*KOSSUTH, LAJOS (LOUIS), was born April 27th 1802 at Monok, in the county of Zemplin, in northern Hungary. He is the only son of Andreas Kossuth, who belonged to the class of nobles, and was a small proprietor of land. Louis Kossuth was educated at the Protestant college of Sarospatak. In 1819 he commenced a course of legal study, and attended the district court of Eperies and the royal court at Pesti'. Having completed his legal education, and received his diploma, he returned in 1822 to Monnk, where he was appointed honorary attorney to the county, and obtained a good practice as an advocate. In 1831 he removed to Pesth, and in 1832, as the represeutative of a magnate, attended the sittings of the Hungarian diet, or parliament, and had the right to speak, but not to vote. Ha wrote reports of the pro. ceediogs of the diet, which were circulated in manuscript, and eagerly rend. In order to extend the circulation of the reports he set up a lithographic press. The Austrian government objected to the publi cation of the reports, and Kossuth was ordered to discontinue his lithographic printing. He continued however to circulate his manu scripts. The session of the diet closed in 1836. Soon afterwards some young men were accused of a political conspiracy, and thrown into prison. Kossuth charged the prosecutors with illegality and injustice; and for this interference he was himself arrested, tried, found guilty, and imprisoned at Buda in 1837. He was kept in solitary confinement three years, without books or writing materials. The diet met again in 1840, and having proceeded to business, declared the imprisonment of Kossuth to have been unjust, and refused to grant the supplies till be was set at liberty. He was released from prison in May 1840: the supplies required were then granted.
On the 1st of January 1841 appeared the first number of the Pesti Hirlap ' (' Peath Journal '), which was published at first four times a week, but soon became a daily newspaper, and at one period attained a circnlation of 10,000. Kossuth •was the editor in chief. On the 10th of Jauuary 1841 he married Teresa Meszlenyi.
The liberal principles advocated in the Peati-Hirlap; and the large circulation which it had reached, alarmed the Austriau government, which in 1844 succeeded in removing from office the liberal ministry, and replacing it by one of imperialist principles. In November 1847 Kossuth was elected by the county of Pesth as its representative in the diet, which met again in that mouth. The liberal opposition,
headed by Count Louis Batthyany, was very powerful; and on tho 3rd of March 1848 the diet adopted a proposition made by Kossuth to send a deputation to the King of Hungary (Emperor of Austria), for the purpose of requiring the formation of a new ministry essentially Hungarian, as well as certain constitutional reforms. On the 15th of March Kossuth entered Vienna with the deputation. Prince Metternich had fled on the 13th, and Kossuth was received by the excited popu lation with the most enthusiastic demonstrations of applause and sympathy. On the 16th the emperor received the deputation, and on the 17th issued a decree which sanctioned the establishment of a new ministry, of which Count Louis Batthyany became the president and Kossuth the minister of finance. Ou the 24th of March a law was passed by the diet, and received the assent of the King of Hungary, which restored to the Hungarians certain constitutional rights long withheld from them, abolished the feudal services to which the peasantry had teen subjected, and exonerated the class of nobles from the taxes which had been previously levied upon them.
The benefits of the law of the 24th of March were extended to the Servians and Croatians; and thengh they at first rejoiced, in common with the Iitingsr1ants, in consequence of their having been raised to the rank of freemen, they were in a short time persuaded by Austrian agents, 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 first outbreak occurred in June 1848. Arms, ammunition, sod stores were secretly furnished by Austria, and Austrian officers in disguise led the Servinus to battle. Thousand? were slain on both sides, towns and villages 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 llonvedis or Defenders of Homo. These raw troops, with the battalions of the line and the regiments of hussars, were the nucleus of what became aftet wards the great Hungarian army.