SZECHENYI, ISTVAN, COUNT (1791-186o), Hungarian statesman, the son of Ferencz Szechenyi and the countess Juliana Festetics, was born at Vienna on Sept. 21, 1791. Entering the army in his 17th year, he fought with distinction at the battle of Raab (June 14, 1809), and on July 16 brought about the sub sequent junction of the two Austrian armies by conveying a message across the Danube to General J. G. Chasteler at the risk of his life. Equally memorable was his famous ride, through the enemy's lines on the night of Oct. 16/17, 1813, to convey to Blucher and Bernadotte orders for the impending battle of Leipzig. In May 1815 he was transferred to Italy, and at the battle of Tolentino scattered Murat's bodyguard by a dashing cavalry charge. From Sept. 1815 to 1821 he travelled widely, studying the institutions of the countries through which he passed. A sec ond—scientific—tour with his friend, Baron Miklos Wesselenyi, taught him much about trade and industry. In 1825, when went to France to attend the coronation of Charles X., the canal du Midi attracted his attention and suggested to him the idea of regulating the rivers Danube and Theiss. At the diet of 1825, when the motion for founding a Hungarian academy was made by Pal Nagy, who bitterly reproached the Magyar nobles for so long neglecting their mother-tongue, Szechenyi set the example by offering to contribute a whole year's income (6o,000 florins) towards it. The formation (June 1833) of the Danube Navigation Company, which eventually opened up the Danube from Buda to the Black Sea was the fruit of Szechenyi's initiative and per sonal study. Szechenyi was also the first to start steamboats on
the Theiss, the Danube and the lake of Balaton.
All this time Szechenyi had been following, with some anxiety, the political course of Kossuth, whose extravagances he feared would plunge Hungary back into the chaos out of which he had helped to raise her. The majority, indeed, sided with Kossuth, but neither this fact nor the gradual loss of his popularity restrained Szechenyi, both in the diet and at county meetings, from fulmi nating conscientiously against the extreme demands of Kossuth. His views at this period are expounded in the pamphlet Politikai programrn toredekek ("Fragments of a Political Programme"). He held the portfolio of ways and communications in the first responsible Magyar administration (March 23, 1848) under Batthyany, but his increasing apprehension of a revolution, with its inevitable corollaries of civil war and a rupture with the dynasty, finally affected his mind, and on Sept. 5 he was removed to an asylum. Here he remained for many years, but recovered sufficiently to correspond with his friends and even to meditate writing fresh books ; but the sudden death of his old friend Baron Samuel josika and the once more darkening political horizon led him, in a moment of despair, to take his own life (April 8, 186o). He richly deserved the epithet "the greatest of the Magyars" be stowed upon him by his political antagonist Kossuth.