KOSSUTH, LAJOS. - Patriot and politician, b. at Monok in northern Hungary on 17 Sept. 1802, d. in exile at Turin on 20 March 1894. A brilliant orator, lawyer and journalist, he was arrested in 1837 for the clandestine dissemination of the reports of the Assembly, which had been prohibited by Metternich's censorship. Amnestied, in 1841 he took over the direction of the daily Pesti Hirlap, where he fought for the reform of the ancient constitution according to the concepts of national liberalism. He engaged in bitter polemics with Count Stephen Széchenyi, head of the moderate wing of the reformers, who considered it more prudent to keep national aspirations within the limits of the economic and cultural sphere so as not to expose the country to a civil war.
Minister of finance in March 1848, he was opposed by the left wing of the radicals; in July he succeeded in postponing the further dispatch of Hungarian soldiers to Lombardy, and in Oct. 1848 he recalled his compatriots from Radetzky's army. When the Court of Vienna revoked the constitutional liberties and stirred up a war of races and nationalities in order to stifle the Hungarian movement, K., as head of the Committee for the Defense of the Fatherland, created an army that defeated the Austrians, who then called in the troops of the Tsar.
K. concluded an alliance with Manin and prepared, with the contribution of the Italian legion organized in Hungary, an expedition to free Venice from the siege; but above all, Gen. Artur Görgey laid down his arms on 13 Aug. 1849 and K. fled to Turkey.
In 1850 K. entered into correspondence with Mazzini and adhered to the democratic program, reserving to the Hungarian people the choice of the future form of government. Having gone to England and America as a champion of constitutional liberties and of the Magyar nation oppressed by reaction, in the summer of 1852 he settled in London and there upheld the expediency of coordinating the movements of the Italian Risorgimento with a new insurrection in Hungary.
In 1859, having broken with Mazzini, he went to Napoleon
III, to Victor Emmanuel II and to Prince Jerome Bonaparte to induce them to extend military operations to the Dalmatian coasts with the aim of liberating Hungary as well. Disappointed by the armistice of Villafranca, he returned to London; but in Sept. 1860 at Turin he reached agreements with Cavour, offering the contribution of the Hungarian legion for the liberation of Venetia, while the exiled generals Türr and Klapka were preparing a landing by Garibaldi at the mouths of the Danube in order to make Hungary rise up through Transylvania.
After the compromise of 1867 between Hungary and the Habsburg dynasty, in the famous letter Cassandra addressed to Francis Deák, the architect of the settlement, he condemned the dualist regime and foresaw the inevitable collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Elected deputy, he refused the invitation to return home and remained in Italy until his death.
To his work is due, among other things, the fact that the Hungarian peasants were able to obtain legally in 1848 ownership of those lands which until then they had cultivated on behalf of the feudal lord. Through his merit the Hungarian insurrection of 1848-49 did not degenerate into revolutionary excesses. When the deposition of the Habsburgs from the Hungarian crown was proclaimed (14 Apr. 1849), K. avoided the establishment of a republic that would have split national unity. Although he was a Protestant, he showed deference for the Catholic majority of his country.