Some said the Hungarians had copied the French and erected a guillotine in the center of Budapest, executing their opponents every day; Archduke Stephen and his family had died beneath its blade.
Most accounts spoke of torture: pear of anguish, iron maiden, rack, drill, impalement, rat torture, breaking wheel, and drawing and quartering.
The stories of how Archduke Stephen and his family had behaved varied just as widely. Some said they had been dragged out like dogs, wagging their tails and begging the executioners for mercy.
Others said they had faced torture without fear, meeting death with their heads held high, and even stared straight into the executioner's blade, scaring the masked headsman into pissing himself.
Some painted them as saints, striding toward the scaffold to protect the innocent. Others even claimed that, before their deaths, every member of Archduke Stephen's family had delivered a stirring speech.
The monarchs who had just abolished their constitutions were now in striking agreement: every one of them wanted to eat the Hungarians alive.
Before the French Revolution, no one had dared lay a hand on a royal family. Even defeat or the most reactionary policies did not put their lives in danger.
But the French Revolution had shattered that ironclad rule. To ordinary people, executing kings and nobles was no longer unthinkable; for a time, it had even become a form of after-dinner entertainment.
Decades after the Vienna Conference, they had finally managed to forget the fear buried in their hearts. Now the Hungarians had stirred it up again—and fear, when pushed to its limit, turned to rage.
Of course, that rage had a solid foundation: Austria's invincible army, and, in particular, Louis Philippe and the new King of the Kingdom of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II.
Faced with the double pressure of France