Mayne Reid Part 9

"I am, sir, etc,

"Mayne Reid."

"To Captain Mayne Reid.

"London, February 18, 1853.

"My Dear Sir,

"I feel myself under high obligations for the generous and chivalric manner in which you stepped forth to do me justice, when you knew me to be wronged in that 'proclamation' matter; as also I feel bound to lasting grat.i.tude towards you for the n.o.ble readiness with which you gave me at once your helping hand, at my request, to aid me to reach the field of that action which I did not approve, but which, of course, I must have been anxious to join.

"Your generous a.s.sistance, which you so readily granted me, I can the more appreciate, as I am sorry to say with us there are many difficulties, even in reaching any field of honourable danger at all.

We are not free to move. Evidence of it: That when not long ago my departed dear mother was on her death-bed in exile, a certain 'const.i.tutional' government would allow me to go to imprint the parting kiss of filial devotion on her brow upon the condition only that I should submit to the disgraceful profanation of being accompanied by a 'gendarme' to my dying mother's bed.

"I thank you, sir, most affectionately, for that your a.s.sistance, as well as your chivalric defence. I was just about myself to publish a formal disavowal of that 'Proclamation to the Hungarian Soldiers.' I hope you, as well as every Englishman, will appreciate my motive for not having done it earlier.

"My motive, sir, was this: that my disavowal would, of course, have been telegraphed to Austrian quarters; and, supposing the fight in Italy still pending, might have possibly done some harm to my beloved brethren in oppression, the Italians. So I took it to be my simple duty rather silently to submit to any virulent indignity than to harm the chances of the struggling patriots at Milan, who, though inconsiderately and at an ill-chosen moment, risked their life and blood and their sacred honour to free their country from insupportable oppression, and that a foreign one, too; just as England once rose and risked blood and life and sacred honour--nay, more, sent one king to the scaffold and one other into eternal exile--to free herself from oppression, though it was not a foreign one.

"The history of past revolutions is but too readily forgotten by those who now reap their fruits in peace and happiness. But I would like to recall it to memory now, when men will be but too ready to add bitter blame to the misfortune of the vanquished.

"I certainly, sir, did highly disapprove of any idea of rising in Italy now; but the failure of the unfortunate victims I will consider but as a new claim upon my compa.s.sion and sympathy. Men, in the peaceful enjoyment of freedom and prosperity, can scarcely imagine what aspirations and what thoughts can and must cross the hearts of a people suffering what Italy does. That should be borne in mind before we cast the stone of blame upon those who fell.

"I, sir, am so much penetrated by this sentiment, that, were it not for higher motives--which are entirely of no personal susceptibility that I am not permitted to take upon myself the imputation of an imprudent act which I did not commit--I, perhaps, would have preferred to be injured by letting pa.s.s in silence the whole proclamation matter, and all the venomous slander connected with it.

"But for those higher motives I feel infinitely obliged to you for having so generously undertaken to vindicate my prudence, and my plain but honest character. May be that this, your chivalry, will entirely release me from the necessity of any further public steps in that respect. That I shall see, and leave in the meantime my ready disavowal where it is.

"However, as following the generous impulse of your heart, you may, perhaps, feel inclined to fight on the battle, if required, in which you so n.o.bly engaged, I thought it would perhaps be as well to state to you some particulars.

"I think any intelligent reader of that purported proclamation may have at once become aware of its not being genuine on reading it. Because, to say in one and the same, doc.u.ment something to this effect: 'I send the bearer to you that he may inform me who amongst you are faithful and true, and inform me how you should organise;' and to say in the same doc.u.ment, as it were with the same breath: 'Rise! Strike! The moment is at hand,' which, is as much as to say, 'Don't organise'--this is, indeed, too absurd a blunder in logic to be believed.

"Do I then disavow the sentiments contained in that doc.u.ment? No, sir; all my life is, and will be, summed up in this idea: my country's freedom--my country's rights; and consistently with this, I am, and will remain, an irreconcilable enemy to Francis Joseph of Austria, who stole by perjury from my country sacred rights, freedom, const.i.tution, laws, and national existence; and beaten back in his criminal attack, robbed it by treason and by foreign force--and now murders it. Yes, sir, I avow openly these my sentiments, and trust in G.o.d that the day of justice and retribution will soon come. And why should I not avow them?

I am not bound to any allegiance to Francis Joseph of Austria. Not I; not my exiled countrymen; not our dear Hungary. He is no lawful sovereign of Hungary. Justice is at home in England, sir; and, therefore, I defy any man to get up a jury, or to point out a court in all England which would find a verdict for Francis Joseph being a lawful sovereign of Hungary--or I and my country owing him allegiance.

"Nor do I desire to be understood that I have never written anything like the contents of that apocryphal doc.u.ment. I, indeed, sir, never thought to have any claim to the reputation of a cla.s.sical authors.h.i.+p.

Bad as it is, sir, I have written worse things in my life. I may have written every sentence of it; some of them at one time, some at another on different occasions--probably when I was a prisoner at Kutayah, for different exigencies, all past, long past, years ago, out of which writings the present doc.u.ment might have been patched up without my knowledge, and used on the present occasion without my consent.

"All this is not the question. The question, sir, is--have I addressed this (or whatsoever else) proclamation from English soil for the purpose of engaging the Hungarian soldiers, or whomsoever else, in the late insurrection at Milan, or wherever else, in Italy?

"That is the question. Answering to this question, you disavowed the doc.u.ment as such, and p.r.o.nounced it to be a forgery--and you are perfectly right. I neither invited, nor gave any authority to any one to invite, the Hungarian soldiers to join in any insurrection in Italy now. Nay, whenever I heard anything said about the Lombard patriots being incapable of enduring longer their oppression, and that perhaps they might feel inclined to break forth at any risk, I condemned the very idea of thinking now upon an insurrection in Italy, declaring that, for the present, no revolutionary movement would succeed in Lombardy, but 'would turn out to be but a deplorable _emeute_;' and I, for one, declared every _emeute_, however valiantly fought, would but render impure the well-founded, legitimate prospects of the cause of liberty.

"All this, sir, you have known, when you gave your chivalric _dementi_ to that purported proclamation of mine. You have known more yet; you have seen a letter from one of the most renowned Italian patriots, dated on the 10th of February, from the field of action, in which he categorically confesses that 'I in my views was perfectly right, and they have been wrong;' and in which he further, giving me the first notice of my name having been used 'clandestinely' at Milan, gives me himself full evidence that it was done without my knowledge, without my consent.

"You have known all this, sir; but one thing you may not yet know, and that is:

"I came to England about the end of June, 1852. Since that time I have been always on English soil; and since I have been on English soil, I never addressed any proclamation to the Hungarian soldiers in Italy.

"But stop. Yes, I have addressed a proclamation to them. A single one, dated February 15th, a copy of which I beg leave to send to you; and remain with the highest regards and sincere grat.i.tude,

"Dear sir,

"Yours affectionately and obediently,

"L. Kossuth.

"P.S.--You may make any public or private use of this my letter, and of the annexed proclamation, you may think proper.--Kossuth."

"To the Hungarian Soldiers quartered in Italy.

"Gallant Countrymen!--It is with indignation I learn that on the occasion of the troubles of February 6th, at Milan, an appeal has been circulated there in my name, calling on you to join in that abortive movement.

"Soldiers! that doc.u.ment was not genuine. I have not approved of an insurrection in Italy for the present moment. I issued no appeal calling on you to take a part in it.

"Once the time will come--and come it shall, undoubtedly--when I, in the name of our country, will desire you, wheresoever you may then be, to side with the people around the banner of liberty. That is a sacred duty. Our enemy is the same everywhere, and the people's cause is one and the same; alike as there is but one G.o.d, one honour, and one liberty.

"But this one I shall do at the right time. The present time was not the right one.

"Of one thing you may rest a.s.sured, and that is, that I shall never play with your blood a wanton play.

"Whensoever I shall say to you, 'Ye braves, the time is at hand!' I will tell you this neither from London, nor from any distant safe place, but from headquarters. In person will I lead you on, and claim the first share in your glorious dangers.

"Never shall I invite you to risk any danger in which I myself do not share.

"And as no one can be present in two places at once, should I, for that reason, not place myself, at the head of your heroic ranks--because duty will call on me to do that in our own dear country, where I shall have to fight for freedom and right in Hungary, while you will be fighting for it in Italy--my appeal will reach you by the hand of a gallant Hungarian commander, whom I will charge to lead you on to the field of glory--fighting forward home to join the banner which I shall hold there.

"Of this you may rest a.s.sured. Until then be prepared--but wait. Don't play your blood wantonly. The Fatherland, the world, is needing it.

"For freedom and Fatherland!

"L. Kossuth.

"London, February 15, 1853."

The "forged proclamation" correspondence elicited numerous editorials from the Press, all warmly in praise of Captain Mayne Reid's able defence of Kossuth.

From the _Morning Advertiser_ of February 19 the following is extracted:

"_The Times_--we say it with regret, because the character of the entire newspaper press is more or less affected by the misdeeds of one of its leading members--has earned for itself an unenviable notoriety by the frequency with which it gives circulation to calumnies against those to whom it is opposed, and then refusing to allow the parties affected to prove that they are calumniated.

"A striking case, ill.u.s.trative of this, has occurred within the last few days. _The Times_, by some means or other, becomes possessed of a doc.u.ment purporting to be a proclamation from Kossuth, addressed to the Hungarian soldiers in that portion of the Austrian army employed to put down the insurrection in Milan. We do not charge our contemporary with publis.h.i.+ng this proclamation knowing it not to be genuine. We are willing to give _The Times_ credit for believing in the perfect genuineness of the doc.u.ment when it opened its columns to its insertion.

Nor do we blame that journal for inditing a leading article, in which the proclamation in question was made the groundwork of a furious onslaught on Kossuth, because we are still a.s.suming that _The Times_ all this while believed the doc.u.ment to be an emanation from the pen of the ill.u.s.trious Magyar.

"But farther than this, in our allowances for our contemporary, we cannot go. _The Times_ is told that the proclamation to the Hungarian soldiers in the Austrian army was not the production of Kossuth's pen, and that he was in no wise responsible for its sentiments or its exhortations. Captain Mayne Reid writes to _The Times_, not only denying the genuineness of the doc.u.ment but producing facts and a.s.signing reasons, which ought to have satisfied that journal that it had preferred a charge against Kossuth as groundless as it was injurious. But instead of giving a ready insertion to Captain Mayne Reid's vindication of the character of the Hungarian chief from the calumnies which _The Times_ put into circulation, that journal, without a.s.signing, or being able to a.s.sign, any reason for still believing that the doc.u.ment was genuine, reiterates the a.s.sertion of its having proceeded from Kossuth's pen.

"Fortunately for the character of the English press, there is not another journal of any reputation in the country that would act in this matter as _The Times_ has done. However much a paper may chance to be opposed to a particular individual, we know of no instance, with this solitary exception of _The Times_, in which an editor, having preferred a groundless charge against a man whose character is everything to him, would refuse to allow a contradiction and disproof of the accusation.

The force of injustice could no further go. To act in this way is to play the part of a moral a.s.sa.s.sin, and ought to draw down on the head of the journalist who could play so criminal a part the indignation and abhorrence of the public.

"_The Times_ has not yet forgotten its old grudge against the Magyar chief, nor is it likely it ever will. It not only greatly damaged its commercial interests by the system of calumny which it pursued towards the Hungarian exile, but it had also to endure the mortification of finding that all its efforts to injure Kossuth's character, or to diminish the interest felt in the cause of Hungary, were entirely unsuccessful. Never was the utter powerlessness of a journal more thoroughly demonstrated than was that of _The Times_ on the arrival of Kossuth in this country, and the mortification of its signal failure to prevent the tide of popular feeling from flowing in favour of the ex-governor of Hungary, still rankles in the heart of _The Times_. The gross act of injustice which we have sought to expose, and which we have so unsparingly denounced, is the consequence of that intolerable mortification.