Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/46



How absolutely natural and necessary the Revolution had come was revealed m the days following its outbreak.

The city had assumed an almost normal appearance, and apart from externals, nothing special seemed to have befallen.

The rush of the puffing and blowing military motors over the streets was already no more on the third day of the Revolution, the firing of shots, become senseless, had completely ceased, and merely the placards which just like a flood rankly covered every visible spot, gave evidence of what was working below.

The maintenance of public order constituted the greatest care of the new Government.

In Budapest there was plunder of small extent in the Lower Danube district; in the outermost districts there were petty robberies. The denial of public and private property from political motives did not make itself heard, and, thanks to the prompt handling of the authorities, the formation of organised groups of plunderers could be completely obviated. While the single hand could do only petty damage, on the other side bands were at once scattered, and on the whole quiet was maintained in the capital.

More markedly began the provincial rabble to break out. Once more it was in Croatia and the