KOSSDTH, LAJOS. 



KOSTER, LAWRENCE. 



749 



pnsuitry had been subjected, and exonerated the class of noble* 

 from the taxes which had been previouly levied upon them. 



The benefit* of the law of the 24th of March were extended to the 

 Servians and Croatian* ; and though they at fint rejoiced, in common 

 with the Hungarian!, in consequence of their having been raiaed to 

 the rank of freemen, they were in a short time persuaded by Austrian 

 agent*, one of whom was their own archbishop, that the Hungarians 

 Intended to subjugate them, and to destroy their religion and nation- 

 ality. An insurrectionary movement against Hungary was soon 

 organised, and the fint outbreak occurred in June 1848. Arms, 

 ammunition, and stores were secretly furnished by Austria, and 

 Austrian officers in disguise led the Servians to battle. Thousands 

 were slain on both ride*, towns and Tillages were burnt, and the 

 frontier districts laid waste. Most of the Hungarian troops were at 

 this time fighting the battles of Austria in Italy. Kossuth displayed 

 extraordinary activity and energy in rousing the Hungarian people by 

 his speeches, in obtaining money, and raising recruits, so that the 

 Hungarian ministry in a short time organised ten battalions of 

 volunteers, who were called Honveds, or Defenders of Home. These 

 raw troops, with the battalions of the line and the regiments of hussars, 

 were the nucleus of what became afterwards the great Hungarian 

 army. 



On the 9th of September 1848, Jellachich, the Ban of Croatia, 

 having collected an army of 80,000 Servians and Croatian*, crossed 

 the Drave and invaded Hungary. He was opposed and defeated by 

 Ouyon and others, and obliged to retreat to the vicinity of Vienna. 

 Meantime a royal decree had appointed Field-Marshal Count 

 Lamberg commandcr-in- chief of the Hungarian army, and ho came to 

 Pesth in order to commence the performance of his duties; but so 

 infuriated were the people that they murdered him, September 28, on 

 the bridge which connects Buda with 1'esth. In his pocket was found 

 a decree authorising the dissolution of the Hungarian parliament. 

 A remonstrance was published called ' The Parliament's Address to 

 the Nation,' which produced great excitement in Hungary. At the 

 end of October the Hungarian army crossed the Austrian frontier, 

 advanced to the vicinity of Vienna, and were defeated. In December 

 Prince Windischgratz, at the head of an Austrian army, crossed the 

 frontier and invaded Hungary. The Hungarian parliament then 

 retired from Pcsth to Debreczin. The war was extended; the 

 Austriana suffered a series of defeats, and on the 14th of April 1849, 

 the Hungarian parliament proclaimed the independence of Hungary 

 and the deposition of the Home of Hapsburg from their office of 

 kings of Hungary. This measure, which was carried ou the proposal 

 of Kossuth, was perhaps injudicious. It was well received by the 

 army in general, but was censured by Gorge!, then commander-in- 

 chitf, and afforded him a pretext for afterwards thwarting the 

 measures of Kossuth. It was also disliked by many of the people, 

 who were opposed to a change of their ancient constitution and to the 

 separation of the Kingdom of Hungary from the Empire of Austria. 



Kossuth was appointed by the Hungarian parliament Provisional 

 Governor of Hungary, and a Provisional Committee was formed to 

 manage the affairs of the nation, which was afterwards organised as a 

 Committee of Defence, of which Kossuth was appointed President. 

 This Committee supplied the place of a ministry till the 1st of May, 

 when a cabinet was formed with Count Szemere as premier. A 

 Russian army soon afterwards crossed the Carpathian Mountains for 

 the purpose of assisting the Austrians, and gradually pursued Qorgei's 

 army to the vicinity of Arad, whither the Hungarian ministry had 

 retired from Debreczin. Meantime the Hungarian army of the south 

 was pursued by the Austrian army under Haynau, and was defeated 

 at Temeswar, August 9, 1849. The news of this disastrous event 

 having been communicated to Kossuth at Arad, on the llth of 

 August he resigned his office of Provisional Governor of Hungary, 

 conferred on Gorgei the entire civil and military power of a dictator, and 

 with the officers and part of the army of the south made his escape into 

 the Turkish territories. Gorgei on the 14th of August surrendered his 

 army unconditionally to the Russians, and the war then terminated. 



Koseuth, and the officers who accompanied him, were detained as 

 prisoners first at Widdin, and next at Schumla. Kossuth was finally 

 placed in confinement at Kntayia, in Asia Minor, where in February 

 1850 he was joined by bis wife, with his two sons and daughter. 

 \Vhilo at Kutayia he made himself master of the English language 

 chiefly by reading Shakapere with the aid of Johnson's ' Dictionary.' 

 By the intervention of the English and American governments, 

 through their ambassadors at Constantinople, and in defiance of the 

 threats of Austria, he was set at liberty in August 1851. He left 

 KuUyia September 1, embarked at Smyrna in an American vessel 

 September 13, and landed at Southampton in England October 17. 

 He was received in London and other large cities and towns with 

 boundless enthusiasm. His speeches were listened to with intense 

 admiration, and his command of the English language excited a 

 feeling of wonder. In November 1861 he wont to the United States 

 of America, apparently fur the purpose of getting up a kind of crusade 

 in favour of Hungary. He excited as much interest and enthusiasm 

 there as be had done in this country ; he also collected some money, 

 and landed again in England in June 1852. Ho has since continued 

 to reside in London, and he spoke occasionally on the subject of the 

 late war with Russia. 



Komuth's Speeches have been published separately and collected, 

 in various forms, among which may be mentioned ' Select Speeches of 

 Kossuth, condensed and abridged, with Kossuth 's express Sanction, 

 by Francis W. Newman,' STO, 1853; 'Authentic Report of Kouuth's 

 Speeches on the War in the East, at Sheffield and Nottingham, 

 published by himself,' 8vo, 1854. 



KOSTER, LAWRENCE, or LAURENT JANSZOOX, a native of 

 Haarlem in Holland, whom the Dutch consider as the true inventor of 

 the art of printing. He is believed to have been born at Haarlem 

 about 1370; and in afterlife filled successively several minor offices 

 in his native town, as sacristan, churchwarden, and treasurer of the 

 church of St. Bavon. His name appears in the registers of that 

 church in the years 1423, 1426, 1432, and 1433. The time of his 

 death is not mentioned. The following is the account given by 

 Hadrian Juniufl, a Dutch writer of the 16th century, of Koster s 

 claim to the discovery of printing. Junius's ' Batavia ' was published 

 in 1588, but the passage, the substance of which we here give, is 

 believed from the context to have been written twenty yean before. 

 He relates, that about 128 years before be wrote, this Lawrence 

 Koster resided in a large house, situated opposite the royal palace at 

 Haarlem, which was still standing. That Koster, during his after- 

 noon walks in the vicinity of the city, began by amusing himself with 

 cutting letters out of the bark of the beech-tree; and with these 

 one after another, the letters being inverted, he printed small sentences 

 for the instruction of his grandchildren. That being a man of genius 

 and research, and finding the ink then commonly used apt to spread, 

 he afterwards discovered, with the assistance of his sou-in law, Thomas 

 the son of Peter (who, he tells us, left four children, most of whom 

 afterwards enjoyed high offices in the state), a more glutinous kind 

 of ink, with which he succeeded in printing entire pages, with cuts 

 and characters. That he, Junius, had seen specimens of this kind, 

 printed on one side of the paper only, in a book entitled ' Speculum 

 Nostras Salutis,' written by an anonymous writer in the Dutch 

 language; the blank pages being pasted together, that the leaves 

 might turn over, like those of an ordinary book, without showing the 

 vacancies. That, afterwards, Koster made his letters of lead instead 

 of wood ; and lastly of pewter, finding that metal harder, and conse- 

 quently more proper for the purpose ; and that various drinking cups 

 made of the remains of this old type, were still preserved in the 

 aforesaid house, where, but a few years before, Roster's great-nephew, 

 or great-grandson, Gerard Thomas, had died at an advanced age. 

 That the invention in question soon meeting with encouragement, it 

 became necessary to augment the number of hands employed; which 

 circumstance proved the first cause of disaster to the new establish- 

 ment; for that one of the workmen, named John (whom Junius 

 suspects might be Fust, for he does not absolutely accuse him), as 

 soon as he had made himself sufficient master of the art of casting the 

 type, and joining the characters (notwithstanding be had given an 

 oath of secrecy), took the earliest opportunity of robbing his master 

 of the implements of his art; choosing, for the completion of his 

 purpose, the night preceding the Feast of the Nativity, when the whole 

 family, with the rest of the inhabitants of the city, were at church, 

 hearing the midnight mass. That ho escaped with his booty to 

 Amsterdam, thence to Cologne, and lastly, that he took up his resi- 

 dence at Mainz, where he established his printing-press ; from which 

 within the following year, 1442, were issued two books, printed with 

 the characters which had been before used by Lawrence Koster at 

 Haarlem : the one entitled ' Alexandri Ualli Doctrinale,' the other 

 'Petri llispaui Tractatus.' 



This account, Junius assures us, he had from several old gentle- 

 men, who had filled the most honourable offices of the city, and who 

 themselves had received it from others of equal respectability and 

 credit, as a well-founded tradition ; as a lighted torch, he says, passes 

 from one hand to another without being extinguished. He adds, 

 that he well remembers Nicolas Ualius, the tutor of his youth, who 

 was an old gentleman of very tenacious memory, used to relate that 

 when he was a boy he had often heard one Cornelius, then an old 

 man, upwards of eighty years of age, who had been a bookbinder, and 

 in his youth had assisted in the printing-office of Koster, describe 

 with great earnestness the various trials and experiments made by 

 his master in the infancy of the invention : upon which occasions he 

 would even shed tears, especially when he came to the robbery com- 

 mitted by one of the workmen, which he related with great vehemence; 

 cursing thoso nights in which, as he said, for some months he had 

 slept in the same bed with so vile a miscreant, and protesting that he 

 would with bis own hands have hanged the thief if lie had been still 

 alive : which relation, as Junius tells us, corresponded with the 

 account which Quirinus Talesius, the burgomaster, confessed to him 

 he had heard from the mouth of the same old bookbinder. 



The foregoing is the only evidence in favour of Kostcr's claims. 

 Conjectures and explanations have been given in abundance, but no 

 further confirmation. No production of Koster' s has been satisfac- 

 torily discovered, for the ' Horarium,' found by Enschedius, a letter- 

 founder and printer at Haarlem, of which he published a fac-simile in 

 1768, was, there can be little doubt, a forgery. It is true that the 

 civic records of Haarlem prove that a Lawrence Jauszoou lived there 

 at the period mentioned, indeed there were three of the name between 

 1420 and 1440, one of whom was Koster, a sexton of St. Bavon's, and 



