been mistaken for him by the watchful Austrian police and actually hanged.

Through his connection with Kossuth and Pulszky he became acquainted with many prominent Britons, and his exploits and adventures were so much talked about in London at that time that Edwin Lawrence Godkin-who had written a history of Hungary and was then connected. with Cassel's publishing house-offered to write a story of his life with the Hungarian struggle for independence as the background.

In Italy, in 1859, Figyelmessy was Kossuth's aide-de-camp. The following year he organized and commanded a squadron of Hungarian hussars, with which he fought through Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign. He treasured to his last day a letter from Garibaldi, in which the latter wrote of him as the bravest of the brave.

Finding the prospects of a renewal of the war and of carrying it into Hungary gone, he came to America in 1861 to offer his sword to the Union. He was well supplied with letters of introduction, among which was one from Kossuth to Secretary Seward. He did not think much of the volunteers, and declined the colonelcy of a regiment of dragoons on that account. All his compatriots belonged to the volunteer force; but he was commissioned colonel in the regular army, and was ordered to report to Gen. Frémont at Wheeling, who made him inspector-general. Later he became inspector-of-outposts to his countryman and friend, Gen. Stahel.

He did also a few Hungarian hussar stunts during the war, as when he "with only fifteen men brilliantly charged and put to flight a body of

25 The History of Hungary and the Magyars. By Edwin Lawrence Godkin, New York, 1853. 8-vo., 380 pp. A reprint of the English edition.

46

cavalry commanded by Ashby in person". But he suffered a double hernia in an accident, which troubled him a great deal and hampered him in his movements for some time.

After the war, he was rewarded with a consulship, and he chose Demerara, in British Guiana,

Philip Figyelmessy, Colonel, U. S. A.

which post he kept under various administrations from 1865 to 1888. One of his consular reports on the evils of coolie labor attracted wide attention in Great Britain, and the agitation which followed it, did much toward the amelioration of the condition of the coolies. In his last years he lived in Philadelphia, and longed to see his native land once more; but, true to his word, he would

26 Rebellion Record, Series I, V. 21, June 1, 1862.

not set foot on her soil unless she was independent. He died in 1907 at the age of eighty-five27.

Among his friends was Emeric Szabad, who had been a government official during the Hungarian War, fled to England, served in Figyelmessy's Hungarian squadron in Sicily, and came to America early in 186228. Here he got a commission as captain, and was made inspector of outposts to Gen. Sickles, whom he had known in London. He had the ill-luck to be captured and put into that place of horrors, Libby Prison. His happy disposition made him a favorite, and even won the good-will of Turner, the jailer, who allowed him to write to Figyelmessy. In this letter the prisoner described himself as in danger, through sheer hunger, of eating his dilapidated boots. Figyelmessy and Gen. Stahel responded with a box of eatables, which arrived safely at its destination and was delivered intact. After his release from Libby, Szabad returned to the front, and was breveted colonel for gallantry in the battles before Petersburg. The war ended, he went to Texas as assistant collector of the port of Galveston.

Col. Cornelius Fornet had gone through many vicissitudes before the Civil War. He was an engineer, served in the Honvéd Army with the rank of major, and was decorated for gallantry. With great difficulties he made his way to America, and first assisted Prágay in writing his book. In 1850 he went with three fellow-exiles, Count Samuel Wass, Gustave Molitor and John Juhos, to California, where they met with some success in the gold fields. Being skilled engineers they found it, how

27 Figyelmessy's memoirs were written by his wife, née Eliza Haldeman, during his lifetime, but not published. I had the privilege of reading the manuscript, and had also the pleasure of a personal quaintance with the Colonel

ac

He

28. Szabad was a man of literary and scholarly attainments. wrote: Hungary Past and Present, Edinburgh, 1854; Hungarian Sketches in Peace and War (a translation of some of Jókai's stories), Edinburgh, 1854; The State Policy of Modern Europe, 2 vols., London, 1857; and Modern War, New York, 1863.

ever, more profitable to coin the gold that others had dug up, and, having obtained a government license, operated a mint for that purpose under the firm of Wass, Molitor and Company. In 1852 Fornet went to Bruxelles to wed his fiancée, from whom he had been separated through the war, and returned with her to New Jersey, where they founded their home. In the Civil War he was first a major of engineers in Frémont's Army of the West. Having received serious injuries in an accident at Camp Lily, near Jefferson City, he was sent East, and after his recovery was ordered by Gen. Halleck to organize the 21st New Jersey Infantry Regiment, of which he became the colonel.

In the eastern campaigns were also engaged Brig.-Generals Kozlay and Mundee, Col. Korponay, Majors Décsy, Stephen Kovács and Semsey, Captains Menyhárt and Rózsafi, and several others, whose names and records can be found in the appendix.

There were several officers in the Union Army, who, while not natives of Hungary, may be classified as Hungarians, for they had been identified with the Hungarian cause, spoke the Hungarian language, and attached themselves in America to the Hungarians. Among them were: Constantin Blandovski, a Pole, who had served in the Honvéd Army, and was captain in the 3d Missouri Infantry. He was mortally wounded at the capture of Camp Jackson, near St. Louis, May 10, 1861, and died fifteen days later.-Nicholas Dunka, a native of Jassy, Rumania, who had been Figyelmessy's lieutenant in Sicily, and accompanied him to America. He was an aide on Gen. Stahel's staff with the rank of captain, and a brave soldier, though always in trouble on account of his uncontrolable temper. He lost his life in the battle of Cross Keys, Va., June 8, 1862, and was buried there in the yard of the Union Church.-George von Amsberg, a native of Hannover. He entered

the Austrian service as an officer of a crack Hun. garian hussar regiment, and got there so Hungarianized that he spoke Hungarian in preference to German, went over with his regiment to the Honvéd Army, and fought for Hungarian independence. In the Civil War he was colonel of the 45th New York Infantry.

IX.

The services of Hungary's sons for the preservation of the Union seem not to have been limited to the military field. It is impossible at the present time to determine the full importance of what Louis Kossuth has done to prevent the threatening intervention of Great Britain, because the documents relating thereto are still inaccessible; but it is evident that Kossuth did use his influence in behalf of the United States at that critical period.

When Louis Kossuth came to America in 1851, one of his warmest admirers and supporters was William H. Seward, then senator from New York. What his friend and partner, Horace Greeley, did for Kossuth and the Hungarian cause in the Tribune, Seward tried to do on the floor of the Senate and in the realm of politics.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Great Britain's attitude towards the United States was anything but friendly. Lord Palmerston-who, in 1849 had refused to acknowledge victorious Hungary, a thousand-year-old nation, as a belligerent —had no such scruples in regard to the Confederate States, which had won no victories as yet and were but the embryo of a nation never to be born; he was, in fact, in very great haste to acknowledge them. During the excitement of the Trent affair, Great Britain openly made warlike preparations, and, although an armed conflict was then averted, grave apprehensions were entertained in