At an event to commemorate leaders of Hungary’s revolution and freedom fight executed by Austria in 1849, President János Áder said the life and death of Count Lajos Batthyány, prime minister of Hungary’s first independent government, reminds Hungarians of the value of a country’s freedom and independence.
“Batthyány not only died for Hungary but also lived, worked and fought for it,” President Áder said at the event held at the Budapest mausoleum of the martyred prime minister.
According to MTI, the President said the revolution and freedom fight of 1848 were linked by the era of civic transformation. The few months that separated the revolution and the freedom fight saw the birth of a new homeland through the enactment of new laws and the achievements of Hungary’s reform era, he added. This was the era in which Hungary restocked its treasury, established the conditions for political stability and embarked on new state developments, he noted.
President Áder said Batthyány’s government was able to lay the foundations of Hungary’s autonomy within a matter of a few months, noting that this process had often taken decades or centuries for countries “that were luckier in their histories”.
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