[Hungary] 

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” 
No. 301, 19 May 1849] 

* Cologne, 18 May. At the moment when the Magyar war is becoming a European one through the actual entry of the Russians, we are forced to suspend our reports on its further course. We are only still permitted to present to our readers, in a short overview, the development of this grandiose East European revolutionary war.

People will recall how, already before the February revolution, in the autumn of 1847, the Pressburg Diet, led by Kossuth, adopted a series of revolutionary resolutions: how it resolved on the alienability of landed property, the freedom of movement of the peasants, the commutation of feudal burdens, the emancipation of the Jews, equal taxation of all classes; how it granted the Croats and Slavonians the official use of their own language in internal affairs, and finally, by demanding a separate responsible ministry for Hungary, took the first step towards the severance of Hungary on the very day that the February revolution began in Paris (22 February).

The February revolution broke out. With it, the resistance of the Vienna government to the demands of the Hungarians collapsed. On 16 March, the day after the Vienna revolution, the independent Hungarian ministry was granted, and therewith Hungary’s connection with Austria was reduced to a mere personal union.

Now the Magyar revolution, having become independent, advanced rapidly. All political privileges were abolished, universal suffrage introduced, all feudal burdens, robot and tithes were abolished, compensation being provided by the state, the union with Transylvania carried through, the appointment of Kossuth as finance minister and the dismissal of the rebellious Ban Jellachich forced.

Ungarn Ä 509

Meanwhile, the Austrian government recovered again. While the supposedly responsible ministry in Vienna remained powerless, the camarilla of the Innsbruck Court rose all the more powerfully, supported by the imperial army in Italy, by the national aspirations of the Czechs, Croats and Serbs, by the stubborn narrow-mindedness of the Ruthenian peasants.

On 17 June, the Serbian insurrection broke out in the Banat and the Bácska, incited by money and emissaries from the Court. On the 20th, Jellachich had an audience with the Emperor in Innsbruck and was again appointed Ban. Having returned to Croatia, Jellachich renounced obedience to the Hungarian ministry and declared war on it on 25 August.

The treason of the Habsburg camarilla lay open to the day. Once again the Hungarians tried to bring the Emperor back onto the constitutional path. They sent a deputation of 200 members of the Diet to Vienna; the Emperor answered evasively. The excitement grew. The people demanded guarantees and forced a change of ministry. The traitors who also sat in the Pest ministry were removed, and Kossuth was appointed prime minister on 20 September. But only four days later, the Emperor’s deputy, Palatine Archduke Stephen, fled to Vienna, and on the 26th the Emperor issued the well-known manifesto to the Hungarians, in which he dismissed the ministry as rebellious, appointed the Magyar-eater Jellachich governor of Hungary, and touched upon the most essential revolutionary conquests of Hungary.

The manifesto, countersigned by no Hungarian minister, was declared null and void by Kossuth. *

Meanwhile, Jellachich, favoured by the disorganisation and treachery that reigned throughout the whole nominally Hungarian but in reality old-imperial officer corps and general staff, had advanced as far as Stuhlweissenburg. There the Hungarian army, despite its treacherous leaders, defeated him and drove him onto Austrian territory up to the walls of Vienna. The Emperor and the old traitor Latour decided to send him reinforcements and to reconquer Hungary with German and Slav troops. Then the Vienna revolution of 6 October breaks out and puts a temporary stop to the imperial-royal projects.

Kossuth immediately moves to the aid of the Viennese with a Magyar corps. At the Leitha, the indecision of the Vienna Diet, the treachery of his own officers, and the poor organisation of his army, consisting for the most part of the Landsturm, prevent him from immediately advancing. He finally finds himself compelled to have a few dozen officers arrested, taken to Pest, and some of them shot, and now ventures the attack. Too late – Vienna had already fallen, and his undisciplined Landsturm troops were defeated at Schwechat by the regular Austrian troops.

For six weeks more the truce lasted between the Imperialists and the Magyars. While both armies made every effort to reinforce themselves, the Olmütz camarilla[29] carried out its long-prepared coup: they had the idiot Ferdinand, who had compromised and worn himself out by concessions to the revolution, abdicate, and placed the child Franz Joseph, son of Sophie, on the throne as their tool. Relying on the Hungarian constitution, the Pest Diet rejected this change of throne.

In mid-December, the war was finally opened. The imperial army had by then practically surrounded Hungary. The attack was made from all sides.

From Austria, three army corps advanced under the personal supreme command of Field Marshal Windischgrätz, at a strength of at least 90,000 men, south of the Danube. From Styria, Nugent moved with about 20,000 men on the left bank of the Drave, from Croatia Dahlen with 10,000 men on the right bank of the Drave towards the Banat. In the Banat itself fought several border regiments, the garrison of Temesvár, the Serbian Landsturm, and the Serbian auxiliary corps of Knitanin, altogether 30,000–40,000 men under Todorovich and Rukavina. In Transylvania stood Puchner with 20,000–25,000 men and Malkowski, who had invaded from the Bukovina, with 10,000–15,000 men. From Galicia finally, Schlick advanced with a corps of 20,000–25,000 men against the upper Theiss.

The imperial army therefore totalled at least 200,000 men of regular, mostly war-experienced troops, not counting the Slav, Romanian and Saxon Landsturm and National Guards who took part in the fighting in the south and in Transylvania.

Against these colossal forces, Hungary had to oppose an army of perhaps 80,000–90,000 men of drilled troops, including 24,000 men of former imperial soldiers, and in addition 50,000–60,000 men of still quite unorganised Honvéds and Landsturm; an army whose leaders were for the most part just such traitors as the officers arrested by Kossuth on the Leitha.

But while from Austria, kept down by force, no more recruits could for the time being be drawn, while Austria was financially ruined and almost without money, the Magyars still had magnificent resources open to them. The enthusiasm for freedom of the Magyars, heightened still further by national pride, grew with every day and placed at Kossuth’s disposal a number eager to fight unheard-of for the little nation of 5 million; the Hungarian banknote printing press gave him an inexhaustible source of money at his disposition, and every Magyar accepted these national assignats as hard silver coin. Rifle and cannon factories were in full activity. The army lacked only weapons, training, and good leaders, and all that could be procured in a few months.

510 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels * „Neue Rheinische Zeitung“

It was therefore only a question of gaining time, of luring the Imperialists into the country, where they would be worn out by continual guerrilla warfare, weakened by the necessity of leaving behind strong garrisons and other detachments.

Hence the plan of the Hungarians to withdraw slowly into the interior, to train the recruits in constant engagements, and, in the extreme emergency, to interpose between themselves and the enemy the Theiss line with its impassable marshes, that natural moat drawn around the core of the Magyar country.

By all calculations, the Hungarians would have had to be able to hold out in the territory between Pressburg and Pest for two to three months even against the superior Austrian forces. But then the severe frost set in, which for several months covered all the rivers and all the marshes with a sheet of ice passable even for heavy artillery. In this way all the terrain features favourable for defence were eliminated, all the entrenchments erected by the Magyars rendered useless and exposed to being turned. Thus it happened that the Hungarian army was thrown back in barely twenty days from Ödenburg and Pressburg to Raab, from Raab to Moor, from Moor to Pest, that it even had to evacuate Pest and already, at the start of the campaign, had to withdraw behind the Theiss.

While this was happening with the main army, things went likewise with the other corps. In the south, Nugent and Dahlen pressed forward ever further against Esseg, occupied by the Magyars, and the Serbs approached the Maros line more and more; in Transylvania, Puchner and Malkowski united at Maros-Vásárhely; in the north, Schlick advanced from the Carpathians down to the Theiss and established his communication with Windischgrätz via Miskolcz.

The Austrians seemed to be as good as finished with the Magyar revolution. Two-thirds of Hungary and three-quarters of Transylvania were in their rear, and the Hungarians were defeated simultaneously in front, in both flanks, and in the rear. A few more miles of advance, and all the imperial corps would join hands in a circle contracting tighter and tighter, within which Hungary would be crushed as in the coils of a boa constrictor.

Now it was a question of, while the Theiss in the front constituted a moat impassable for the enemy for the time being, creating breathing space on some side.

This was done on two sides: in Transylvania by Bem, in Slovakia by Görgey. Both carried out operations by which they proved themselves the most brilliant commanders of the present day.

Bem arrived on 29 December in Klausenburg, the only point in Transylvania still in the hands of the Magyars. He quickly concentrated the reinforcements he had brought, the remnants of the defeated Magyar and Szekler troops, moved against Maros-Vásárhely, defeated the Austrians, and pursued first Malkowski across the Carpathians into the Bukovina and from there to Galicia, where he advanced as far as Stanislawow. Then he rapidly turned back to Transylvania and drove Puchner before him to within a few miles of Hermannstadt. A few engagements, a few rapid cross-marches and counter-marches, and all Transylvania was in his hands, except for two towns, Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, and these would have been lost if the Russians had not been called into the country. The weight that the 10,000 Russian auxiliary troops threw into the scale forced Bem to withdraw into the Szeklerland.

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There he organised the rising of the Szeklers, and having succeeded in this, he had the Szekler Landsturm engage Puchner, who had advanced as far as Schäßburg, turned his position, advanced directly on Hermannstadt, drove out the Russians, defeated the advancing Puchner, marched on Kronstadt, and entered it without a sword-stroke.

Thus Transylvania was conquered and the rear of the Magyar army left free. The natural fortress line formed by the Theiss now found its continuation and completion in the mountain chain of the Carpathians and the Transylvanian Alps, from Zips down to the Banat border.

At the same time Görgey accomplished a similar triumphal march in north-west Hungary. Setting out from Pesth with a corps for Slovakia, he kept in check for two months the corps of Generals Götz, Csorich and Simunich, which were operating against him from three sides, and finally, when his position became untenable in face of superior forces, fought his way through the Carpathians to Eperies and Kaschau. Here he stood in the rear of Schlick, compelling him hastily to abandon his position and his entire operational base and to fall back on Windischgrätz’s main army, while he himself marched down along the Hernad to the Theiss and united with the Magyar main force.

This main force, at the head of which now stood Dembinski, had also crossed the Theiss and had thrown the enemy back at all points. It had advanced as far as Hatvan, 6 miles from Pesth, when the stronger concentration of enemy forces compelled it to retreat again. After fierce defensive actions at Kapolna, Maklar and Poroszlö, it fell back across the Theiss, at the very moment when Görgey arrived at Tokaj on the Theiss. The union of the two corps gave the signal for a new, grand advance of the Hungarians. Newly trained recruits had arrived from the interior and reinforced the operational army of the Magyars. Polish and German legions had been formed, capable leaders had emerged or been brought in, and instead of the leaderless, unorganised mass of December, the imperialists now suddenly confronted a concentrated, courageous, numerous, well-organised and superbly led army.

In three corps the Magyars crossed the Theiss. The right wing (Görgey) moved northwards, bypassed Ramberg’s division, which had previously followed him, near Eperies, and drove it hastily back via Rimaszombat upon the imperial main army. The latter was defeated by Dembinski at Erlau, Gyöngyös, Gödöllö, and Hatvan, and withdrew hurriedly to the environs of Pesth. The left wing (Vetter) finally drove Jellachich out of Kecskemet, Szolnok and Czegled, defeated him at Jászberény, and also forced him to retreat under the walls of Pesth. Here the imperialists now stood from Pesth to Waitzen along the Danube, surrounded in a wide semicircle by the Magyars.

To avoid exposing Pesth to bombardment from Ofen, the Hungarians resorted to their tried and tested method of dislodging the Austrians from this position by manoeuvre rather than by frontal attack. Görgey took Waitzen and threw the Austrians back behind Gran and the Danube, defeated Wohlgemuth between Gran and Neutra, and thereby relieved Komorn, which the imperialists were besieging. The imperialists, threatened in their line of retreat, soon had to decide on a hurried withdrawal. Welden, the new supreme commander, fell back in the direction of Raab and Pressburg; and Jellachich, in order to pacify his extremely refractory Croats, was forced to march with them down the Danube to Slavonia in all haste.

During their retreat, which resembled a wild flight, Welden (especially his rearguard under Schlick) and Jellachich still suffered significant losses. While the latter’s corps is struggling wearily and slowly through the Tolna and Baranya counties, Welden has been able to concentrate the remnants of his army at Pressburg. Remnants that possess absolutely no serious capacity for resistance.

Simultaneously with these surprising victories of the Magyars over the Austrian main army, Moritz Perczel advanced from Szegedin and Tolna towards Peterwardein, relieved it, took possession of the Bácska, and penetrated into the Banat in order to join hands with Bem, who was advancing from Transylvania. Bem has already taken Arad and is besieging Temesvár; Perczel stands at Werschetz, right on the Turkish border, so that within a few days the Banat will be conquered. At the same time the Székelys cover the entrenched Transylvanian mountain passes, the Landsturm covers the upper Hungarian mountain passes, and Görgey stands with a considerable army force in the Jablunka Pass, on the Moravian-Galician border.

In short, a few more days, and the victorious Magyar army, driving the remnants of the mighty Austrian armies before it, would march in triumph into Vienna and destroy the Austrian monarchy forever.

Hungary’s renunciation of Austria had already been decided on 14 April in Debreczin; the alliance with the Poles had been openly proclaimed since mid-January and had become a reality through the entry of 20,000–30,000 Poles into the Hungarian army. The alliance with the German-Austrians, which had existed since the Viennese Revolution of 6 October and the Battle of Schwechat, was likewise borne and maintained by the German legions in the Hungarian army, as well as by the strategic and political necessity for the Magyars to secure recognition for their declaration of independence through the capture of Vienna and the revolutionising of Austria.

Thus the Magyar war very soon lost the national character it had at the beginning, and precisely through the seemingly most national step, the declaration of independence, it took on a definitively European character. The alliance with the Poles for the liberation of both countries, the alliance with the Germans for the revolutionising of Eastern Germany only acquired a definite character, a solid foundation, when Hungary renounced Austria and thereby declared the Austrian monarchy dissolved. Hungary independent, Poland restored, German-Austria turned into the revolutionary centre of Germany, Lombardy and Italy independent by themselves – with the realisation of these plans the entire Eastern European system of states would be destroyed, Austria vanished, Prussia dissolved, Russia pushed back to the borders of Asia.

The Holy Alliance!!6”! therefore had to exert every effort to raise a barrier against the threatening Eastern European revolution: The Russian armies rolled towards the Transylvanian and Galician frontiers. Prussia occupied the Bohemian-Silesian border and allowed the Russians to march through her territory to Prerau, and within a few days the first Russian army corps stood on Moravian soil.

The Magyars, knowing full well that within a few weeks they would have to deal with numerous fresh forces, did not march on Vienna as rapidly as was at first expected. They could no more take Vienna by a frontal attack than they could Pesth, without having to bombard it, and that they were not allowed to do. They were once again, as at Pesth, compelled to capture it by envelopment, and this required time, required the certainty that they themselves were not threatened in flank and rear. But it was precisely here that the Russians were threatening them in the rear, while from the other side, if Vienna were directly threatened, strong momentary detachments from Radetzky’s army had to be expected.

Instead of advancing rapidly on Vienna, the Hungarians have therefore acted very wisely in contenting themselves with driving the imperialists ever farther out of Hungary, enveloping them in a great arc from the Lesser Carpathians to the foothills of the Styrian Alps, detaching a strong corps against the Jablunka, fortifying and covering the Galician mountain passes, attacking Ofen, and pushing forward rapidly with the new recruitment of 250,000 men, especially in the reconquered western counties. In this way they secure their flank and rear and bring together an army that has no more to fear from the Russian reinforcements than from the once colossal imperial army. Of this glorious black-and-yellow!?!! army, 200,000 men marched into Hungary and barely 50,000 have returned; the rest have fallen, been wounded, sick, taken prisoner, or deserted.

To be sure, the Russians are threatening with many armies. According to some, 120,000 men, according to others 170,000 men, are to invade. According to the “Trieste Free Port”, the mobile operational army is supposed to be well over 500,000 men. But one knows Russian exaggerations; one knows that of the stated numbers only half appear on the muster rolls, and that of the figure on the muster rolls not even half is actually present. If the Russian aid, after deducting the troops necessary to occupy Poland, puts an effective strength of 60,000–70,000 men into the field, Austria can count herself lucky. And the Magyars will finish with that number.

The Magyar war of 1849 bears a very great resemblance to the Polish war of 1830/31!?33]. But precisely in this respect it differs from it, in that it now possesses all the chances that Poland then had against it. It is known that Lelewel then urged, without success, first to chain the mass of the population to the revolution by emancipating the peasants and Jews, and secondly to involve all three partitioning powers in the war by raising an insurrection throughout the whole of old Poland, to make the war a European one. What in Poland at that time was only carried out when it was too late, the Magyars are beginning with. The social revolution at home, the destruction of feudalism, was the first measure in Hungary; drawing Poland and Germany into the war the second, and with that the European war was there. It began with the entry of the first Russian corps onto German soil; it will take its decisive turn with the entry of the first French battalion onto German soil.

Because the Hungarian war has become a European one, it enters into reciprocal interaction with all the other factors of the European movement. Its course has an effect not only on Germany, but also on France and England. That the English bourgeoisie will tolerate the transformation of Austria into a Russian province is not to be expected; that the French people will not calmly look on while the counter-revolution presses closer and closer upon them, is certain. However the elections in France turn out, the army has in any case declared for the revolution, and for the moment the army decides. If the army wants war – and it does want war –, then war is there.

And it will come. The revolution in Paris, whether through the elections or through the fraternisation of the army with the revolutionary party that has already taken place at the ballot box, is at the door. And while in southern Germany the core of a German revolutionary army is forming and preventing Prussia from taking an active part in the Hungarian campaign, France is on the point of actively participating in the struggle. A few weeks, perhaps only a few days, will decide, and the French, the Magyar-Polish and the German revolutionary army will soon celebrate their fraternisation festival under the walls of Berlin on the field of battle.