The purpose of this brief presentation is to show that Lajos Kossuth was both a sincere nationalist and a sincere liberal and that these convictions did not contradict but strongly reinforced each other. It is also my intention to demonstrate that Kossuth was not a revolutionary but a reformer who in 1848 was forced by events beyond his control to promote revolution at home as well as to seek alliances with revolutionary circles outside Hungary. His ambition was not to accomplish a drastic reorganization of Europe but, by peaceful means, to make Hungary a great country. A great Hungary, he believed, would benefit all the inhabitants of the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen and contribute to peace, progress, and liberty in Europe.

Throughout the Revolution of 1848–1849 the national aspirations of the Hungarians generally evoked a negative response from both liberal and radical Czechs, although, on the whole, the radicals expressed less hostility than the liberals toward developments in Hungary. Of the two groups, the Czech radicals were the least interested in maintaining the territorial and political integrity of the Habsburg monarchy and the more revolutionary in their demands and expectations. Consequently they had less cause to criticize the Magyars. Indeed, after the Habsburgs declared war against Hungary and the Russians openly assisted them in subduing the Hungarian revolutionaries, the radicals openly expressed sympathy for the Magyar cause.

It is no secret that during the first half of the nineteenth century Hungarian nationalism changed from quiescence to fierce agitation, from relative indifference to extreme preoccupation, from an aristocratic prerogative to a mass movement, and from a disregard of the lower classes to a sincere endeavor to make everyone who lived in the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen happy. Among the most conspicuous promoters of this modern, aggressive nationalism were István Széchenyi, Miklós Wesselényi, and Lajos Kossuth. All three nurtured identical hopes for the future of the nation, but they advocated very different methods for attaining the fulfillment of these expectations. They were contemporaries or near-contemporaries; yet their successive rise and decline reflected important shifts in the evolution of Hungarian nationalism as it gradually moved into an all-encompassing doctrine requiring total personal commitment and integration.