But before the Assembly could decide to act the crowd outside had taken sterner measures.  The speakers who immediately followed Fischhof had made little impression; then another doctor, named Goldmark, sprang up and urged the people to break into the Landhaus.  So, before the leaders of the Estates had decided what action to take, the doors were suddenly burst open, and Fischhof entered at the head of the crowd.  He announced that he had come to encourage the Estates in their deliberations, and to ask them to sanction the demands embodied in the petition of the people.  Montecuccoli assured the deputation that the Emperor had already promised to summon the Provincial Assemblies to Vienna, and that, for their part, the Estates of Lower Austria were in favor of progress.  “But,” he added, “they must have room and opportunity to deliberate.”  Fischhof assented to this suggestion, and persuaded his followers to withdraw to the courtyard.  But those who had remained behind had been seized with a fear of treachery, and a cry arose that Fischhof had been arrested.  Thereupon Fischhof showed himself, with Montecuccoli, on the balcony; and the President promised that the Estates would send a deputation of their own to the Emperor to express to him the wishes of the people.  He therefore invited the crowd to choose twelve men, to be present at the deliberations of the Estates during the drawing up of the petition.  While the election of these twelve was still going on, a Hungarian student appeared with the German translation of Kossuth’s speech.  The Hungarian’s voice being too weak to make itself heard, he handed the speech to a Tyrolese student, who read it to the crowd.  The allusion to the need of a constitution was received with loud applause, and so also was the expression of the hopes for good from the Archduke Francis Joseph.

But however much the reading of the speech had encouraged the hopes of the crowd, it had also given time for the Estates to decide on a course without waiting for the twelve representatives of the people; and, before the crowd had heard the end of Kossuth’s speech the reading was interrupted by a message from the Estates announcing the contents of their proposed petition.  The petition had shrunk to the meagre demand that a report on the condition of the state bank should be laid before the Estates, and that a committee should be chosen from Provincial Assemblies to consider timely reforms and to take a share in legislation.

The feeble character of the proposed compromise roused a storm of scorn and rage; and a Moravian student tore the message of the Estates into pieces.  The conclusion of Kossuth’s speech roused the people to still further excitement; and, with cries for a free constitution, for union with Germany, and against alliance with Russia, the crowd once more broke into the Assembly.

One of the leading students then demanded of Montecuccoli whether this was the whole of the petition they intended to send to the Emperor.  Montecuccoli answered that the Estates had been so disturbed in their deliberations that they had not been able to come to a final decision.  But he declared that they desired to lay before the Emperor all the wishes of the people.