DEAK, FRANCIS (FERENCZ) Hungarian statesman, was born at Sojtor in the county of Zala on October 17, 1803. Of an ancient and distinguished family, he was edu cated for the law and practised first as an advocate and ultimately as a notary. His reputation in his own county was quickly es tablished and when in 1833 his elder brother, Antal, was obliged by ill-health to relinquish his seat in the Hungarian parliament, the electors chose Ferencz in his stead. No man owed less to ex ternal advantages. He was to all intents and purposes a simple country squire. His true greatness was never exhibited in debate. It was in friendly talk, generally with a pipe in his mouth and an anecdote on the tip of his tongue, that he exercised his extraor dinary influence over his fellows. He convinced them from the first of his disinterestedness and sincerity, and impressed them by his instinctive faculty of always seizing the main point and sticking to it. Perhaps he is unique in history, for though neither soldier, nor diplomatist, nor writer he became the leader of a great party by sheer force of intellect and moral superiority. This is all the more remarkable because he appealed to no passion but patriotism, and avoided power instead of seeking it.
During the struggle between Austria and Hungary for the pres ervation of the Hungarian constitution, Deak and Count Stephen Szechenyi were the leaders of that party who wished all pro ceedings to be conducted in a strictly legal manner, and who therefore were opposed to the extreme revolutionary methods of Kossuth and his followers. In the diet of 1839-4o it was Deak who brought about an understanding between a reactionary gov ernment in need of money and recruits for the army and a Liberal opposition determined to vindicate Hungary's political rights. He did not sit in the diet of 1843-44 because his election was the occasion of bloodshed in the struggle between the Clericals who would have ousted him and the Liberals who brought him in. After the constitutional victory of 1848 he became minister of justice in the Batthyany ministry. All through the stormy days that followed, culminating in the War of Hungarian Independence, he never ceased to urge moderation and the adoption of a strictly legal position, but Kossuth and the extremists got the upper hand. "You cannot argue with a drunken man," he is reported to have said, "and at the moment the diet is drunk." When it became obvious that the Vienna Government did not intend to keep its promises to Hungary, Deak resigned with Batthyany, but without ceasing to be a member of the diet. He was one of the parlia mentary deputation which waited in vain upon Prince Windisch gratz in his camp. (See HUNGARY : History.) He then retired to his estate at Kehida. After the War of Independence he was tried by court-martial but acquitted.
After 1854 he spent the greater part of his time in Pest, where his room at the "Queen of England" inn became the centre for those patriots who in the dark days of the Bach administration looked to his wisdom for guidance. He did all in his power to stimulate the moral strength of the nation and to keep its hopes alive. He considered armed resistance dangerous, but he was the immutable defender of the continuity of the Hungarian constitu tion on the basis of the reforms of 1848. The Kossuth faction looked for salvation to a second war with Austria engineered from abroad, while the followers of Szechenyi adopted an attitude of resignation, equally repugnant to Deak.
The Italian war of 1859 convinced the Austrian Government of the necessity of a reconciliation with Hungary. Bach was replaced by Schmerling and an imperial patent of April 19, 186o removed some of the chief grievances of the Magyars. The October diploma of the same year was intended to provide the empire with a federal system of government on constitutional lines. Deak rejected it, but at the request of the government he went to Vienna to set forth the national demands. He insisted on the re-establish ment of the constitution in its integrity as a sine qua non. On Feb ruary 16, 186i the government withdrew the diploma and issued a patent which was a return to the former centralist and bureau cratic system. On April 6 the diet met at Pest. Deak rose to de fend the national right and traditions, and on June 5 moved an address to the crown refusing to recognize the February patent, insisting on the laws of 1848 as the sole basis of accord, and re minding the Emperor that an uncrowned king was no true sov ereign of Hungary. The speech of Deak on this occasion was his finest effort and he was acknowledged the leader of the nation by all parties. He next proposed to the emperor that he should break away from counsellors who had sought to oppress Hungary, and restore the constitution as a personal act. The emperor thereupon dismissed Schmerling, suspended the February constitution and summoned the coronation diet. Of that diet Deak was the indis pensable leader, and all parties left him to conduct the delicate negotiations with the emperor. The committee of which he was president had completed its work when the Austro-Prussian War broke out. The extreme party would have used the defeat of Koniggratz to extort still more favourable terms, but Deak made it easy for the emperor in the hour of his humiliation. To his question, "What does Hungary demand?" Deak answered, "Noth ing more after Sadowa than before it." On Feb. 18, 1867 the restoration of the Hungarian constitution was publicly announced in the diet, and a responsible ministry was formed under the premiership of Count Julius Andrassy. Deak himself refused to take office. There was still one fierce parliamentary struggle, in which Deak defended the compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867, both against the Kossuthites and against the Left-centre, which had detached itself from his own party under the leadership of Kal man Tisza (q.v.). It was the wish of the diet that Deak should exercise the functions of a palatine at the coronation, but he refused the honour, just as he had refused every other reward and distinction. "It was beyond the king's power to give him anything but a clasp of the hand." His reward was the assurance of the prosperity and tranquillity of his country and the reconciliation of the nation and its sovereign. This service reconciled him to the loss of much of his popularity; for a large part of the Hungarian people looked upon the compromise of 1867 as a surrender and blamed Deak for it. He died at midnight of July 28-29, 1876; his funeral was celebrated with royal pomp on Feb. 3. A mausoleum was erected by national subscription and in 1887. a statue over looking the Danube was erected to his memory.