The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  The soldier obeyed.

  This young officer then collected three or four other men who had been standing about in the same way, formed them up with the others and marched them all off in the direction of Károlyi Boulevard.

  ‘What a man!’ said Zichy. ‘If only there were more like him … then, perhaps…’

  We turned into Lajos Kossuth Street and there we met several acquaintances. Among them was Miklós Vadász, the well-known designer, who was sporting a huge aster in his lapel and had about him a somewhat comic air of self-importance, making out that he was a secret revolutionary and hinting that it was he who had brought it all about. As it turned out it was not only he but everyone else we met who, according to the character of each, exhibited the full range of pleasure from radiant ecstasy down to a sort of modest relief which could be described as a ‘post-extraction joy’ or ‘Thank God it’s out at last’, which, of course is not much but still in its way a sort of joy.

  The general euphoria was not really surprising. Everything that the general public knew about Károlyi tended to invite their trust and gave them hope. Just before the war he had made no secret of travelling to France and America, openly admitting that this was a political mission. When war broke out he left New York for home but was for a while detained in France. Finally the French government let him go without his having to attempt to escape. He then stopped in Switzerland before returning to Budapest8.

  Back in Hungary he proclaimed his support for a rupture with Germany and a separate peace with the Allies. Later he was to declare that Hungary should lose no time in accepting President Wilson’s terms. That he never seemed to waver in his publicly declared attitude, at least not so the general public would notice, (as, for example, when he volunteered for the army, or when Romania’s entry into the war provoked a fierce chauvinist reaction in Hungary), may have puzzled many of those who did not know him well.

  Some of his intimate friends, however, knew that Károlyi had relations in France and what was more significant, had held political discussions with Poincaré, who had once acted for him as a solicitor. This was enough, in those last ominous weeks and months, for more and more people to see in him not only the one politician who seemed always to have been right but also possessed powerful links with (and maybe even definite promises from) the Allies, who could bring about an end to the already all too evident menace of the nation’s imminent destruction and so somehow lead the country to the other side of the political Ocean, just as the Czechs and Poles had already done. Even the lawsuit brought by his cousin, Imre Károlyi9 seemed to confirm what they thought just because the two men had been in such close touch. Surely this meant, the general public assumed, that it was precisely this relationship which proved that Imre’s accusations were true; and so, if it were true now, when the destruction of the Central Powers was only a matter of days away, how much more faith should be put in Mihály if he were indeed a secret agent in the pay of the French? The example of the Czech Kramarz strengthened this view, since the latter had been tried for treason in Austria, recently set free and had now re-emerged as spokesman for the newly independent republic of Czechoslovakia.

  In the course of that first week of the revolution I met many men who analysed these events with cool logic. Furthermore, an army of eager gossip-mongers was to be found everywhere, who heard everything from ‘reliable’ sources, and these men, who now announced with joy that providence had sent Count Károlyi to head the government, were the very same who, a few months before, had related with wicked glee that the ‘traitor’ Károlyi was about to be arrested. This was one of those times when one needs a lot of brotherly love not to loathe one’s fellow men.

  So passed the first morning of revolution in a general outpouring of joy. Everywhere was heard the cry: ‘our bloodless floral revolution!’

  And indeed that first day was bloodless, and all the firing heard during the night was only due to high spirits. No one was hurt, not even General Lukacsics who had been called ‘Bloody Lukacsics’ as he had ordered ten or so deserters to be shot as soon as he had been put in command of the Budapest garrison. Arrested, like all the other senior officers in the capital, he had been taken to the Hotel Astoria, dressed in civilian clothes, and let out the back door.

  Amazingly enough there was no resistance anywhere or incident of any kind. Even today10, with the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to understand how everything passed so smoothly. This cannot be explained solely by the fact that the night before, General Lukacsics had telephoned King Karl for instructions and he, always kind-hearted, had said that no blood was to be shed; nor because, as came to light later, all the telephone lines (including the secret ones) had been taken over by the revolutionaries. Some people later suggested it was because Hungarian officers refused to fire on their fellow Hungarians, but this does not explain it either, for neither the officers of the Kommando-Korps, nor many other army leaders were any more Hungarian than the men under their command, most of whom were Soldatenkinder, born into military families in which the tradition of serving in the Dual Monarchy’s forces was handed down from father to son. Such men had hardly any connection with Hungary, for their only ‘homeland’ was the Austrian army. What was common to them all was a shared ideology (which, incidentally, was to prove to be both their strength and their weakness while ensuring that the dual army was one of the Habsburg monarchy’s strongest supports) made up of such artificial notions as the Kaisers Rock and the Portepée Ehre11, and this made it all the more extraordinary that all those disciplined officers, from humble depot commanders to those of the highest rank, should now forget their most cherished ethic and give up their arms when faced with threats and orders from mere civilians or disobedient soldiery. Was their passivity caused by the lack of orders from above? Was that why they did not automatically reach for their own weapons? I admit that theirs was the wisest course; but were they all wise? How was it that the tradition of never permitting an insult to the Kaisers Rock – which in times of peace was so fiercely upheld that an unwise remark or harmless gesture could provoke a duel as an ‘affair of honour’ – was now forgotten by them all?

  However, one thing did cast a chill over that evening on the day when the sun had shone and ‘bloodless’ revolution was being celebrated everywhere with white aster flowers in full bloom.

  This was the assassination of István Tisza.

  The news spread like wildfire through the city, and as it did the universal merriment was stilled and the crowds started to melt away. Those few who remained would speak quietly to each other, whispering the news and moving swiftly on so as not to have to reveal what they felt. It was as if the flames of the guns that had killed the man whom many people, both friend and foe, had considered great had acted as a flash of lightning had laid bare the sinister truth.

  The revolutionary idyll ended at that moment.

  Tisza’s funeral was to be at four o’clock on the following day. At half-past three I set off but was met by a friend coming away. He told me that the funeral was over and that it had been held before the time announced as it had been feared the mob might try to prevent the last respects from being paid because there were those who had threatened to desecrate the corpse of a man who had been so hated.

  ***

  Tisza’s tragic death at once put an end to the public rejoicing, but the people’s confidence in the new order, and in particular in its leader, was eroded more slowly. The first disappointment came when the new cabinet was announced and, instead of an exciting bevy of new names, sparkling with talent and promise, which everyone had expected, the list of ministers held no surprises. Of course, the public’s hopes had been essentially naive since by then most men of experience and integrity had long been antagonized and so, in the inevitable atmosphere of distrust and disillusion it was a matter of ‘Woher nehmen und nicht stehlen?’12 Even if Károlyi had wanted to do otherwise, he found himself bound to make the choice from members of his own party.

  E
ven so, the first list of ministers was not complete. No one wanted the post of minister of justice. This gave rise to a tragicomic little anecdote that was soon repeated all over Budapest and caused much amusement. It was recounted that all morning and most of the afternoon Károlyi had tried in vain to find someone willing to occupy the velvet seat of the minister of justice. This was serious, as Károlyi was desperately anxious to take over the government without delay. Nothing was to be done, however, and so Károlyi, with his incomplete band of proposed ministers, set off for Buda to present them to Archduke Joseph. In the funicular they met, by chance, one Károly Sladics who held a senior post at the ministry of justice. Why not offer him the vacant post? someone suggested, and to their relief and joy, he accepted; and so, by the time the old funicular car had rattled its way to the top, the cabinet list was complete. But not for long. Just as they were walking across from the station to the archduke’s palace a newsboy came rushing over to them yelling out the news of Tisza’s murder and offering them printed leaflets with all the details. Some of the little band bought them and then, just as they were saying they had better get a move on so as not to keep the archduke waiting, they looked around for the future justice minister – he was nowhere to be seen, vanished into thin air. No one had seen him go, and no one knew where he had gone. He had just slid away and vanished, and was never seen again.

  This humorous little tale was characteristic of those days and, although perhaps not completely accurate in detail, essentially true13.

  Later on someone was found for the post, but everyone’s feeling of disappointment remained. The new ministers were largely unknown, except perhaps to a few in obscure circles in the capital. What was worse was that none of them had any practical experience in the fields for which they were now to be responsible. They had never held executive posts in any civic or governmental department. On the contrary, they were armchair theorists or journalists who ranged from honest but donnish scientists and dreamers to that familiar type, those coffee-house prophets who had passed their days in playfully solving all the world’s most complex problems while sitting at their desks or at the marble tables of popular cafés. The only exceptions were the Socialists for whom leadership of the trade unions had proved a good schooling, and so they alone of the new government had any idea of the effect new measures might have on real people when they passed into law.

  It was therefore only to be expected that once such men had seized power, which they had done from the first day of the revolution, the whole edifice of government would gradually begin to wither away.

  Notes

  6. These had been established in the Hotel Astoria.

  7. The white aster is usually known as a ‘Michaelmas Daisy’ in England, while ‘aster’ is normally kept for the hybrid varieties of this very large genus of plants. Several other historical accounts of this day refer to the ‘Michaelmas Daisy Revolution’, but the name ‘Aster’ is more usual.

  8. In fact, in October 1914, in the company of a small band of Hungarians who had also been interned in the garrison barracks at Bordeaux, Károlyi was allowed to board a Spanish ship which took them to Venice, whence they went directly to Vienna. The visit to Switzerland took place three years later, in October 1917, when Károlyi attended the Congress of the League for Permanent Peace held in Berne.

  9. This is not quite accurate. In January 1918 Imre Károlyi, a prominent banker, published a letter in the press – not a lawsuit – accusing Mihály of being ‘half-traitor’. In 1923, when Mihály Károlyi was living in exile in London, it was used as evidence (fabricated, according to Károlyi’s memoirs) that led to Mihály’s being arraigned for High Treason. Found guilty in his absence (he had already been out of Hungary since 1919), his properties were seized, and he was officially condemned to an exile that, in all, lasted for twenty-seven years.

  10. That is, fourteen years after the events here described.

  11. The Kaisers Rock was the imperial uniform, regarded by the officer caste as a quasi-sacred symbol of their calling that must never be disgraced by word or deed, while the Portepée Ehre – literally ‘sword-carrier’s honour’, meaning a gentleman’s honour – was a phrase dating originally from the days when all gentlemen, and only gentlemen, wore swords with civilian dress.

  12. Although the literal meaning of this German saying is ‘How do you take without stealing?’ perhaps the sense here is best interpreted as ‘How do you remove the best and not be left with the second rate?’ or ‘If you remove the strong you are left with the weak.’

  13. Károlyi does not mention his search for a justice minister but does say: ‘I now went, accompanied by the members of the government, to the palace, to take the oath before Archduke Joseph. In the entrance hall we were told that Count Tisza had been murdered in his villa in the Varosliget. The news came five minutes before the swearing-in ceremony and so terrified our future minister of justice that, taking to his heels, he vanished and was seen no more…’

  Chapter Three

  The story of the October Revolution is not really the subject of these purely personal reminiscences. It is neither my intention nor my calling to write any more about it. Everything that I know of those days stemmed either from the newspaper accounts or from the unverifiable tales told to me by acquaintances. Even afterwards I never studied any of the official documents, and as far as the Károlyi case was concerned, all I knew was the published verdict. Therefore all I can recount of what actually happened in those troubled times was learned from the point of view of an onlooker; and very few of those events had any personal significance for me. My memories can offer only a fragmentary picture, and so their only value can be as source material for historians of the future who wish to write about this period after a long interval of time; and their interest, perhaps, will be underlined by the fact that these pages come from the pen of a man who tried always to avoid bias.

  Impartiality is not necessarily a virtue; rather it is a question of character. At any rate it has always been a part of my character, so ingrained that I feel I was born with it as an inherited characteristic which was to be developed by many experiences during my time as a diplomat. Then I was apt to make mistakes by involving myself in the affairs of people whose ideas always held such a fascination for me that I would joyfully try to imagine myself in their shoes. Perhaps, too, it is part of a writer’s makeup to collect facts, to analyse human nature and, by trying to enter the minds of others, to understand the significance of a strange association of apparently contradictory ideas. But once one does that, impartiality becomes a necessity, because only thus can one decide with clarity whence, and under what influences, could this apparently strange and illogical action have stemmed. Only with impartial analysis will the motives become clear, even when they seem to contradict each other, and then one can see what – after an agony of suppressed internal battles and hesitations – has given birth to a decision that at first had seemed beyond all reason. Such apparently illogical actions are almost never inspired by a single motive. They spring from an unknown number of threads, perhaps thousands of them, some forgotten, some unconscious, some consciously suppressed or not admitted, which when collected and spun together have formed a conclusion, however considered or unconsidered it may ultimately seem. It is like the myriad tiny wells and springs, underground streams and insignificant little rivulets of water emerging from far and wide, seeping out from swamps or caverns of rock-crystal, surging forth from the dark underground or oozing through rotting vegetation until, bursting from a cleft in the rocks, they all unite and merge imperceptibly together then, tumbling down to the valley, they achieve their ultimate purpose and are transformed into a mighty river.

  Among those who played a part in those uncertain days, I was closely related only to one: Mihály Károlyi. Destiny had somehow placed him right at the centre of affairs. I think I knew him better than anyone else, for not only was he a near relation but, what is more important, we had also been close personal frien
ds since early childhood. I was seven and he was six when we first met, and there sprung up between us an almost brotherly affection that lasted and bound us together well through our stormy teenage years. Indeed it was to last long afterwards – even when our careers and adult lives kept us more and more apart, and our characters were becoming evermore different. Finally our very different points of view and understanding of what was important in life were to bring about a complete rupture between us. Nevertheless, we remained on the intimate terms born of our childhood together, even at a distance and although we rarely saw each other after his marriage and during the war. Brothers, even if they have very different characters, can be like this; the bond remains even if fate has sent them on widely separate paths. The old intimacy is never entirely lost.

  From his earliest childhood there were the most varied opinions about Mihály Károlyi’s character and abilities. Even today in 1932 people still hold wildly differing views, some believing him to have only a most limited understanding and modest talents and to be little more than a power-hungry adventurer; others – although nowadays these are growing fewer and fewer – see in him some kind of noble prophet. To my view both these opinions are wrong, and so I will try to describe him as I personally see him, not as a politician but as a man. And to do so I will have to show not only what he became but also go back to where he started, so as to establish, if I can, whence came those early impressions that were to motivate his actions over two decades, actions which were ultimately so fatal as to land him where he is today14.