Hungarian Army

“ The Hungarian Army at that time was concerned with the question of regrouping its units, which were organized in brigades, into divisions and also with the setting up of motorized troops and of panzer units. The chief of the Organization Division of the General Staff of the Army, then Major General Buhle, and myself advised Colonel Lazslo. At the same time, several Hungarian military commissions were in Berlin, and with them also the Hungarian Minister of War, General Von Bartha, and they discussed armament deliveries to Hungary with German authorities. ”

“ Above Komárom, the largest fortress in the county, alone the Hungarian colors were still floating. General Klapka, its commandant, bravely defended it, and continued to hold it for six weeks after the sad catastrophe of Világos. The brave defenders, seeing at last that further resistance served no purpose, as the Hungarian army had ceased to exist, and the whole country had passed into the hands of the Austrians, capitulated upon most honorable terms. ”

“ Towards noon, the beating of drums and the sound of the trumpet announced the entrance of the Hungarian army. The troops had an hour's rest, and received a hearty welcome from citizens who willingly shared their last morsel with the national guards, after their many vicissitudes, and days and nights of hardship and privation.
A hussar officer rode up to the widow's house. He was a handsome, slender youth, whose raven hair and moustache formed a striking contrast to the olive paleness of his complexion. He wore a double gold cord on his crimson csako, and his breast was already decorated. ”

“ Duke Charles marched to the southern parts of Hungary and destroyed the Turkish army near Mohács, there, where 161 years before the Hungarian army had been annihilated by the Moslems. Soon after, Transylvania, too, passed under the supremacy of the king of Hungary. All the principal fortresses and towns were successively occupied by the royal troops, and when, in 1691, a Turkish army numbering 100,000 men was sent again to Hungary by the Sublime Porte, they were completely routed near Szalánkemén. ”

“ At the approach of the Ottoman army, all Hungary, governed by Matthias Corvinus, son of Hunniades, flew to arms. The Hungarian army met the Turks in the plains of Transylvania, and gave them battle. Victory was obtained by the Christians, who, in a single battle, destroyed the enemy’s army. Contemporary chronicles take less pains to describe this terrible conflict, than to exhibit the joy of the conquerors after their triumph. The entire victorious army assisted at a banquet prepared upon the field of battle, still covered with dead, and all smoking with carnage. ”

“ He led over 150,000 men under the walls of that famous fortress, and hastened to station his ships on the Danube, on which Belgrade lies, in order to cut off the communication between the Hungarian army and the garrison, and thus to isolate the latter. The Hungarian army itself did not number, even now, over 15,000 men, hardly more than those whom Hunyadi had been able to collect by his own exertions. ”

“ Since Hungary reserved her right to fix the conditions on which recruits should be granted, the partisans of the Magyar words of command argued that the abolition of the German words of command in the Hungarian regiments might be made such a condition, despite the enumeration in the preceding clause 11, of everything appertaining to the unitary leadership and inner organization of the joint Austro-Hungarian army as belonging to the constitutional military prerogatives of the crown. ”

“ Section I. Military Clauses Chapter I. General Article 102 Within three months of the coming into force of the present Treaty, the military forces of Hungary shall be demobilised to the extent prescribed hereinafter.
Article 103 Universal compulsory military service shall be abolished in Hungary. The Hungarian Army shall in future only be constituted and recruited by means of voluntary enlistment.
Chapter II. Effectives and Cadres of the Hungarian Army Article 104 The total number of military forces in the Hungarian Army shall not exceed 35,000 men, including officers and depot troops. ”

“ Nearly all of them are good talkers and by sheer fervor and conviction can make almost any phrase resemble an idea and a real idea as good as a play. Hungarians are useful when trenches must be taken by storm, just as the sober Tyrolean mountaineers are better for sharp-shooting and slow resistance.
One of the interesting things about the Austro-Hungarian army, as well, of course, as an inevitable weakness, is the variety of races and temperaments hidden under these blue-gray uniforms—Hungarians, Austrians, Croatians, Slovaks, Czechs. ”

“ They were surrounded by the Hungarian forces, and a portion of their army, nine thousand men strong, were compelled to lay down their arms, while Jellachich, with his remaining forces, precipitately fled from the country. The young Hungarian army had thus proved itself equal to the task of repulsing the attack of the Croats, but the recent events were nevertheless fraught with the gravest consequences. ”

“ It begins with the mental reservation, 'The Hungarian noble militia will be called into service only in case of imminent danger of an attack from a foreign enemy, and then only if the attacking army be so powerful that the regular imperial troops shall be unable to withstand it!' That the enemy is the more powerful no commander-in-chief finds out until he has been thoroughly whipped! ”

“ He, however, still continued his operations, and levied an army for the invasion of Hungary, and a fierce and bloody war of races broke out, marked on both sides by the most fearful atrocities.
The Hungarian Diet was opened on the 5th of July, when the Palatine, Archduke Stephen, in the name of the king, solemnly denounced the conduct of the insurgent Croats. A few days after, Kossuth, in a speech in the Diet, set forth the perilous state of affairs, and concluded by asking for authority to raise an army of 200,000 men, and a large amount of money. ”

“ It forms in peace-time the Cadres for 92 battalions of Infantry and 15 regiments of Honvéd Hussars (60 squadrons) . The officers of this force are trained in the Honvéd Ludovica Academy at Buda Pesth. It is on this Army, whose standards and badges are of the Hungarian colours, and which in time of war reaches nearly 200,000 men, that the pride of Hungary rests. It is this Army whose predecessors saved the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy from destruction a century and a half ago. ”

“ When joined by the Hungarian army, under Sigismund, and by the contingents from Wallachia and Bosnia, they made up a total force of about sixty thousand men. The expedition was in the nature of a crusade, but was more secular than religious in its aims and methods, and was regarded, it seems, by most of those engaged in it rather as a kind of picnic than as a serious campaign. The composite force collected together at Buda, in Hungary, in the summer of 1396, and thence marched down the Danube to Nicopolis, capturing Widdin and Sistova on the way. ”

“ Yet the L's, who in the course of a few days have again been brought up to full strength by the enormous reinforcements which Russia continues to pour into the army, will have written their name on the Hungarian war in as lasting colours as on the Galician. We are over the crest; we are fighting in the main downwards; we touch a vital spot ”

“ Towards the latter end of March, Béla, inspired by despair rather than by any hope of success, led the royal army which had gathered around Pesth, and numbered altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 warriors,139 against the Mongols. This scanty force was all that the Hungarian nation, shorn of its valor and sadly wanting in public spirit, opposed to the invading enemy. The Mongol army retreated before Béla as far as the Theiss, and there Batu Khan, falling back with both wings of his army, pitched his camp in the angle formed by the Sajó and the Theiss. ”

“ To-day a new misfortune has overtaken Hungary. The French Colonel Vyx, who has lately come to Budapest as head of the Entente’s military mission, has sent a memorandum to the Hungarian Government, which contains the price of the Czechs’ high-treason. The victorious Powers claim from Hungary the evacuation of all Upper Hungary, because they recognise the sovereignty of the Czecho-Slovak State and consider its army as an allied army.... ”

“ Sacrifice made to Germany at the beginning of the war, when so many of the Austro-Hungarian guns and motors were sent to the western front, have left their marks on the Hungarian artillery. The Carpathians are like a fan, and might [Pg 163] perhaps have been held from the inside, but they have at many points been lost step by step; and once they are crossed, the converging passes will bring the Russians together into a compact mass on the further side.
There is one strong man in Hungary, Count Tisza, and he still reserves his hand. ”

“ The Poles (the Hungarian king Uladislaus being also their king) sent a tolerably large contingent; in Germany, France, and Bohemia, too, there were many ready to enlist in a holy war against the unbelieving Turks, as had been formerly done in the time of the crusaders, and these joined Hunyadi’s camp. The southern vassal states sent also some forces. The principal army, however, was still composed of Hunyadi’s Hungarians, which was joined by the king’s own troops. They may have numbered altogether forty thousand men. ”

“ There is a Landwehr, or first reserve, in which the term of service is 10 years in the infantry, and seven for the cavalry or horse artillery, which service is followed by that in the Landsturm, or second reserve, in which the soldier serves until his forty-second birthday. Hungary possesses a separate and distinct Landwehr and Landsturm, which constitute the Hungarian National army. There is also a supplementary reserve intended to maintain the units of the common army at full strength. ”

“ They are full of trees, water and mud. Only one double line of railway runs through them. As they have the shape of a fan spread northwards, the defence can concentrate backward along the various converging passes and can, in a relatively small space, almost block the narrow entrance to the Hungarian plain. But once that final barrier is passed, [Pg 178] Hungary is lost. Any counter advance can be blocked without great expenditure of forces, and the conqueror will be free to advance southwards or westwards. ”

“ Hungary further agrees to take the necessary measures to prevent Hungarian nationals from leaving her territory to enlist in the army, navy or air service of any foreign Power, or to be attached to such army, navy or air service for the purposes of assisting in the military, naval or air training thereof, or generally for the purpose of giving military, naval or air instruction in any foreign country. ”

“ Thus are contradicted all the reports spread by ill-informed correspondents of foreign newspapers, who sought to create the impression that Austria-Hungary was tired and had not the energy to face the situation such as it is. Furthermore, the acceptance of the supplementary Landsturm service gave testimony, in the Hungarian Parliament, of the unanimity in which the Hungarian Nation unites as soon as it is a question of furthering the armed preparedness of the army. ”

“ The Austrians planned to strike a decisive blow against their opponents' centre. Sixteen troops of light cavalry, lancers, and dragoons, two cuirassier regiments, eight batteries of cannon, and two mortar batteries crossed the Rákos above Isaszeg and descended like an avalanche on the Hungarian centre. The Hungarians, drawn up in close order, occupied that circular space which even now shows the traces of having once been trampled by many feet. There were three thousand hussars in a body. ”

“ Sympathy in the cause for which she laboured, in the motives which animated her, she welcomed, whilst she invariably shrank from praise for individual exertion.
Although brilliant successes attended the efforts of the Magyars, who might have subdued the insurgent tribes, and even held their own against the Austrians, it might have been apparent that the struggle was hopeless when the aid of Russia was obtained, and Hungary invaded from all quarters. But no one appears to have been prepared for the surrender of the Hungarian General to the Russian forces at Grosswardein. ”

“ For the war against Russia, Hungary must make available 15 operational units (including 3 mobilized, cavalry, and Panzer units) ; she must also complete, by 1 June 1941, the erection of fortifications in Transcarpathian Russia, assist the advance of the German troops in the area adjacent to the Hungarian-Yugoslav and the Hungarian-Soviet frontiers and facilitate the deployment and the passage of supplies for the troops through Hungary. The details for the operational preparation will be determined later by representatives of the German General Staff about to be sent to Hungary. ”

“ While we were waiting for a train today, Count Apponyi informed me quite seriously that Hungary was not the least feudal, either in theory or practice.
The Hungarians harbor no animosity against Britain and France and really deserve the chivalrous friendship of these two nations. They are the only people in the present conflict who, in the heat and excitement of war, have on all occasions behaved like good sportsmen. When trains of Russian prisoners arrive at Hungarian stations, the people manifest no hostility, but greet them with kindness and sympathy and offer them food and flowers. ”

“ In the course of a few weeks, the flames of rebellion had spread over a large part of the country, and the Hungarian element, instead of enjoying the liberties won for the whole nation after a bitter struggle of many decades, was under the sad necessity of resorting to armed force in order to reëstablish the internal peace. The Hungarians now had to prove on the battlefield and in bloody engagements that they were worthy of liberty and capable of defending it. ”