User:Sylvain1975/Hungarian Revolution of 1848

The birth and organization of the Hungarian army

The military policy of the Batthyány government

The fifth point of the most important document of the revolution from 15 March 1848 from Pest (the Twelve Points), demanded the foundation of a "National Guard" (Hungarian: nemzetőrség). This was a typical institution of the revolutions of the 19th century. Despite this, the laws passed by the Batthyány government in March–April 1848 made no specific reference to the creation of a Hungarian army. According to the article XXII of the April Laws, the National Guard was to be set up to serve as an internal law enforcement mechanism.

The tenth of the Twelve Points of the Revolution of 15 March was to replace the foreign troops in Hungary with Hungarian regiments stationed abroad. The Batthyány government considered to achieve this goal as soon as possible. There was still some hope that the Hungarian cavalry and infantry regiments stationed in Galicia, Bohemia, and Austria could be sent home. However, the Habsburgs felt there was no question of sending home the Hungarian units fighting in the imperial and royal (K.u.K.) army in Northern Italy. Most of the 4th (Alexander), 6th (Württemberg), and 9th (Nicholas) Hussar regiments were legally repatriated from Austria, Bohemia, and Galicia, except for one squadron of the 6th Hussar regiment which deserted earlier from Galicia, coming back to Hungary at the end of May 1848.

The creation of the National Guard and the Honvéd Army

The National Guard was designed to be used for internal law enforcement. Above a certain property census, everyone had to be a National Guard, either on foot or mounted. The local authorities mobilized the National Guard when needed. National Guard units were trained by old soldiers or retired officers. They mainly mustered at weekends, so they were not a permanent military force suitable for war in the field. They were ‘citizen soldiers’ ("polgárkatonák"), as they were called then. The authorities tried to provide arms for them, but mostly they used their own weapons and equipment. The amount of weapons allocated to them was never enough. Another disadvantage of the National Guard was that they only served for two to eight weeks at a time, so by the time they got used to being soldiers, their period of service ended.

Hungarian national guard uniforms from 1848

In the Austrian Empire, military affairs in the provinces were administered by a number of general commands (German: General Kommando) under the control of the Habsburg administration. Before 1848, the troops stationed in Hungary consisted mainly of ethnic Austrian, Polish, Czech, Moravian, and Ukrainian units, while most of the Hungarian soldiers recruited and conscripted in Hungary were stationed abroad.

Due to the decisive action of Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány, on 7 May 1848 the Emperor placed the four military headquarters in Hungary (namely, Buda (most of Hungary), the Temesvár (Banat), the Pétervárad (Slavonia and Syrmia) and the Zagreb (Croatia) general commandments), under control of the Batthyány government. It was only on 10 June, when the union with Transylvania was ratified, that the general command in Nagyszeben (Transylvania) was ordered to comply with the Hungarian government's decrees. However, these general commands’ loyalty to the Hungarian Government left much to be desired. Their commanders had grown up in the spirit of absolute loyalty to the monarch and the idea of imperial unity, while most of the troops under their command were foreigners who were largely unwilling to obey the Hungarian government. The Batthyány government therefore knew that they could not be relied in case of a foreign attack or internal revolt.

To create an army capable of sacrifice for the national cause, the National Guard had to be transformed into a proper military force. The core unit of the National Guard was the battalion (usually each city mustered one, while each county mustered from one to four battalions). By the summer of 1848, the total number of Hungarian national guards had reached 350,000-380,000, but this figure does not include the Transylvanian or Croatian national guards. Of this significant number, only 6000 were mounted.

Teibler Eisler Ferenc Hungarian national guard

The repatriation of Hungarian military units from abroad was a very slow process. Still, the government needed to provide an armed force as soon as possible, because right then it seemed that there were not enough forces in Hungary to defend the country. The Hungarian leaders therefore decided to create a volunteer army. On 26 April, the government established a separate ‘volunteer’ or ‘mobile’ national guard of 10,000 men: the ‘Honvéd’ (literally, ‘Defenders of the Fatherland’, which remains the official name of the Hungarian armed forces to this day).

The creation of the first ten Honvéd battalions began in mid-May by the end of July, most of them were already fighting against the Serb insurgents in the South. By contrast with the simple national guard (who only served for two to eight weeks at a time, as mentioned earlier), a volunteer national guard had to sign up to serve for three years. The volunteers were promised that they would not be taken across the border and would only be deployed as a police force within the country. However, the officers, equipment and weaponry provided to them indicated that this would not be like other countries' national guard but a regular military force. As a result its members started to be called "Honvéd", a direct translation of the Austrian "Landwehr". The Hungarian leadership tried to mislead the Habsburg government in Vienna (which was totally against the creation of a Hungarian army) by describing the members of these battalions as volunteer national guards, not soldiers.

József Borsos: Nemzetőr

In Transylvania, the organization of two volunteer Honvéd battalions did not begin until the end of the summer of 1848 and they only became operational in October–November 1848. In mid-August Batthyány initiated the organization of new volunteer mobile national guard units. In the autumn, most of these were then transformed into Honvéd (army) battalions. Thus, Hungary’s armed forces were created from former Hungarian units of the Imperial and Royal (K.u.K.) army and the Honvéd and mobile volunteer National Guard battalions. Starting from the autumn of 1848, their mission was to defend the country's independence.

The Hungarian National Assembly began debating a conscription law on 16 August 1848, long after fight against the Serb insurrection in the south began on 12 June and shortly before the start of the actual war of independence (Josip Jelačić's invasion of Hungary on 11 September). On 26–29 August, the Parliament passed the bill to introduce conscription, but King Ferdinand V refused to ratify it. Because of Jelačić's invasion on 11 September, the Parliament passed a resolution the next day to implement the conscription law. Based on this parliamentary resolution, Batthyány ordered the establishment of new Honvéd units on 14 September, to be filled by conscription. From then on, the new recruits were only organized into Home Guard battalions. On 16 September, the Parliament approved Pál Nyáry's motion that each municipality should provide two recruits for every 127 men eligible for conscription. Thus, the majority of the Hungarian army was no longer made up of volunteers, but of conscripts. By the end of the year the number of Honvéd battalions reached 66.

The National Defence Committee (OHB) and the organization of the Honvéd army

After the Habsburg king of Hungary, Ferdinand V, forced the Batthyány government to resign at the beginning of September 1848, the country was again left without executive power. After 28 September, the National Defence Committee (Országos Honvédelmi Bizottmány, OHB) exercised power, first temporarily and then, following a parliamentary decision on 8 October, permanently. Lajos Kossuth was elected president of the OHB, which functioned as a government.

The organization of the Honvéd army

In October 1848, the OHB ordered all units of the Hungarian army to adopt the Hungarian colors (red-white-green); then on 27 November Kossuth issued a decree stating that all units had taken the oath of allegiance to the constitution and adopted the Hungarian colors. The Hungarian army’s infantry comprised the former line regiments, the newly formed Honvéd battalions, the volunteer mobile national guard battalions, and other volunteer troops. The Jägers were special forces. The first Jäger unit was organized by Prince Mieczyslaw Woroniecki in the summer of 1848. The others were formed in the autumn and winter of that year. Unlike the K.u.K. Army, however, these were divided into regiments, and these into squadrons (two companies).

Ferenc Klimkovics - Hungarian soldiers resting after the march

The Hungarian Army’s cavalry consisted of hussar units stationed in the country; those who had deserted and come home from abroad; the newly established hussar regiments; and some cavalry in the foreign legions fighting alongside the Hungarians (the Polish Uhlans). The fighting style and equipment of particular hussar regiments varied. The troopers of the Hunyadi Hussars were more like Csikós (cowboys) and Betyárs (outlaws) than hussars: instead of sabers, they often used long bullwhips that could inflict serious wounds from a distance or to pull enemy riders from the saddle, giving their opponents an unpleasant surprise. They were only referred to as Csikós in the K.u.K. war reports. It could be said that the Honvéd Army – unlike the K.u.K. army – had no heavy cavalry. At the end of December 1848, the creation of a regiment of Honvéd Cuirassiers began but was then halted due to the evacuation of the capital and lack of equipment.

Hungarian soldiers of 1848. From left to right: Hunyadi infantry, Honvéd Artillerist, Lehel Hussar, Hunyadi Hussar

The artillery was established by the Batthyány government. Honvéd batteries consisted of 8 guns, whereas the K.u.K. batteries had only 6. In the battles, this gave the Honvéd artillery a greater firepower. The gunners were a mixture of former K.u.K. artillerymen and young Hungarians with education in engineering. The artillery became perhaps the best combat arm in the Hungarian army. The K.u.K. and Russian officers were convinced that the Hungarian guns were being served by French artillerymen and were astonished to find that they had been schooled by youngsters of 16 or 18.

The first combat engineer units appeared in September 1848 when sapper troops were created for the volunteer mobile national guards, but the first combat engineer battalions were not established until November when the war of independence was already in full swing. The sapper battalions played a major role in the winter of 1848–1849 when they worked very hard to enable the troops to move through the mountain passes, mine tunnels, and cross the rivers. Until the end of the War of Independence, a total of four battalions were formed.

As mentioned above, the volunteer units included the initial ten Honvéd battalions and the volunteer mobile national guards. Beside these, there were also guerillas also belonged to the volunteer units. The latter were intended to wage guerrilla warfare in the enemy's rear. Over time, however, most of them became regular units and fought as part of the army, just like the honvéds and volunteer national guards. Some of them were reorganized as a regular honvéd battalion. The irregular units formed in the winter of 1848–1849 were mostly used against national insurgents in Transylvania and in Southern Hungary. Their equipment and discipline were both poor, and both the civilian population and the military authorities complained about them frequently and with good reason.

Hussar regiments

There were 12 hussar regiments in the Habsburg Empire, all of them raised in the Lands of the Hungarian Crown governed by the Habsburgs (Hungary, Croatia and Transylvania). A hussar regiment's establishment strength was 1,792 men and 1,388 horses, each division having 369 men. The basic unit within a regiment was the squadron. A hussar regiment consisted of four divisions, each of two squadrons. In addition to the eight regimental squadrons, the hussar regiments had also a reserve squadron that was only mobilized in time of war, as well as the regimental headquarters and the depot detachment. The divisions were named according to the rank of their commanders: colonel's division, lieutenant colonel's, first major's, and second major's. The squadrons were numbered within each division. The squadrons were further divided into two wings and each wing into two troops. The troops were also numbered within the division so that the odd-numbered troops made up the 1st squadron and the even-numbered troops the 2nd squadron.

At the beginning of the War of Independence, there were 12 hussar regiments in the Habsburg Empire: the Imperial (1st), Hannover (2nd), Ferdinand (3rd), Alexander (4th), Radetzky (5th), Württemberg (6th), Reuss (7th), Coburg (8th), Nicholas (9th), Wilhelm (10th), Székely (11th) and Palatine (12th). In the autumn of 1848, the Hungarian army command decided to create six new Hussar regiments: Hunyadi (13th), Lehel (14th), Mátyás (15th), Károlyi (16th), Bocskai (17th) and Attila (18th).

Since the Hungarian cavalry consisted almost exclusively of hussars, equipped and trained for irregular combat, they were not ideally suited to take on the Habsburg army's heavy cavalry or lance-armed uhlans, nor its infantry, especially when it formed battalion squares, or against the artillery. The hussars were at a disadvantage when they had to stand against the K.u.K. or Russian massed cavalry charges. Nevertheless, during the War of Independence, the Hungarian army command was often forced to use them in such situations (for example, in the Battle of Komárom on 2 July 1849), because it lacked other types of cavalry. However, it can be said that the hussars adapted to this less-than-ideal situation and, for the most part, accomplished their tasks on the battlefield. Yet they achieved their greatest successes when they attacked the enemy from the flanks, from the rear, or in ambushes.

Legions raised from other nationalities

The Polish, German, Viennese, and Italian foreign legions were created partly from volunteers and partly from the POWs or soldiers defecting from the K.u.K. and Russian armies. They numbered about 6,000 in total. The Poles particularly distinguished themselves: in the battles during the winter of 1848–1849, the self-sacrificing rearguard actions of the Polish Legion saved the retreating Hungarian troops from disaster on several occasions.

The Polish diaspora in Western Europe did not only help the cause of the War of Independence by recruiting volunteers and sending them to Hungary. From the winter of 1848, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski's diplomatic network based in Paris made great efforts to reconcile the Hungarians with the nationalities that were fighting on the emperor's side. To this end, his envoys also contacted the Serbian government and Romanian emigrés.

Production and procurement of weapons

There was no weapons production in Hungary before 1848, thus one of the most important tasks for the Hungarian government was to launch it. On 29 April 1848, Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány signed a contract with the Machine and Iron Foundry Company from Pest, according to which the government granted an interest-free loan to the factory and ordered 100,000 bayonetted firearms. In return, the company agreed to produce 500 muskets, a day starting from 15 November. Until the end of September 1848, the factory only repaired and modified old weapons. Even after then, it did not make new muskets entirely from raw materials but only repaired and modified old ones using the stocks from the armories. On 14 November Kossuth took measures to nationalize the factory. After that, it operated under the name National Armament Factory (Állami Országos Fegyvergyár). At the beginning of January 1849, because of the Austrian occupation of Pest, the Armament Factory was moved to Nagyvárad, where it operated until July–August 1849. In addition to this factory, about 20 factories of various sizes were engaged in the production of arms and their components from the autumn of 1848, followed by about 40 more in the spring of 1849. These were mainly located in the traditional industrial areas of the country, but from the autumn of 1848 arms and ammunition production also started in Székely Land (which was far from being an industrial zone), thanks to the ingenious Áron Gábor.

Foreign purchases were another source of weapons. By October 1848, Lieutenant Soma Sztankó had bought and sent home nearly 25,000 modern percussion muskets. Some of the machines needed for producing weapons were also smuggled into the country from abroad in the winter of 1848–1849.

Feeding and equipping the army

Artúr Görgei proposed to Kossuth to create a commissariat (intendantúra) that would organize a professional staff to arrange supplies for the army. This was to be led by an intendant who answered directly to the commander-in-chief. From the spring of 1849, this institution was responsible for keeping the main Hungarian army supplied. In the other Hungarian armies, provisioning was the responsibility of the government commissioners (kormánybiztos), although almost all corps commanders appointed a food or general commissioner for their corps.

The soldiers usually only received a bread ration. Anything else had to be bought from their pay. However, for this to work, there always had to be supplies available to buy. This was achieved with the help of the victuallers. A continuous supply of clothing and equipment was important to keep the army operational. This was achieved in two ways. On the one hand, the county authorities took care of the needs of the units raised in or passing through their counties. On the other hand, the government organized a central supply system.

The National Uniform Commission was created by the military clothing committee in Óbuda. This commission brought together the work of various companies of all sizes, small factories, and guilds, from which it obtained semi-finished products. The necessary equipment was then created from these by the Commission. They tried to build up stocks of equipment. The Commission was also responsible for the dispatch of supply consignments, which were assembled according to units’ needs.

Transport

Transport was usually carried out with the so-called Előfogat (German: Vorspann) of the settlements on the way. The Előfogat system obliged each locality to carry out military transport for a fee. However, this was a one-off obligation for a limited distance and time. Thus, the transported supplies had to be transshipped and kept waiting several times until they reached their destination. This system often caused delays and unnecessary waiting. This was compounded by the country's poor road network.

The Vác–Pest–Szolnok railway line, which offered very favorable transport conditions, was used for supply purposes. The horse-drawn railway line connecting Nagyszombat with Szered was also used for moving troops.

River boats also offered fast and reliable transport.

Medical care

Throughout the War of Independence, the government and the civilian population made every effort to care for the wounded. In the army, each battalion or regiment had its own doctor and sub-physician (the latter often also performed the veterinary duties required for cavalry and artillery). Within the army there were no dedicated personnel for transporting the wounded, who were therefore carried to the first aid stations by their comrades. Wounded soldiers were treated in field hospitals, and the convalescents and the lightly wounded were sent to the larger towns. Bandages (from strips of cloth) were supplied to the army by the population. On 16 April 1849, Lajos Kossuth appointed his sister Zsuzsanna Kossuth as the national chief nurse, but Hungary's defeat prevented the establishment of a nationwide nursing service. The government promised land and a cash reward to soldiers who were invalided out.

The nationalities and the Hungarian revolution

The deputies in the last Hungarian Diet hoped that the April laws would extend civil liberties to the whole population of the country, regardless of nationality, religion, or social status, and that the emancipation of the serfs (which affected the majority of the population) would form a basis on which the peoples of the country could build a democratic Hungary by working together. The ideal of the Hungarian liberals was a bourgeois nation-state with a single market and a monolingual administration. The government was therefore surprised when many of the country's ethnic minorities made demands concerning their language rights and autonomy in the spring of 1848.

Nationalities against the Hungarian revolution

The Slovak national movement

The Slovak movement proved to be the weakest and the one that was easiest to handle by law enforcement. The emancipation of the serfs satisfied most of the Slovak peasantry. The majority of the Slovak population was Catholics, thus the Slovak national movement, led largely by Lutheran pastors, had little chance of gaining wide popularity among the Slovak population. At their meeting in Liptószentmiklós on 10–11 May, the leaders of the Slovak national movement demanded national equality, an independent national assembly, and proportional representation in the parliament, as well as redress for previous excesses by landlords, the liberation of the serfs and the abolition of the landlords' Jura regalia. However, the Batthyány government soon ordered the arrest of those who participated in this meeting as Pan-Slavist agitators, and they were forced to flee to Bohemia to escape.

The Croatian national movement

After the Hungarian revolution of March 1848, the Croatian nationalists' basic demands were the unification of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, the so-called Hungarian Seaside (Tengermellék) and the Croatian and Slavonian Military Frontier as the Triune Kingdom, and the right to communicate with the Hungarian authorities in Croatian.

On 23 March, Baron Josip Jelačić, a man very close to the Viennese court, was appointed as the new Ban of Croatia, and soon afterward also as commander of the Croatian Generalkommando. After he arrived in Zagreb, he severed all relations between Hungary and Croatia. Jelačić did not promulgate the April laws passed by the Batthyány government but announced the emancipation of the serfs under his own authority. This very important benefit for the peasants was therefore attributed to him and not to the Hungarian government that technically had authority over Croatia. On 19 April, the Hungarian government invited Jelačić to Pest, but he refused to go. When the emperor suspended him from his position as Ban of Croatia, on 10 June in response to Hungarian demands, Jelačić claimed that Ferdinand V was forced to do so, so he ignored this suspension and continued to act as Ban. After July 1848, Jelačić acted as a total dictator without any control from the Sabor or legal authority.

The only result of the negotiations with Batthyány held in Vienna at the end of July was that Batthyány and the Ban agreed: in order to reduce tensions both sides would withdraw their troops from the Dráva river.

As long as the internal and foreign situation of the empire was uncertain, the Habsburg government pretended to support the Hungarian side. This was signified by the royal mandate of 10 June that suspended the Ban, but they did nothing to enforce this. However, as soon as the situation in the Italian theatre of operations improved, they revealed that they were fully on Jelačić's side. On 4 September, the emperor revoked Jelačić's suspension from 10 June.

Jelačić occupied Varasd (Varaždin) county in early June. In July, Jelačić made a tour of Slavonia and Syrmia and won the loyalty of the local border guard regiments stationed there. His troops invaded Verőce (Virovitica County) between 8 and 10 August, and then Szerém (Syrmia County) in mid-August. After the Croatian occupation of Vukovar and then Verőce, it became increasingly clear that the Croatian invasion of Hungary was only a matter of days away.

On 27 August, the Hungarian government decided to offer Croatia personal union and even the right to secede, but this was not enough for Jelačić; he did not want to negotiate at all. The Ban of Croatia continued to demand the same thing as Vienna: the abrogation of Hungary's independent monetary, military, and commercial affairs, which would have meant the end of all the revolutionary achievements of March and April and the end of the country's autonomy gained in the spring of 1848.

Due to the Croatian threat, on 2 June, the Palatine Stephen and the Minister of Internal Affairs Bertalan Szemere appointed László Csány as the Royal Commissioner of Zala, Somogy, Baranya, and Tolna counties. They charged him with the task of monitoring events on the other bank of the Dráva river with the help of the conscript troops and the national guard. By the end of July, the total number of Hungarian armed men on this 250–290 km stretch was just over 35,000. But then, two line battalions and thousands of national guardsmen were transferred to the Bácska front to fight the Serbs. Later on, more hussar squadrons, an Honvéd battalion, and two companies of volunteers arrived to reinforce the troops on the Dráva line. By the beginning of September, the total number of soldiers stationed there was about 24,000.

The Romanian national movement

The union of Transylvania and Hungary was a long-standing demand of the Hungarian public. It was also mentioned in the Twelve Points, and Article VII of the April Laws declared the reunion of the two countries. But for this decision to materialize, it also required the consent of the Transylvanian Diet. The Transylvanian Diet was convoked in Kolozsvár on 29 May voted in favor of the Union the next day. This was ratified by Ferdinand V on 10 June. The Transylvanian Saxons and Romanians had serious objections to the Union.

Most of the huge peasant masses were of Romanian nationality, while most of the nobility were Hungarians. The national assembly of the Transylvanian Romanians in Balázsfalva on 15–17 May demanded much more radical emancipation of the serfs than that formulated in the April laws, and at the same time demanded that the Romanians – along with the Hungarians, Székelys and Saxons – be recognized as the fourth Transylvanian nation (see Unio Trium Nationum, the union of the Hungarian nobility and the Székely and Saxon feudal "nations"), and that until this happened, the Transylvanian Diet should not discuss union with Hungary. The assembly's main speaker, Simion Bărnuțiu, also said that there was no point in joining forces with the Hungarians, because every bite on the table of Hungarian freedom is poisoned.

However, the Transylvanian Diet, which met from 29 May to 18 July, pointed to the fact, that with the creation of the Union, the anti-feudal April Laws would be implemented in Transylvania. Thus, there would no longer be any need for feudal nations, and the peoples of Transylvania would equally benefit from the blessings of civil liberties. The Diet therefore refused to recognize the Romanians as the fourth nation.

After the union of Transylvania and Hungary, during the summer, the Union Committee of the Hungarian National Parliament drafted its legislative proposals taking into account the national needs of the Romanians. The bill recognized the collective legal personality of the Romanians. Its 16 articles were based on the principle that the nationality and language of the Romanians shall be recognized. Not only did it ensure the use of Romanian in schools and in the church, but it also allowed its use in the public forums of the counties and cities, where Romanians participate in large numbers. It announced that in regions with a majority Romanian population, orders to the national guards would be given in Romanian, that Romanians should be employed in the administration of each region in proportion to their share of its population, and that Romanians should also be granted all the rights and privileges which other nationalities of the country enjoy or subsequently obtain by legislation. even though the Romanian leaders were aware of this bill, they sided with the Habsburgs against the Hungarian government. This was because, in early autumn of 1848, it seemed to them that the imminent Croatian attack, combined with the Serbian uprising and the imminent imperial offensive, would easily crush the independent Hungarian government, so they sided with the stronger party.

The Romanian peasantry, for whom national and linguistic rights were less important than economic ones, was dissatisfied with the way the serfs were freed. As the majority of the soldiers who crushed its protests (2 June at Mihálcfalva and 12 September at Aranyoslóna) were of Hungarian (Székely) nationality, the conflict between the Romanians and the government also became a conflict between these two nationalities. Colonel Karl von Urban, the commander of the Romanian border regiment in Naszód (Northern Transylvania), and the Transylvanian Generalkommando in Nagyszeben under Lieutenant General Anton Puchner did everything in their power to make the Romanian peasantry hope that the Habsburg government would grant all their wishes.

Nationalities allied with the Hungarians during the War of Independence

During the Hungarian War of Independence, of all the nationalities in Hungary, only the Croats and Serbs fought almost exclusively on the anti-Hungarian side. Even then, there were also Croatian and Serbian officers in the Hungarian military high command, such as the Serb János Damjanich or the Croat Károly Knezić. In the Hungarian Army there were dozens of battalions comprised almost entirely of Slovaks and Romanians. Research shows that there were about 30,000–40,000 Slovak soldiers in the Hungarian army and about 25,000 Romanians. Some of these were volunteers, while others were conscripts. Hungary’s Germans (with the exception of the Transylvanian Saxons) also supported the Hungarian army, and the German (Swabian) population of Bácska and Banat and the Saxons of Szepesség (Zipser Germans) contributed thousands of soldiers to the army. The great majority of the Armenians, Rusyns and Jews also supported the Hungarian cause.

The armies of the empires and nationalities attacking Hungary in 1848–1849

The Imperial-Royal (K.u.K.) Army

The K.u.K. Army consisted of two branches: the land army and the Adriatic fleet. The land army had three main combat arms: infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

Infantry

The infantry was divided into three branches: line Infantry (Linien-Infanterie), border guards and lightg infantry Jägers. The 58 line infantry regiments made up the largest part of the infantry.

The border guard infantry regiments were not only administrative but also territorial units: each border regiment's district corresponded to that of a small Hungarian county. The chain of regiments along the Military Frontier stretched from Dalmatia to the Galician border. This area was divided into regiments and the Court War Council in Vienna (Hofkriegsrat; then, from April 1848, the Imperial War Ministry) controlled them directly through the Generalkommandos. The Military Frontier district was divided into generalates that were subdivided into regimental and company districts, then again within the company districts into parishes consisting of several families, each under a voluntarily elected "head of the family" (i.e. a community head). Each parish received a certain amount of land as a military fief, and each had to provide a certain number of soldiers.

Distribution of the military units in the Habsburg Empire in February 1848.
- Red: Austrian units,
- Blue: Hungarian units,
- White: Troops of the Military Border Guard Regiments.
Monochrome color - Infantry unit,
Half white: Cavalry unit.

The border regiments stationed in Hungary and Transylvania were as follows: eight of them (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, X, XI) in Croatia, three (VII, VIII, IX) in Slavonia, three (XII, XIII, the Šajkaši regiment) in Banat, and four (XIV, XV, XVI, XVII) in Transylvania. The population of the border region was made up of Serb, Croat, Romanian, German, and Székely peasant soldiers. Thus, apart from the two Székely (XIV, XV) border regiments stationed in Transylvania, the other 16 (including the unnumbered Serbian Šajkaši regiment) were all non-Hungarian nationalities under Austrian command. These, therefore, formed a well-organized, armed base for the anti-Hungarian revolts launched by the Habsburgs.

The Jägers were specialist light infantry units. Their missions included reconnaissance, advance guard duties, and disrupting the advancing enemy infantry. They were particularly specialized for mountain and forest fighting. The Jägers' armament consisted of modern weapons with rifled barrels that were more accurate than the line infantry's smoothbore muskets. The Jäger formations consisted of the four battalions of the Tyrolean Jäger Regiment (Imperial Jägers) and 12 field battalions (Feldjäger-Battalions).

The infantry also included five garrison battalions, numbered from 2 to 6, consisting mostly of older soldiers and invalids; one of these was recruited from Hungary. These units defended the castles and forts. Border guard duties were also performed by the 1st and 2nd Cordon Battalions in Bukovina, which belonged to Galicia at that time.

The total strength of the K.u.K. infantry, not counting reserve companies, was about 400,000.

Cavalry

The cavalry of the K.u.K. Army was divided into heavy and light cavalry. The main task of the heavy cavalry was to decide the battle by charging to break the enemy line. The heavy cavalry consisted of the cuirassiers and dragoons. These were equipped with breastplates, helmets and double-edged swords, and were recruited in the Austrian Hereditary Provinces. Each of the six regiments of cuirassiers and the eight regiments of cragoons consisted of six to six squadrons, with 177 men per squadron. Each regiment had about 1,250 men, making 17,500 in total in the 14 heavy cavalry regiments.

The light cavalry's missions included reconnaissance, ambushing, and disrupting the enemy infantry. It was also generally assigned to protect the artillery since the greatest threat to the artillery (or more precisely to the gunners) was the sudden attack by enemy cavalry. The light cavalry was comprised of four lancer (Uhlan), seven chevauléger, and 12 hussar regiments. Of these, the hussars were the traditional Hungarian cavalry type, so all 12 imperial hussar regiments were recruited in Hungary and Transylvania. The other cavalry regiments were recruited from provinces outside Hungary and, together with the dragoons and the cuirassier regiments, were referred to as German cavalry.

Artillery

None of the five field artillery regiments of the K.u.K. Army was recruited from Hungary. Each artillery regiment had 18 companies with a total of 3,817 men. The Congreve rocket Corps (Raketen-Corps) consisted of three companies, and the Bombardier Corps (Bombardier-Corps) of five. The total number of men serving in the artillery was about 20,345.

During martial law, regiments deployed field batteries of six guns each. In 1848, the Imperial Army had about 200 cannon batteries and 16 rocket batteries. A battery usually consisted of four cannons and two howitzers. The guns ranged in size from 6-pounder to 12-pounder. Ten-, 30- or 60-pounder mortars were used for sieges, as were 24-pounder cannon batteries.

The Congreve rockets (the ancestors of modern rocket launchers and mine-throwers) were capable of launching six- and twelve-pound projectiles.

Engineer corps

The K.u.K. army also had an engineer corps: eight entrenching companies, six companies of miners, and three sapper battalions. The entrenching and mining companies had 150 men each. Two of the sapper battalions consisted of six companies, one of four. The total number of men in the engineer corps was 4,400.

None of the artillery or engineer units were recruited in Hungary.

Forces of the nationalities allied with Austria

Serb troops

The Serbian insurgent forces in Southern Hungary (Délvidék) consisted of three major components. The most valuable and largest component was made up of active and reserve soldiers from the rebellious border regiments. The Pétervárad, German, Wallachian, and Serb-Banat border guard regiments, plus the Titel Šajkaši battalion, mustered a total of 16 battalions. The second component was the irregular militia units recruited from the Serbian population of the southern Hungarian counties. The third composed of the volunteers coming across the border from the Principality of Serbia, known as Servians. Their numbers are not known, but estimates range from a few hundred to tens of thousands. The border guards used the same smoothbore muskets as the Imperial Infantry; the militias and national guardsmen were equipped with weapons obtained from various sources, while the Servians brought their weapons with them from the Balkans.

There is no exact data on the total number of Serbian troops: in early July 1848, their number was estimated at 29,000–30,000; in early September, 26,000; and at the end of October, 21,000, with about 100–104 guns. They did not have any serious artillery, mostly just the 3-pounder guns of the border guard regiments, although they acquired six-, twelve- and QF 18-pounder guns when they captured the Titel arsenal. Interestingly, the Serbs did not have any cavalry worth mentioning and only a few of the Croatian Seressaner fought on horseback. However, the Serbs made themselves extremely mobile by the fact that their camps had hundreds of peasant wagons on constant standby, each of which could quickly transport five or six fighters from one place to another. Cavalry support was provided as necessary by the K.u.K. cavalry regiments stationed there.

Croatian troops

The bulk of the Croatian force was made up of battalions from the Croatian, Slavonian, and Syrmian border guard regiments. Excluding the Pétervárad regiment, there were ten border guard regiments with a total of 28 battalions fighting on the Croatian side. These were joined by the six squadrons of the Croatian Ban's or Banderial Hussar Regiment, recruited from the Pandurs from Zagreb County. The bulk of the Croatian artillery was also provided by the personnel of the border guard regiments. Militia (or popular insurgent) battalions (Aufgeboth- or Populations-Bataillons) were recruited from the districts of the border guard regiments, while the masses of the popular insurrections (Massel-Insurrection) came from the territories of the Croatian counties. However, the military value of the latter was almost nil and all they were fit for was guard duty and observation.

The total number of troops deployed by the Croatian and Slavonic–Syrmian regions during the War of Independence cannot be determined with absolute certainty, but in September 1848 it exceeded 60,000. Together with the units sent to replace losses and the temporarily mobilized semi-regular troops, it could have reached (perhaps even exceeded) 80,000.

Romanian troops

It is difficult to estimate the actual number of men deployed by the Romanians during the War of Independence. There are 12 legions in total, organized on the Ancient Roman model. There are no numerical records of how many men fought in a Romanian legion. One of the Hungarian summaries of the military events affirms that 195,000 Romanian rebels were fighting against the Hungarians during the 1848–1849 War of Independence, and estimates the number of Romanians resisting in the Transylvanian Ore Mountains in the spring and summer of 1849 at 40,000; an imperial summary estimates the total number of Romanian and Saxon national guardsmen and insurgents at 100,000. The fact is that the imperial command could do little with this untrained mass: it used them to make good the losses from the regular battalions, and smaller units of a few hundred were temporarily attached to the regular troops.

The Romanian militias' and insurrectionists' armament was rather rudimentary. It consisted of mostly spears, homemade axes, hunting rifles of dubious effectiveness, and (to a very small extent) modern weapons from the K.u.K. armories. Many of their weapons were acquired during raids on Hungarian settlements and noble mansions in Transylvania. They had no cavalry, and their artillery consisted of cannons made from pipes from pumping machinery used in the mining district (other sources say that they made wooden cannons).

In open terrain, they were usually beaten and scattered by the Hungarian troops. They could only inflict serious losses in the mountains: for example in May 1849 at Abrudbánya and in early July 1849 at Havasnagyfalu, when they were able to exploit the mountainous terrain and assert their overwhelming numerical superiority over the scattered Hungarian forces.

Slovak troops

The Slovak legion fighting alongside the K.u.K. troops during the War of Independence was always small. In early December 1848, its strength was 200. By forced recruitment, this was increased to 800 in mid-January 1849 and 1,800 at the end of February 1849. However, on 26 February 1849, the Gömör County National Guard – mostly of Slovak nationality – defeated a considerable portion of this force at Murányváralja. On 7 April 1849, it suffered a further defeat at Eperjes. The survivors were reorganized near Pozsony in May 1849 and a K.u.K. major named Henryk Lewartowski was assigned to command them. This 800–900-strong unit was then used to "pacify" Upper Hungary from the end of the summer until the legion was formally disbanded in November 1849.

The legion was largely armed with the same weapons as the K.u.K. army. It had no cavalry or artillery.

Russian army

The Russian army that decided the fate of the Hungarian War of Independence in the summer of 1849 was organized as six infantry corps, a guard corps, a grenadier corps, three reserve cavalry corps, the occupation corps securing the regions of Caucasus, Finland, Orenburg, and Siberia, as well as reserve and irregular troops.

Each of the six infantry corps consisted of three infantry divisions, a light cavalry division and an artillery division. The infantry divisions consisted of two infantry brigades (one of line infantry and one of Jäger). Each brigade had two regiments of four battalions each. The establishment strength of a corps was 50,640; of a division, 16,880; of a brigade, 8,440; of a regiment, 4,220; and of a battalion, 1.055.

The corps' light cavalry divisions were divided into a lancer (Uhlan) brigade and a hussar brigade, each of two regiments of 800 men. The number of mounted soldiers fighting in an Uhlan and Hussar regiments was 1,401, in a brigade was 2,802 and in a division was 5,604.

The artillery division of the infantry corps comprised of four brigades. Each infantry division had an artillery brigade consisting of four batteries, with 12 guns per battery. The light cavalry divisions had a mounted artillery brigade made up of two batteries, with 8 guns per battery. The artillery brigade assigned to the 1st Infantry Division had two heavy and two light batteries, while the 2nd and 3rd Artillery Brigades assigned to the 2nd and 3rd Infantry Divisions had one heavy and three light batteries. The heavy batteries consisted of 6 twelve-pounder guns and 6 howitzers of a half pood (1 pood = 16,38 kg), while a light battery had 8 six-pounder guns and 4 howitzers of a quarter pood. The light cavalry batteries consisted of 4 six-pounder cannons and a howitzer of 4 ¼-poods. The heavy infantry battery had 319 soldiers, the light infantry battery had 253 soldiers, and the light cavalry battery had 226 soldiers. The total number of soldiers in an artillery division was therefore 3,752, with a total of 160 guns.

Each corps in the Russian army consisted of several units, including a battalion of riflemen and a battalion of trench sappers (engineers). Each battalion had four companies and 1,055 personnel. Additionally, each infantry and Jäger regiment had a transportation company of 288 men, which were organized into three battalions per corps, totaling 3,456 men. Train battalions were also assigned to cavalry and artillery battalions, as well as riflemen and trench sapper battalions. The total number of soldiers in a Russian infantry corps was approximately 68,000.

The Grenadier and Guards Corps were structured in the same way as the Infantry Corps.

The reserve cavalry corps consisted of three divisions, with the I and II divisions each having two cavalry brigades, one cuirassier and an Uhlan division. A cavalry brigade had two regiments, each of them having six hundred men. Additionally, there was an artillery division of four batteries (32 guns) and a train (transportation) platoon. The cavalry batteries were equipped with 8 cannons of half pood. The size of a division was approximately 5,000, and a reserve cavalry corps had 10,000 personnel.

The III. Reserve Cavalry Corps, also known as the Dragoon Corps, had two divisions, two brigades per division, and two dragoon regiments of ten companies per brigade (1757 men per regiment). The corps also had a mounted sappers squadron, with two companies. The dragoons were trained for infantry combat: 8 of their companies were equipped with bayonet firearms, which they carried on their shoulders without bayonets, while the remaining 2 companies were equipped with spears. In the event of infantry fighting, two-thirds of them dismounted, and the remaining third held the horses. Those who dismounted formed an infantry battalion, while the spearmen always remained on horseback. The number of soldiers in the Dragoons Corps was around 15,500.

The Emperor of Russia's irregular cavalry comprised 844-man Cossack regiments, each with six companies. Every four regiments had a battery of eight guns and 207 gunners.

The Russian Emperor (Tsar) Nicholas I planned to deploy 200,000 troops and have another 80,000 on reserve to suppress the Hungarian independence movement. Thus, he was prepared to utilize approximately a quarter of the entire Russian military force against Hungary.

Rebellion or war of self-defense?

After 1849, Austrian and Russian historical sources used terms like "revolution," "rebellion," and "insurrection" to describe the Hungarian War of Independence. Meanwhile, the Hungarians and their supporters called it a "war of independence," "national struggle," "war for freedom," "revolution," and "civil war" (the latter mainly concerning the conflict between the nationalities and the Hungarians). This shows that while the Austrians and Russians described the events that began on 15 March 1848 as a rebellion against the legitimate monarch and power (the Habsburg-Lothringen dynasty), the Hungarians saw it as a legitimate war of self-defense. This difference in perception is significant and helps to explain the different ways in which the conflict was understood and remembered by different nations.

The Austrian, or imperial, approach to the events of March–April 1848 was that Hungary's politicians took advantage of the desperate situation of the empire, which was shaken by revolutions and national movements. They used this situation to force the empire to accept the installation of the Batthyány government as Hungary's autonomous national government, along with the April laws. According to the Austrians, this move endangered the unity of the empire. The imperials considered, that Austria's military attack on Hungary, starting in September 1848, was a necessary move to eliminate the Hungarian autonomy, considered by them a rebellion that threatened the empire.

The fact that the Hungarians refer to this conflict as a war of independence stems from legal reasons. Hungary had declared its independence from the Austrian Hereditary Provinces back in 1790, but the Habsburgs had did not implement it. However, during the spring of 1848, as part of the European revolutionary wave, the revolution in Pest and the visit of the Hungarian Diet delegation to Vienna resulted in the emperor recognizing Hungary's national rights and approving its demands for modernization, such as the liberation of the serfs, an independent Hungarian military and finance. These demands were now legally recognized by the King and the imperial government. In the summer and autumn of 1848, a counter-revolutionary reaction swept across Europe, which had a significant impact on Hungary. The Austrian Empire, having defeated the Kingdom of Sardinia, Northern Italy's revolutionary armed forces and their supporting armies coming from the Italian Peninsula in the Battle of Custoza on July 24–25, believed that it was time to abolish Hungarian autonomy within the empire. To that end, the Austrian government issued an ultimatum on August 27, demanding the abolition of Hungary's autonomy. However, the Hungarian political elite, defending their legal rights, refused to comply, calling this ultimatum illegal. The Hungarian decision was further justified by the coup d'état that took place on 2 December 1848, where the Habsburg Camarilla removed the legitimate monarch, Ferdinand V, and replaced him with the 18-year-old Franz Joseph, skipping Archduke Franz Karl, the next in line of succession. Ferdinand's removal was likely due to his previous ratification of the Hungarian laws of April, which would have prevented him from ordering any imperial operations against Hungary to abolish those laws. According to historical records, the deposition of Ferdinand V and the enthronement of his successor was deemed illegal because it could not have taken place without the consent of Hungary, which was a clear violation of the Hungarian constitution. However, despite this violation, the Hungarian political elite and military leadership continued to regard Ferdinand V as their legitimate ruler and rejected the act of his deposition.

The Hungarian view was that negotiations between both parties were necessary to resolve the situation. The imperial view was that the interests of the empire were paramount. On the other hand, the imperial view was that the interests of the empire were of utmost importance. According to this view, if the other side threatened these interests, the leaders of the empire had not only the right but also the duty to correct the situation unilaterally, even if it meant going to war.

Even before the war broke out, the Hungarian government tried its best to convince the Emperor that Hungary was loyal to him. They even offered to send auxiliary troops to northern Italy to support the Imperial army led by Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky against the First Risorgimento. By doing so, they hoped to gain the Empire's gratitude. This proposal was debated in parliament and voted on 22 July 1848 despite opposition from politicians and intellectuals such as the poet Sándor Petőfi. However, due to the imperial victory at Custoza on 25 July and the ceasefire with the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Austrians did not require Hungary's assistance.

It is noteworthy that although Austria repeatedly challenged Hungary's stance, such as by removing Ferdinand V from power, then attacking it, first by sending the Croatian troops into Hungary in September 1848, then attacking Hungary by the Austrian main army in December 1848, Hungary did not declare its secession from the Habsburg Empire. Despite the attack by the imperial army, the Hungarian Parliament and the Kossuth-led National Defence Committee (OHB) remained open to a peace agreement based on the recognition of the April Laws by the Austrians. From the time of the imperial army's attack in mid-December 1848 until the Hungarian Declaration of Independence on 14 April 1849, the Austrians rejected at least seven public or gestured Hungarian peace offers. On 4 March 1849, the Habsburg Camarilla and the new Emperor Franz Joseph proclaimed the Olmütz Constitution which was the ultimate anti-Hungarian measure. According to the Hungarian historiography, this act forced Lajos Kossuth to persuade the Hungarian Parliament to vote for the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty on 14 April 1849. Subsequently, the Declaration of Independence was passed, which made Hungary an independent state, free from the Empire. In light of this, the Hungarian War of Independence was more a legitimate war of self-defense against the Habsburgs than a rebellion.

The War of Independence

The Serb rebellion and the start of the war

In the spring of 1848, the assemblies of the Serbs held in Pest and Újvidék (Novi Sad) demanded recognition of Serbs as a nation and abolition of feudalism in the Military Frontier. When the envoys of the Serbs appeared in Pozsony, Kossuth informed them that they could not be recognized as an independent nation. This was because the new Liberal concept of a nation brought by the revolution was that in Hungary only one political nation could exist, and that was the Hungarian nation. The term 'Hungarian nation' referred to all the people of different languages living in Hungary. Kossuth and the Hungarian politicians knew that accepting political nations other than the Hungarian within the country would lead to the separation of those nations from Hungary. This would result in the dismemberment of the country.

During a meeting between the Hungarian politicians and the Serbs, it was alleged that a member of the Serbian delegation Đorđe Stratimirović threatened to seek fulfillment of their demands elsewhere if the Hungarians did not accept their demands. It was also alleged that Lajos Kossuth replied to this, Then the sword will decide between us. However, Kossuth later denied that the meeting ever took place, and there are no authentic sources from the time to confirm or deny the claims. It is possible that the story was fabricated and spread by Serbian politicians.

In Southern Hungary, Serbs demanded the creation of an independent Serbian Vojvodina. However, this area did not have a relative majority of Serbs living there. Out of the total population of the counties they wanted to include in it (Baranya, Bács, Temes, Arad, Krassó, Torontál), only 371,104 people, which was 20.22% of the population, were of Serbian nationality.

The military situation in Hungary between 12.06.1848-29.09.1848

On 13–15 May 1848, the Serbian National Assembly in Karlóca established the Serbian Main Committee (also known as the "Main Odbor"), followed by the formation of various districts and local committees in late May and early June. The Orthodox Archbishop Josif Rajačić was initially elected as the chairman of the Main Odbor, but later resigned and was replaced by Đorđe Stratimirović, who had previously served as an officer in the K.u.K. army and had the necessary skills to organize an armed force. The Assembly in Karlóca called upon the Serb population to take up arms. Rajačić traveled to Zagreb in early June, where he formed an alliance against the Hungarians with the leader of the Croatian movement, Josip Jelačić.

The situation in the southern region was worsened by the arrival of several thousand volunteers, commonly known as Servians, from the Ottoman vassal Principality of Serbia, who intended to assist their fellow countrymen. Their involvement played a crucial role in the outcome of the Karlóca national assembly and in the intense fighting that began in mid–June, which often degenerated into gruesome massacres against the civilians.

At the end of May, the Main Odbor repeatedly called for an armed uprising of the Serb population in the south, and in early June asked also the border guard regiments to join the uprising. On 8 June, the Hungarian government ordered Lieutenant-General János Hrabovszky, the commander-in-chief of the Slavonia and Syrmia (Szerémség) regions, to put an end to the increasingly dangerous movement of the Serbs and even disperse by force of arms the Main Odbor from Karlóca. On 12 June, Hrabovsky and his troops attacked the town. The Battle of Karlóca that started, was the first clash of the Hungarian War of Independence. At first, the Hungarian attack was successful, but the Serbs received reinforcements from other settlements, and fearing an encirclement, Hrabovszky retreated. This success further inflamed the Serb insurrection.

The Servians and border guards started to set up fortified camps, from which they attacked the German, Romanian, and Hungarian settlements of Bácska and Bánság (Banat), expelling, conquering and even massacring some of their population. The leaders, mostly of foreign origin, of the K.u.K. army subordinated to the Hungarian government, did not make much effort to put down this uprising. Peace negotiation attempts began almost at the same time as the outbreak of armed hostilities. The first to make contact with the leaders of the Serbian insurgents was royal commissioner Péter Chernovits (of Serbian origin), but the ceasefire concluded on 24 June was used by the Serbs to gather more forces, thus the fight continued shortly afterward.

In the fights during July and August, despite some Hungarian victories (the battles of Versec, Écska, Futak, Fehértemplom), due to the obstruction of the defense by the majority of the Austrian officers, the incompetence or lack of determination of the Hungarian commanders, the Serbs took over most of the Southern Banat and Southern Bácska regions, being greeted by a part of the Serbian population, and forcing those who were reluctant with promises or threats to join. Between the second part of July and the first half of August, the Hungarians lost one after other important localities as Bácsföldvár, Pancsova, Uzdin, Kovacsica, Padina, Jarkovác, Margitica, Tomasevác, Neuzina, Szárcsa, Szécsány, Ernesztháza, Bóka, the only town which withstood the Serb attacks was Fehértemplom, which repelled two Serbian attacks on 19 and 30 August.

Despite the apparently neutral stance of the Habsburg government, Ferdinand Mayerhofer von Grünbühel, the Austrian consul in Belgrade, was one of the main supporters of the anti-Hungarian efforts of the Serbs and the participation of Serbian volunteers in the fighting. The Belgrade consul first played a major role in encouraging the Serbian Servians to come to Hungary to fight the Hungarians and then sought to promote an alliance between the Serbs and Croatian Ban Josip Jelačić. Later, during the winter months, he took over the command of the joint Austrian–Serbian corps, and led it against the Hungarian units.

The first notable Hungarian success of the war in the south was the capture of the Serb fortified camp from Perlasz on 2 September. The Hungarians, however, did not take advantage of the success, and the start of the Croatian campaign in Transdanubia starting on 11 June caused the Hungarian troops to retreat to defensive positions.

The most important Serbian fortified camp established in Bácska, Szenttamás, was located on the banks of the Franz Canal. Taking advantage of the natural conditions, by the end of June 1848, the Serbs had established a substantial system of entrenchments around the settlement. The soldiers of the Titel Šajkaši battalion equipped the entrenchments with three-pounder cannons. The First Siege of Szenttamás took place on 14 July 1848 but the Hungarian attack was repulsed. The Hungarians repeated the attack on 19 August, but the Serbs again repulsed the attack. On 21 September, the Minister of War, General Lázár Mészáros, attempted the to take Szenttamás again, but this siege also failed.

The Autumn Campaign

Jelačić’s attack

In late August, Lajos Batthyány and Ferenc Deák traveled to Vienna. The Austrian response to the Hungarian government's offers to negotiate was a sharp ultimatum sent to Pest, demanding the abolition of the independent Hungarian ministries of finance, war, and trade. It turned out that Vienna saw the time as ripe for a unilateral and, if necessary, violent revoking of the April laws. As a result of this, the Batthyány government resigned on 11 September 1848. The crisis caused by the resignation of the government was resolved when Palatine Stephen entrusted Batthyány with the temporary leadership of the executive powers and the formation of a new government on 12 September.

In the early hours of 11 September 1848, the Croatian army of nearly 50,000, led by Ban of Croatia, Lieutenant General Josip Jelačić, crossed the Drava River, which formed the Hungarian–Croatian border. After the occupation of the Muraköz, the Croatian troops crossed the Mura River on 14–15 September and advanced towards the north-west. His troops invaded Hungary not under Croatian, but under Habsburg imperial (black and yellow) banners. The K.u.K. units, consisting of foreign soldiers stationed in Hungary joined immediately the Ban's army. By forcing the Hungarian government to resign, the imperial court hoped that Hungary would be unable to resist the enemy.

General Ádám Teleki, the commander of the Hungarian army in the Dráva region, declared that the resignation of the Batthyány government meant that there was no legal authority in Hungary at the moment, so he refused to confront Jelačić's army. This grave situation was saved by the intervention of a group of Hungarian officers. On 16 September, their delegation visited Jelačić and asked him to show them the imperial decree which authorized him to attack Hungary. Since the Ban could not provide such a thing, they declared that they would confront him with arms. However, it was uncertain whether it would be possible to gather the necessary armed force to be able to stop his large army. Batthyány and his colleagues, however, did their best to raise a Hungarian army capable of fighting the Croatian army in the few days they had at their disposition.

Unsuccessful negotiation attempts

To ensure the loyalty of the officers of K.u.K. service, Batthyány convinced Palatine Stephen to assume command of the Hungarian army on 15 September. The Palatine tried to make contact with Jelačić, but the Ban refused to appear for the negotiations on 21 September, on board the Kisfaludy steamboat at Lake Balaton, the scene of the planned negotiations, thus publicly humiliating the only member of the Habsburg dynasty sympathetic to the Hungarian cause. Thereafter, Palatine Stephen fled Hungary to Vienna, resigning from his dignity.

On 25 September, Emperor Ferdinand I appointed Lieutenant-General Count Ferenc Lamberg as commander-in-chief of all the armed forces in Hungary – both Hungarian and Croatian. However, the appointed commander-in-chief traveled to the capital, where the National Assembly declared his mission illegal on Kossuth's motion, and on 28 September, the angry crowd attacked and lynched him on the pontoon bridge over the Danube.

Kossuth's recruiting tours

Simultaneously, the Hungarian politicians did everything to gather an army against the Croatian troops which were approaching the Hungarian capital.

In the autumn of 1848, for instance, Kossuth made two tours of the Great Hungarian Plain, and in his speeches, called on the people of its towns and villages to rise against the invaders, or join the Honvéd army as soon as possible. During his first recruitment trip, between 24–28 September, he visited Cegléd, Nagykőrös, Kecskemét, Abony and Szolnok. Between 29 September and 4 October, he spoke in Csongrád, Szentes, Hódmezővásárhely, Szegvár and Szeged. As a result of his inflammatory speeches, tens of thousands of national guards and popular insurrectionists rose and rushed to guard the left bank of the Danube and prevent a possible Croatian attempt to cross.

Desertions of the Hussar units from abroad, and their return to Hungary

The worsening military situation required the activation of all Hungarian weapon-bearing forces to defend the homeland. This included also the Hussars, the majority of whom were stationed in the Austrian provinces outside of Hungary: Austria, Bohemia, Galicia, and Italy. At the beginning of 1848, only 4 Hussars regiments were stationed in Hungary: the 1st (Imperial), 2nd (Hannover), 3rd (Ferdinand of Este), and 11th (Székely) Hussars. From the beginning, the newly formed Batthyány government sought to bring home the Hussar regiments stationed in parts of the empire outside Hungary and to transfer in return the cavalry regiments of non-Hungarian composition, stationed there. Due to the negotiations, by the end of September 1848, the 6th (Württemberg) and the 9th (Nicholas) Hussar regiments had returned home while 6 companies of the 4th (Alexander) and 4 of the 10th (Wilhelm) Hussars were returned. On 10 October 1848, after the open break between Vienna and Pest, the Hungarian National Assembly, through open proclamations and secret letters sent to the troops, called home the Hungarian soldiers stationed abroad, whose escape it tried to help by sending agents. By the end of 1848, the 6 companies of the 4th and 10th Hussars, still abroad, had escaped, albeit with losses, and under adventurous circumstances had returned home, as had virtually the entire 8th (Coburg) Hussars from Galicia. Of the 12th (Palatine) Hussar Regiment in Bohemia, only the 2nd Major Squadron managed to return to Hungary in adventurous escapes during October.

The Desertions and Return to Hungary of the Hussar Troops during the Hungarian war of Independence of 1848–1849

The Hussars that escaped from Galicia, Bohemia, and Austria, in groups numbering from 25 to 300 men, cut their way through mountains, rivers, and other natural obstacles, avoiding, breaking through, and overcoming the imperial troops that were blocking their way, chased or attacked them, finally reaching often miraculously the Hungarian border. The most adventurous, and also the most famous Hussar escapes to Hungary, were the 91 Württemberg hussars from Marijampolė, Galicia, led by Captain János Lenkey between 25–31 May, the 60 Palatine hussars led by Captain Lajos Sréter from Slaný in Bohemia between 4–11 October, and the 203 Hussars led by Lieutenant Gedeon Virágh, from Raudnitz in Bohemia between 21–29 October. These Hussars, who managed to reach Hungary, immediately joined the Hungarian army, and went on the battlefield to fight the invading K.u.K. forces.

The Hussar desertions from the Austrian provinces, and their attempts to return to Hungary, did not end in 1848, they continued also in 1849. When the 12th Regiment was ordered to ride to Italy in the summer of 1849, nearly 100 members of the 1st Major Squadron also escaped. Later, the rest of the squadron also tried to escape, but they were captured and 13 of them were executed as a deterrent between 23 June and 6 July 1849. The 5th (Radetzky) and the 7th (Reuss-Köstritz) Hussar regiments were serving in Northern Italy, in the Imperial Army fighting against the Kingdom of Sardinia and the revolutionaries; there was no realistic chance of their transfer and subsequent escape across the Alps mountain range.

On the service records of those Hussars who after the defeat of the Hungarian War of Independence became prisoners, it was mentioned that they deserted from the imperial army, its cause being given as follows: The suspected reason for the escape: love of the fatherland.

Battle of Pákozd

At the end of September, the Hungarian army, numbering nearly 18 000, was gathering in Transdanubia, at the northern shore of Lake Velence. On 29 September, the Hungarian army, deployed on the hills of Pátka and Sukoró, faced the attack of the twice outnumbering Croatian troops of Jelačić. However, the Hungarian troops led by Lieutenant-General János Móga repulsed the Croatians' successive attacks in the Battle of Pákozd. One of Jelačić's divisions arrived only at the end of the battle, when he had already ordered his troops to retreat. On the next day the two parties signed a three-day ceasefire. The Ban of Croatia – mainly due to logistical problems – on 1 October retreated his troops, heading for Győr.

The surrender of a Croatian corps at Ozora

After the start of the Croatian invasion, Batthyány ordered a popular uprising in the whole of Transdanubia.

The main role of the popular uprising was to block the enemy's supply routes and communication. The people of Transdanubia listened to the call of the government, and started a generalized uprising and guerrilla war against the invaders, causing them more and more losses. At the end of September 1848, Hungarian militiamen intercepted Jelačić's messengers, which revealed that he was in direct contact with the Austrian Minister of War, Field Marshal Theodor Franz, Count Baillet von Latour, who sent him orders and advice. Thus this was another proof that Jelačić's campaign was not a Hungarian–Croatian conflict, but in fact a proxy war of the Habsburg Empire against Hungary.

The garrison left behind by Jelačić in Székesfehérvár was forced to surrender on 3 October by the urban popular uprising, and the 9,000-strong auxiliary column marching through the counties of Baranya and Tolna was forced to surrender at Ozora on 7 October by the National Guard, volunteers and militias led by colonels Artúr Görgei and Mór Perczel. It was the only victory of the War of Independence that ended with the capture of the entire enemy force.

Expulsion of the enemy troops from the country

Soon, the rest of Transdanubia was also liberated. At the end of September, the National Guard of the Western Transdanubian counties, concentrated in Vas County, under the leadership of József Vidos, set off against the Croatian troops occupying Zala County. On 3 October, the people of Nagykanizsa chased away the Croatian garrison there, and together with Vidos's troops drove the Croatian troops out of the whole Zala County.

In mid-October, Colonel Mór Perczel's division arrived in Zala County. On 17 October, he crossed the Mura River, and with his victories at Letenye and Kotor, by the next day he had driven the Croatian troops out of the Mura Interfluve (Muraköz/Međimurje). On 8 November, he beat the Styrian Imperial forces in the Battle of Friedau, and after this, he evacuated the Muraköz on 11 November. Then, he then held the Croatian and Styrian forces at bay until mid-December.

At the end of September, the legion organized by the Slovak National Council with Austrian money entered northern Hungary, but the Hungarian authorities from Upper Hungary (Felvidék) soon drove it out, with the forces of the local Slovak National Guards and the popular uprising. In December, the leaders of the Slovak National Council joined the K.u.K. army and attempted to get the Slovak population to rise against the Hungarians, but they were not very successful. The Slovak legion, composed mostly of Czech students from Prague, was only one battalion strong and numbered less than a thousand, while the Hungarian army had at least tens of thousands of Slovak soldiers.

Attempt to help the revolution in Vienna

When the news of Ferenc Lamberg's murder from 28 September in Pest had reached Vienna, in his manifesto of 3 October the emperor appointed Jelačić as the omnipotent commander of the Hungarian armed forces and the royal commissioner of the country.

But Jelačić was in no position to do this, however, as his troops retreated towards the Austrian border, as a result of his defeat at Pákozd. On 4 October, the Ban of Croatia received the manifesto of 3 October at Magyaróvár, and as a result, he planned a new attack on Hungary, but first, he waited for reinforcements to arrive from Upper Hungary and the Transdanubian region.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 30.09.1848-04.12.1848

On 6 October, however, another revolution broke out in Vienna, in which Jelačić's main supporter, the Austrian Minister of War Theodor Franz Baillet von Latour was killed by the revolutionaries. Jelačić was thus left without support, so he sent the less valuable part of his army (the militias and national guards) to Croatia, and with the rest he retreated towards Austria.

All these contributed to the fact that the majority of the former officers of the Imperial Army (many of them not of Hungarian origin) did not abandon the Hungarian side. The Vienna Revolution came at the right time, as it made impossible any imperial attacks on Hungary for weeks.

At the same time, the Hungarian commander Lieutenant General János Móga with his troops pursued Jelačić. However, as the Croatian forces were still superior, the pursuit was rather cautious. A fundamental turning point came with the arrival of the news about the Viennese Revolution. The Hungarian army then advanced to the Lajta river - Hungary's border with Austria - where it awaited a political decision on what to do next.

After the Vienna Revolution, it seemed natural that the Hungarian army would rush to the aid of Vienna, threatened by the K.u.K. troops. However, there were serious military and political arguments against crossing the border. Jelačić's army was significantly reinforced in early October. For the Hungarians, crossing the border meant the risk that the army would have to face not only Croatian troops but also those of the K.u.K. army, which had been pushed out of Vienna by the revolution. This - besides the enemy's superior strength - would have caused a serious moral conflict both to the Hungarian army's conscripts sworn to the common monarch and the officers coming from the K.u.K. army.

On 10 October, the Hungarian Parliament decided that if Vienna called for help, the Hungarian army must go to its aid. In Vienna, however, neither the Imperial Assembly, nor its commission, nor even the city council weren't inclined to formally ask for Hungarian help. Many still hoped that some way could be found to reach a compromise with the court. And the leaders of the Hungarian army refused to cross the Austrian border until Vienna sent them an invitation.

Meanwhile, the forces of the counter-revolution were not idle. The Emperor who fled from Vienna to Olmütz, on 16 October made Prince Alfred Windisch-Grätz, who became famous in June 1848 by crushing the Prague Uprising of 1848, the main commander of all the imperial forces outside Italy. On 23 October, Windisch-Grätz arrived with his troops in front of Vienna, by using the railway. Now, with nearly 80 000 imperial troops concentrated under Vienna, the Hungarian army had no chance of victory.

At the end of October, Kossuth himself arrived in the Hungarian camp and tried to convince the army to make one last attempt to march to relieve Vienna. On 27 October, after serious debates, the Hungarian Council of War accepted Kossuth's proposal. In the meantime, the delegation of the Vienna City Council accepted Windisch-Grätz's terms for the surrender of the city on 29 October, but when the defenders learned of the advance of the Hungarian troops, on 30 October they took up arms again. Windisch-Grätz was thus unable to use all his strength against the Hungarian army, so he sent a part of his troops led by Jelačić to confront the enemy.

Battle of Schwechat

On 30 October, the advancing Hungarian troops clashed with Jelačić's Croatian and Austrian forces in the Battle of Schwechat on the line of the Schwechat River near Vienna, between the villages of Schwechat and Mannswörth. The Hungarian army had about 27,00030,000 men and 82 guns, while Jelačić had 30,000 soldiers and 99 guns. But the balance of power was only apparent. The majority of Jelačić's army was made up of battle-hardened troops, while half of the Hungarian troops were largely made up of recruits and national guardsmen with straightened scythes instead of rifles. The Hungarian attack, which started well, got stuck in the enemy's heavy cannon fire and degenerated into a disorderly flight.

During the battle, Moga fell from his horse and resigned from the main commandment. After the battle, Kossuth entrusted the leadership of the army to the 30-year-old young man, Artur Görgei, whom he also appointed general. Görgei, as seen above, played an important role in the victory of Ozora, and he was one of those who supported Kossuth's position on the border crossing.

On 31 October, the day after the Battle of Schwechat, Vienna also fell to the imperials. The crushing of the Vienna Revolution was followed by severe reprisals, with 25 people sentenced to death by court martial.

The spread of counter-revolution in Hungary

The Imperial Manifesto of 3 October ordered the dissolution of the Hungarian Diet, declaring its previous resolutions and decrees illegal. It suspended the functioning of local governments and imposed a state of emergency in Hungary. The royal manuscript was formally illegal, as it was not countersigned by the Hungarian ministry. From a substantive point of view, it was invalid because Parliament had not yet finished debating the Budget Act, and according to Article 4 of Act 1848:4, the Parliament could not be dissolved before the conclusion of the debates and the adoption of the final accounts of the previous year.

The defection of castles and fortresses

As a result of the imperial Manifesto of 3 October, the Main Army Commandments (General Commandos) of Transylvania and Bánát revolted against the Hungarian Parliament and government. As a result of this, several castles and fortresses, most of whose commanders and soldiers were foreigners declared that they would obey the Hungarian government, but only to the emperor. In October 1848, the garrisons of the two fortresses of the Bánát General Commando, Temesvár, and Arad rebelled, and the same was done in Transylvania by the garrison of Gyulafehervár. However, at the end of September 1848, the Hungarians managed to secure the most powerful fortress in Hungary, Komárom, and Pétervárad declared its loyalty on 15 October. At the same time, smaller fortresses such as Lipótvár in the western part of Upper Hungary, Eszék (Osijek) in Slavonia and Munkács in northeastern Hungary also came under Hungarian control. In other words, all important fortifications west of the Tisza were under Hungarian control, while those east of it were under K.u.K. control.

Fight against the Serbs and the imperial fortresses in Southern Hungary

After the rebellion of the fortresses (Arad and Temesvár), the situation was aggravated even more by the fact that the Serbian uprising was still in progress.

Now the Serbian and the Austrian forces numbered 36,000-40,000 men and 140-160 cannons, while the Hungarians could oppose them with 26,000-28,000 soldiers and 106 cannons.

However, the Hungarian forces stationed in the area soon proved to be an equal opponent. On 13 October, the Serbian troops from Bácska, which were attacking Törökbecse, were repulsed in the Battle of Törökbecse-Óbecse-Nagykikinda. On 30 November, Hungarian troops in Banat occupied Ördöghídja, on 4 December Tomasevác, on 12 December Károlyfalva and Alibunár, and, on 15 December, in the Battle of Jarkovác, they inflicted a heavy defeat on the Serbian troops who were laying them an ambush.

However, the Hungarian troops had much less success against the fortresses of Banat in Austrian hands. On 3-4 December, Lieutenant Colonel János Máriássy, commander of the besieging army of Arad, attempted to take the fortress by ambush, but the attack failed. On 14 December, the Imperial troops from Temesvár broke the siege of Arad and supplied the garrison with enough food for several weeks. By the end of the year, however, Arad was surrounded by a loose encirclement.

In the last two months of the year, in the region of Bácska, no important battles were held, and even peace attempts were made at the end of November, but these were unsuccessful.

The loss of Transylvania

The second Romanian national assembly in Balázsfalva, which met from 16-28 September, demanded the adoption of the Austrian constitution in Transylvania, which in essence proclaimed the equal rights of nationalities and the abolition of the Hungarian constitution (although, as seen above, the bill of the Union Committee of the Hungarian Parliament promised the same thing), and decided to arm and mobilize the Romanian population. At the end of the month began the armed rebellion of the Romanian peasantry and border guard regiments against the Hungarian government. To prevent the Hungarians from resisting this rebellion, the rebels, supported by the Transylvanian General Commando, began to break into cities and villages and disarm the Hungarians. The rebels, however, were not content with disarming the Hungarians but launched an ethnic cleansing against them. Thousands of Hungarians were killed in these massacres (the biggest massacres were in Zalatna, Gerendkeresztúr, Kisenyed, Magyarigen, Felvinc).

All of this was done with the knowledge and permission of the head of the Transylvanian (Main Army Headquarters) General Commando, General Anton Puchner, who knew, that the more serious and bloody the ethnic civil war between the Romanians and Hungarians was, the less possible was to conclude any agreement and cooperation between these two nations. Puchner made Southern Transylvania, the region inhabited by the Transylvanian Saxons, who were the ethnic group most loyal to him, the base of his counter-revolutionary campaign against the Hungarian authorities. In early October, Puchner concentrated his forces around the Saxon towns (Nagyszeben, Brassó, Segesvár, Szászsebes, etc.). In his attack against the Hungarian government, Puchner could count on 13 000 Austrian line regiments stationed in Transylvania, and the Romanian rebels, who, according to some accounts were 150 000 men. On 18 October, Puchner openly declared his revolt by issuing a statement calling the Hungarian government illegitimate, refusing to obey it and inciting the Romanians and Saxons to revolt.

On 16-18 October, the Székely community held a national meeting in Agyagfalva, and they too decided to start an uprising, but they did not take a stand against Hungary but against the Austrian General Commando and the Saxon, and Romanian rebellion, in favor of the union between Transylvania and Hungary, and to defend the Hungarian civilian population attacked by the Romanian rebels. However, their troops were not sufficiently military organized and they had no cannons. After defeating Lieutenant-Colonel Urban's Romanian troops at Vajdaszentiván on 31 October, the Szeklers suffered a heavy defeat at Marosvásárhely on 5 November at the hands of Austrian troops equipped with cannons, sent by Puchner in support of Urban. Before the battle at least half of the Székely troops had already returned home, but after the battle, all Székely resistance ended. Only Manó Baldacci's Hungarian troops of 3,000-4,000 soldiers and 6 cannons remained in the vicinity of Kolozsvár. But the Austrian troops attacked them from three directions and the Hungarians were defeated, abandoning Kolozsvár and retreating to the border of Transylvania at Csucsa, where Major János Czetz tried to reorganize the troops who had lost their organization and hope. To aid the Hungarian troops in Transylvania, a Hungarian force of 5,000 led by Major Miklós Katona was sent from the Szatmár region in northern Transylvania, but was defeated at Dés on 25 November by Lieutenant-Colonel Urban, wresting the Máramaros County from Hungarian hands. As a result of this battle, Transylvania came under full Austrian control.

The Székely resistance from Háromszék

By the end of November, the Hungarian troops had been pushed back to the western border of Transylvania, around Csucsa. Only the remote Székely Seat of Háromszék in the south-eastern part of Transylvania remained loyal to the Hungarian government. Here, the revolutionary administration managed to mobilize the whole society, and a clever Székely handyman, Áron Gábor, even cast cannons from the church bells. Following considerable efforts, Háromszék organized an army of 10-12 000 men led by Károly Dobai, Sándor Sombori, and Sándor Gál to confront the imperial troops. When the General Commando tried to put down their resistance, the Székelys defeated the imperial troops and the supporting Romanian and Saxon militias at Földvár on 30 November, at Szászhermány on 5 December and Rika on 13 December, and invaded Barcaság, threatening the imperial rule in Eastern Transylvania. For this reason, Puchner transferred Schurtter's brigade to Háromszék, with the help of which the Austrians defeated the Székely troops at the Battle of Hídvég on 24 December, then on 2 January 1849, the compromise treaty of Árapatak was concluded. According to this treaty, the imperials did not occupy Háromszék, the Székely border guards were allowed to keep their weapons, the Hungarian soldiers from other regions who fought with the Székelys had to be removed from the territory of the Seat, and the cannon barrels were to be re-cast into bells. By concluding this treaty, Háromszék bought time until the victorious armies of Lieutenant General Józef Bem arrived. On 15 January 1849, less than 2 weeks after it was concluded, the people of Háromszék denounced the treaty of Árapatak, and, together with Bem's army, continued their fight against the K.u.K. armies.

The resistance of Háromszék between 29 November and 28 December 1848 was not in vain, because, on the one hand, it tied down a significant enemy force, which was originally intended to attack Hungary, and, on the other hand, because Háromszék, through the military experience and preparedness gained during this resistance, contributed in a considerable measure to General Bem's successful Spring Campaign to retake Transylvania.

The Winter Campaign

Change of ruler

The accession of a new monarch preceded the attack of the main imperial army against Hungary. Emperor Ferdinand's unfitness for the throne (Ferdinand I. as Emperor of Austria and Ferdinand V. as King of Hungary) had long been evident, and the "military party" (those who were supporting a military solution for the conflict between Austria and Hungary) led by Prince Windisch-Grätz had already begun preparing for a change of throne in early September 1848. After the suppression of the Viennese Revolution of 6 October and the formation of a new government on 21 November by Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, who advocated a united Austria, Ferdinand's resignation was only a matter of weeks away. One reason for the change of throne was that Ferdinand had sworn an oath to the Hungarian constitution, and therefore could no longer order the attack of the main Austrian army against Hungary to occupy it and end its constitutional order, and another was that the Emperor had repeatedly shown himself unfit to rule. On 2 December, as a result of the intervention of the imperial court and the military party, which advocated for an authoritarian centralization, he abdicated the throne and was succeeded by his nephew, Franz Joseph I, by skipping the order of succession. Since the new emperor did not swear an oath to Hungarian law, his supporters believed he had greater freedom of action to abolish Hungarian constitutionalism.

The news about the change of the throne arrived in Pest on 5 December. Kossuth briefly declared it a farce of abdication, and the parliamentary declaration he had proposed stated: The royal throne of Hungary cannot be vacated without the prior consent of the nation, [and] by the common law of mankind, only the death of the crowned king can make it empty. Until this happens, no one may unilaterally decide the possession of the Hungarian royal seat. Only those who swear an oath of allegiance to the laws and are legitimately crowned are considered kings of Hungary. Anything else is considered a usurpation of the throne.

The Parliament's resolution therefore rejected the change of throne and continued to regard Ferdinand V as King of Hungary. However, it did not rule out the later recognition of Franz Joseph I, if he was willing to respect the constitutional rules and traditions of the coronation and duties of the Hungarian kings. However, Franz Joseph did not feel compelled to obey Hungarian law, as he had not crowned himself Hungarian king.

Opposing forces

The K.u.K. army and its allies

The Austrian army was under the command of Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz and had the following troops at his disposal. The main grouping was in the Vienna area, consisting of the 1st (Jelačić) Corps, the II (Wrbna) Corps, and the reserve Serbelloni Corps, with 45,000 men and 216 guns in total. Other troops were waiting for the order of attack in Moravia, where Lieutenant-General Balthasar Simunich's division of 4,500 men and 12 guns awaited orders, in Galicia where Franz Schlik’s corps was ready to attack with 8,400 men and 27 guns, in Transylvania where Lieutenant-General Anton Puchner's army of 16-17,000 men with 24 guns wanted to head towards the Tisza, and in Styria where Major-General Laval Nugent von Westmeath was preparing with 6,000 soldiers. In addition to these major troops, there were other columns of troops assigned to various tasks. The large force of approximately 30,000 Serb insurgents from Bácska and Bánát, was ready to chase out the Hungarian troops from there.

Balance of forces during the Hungarian wars of Independence of 1848-1849 before the start of the Winter Campaign

From the major important castles in the country, Arad, Temesvár, and Gyulafehervár were in Austrian hands. The garrison of Temesvár consisted of 6000 soldiers and 213 cannons. The garrison of Arad consisted of 2000 soldiers and 66 cannons. The garrison of Gyulafehérvár consisted of 1557 soldiers with 50 heavy and 50 field guns.

The total size of the force was close to 150,000 with about 350 guns.

Romanian, Saxon, and Slovak irregular forces were also part of this. The total number of Transylvanian Romanian and Saxon national guards and militias was probably around 100 000. The number of Slovaks fighting the Hungarians was low. The Slovak legion, formed of Czech-Moravian volunteers and Slovaks, numbered only around 200 at the beginning of December, but by February this had increased to 1,800.

The aim of the campaign was the capture of the Hungarian capitals, Pest and Buda, the main direction of the attack being Vienna-Győr-Komárom-Buda. The imperial troops waiting for the order from the west, north, east and south, had to attack the center of the country at the same time.

The Hungarian army

After Móga's resignation, the main grouping of the Hungarian troops was led by General Artur Görgei, who had 23,000 men and 103 guns at his disposal in the area around Bratislava. A group of 3,000 National Guardsmen mobilized near the Moravian border. At Kassa, Lieutenant Colonel Sándor Pulszky commanded 9,000 men and 21 cannons. At the Csucsa Pass, Major János Czetz with about 10 000 men, and 21 cannons. In Bácska and in Bánát there were 24 000 soldiers and 36 cannons. Around Arad 6000 Hungarian soldiers and 13 cannons were camped. In Muraköz, under the command of General Mór Perczel there were 9000 men, and 20 guns.

Indirectly, the Hungarian leadership could count on the support of the Székelys from the Seat of Háromszék. The number of armed men involved in the Székely resistance in Háromszék was around 10 000, and by the end of December, the number of their home-made cannons was 9.

The most important fortresses in Hungarian hands were Komárom, Pétervárad, Lipótvár and Eszék. Komárom had 3,000 defenders, 6 field, and about 120 fortress guns. The guard of the Pétervárad Castle consisted of 3500 soldiers, 6 field guns, and 100 fortress cannons. At Eszék there were 4,400 soldiers and 60 fortress cannons. And the castle of Lipótvár was defended by 1,000 soldiers and 24 cannons.

The goal of the Hungarian troops was to prevent the enemy from crossing the border and to preserve the political autonomy of the country starting from March 1848. There was no joint commander-in-chief to coordinate the troops' activities, and the commanders were given political guidance at most. Thus there was no central command.

Start of the attack

Schlik campaign in Upper Hungary

Rumors about an enemy invasion had been coming in steadily since November 1848. After all proved to be fake news, the Hungarian political and military leadership started hoping that the attack of the imperial army would be canceled since a winter campaign can also cause serious problems also for the attackers. Despite these hopes, the attack did take place

At the beginning of December, the attack of the K.u.K. troops began. Lieutenant General Franz Schlik, who had invaded Upper Hungary from Galicia, captured Eperjes and Kassa, and on 11 December he dispersed the newly assembled army of Colonel Sándor Pulszky in the Battle of Budamér. At the end of the month, the Minister of War himself, General Lázár Mészáros, rushed against Schlik, but his attack in the Battle of Kassa on 4 January 1849 also ended in a disastrous failure. After the defeat, the Hungarian troops retreated south as far as Miskolc.

The attack of the main imperial army

Advance on the capitals In mid-December, the attack also began on the main battlefront. On 14 December, Lieutenant-General Simunich's troops broke into the Nádas Pass, and on 16 December, they defeated Colonel Richard Guyon's troops in the Battle of Nagyszombat. On the same day, the imperial army led by Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz launched an attack along the Lajta River’s front and almost swept away Görgei's Army of the Upper Danube. Görgei tried to hold off the enemy's main forces at Győr, but in the harsh winter, the rivers and marshes around the city froze so hard that the enemy could cross them even with its cannons. This compromised Görgei's plans centered on the defense of Győr because he understood that the enemy could easily encircle him, so at the last moment, he withdrew his troops from the city's entrenchments and marched with them toward Buda.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 05.12.1848-05.01.1849

Kossuth hoped to stop the imperial army at least in front of the capital. Therefore, he ordered reinforcements from southwestern Hungary to the capital, calling from there General Mór Perczel, and asking him to unite with Görgei's troops. But before the unification of the two Hungarian armies took place, on 30 December Perczel met with Jelačić's corps in the Battle of Mór, and suffered a serious defeat, a third of his troops remaining on the battlefield or being captured.

After the defeat of Mór, there was no longer any hope of stopping the enemy before the capital. Thus, on 31 December, the National Assembly and the National Defence Commission decided to flee to Debrecen, where they installed themselves, proclaiming this town the new provisory capital of the revolutionary Hungary. Before that, they sent a peace delegation to Windisch-Grätz, but the prince demanded unconditional surrender, and after the K.u.K. troops had marched into the capitals, he arrested one of the members of the Hungarian delegation, the former prime minister Lajos Batthyány, who remained under their arrest until his execution on 6 October.

The military council from 2 January 1849 On 2 January, before the evacuation of the capital, a military council was held, which decided to concentrate Hungarian forces in Tiszántúl (the region east of the Tisza River). The adopted operation plan stated that the Upper Tisza Corps and the Perczel Corps would take up positions along the Tisza. To allow enough time for this to happen, General Görgei's Upper Danube Corps had to conduct a diversion operation in north-western Hungary to relieve the besieged Lipótvár, then retreat to east through the mining towns to the Upper Tisza. Because of the defeat on 4 January of the Upper Tisza Corps at Kassa, a few days later the plan was complemented with the order of the abandonment of Bácska and Bánát, and the transfer of the troops there to the Central Tisza region.

On 3 January 1849, Görgei's hussars repulsed Jelačić's troops in the Battle of Tétény, then crossed to the left bank of the Danube. The last Hungarian troops left Pest on 5 January, and the K.u.K. army occupied the capital the same day. Now Windisch-Grätz believed that he had won the war and therefore did not move from Buda and Pest, and the two weeks gained by the Hungarians were enough to consolidate the Hungarian defenses. along the Tisza

The Vác Manifesto Before the retreat from the capitals, the former officers of the Imperial Army were abandoning en masse Görgei's Upper Danube Corps. In order to resolve this very grave problem, Görgei issued a declaration at Vác on 5 January 1849, in which he announced the political principles for which his army was willing to fight against the invaders. The manifesto was necessary to restore the self-confidence of the Hungarian army, which had been badly damaged by the constant retreat, the conflicting orders of the government, and the departure of a significant number of officers who had previously served in the K.u.K. Army. The so-called Vac Declaration is actually made of two parts. In the first part, Görgei exercises some serious self-criticism, explaining to his soldiers which is the cause of the situation that led to the army's loss of confidence. He then criticizes the Kossuth-led National Defence Committee (OHB), which substituted the government. He accuses OHB of having boasted that it would stay in the capital until the end, but then fled the city at the news of the imperial troops' approach, demoralizing the inhabitants. He also deplores the republican propaganda of the Committee, pointing out that many non-Hungarian officers who had hitherto stood by the Hungarian cause, would only continue to do so if Hungary while refusing to recognize Franz Joseph's illegitimate seizure of power, remained under the Habsburg crown, recognizing Ferdinand V as Hungary's legitimate king.

The second part of the manifesto, therefore, to assure the loyalty of these remaining, experienced and indispensable officers, declared: I. The Army of the Upper Danube shall remain faithful to its oath, and shall resolutely fight all external enemies in the defense of the Constitution of Hungary, sanctioned by King Ferdinand V. II. With no less determination, however, it will oppose all those who would attempt to subvert the constitutional kingdom by premature republican agitations within the country.

This manifesto of Görgei deeply outraged the OHB. The driving force behind the OHB was Kossuth, so any criticism of the committee, which was expressed in the manifesto, was directed at Kossuth. This manifesto started the first conflict between Kossuth and Görgei, and one of the reasons why after the defeat of the Revolution, in his famous Vidin letter, Kossuth accused Görgei, quite unjustly, of treason. It was not only Kossuth who resented Görgei for the Vác Manifesto but also the radical pro-republican Hungarian politicians for his stand for his royalist attitude. However, most important for Görgei and Hungary at the time, was that this Manifesto restored the faith of the army and foreign officers. So the Hungarian army did not disintegrate, but continued to defend the country.

The retreat of the Army of the Upper Danube through northern Hungary According to the plan of the campaign through Upper Hungary, Görgei had to march to the region of the Upper Tisza, but through Northern Hungary, thus giving the impression that he was threatening Vienna. The main advantage of this plan was that the threat posed by the march of Görgei's army northwards guaranteed that Windisgratz would not push towards Debrecen because he would not dare to lose Vienna. After the retreat from the capital, Görgei's troops moved towards Lipótvár according to the operation plan of the military council from 2 January.

Görgei's 13,000-strong Upper Danube Corps, consisting of the divisions led by Colonel Lajos Aulich, Colonel Richard Guyon, and Lieutenant Colonel György Kmetty, marched from Vác to Körmöcbánya. On 21-22 January, Görgei scored minor success in the Battle of Szélakna against the troops of Lieutenant General Anton Csorich, who were pursuing him and trying to surround him, but he was defeated in the battles of Selmec and Hodrusbánya. From there, they escaped the enemy's encirclement by marching through a mine tunnel under the Szkalka mountain belonging to the Körmöc mountain range to Besztercebánya. Görgei was in a dangerous position because of the pursuit of the outnumbering Imperial armies, but after Mór Perczel's attack towards Szolnok and Cegléd (22 and 25 January), the Imperial commander-in-chief Windisch-Grätz was frightened, believing that Perczel would march against Pest, ordered Csorich to come to his aid with two brigades, thus weakening the troops pursuing Görgei. 2 Slovak battalions also joined the Hungarians in the mining towns. At Besztercebánya the army led by Görgei split up and continued its march eastwards on separate routes. The northern column - with Görgei, Aulich, and Kmetty - pushed through the Sturec Pass, while the southern column led by Guyon marched through the Garam valley to the meeting point at Lőcse. On 2 February, Guyon was surprised by the garrison in the Battle of Igló, suffering heavy casualties.

Görgei's pursuit was significantly hampered by the resistance of the outdated fortress of Lipótvár to the Austrian siege, whose guards finally surrendered only on 2 February after the start of the bombardment of the K.u.K. artillery. The K.u.K. troops pinned down under the fortress could help considerably the operation against Görgei or the encirclement of Komárom, which was firmly in Hungarian hands.

Consolidation of the Hungarian defense along the Tisza On 22-25 January, Mór Perczel, appointed with the defense of the Central Tisza region, crossed the river and defeated General Ferenc Ottinger's cavalry brigade in the First Battle of Szolnok and in the Cegléd, and drove it near Pest.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 06.01.1849-12.02.1849

In the Upper Tisza region, with reinforcements coming from Pest, Colonel György Klapka arrived to replace the unsuccessful Lázár Mészáros. After the victory of Kassa from 4 January, Franz Schlik was busy with the pacification of the eastern part of Upper Hungary, and this time was sufficient for Klapka to reinforce and reorganize the Hungarian troops. Schlik renewed his attack against the Hungarians only on 17 January. But on 22-23 January Klapka's troops repulsed this attack in the Battles of Tarcal and Bodrogkeresztúr. At the end of January, Schlik received reinforcements from Windisch-Grätz and launched another offensive. Klapka therefore abandoned the Bodrog line and retreated to the Tisza line. And when Schlik's troops renewed his, on 31 January Klapka defeated them again in the Battle of Tokaj. After this series of defeats, Schlik began his retreat towards Kassa. But here another danger waited for him. On 5 February Görgei's troops in the Battle of Branyiszkó, broke through the Austrian garrison defending the heavily fortified mountain pass, ending their march towards the Tisza through Upper Hungary. Now they approached Kassa, and Schlik started to feel in danger of being encircled by Görgei's troops from the northwest and Klapka's troops from the south.

Retreat from Southern Hungary

On 2 January in the Battle of Pancsova, the Hungarian army led by Lieutenant General Ernő Kiss suffered a heavy defeat by the Serbs.

On 16 January 1849 the government sent an order to the two southern corps (the Bánát and the Bácska Corps) to give up all the Hungarian positions South of the Maros River, and to march immediately to the middle line of the Tisza, to defend that line against the Austrian main forces, then to participate in an eventual counter-attack. As a result of this, at the end of the month, the Hungarian troops gave up Bácska and Bánát retreating to the Maros line, and the Serbian and K.u.K. forces from the South began their advance towards Szeged and Arad.

At the same time, the South Transdanubia also fell into the hands of the imperial troops led by Field Marshal Laval Nugent.

Already at the end of January 1849, the Slavonian Imperial troops started to surround Eszék, and after a short siege, the fortress capitulated on 14 February, upon the promise of amnesty for the garrison. In January 1849, during the evacuation of the South, the Hungarians supplied the garrison of Pétervárad (the only fortress in the South that remained in Hungarian hands) with enough food for five months. In February 1849, the Imperial troops led by Field Marshal Nugent began to surround Pétervárad, but did not attempt a serious siege.

The Hungarian troops retreated to the Maros line. After conquering most of Bácska and Bánát, the Serbs attempted to take possession of this line and to come into contact with the main K.u.K. forces advancing in the Danube–Tisza Interfluve. On 8 February in the Second Battle of Arad, Lieutenant-General Joseph Glaeser's troops broke the Hungarian siege of Arad and supplied the garrison with enough food and ammunition for several weeks. The Hungarian troops recaptured the city, but it took weeks to complete the siege lock again. On 11 February, a Serbian detachment occupied Újszeged and started to bombard Szeged. The Hungarian troops led by Gusztáv Hadik retook Újszeged and the Serbs were driven back to Szőreg.

Joseph Bem's campaign in Transylvania

Liberation of Northern Transylvania At the beginning of December 1848, Polish General Józef Bem took command of the Hungarian troops that had been pushed back to the border of Transylvania. The Polish general soon won the trust and affection of the Hungarian soldiers, who called him "Papa Bem" among themselves.

On 15 December 1848, the Hungarian army in Transylvania consisted of 11,150 infantry, 1,385 cavalry, and 24 cannons in the Csucsa Strait, at Nagyvárad, in Szilágy County and Szatmárnémeti. The opposing Austrian regular forces numbered about 12 000 men, 60 guns and they had also 25 000-30 000 Romanian militias in support.

As we have seen above, in mid-December the Imperial troops launched an attack on Hungary from 9 directions. According to the orders of the imperial commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz, Puchner's task was to occupy Nagyvárad and march towards Debrecen. On 19-20 December, the Austrian troops attacked in three columns Bem's troops stationed at Csucsa and Zsibó, but after two days of fighting, their both attacks were repulsed. Bem then counter-attacked and on the 23rd he defeated Jablonski's brigade in the Second Battle of Dés, causing it to flee to Beszterce in northeastern Transylvania. Then Bem marched through Szamosújvár and Apahida to reach Kolozsvár on the 25th, from where the surprised Austrians fled without a fight towards Torda, leaving 100 prisoners and all their luggage in the hands of the Hungarians. One of the secrets of Bem's success was the long distances he covered in a short time through forced marches, which surprised the enemy: in 8 days he covered 190 km in minus 15 to 20 degrees Celsius. Bem, however, stood out not only for his abilities as a military commander but also for his conciliatory attitude towards the nationalities of Transylvania. On 27 December, he issued from Kolozsvár a trilingual (Hungarian, Romanian, German) proclamation, promising amnesty and equal rights for every nationality.

Then, after sending Lieutenant-Colonel János Czetz towards Torda on the 26th, Bem moved towards Beszterce, captured a platoon of border guards in the Battle of Bethlen on the 28th, and cut the Austrian troops in two, forcing them to retreat towards Bukovina. Bem's troops first defeated the two Austrian columns at Beszterce and Naszód on the 31st, then attacked them in the Battle of Tihuca on the 3rd of January 1849 and drove them into Bukovina. Bem pursued Urban's troops as far as Vatra Dornei in Bukovina, then returned to Transylvania. He left a garrison at Borgóprund-Jád-Beszterce and Naszód and then set off towards Székely Land and southern Transylvania.

On 13 January 1849, Bem liberated Marosvásárhely. In mid-January, Lieutenant General Puchner advanced with his whole force - 2 infantry, 1 cavalry brigade, and 30 cannons - from Nagyszeben through Medgyes to Marosvásárhely, but on 17 January Bem crushed his army, and forced him to flee in the Battle of Gálfalva. He then followed the retreating Puchner to Nagyszeben.

Bem's retreat through South Transylvania His successive victories so far had made Bem believe that he was capable of inflicting a decisive defeat on Puchner's imperial armies, so he attacked the latter's headquarters with his small force on 21 January, but Puchner repulsed him in the First Battle of Nagyszeben. On 30 January, Bem repulsed Puchner's three times bigger army's attack in the Battle of Szelindek but, realized that he would not be able to resist there for long with his weak forces. The situation was made even more difficult by the fact that, in early February, some 7,000 Russian troops had arrived from Wallachia to support Puchner, assuring the defense of the two main cities of Puchner's operational basis (Brassó and Nagyszeben), so the Austrian general could now turn all of his soldiers against the Hungarians. To make things even worse, Bem sent three battalions, a squadron of hussars, and a battery from his troops to Székely Land and to Déva to facilitate the arrival of reinforcements from there. As a result, he remained only with about 1730 infantry, 325 horsemen, and 24 cannons in the vicinity of Nagyszeben. On the morning of 4 February, in the Battle of Vízakna, Puchner, with at least 12,000 men and 30 cannons and supported by thousands of Romanian militias attacked Bem, who, despite his opponent's huge superiority, almost drove the enemy back at the beginning of the battle, but the Austrian counterattack swept away the Hungarians, who lost a quarter of their soldiers and a third of their cannons. Bem was almost captured.

After the battle, Bem retreated through southern Transylvania, captured Szászsebes, and on the 7th he clashed with the Austrians in the Battle of Szászváros, where, to save his remaining cannons, he personally tried to defend them, but without success, being wounded. After this defeat, Bem, with his 1200 remaining soldiers, arrived at Déva and then retreated at Piski, where he was finally able to join the reinforcements sent by General János Damjanich, which increased his troops to 7000 men and 24 guns. It was here that he clashed with Puchner's army of about 8,000 soldiers and 26 cannons.

If this bridge is lost, the whole of Transylvania will be lost, he encouraged his soldiers. In the Battle of Piski on 9 February, he finally defeated Puchner, who was forced to retreat towards Nagyszeben.

After the victory in Piski, Bem had to rush to northern Transylvania, because Colonel Urban's troops invaded again from Bukovina, and on 18 February, in the Battle of Királynémeti they defeated the troops of Colonel Ignác Riczkó, who was killed in action. Bem defeated the already retreating enemy in the Battle of Borgóprund on 26 February, chasing him back in Bukovina and after that, there was no battle in Northern Transylvania until June 1849.

The counterattack of the Hungarian main army and the Battle of Kápolna

At the end of January 1849, a concentration of the Hungarian troops behind the Tisza began. After Klapka's and Perczel's successes and Görgei's breakthrough at Branyiszkó, the time came for a counter-attack, but it was delayed. Kossuth appointed the Polish general Henryk Dembiński, who had arrived from France, to lead the concentrated main army. His decision was also influenced by the fact that Kossuth misunderstood Görgei's Vác Manifesto and thought that the general wanted to disobey the National Defence Committee, and therefore did not want to give him the high command at any price. The appointment of Dembiński proved to be a bad choice. The Polish general quarrelled with almost all his subordinates as soon as he was appointed. Because of his wrong orders, he dispersed the forces at his disposal and also missed the opportunity to destroy Schlik's isolated army. So when Windisch-Grätz finally moved towards Debrecen at the end of February, only half of the Hungarian main force took part in the Battle of Kápolna on 26-27 February, and was defeated.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 13.02.1849-05.03.1849

During the retreat after the Battle of Kápolna, Dembiński again demonstrated his incompetence as a commander and refused to inform the Hungarian officers of his plans of war. Therefore, the disgruntled officers, with the assistance of Bertalan Szemere, the national commissioner, dismissed him from the high command on 3 March in Tiszafüred, and the outraged officers even arrested Dembiński.. When Kossuth heard of all this, he hurried to Tiszafüred, and, suspecting that Görgei was behind this rebellion, he allegedly declared that he would have the Hungarian general executed. However, when he saw on the spot that the officers supported Görgei, he approved Dembiński's replacement and was forced to accept Szemere's earlier decision to appoint Görgei as provisional commander-in-chief.

Before the battle of Kápolna, it was planned that the divisions of Major Generals János Damjanich and Károly Vécsey to launch a diversionary attack at Szolnok, thus allowing the Hungarian main force to advance undetected. However, the Battle of Kápolna, fought too early, thwarted this plan. However, Damjanich and Vécsey still wanted to perform the attack, so on 5 March they attacked and defeated the Karger brigade in the Second Battle of Szolnok, where the Imperial troops lost about 500 men.

The imposed Constitution of Olmütz

Following the Battle of Kápolna, Windisch-Grätz sent a bragging, over-optimistic battle report to the imperial court in Olmütz: I found the rebel hordes at Kápolna in terrible numbers, but I scattered them and destroyed most of them. The rest fled across the Tisza. I hope to be in Debrecen in a few days, and to capture the nest of the rebellion. Reading this report, the imperial court believed that the Hungarians had been crushed once and for all, and that the time had come to definitively settle the struggle between constitutionalism and absolutism. On 4 March, by dissolving the Imperial Assembly from Kremsier, which was right then drawing up a democratic draft constitution, the emperor himself gave the people a constitution. This constitution, imposed by the emperor, repealed the Hungarian laws of April 1848 and abolished also the feudal constitution which was valid before 1848, thus terminating any trace of Hungary's internal autonomy. In addition, it separated Transylvania, Croatia, Slavonia, and the Partium from Hungary. The decree abolished and divided Hungary, which had been a unitary and independent kingdom inside the Habsburg Monarchy, into parts. All this effectively amounted to the incorporation of Hungary into the Austrian Empire. This constitution never came into force; it was delayed until it was repealed in 1851.

This constitution caused a huge outcry in Hungary and confirmed Kossuth's determination that Hungary should be formally declared independent from the Habsburg Empire because there was no longer any legal basis for compromise.

Spring Campaign

Opposing forces

The Hungarians

In the last days of March, four Hungarian corps (I, II, III, VII) massed in Tiszántúl (the region east of Tisza) to launch the campaign against the Imperial main army. The four corps had in total 52 300 men and 184 guns. At the start of March, in Transylvania, together with the Székely troops, Lieutenant General Józef Bem had 17 000 soldiers and 42 guns. In southern Hungary, around Szeged, the IV. (Bácska) corps led by General Mór Perczel prepared to attack the Serbs with 8,500 soldiers and 30 guns. The Austrian fortresses in Banat (Temesvár and Arad) were surrounded by the V. (Bánát) Corps led by General Károly Vécsey with 6000 soldiers, 24 field cannons and an unknown number of siege guns. In northeastern Hungary, troops of the 19th Division were stationed with 3,500 soldiers and 8 guns.

In addition, the following forces defended the Hungarian-controlled fortresses and strongholds. The garrison of Komárom (VIII Corps) consisted of 9,000 soldiers, 6 field pieces, and 200 fortress cannons. The garrison of Pétervárad consisted of 5,000 men and 116 cannons. And two companies of soldiers and 26 guns were defending the Munkács Castle.

The number of reserve troops in formation at the time was 7,000 and 12 guns.

Thus, in total, the Hungarian troops were around 110,000 soldiers and 700 guns.

The K.u.K. army and its allies

Opposing the Hungarian main army on the other bank of the Tisza was the Austrian army led by Field Marshal Alfred Windisch-Grätz, consisting of three corps (I, II, III) and one division (Ramberg - later Götz - division), with a total of 50 500 soldiers and 222 cannons. The Komárom siege corps consisted of 14,133 soldiers and 42 guns.

Balance of forces during the Hungarian wars of Independence of 1848-1849 before the start of the Spring Campaign

In Transylvania, Lieutenant General Anton Puchner commanded 8676 soldiers and 36 guns. In addition, since February there had been 7,000 Russian soldiers and 14 artillery pieces in Transylvania, which Puchner could only rely on for defensive fighting. Besides these, there were some 70,000 Romanian national guards and militias in southern and western Transylvania.

In the Bánát and Bácska regions, the mobile Serb-Austrian forces (those who were not stationed as garrisons in fortresses) on 14 February consisted of 29 402 soldiers and 92 guns. However, at the beginning of March, the Serbian volunteers, called Servians (6-7000 men) returned to the Principality of Serbia because the Austrian command had forbidden them to plunder. At the same time, not all parts of the Olmütz constitution were in concordance with the Serbian national aspirations, and this too contributed to the return of the Serbian volunteers. To make up for the shortfall caused by their departure, the Styrian-Croatian corps was sent to support the Serbian troops in the area of Pétervárad. It consisted of 7568 soldiers and 36 guns. This increased the number of Imperial troops in the south, consisting of Serbs, Austrians, and Croats, to about 30,000 soldiers and 128 guns.

In addition to these, the following troops were in the castles controlled by the Imperials. In Transylvania: Gyulafehervar's garrison consisted of 2,523 soldiers and 71 guns, and the small hilltop castle of Déva with 80 soldiers and 3 cannons.

In the South three castles were in imperial hands: Temesvár, Arad, and Eszék. Temesvár had a garrison of 8851 men and 213 guns, Arad had 1453 defenders and 66 guns, while in Eszék there were 3,000 soldiers and an unknown number of guns.

In addition to these troops, new imperial troops were sent to stop the Hungarian army, which had won a series of victories in April. In mid-April, 10,000 troops and 18 guns under the command of Lieutenant-General Ludwig von Wohlgemuth, gathered in Austria, Styria, Moravia, and Bohemia, arrived in western Hungary. At the same time, the Vogel Corps, consisting of 11,000 soldiers and 24 guns, was sent to Northern Hungary from Galicia.

Thus, in total, the K.u.K. troops (including also the Serbs from Bánát and Bácska) and their nationality and Russian allies were around 119 216 soldiers and 781 guns. The Russian troops from Transylvania were 7000 soldiers and 14 cannons. Around 70,000 Romanian militias also helped the Austrians in Transylvania. So we can say that before the start of the Spring Campaign, the counter-revolutionary camp was much more numerous than the Hungarians. And to these in April added another 21 000 K.u.K. soldiers and 42 guns during April 1849.

The campaign attempt of Antal Vetter

After Dembiński's replacement, on 8 March 1849, Kossuth appointed Major General Antal Vetter as commander-in-chief of the Hungarian army. Vetter's operational plan was to send Görgei's VII Corps towards Miskolc, while he with the other three corps wanted to cross the Tisza at Cibakháza and try to attack the enemy's flank. The Hungarian main army crossed the Tisza on the Cibakháza bridge on 16-17 March. In the meantime Windisch-Grätz also moved his troops towards Cibakháza. On the 18th Vetter received the news that 40,000 Imperial soldiers were stationed in Nagykőrös. As a result, the Hungarian military council decided to retreat Tisza through Cibakháza. On 18-19 March, the Hungarian main forces returned to the left bank of the Tisza and marched northwards.

Meanwhile, Görgei crossed the Tisza at Tokaj, and headed west. In the meantime, Vetter fell ill, and another commander-in-chief had to be appointed. At first, Kossuth thought that he would be the commander-in-chief, but the generals dissuaded him. The majority of the army wanted Görgei to be appointed commander-in-chief, and therefore Kossuth was forced to put him as temporary main commander on 30 March. The appointment was not officialized, but after Görgei took over the Ministry of War in May 1849, he remained de facto the commander-in-chief of the Hungarian army until 1 July 1849.

The liberation of Transylvania

At the beginning of March, Bem again turned against Nagyszeben, the headquarters of the imperial army led by Puchner. On 2-3 March, Bem was defeated by Puchner in the Battle of Medgyes, and retreated to Segesvár. Puchner thought that finally, the opportunity to deliver a definitive blow to Bem had come, and he sent his troops on several routes towards Segesvár trying to cut all the escape routes and close Bem's army in the town. Only the road from Segesvár to Nagyszeben was left unsecured, for a short time.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 06.03.1849-21.03.1849

Bem immediately recognized his big chance, and on 9 March, he left Segesvár and went in a forced march with his troops on that route to Nagyszeben. On 11 March, in the Second Battle of Nagyszeben, he defeated the Russian-Austrian garrison led by the Tsarist Colonel Grigory Skariatin, who came out from the city to face him and then started to besiege Nagyszeben, taking it by nightfall. Puchner who understood late, that Bem played a game of cat and mouse with him, rushed with his troops, which were surrounding the empty Segesvár, towards Nagyszeben, but before he reached it, on 12 March in Alzen (Rom. Alțina), he was informed that his headquarters had fallen. The fall of Nagyszeben was a huge psychological blow to the Imperial forces: lieutenant-general Puchner resigned his command in favor of General József Kalliány. The Imperials still had a much larger army than Bem had, and the new commander-in-chief was considering retaking Nagyszeben, but when General Engelhardt, the leader of the Russian troops defending Brassó, warned him that a force of about 10,000 men was approaching from Székely Land, he was forced to abandon this plan. Colonel János Czetz received orders from Bem to march towards Brassó. On 18 March, Czetz's troops inflicted a final defeat on Kalliány's army in the Battle of Feketehalom, as a result of which the Austrian and Russian armies fled Transylvania for Wallachia. Czetz captured Brassó on 20 March, while Bem drove out the rest of the enemy army through the Vöröstorony Pass. By the end of March, Bem had cleared the whole of Transylvania of them. Only the fortress of Gyulafehervár and the small castle of Déva on top of a mountain remained in the hands of the K.u.K. troops and part of the Transylvanian Ore Mountains in the hands of the Romanian rebels, led by Avram Iancu.

On 27 May, the castle of Déva also surrendered to the Hungarians, and a siege ring was drawn around the castle of Gyulafehervár.

Fights against the Romanians retreated to the Transylvanian Ore Mountains

The victories of General Bem and the withdrawal of the Austrian and Russian armies from Transylvania forced the Romanian insurgents led by Avram Iancu to retreat to the well-defended Ore Mountains in western Transylvania. With around 70 000 armed men in total, they posed a serious threat to the Hungarians. Starting with October 1848, Avram Iancu's Romanian insurgents gained a gruesome reputation mainly for the mass killing of innocent Hungarian civilians throughout southern Transylvania, thus the Hungarian army could not take their threat lightly. However, the Hungarian successes in March led the Romanians to show a willingness to compromise. Ioan Dragoș, a Romanian MP in the Hungarian Parliament from Bihar County, tried to mediate a truce between the two sides, when Imre Hatvani, the new leader of the Zaránd brigade, with 1109 poorly armed national guards and guerillas (some of them had only spears), 52 hussars, and 3 small caliber cannons, appeared on 6 May in Abrudbánya, the center of the Romanians from the Ore Mountains. In response, the Romanians broke off all negotiations, and on the 9th they laid siege to Abrudbánya, from which Hatvani and his troops withdrew, but in the heavy fighting 150 men of the Zaránd Brigade were killed. Hatvani, on Kossuth's orders, repeated the attack on 15 May with 1300 men. He reoccupied Abrudbánya, and then the Romanians' overwhelming superiority forced him to flee again. The Romanians took revenge for Hatvani's attacks by massacring 5,000 Hungarian civilians living in Abrudbánya, Verespatak, and the surrounding villages.

The Romanians, smelling blood from these successes, tried to launch attacks from the mountains. One such attack took place on 30 May against the Hungarian army besieging Gyulafehérvár, led by Avram Iancu himself with 7-8000 men, but was repulsed by the Hungarian troops.

Liberation of Southern Hungary

At the same time as the liberation of Transylvania, the military situation in Bácska and Bánát took a favorable turn. On 15 March 1849, General Mór Perczel took command of the Bácska troops, i.e. the IV Corps. After several victorious battles, Perczel first relieved the blockade of Pétervárad from the north and then made an unsuccessful attempt to break the blockade from the south too. Then he turned back and brought reinforcements from Szeged. On 3 April he attacked and captured the Serbian fortified camp of Szenttamás, which had been besieged unsuccessfully three times by Hungarian troops. On 7 April, he broke through the Roman Entrenchments. On 12 April he attempted to take the heavily fortified Titel plateau from the Serbians but was repulsed in the First Battle of Titel. Then Perczel brought in new reinforcements and on 22 April he crossed the Tisza at Zenta. On 29 April, he fought an undecided battle with Kuzman Todorović's troops in the Battle of Melence, after which both sides retreated. The next day Perczel took Nagybecskerek.

In the meantime, Bem's army left Transylvania, and on 16 April pushed into Bánát from the east. He took Karánsebes and Lugos, then met Perczel at Zsombolya. In the meantime, the Imperial Corps, driven out of Transylvania in March, under the command of Lieutenant General Ignaz Malkowski, entered Bánát at Orsova. Bem and Perczel agreed that Perczel would continue to pursue Todorović, while Bem would turn against Malkowski. Perczel beat the Serb troops in the Battle of Uzdin on 7 May and then occupied Pancsova on 10 May. In the battle, the German-Serbian Corps from Southern Hungary broke into pieces and retreated in different directions. In the meantime, Bem quickly sent his brigades to outflank Malkowski's corps, which, fearing an encirclement, left the country, back into Wallachia

At the same time, there were also major changes in the blockade of the Austrian fortresses from Bánát. At the beginning of April, Major General Károly Vécsey took command of the troops besieging Arad, and by 25 April he built a canal to cut off the garrison from the outside world.

Meanwhile, at the end of April, Bem's troops took up observation positions around the fortress of Temesvár. From Bem, Vécsey's troops took over the observation of the fortress, and Vécsey put the fortress under regular siege.

At the end of May, except the fortresses of Arad and Temesvár -both encircled by the Hungarian forces - all Bánát was in Hungarian hands, while, except the Titel plateau, all Bácska was liberated.

The Campaign of the Hungarian main army

The operational plan of the Spring campaign was elaborated by General György Klapka.

According to the plan, the VII. corps, standing at Hatvan, had to attract there the attention of the K.u.K. commander-in-chief, while the I., II., and III. corps tried to get behind the enemy's main army by a southwestern detour. The plan was risky because if the imperialists discovered that only a small part of the Hungarian army was at Hatvan, they could easily crush it and cut off the supply lines of the other 3 corps.

The Gödöllő-Operation

As a prelude to the spring campaign, on 25 March, a Hungarian detachment of 450 soldiers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Lajos Beniczky made a Raid on Losonc, driving the K.u.K. troops out of the town with heavy losses. The leader of the Austrian garrison of Losonc, Colonel Almásy, reported that he was attacked by a Hungarian army of 6000 men, from which Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz concluded that a huge Hungarian army was from the north advancing towards Komárom. He therefore sent troops northwards to avert this false threat. In this way he weakened the imperial troops in front of Pest shortly before the Hungarian main army attacked.

The first serious clash between the two main armies took place in the Battle of Hatvan on 2 April. Franz Schlik, one of the best generals of the imperial army, was defeated by the VII Corps led by Colonel András Gáspár, creating the belief in the confused Windisch-Grätz that the Hungarian main army would attack Pest frontally.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 22.03.1849-09.04.1849

Meanwhile, the corps led by János Damjanich, György Klapka, and Lajos Aulich (I, II, III) moved towards Pest on the detour from the south route through Jászság. On 4 April, Klapka's troops clashed with Jelačić's rearguard in the Battle of Tápióbicske. Klapka's troops fled, but Görgei arrived on the scene and restored order, while Damjanich's corps took back the bridge over the Tápió with a bayonet charge, and then drove the border guards out of the village. With the irresponsible attack against Tápióbicske at the start of the battle, Klapka revealed the intentions of the Hungarian army. Windisch-Grätz, however, was not properly informed about the battle and because of this, he still did not know the whereabouts of the Hungarian main forces. For this reason, on 5 April he sent the I. (Jelačić) Corps on a forced reconnaissance in the direction of the Zagyva. The reconnaissance made it certain to him that the Hungarian main force was not at Hatvan, but he still could not find out whether the main force was trying to encircle him from the north or the south. In the former case, he was threatened by the danger of the Hungarian relief attempt of Komárom, and in the latter by the cutting off of the possibility of the K.u.K. army retreat towards Pest. He, therefore, assigned Schlik's corps to Gödöllő, Jelačić's to Isaszeg, and Wrbna's to Vác, and also subordinated to the latter Lieutenant General Georg Heinrich von Ramberg's division stationed at Balassagyarmat. Two brigades stayed in the capital and one occupied Monor. The imperial troops thus stretched over a very large front, some 54 km long and 30 km deep, which made it impossible to concentrate these troops in a single day in the case of an attack of the enemy. So when he faced the Hungarian main army in the Battle of Isaszeg on 6 April, he could only gather there half of his troops. The imperial army still proved to be a serious opponent. Klapka's wavering troops had to be stopped by Görgei again, and it was only through the perseverance of Damjanich's honvéd soldiers and the self-initiated action of Lajos Aulich that the battle between the two main armies brought a Hungarian victory.

The relieve of Komárom

At Gödöllő on 7 April, the Hungarian command drew up a new operation plan, based, in the same way as the former, on feigning an attack from the front, while bypassing the enemy. The essence of this was to leave Lajos Aulich's II Corps behind in front of Pest this force had to be soon joined from the north by the Kmety Division which belonged to the VII Corps, after it covered the departure towards the north, of the I and III Corps and the two remaining divisions of the VII Corps. The I and III Corps had to take Vác, then together with the two remaining divisions of the VII Corps had to march towards the Garam. The task of the II Corps and the 12th Division was then to make it appear that the Hungarian main forces were still in front of Pest by launching deceptive operations. In the meantime, the Hungarian main forces had to cross the Garam and break the siege blockade around Komárom from the left bank of the Danube. Then after crossing to the right bank of the Danube, they had to break the siege blockade also from the south. Then, the enemy would have been left with two choices: either evacuate the capitals and retreat towards Vienna, or risk being surrounded by the Hungarian main army in the vicinity of Buda.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 10.04.1849-30.04.1849

Indeed, in the second phase of the attack, the Hungarian troops in front of the capital, led by General Lajos Aulich, with fake attacks deceived the enemy's main force, making it believe that the Hungarian main forces were at Pest. Meanwhile, the Hungarian main troops led by Görgei was heading north. On 10 April, Damjanich's corps occupied Vác from the Ramberg division. After several hours, the enemy commander himself, General Götz, died from the wounds received in this battle.

On 19 April, in the Battle of Nagysalló, the Hungarians found themselves face to face with a newly organized Imperial corps, which had marched into Hungary from Austria, under the command of Ludwig von Wohlgemuth. But the Honvéds, who had already tasted victory several times, had no obstacle to overcome this, and the enemy was crushed, the Hungarians taking more than 1000 prisoners. On the next day, the Hungarian troops won another victory over an imperial brigade in the Battle of Kéménd and then reached Komárom.

Field Marshal Ludwig von Welden, appointed as Windisch-Grätz's successor, was forced to evacuate Pest, leaving only a garrison to defend the Buda Castle, and Jelačić's corps was sent to the south, while he himself withdrew with the main force to the western border.

Komárom was surrounded in January 1849, and since March it has been constantly besieged and bombarded by imperial troops. Approaching the fortress from the north, Görgei's troops first wiped out the Austrian blockade on the left bank of the Danube, then crossed to the right bank on 26 April on a newly built raft bridge. Thus the First Battle of Komárom begun. In the early hours of the morning, the Hungarians captured the Austrian entrenchments, the siege corps being saved from the total annihilation by Welden’s main army retreating from Pest, which arrived there in the right moment. After the end of the battle, Welden's troops retreated to the western border of Hungary, and Komárom was liberated.

Fights along the western border

After the battle of Komárom on 26 April, the imperial armies retreated to the western border of the country, around Pozsony. These troops were pursued by Colonel Ernő Poeltenberg with the VII Corps.<ref="Hadtörténet95"/> During May, the Hungarian troops stationed at Győr and on the Rába line fought some small-scale battles with the K.u.K. troops stationed on the right bank of the Danube. Poeltenberg’s VII Corps of 7632 foot and 1411 mounted soldiers, despite of being sporadically supported by the 9000 soldiers of the garrison of Komárom (called the VIII Corps), were hugely outnumbered by the Austrian armies gathered around Pozsony, which had 75 633 personnel, with 54 443 combat-ready soldiers and 237 cannons. Despite their significant numerical disadvantage, in the fights that occurred during the next month between the two sides, the VII Corps was able to hold its positions, and even initiate successful attacks. On 5 May, VII Corps chased the Imperial forces from Enese, as well as the imperial cavalry units that had come to their aid. On 9 May, however, Poeltenberg, on reconnaissance towards Moson, retreated from the overwhelming force of the enemy. On 11 May, Austrian troops led by General Franz Wyss consisting of 6 cavalry companies, 3 infantry battalions, 6 guns, and 2 Congreve rocket launchers (around 2500 men) were repulsed by Poeltenberg's 7 hussar companies, 1-2 infantry companies and 9-11 cannons (in total around 900-1000 men) in the Battle of Lesvár, as were the imperial troops attacking the Csallóköz. Austrian attacks continued in the following days, but the Hungarians repulsed them. On 19 May the imperial troops drove the Hungarian outposts out of Öttevény, but the next day the Hungarians recaptured the settlement. From 24 May until 7 June, however, there were no more clashes between the two sides.

The proclamation of Hungary's independence

After the Hungarian victories in the spring campaign, Kossuth saw the time had come to respond to the Olmütz constitution. On 14 April, the Diet met in Debrecen, and by a public vote, the dethronement of the Habsburg-Lotharingian dynasty and the declaration of Hungary's independence was declared. The Parliament also elected Kossuth as Governor-president, i.e. temporary head of state. The Declaration of Independence formulating these decisions was adopted by Parliament on 19 April.

With this step, Kossuth hoped, among other things, that the Western powers would join Hungary in the war, or at least they would recognize its independence. However, the Western powers saw the Habsburg Empire as more necessary to the European balance of power than accepting an independent Hungary.

The proclamation of Hungary's independence was disapproved not only by the foreign powers but also by many of the Hungarian generals and other officers. While Józef Bem, the leader of the Army of Transylvania, and Mór Perczel, the commander of the Army of the South, agreed with this, it was greeted with concern and even indignation by some in the Upper Danube Army, the main Hungarian army, which included most foreign-born officers who had only stuck to the Hungarian cause thanks to the Declaration of Vác from 5 January. However, no collective action was taken against the declaration of independence by the dissatisfied officers.

Even so, the fact remains that the declaration's issuance was not fortunate for the unity of the army's officer corps, nor for the unity of those who fought for the Hungarian cause. According to some officers, while Hungary's struggle for the preservation of the Hungarian constitution and the recognition of an independent Hungary within the empire had been legitimate self-defense, with the declaration of independence the war of self-defense lost its legal basis. However, the fact is that since the attack of the Croatian army led by Josip Jelačić in September 1848 and the attack of the imperial army led by General Windisch-Grätz in December 1848, the empire has rejected at least seven public or gestural Hungarian peace offers, and the Olmütz Constitution convinced most loyalist officers that the emperor was not willing to sit down at the negotiating table with the Hungarians at any price, so the declaration of independence was a necessary and legitimate step for which the Hungarians were not to blame. The Hungarian victories in the spring campaign also prevented mass resignations of the officers, because they created the belief that Hungary could win the war and would dictate the terms of peace. But still there were some important officers who resigned, very probably because of the Declaration of Independence. Among these was one of the talented corps commanders, General András Gáspár.

In the beginning, Artur Görgei's stance towards the Declaration of Independence was uncertain. When, after the Battle of Isaszeg, Kossuth hinted at this plan to him, Görgei expressed only mild disapproval, but did not take a clear stand against it, nor did the other officers. This encouraged Kossuth to take this step. Even after the Declaration of Independence, Görgei did not express himself clearly against it, although in his later writings, he claims to have protested against it. But as early as May, Görgei secretly met members of the Peace Party, which was seeking to overturn the Declaration of Independence, and before them, he showed himself ready to use his troops to restore the situation that existed before the Declaration was proclaimed. However, when, in the summer of 1849, the Russian army invaded Hungary, he openly expressed his opinion that the Russian intervention was caused by Kossuth's proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and this, starting with June, contributed to the deterioration of their relationship.

Siege of the Buda Castle

After the liberation of Komárom, the leaders of the Hungarian main army had to decide on the direction of further operations. Görgei and the Chief of the General Staff, Colonel József Bayer, advocated an advance towards the western Hungarian border, while General György Klapka, the man who had drawn up the plan for the Spring Campaign, argued for the liberation of Buda. Klapka put forward two main arguments. The first was that without the forces left under Buda, the Hungarian main army was not strong enough to launch a successful attack. The second was that as long as Buda was in Austrian hands, neither the Danube, the most important waterway, nor the only permanent bridge over the Danube in Hungary, the Chain Bridge, which was right in front of the Buda Castle, could be used by the Hungarian army. So, the control of the Austrian garrison over the Chain Bridge could cause serious disruptions to the transportation of supplies to the armies fighting in Western Hungary.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 01.05.1849-14.06.1849

Also regarding the balance of power, the siege was the best choice, as the imperial army in front of Vienna had almost twice as many soldiers and cannons as the Hungarians had. So Görgei marched to Buda.

On 4 May, he called on General Heinrich Hentzi, who was the commander of the K.u.K. garrison, to surrender. Hentzi refused the offer, and in the following days, he unjustifiably bombarded Pest several times, even though Görgei's troops did not attack the castle from there. So the Siege of Buda begun. The decisive assault was launched in the early hours of 21 May, and by 6 a.m. the Hungarian flag was flying on the walls. Hentzi himself was mortally wounded in the battle. The capture of the castle was one of the shortest and most successful sieges of the Hungarian War of Independence: it lasted only 17 days, the Hungarians took almost 5,000 prisoners, and brought 248 cannons and thousands of rifles into the hands of the Hungarians.

Liberation of Northern Hungary

Colonel Lajos Beniczky's detachment of 450 soldiers, who, as seen above, successfully carried out the raid against Losonc on 24 March, in April continued its campaign in the northern Hungarian territories. After capturing Rimaszombat, Beniczky's detachment marched on 5 April to Szepesváralja, and on 7 April it liberated Eperjes.

At the same time, Major Ármin Görgey, sent by his brother Artúr Görgei to secure the rear of the Hungarian main army, set off with a detachment of 6 companies of infantry, 1 company of Nicholas hussars, and 2 six-pounder guns to liberate the mining towns of the Central part of Upper Hungary. On 18 April Ármin Görgey drove the Austrians out of Selmecbánya, and on 21 April he took Körmöcbánya. On 23 April, Görgey's vanguard attacked Major Heinrich van der Trenk's 2 infantry companies near Pribóc and chased them to Varin - which he captured a few days later. On 26 April, he routed Friedrich Bondek's Slovak militias at Zaskala, taking 160 prisoners, and successfully completing the liberation of the economically important mining towns. As a result of these battles, Lajos Beniczky and Ármin Görgey, with their small detachments, liberated the central part of Upper Hungary.

In the easternmost part of Northern Hungary, in the Ung, Bereg, and Máramaros counties, only small Hungarian troops were deployed to defend the Galician border. They were engaged in constant vanguard skirmishes with the imperial troops, which, from time to time, broke into Hungary from the other side of the border. In April, due to the unfavorable development of the military situation in Hungary, the Imperial Command decided to direct the forces that were indispensable in Galicia to the Hungarian theatre of operations under the command of Lieutenant General Gustav Vogel. One brigade, under the command of Major General Joseph Barco, advanced towards Munkács, the other two towards Eperjes and Lőcse. On 22 April in the Battle of Podhering, the Hungarian troops forced Barco to retreat. The other two brigades were supposed to advance towards Miskolc via Kassa, but due to the order of Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz on 10 April they moved towards the west, and in mid-May, they joined the main K.u.K. Army around Pozsony.

The retreaters were pursued by the detachments of Major Ármin Görgey and Major Lajos Beniczky.

To prevent similar break-ins, on 19 April Kossuth named Lieutenant General Henryk Dembiński as the commander of the Hungarian troops in Upper Hungary, which would be later organized as the IX Corps. In early May, various units of the Polish Legion, led by Major General Józef Wysocki, were also directed to this area. At the end of May, Dembiński resigned from the command of these troops, but only on 18 June did he hand over command to Wysocki.

Liberation of the Southern Transdanubia

Since the winter of 1848-49, Southern Transdanubia was under Austrian occupation. As the Hungarian military forces had been sent to liberate other areas, Kossuth wanted to liberate this region through a popular uprising. He therefore authorized Gáspár Noszlopy, to organize a popular uprising, to liberate Somogy county. Noszlopy was a successful guerrilla leader, who, during Jelačić’s campaign in Hungary, on 26 September at Marcali crushed a Croatian detachment, capturing 200 soldiers. On 19 April, Noszlopy set out from Baja with 35 volunteers, crossed the Danube in secret, arriving in disguise at Marcali after an adventurous journey, where he started a national insurrection, which, by the joining of the masses, quickly grew in a huge popular uprising. On 1 May Noszlopy marched into Kaposvár, the capital of Somogy County, which had been previously abandoned by the frightened enemy troops. This victory liberated most of Somogy county and 15 000 people joined Noszlopy's movement. On 5 May the enemy garrison fled from Szigetvár to Pécs, and on the 24th, Noszlopy, with his troops, who had hardly any firearms, defeated the Austrian and Croatian troops numbering 1200 soldiers in the Battle of Barcs, and drove them into Slavonia. Then Noszlopy continued his campaign in Zala County, and on 20-21 May he expulsed the enemy brigade occupying Nagykanizsa, which fled to Muraköz. Noszlopy then organized his insurgents into military units, constituting the 127th Honvéd Battalion, a Jäger squadron, and a cavalry company, and even had some cannons founded in Kaposvár. Southern Transdanubia was thus liberated. The only area where the imperial troops remained in control was Baranya County. This was only due to the arrival there of Lieutenant General Josip Jelačić's imperial corps, sent to southern Hungary, and against which, of course, a popular uprising had no chance of success.

The results of the Spring Campaign

At the beginning of March, the Hungarian army held only the eastern part of the country, behind the Tisza- line, while in the south it retreated to the Maros line, holding also the northern half of Transylvania. But during the spring campaign, the Honvéds pushed the Austrian army back to the western border of the country, liberating Transylvania almost entirely, while in the south they had freed the Bánát and Bácska regions, and pushed the enemy back into Croatia, thus holding almost the whole of Hungary.

The Summer Campaign

The calling of the Russians

According to the Treaty of Münchengrätz of 1833, Austria could count on the help of Russia's army, but the Austrian government was reluctant to ask for help. By the end of March 1849, it had become increasingly evident, that the imperial army alone was incapable of putting down the Hungarian "rebellion". Negotiations in preparation for the intervention started at the end of March and the formal request for assistance was made on 21 April. The Austrian side wanted to ask for only a few tens of thousands of Russian auxiliary forces fighting under Austrian command. Tsar Nicholas I Russia, however, believed that he had to act with a strong army that alone could crush the revolution.

The opposing forces

The Anti-Hungarian coalition

The Austrian army and its allies The Imperial Army under the command of Field Marshal Julius Jacob von Haynau consisted of the following army groupings.

The Army of the Danube consisted of 4 corps (I, II, III, IV) and a Russian division, which amounted to 82,570 soldiers and 336 guns. In addition, there were two battalions and six companies stationed in various forts and towns in western Hungary or assigned to guard the main artillery reserves.

The Southern Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Josip Jelačić, consisted of a corps, 3 divisions, a cavalry division, and the Temesvár and Arad garrisons, which totaled 54 392 Austrian and Serbian soldiers and 401 cannons. The Transylvanian corps led by Lieutenant General Eduard Clamm-Gallas consisted of 12 000 soldiers and 36 guns. The Austrian troops in Transylvania were joined by a column led by Colonel Karl Urban, then Colonel Springensfeld, with 3000 soldiers and 9 guns. These were joined by a couple of reserve corps, such as the 1st Reserve Corps under Lieutenant General Johann Nobili with 6,000 soldiers and 12 guns, and the 2nd Reserve Corps under Field Marshal Laval Nugent with 8,500 soldiers and 24 guns. The garrisons and other troops totaled 10,000 soldiers with an unknown number of guns. Thus, the total Imperial Army attacking Hungary consisted of 177,964 soldiers and artillery which exceded 818 guns.

Among the irregular troops that supported the Austrians were the Romanians, who retreated to the Ore Mountains of Transylvania, led by Avram Iancu. The number of these Romanian rebels was estimated at around 70 000. Besides them, it was the Slovak legion, which consisted of about 900 men.

The Russian army In 1849 Tsar Nicholas I mobilized for the Hungarian campaign, the entire II, III, and IV Infantry Corps of the Russian army, the majority of the V Infantry Corps, some units of the I Infantry Corps and the II Reserve Cavalry Corps, about 10 Cossack regiments, 4 companies of Caucasian Circassian cavalry and 6 companies of Muslim cavalry from the Southern Caucasus region. The I Infantry Corps, the undeployed part of the II Reserve Cavalry Corps, and the entire III Reserve Cavalry Corps were waiting at the Hungarian borders as reserves. These totalled 193 000 soldiers and 584 guns. Of these, 135 500 soldiers and 448 guns were stationed at the borders of Northern Hungary, 37 000 soldiers and 88 guns at the borders of Transylvania, while 12 000 Russian soldiers and 48 guns joined the Austrian main force under Haynau.

The Hungarian army

The Hungarian main army led by General Artur Görgei, which was concentrated in the western part of the country, around the Rába and Vág rivers, consisted of 5 corps (I, II, III, VII, VIII), 1 independent division (György Kmety's division) and 3 mobile columns (led by Lajos Beniczky, Ármin Görgey and János Horváth). This totalled 62 640 soldiers and 229 guns.

The Northern Army, led by Lieutenant General Henryk Dembiński, consisted of 1 corps (IX Corps) and a separate division (Kazinczy's Division) with 16 500 soldiers and 57 guns. The reserve corps, led by General Richard Guyon, had 9 500 soldiers and 12 guns. The southern (Bács-Bánság) army under the command of Lieutenant-General Vetter consisted of two corps (IV, V) and the garrison of Pétervárad, which totaled 36,800 soldiers and 109 field guns, 49 siege guns and 64 fortress cannons. The Transylvanian army, which included 1 corps (VI) and the siege troops of Gyulafehérvár, totaled 27 000 soldiers 65 field guns, and 10 siege cannons. To these were added the Székely and Hungarian militias and mobile national guards, which amounted to about 20,000 armed men.

This amounted to 172,440 soldiers and 472 guns.

In addition, there were 465 heavy guns in Komárom and 392 in Pétervárad, for a total of 857.

Balance of forces

Before the new campaign, the balance of power could not be more disadvantageous for the Hungarians. The total number of the Hungarian regular troops is still not known in the most exact way: the most accurate estimate is about 150,000 men, 464 field, and 393 fortress cannons. The total number of the Imperial Army was close to 165,000, with 770 guns (about half of them fortress guns). The Russian intervention force numbered nearly 193,000 and 584 guns, i.e. 358,000 enemy soldiers and 1,354 guns against 150,000 soldiers and 857 guns. A further 60 000 Russian troops were still on standby in Galicia and 15 000 in Wallachia.

Balance of forces during the Hungarian wars of Independence of 1848-1849 before the start of the Summer Campaign

As for the balance of forces in the different theatres of war, the situation was as follows. The Hungarian main army, including the Komárom garrison, had about 53,000 men, 196 field, and 244 fortress guns. In contrast, the Danube army of Field Marshal Haynau had about. 71,000 troops and 288 guns. However, this force was supplemented at the beginning of the campaign by a combined Russian infantry division, which alone numbered about 12,000 troops and 48 guns. In total, under Haynau's command, an intervention force of 83 000 soldiers and 336 guns, were ready to fight.

The Hungarian forces in Northern Hungary were in the most desperate situation: 16,500 and 49 guns defended the border counties against 135,500 Russian soldiers and 448 guns. The overwhelming force here was nine times larger! In the southern theatre of operations, some 34,000 Hungarian soldiers and 249 guns fought against the 53,000 soldiers and 401 guns strong K.u.K. and Serb troops. In Transylvania, 39,000 Hungarians with 107 cannons faced 53,000 Russian and Austrian intervention forces with 133 guns. Beside these, the K.u.K. army had a reserve force of 25 000 soldiers and 36 guns in Styria and Moravia, ready to invade Hungary if needed, and also various garrison troops

The Hungarians' unfavorable situation was complicated even more by the fact that part of the Hungarian troops in Southern Hungary and in Transylvania were encircling the fortresses of Arad, Temesvár, and Gyulafehérvár. This number was at least 12 000, with a further 8000 forming the permanent garrison troops of Pétervárad, Komárom and Munkács. In other words, 13% of the Hungarian army could not be used in field battles.

Apart from the fact that the Hungarian troops were largely made up of young, inexperienced troops and that there was a lack of coordination and agreement in the leadership, the inadequate number of the forces available left little doubt about the sad outcome of the future uneven fighting.

Fights on the main war theater

The battle of the main armies along the Danube and the Vág

Operations on the main battlefield did not restart until mid-June, but due to the Austro-Russian overwhelming force, the Hungarian resistance did not promise victory. But it was not the same whether the Hungarian army ended the war completely destroyed, or with some kind of success, or perhaps with a compromise. There was one way to do this: by concentrating forces. Görgei saw that he could only hope for success if he could defeat the K.u.K. Army before the slow-moving Russian main force arrived.

However, the reinforcements hoped from Southern Hungary did not arrive, so the Hungarian counter-offensive attempt along the Vág started with unfavorable signs. The operational plan was also rather complicated: it required the exact cooperation of the Hungarian corps lined up along the Vág, and if one of them did not demonstrate sufficient determination, the whole operation was threatened with failure. The likelihood of failure was also indicated by the fact that many highly experienced and talented Hungarian generals, who contributed to the victory in the Spring Campaign, were no longer present in the Hungarian army. General András Gáspár probably asked for his retirement because of the Hungarian Declaration of Independence, János Damjanich broke his leg at the end of April, György Klapka became at first deputy minister of war and then commander of Komárom, and Lajos Aulich was relieved of his troops because of illness. And the commanders who replaced them (Károly Knezich, József Nagysándor, and Lajos Asbóth) were not up to the task.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 15.06.1849-12.07.1849

Field Marshal Julius Jacob von Haynau, who was appointed the third Imperial main commander of the K.u.K. armies since the beginning of Prince Windisch-Grätz's campaign against Hungary (if we do not count Jelačić's temporary command between Windisch-Grätz's resignation and Welden's arrival), replaced Ludwig von Welden dismissed for his failure against the Hungarians. Unlike his predecessors, he was a determined, resolute commander, ready to use any means necessary to achieve victory. The new commander-in-chief deployed the I and III Imperial Corps on the right bank of the Danube, while the II and IV (Reserve) Corps were deployed on the left bank. The latter corps were joined by the Russian Panyutyin Brigade.

Nevertheless, the summer campaign began with Hungarian success. On 13 June, the Hungarian detachment deployed along the Rába, led by Colonel György Kmety, surprised the Austrian troops and inflicted a heavy defeat on them in the Battle of Csorna. In the battle, the commander of the Austrians, General Franz Wyss, was also killed in the battle. During those days, the Hungarians made several successful attacks on the right and left banks of the Danube and around the Vág, but these did not change the overwhelming superiority of the imperial armies.

The Hungarian army then tried to make a breakthrough in the Vág region. On 16 June, Colonel Lajos Asbóth's II Corps launched an attack in the Zsigárd and Királyrév regions, but, after initial successes, the Battle of Zsigárd ended in defeat, because of the passivity of the other two corps commanders. Having learned of the failure, Görgei decided to repeat the attack on 20 June. On the first day of the Battle of Pered, Asbóth has once again done an excellent job. With his troops, he captured Királyréve, Zsigárd, and after several assaults, also Pered. But the other corps commanders failed. József Nagysándor and Károly Knezich did not show sufficient determination, while Klapka, was repulsed in the Battle of Alsónyárasd. Surprizingly, that evening the angry Görgei replaced the most successful officer, Lajos Asbóth. And, as could be expected, the next day, the numerically superior Austrian troops led by Lieutenant-General Wohlgemuth and the Russian Panyutyin division, which had been sent to support them, forced the Hungarian troops to retreat, and the Battle of Pered ended in defeat. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Hungarians, Haynau had redeployed his troops from the left bank of the Danube to the right bank, and the Hungarian attack along the Vág River, which resulted in the aforementioned defeat, was of great help in this, because it distracted the Hungarians. The Austrian victory, in which the Russian division led by Lieutenant General Feodor Sergeyevich Panyutyin played a major role, gave the impression that their main forces were still on the left bank, while Haynau was already preparing to attack Győr.

On 26 June Haynau's forces of almost 66 000 men attacked along the Rába line, and first, on 27 June, in the Battle of Ihász, they pushed the Kmety division towards Pápa, and on 28 June in the Battle of Győr, they forced General Ernő Poeltenberg's VII Corps and the troops sent to his aid, to retreat from the city. Artúr Görgei, who, because of his ministerial duties, arrived only at the end of the battle, risked his life at the head of the Hungarian Hussars to repulse the enemy's attacks, saving in this way his retreating troops from destruction.

The conflict between Kossuth and Görgei escalates

Even though the president of the National Defence Committee, Kossuth, had been hostile to Görgei since January because of the Declaration of Vác and because he suspected him as the initiator of the rebellion of Hungarian officers against Dembiński in Tiszafüred, the fact that he was with the army in the first part of the spring campaign, and the victories of Görgei in this campaign, had settled their differences, and the two became friends, and as a result of this, on 17 April Kossuth offered Görgei to be the new Minister of War.

However, their relationship started to deteriorate again at the end of April. Kossuth's political actions - above all the dethronement of the House of Habsburg - and his measures in matters concerning the army did not necessarily please the military leadership. Görgei believed that the Russian invasion was caused by the Declaration of Independence (Görgei was wrong, however, because the Russian invasion had already been agreed between the Habsburgs and the Russians before the dethronement). He blamed Kossuth for this, and believed that if Kossuth and those politicians who were in favor of the independence were removed from power, the Russian invasion could be avoided, and a deal could be negotiated with the Habsburgs, at the cost of Hungary's renewed recognition of the Habsburg monarch as its king, in return for the king's recognition of the April 1848 laws (i.e. Hungary's autonomy). This dislike was perhaps also signaled by the fact that when, after the recapture of Buda, Kossuth offered him the Royal Palace of Gödöllő as a "gift of the nation" and then his promotion to lieutenant-general, Görgei refused both. At the same time, Görgei contacted the so-called Hungarian Peace Party, which, like him, did not agree with the dethronement. Görgei told them that he was prepared to use the military to overthrow Kossuth's government in order to have the Declaration of Independence revoked, but the Peace Party did not agree, and Görgei left the meeting. Kossuth, however, had learned of Görgei's meeting with the Peace Party and wanted to remove Görgei from his position as head of the Hungarian army, but would have allowed him to keep his position as Minister of War.

Due to the escalating fighting, Görgei was unable to carry out his duties as minister and commander-in-chief at the same time. In practice, this meant that he had to commute between the army headquarters and the capital, which meant the road between Komárom and Pest. As a consequence, as mentioned above, he was absent from the Battle of Zsigárd and the first day of the Battle of Pered, and when he appeared on the second day of the latter battle, he was unable to appreciate the situation that had developed in the meantime and therefore lost both battles.

At the Council of Ministers meeting on 26 June 1849, on Görgei's proposal, the following operational plan was accepted. Since there was no possibility of attacking or defending successfully on all fronts, the troops would have to be concentrated in two strategical points. One of the groupings, representing the main army, should be united in the area of Komárom. The task of Wysocki's IX Corps would have remained the same: to hold back or slow off the advance of the Russian main force. The other grouping would have consisted of the Hungarian forces of Bácska, Bánát, and Transylvania, as well as Lajos Kazinczy's detached division. This grouping's task would have been to take up a position along the Tisza, with Nagyvárad as its center. Its task would have been to defend the Tisza line, defend Bánát, and capture the two fortresses (Temesvár and Arad) still in enemy hands. The decision therefore envisaged a two-centred concentration. Its most essential element was to attack Austria.

However, on 29 June, the Council of Ministers reconsidered the decision of 26 June. The Minister of War, without Görgei's knowledge, decided to abandon the plan of concentration around Komárom, and Görgei's, Bem's troops and Wysocki's troops were all ordered to Szeged, in order to ensure the success of the operations against Jelačić. The fact that this new operational plan was taken without the knowledge of the minister of war, by abandoning his own plan agreed earlier, insulted Görgei’s dignity, and seriously damaged his authority as Minister of War. In Komárom, only a garrison of about 15,000 was planned to be left behind. According to this new operation plan made by Dembiński, the Kmety division also was to be sent to Southern Hungary through Baja. So the Council of Ministers decided to concentrate all troops in Southern Hungary, abandoning the rest of Hungary to the enemy.

From a military point of view, Görgei's plan was the better one. As long as Komárom, one of the best fortifications of the Habsburg Empire, was in Hungarian hands, the imperial army could not ignore it. With the concentration of the forces at Komárom, the Hungarian forces would have had two weeks to try to inflict a decisive defeat on Haynau's army. Dembiński's Szeged concentration plan, however, meant that the Hungarian army would have drawn against the Hungarian army the concentrated attack of the Russian and the K.u.K. main armies, the result of which would have been certainly a catastrophe for the Hungarians.

Görgei on 30 June, before learning of the plan of the concentration at Szeged, wrote to Kossuth a letter to inform him that he intended to continue to operate in the spirit of the Komárom concentration plan and that he had not changed his mind because of the defeat of Győr. However, when the delegation with the new war plan arrived on the same day, although it was humiliating to him, and he disagreed with it, he verbally promised to obey this decision. Görgei's letter written before the arrival of the delegation, however, was delivered to Kossuth after the delegation returned, and informed him that the commander accepted to march to Szeged, so Kossuth received the two messages in reverse order. The governor-president, therefore, believed that the main commander had withdrawn his verbal promise to the delegation, thus he had disobeyed Kossuth’s and the Council of Ministers' orders to concentrate in Szeged, classifying this as a rebellion against their authority, therefore he dismissed Görgei from the high command, and he sent immediately Lieutenant General Lázár Mészáros to Komárom, to take over the leadership of the Hungarian army.

Battles around Komárom

In the meantime, the Imperial Army after occupying Győr, began to advance towards Komárom, where the Hungarian troops retreated. Field Marshal Julius von Haynau ordered his troops to launch a general attack on 2 July. In the first part of the Second Battle of Komárom, the imperial army of 52 000 soldiers forced the Hungarian troops numbering 26 000 men to flee, but Görgei counter-attacked and forced Haynau's troops to retreat. Towards the end of the battle, Görgei, who was personally leading the charge of the Hungarian cavalry, suffered a severe head wound from an enemy shell, which left him unconscious and unable to serve for days. The second Battle of Komárom proved that, despite the enemy's twice superior numbers, under a talented and determined leadership, the young Hungarian army could successfully stand against the main army of one of the Habsburg Empire, one of the strongest states in Europe.

After the battle, the order to replace Görgei and to appoint the unskilled Lt. Gen. Lázár Mészáros arrived in Komárom. This news deeply upset the Hungarian officers, who still considered Görgei the most capable Hungarian commander. They sent Generals József Nagysándor and György Klapka to Pest, where the officers' protest was handed over to Kossuth, who was forced to temporarily reinstate Görgeit as commander of the Upper Danube Army and let him lead the troops' withdrawal to southern Hungary.

Since after the battle, because Görgei was unconscious, he could not fulfill the order of the Council of Ministers on 29 June, by leading the army to Szeged, so this was delayed for several days. So the Hungarian generals decided to use this time to try to break the Austrian encirclement around Komárom on the right bank of the Danube installed by Haynau, and then to retreat towards Szeged.

Since Görgei was not yet fully fit for service, on 11 July 1849 the Hungarian army led by Klapka attempted to break through the encirclement of the imperial troops on the right bank of the Danube. However, due to the lack of cooperation between the Hungarian troops, the Third Battle of Komárom ended in defeat.

Görgei’s troops’ march towards Southern Hungary

Because, as a result of the defeat on 11 July, the imperial army was blocking the way on the right bank of the Danube, on 12-13 Görgei's troops started their march towards Pest on the left bank of the river, to join the Hungarian forces concentrating in the South. On the way, however, they encountered the vanguard of the Russian main army South of Vác. On 15 July, the first day of the Second Battle of Vác, Görgei's troops drove out the Cossacks from the city. In the afternoon, more Russian troops appeared in front of Vác and tried to push out the Hungarians from the city, but they were repulsed. Now Görgei knew that there were significant Russian forces south and southeast of Vác, and that was almost hopeless to break through them towards the South, so he decided to take a long detour to the northeast, drawing Field Marshal Paskevich's Russian main army after him, preventing it in this way to attack the Hungarian troops concentrating at Szeged. The retreat began on the evening of 16 July, and on 17 the Hungarian troops fought their way northeastwards in heavy fighting. Thus, after the repulse of the Habsburg Imperial Army led by Haynau at the Battle of Komárom on 2 July, Görgei this time achieved strategic success against the Russian army led by General Paskevich, which had twice the numerical superiority.

On 20 July General Mór Perczel's cavalry attacked the Russians from the side, and although, due to the intervention in the battle of the overwhelming Russian infantry, the Battle of Tura ended in a Hungarian withdrawal. Perczel’s attack also played a role in Paskevich's failure to pursue Görgei with all his strenght.

Görgei's retreat in northern Hungary threatened the Russian army's supply lines, so Paskevich, instead of marching south to link up with Haynau's Imperial Army, sent his corps after Görgei, delaying the end of the war for weeks. Now the Army of the Upper Danube marched towards Miskolc and fought successful defensive battles with the Russian IV Corps in the Battle of Görömböly on 24 July and the Battle of Zsolca on 25 July. Görgei, being informed on the 27th, that the Russians had crossed the Tisza at Poroszló, ordered his troops to march towards the river at an accelerated pace. However, before his troops reached the Tisza, on the 28th Károly Leiningen-Westerburg's III Corps repulsed Lieutenant-General Pavel Grabbe's numerically superior Russian detachment in the Battle of Gesztely. On the 29th Görgei crossed the Tisza at Tokaj and headed for Arad.

Görgei finally reached the Tisza with a long detour. He reached every destination of his march before the Russians and with one-sixth of the Hungarian army he had tied up one-third of the Austro-Russian intervention forces, four times his own. The Tsar himself wondered how Görgei's 30,000 men could outsmart Paskevich's 120,000 soldiers.

Görgei divided his army in Nyíregyháza on 30 July and marched towards Arad. In the Battle of Debrecen from 2 August 1849, General József Nagysándor, the commander of one of the columns, recklessly engaged in battle with the Russian main force outnumbering his troops seven to one, and suffered a serious defeat.}} After the battle of Debrecen, however, the Russian forces remained several days behind the Army of the Upper Danube which was marching towards Arad, so if the Army of the South led by Henryk Dembiński and Görgei's Army had joined their forces, they could destroy Haynau's imperial army before the Russians arrived.

Battles in Transylvania

The campaign in the mountains

In Transylvania, Bem gathered some 39,000 Hungarian soldiers and 107 guns against 53,000 soldiers and 133 guns of the Russian and Austrian intervention forces. But the best of Bem's soldiers were deployed to watch the Romanians from the Transylvanian Ore Mountains mountains, to encircle Gyulafehérvár, and to guard Bánát. Most of the troops on the borders threatened by the Russian invasion were poorly equipped recruits. Meanwhile, at the beginning of June, Bem sent Colonel Farkas Kemény with 5000 soldiers against Avram Iancu's troops in the mountains, but the attack, carried out without sufficient force, against the numerically overwhelming Romanians (according to Kemény there were 10 000 riflemen and 60 000 spearmen) who were using guerilla tactics, fizzled out by 16 June and Kemény was forced to retreat. As a result, on the eve of the Russian intervention, the insurgents continued to tie down a significant part of the Hungarian forces in Transylvania. At the beginning of July, the army troops camped around the Ore Mountains, prepared for another attack on Bem's orders, but it was soon called off or postponed. However, the decision did not reach the Rákóczi Volunteer Troop led by Pál Vasvári, which was surrounded by Romanian rebels at Havasnagyfalu on 5 and 6 July and was wiped out. In the bloody clash, the commander himself was killed. At the same time, the Romanians too tried to break out of the mountains and attack the villages and towns near them. On 9 June a Romanian militia troop of about 4000 men was defeated by the 1170 men and 14 guns led by Major István Csanády in the Battle of Nagyhalmágy. In the end, thanks to the help of the Romanian revolutionaries from Wallachia, at the beginning of August, Avram Iancu promised that he would not attack the Hungarians if they too would refrain from attacking the Romanians.

The start of the Russo-Austrian invasion against Transylvania

Being certain about the imminency of the intervention, Bem knew that if he, with his inferior and rookie troops, engaged in a decisive battle against the Russian-Austrian troops, his army could easily be destroyed. He, therefore, decided to spread his troops along the border and to constantly move from one division to another, by leading continuous attacks against the enemy to prevent the Russo-Austrian forces from entering the Great Hungarian Plain and to protect from enemy occupation his main base of operations, the Székely Land.

On 19-20 June, Alexander von Lüders' main Russian force broke through the Tömös Pass, defeated in the Battle of Tömös the Hungarian division which was defending the Strait, and occupied Brassó the same day. After the capture of Brassó, Lüders sent a 9,000-strong brigade into Székely Land, which defeated part of the Székely division on 23 June. Lüders then moved his troops towards Nagyszeben, to capture the city and chase away the Hungarian troops defending the Vöröstorony through which the Imperial Corps led by Eduard Clam-Gallas was preparing to invade Transylvania. Lüders defeated a brigade of the Nagyszeben division in the Battle of Fogaras on 13 July and the other in the Battle of Fenyőfalva on 18 July, after which the Hungarian division evacuated Nagyszeben and retreated to Székely Land. The Hungarian garrison defending the Vöröstorony Pass was attacked on 20 July by Lüders' troops and pushed into Wallachia. The detachment laid down their arms in front of the Turkish troops stationed there.

On 20 June, the Russian division led by General Magnus Johann von Grotenhjelm entered Transylvania through the Borgó and Radna passes. After two defeats, Lieutenant Colonel József Dobay, who was in charge of the defence, gave up Beszterce and retreated as far as Dés. On 24 June, however, Bem took command of the division from Dobay. He occupied Beszterce and then attacked Grotenhjelm. On 27 June Grotenhjelm repulsed the attack in the Battle of Jád and on the 28th he drove the Hungarian army back to Szeretfalva. After the victory, however, Grotenhjelm returned to the foothills of the Borgó Strait, and Bem could reoccupy Beszterce on July 1.

On 10 July Grotenhjelm attacked the Hungarian troops, but after the victory in the Battle of Beszterce, he retreated again to the foreground of the Borgó Pass. After this, Bem handed over command of the Beszterce division to Colonel György Damaszkin. On 16 July, Grotenhjelm attacked again, and in the Battle of Szeretfalva pushed the Damaszkin's division towards Szászrégen, and then returned to Beszterce. On 21 July, Colonel Damaszkin made a weak attempt to attack, but then retreated again as far as Szászrégen. On 23 July, Grotenhjelm's much superior army attacked and defeated Damaszkin’s 3000 soldiers in the Battle of Szászrégen, but the delay of the Russian encircling column allowed the Hungarians to leave the battlefield without serious losses.

Fights in Székely Land and Moldova

On July 2, in the [[Second Battle of Kökös], the Székely division led by Colonel Sándor Gál repelled the attack of the Russian troops led by General Hasford. However, the Székelys had a great loss in the death in this battle of Major Áron Gábor, the founder of the cannon production in Háromszék and the artillery commander of the Székely Land division. On the news of the outcome of this battle, General Lüders turned back from Nagyszeben and pushed into Székely Land, and on 5 July he attacked Colonel Sándor Gál's division and defeated it in the Battle of Sepsiszentgyörgy after which the Hungarians retreated to Csíkszereda.

On 20-21 July, Bem attacked and drove Clam-Gallas' corps out of Székely Land in several battles, and on 23 July he invaded Moldavia through the Ojtoz Pass. He took some 2,000 troops to this diversion, and in the Battle of Grozești, he defeated the Russian forces left behind in Moldavia, advancing as far as Onești and Târgu Ocna. During his incursion, he issued a manifesto calling on the Romanian population to rise against the Russian occupation, but it had little effect. So on 25 July, he turned back to Transylvania.

Bem’s defeat in Transylvania

Bem was confronted on 31 July by Lüders' Russian army in the Battle of Segesvár. In a battle with an overwhelmingly superior enemy forces, in the beginning of which Russian General Grigory Skaryatyn lost his life, Bem was defeated and almost fell in the hands of the pursuers. The poet of the revolution, Major Sándor Petőfi, died at the end of the battle.

On August 1, Clam-Gallas's imperial corps defeated Gál Sándor's army of 6000 men in the Battle of Bükszád, and on August 2, he captured Csíkszereda, while Grotenhjelm captured Marosvásárhely. Gál's army reduced to 1100 men, retreated to Székelyudvarhely and from there to Kolozsvár.

Meanwhile, a few days after his defeat at Segesvár, Bem was already on his way, and on 5 August, behind Lüders back, as a result of the Third Battle of Nagyszeben, he again captured the city, repeating his feat of 11 March 1849. This forced the Russians heading towards Székely Land to turn back. But on 6 August, Lüders arrived with his troops at Nagyszeben, and in the Battle of Nagycsűr, they crushed Bem's troops despite their heroic defense, inflicting a decisive defeat on them. This was Bem's last battle in Transylvania. The remaining troops fled towards Déva, while Bem hurried to Hungary because Kossuth had entrusted him with the command of the main army.

If we want to conclude Józef Bem’s performance in the Summer Campaign as the commander of the Army of Transylvania, we can say, that despite losing more battles than he won, he still managed to tie down the superior Austro-Russian forces, and preventing them from entering the Great Hungarian Plain, and to attack the Hungarian armies there from the back. The troops of Lüders and Clam-Gallas only reached Transylvania’s western border after the main Hungarian army put down its weapons on 13 August. In conclusion, despite his defeats on the battlefield, Bem achieved his main goal.

Fight for Southern Hungary

Defeat of Perczel

In April 1849, Jelačić's troops marched to Southern Hungary, where the Serbian and Austrian troops were in serious trouble, and in May they appeared on the battlefield, consolidating the positions of the Serbian and K.u.K. forces in the South. On the other side, Perczel's troops attempted on three occasions (on 22, 24, and 26 May) to capture the Serbs' strongest stronghold, the Titel plateau, but the Serbs, taking advantage of the marshy terrain, repulsed the attack on each occasion.

On 31 May, however, Jelačić's corps arrived near the plateau, causing Percze to withdraw his troops to Újvidék. On 4 June, Perczel attempted to break the imperial siege blockade surrounding the Pétervárad fortress from the south, but the attack was thwarted by the intervention of Jelačić's troops. Finally, the two sides clashed on 7 June in the Battle of Káty in an open battle and Perczel suffered a catastrophic defeat due to the charge of the enemy heavy cavalry led by General Ferenc Ottinger (the latter taking revenge for his defeats inflicted on him by Perczel in January at Szolnok and Cegléd). The Hungarian loss in the battle was nearly 1500 (more than a quarter of his troops), while the Imperial loss was only 2 dead and 12 wounded.

After the defeat at Káty on 7 June, Perczel handed over command of his troops to Colonel Ágoston Tóth. Tóth withdrew his troops to defend the Franz Canal (Danube-Tisza-Danube Canal). Jelačić, however, did not follow the Hungarian troops in a serious situation but he tried a Siege of Újvidék. He tried to take the city and the Danube bridgehead to a blockade on the fortress of Pétervárad from the north, but he was unsuccessful. The Ban then marched against Tóth, and in the Battle of Óbecse from 25 June drove the Hungarian troops to the left bank of the Tisza. There was no longer a serious obstacle for him to Szeged, but Jelačić was satisfied with his successes so far and retreated to the Franz Canal. It was not until mid-July that he launched another offensive.

Jelačić’s defeat and retreat

By this time, however, the Hungarian troops were already prepared for the attack. On 14 July Jelačić's more than twice numerous troops, tried to surprise them with a night attack, but the new commander of the Army of the South, Lieutenant-General Antal Vetter and General Richard Guyon defeated the Ban in the Battle of Kishegyes. As a result of this, Jelačić retreated to the Titel plateau and remained there until mid-August.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 13.07.1849-29.07.1849

Another victory for the Hungarian troops in Southern Hungary was that on 1 July one of the most important Austrian fortresses, Arad, surrendered to the Hungarian besiegers led by Lieutenant-General Károly Vécsey, leaving only Temesvár in Austrian hands in the Bánát region, around which the Hungarian troops had drawn a tight siege ring.

After Kishegyes, the initiative was again in the hands of the Hungarians. On 17 July Vetter installed his headquarters in the fortress of Pétervárad.

On 23 July, Richard Guyon's IV Corps launched several attacks to take the Titel plateau, but the defenders repulsed them in the Battle of Mosorin. But on the same day, the War Ministry ordered Vetter to send the IV Corps to Szeged, leaving only György Kmety's corps to defend the Danube line and to observe Titel. On 25 July the IV Corps moved towards Szeged. On 31 July the Ministry of War ordered Vetter to tell Kmety to retreat to the left bank of the Tisza. On 3 August, with the execution of this order, the operations in Bácska were essentially over.

The decisive defeat of the Hungarian main army

Lieutenant General Lázár Mészáros, whom Kossuth had appointed commander-in-chief before the Second Battle of Komárom, resigned at the end of July after General Mór Perczel had refused to obey his orders.

After the battle of Tura on 20 July, Perczel and his troops hurried along the Danube-Tisza towards Szeged, where they arrived on 29 July. The Council of Ministers, held on the night of 29-30 July, decided to entrust the choice of Mészáros' successor to Kossuth. Kossuth, inexplicably, did not appoint Antal Vetter, who had excelled in the Southern campaign as the new commander-in-chief, but Mészáros' former Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Henryk Dembiński.

The Military Situation in Hungary between 30.07.1849-12.08.1849

At the end of July 1849, tens of thousands of Hungarians were in the fortified camp of Szeged waiting to finally meet the imperial troops led by Field Marshal Haynau approaching Szeged. However, the Hungarian commander-in-chief, Dembiński, who made the plan of the concentration in Szeged, claimed that Szeged was not yet suitable to fight the decisive battle with Haynau's smaller forces. Dembiński, therefore, abandoned the excellently fortified town and the trenches of Szőreg, and faced Haynau’s troops outside them, and therefore he lost the Battle of Szőreg on 5 August, then retreated to Bánát. Then, although the government ordered Dembiński to join Görgei's troops in Arad to fight together against Haynau, he sent his troops towards Temesvár, although this fortress was still in Austrian hands.

Dembiński had just given the order to retreat towards Lugos when Lieutenant General Bem, newly appointed as commander-in-chief by Kossuth, arrived in the camp. Bem wanted to march to Arad, but he felt that the troops, depressed by the continuous retreat, would benefit from a victorious battle. So he stopped the retreating army and ordered an attack. Bem, including Temesvár's siege corps, had more than 50 000 men, and Haynau, including Temesvár's garrison, had about 38 000, but his artillery was vastly superior to the Hungarian.

The Battle of Temesvár started well for the Hungarians, their right flank drove back the enemy, but then suddenly the Hungarian guns ran out of ammunition. The cause of this was that, when he was still in charge, Dembiński sent the ammunition wagons to Lugos, and did not inform Bem about this. Bem personally tried to turn the tide of the battle, but when he rode into the front line, he fell from his horse and injured himself. The troops began to retreat towards Lúgos. During the retreat, panic broke out, and at Lugos, barely 20,000 of the 50,000-strong army could be gathered. With this defeat the Hungarian War of Independence was over.

The capitulation

Negotiation attempts with the Russians

On the day of the disaster at Temesvár, the first units of the Army of the Upper Danube led by Görgei arrived at the new concentration point at Arad.

During the retreat towards the northeast, Görgei came into contact with the Russian main army, trying to negotiate with them. Görgei took up the negotiations, hoping to drive a wedge between the Austrian and Russian allies. He also informed the government of the negotiations and Kossuth sent Prime Minister Bertalan Szemere and Foreign Minister Kázmér Batthyány to Görgei's camp. The two ministers summarised Hungary's grievances in a memorial, which was sent to the Russian camp. The document proposed the establishment of a Hungarian-Russian alliance based on the Hungarian Constitution from 1848.

But the Russians did not want to negotiate about this. Tsar Nicholas I repeatedly forbade Paskievich to engage in political negotiations with the Hungarian side, and the Russian commander-in-chief also considered negotiations possible only in the interests of the Hungarian capitulation. Thus, Paskevich refused to meet the two ministers, but on 9 August he wrote to Görgei to say that the Russian army was destined to fight, and not to negotiate, and if Görgei wished to surrender in front of the rightful ruler, he should turn to Haynauh.

On 10 August - still unaware of the defeat at Temesvár - the Hungarian Council of Ministers decided to offer the Hungarian crown to a member of the Russian dynasty if he was willing to guarantee the 1848 April laws. The Council of Ministers also declared that if the Russian side refused to negotiate or mediate with Franz Joseph, the Hungarian army was willing to lay down its arms to the Russians in the case of a decisive defeat.

The resignation of the government and Görgei’s 3 days dictatorship

On the evening of August 10, still not knowing the outcome of the decisive battle, Kossuth and Görgei met for the last time in the Arad Castle. Kossuth asked Görgei what he would do if the Hungarians were victorious at Temesvár, and if he was given the command. Then I will attack with all my might, but only against the Austrians, the general said. And if the Austrians win at Temesvár? asked the governor. Then I will lay down my arms, was the reply.

During that night, the report of the defeat at Temesvár arrived. On 11 August Kossuth and and most of the government resigned.

Then Kossuth appointed Görgeit as dictator and then left Arad. Then, Görgei issued a proclamation announcing the resignation of the governor and the government, and that he had taken over the military high command and civilian powers. What God's indecipherable decree will bring upon us, we will bear it with manly determination, and with the beatific hope of self-consciousness that the just cause cannot be lost forever, he concluded his proclamation.

The capitulation of Világos/Szőlős

After the disaster at Temesvár, Görgei's Army of the Upper Danube was the only Hungarian force able to combat, and it was made up of 29 889 soldiers (but 5000 of them were just unarmed recruits), 9339 horses, and 144 cannons.

The Surrender of the Hungarian Troops and Fortresses at the end of the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-1849

Görgei wrote a letter to Russian General Friedrich von Rüdiger, in which he announced the resignation of the government and his willingness to unconditionally lay down his arms to the Russians. He added his hope that the Tsar would not abandon the former officers of the K.u.K. army, who in 1848-1849 fought for the Hungarian cause, to the lust for revenge of the Austrian government. He then called a council of war. He described the military situation, read out the letter to Rüdiger, and proposed a capitulation in front of the Russians. The Council of war accepted his proposal.

On 13 August, on the field of Szőlős under the castle of Világos, the Hungarian Army of the Upper Danube, led by Görgei, surrendered to Russian General Rüdiger. The commander-in-chief rode one last time in front of the ranks, and when he reached the soldiers of the III Corps, they shouted: Long live Görgei!. Upon this, he started crying.

After the surrender, Görgeit was escorted to Paskevich's headquarters. Here he learned that Paskevich could only guarantee his life, while the other officers' lives were at the disposal of the Austrians. The soldiers were sent to Nagyvárad, and the officers were transported to Gyula, where they were handed over to the Austrians.

The capitulation of the last troops and the surrender of the castles

On hearing the news of Görgei's surrender, Haynau moved his troops against the remnants of the Army of the South. On 15 August, the Imperial troops attacked at Lugos and drove the Hungarian rearguard towards Facset. Bem wanted to march with the forces at his disposal to Transylvania to continue the fight, but the other officers said that it was hopeless. Part of the army led by Bem headed for Déva, while Károly Vécsey with the remnants of the V Corps headed for Borosjenő. Parts of the IX and X Corps marched towards Karánsebes. Major-General Károly Vécsey, who had separated from Bem at Facset, arrived at Borosjenő on 19 August with a large part of the V Corps, leaving behind his artillery and baggage, and handed over his weapons to the Russian troops here on the following day.

Meanwhile, Haynau's forces pushed the remnants of the IX and X Corps towards the southern border. At the request of the Imperial troops, the troops led by Colonel Vilmos Lázár and Major General Arisztid Dessewffy laid down their arms at Karánsebes on 19 August.

On 21 August, a brigade, consisting mostly of the units of the IV Corps, laid down their arms at Hátszeg. Most of the southern forces simply disbanded. The only exceptions were the troops of the Bánát garrison division led by Colonel József Kollman, and the Polish and Italian legions, which left the country in an orderly manner and entered Ottoman territory at Orsova. On 23 August, the troops led by Major Josef Fockner repulsed the attack of the K.u.K. troops at Mehádia, and only the next day they finally left Hungary.

In Bem's absence, Colonel Miksa Stein suffered a heavy defeat at Szászsebes on 12 August and retreated to Deva. On 14 August, due to the negligence of the guards, the castle of Déva exploded, after which Stein retreated to Dobra. Bem reached Dobra, took command and pushed forward to Déva. But here he saw that resistance was hopeless, so he left the army, and together with Stein they fled to Turkish territory. The command was taken over by Colonel Beke József, and on 18 August he laid down his arms to Lüders' forces at Déva.

The remnants of the Háromszék division led by Sándor Gál arrived on 9 August Kolozsvár, where they joined the division of Farkas Kemény. Grotenhjelm's troops approached the city on 14 August. The Hungarian troops evacuated the town, and on 16 and 17 August they clashed with the Austrian and Russian troops at Bánffyhunyad. After the two battles, Gál retreated to Csucsa and from there to Zilah. Here he learned that Colonel Lajos Kazinczy's division was approaching Dés.

On 5 August Kazinczy received Bem's order to march to Transylvania. The division arrived at Dés on 15 August, and on 20 August it joined Gál's troops at Zsibó. It was here that he received Görgei's letter calling him to surrender. The War Council decided to lay down arms before the Russians. However, the majority of the troops simply went home. Thus, on 24-25 August, barely a few hundred soldiers and officers laid down their arms in front of Grotenhjelm's troops. With this, the last mobile force capitulated. Hungary lies at the feet of Your Majesty, Paskevich reported to Nicholas I.

The example of the mobile troops was soon followed by the forts. On 17 August the garrisons of Arad and on 26 August those of Munkács surrendered unconditionally. Pétervárad was surrounded by the Austrian troops only after 17 August 1849. The garrison entered into negotiations with the imperial command, and on 7 September unconditionally surrendered the fortress to the besiegers.

The heroic resistance of Komárom

The defenders crush the besieging troops

The only fortress continued to resist: was the "virgin castle" (as no one had yet been able to take it by siege), Komárom. After the departure of Görgei's Army of the Upper Danube, 19 000 soldiers remained in the fortress of Komárom, led by General György Klapka. On 25 July, a detachment of the garrison made a raid against the Austrian troops in Tata, and acquired a document with the number and location of the besieging army. Klapka then drew up a plan for an operation to crush the Austrian siege army. In the Fourth Battle of Komárom, on 30 July, he drove the enemy first from the left bank of the Danube, and then on 3 August he put to flight Austrian the forces from the right bank. The Imperial troops lost more than 2,000 men, 30 pieces of artillery and thousands of firearms. This was the last major Hungarian victory of the War of Independence. After smashing the siege blockade, Klapka pushed forward as far as Győr, chasing the retreating imperial troops. With this maneuver, Klapka cut the connection between Vienna and the Imperial Army of Haynau for days. On the news of the victory, the people of Székesfehérvár revolted and chased out their Austrian garrison.

Komárom's defense and surrender

However, on 13-14 August, Klapka was forced to evacuate Győr and return to Komárom. On 19 August the Imperial troops began again to surround Komárom, and they requested the surrender of the fortress.

The garrison replied that they would surrender only on certain terms, but these were rejected by the commanders of the Austrian and Russian armies surrounding the castle. Therefore, during September, the Hungarian breakouts and the Austrian and Russian attacks on the castle continued, resulting in some skirmishes. One of the most notable of these was the Battle of Hetény on 5 September, in which some 300 Hussars defeated a Russian Cossack force of the same size. These successful Hungarian breakthroughs, and the failure of the besieging troops' attacks, convinced Haynau that if he tried to take the fortress of Komárom by siege, it would only be at the cost of a long loss of material, time, and men. He, therefore, showed himself ready to compromise with the defenders. On 27 September, a delegation of the garrison and Haynau agreed on the terms of the fortress' surrender. According to the agreement, the members of the garrison and the civilians in the fortress were granted amnesty, and the soldiers and politicians were free to leave for foreign countries. The possession of the fortress was worth enough to the Austrians to ensure the free departure and impunity of the defenders. The fortress was handed over on 2-4 October. These favorable conditions for the defenders were subsequently extended to the members of the Pétervárad garrison so that they too were exempted from punishment; although later most of the soldiers of Pétervárad were forcedly conscripted into the K.u.K. army.

Aftermath

The refugees

Thousands left the country in the summer of 1849. Among them were Governor Lajos Kossuth, several ministers, deputies, government commissioners, military officers, deputy governors, and crowds of ordinary soldiers and citizens. They were all people who believed that the Austrian authorities would be merciless in their revenge on the participants of 1848-1849. The majority crossed into Ottoman territory at Orsova, and together with Kossuth, Bem, and others, they were sent to Vidin in early September. Kossuth and his companions hoped that Turkey, which had taken in Hungarian refugees, would soon be at war with Russia and Austria. The Ottoman authorities recommended that the exiles convert to Islam to avoid being extradited to Russia or Austria. So dozens of officers, including József Bem, Richard Guyon, and György Kmety, converted and joined the Ottoman army. Others believed that they should do their utmost to win over and enlighten Western public opinion, so perhaps in the event of another Hungarian war of independence, Britain and France will not stand idly by and watch Hungary struggle.

Of the nearly 5000 refugees, more than 3156 returned at the end of October 1849. The others were moved from Vidin to Shumen by the Ottoman authorities in early November. The stay in Shumen lasted from 21 November 1849 to 15 February 1850 for the remaining 492 refugees. In February 1850, those refugees, who were considered the most dangerous, were interned in Kütahya in Anatolia.

The retaliation

From the imperials' point of view, the legal basis for the reprisals was the rebellion against the monarch. It started with the publication of the Imperial Manifesto of 3 October 1848, which dissolved the Hungarian Parliament, outlawed its decrees and resolutions and called on all official bodies in Hungary to renounce obedience to the Hungarian government. Thus, in Hungary, 8 October 1848 (the date on which the Imperial Manifesto of 3 October was promulgated) and in Transylvania, 18 October 1848 was the date from which soldiers, officials, or even civilians who supported the Hungarian government could be held accountable. In most cases, military court-martials were responsible for the sentencing, but in justified cases, military commanders could also take action against suspects through summary trials. no accurate records have been kept for these summary trials. This also means that we still cannot be certain of the number of people executed during the War of Independence. The Council of Ministers' meeting in Vienna on 31 August under the chairmanship of Franz Joseph, gave the Commander-in-Chief of Hungary, Baron Field Marshal Julius von Haynau, virtually complete authority to punish those who had participated in the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence. According to the decree issued, Haynau had to submit the court martial proceedings (i.e. after the execution of the judgment, the death punishments included) for approval only afterward, so the Viennese government could not override the decisions made during the sentencing.

In addition to soldiers, civilians, notaries, priests, teachers, and even women were often sentenced to imprisonment, forced labor, like trench-digging, caning, confiscation of property, or loss of their jobs, and thousands were forced to emigrate.

Executions

Executions before October 1849 The most severe form of reprisal was the death penalty by bullet or rope. Of the two methods, the latter was a much more unfair sentence, generally used against common criminals or traitors. The reprisals did not begin after the surrender of 13 August 1849 but much earlier. Windisch-Grätz had already threatened the members of the National Defence Committee, the government commissioners, and the former officers of the Imperial Army with court martial in his manifestos of autumn-winter 1848. However, Windisch-Grätz could only carry out his threats from January 1849, when he occupied Pest. However, his actions were not marked by the severity promised in his proclamations. Between January and April 1849, the imperials executed twenty men, and only five during the time of the high commandership of Welden, who succeeded Windisch-Grätz as commander-in-chief.

Haynau who replaced him was much tougher than his predecessors. He began by having Major László Mednyánszky and Captain Fülöp Gruber hanged in Pozsony because they voted against the surrender of the Lipótvár garrison in February 1849. With them, a total of 58 people were executed by the end of August 1849. The guidelines for reprisals were published by Haynau in a proclamation on 1 July. According to this, anyone connected with the Hungarian government and army was punishable.

Haynau intended to sentence the former officers of the imperial army to death by summary execution. Accordingly, three officers were executed in the second half of August 1849.

In September, only two persons belonging to the civilian population (Catholic priest Miklós Streith and mine master Mátyás Gábel) were executed.

The execution of the martyrs of Arad and Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány The harshest wave of reprisals began on 6 October 1849. On this day, Prime Minister Count Lajos Batthyány, and Imre Fekete, a guerrilla corporal, were executed in Pest. Haynau intended to hang Batthyány. Still, the Prime Minister, to avoid this punishment destined for the traitors, because he did not regard himself as such, before the execution, he injured his neck, forcing his executioners to renounce to the hanging, but to put him before the firing squad. In Arad, three generals and a colonel of the Honvéd Army, Ernő Kiss, József Schweidel, Aristid Dessewffy and Vilmos Lázár, were shot by a firing squad, and nine generals, Ernő Poeltenberg, Ignác Török, György Láhner, Károly Knezic, József Nagysándor, Count Károly Leiningen-Westerburg, Lajos Aulich, János Damjanich, Count Károly Vécsey, were hanged.

The last executions 14 more people are known to have been executed up to 25 October. Among those executed were six officers (National Guard Lieutenant-Colonel András Tamás and National Guard Captain László Sándor executed in Kolozsvár; Colonel Lajos Kazinczy executed in Arad; and three foreigners executed in Pest: Lieutenant Colonel Mieczystaw Woroniecki, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Giron, and Captain Karol d'Abancourt de Franqueville), Government Commissioner and Minister László Csány, Government Commissioner Baron János Jeszenák, Clerk of the House of Representatives Imre Szacsvay, President of the Upper House Baron Zsigmond Perényi, Pastor János Gonzeczky and Clerk Emmánuel Csernyus; and two deserters in Pécs.

15 people were executed in January-February 1850. Only Lieutenant-Colonel Ludwig Hauk was among the military elite of the War of Independence: but he was not sentenced to death because he participated in the Hungarian War of Independence, but for his participation in the Vienna Revolution. Among those executed we find persons treated as public criminals, like the guerrillas found guilty of the murder of the Croatian prisoners in Kőszeg in October 1848, and Captain György Kolossy, who was considered to be Franz Philipp von Lamberg's murderer.

In the months that followed, courts-martial issued death sentences in some 600 cases, but the European outrage forced Haynau to neglect them, but he sent them to 10-16-18-20 years imprisonment or hard labor in the trenches. According to the historian Zoltán Babucs, approximately 120 people (historian Róbert Hermann estimates that about 144 people) were shot or hanged. Among them, we find military leaders of the Honvéd Army, politicians, Catholic and Protestant priests, guerrillas, soldiers who had deserted from the Imperial-Royal Army and wanted to join the Honvéd Army - such as 13 Nádor Hussars - and people hiding weapons.

There were also three Hungarians who were executed for their participation in the Vienna Revolution of 6 October 1848: in November 1848 National Guard commander János Horváth, in December 1848; another person named János Horváth for concealing weapons, and in May 1849 Ferenc Melko (allegedly) for luring Austrian soldiers to fraternize with the revolution.

Other retaliatory measures

Prison A somewhat milder form of retribution was the "fortress-imprisonment" or the more severe "trench-imprisonment". Prisoners sentenced to fortress-imprisonment were not allowed to receive guests, or even to keep stationery or books. If the sentence required, it were put cuffs on the hands and feet of some prisoners, and could only be removed for medical reasons, with medical permission.

Compared to the fortress prisoners, the situation of trench prisoners was much harder: in addition to the feet- and handcuffs, they had to wear chains (the weight of which varied depending on the degree of their guilt) and they were also required to perform various physical labor.

It was possible to be released from imprisonment by individual pardon or mass amnesty earlier than the term to be served. The last prisoners were released in 1859, during the last royal amnesty proclamation.

Public corporal punishments This was generally used to avenge less serious insults against the imperials, without any judicial process. This form of punishment was used mostly against women, as a way of humiliating in their female dignity. The most famous of these was the case of Franciska Buchwald, who, based on fabricated charges, was undressed and flogged in front of the people of Ruszkabánya. Hearing about his wife’s public humiliation, Károly Maderspach committed suicide. The case was reported in the press all over Europe and caused a deep outcry.

Looting of settlements, or imposing war indemnities on them In addition to individual penalties, in some cases, the reprisals could be also collective. The actions of the population against the imperial army during the War of Independence were often avenged collectively, by looting or burning the town or village where the incident took place. In good cases, the inhabitants of the settlements that attacked the K.u.K. or Russian troops got away with a simple war tribute, in worse cases, however, they were burnt and devastated, as the Austrian troops did with Bősárkány and Csongrád, and the Russians in Losonc and Mezőcsát. Haynau imposed a huge war indemnity on the Jewish community of Pest and Óbuda because they supported the war of independence.

Forced recruitments About 20-25 percent of the Hungarian army personnel were soldiers in the K.u.K. Army before the revolution, so, after it was crushed, they were conscripted. After August 1849, many officers were conscripted into the imperial army as simple soldiers, so that each company could have no more than one or two ex-officers. Around 40-50,000 people were conscripted into the imperial-royal army. The conscription was only partially a retaliatory measure. The Imperial Army needed Hussars who had served in the Hungarian army to reorganize and replenish the Hussar regiments. The former Imperial conscripts who had served in the Hungarian army were also re-enlisted. The Imperial Army, whose personnel had been diminished during the war, was also forced to re-enlist soldiers. In addition, recruits were needed to replenish the units depleted in the war, and the soldiers who had learned to bear arms in the Hungarian army were well-suited to replace the fallen and wounded. These former Hungarian soldiers were forced to serve 7 years and were subjected to harsh treatment by the officers.

Destruction of the Hungarian money The Austrian government also ordered the handover of the Hungarian banknotes, the Kossuth banknotes. The Hungarians hoped that the banknotes would be exchanged, but the imperial authorities confiscated and destroyed them without compensation.Thus, the price of the Habsburg restoration in Hungary, and the war was paid almost entirely by the Hungarian society. Haynau on 29 June made the handover of banknotes compulsory, which shows the symbolic importance that the imperials attached to this currency.

The fate of those who emigrated The victims of the reprisals were also those who were forced to emigrate or who were in hiding within Hungary. Although the government could not execute them or imprison them, their property was confiscated in most cases. As a result, those who emigrated often had to create new sources for their livelihood, or those who were hiding ceased to exist for society for many years.

Although there was generally sympathy and willingness to help those who had been subjected to retaliation and their relatives, there were occasional precedents for the opposite. For example, Mihály Táncsics's wife was discredited by some people because she had given birth to their second child in the "absence" of her husband, who was in hiding. In reality, of course, Táncsics was in hiding near his family, but his wife was forced to deny this to the authorities and society.

Amnesty Signs of leniency and mercy towards the convicts on the part of the imperial government started to show from 1853 onwards. In that year, it was decreed that those (or, in case of their execution, their wives or brothers), who were convicted by a military court of loss of their properties, could claim these back from the authorities.

The first amnesty was granted on 24 April 1854, following the marriage of Emperor Franz Joseph and Princess Elisabeth. Subsequently, on 3 April 1856, pardons were granted again to some of the convicted persons, and in the same year, some of the property confiscated in connection with the insurrection trials was returned.

In December 1856, and during Franz Joseph's tour of Hungary in 1857, some of the prisoners were released. In September 1857, it was decided to return all confiscated property, that could be returned, to civilians who did not emigrate, or to those in captivity. At the same time, emigrants were required to apply to the imperial authorities for their return to the country.

The last amnesties were granted in 1858-59. However, it was only after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, that the emigrants could return home, in the knowledge that they would not be held accountable for their actions in 1848-49.

Losses

Number of casualties

There are no precise figures for the total losses of the troops involved in the battles. According to some studies, the Hungarians lost at least 40,000 men. In contrast, the Austrians lost at least 30,000, while the Russians, according to an accurate estimate of their losses, suffered a total of 13,554 casualties during the summer intervention. Most of these died of cholera or other diseases. Dozens of villages and towns also fell victims to the war. Among the major cities, Buda, Pest, Komárom, Losonc, Csongrád, Szeged, Arad, Temesvár, Gyulafehérvár, Zenta, Nagyenyed and Zalatna suffered heavy damage.

In addition, in the interethnic civil war in Transylvania, between 7,500-8,500 Hungarian, between 4,400-6,000 Romanian, and around 500 Saxon, Jewish, Armenian, etc., unarmed civilians lost their lives. Losses were also heavy in Southern Hungary: a total of 68 962 soldiers and civilians died in the battles, ethnic clashes, and diseases.

Material losses

The Hungarian society lost 66 million forints in Kossuth-banknotes. The confiscated or frozen properties of those who were convicted, worth hundreds of thousands of forints.

The war expenses of Austria planned to be 55 million, reached 102,887,369 forints. No wonder that the Austrian finance minister considered the sum of 3,483,236 1/2 roubles requested by Tsar Nicholas I in return for the Russian intervention, to be payable only in tranches, and the equivalent of the sum, which had been reduced by the magnanimity of Nicholas to 3 million roubles, was not fully paid until 1853. The fact that the Russian military budget showed a deficit of 38.5 million roubles and that the Russian state had borrowed, already in July 1849, 31 million roubles from Barings Bank in London is a good indication of the actual costs incurred by the Russians.

Attempts to restart the War of Independence

The most important goal of Lajos Kossuth, who fled abroad after the War of Independence, and the other members of the Hungarian political and military emigration was to re-launch the struggle for freedom. For almost two decades, Kossuth and the Hungarian political emigration tried to create the conditions to restart the War of Independence with foreign support.

Kossuth's travels to England and America

As seen before, in 1849 Kossuth and the Hungarian emigration fled to the Ottoman Empire. But with Anglo-American support, the majority of the Hungarian refugees, including Lajos Kossuth and his family, were able to leave Anatolia. In September 1851, he was transported by an American steamship to the United Kingdom. This marked the beginning of his Western tour, during which the Hungarian cause became public thanks to Kossuth's oratory skills. He captivated the English people not only by his fame and personal appearance but especially by his captivating orations in the classical English language. He arrived in Southampton then he went to London, and from there to Birmingham and Manchester, everywhere arousing enthusiasm and making many friends for the cause of Hungarian freedom. In the United States of America, where he arrived at the end of 1851, the government, parliament, and people of the republic rivaled each other in their expressions of respect and admiration for Kossuth. On the last day of 1851, US President Millard Fillmore received Kossuth and his companions, and on January 5, 1852, the Hungarian guests were welcomed by the Senate, and on January 7, 1852, by both houses of Congress. The Washington celebrations were followed by a seven-and-a-half-month tour of the US. However, apart from celebrations, he received no concrete help for the resumption of the struggle for freedom in Hungary.

Attempts to start a rebellion in Hungary

On the one hand, Kossuth and the other exiled Hungarian leaders were thinking of starting another uprising and war of independence in Hungary. At the same time, they also tried to reach an agreement with the representatives of the nationalities so that the Habsburgs would not be able to use them against the Hungarians again. Kossuth, at the suggestion of the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, also had a plan in mind to involve the Serbs and Romanians in a Hungarian war of independence on the side of the Hungarians. From Serbia, a Serbian corps was to invade Hungary to help organize the Hungarian army. He also thought of organizing Hungarian and Romanian volunteer troops on Serbian territory, with whom he could then launch a new theatre of operations in Transylvania. Several plans like this and others like it were conceived in the early 1850s.

The Makk conspiracy One of the most important attempts to organize an uprising was the conspiracy led by József Makk and the former freedom fighters officers and soldiers who gathered around him. In 1851, after an adventurous journey filled with captivity and escapes, they went to the Ottoman Empire to see Kossuth, and with his approval, they worked out the plan of the movement. In the summer of 1851, Makk established a secret center in Bucharest and sent his agents, who were able to carry out effective organizational work, especially in Székely Land. The Szeklerland group, intended as a bridgehead, was set up by János Török, a teacher at the Reformed College in Marosvásárhely. Organizing of another group also began in Kolozsvár, and also women were included in the movement. The aim was, as a first step, to train four to five thousand men in the mountains who would then use guerrilla warfare to dismantle the local imperial authorities, disarm the garrisons, so that in the second step the former officials of the 1848 revolution would take over local administration, and the Honvéd officers would organize a national army. With this, they wanted to liberate Hungary, but they wanted also to expand this revolt into an international movement which, like the movements of 1848-49, would set the whole of Europe aflame and liberate the peoples from their absolutist rulers. The Austrian authorities, however, discovered the plot and in January 1852, 60 men were taken prisoner, three (Mihály Gálffy, Károly Horváth, János Török) were executed, the others were sentenced to severe imprisonment. A month later, the commander of the 50-man guerrilla unit organized to free the prisoners, Lieutenant József Váradi, captured in Csíkszék, and twelve of his companions, were also sentenced to death. Four of these (Ferenc Bartalis, József Váradi, László Bertalan and Dániel Benedek) were executed. The others were sentenced to between 5 and 18 years of hard labour.

The guerrilla activity of Gáspár Noszlopy Major Gáspár Noszlopy, who liberated the South Transdanubia region in the spring of 1849 through a popular uprising, although he would have had the opportunity to benefit from an amnesty in August of that year after he had handed over the battalion he had recruited to György Klapka in Komárom, he went to the Bakony to continue the guerrilla war, where he gathered another guerrilla group to fight the imperialists. After the defeat of the War of Independence, Haynau's troops and the authorities launched a months-long manhunt for him, but it was not until April 1850 that he was captured. The guerrilla leader was soon court-martialed in Pest and faced certain death, but Noszlopy managed to escape and soon afterward began another anti-imperial plot. The former home guard major contacted József Makk while hiding out at landowners loyal to the ideals of the failed revolution, and organized an adventurous conspiracy in the Hungarian Great Plain. Noszlopy attempted to kidnap Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elisabeth during their visit to this region in 1852, to force Vienna to restore the Hungarian constitution of 1848. The former major visited several places from Kecskemét to Heves and the Bakony, he was recruiting militias to create trouble for the authorities, while he was waiting for Kossuth's arrival He was finally captured by the imperial gendarmes in Pest on 16 November 1852 and taken to Vienna under close guard. Noszlopy managed to escape a second time, but at the beginning of the following year he was again captured by the authorities, who did not leave the matter to chance: in March 1853 he was hanged in the courtyard of the New Building in Pest, together with two of his companions.

Attempts to profit from European military conflicts

The defeat of the Freedom War against the armies of the Austrian Emperor and the Russian Tsar made Kossuth and the Hungarian politicians who emigrated abroad with him realize that Hungary could only achieve lasting independence if it was not alone and could count on the support of other countries, and possibly great powers, in achieving its goals. The attempts to organize a rebellion in Hungary in the early 1850s failed. The Austrian repressive machine worked well. The main organizers were arrested, and for a time also Kossuth's mother and two sisters were imprisoned. Courts martial handed down death sentences in many cases, most of which were carried out.

After the successive failures of various domestic and international conspiracies and attempts of insurrection in 1852 and 1853, Kossuth had to admit the failure of the policy he had pursued so far. He understood that the War of Independence could not be relaunched just by secret conspiracies, issuing proclamations and hoping that the oppressed nations in Hungary and Europe will rise. Without significant financial sources there was no chance for this to happen. Kossuth also changed his approach.

Kossuth and his companions hoped that in the event of an international conflict involving the Habsburg Empire, Hungarian independence could be achieved with the support of the countries fighting against Austria. The Hungarian soldiers who had fled abroad were willing to form Hungarian legions to fight in the armies of states hostile to the Habsburgs and to assist them in return for help in achieving Hungarian independence.

The first such war was the Crimean War, which the Habsburgs did not enter, despite the Russians' best efforts to involve Franz Joseph in return for their support in the defeat of the Hungarian War of Independence. After that, the emigration had two more opportunities to get involved in a war that offered the hope of regaining Hungarian independence. These two conflicts were the Franco-Sardinian-Austrian War of 1859 and the Prussian-Italian-Austrian War of 1866.

The Franco-Sardinian-Austrian War of 1859 In 1859, France under Napoleon III, in alliance with the Kingdom of Sardinia, started a war against Austria. The support of the Hungarian emigration was expected by the two allies. Kossuth, Klapka, and Count László Teleki formed a Hungarian government in exile, called the Hungarian National Directorate. In negotiations with the French Emperor, Kossuth made it clear that, based on his previous experience, he was only willing to call the Hungarian nation to arms if Hungary's independence was declared a war objective by the Allies and significant French armies reached the Hungarian border. Klapka drew up a detailed war plan in which, if the French were to offer assistance and send weapons to Hungary, a Hungarian army of several hundred thousand would be formed to attack the Austrians in the rear. At the same time, Hungarian troops would be organized in Serbia and Moldavia to invade Hungary. Klapka also signed an agreement with Colonel Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the Domnitor of Romania, to implement the diversionary maneuver from the direction of the Romanian principalities. The Romanian side committed to letting the Hungarians use the Romanian territory as a base. In return, he received 10 000 French firearms and political guarantees that the nationality rights of the Romanians of Transylvania would be guaranteed and that the future status of Transylvania would be decided by the population.

After the outbreak of the Franco-Italian-Austrian war in April, dozens of Hungarian emigrants rushed to Italy to fight, in the hope of the renewal of the Hungarian War of Independence . Within the Sardinian army, a Hungarian legion began to be organized in early June, and by early July it numbered some 3,500-4,000 men. General Klapka was appointed commander of the legion.

However, the Hungarian legion did not take part in the fighting. After the French objectives were met, a swift peace treaty was signed. Once again, it became clear that the support of Hungarian ambitions by a great power was only for tactical reasons.

In the autumn of 1860, when Italy was threatened by an Austrian attack for a time, the Piedmontese government again sought the alliance of the Hungarian emigration. An agreement was reached between Piedmontese Prime Minister Camillo Cavour and Kossuth. Under this agreement, one of the common war aims was to win Hungary's independence. The plan was to land Italian troops in Dalmatia, while Hungarian troops in Serbia and Romania would invade Transylvania and Hungary. However, the Italian weapons sent to Romania were confiscated by the authorities and some of them fell into the hands of the Ottoman government. The remaining 20,000 weapons were offered by Kossuth and Klapka to the Polish revolutionaries of 1863-64. Kossuth even had Hungarian money printed in England, but it was later destroyed by the decision of an English court. The Hungarian National Directorate disbanded after one of its members, László Teleki, was arrested in Dresden in December 1860 and handed over to the Austrian authorities, and Klapka resigned in 1862. In 1862, Klapka, with two politicians, György Komáromy and Tivadar Csáky, tried to forge a new agreement with the Italian government by excluding Kossuth, but this did not materialize. Meanwhile, Kossuth and Klapka, separately, tried to organize uprisings in Hungary in the 1860s, but these did not materialize either, and the leaders of the conspiracies in Hungary (János Vidats, István Nedeczky) were arrested by the Austrian authorities.

The Prussian-Italian-Austrian War of 1866 The Prussian-Italian-Austrian war, which started in 1866, was the last opportunity for achieving Hungarian independence. Kossuth, together with Csáky and Komáromy, drew up a grand and fanciful plan to liberate the country. Prussian troops were to invade Hungary from the north, István Türr would enter Southern Hungary with a 28,000-strong Italian army, including the reorganized Hungarian legion from Serbia, and other troops would enter Transylvania from the Romanian principalities. In addition, the people of Hungary would also start an uprising. None of these plans was realized.

But, independently from Kossuth's plans, General György Klapka managed to enter Hungary with an armed force. He negotiated with the Prussians, and under his command a new Hungarian legion was organized. Its strength reached 1500 men. The whole legion was formed by a "brigade", consisting of 8 infantry companies and a hussar company. But when in the first days of August 1866 General György Klapka, leading his troops, entered Northern Hungary, he was severely disappointed. His appearance did not arouse any enthusiasm, and in the meantime, the Prussians and Austrians concluded an armistice, which ended any Prussian support for him.As a result of this, the legion soon retreated into Prussian-occupied territory and disbanded.

Who won?

The Habsburg Empire, thanks to foreign help, won the war in vain if it could not turn its military victory into a political one. In 1867, the Habsburg Empire had to recognize Hungary's autonomy, territorial integrity, the independent Hungarian finance, war, and trade policies; thus, it accepted the validity of the Hungarian point of view on all the issues for which it attacked this country in 1848.

The significance of the Hungarian War of Independence

Compared to other European revolutions, two particularities are usually highlighted in relation to the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The first is that the Hungarian Revolution was peaceful and bloodless; the second is that the revolutionary achievements were successfully transformed into a legal system. This latter factor gave the Batthyány government a strong legitimacy that was unprecedented both within and outside the Habsburg Empire. This legitimacy also provided a great deal of support to the National Defence Commission, which took over executive power at the beginning of October 1848, and made it possible to fight the war of self-defence and then the war of independence. The Hungarian Revolution was the only one that managed to organize its defence, practically without precedent, and this defence was so effective that the opposing side was unable to eliminate it on its own.

The relationship between political power and the army in Hungary was as follows. In September-October 1848, the K.u.K. Army which was stationed in the country was divided along national-ethnic lines. The Hungarian and Slovak units sided with the revolutionary government, while the non-Hungarian units, as well as the Romanian, Serb, and Croatian units, sided with the military counter-revolution. However, this was combined with the fact that the Hungarian government, taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the legal transformation, and the turmoils of the empire between March-October 1848, organized an army before the attack of the main imperial troops in December 1848.

The most successful achievement of 1848-1849 was the Hungarian army. Before 1848, it did not even exist as a plan and was created in 1848 in a few months by the Batthyány government. This army, in September 1848, was able to stop the numerically much superior forces of the Croatian Ban, endure the hardships of a winter campaign full of setbacks, and less than a year after its birth was already driving the army of the Habsburg Empire to the borders or forcing it behind the ramparts of the fortresses. The Hungarian War of Independence was the only revolution of national liberation that could not be defeated only by the armed forces of the empire that ruled the people in question, and that forced the latter to seek military assistance from another empire. On 21 May 1849, when Franz Joseph I kneeled in front of Tsar Nicholas I thanking him for the 200,000 soldiers he had provided to put down the Hungarian Revolution, he did this, unwillingly, also to the achievements of the Hungarian army.