The well-meaning but weak king Zedekiah he denounces with bitter scorn as a perjured traitor (xvii).
In April 1849, when the Hungarians had won many successes, after sounding the army, he issued the celebrated declaration of Hungarian independence, in which he declared that "the house of HabsburgLorraine, perjured in the sight of God and man, had forfeited the Hungarian throne."
Gregory, still supported by Naples, Hungary, Bavaria, and by Rupert, king of the Romans, found protection with Ladislaus, and in a synod at Cividale del Friuli banned Benedict and Alexander as schismatical, perjured and scandalous.
The news of this manifesto, arriving as it did simultaneously with that of Gdrgei's successes, destroyed the last vestiges of a desire of the Hungarian revolutionists to compromise, and on the 14th of April, on the motion of Kossuth, the diet proclaimed the independence of Hungary, declared the house of Habsburg as false and perjured, for ever excluded from the throne, and elected Kossuth president of the Hungarian Republic. This was an execrable blunder in the circumstances, and the results were fatal to the national cause.
Hearsay evidence and the testimony of the perjured informer Lord Howard, whom Sidney had been instrumental in introducing to his friends, were first produced.