The arrest of Louis Kossuth and the first phase of his trial in the eyes
of French contemporaries
The study provides insight into the foreign reception of Louis Kossuth’s trial yet unexamined by scholarship during 1837 through sources such as diplomatic reports by Saint-Aulaire, French ambassador to Vienna as well as articles from periodicals issued in France. An analysis of the weekly diplomatic reports reveals that in 1837 seven of these provided significant coverage of Hungarian affairs. The first letter, dated 11 April 1837 mentioning Kossuth for the first time, calls him the leader of a ‘national network of correspondence,’ while the letters written in autumn 1837 clearly treat the arrest and trial of Kossuth,
a complete unknown for the French that far, as the year’s political event of decisive importance. At the same time, daily newspapers may have had a far greater influence on the French public than the diplomatic correspondence reaching a rather limited readership. In 1827, the Journal des Débates, leading French conservative paper, devoted six of its Hungary-related twenty-two articles to Louis Kossuth. It informed its readers about the arrest of Kossuth as early as the 22nd of May; later about reactions to it as well as about the beginnings of his trial. The tone of the reports depended on the reporters’ attitude towards the Hungarian idea of reform. In sum, it can be concluded that Kossuth’s trial proved newsworthy both in diplomacy and in the daily press of France, but with the Hungarian reaction to the affair declining, interest in France also petered out. The French were interested in Kossuth only as long as responses to his trial evoked nervous reaction in the Hapsburg government. At the same time, through these reports, the greater public became aware of Kossuth and from this time on, reports on the struggle between Vienna and the reform opposition became regular.
