Századok – 1996

Tanulmányok - Urbán Aladár: Népítélet Lamberg felett. Beszámolók; emlékezések; tanúvallomások V/1063

1116 URBÁN ALADÁR POPULAR VERDICT OVER LAMBERG by Urban Aladár (Summary) On September 28, 1848 Count Ferenc Lamberg, lieutenant general and royal commissioner was murdered by the furious crowd on the pontoon-bridge connecting Pest and Buda. The count had it in his commission to take over the high command of all military forces stationing in Hungary In that case the royal commissioner would have been in the position to stop the Croat army drawing near the Hungarian capital that crossed the border on September 11 led by General Jelai, viceroy of Croatia without any declaration of war. The article discusses the causes of the Austrian government's decision to appoint Lamberg royal commissioner without the counter-signature of the Hungarian prime minister. It is also explained why Lamberg refused to go to the armies confronting each other around Székesfehérvár; though the resigning palatine, Archduke Stephen of Habsburg informed Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány of his going there. On September 27 Batthyány went to the Hungarian camp at Martonvásár to meet Lamberg, while the latter arrived at Buda the following day. As instructed, he should have had the appointment of the deputy of the resigning palatine and the royal ordinance adjourning the Hungarian diet confirmed or counter-signed by the new Hungarian prime minister. (The Court did not want the appointment of the royal commissioner himself to be confirmed, which was an open violation of the the April Laws regulating constitutional conditions in the country.) Rumours of Lamberg's unlawful appointment reached the Hungarian diet on September 27, and its special session on the same night qualified it as unconstitutional. The diet also prohibited any cooperation with the royal commissioner on the part of all military and civil authorities. The following day, when the people of Pest heard news of Lamberg's arrival at Buda, excited groups of armed citizens crossed the Danube on the pontoon-bridge to capture him. In the meantime Lamberg, wearing civilian clothes and sitting in a hackney-coach, crossed the river toward Pest. Not having found the prime minister there, he wished to return to Buda, but was recognized and killed by several stabs of knives. The article wishes to introduce contemporary reports, memoirs, and their distortions, together with the presentation of these events in historiography. Finally it discusses the results the Pest authorities managed to reached between October and December, 1848, when thej' investigated the case of Lamberg's murder on the instruction of the diet. However, the efforts of Lamberg coming from a naturalized Hungarian landowning family being considered as high treason in Hungary it was impossible to find out the truth. The attention of the Austrian authorities was finally directed at a student of Transylvanian origin called György Kolossy, who was captured, sentenced to death and hanged in Januaiy, 1850 as the main perpetrator.