen resigned his palatine on September the 23rd and departed the country. Scorned in Hungary as a traitor and scorned in Austria as a revolutionary troublemaker,

Stephen spent the rest of his life in exile. In response to all of this, Vienna came back with what is often portrayed as a botched olive branch. There was apparently a peace camp at the court, who hoped to broker a peaceful resolution to the Croat-Majjar conflict, and they got the emperor to appoint the Hungarian count Franz Philippe von Lomburg to be the new royal commissioner and commander-in-chief of all forces in Hungary, putting Lemberg, nominally at least, above both the Hungarians and the Croats. He was a career army officer from the upper Hungarian nobility, who had served in the national diet of 1847, 1848, the one that had ended with the April laws.

And though a conservative, he was at least considered an honest one by guys like Batani, who indicated that he could work with him. So this wasn't like when Marshall Vindischgratz got appointed to take over Prague. But the emperor also appointed a new prime minister, a guy named Miklos Wai. But this was illegal under the April laws. And so far from an olive branch, these appointments were taken as proof that Vienna was now truly trying to roll back the concessions that they had made under duress back in the spring. So on September the 27th, with Lamberg on his way,

the Hungarian parliament declared their fidelity to the Constitution and Koschut signaled to the army that they were not to obey the orders of Lamberg and that his appointment was illegal and unconstitutional. But those few of you out there who already know the history of Hungary know that this is not going to stop with fiery speeches and mere words. Count Lamberg arrived in Budapest on September the 28th, and after conferring briefly with a senior Hungarian general, he rode out to inspect some fortifications. While he was en route, his carriage was recognized.

With Lamberg as the living symbol of Vienna's attempt to crush all that the Hungarians had gained, his carriage was surrounded by angry students and artisans and some rogue soldiers, They forced it to stop, they ripped open the door, and they proceeded to beat Lamberg to death. So, that's the end of the olive branch. We are now at the point of no return. Laos Bataunyiush batani resigned as Prime Minister, this time for the last time, on October 1st. The fate of Hungary was now in the hands of Laoschouet and the Committee of National Defense. Knowing that the murder of Lamberg would bring the hammer down really hard,

The radical elements inside the parliament, who, along with Koschut, had dominated the Committee of National Defense, invited six other members of parliament who were known to have strong liberal principles to join them in an attempt to create something like a unity government to face the incoming onslaught, and those six men accepted. So, unlike in other locations, where at critical moments the liberals abandoned the radicals for the forces of conservative order, in Hungary, whatever breach had been opening between the liberals and the radicals was healed, and they started to refuse back together. This was now a war of national liberation, and they faced a common foreign enemy that was threatening everything. Plus, on top of that, the quote-unquote radicals in Budapest only ever really had limited social demands,

and they had stuck mostly to the political side of the question in 1848. So the liberals weren't really afraid that the world was about to be turned up. upside down. The threat to their property came not from social pressure from below, but from the iron heel of a vengeful Austria that hovered above the whole kingdom. So in early October 1848, they re-rallied to each other in defense of the April laws, but more generally, in defense of Hungary. Shandor Patofi and most of his comrades joined the Han Venn battalions to go fight for their national freedom. On September the 29th, that is, the day after Lamberg's murder. The Kralat's renewed their push to Budapest, but their slow advance

had given the Hungarians time to mass a defensive position near the village of Pakos. Yelachit concentrated 30,000 men against the Hungarians, who themselves now managed to bring something like 20,000 men into the fight, so they were still pretty heavily outnumbered. But they were well dug in, and in spite of what seemed like impossible odds, just a few days earlier, the Hungarians won the battle, and after hard days fighting, Yelichich ordered a withdrawal. The Battle of Pekos is occasionally referred to as the Hungarian Valmy, an almost miraculous victory, the salvation of the capital by patriotic volunteers against a hardened foreign enemy. Certainly, it saved the Hungarian revolution for another day. Meanwhile, news of Count Lamberg's murder race back to Vienna and

fatally discredited those at court still hoping for a peaceful resolution. The hardliners were now fully ascendant and convinced the emperor that the time had come to smash the revolution into a million tiny pieces that could never again be reassembled. On October 3, 1848, Austria declared war on Hungary. And the official entry of Austria into the war came not a moment too soon for Yelichich, because as it turned out, his Croatian army was not getting the job done. After their defeat at Pakodes, another 10,000 man, Croat army was surrounded on October the 7th and forced to surrender. The following day, the Hungarian

Committee of National Defense had their mandate expanded still further to now include all executive power in the kingdom, and with Koshute as its president, he became a near dictator. With the Hungarians rallying strongly, it thus came as something of a welcome relief to Yalachiche when he got word that Vienna had exploded and that he was urgently needed back at the imperial capital. So, off to Vienna, we now go. Remember, in the wake of the worker riots on August the 23rd, the old committee of security had voted to disband itself, and the civic guard had put themselves under the minister of the interior.

Now, this seemed to signal the end for radical trouble in the imperial capital, but it was not the end. In the middle of September, a people's bank that had been established for people to invest their life savings in was revealed to be a massive scam. When it collapsed, it took with it the savings of many artisans and small business owners. These victims petitioned both the Ministry of the Interior and the Vienna City Council for relief, but both declined to get involved.

This is the days before FDIC insurance. So the people started getting agitated, and the students who had left when the university had been closed were now returning for the October term, and they made noise about restarting the security Committee, reforming the academic legions. On September the 12th, a mob outside the Ministry of the Interior managed to break in, and they were looking for the minister of the interior, who managed to slip safely out the back door, so the crowd just smashed the joint up. This brought out the civic guard and the regular army, so the radicals started organizing

the academic legions again, but just before Vienna played host to yet another round of shooting in the streets, the parliament stepped in and said, we will guarantee interest-free loans for the victims and underwrite 20% of their total losses. After all, it had been caused by a bank fraud. Then, they told the government to order the army out of the capital. Now, this released the tension for the moment, tension that would all come building back up again when Austria declared war on Hungary. The Emperor's Declaration of War on October the 3rd, reignited those same radical forces that had been ascendant since March, the students, the artisans, and the workers. Abandoned by the liberal men of property back in August, and

somewhat beaten back, they now re-errupted with a vengeance after the emperor declared war. Hungarian success had come at the expense of the power of the conservative central authorities. For the emperor to now so violently bring the hammer down, spell bad trouble for revolutionary Austria. or even simply reformists in Austria. If the Hungarians were crushed, what hoped did they have of preserving what they had accomplished in Vienna? The Constitution, civil rights,

liberal government, it was all threatened. And this even brought a few of those liberals back into the revolutionary fold because the Hungarian accomplishments of March and April that were now under threat were in lockstep with everything that they wanted for Vienna, for the empire. Over the next few days,

the Capitol witnessed random acts of violence and vandalism, assaults, students, workers were remobilizing, recorinating, streets were full of fear and tension and anger. The guy who became the focal point for all that anger in Vienna was the Minister of War Count von Latour. Latour was a conservative who had been the principal supporter of Yosep Yelichich over the past few months. He had continued to fund Yelachich even after he had been deposed as ban of Croatia and had been

among those working at court to get him reinstated as ban of Croatia. Latour wanted the Hungarians beaten back into line, then he wanted the empire to return to its rightful conservative absolutism. On October the 6th, three days after the declaration of war, Latour ordered imperial troops from around Vienna to board trains that would take them to the front lines in Hungary, but the radicals organized to stop the troop transfers. Gathering in their reformed academic legions and companies of more radically oriented civic guard, all marched together down to the train station. There, people started tearing up the train tracks

to stop the trains from rolling. Then, a company of grenadiers mutinied to the people and themselves got in on the action, blocking a bridge from the city to the station. Latour ordered in more regular troops to disperse these mobs and forced the mutinous grenadiers onto the train. Shots were exchanged, and the regular troops opened up a massive broadside,

on the mutinous grenadiers, killing 30 of them in just a few minutes. But there were simply too many people now swarming around, and so the troops were forced to retreat from the station. This incident marks the beginning of what is called the Vienna Uprising. But being just one of a number of Vienna Uprising, I think it's better to call it the last Vienna Uprising. The Civic Guard promptly splintered into two factions, those who stuck with the government and those who decided to go back over to the radicals,

moved now by the Declaration of War to back away from the Emperor. In the chaotic swirl, the guard unit started turning on each other, and a radical unit actually besieged a more moderate unit inside St. Stephen's Cathedral. To calm things down, the ministry ordered the regular army to withdraw from Vienna. But this turned out to be a fatal mistake, at least a fatal mistake for Minister of War Latour. There had been a company of soldiers defending the offices of the war ministry, and when they were withdrawn, it was left wide open. A mob descended on the building, shouting, where is Latour? He must

die. And if you're in that building and your name is Latour, that's really not something you want to hear being shouted at you by an angry mob outside the window. When the crowd pushed their way inside, Latour fled up to the attic, which, if you've ever watched a horror movie, you know that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to go out, not up. Well, he didn't. The mob eventually located Latour, and without further ado, stabbed and beat him to death. Then they dragged his mangled corpse through the street and hung it from a lamp pole. With the people of Vienna once again rising up, the emperor and the imperial court took the opportunity to run away from the capital as fast as they could for the second embarrassing time that year. This time, they made for Omuts,

where they arrived on October the 14th. But unlike the last time this had happened, where the ministry stayed behind in Vienna so they could claim, oh, well, the emperor is just personally away from the city. The government is still situated here. Now the government was also abandoning Vienna. When they left,

probably half the recently convened Austrian parliament followed, leaving behind a rump parliament composed of what small faction of radical voices had been present, plus some of the more committed liberals who felt that the war against Hungary was wrong and that the emperor was trying to undo all that had been done. And on that score, they were exactly right. So inside Vienna, this rump parliament, isn't it fun to be talking about rump parliaments again, it's been years. They were joined by a multi-fractured splintering of power between the parliament, the Vienna City Council, and various student and radical committees that started back up.

spontaneously and for once again organizing a central gathering for coordinated action. Then the parliament formed an emergency committee that took on executive authority ostensibly on behalf of the entire empire. They were supposed to present their decisions to the full body for ratification, but with events moving so quickly, this emergency committee just became the de facto national executive. Not that anything they said or did had any real authority outside Vienna, mind you. But at the same time, with the emperor on the run and the members of parliament attending to him not meeting in any kind of formal session and different factions at court taking this opportunity to slit each other's throats, it's really hard to tell who,

if anyone, was actually in control of the Austrian Empire at that moment. Probably nobody was. So the rump parliament had three simple demands for the emperor. First, end the war with Hungary. second depose ban Yelichichich and third form a new popular government but the emperor was done conceding so the principal goal of the parliament and everybody else inside Vienna turned out to be not running an empire but defending the city from inevitable counterattack inside the city citizens armed manned the walls positioned what artillery they had and started digging trenches on the outskirts of the suburbs, and they had a little bit of room to breathe, because though there were about 12,000 imperial troops now stationed outside Vienna, they were under orders not to make any

moves on the capital until they were massively reinforced. The conservatives at court had had enough of this. The plan now was to utterly crush the rebels in Vienna, and as soon as they had all cleared the capital on October 8th, they had the emperor start issuing orders for other imperial troops to converge on Vienna, and that included Yelichich's Croats in Hungary. Yelichich, for his part, was eager to get moving, not only because the initial war against the Hungarians had not exactly gone well, but also because, remember, his whole object in all of this is to prove to the emperor what a good and loyal subject he was, that he and the Croats could be the saviors of the empire, and then be duly rewarded with increased rights and privileges. And now,

going to have the chance to literally save the capital from rebel scum. So as soon as he got his orders on October the 8th, he wheeled around and led 12,000 men back towards Vienna. On a double-time march, they made it to the capital by the morning of October the 10th. But the Hungarians decided that two could play at the role of savior. The Hungarian army followed Yelichich at a discreet distance, and then they planted themselves on the Austro-Hungarian border. Then the Hungarian parliament sent a message.

to Vienna asking if the citizens of the Capitol requested their assistance. To preserve some sense of legality, the Hungarians weren't going to move unless they were invited to move, but if asked, they would move. Inside Vienna, the offer filled the brunt parliament with vexation and dread. They knew it was going to be hard to hold out against the gathering imperial forces, but they were themselves trying to maintain a veneer of sovereign legitimacy, and it would be much harder to maintain that veneer to prove that they weren't themselves rebels if they asked the Hungarians who the emperor had declared war on for assistance.

They tried to get the Austrian city council to make the request to the Hungarians, but those guys just kicked it back to the parliament and said, no, no, no, this is your call. So the parliament tried one very long shot gambit to avoid calling in the Hungarians. They sent a dispatch to the emperor asking him to unilaterally withdraw the imperial troops. but fat chance of that. The troops massing outside the walls were only getting bigger, and the Hungarians were now Vienna's only hope. News of the showdown in Vienna spread across Europe,

and the Frankfurt Parliament, just a few weeks removed from bloody riots and the triumph of moderate liberals, took up the issue of whether or not to send any aid to the people of Vienna, who were, after all, fighting basically for the same rights as the men in Frankfurt. But more cautious now than ever, they voted no aid to Vienna. Disgusted, the remaining radical left wing sent two of their number to Vienna in solidarity. One of them don't worry about. The other was Robert Bloom, who we introduced last week.

They departed immediately and arrived in Vienna on October the 17th, just before the final siege lines were drawn up. The final proof of what the emperor had in store for his rebellious subjects came on October the 16th, when he ordered Marshall Vindischgratz, fresh off his suppression of the Prague uprising, to lead just about all the imperial troops in Bohemia to Vienna and take over as commander-in-chief. The emperor also issued a general declaration that a tiny faction inside Vienna threatened to destroy the empire

and that they must be brought back into line. And he said specifically that this faction had led a reign of terror, deliberately invoking the language of the French Revolution, because remember, the specter of the French Revolution hangs over all of this. This declaration was drafted with the help of his brother-in-law, Prince Felix von Schwarzenberg, who would be invited to form a new, almost exclusively conservative government just a few days later. By October the 20th, Marshal Vindischgratz was at the head of 30,000 men, and they were marching on the road to Vienna. While this army marched, the emperor issued another decree, stating that the Austrian Parliament was to reconvene in the city of Kremsier.

The members who had already decamped Vienna made their way over no problem, but those remaining inside Vienna in the Rump Parliament refused to budge. But in their disobedience, they were now no longer the legitimate parliament. That was a claim now held by the Assembly of Men gathered in Kremsier on October the 22nd. On October the 23rd, Marshall Vindigrots and his men arrived. There were now 70,000 troops surrounding Vienna, completely cutting the city off from the outside world.

The conservatives at the Habsburg court wanted this to be the end of rebellious Vienna. On October the 24th, Marshall Vindigrots offered an ultimatum to the city. You have 48 hours to surrender, or we take the capital by force.

So now the only hope for those inside Vienna was the Hungarians, whose numbers were increased, when Koschut personally led 12,000 Hanved volunteers to join the 13,000 regular troops of the line stationed on the Austro-Hungarian border. Now up over 25,000 strong. They made a few forays across the border, but mostly they sat tight and waited for that formal request for aid. Koschut himself said, we do not force aid on people who do not express that they will accept it. Now, partly he wanted to be invited so it didn't look like the Hungarians were invaders,

But if the Viennese really did not want Hungarian help, then there was no reason to waste blood and treasure that would be sorely needed to defend Hungary. But keeping Vienna liberal and defeating the hardliners in the Habsburg court and defeating Yelichich, all of this was in the Hungarian national interest, so they were really chomping at the bit to get into the fight. If Vienna fell, the empire would come at Hungary harder than ever. On October the 26th, 1848, Marshall Vindigrots's ultimatum expired. and Vienna had still not given up. So he ordered the attack to begin. The Imperial artillery bombarded the outskirts of the city, while Ban Yelichit led an attack into the eastern suburbs.

The Viennese didn't go quietly, though, and it took 12 hours of hard fighting to push them back. There was then a lull the next morning, but when no white flag went up, the attack was renewed. This time everywhere. The imperial forces advanced from all sides. The workers had barricaded most of the suburban streets outside the central city, and they had to be cleared with hand-to-hand fighting. But the imperial troops kept advancing, and by the evening of October the 27th, the army was at the gates of the inner city.

The suburbs were now all in flames. Vindischrots ordered the main city bombarded all night, but then on the morning of October the 28th, the attack paused again. But the city was still not giving up. and a big problem was now that the people inside could expect no quarter and no forgiveness, and without some kind of assurance that they wouldn't all just be bayoneted the minute the imperial troops showed up, there was little incentive for them to give up voluntarily. And then they got one little ray of hope. Lyosch Koshchut finally decided he was done waiting for anybody to ask the Hungarians to enter the fray.

With the smoke from the suburbs of Vienna visible, Koshute led his army forward. Those inside Vienna spotted the Hungarians advancing, so there was still hope. This forced the Imperial Army to halt its attack on Vienna, and Vindushrots sent 28,000 men under Yelachid to stop the Hungarians. On October the 30th, the Madjar army was just a few miles from the city, but the imperial forces were well positioned to meet them. They had set up an artillery battery out of view, behind the heights of Shvehat, and the Hungarians walked. right into it. Multiple attempt by the Majjard to push on in the face of close range of blasting came to nothing. The regular Hungarian line troops held it together, but the Han Ved volunteer battalions could take no more, and they broke and fled. The Hungarian army, now in chaotic shambles,

was forced into a general retreat. All of this was witnessed from the towers of St. Stephen's Cathedral inside Vienna, and the brief moment of renewed hope was snuffed out. The Battle of Shvehate marked the end of the revolution in Vienna. On October the 31st, the leaders of the Vienna City Council sent word to Marshall Vindichgratz that the vast majority of the citizens of the capital were ready to surrender, but that they were being stopped by a small click of radical extremists. White flags started spontaneously going up to show that the citizens were in fact done fighting, even if the last radical insurgents were not.

The imperial troops entered the city and did indeed find a few last stubborn pockets of resistance, One group, controlling the Burg Gate, took such an effort to dislodge that stray fire lit the Emperor's personal library on fire, destroying a trove of irreplaceable books and manuscripts. But these pockets were only pockets, and on November 1, 1848, the Imperial Army had fully occupied and taken control of Vienna. Martial law was put into effect, and 2,000 prisoners were rounded up. I have seen the total casualty numbers of all of this, ranging for, from 2,000 to 4,000.

So this is not some little thing with a few dozen or a few hundred dead. This was thousands. Among the last to be killed were about two dozen leaders identified and summarily executed. Among them was Robert Bloom. Despite his claim to parliamentary immunity, the leader of the radicals in the Frankfurt Parliament was hauled before a military tribunal on November 9th, found guilty, and shot. This would be a scandal and make him a martyr, but it would also mark him as a symbol of the hard death of the revolutions of 1848. So this failed Vienna uprising of October 1848 marked the end of the line in the imperial capital,

and it would set up a renewed push from Habsburg Absolutus to take back control of their empire, most especially now from the Hungarians. But these forces of absolutism still had trouble on their Italian flank. And next week, we will return to the peninsula, as the forces of Resorgimento attempt to regroup in the wake of Piedmont's failed invasion of Lumberty, Venetia. Now Venice still holds out under Daniel Manin, and further south, the citizens of Rome, increasingly furious that Pope Pius X. 9th had betrayed the cause of liberation and unification, would send the Pope running for his life.