István Türr (, ; 10 August 1825 – 3 May 1908) was a Hungarian soldier, revolutionary, canal architect and engineer, remembered in Italy for his role in that country's unification and his association with Garibaldi. In the later years of his life became known as a peace activist.
Young age and Enlistment Türr was born in the city of Baja, Hungary, the fifth child of an ironmonger. His mother was Terézia Udvary, whose father was a medical doctor. When young he was not a diligent pupil and left school early. As a teenager he tried his father's profession as well as working in a mill and as an unskilled mason, but did not show great aptitude for any of these three jobs.
The first time he tried to enlist in the Austrian Army he was rejected, but on his re-application in 1842 he was accepted at the age of 17. Moreover, officers found in him a hitherto unnoticed promise and encouraged him to improve himself and undergo officer's training at Pécs. By 1848 he was already a military engineer at the rank of lieutenant in a Hungarian grenadier regiment.
Deserting the Austrian Army, fighting for the 1848 Revolution in Italy
At the time when the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 engulfed his homeland, Türr was stationed in Lombardy, Italy. He was involved in early fighting against Piedmont and witnessed the cruel reprisals inflicted on rebellious Italians at Monza, where he was stationed, which caused him to change his loyalties.
On 19 January 1849 Türr crossed the bridge over the Ticino and went over to the Piedmont side. He was immediately placed in command of the newly formed "Hungarian Legion", comprising numerous deserters of the Austrian Imperial Army. Its ranks were swelled by the increasing desertion of Hungarian soldiers and officers, crossing the Ticino in small boats every night until the Austrian command moved them away.
In a parallel development, another Hungarian Legion, headed by Lajos Winkler (1810–1861) who would later become Türr's close associate, was formed at Venice and fought in defence of the revolutionary Repubblica di San Marco headed by Daniele Manin.Paul Ginsborg, "Daniele Manin and the Venetian revolution of 1848–49", p. 345, ; Margaret Anne Doody, "Tropic of Venice", p. 34: "The Memorial to Lajos Winkler and his band of Hungarians who fought with the Venetians, on the wall of the post office behind St. Mark's, was only put up in 2002" ; commemorative plaque at ; 2008 memorial by the Italian-Hungarian Friendship Society ,
Thus, Türr became involved in the First Italian War of Independence, under the leadership of King Carlo Alberto of Piedmont. The final Austrian victory at Novara dashed the Italian hopes. Carlo Alberto had to abdicate and go into exile, and Piedmont could no longer carry on the struggle.
From Italy to Baden
Under the terms of the ceasefire imposed on Piedmont, the Hungarian Legion (and a similar Polish Legion, also composed of deserters from the Austrian Army) were to be disbanded. Privates and NCO's up to the rank of sergeant-major were offered a pardon and a return home. This did not include the officers, but the Austrians did not object to their accepting commissions in the Piedmontese Army.
However, when Türr put it to his men, they voted by acclamation to reject the Austrian pardon, stay together and leave Piedmont in search of a place whose revolution was still holding out. At first they set out for the Roman Republic, but were blocked by the French forces besieging the city (thus, Türr's meeting with Garibaldi, at this time directing Rome's defence, was delayed for ten years).
Next, the Hungarians entered France itself via Nice, where they had to give up their arms and the authorities regarded them with considerable suspicion. The Hungarians, kept for a considerable time in Toulon, conceived the idea of going to the Ottoman Empire, where some Hungarians already got refuge (and many more would follow in the coming years). However, the French disliked this idea, attempting to send them instead to Algiers, where, Türr feared, the Hungarian Legion would "melt down". He then decided to try heading to Britain in the hope that from there it would be easier to get to Turkey.
Hearing of the revolutionary ferment at Baden, Germany, where "the army had joined with the people to overthrow the monarchial government", Türr decided to set out in that direction, also in the hope of eventually returning to a liberated Hungary via Germany. Two contingents of the Hungarian Legion did manage to cross into Germany and reach Baden; a third was stopped by the French and diverted to Folkestone, where the British put them on a ship headed to Turkey.
Bringing sorely needed reinforcements, Türr was warmly welcomed in Baden, made immediately upon arrival a colonel in its revolutionary army, and got three battalions of German troops under his command in addition to the Hungarians who came with him. He did not hold this position long, however, as the Baden revolution soon succumbed to an overwhelming Prussian attack. Together with the overthrown Baden Government, he and his troops had to seek refuge in Switzerland. The victors, in control of occupied Baden, were summarily executing the officers of the revolutionary army who fell into their hands.
In Bern, Türr got the bitter news of the revolution being crushed in his own homeland, too, after prolonged fighting throughout Hungary. He was faced with the prospect of an exile life of indefinite duration, with his life forfeit if he ever tried to go home.
Sending exiles to America
In the wake of the Hungarian Army's surrender at Világos (now Şiria, Romania) on 13 August 1849, the Austrians in the following month, September, renewed the offer of a free pardon to the men of the Hungarian Legion. This time, a considerable part of them accepted the offer, "tired of incessant fatigues and disappointments, and having lost all hope of ever being able to fight for their country's cause", and went back to defeated Hungary.
The sympathetic Government of Switzerland, described by Türr as "always humane and noble minded", financed and facilitated the sending the rest of the Hungarian soldiers to America. (This Federal Swiss government was newly installed, composed of the Radicals, who won the Swiss civil war two years earlier, one of the few regimes established by the Revolutions of 1848 that remained in power, inclined to help the less fortunate revolutionary refugees.)
Türr himself, dejected and in bad health, remained in Europe, alternating between Switzerland and Piedmont, and living on a pension that the Piedmont-Sardinian Government granted to him.
In October 1850, the above-mentioned Captain Lajos Winkler, who had fought at Venice, came over from Lombardy, in command of a party of about a hundred Hungarian privates that he had kept together under discipline. Türr's 1856 brochure, mentioning this and other events of the 1850s,"Narrative of the arrest, trial, & condemnation of Colonel Türr", published by Türr in London, 1856 does not relate where Winkler and his men had been and what they had been doing during the year since the fall of Venice; evidently, they had gotten the help of sympathetic Italians.
With the Hungarian fortunes at their nadir, Türr and Winkler devised a plan of sailing with this troop to Montevideo, to join the Liberal forces fighting against Juan Manuel de Rosas in the Uruguayan Civil War. Since the 1830s, the prolonged struggle, especially the perilous Siege of Montevideo, gained the considerable support and sympathy of progressive Europeans, and it was there that Garibaldi first gained his reputation as a freedom fighter. With the European revolutions crushed, the war in Uruguay seemed to offer Türr the only place where he could still "contribute to the protection of freedom against oppression and tyranny".
Had Türr carried out this plan, his subsequent career might have been considerably different. However, at Genoa, they were faced with a firm Austrian demand for the extradition of the Hungarian deserters. To save them, Türr falsely declared that they had all belonged to the former Piedmontese-Hungarian Legion that he had commanded and thus covered by the amnesty offered to these.
Türr gained the Piedmontese Government's permission to take the Hungarian troops to Switzerland, whose friendly Federal Council in turn obtained French permission for them to go to America. As the Austrians had not completely given up their demands, Türr personally conducted the exiled troops as they made their way on foot to Le Havre and saw them safely embarked to their destination.
From the Austrian point of view, the demand for the Hungarian troops' extradition turned out to be a serious blunder. Instead of letting Türr neatly get rid of himself and devote his energies to Latin American struggles, the Austrians themselves ensured that he would stay on in Europe and become an increasingly disturbing thorn in the Habsburg Empire's side.
Many of the Hungarian "Forty-Eighters" who arrived in the US at this time are known to have later fought on the Union side in the American Civil War. The ones sent off by Türr might have been among them.
Mazzinian conspiracies and the Crimean War
Between 1850 and 1853 the exile Türr, facing execution as a deserter should he return to Hungary, moved between Switzerland, France, England and Piedmont.
In the early 1850s he became closely involved with fellow exile in Mazzinian conspiracies, such as the failed Milan uprising of 6 February 1853.
Following the outbreak of the Crimean War Türr was also involved in the plan of György Klapka, former War Minister of the 1848 revolutionary Hungarian government, to raise a force of Hungarian exiles to fight against Russia, whose intervention in 1848–49 had tipped the scales against the Hungarian rebels.
Even before the Crimean War, a considerable number of exiled Hungarians had already taken service with the Ottomans, some reaching high positions without having to convert to Islam (see Islam in Hungary). During the Siege of Kars in eastern Anatolia, Hungarian exiles took an active part in defending this border city against the invading Russians.
As Türr would later disclose to Italian friends, supporting the Ottoman Empire against the Russian Empire was far less satisfactory to him than taking part in the Italian struggle for liberation. It was more in the nature of "serving one barbarism, out of the hatred of another barbarism"."Servire un barbaro per odio contro un altro barbaro", quoted in Giuseppe Cesare Abba, "Storia dei Mille", 1904, .
Arrest by the Austrians, court martial, release
During the Crimean War, in 1855 Türr was required to procure supplies for the British forces in the Danubian Principalities, at the time occupied by Austria though not annexed to the Habsburg Empire. He trusted to the protection of the British and to promises of safe-conduct by locally stationed Austrian officers, which were apparently overruled by Vienna.
In Bucharest Türr was arrested and sent on to Kronstadt (the present Brașov), where he was interrogated and court-martialed. He was sentenced to death for desertion and treason ("seeking to detach Italy and Hungary from Austrian rule"). However, the Emperor commuted his punishment to perpetual banishment, due to the strong British protests, apparently involving Queen Victoria personally.
At the time, the whole affair got considerable press attention all over Europe, and on his release Türr published a long and detailed account of it.* "Narrative of the arrest, trial, & condemnation of Colonel Türr" by István Türr, 48 p English translation of the Austrian original, published in London, 1856.
Disputed British naturalization
It was in 1856, after this intervention to save him that Turr asked for British citizenship. This was granted, but his naturalization was thereafter strongly contested, as can be seen from a then-classified British document stating tersely: