Battle of Tápióbicske

The Battle of Tápióbicske was a battle in the Spring Campaign of the Hungarian War of Independence from 1848–1849, fought on 4 April 1849 between the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian Revolutionary Army. The Habsburg forces consisted by the I. corps of the imperial army led by Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić, while the Hungarians by the I. and III. corps of the Hungarian army led by General György Klapka, respectively by General János Damjanich. The Hungarians were victorious, and thanks to this, the main Hungarian armies advanced towards the Hungarian capitals (Buda and Pest), forcing the Austrian high commander, Marshal Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz to a decisive battle at Isaszeg, which would decide the fate of Central and Western Hungary until the intervention of the Russian forces on the Habsburg side in June 1849.

Background
After the Spring Campaign of the Hungarian revolutionary army started well with a victory in the Battle of Hatvan, the second army group, consisting of I., II., III., corps started an advance towards south west in the direction of Pest and Buda. They met at Jászberény on 3 April. General Artúr Görgei, the interim high commander of the Hungarian main armies, gave the disposition to György Klapka to depart with the I. corps under his lead in the next morning at 4 o'clock towards Tápióbicske via Nagykáta, to János Damjanich with the III. corps to move at 5 o'clock towards Nagykáta, and to Lieutenant-Colonel István Szekulits,with the II. corps to go at 6 o'clock towards Farmos, but the headquarters will be at Nagykáta. The Hungarian plan of the Spring Campaign, elaborated by Antal Vetter, was that the 7th corps, under the lead of András Gáspár, had to attract the attention of Windisch-Grätz on his troops by making a deception attack from the direction of Hatvan, while the other three corps (I., II., III.) would encircle the Austrian forces from South West, and cut them from the capital cities (Pest and Buda). So it was very important that these three army corps to advance towards Windisch-Grätz, undetected, or without accidentally betray their numbers and purposes to the enemy.

Prelude
Finally the troops departed two hours later, at 6 o'clock, and on the way he received news that Jelačić's troops had spent the night at Tápióbicske, but departed, letting only their baggage and a few soldiers in the village. So, without thinking about the danger of exposing the campaign's plans to the enemy, Klapka decided to fall by surprise on them and take this spoil which seemed very easy to obtain. But in the meanwhile, without Klapka's knowing in Tápióbicske arrived Colonel Leopold Sternberg with a cavalry brigade and an infantry brigade under the command of Major-General Daniel Rastić.

Battle
On Klapka's troops vanguard were led by the Dipold brigade, than advanced the rest of the army as follows: the Bobich, Sulcz and Zákó brigades (named after the name of the officers which led them), than the cavalry division led by Colonel Arisztid Dessewffy. The vanguard crossed the Tápió river, than entered Tápióbicske in company columns. But here it was caught by surprise by the crossfire of the Croatian border guard units of the Rastić-brigade, hidden among the houses of the village, and suffered heavy losses, retreating in disorder towards the Tápió bridge. The soldiers of the fleeing Dipold-brigade run in the Bobich-brigade which just crossed the river and installed its cavalry battery, created panic, and whirled with themselves also their infantry and the artillery, than also the Sulcz and Zákó brigades.

This predisposition to panic was a common problem of the Hungarian revolutionary army, because, mainly in the first months of the Hungarian War of Independence, many times, among regular soldiers they used also irregulars (the panic of which caused big problems, for example in the Battle of Schwechat ), due to the quality of their training, or the short period of their instruction, caused by the need for new troops to fulfill the losses and the needs of defending a country attacked from every directions, the unpreparedness and lack of routine of the officers; all of these being caused by the fact that the Hungarian army was only a few months old, while its enemy, the Habsburg army was the product of a many centuries long uninterrupted institutionalized tradition.

The Hungarians also lost an entire battery, because the gunners confused the attacking enemy infantry with theirs, due to the same coloration of their uniforms. Seeing all of these misfortunes, Klapka sent the I. (Császár) and VIIIth (Koburg) hussar regiments to attack the Croatian Bans Hussars, who were chasing the Hungarian infantry. On the lead of the I. hussar regiment was Major Alajos Sebő, a very good officer, while on the lead of the Croatians was Major Hermann Riedesel, a strapping man, one of the best duelists of the imperial army. They knew each other before. Riedesel invited Sebő to a duel, and this, despite fearing that he would be killed certainly, he accepted, as he told later, to show an example of bravery to his regiment, which was known as one of the weakest in the Hungarian army. After they made the first and second charge on each other, none of them was wounded, but on the third charge, after Riedesel injured his hand or arm, Sebő made his smaller and quicker horse to push the horse of the Austrian officer, causing him to lose his balance, than struck him down with his sword, slashing Riedesel's face, who fell down dead. This duel inspired 20 years later the great Hungarian novelist, Mór Jókai, in the description of the duel between two of his imaginary characters, the Hungarian hussar Richárd Baradlay and the Austrian officer, Otto Palvicz in the 23. chapter of his novel The Baron's Sons (A kőszívű ember fiai), depicting the Battle of Isaszeg.

After Sebő's success, the Hungarian hussars drove the Croatian cavalry back, but were halted by the imperial artillery and the brave attack of the Croatian border guard battalion, which forced them to retreat on the other side of the Tápió river. This caused chaos again to the Hungarian troops, which started a hasty retreat, to which contributed that Klapka lost the contact with his troops, trying to cross the river far from his troops. The Rastić and the Sternberg brigades crossed the river on the bridge, occupied 10 Hungarian cannons, 4 wagons with ammunition, and took prisoners 2 Hungarian officers together with 123 soldiers. with their batteries fired at the retreating Hungarians, who had luck that the terrain on this side of the river was accidented, so their cavalry could not do his job in chasing the retreating forces. In these dramatic moments Görgei arrived on the scene, and tried, without success to stop the I. corps soldiers retreat and to get them in battle order.

The battle seemed to be lost, until Damjanich's III. corps arrived on the battlefield. Before they deployed, Colonel Arisztid Dessewffy, along with the remaining part of the cavalry and artillery of the I. corps which had not fled, managed to stop the advancing imperials amidst heavy fighting. Damjanich, following Görgei's order, then took command of the Wysocki division of his III. corps, and together with the Leiningen brigade, started to charge. In the meantime, the fleeing troops of the I. corps also regrouped. When the Hungarian soldiers of the 3. and the 9. battalions of the III. corps, after chasing the enemy on the other side of the river, arrived at the bridge, they started to quarrel about who would first cross it, losing precious time. The commander of the 3. battalion, Major Károly Földváry – a hero of several battles of the Hungarian War of Independence (distinguishing himself also in the Battle of Vác) – wrested the flag of the 9th battalion from its commander's hand, and led both the battalions over the bridge in a shower of bullets from the imperial troops. After chasing them from the outskirts of the village, the whole Wysocki division crossed after which they joined the pursuit. The retreating imperial troops set the village on fire to slow down the advancing Hungarians. The cavalry of the III. corps led by Colonel József Nagysándor, tried to chase the retreating Austrians, but the terrain prevented them from achieving this.

Aftermath
The Hungarian victory was embittered by the fact that they could not take back four of their cannons, taken by the Austrians. Additionally, György Klapka, a normally very capable general, had made a considerable tactical error in giving the order to attack Tápióbicske, because in doing so he had revealed the location of his troops. Because of this, Görgei had no courage to give the order of the encirclement of the main imperial forces from Isaszeg and Gödöllő. With this, according to László Pusztaszeri, Klapka prevented a decisive Hungarian victory against Windisch-Grätz's troops. Róbert Hermann believes that although Görgei was uncertain what to do, he finally decided to order his troops to continue their movements according to the initial plan.

On the other hand, after the battle from 4 April, Jelačić falsely reported a victory over the Hungarians. This misled to Windisch-Grätz, the field marshal, who did not understand what was happening on the south-eastern front, and contributed to Windisch-Grätz ordering the Ban of Croatia (Jelačić) to pursue the Hungarians, who in reality were not fleeing but nearing Gödöllő. He was totally unclear about where the Hungarian forces really were, and feared that their main forces would get around him from the south, cutting his lines towards the capital, or from the north, liberating the fortress of Komárom from the imperial siege. So Windisch-Grätz scattered his forces on a 54-kilometer front, which made it impossible for his troops to effectively help each other (some of the troops were more than a day's distance from each others). In contrast, the Hungarian front line was only 22 kilometers long, and so at all times during the battle Görgei could concentrate up to two thirds of his troops at any point of his front line. Windisch-Grätz's error weakened his chances of victory against the Hungarian main forces in the Battle of Isaszeg which followed two days after Tápióbicske.