Lajos Kossuth

Born into lesser Hungarian nobility in 1802, Kossuth worked as a lawyer and journalist before his oratory lifted him from the gentry into revolutionary leadership. When the 1848 uprisings swept Europe, he became governor-president of the breakaway Hungarian State during its war of independence against Austria. The revolution failed by 1849, forcing him into exile. He toured Britain and America to wide acclaim - Horace Greeley called him unsurpassed among living orators and statesmen, Engels likened him to Danton and Carnot fused into one. He never returned to Hungary, dying in Turin in 1894 at 91, still the symbol abroad of a freedom that had slipped through his hands at home.