Thank you 1848 Hungarian Revolution for another long weekend

Today (March 15th) is a national holiday in Hungary and our school was nice enough to give all the teachers yesterday off as well, effectively giving everyone a 4-day weekend. Unfortunately, we will need to work on a Saturday in April to make up for the extra day. Still, that's not so bad as we have heard that most Hungarians also need to work this coming Saturday to make up for national holiday. Huh? What's the point of a national holiday if you need to work an extra day some other time to make up for it?

Anyway, the national holiday on March 15th each year commemorates the events of the Hungarian Revolution which began on March 15th 1848. The Revolution was an attempt to put an end to Austrian (or Habsburg) rule in Hungary, and it began as a series of mass demonstrations in Buda and Pest, followed by various uprisings throughout the country. 

At first, the Revolution achieved great success. This was mainly because the Austrians were too busy fighting off other insurrections throughout their kingdom to pay much attention to Hungary. This allowed Hungarian reformists to quickly declare Hungary's new government and appoint the first Prime Minister. A number of other changes to the political system were also introduced during this period of independence.

Unfortunately, by September 1848, the Austrians were no longer distracted by other insurrections, and they turned their attention to confronting the Hungarian reformists. Almost a year of armed conflict ensued. The Hungarians initially achieved several victories, however this did not last long. By June 1849, Austria had teamed up with the Russian Empire and a 200,000-strong Russian force invaded Hungary and made short work of bringing the vastly outnumbered Hungarians back into line. On August 13th 1849 the Hungarians surrendered to the Russians, who then handed the army over to the Habsburgs.

Despite its ultimate defeat, the Revolution succeeding in initiating a chain of events that would utimately lead to the autonomy of Hungary within the new Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. But that's a whole other history lesson...

Today, March 15th remains an important national day in Hungary. Red, white and green cockades (kokárda) are worn to commemorate the fallen revolutionaries and the ideal of the Revolution. Red symbolizes strength, white stands for fidelity, and green for hope. 

Interestingly, the cockades worn to commemorate the Hungarian Revolution are a bit unusual. It is customary for a cockade to be 'read' or deciphered from the inside out. So the true Hungarian cockade should be red on the inside, then white, then green on the outer edge. This corresponds to the colours on the Hungarian flag - red at the top, white in the middle and green on the bottom. 

However, the first Hungarian cockade was sewn by a woman named Szendrey Júlia - wife of the famous Hungarian poet Petőfi Sándor - and she was obviously unaware of the rules associated with the correct way to read a cockade. As a result, she made the first Hungarian cockade with the green stripe on the inside. This mistake was then copied by countless others and today almost all Hungarians wear the incorrect colours. 

I'm not sure how true this story is, but I think it adds a certain amount of extra character to the Hungarian cockade. I'm also curious to know how Italy feels about the Hungarians unofficially stealing their pattern.

 - Amanda