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Select Speeches of Kossuth by Kossuth
page 34 of 506 (06%)
despair.

Measures were immediately taken to increase the small standing army by
volunteers and the levy of the people. These troops, supplying the want
of experience by the enthusiasm arising from the feeling that they had
right on their side, defeated the Croatian armaments, and drove them out
of the country.***

The defeated army fled in the direction of Vienna, where the emperor
continued his demoralizing policy, and nominated the beaten and flying
rebel as his plenipotentiary and substitute in Hungary, suspending by
this act the constitution and institutions of the country, all its
authorities, courts of justice, and tribunals, laying the kingdom under
martial law, and placing in the hand of, and under the unlimited
authority of, a rebel, the honour, the property and the lives of the
people; in the hand of a man who, with armed bands, had braved the laws,
and attacked the Constitution of the country.

But the house of Austria was not contented with the unjustifiable
violation of oaths taken by its head.

The rebellious Ban was taken under the protection of the troops
stationed near Vienna, and commanded by Prince Windischgrätz. These
troops, after taking Vienna by storm, were led as an imperial Austrian
army to conquer Hungary. But the Hungarian nation, persisting in its
loyalty, sent an envoy to the advancing enemy. This envoy, coming under
a flag of truce, was treated as a prisoner, and thrown into prison. No
heed was paid to the remonstrances and the demands of the Hungarian
nation for justice. The threat of the gallows was, on the contrary,
thundered against all who had taken arms in defence of a wretched and
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