Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/248

Rh to Land’s End,—that deliverance for which prayers have ascended, and are ascending still, to the Father of mankind from millions of British hearts,—shall it be recorded in history that at such a time, that under such circumstances, England plunged into the horrors and calamities of war, nay, that she took upon herself to make this war prolonged and universal, for the mere purpose of upholding the inviolability of those rotten treaties in favor of Austria, good for nothing on earth except to spread darkness and to perpetuate servitude?

“There you have that Austria in Piedmont carrying on war in a manner that recalls to memory the horrors of the long gone-by ages of barbarism. You may read in the accounts furnished to the daily papers, by their special correspondents, that the rigorously disciplined soldiers of Austria were allowed to act the part of robbers let loose upon an unoffending population, to offer violence to unprotected families, to outrage daughters in the presence of their parents, and to revel in such other savage crimes as the blood of civilized men curdles at hearing and the tongue falters in relating. Such she was always—always. These horrors but faintly reflect what Hungary had to suffer from her in our late war. And shall it be said that England, the home of gentlemen, sent her brave sons to shed their blood and to stain their honor in fighting side by side with such a soldatesca for those highwayman compacts of 1815 to the profit of that Austria?”

With the treaty of Villafranca, July 11, 1859, Kossuth abandoned all hope of the independence of Hungary. There can be no doubt that, from the first, Napoleon intended to abandon Kossuth and his cause when he had made use of his influence in England and in Italy for his own purposes. The armistice and the peace with Austria were inaugurated by Napoleon; and when, at the last moment, Emperor Francis Joseph raised difficulties upon some points in the treaty, Prince