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The main factor which destroyed the Habsburg Monarchy was the problem of nationality and its dissolution was hastened, but not caused, by World War I. Oscar Jászi spent twenty years studying the dangers that threatened this monarchy but his practical plans for averting these dangers were not given a hearing until it was too late. This book was the culmination of Mr. Jászi’s theoretical and practical activity and was enthusiastically received when first published in 1929. “It is not only effective and dramatic narrative, it is also political science of the first order.”—Harold J. Laski “The work is a liberal education in Central European politics.”—Henry C. Alsberg, The Nation “There have been many books written on the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but there is none which goes so deeply into the causes...in this pitiless yet pitiful analysis, rigorously buttressed with statistics, the tragedy is described without bitterness but with deep feeling.”—The Manchester Guardian

Hungary's War of Independence was the bloodiest conflict of a European revolutionary era. It excited nationalist passions that have not yet been stilled. The principal actor of the drama was the nobleman, Louis Kossuth. The story of the revolution of 1848, Hungary's most important historic event, is told here in terms of the towering personality of Louis Kossuth. In the spring of that year, Kossuth and his fellow noblemen seized the opportunity presented by the European revolutions to legally restore the sovereignty of the country under the Habsburg Crown. They also introduced many administrative, social and economic reforms. The goals of the reformers however ran into the opposition of the Habsburg Court, the new liberal Austrian government and the non-Magyar peoples of Hungary who feared Hungarian nationalism. In the ensuing war the country was led by Kossuth. The Hungarians lost the war and, in August 1849, Kossuth fled, never to return to his homeland. Louis Kossuth was a forceful, powerful governor-president of Hungary, the people's spokesman and hero but also the symbol of much that they considered calamitous in the national character. At once dynamic and forceful, but also hesitant and weak - he made great provisions for the wounded, veterans, women and orphans but also squandered the lives of his soldiers unnecessarily. He emancipated the peasants and the Jews and, though he died an impoverished exile, he remained a popular idol in Hungary, his name a symbol of the aspiration for independence. His legend grew with the years and was further cultivated after 1945, when Hungary had lost much of the independence for which Kossuth struggled.