Századok – 2010

TANULMÁNYOK - Urbán Aladár: Batthyány Lajos és a bécsi magyar külügyminisztérium

562 URBÁN ALADÁR The first session of government commissioned Esterházy with the task of informing the English ambassador at Vienna about the formation and intentions of the new administration. Such a task in fact belonged to the responsibilities of a foreign minister. Yet as he was staying in Vienna, he could not participate to the sessions of the government at Pest. Thus he played no role in the dispatch by the government in the middle of May of an embassy to the future assembly of Frankfurt. Nor did the envoys themselves report to him but to the government in session at Pest. When the king fled to Innsbruck before the new revolution at Vienna, the duke followed him. During his stay there he worked in order to loosen the ever growing tension between the Hungarians and the Croats. Since his efforts yielded no result, he left Innsbruck in the second half of June under the pretext of a „bath-cure". During his sojourn there the current affairs of the Ministry were handled by the secretary of state, Ferenc Pulszky, whom the duke had assumed in April upon the demand of Batthyány himself. When the king returned to Vienna in the middle of August, he again took some of the affairs, requested by Batthyány. Yet when the Austrian government put forward its memorandum on 31 August 1848, which contested the king's right to sanction the laws of April, he resigned. The affairs of the Ministry were assumed by Ferenc Pulszky, who, alter the resignation of the government, maintained contact on behalf of Battyányi with the court of Vienna. After Batthyány left his office on 2 October, Pulszky informed the National Defence Committee about the events at Vienna. In the middle of August he also left the imperial capital, and the Ministry, which continued to function with the remaining personnel, was suppressed altogether upon the order of Windisch-Graetz on 3 November.