First Battle of Komárom (1849)

The First battle of Komárom was one of the most important battles of the Hungarian War of Independence, fought on 26 April 1849, between the Hungarian and the Austrian Imperial main armies, which ended, in some opinions with a Hungarian victory, while others say that actually it was undecided. This battle was part of the Hungarian Spring Campaign. After the revolutionary army attacked and destroyed the Austrian blockade around the fortress, the Imperials, because of receiving reinforcements which made them numerically much superior than their enemies, successfully counterattacked, but after they secured the situation, they retreated towards Győr, leaving the trenches and much of their siege artillery in Hungarian hands. With this battle the Hungarian revolutionary army relieved the fortress of Komárom from a very long imperial siege, and forced the enemy to retreat in the westernmost land strip of Kingdom of Hungary. After this battle, following a long debate about among the Hungarian military and political leaders, in which direction to continue their advancement: towards Vienna, the Habsburg capital, or Buda the Hungarian capital, which fortress was still held by Austrian forces, the second option was chosen.

Background
The main purpose of the Hungarian Spring Campaign, led by Artúr Görgei was to push the Habsburg main armies out of Hungary towards Vienna. The first phase of the Spring Campaign was successful, and forced the imperial forces to retreat from the foreground of the Hungarian capitals: Pest and Buda, thanks to the victory of Isaszeg. For the second phase of the campaign on 7 April 1849 the Hungarian commanders elaborated another plan. According to this plan the Hungarian army had to split, General Lajos Aulich with the II. Hungarian Army Corps, and the division of Colonel Lajos Asbóth remained in front of Pest, doing such military maneuvers which have to make the imperials to believe that the whole Hungarian army is there, diverting their attention from north, where the real Hungarian attack had to start with the I., III. and the VII., corps which had to go westwards, on the northern bank of the Danube via Komárom, to relieve it from the imperial siege. The Kmety division of the VII. corps had to cover the three corps march, and after the I. and the III. corps occupied Vác, the division had to secure the town, while the rest of the troops together with the two remaining divisions of the VII. corps, had to advance to Garam river, than heading for the south to relieve the northern section of Austrian siege of the fortress of Komárom. After this, they had to cross the Danube and relieve the southern section of the siege. In the eventuality of finishing all of these with success, the imperials had only two chances: Or to retreat from Middle Hungary towards Viena, or face the encirclement from the Hungarian troops in the Hungarian capitals. This plan was very risky (as was the first plan of the Spring Campaign too) because if Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz had discovered that in front of Pest remained only a Hungarian corps, with an attack could destroy Aulich's troops, and with this he could easily cut the support lines of the main Hungarian army, and even occupy Debrecen, the seat of the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament and the National Defense Committee (interim government of Hungary), or he could encircle the three corps advancing to relieve Komárom. To secure the success of the Hungarian army, the National Defense Committee sent from Debrecen 100 wagons with munitions. At 10 April the III. Hungarian army corps, led by General János Damjanich defeated in the Battle of Vác the Ramberg division led by Major General Christian Götz, who was fatally wounded. The imperial high commandment led by Field Marshal Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz even after this battle, was unsure if the main Hungarian army stayed before Pest of it already moved towards north, wanting to relieve Komárom. They still believed in the possibility that only a secondary unit attacked Vác, and moves towards the besieged Hungarian fortress. When Windisch-Grätz finally seemed to grasp what is happening in reality, wanting to make a powerful attack at 14 April against the Hungarians at Pest, than to cross the Danube at Esztergom, and cut the way of the army which was marching towards Komárom, but his corps commanders, General Franz Schlik and Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić refused to obey to his commands, so his plan, which could cause serious problems to the Hungarian armies, was not realized. Because of his series of defeats from the start of the Spring Campaign against the Hungarians, at 12 April Windisch-Grätz was relieved from the high commandment of the imperial troops in Hungary, by the emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, in his place being designed Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden, the former military governor of Vienna, but until he arrived, Windisch-Grätz had to give the leadership to Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić, as temporary main commander of the imperial armies in Hungary. But this change in the commandment of the imperial forces, had not brought lucidity and organization in the imperial commandment, because the first thing that Jelačić gave after the commencement of his interim High Commandment was to call off Windisch-Grätz's plan of establishing the gathering point of the imperial armies around Esztergom, and with this to give a chance to this not bad plan. Görgey who after the battle of Győr installed his headquarters in the city, at 11 April gave order to the III. corps of Damjanich, at the 12th to Klapka's I. corps to advance towards Léva. Their place in Vác was taken by the VII. corps under András Gáspár, than after they too departed on the same way, their place in Vác was taken by the division of György Kmety. At 15–17 April the Hungarian army consisting of the I. corps led by General György Klapka, III. corps led by General János Damjanich, and two divisions of the VII. corps led by General András Gáspár arrived to the Garam river, under the overall leadership of General Artúr Görgei. Here, on 19 April, at Nagysalló, they met with the troops of Lieutenant General Ludwig von Wohlgemuth with the new imperial troops gathered in the following Habsburg Hereditary Lands: Styria, Bohemia, Moravia and the capital Vienna, and strengthened with the Jablonowski division (which participated 10 days before in the Battle of Vác). The imperials suffered defeat and retreated towards Érsekújvár. The Hungarian victory of Nagysalló, brought with itself serious results. It opened the way towards Komárom, bringing its relieving to just a couple of days distance. In the same time it brought the imperials in the situation of being incapable to stretch their troops on a very large front which this Hungarian victory created, so instead of uniting their troops around Pest and Buda, as they planned, Feldzeugmeister Welden had to order the retreat from Pest being in danger to fall in the pincers of the Hungarian troops. When he learned about the defeat in the morning of 20 April, he wrote to Lieutenant General Balthasar Simunich, the commander of the besieging forces of Komárom, and to Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, the Minister-President of the Austrian Empire, that in order to secure Vienna and Pozsony, from a Hungarian attack, he is forced to retreat the imperial troops from Pest, and even from Komárom. He also wrote that the spirit of the imperial troops is very low, and because of this they cannot fight another battle for a while, without suffering another defeat. So the next day he ordered the evacuation of Pest, leaving an important garrison in the fortress of Buda, to defend it against the Hungarian attacks. He ordered to Jelačić to remain for a while in Pest, and than to retreat towards Eszék in Bácska where the Serbian insurgents, allied with the Austrians were in a grave situation after the victories of the Hungarian armies led by Mór Perczel and Józef Bem.

Prelude
On 20 April the Hungarian VII. corps arrived to Nagybénye, than to Kéménd, where they met with a brigade of the II. imperial corps led by Major General Franz Wyss who came from Párkány, forcing them to cross the Danube and to retreat to Esztergom, but General András Gáspár did not sent his cavalry to pursue the enemy although he had the chance to cause them heavy losses.

On 20 April, the Hungarian I. and III. corps started their march towards Komárom. On 22 of April, the two Hungarian corps arrived to Komárom, breaking the Northern section of the imperial blockade around this fortress. In the same day, the garrison of Komárom, broke out from the Nádor defense line against the Sossay brigade in Csallóköz, forcing the imperials to retreat to Csallóközaranyos, than to Nyárasd. The imperials lost 50 men and 30 horses. Hearing about the fact that Lieutenant General Wohlgemuth, who after his defeat at Nagysalló, retreated to west from the river Vág, now advanced again towards East to Érsekújvár, Görgei ordered to the VII. corps, which just arrived, to take position at Perbete, to secure the rear of the Hungarian army from an eventual attack. Than he, together with General György Klapka, elaborated the plan for the next day.

Five brigades had to cross the Danube in the night between the 25 and 26 April: the Kiss and Kökényessy brigades had to cross on the raft bridge constructed in haste to replace the pontoon bridge destroyed by the Imperials, and to position themselves on the bridgehead, right from the so-called cross rampart, than they had to be followed by the Sulcz and Zákó brigades of the I. corps, positioning themselves to right from the latters, occupying the redoubts from the right wing of the fortress, and the Dipold brigade had to cross, before midnight on boats, and prepares to attack towards Újszőny. The attack had to be started by the brigade of Colonel Pál Kiss against the Monostor fortress, named also Sandberg, supported by the Kökényessy brigade. The brigade of Lieutenant-Colonel Bódog Bátori Sulcz had to attack and occupy Újszőny. Than all these brigades had to attack the Monostor waste land, while a strong detachment sent by Major General Richard Guyon, which after crossing the river from the Danube island, had to attack the Imperials from the rear. With this plan Görgei hoped to occupy all the Austrian siege fortifications and the heights around them, and after the arrival of the remaining parts, cavalry and artillery of the I. and III. corps, than with the help of the VIII. corps to start a general attack, and to push the Imperials towards Győr, while the VII. corps had to remain in reserve. In the meanwhile Lieutenant General Balthasar von Simunich wrote at 21 April to Lieutenant General Anton Csorich, that Görgei entered Komárom in the same day, and the attack on the Imperial besieging forces on the southern bank of the Danube is imminent. So he asked his colleague to send him cavalry and artillery reinforcements. On 24th he informed Csorich that the Hungarians had reconstructed the bridge across the Danube, and on it and on rafts started to cross the river. So he asked Csorich to come with his troops at the latest in the morning of 25 April to Herkálypuszta, to help him against the Hungarian attack.

Following the above-mentioned orders of Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden, the Imperial troops finished on 23 April the evacuation of Pest, in which at 25 April General Lajos Aulich entered with the II. Hungarian corps. Welden ordered to the brigade led by Major General Franz Wyss to move to Tata, to the brigade led by Major General Franz de Paula Gundaccar II. von Colloredo-Mannsfeld to retreat from Esztergom to Dorog, to the Schwarzenberg division to move from Buda to Esztergom, retreating the Austrian troops from the region of the Danube Bend (except the garrison of Buda, led by Major General Heinrich Hentzi) and concentrating them around and near Komárom, to be deployable in the eventuality of a battle at Komárom. Welden finally understood that the Hungarian forces which were East from Pest (the II. corps led by Aulich), represented not an overwhelming force, which could have been a real treat to the imperials, if they retreated from their secured positions from Pest and the Danube Bend towards Komárom. This is why they could concentrate their forces around Komárom, to withstand against the main Hungarian forces preparing to attack them there. But Görgei hoped that his plan of misleading the Imperials was still working at that moment, this is why he ordered the crossing of the Danube, to attack the Austrian forces concentrated there, hoping to use his supposed numerical superiority to destroy them, and to encircle with this the forces which he thought were still in the Danube Bend. He was warned, among others by his chief of the general staff Colonel József Bayer, that crossing the Danube to South is a very risky plan, but Görgei did not change his mind.

Battle
In the night of 25 to 26 April, at 2 o'clock the Hungarian I., III. and the VIII. corps (this latter being the garrison of the fortress) crossed the Danube on the raft bridge constructed, and in the dawn attacked the enemy trenches of the fortress, from the southern shores of the river, occupying them after heavy fights. The brigade of Pál Kiss occupied Sandberg, capturing the enemy siege cannons, destroying the Hohenlohe battalion which defended it, capturing 350 soldiers and 4 officers. The brigade of Bódog Bátori Sulcz occupied Újszőny, and when according to the battle plan, the troops of Major General Richard Guyon arrived from behind, the Imperial Lederer brigade, retreated in heavy fighting behind the Concó creek. The Dipold brigade also accomplished his duty, pushing back the imperials towards Mocsa. During these fights two Austrian rearguard companies also fell prisoners to the Hungarian Coburg Hussars. The corps composed of three brigades of Simunich was forced to retreat on every front. At 6 o'clock, the high commander of the Hungarian army, General Artúr Görgei arrived on the battlefield, and ordered to his troops to continue the advancement. The right wing was commanded by himself advanced in the forest from Ács, the left flank led by General György Klapka between Mocsa and Ószőny. After the troops of Klapka advanced to Ószőny, pushing back the Liebler brigade, the latter, enforced by the cavalry of Lieutenant General Franz Schlik, started a counterattack, making the Hungarians to retreat, but when it arrived within the range of the Hungarian cannons from the fortress of Komárom, the cannonade of these caused heavy losses to the Imperial brigade, forcing it to move back to its initial position. The center commanded by General János Damjanich had to advance in the area of the waste lands of Herkály and Csém, but could start the rapid attack only at 9 o'clock, because before doing that, it had to cross the area dug and filled by the imperials with ditches, in order to make their advancement harder.

In this moment Simunich was about to suffer a heavy defeat, but he was saved by the intervention of the II. and III. corps of the imperial army, which retreated from Buda and Pest, as Welden had ordered five days before, after the battle of Nagysalló. The overall lead of the imperial army was taken by Schlik, the commander of the III. corps, ordering at noon a general attack against the Hungarians. Until that moment the Hungarian and the imperial troops had equal numbers (around 14 000 Hungarian troops from the I. and the III. corps against equal numbers of Simunich's besieging army), but the involvement of the III. imperial corps led by Franz Schlik, created a 2-1 Austrian superiority. The arrival of Schlik's troops was reported to Görgei by Damjanich, who because of this stopped his troops advance, retreated fighting to the Monostor height. After Görgei received the information from Damjanich, ordered to him to retreat slowly behind the siege trenches around Komárom, made by the Austrians when they besieged the fortress, and occupied by the Hungarians at dawn, and resist there with all costs. At the Hungarian left wing the Hungarian advance, covered by the cannons from the fortress, was stopped by the enemy cavalry, and pushed back to the so-called Star Fort of Komárom. The retreating Liebler-brigade was pursued towards Nagyigmánd by two regiments of the Hungarian hussars led by Major General József Nagysándor, supported by the 47th battalion and a 12-pound battery, but they were attacked from two sides by 4 enemy heavy cavalry regiments, which put the Hungarian cavalry in the danger of being obliterated, but the resistance of the infantry battalion, which entered quickly in a square formation, stopped the imperial cavalry. The Hungarian infantry from the Hungarian left wing retreated in square formations while shooting towards the center led by Damjanich. The 26th Hungarian battalion with a bayonet attack, forced the imperial heavy cavalry to retreat, saving the 47th battalion from a difficult situation, and holding until Damjanich sent the Ferdinánd Hussars to help them. With this on the left wing the Hungarians managed to hold the powerful imperial advance, so the battle here continued with artillery duel, until they run out of cannonballs. One of the adjutants of the Hungarian headquarters, Kálmán Rochlitz, wrote in his memoirs: Our field artillery run out of ammunition in such a way that, when I went to one of the batteries of the I. corps, I saw with my own eyes, that our artillerymen picked up from the ground the cannon balls fired at us [by the enemy], wrapped them in the rags, made of the clothes ripped from the dead bodies of the fallen [soldiers], and in this way they put them in the cannon tubes, on the blank gunpowder, they put in them [in the cannon tubes] before.

On the right wing, in the forest from Ács, Görgei's six battalions, were subjected to an ever-growing pression by the imperials, which, because the order, that after the battle to retreat towards west, was already given, appeared in this place more and more numerous, preventing the Hungarian high commander to achieve a success here. In the center Damjanich's center was also in a grave situation, because they were attacked from two sides by the numerically superior II. and III. imperial corps.

Experiencing this pressure, and the fact that the Hungarian artillery had run out of ammunition (because of this, the Hungarian Hussars had to chase the cannonballs shot by the Austrian artillery and bring them to their cannons, in order to respond to their fire), Görgei decided to retreat behind the siege trenches made by the imperials around Komárom, and to wait for reinforcements. Luckily the imperial troops had also run out of their ammunition at the same time. So practically, at 1 o'clock in the noon, the battle ended. Although Görgei, at sunrise, than his chief of the general staff Colonel József Bayer at 9 o'clock, sent order to Lieutenant-Colonel Ernő Poeltenberg, the new commander of the VII. corps (taking the place of General András Gáspár, who not long before went on permission) to come quickly from Perbete, where they were stationed to Komárom. Poeltenberg hurried as he could, but his troops movements were slowed by the fact that the roads were flooded because of the spring rains, and when they arrived to the northern shores of the Danube, the raft bridge improvised by Görgei's sappers almost crumbled, and had to be strengthened before they accomplished the crossing o the Southern shores of the river. So Poeltenberg's two Hussar regiments and cavalry batteries arrived only at 3 o'clock to the battlefield, when the battle was already over, while the infantry divisions arrived only in the evening, but they departed in that night towards Győr, to pursue the enemy, and to occupy that very important city.

Görgei, who before the battle taught that his army will face only the besieging army corps led by Simunich, after the arrival of Schlik's III. corps, taught that the whole imperial main army will attack. So this is why he decided to face the enemy behind the siege trenches, in his back with the fortress, the latter still having enough ammunition (while as mentioned before, the ammunition of his field army fighting in the battlefield, and the captured siege artillery had run out of it before), with which he hoped to resist to such a powerful attack. He did not knew that Welden sent the corps led by Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić to Southern Hungary to help the Serbian insurgents, allied with the Austrians who were in a grave situation after the victories of the Hungarian armies led by Mór Perczel and Józef Bem, and the II. corps to Sopron through Veszprém and Pápa.

The imperial army used its final attack only to hold the Hungarians in order to accomplish their retreat towards Pozsony and Vienna, without having heavy losses during their retreat. Still the Hungarian hussars chased them, but with their tired horses were unable to score any notable result. Schlik ordered the imperial troops to move towards Győr from Ács on the road which they secured in the battle, in order to arrive near the border safely. They lost, besides the deaths and prisoners, 7 siege cannons and mortars, a huge amount of ammunition, food and its whole tent camp.

The outcome of the battle
The Hungarian historians like József Bánlaky, in the 21th volume of his monumental Military History of the Hungarian Nation (A magyar nemzet hadtörténete), although he did not make a direct affirmation about the outcome of the battle, by quoting Görgei's report to the Hungarian government about the battle, in which the Hungarian commander names this engagement a victory, without commenting on this, tacitly he accepts Görgei's opinion. In his book about Görgei's military career, László Pusztaszeri speaks about the "failure to achieve a decisive victory", showing that he rather considers this battle as a victory but not a decisive one. Tamás Tarján in an article in the Hungarian historical magazine, called Rubicon, also consider this battle as a Hungarian victory. Róbert Hermann's opinion is that, although the Hungarian army achieved its plan to relieve the very important fortress, accomplishing its tactical purpose, the Battle of Komárom fought at 26 April 1849 can be accepted rather an undecided battle, because before the battle, the imperial plan was to abandon the siege and to retreat towards Pozsony and Vienna, so the Hungarians did not imposed their will on the enemy, but just forced them to retreat with a few days earlier than they planned. The Hungarian plan to surround and destroy the imperial troops failed because of the arrival and attack of the III. imperial corps led by Franz Schlik. But the loss of much of the siege artillery, and the loss of a whole grenadier division, a huge amount of food, ammunition, 7 heavy siege cannons and mortars, the whole military tent camp, all captured by the Hungarians, was a hard blow for the imperial commanders.

Aftermath
The first Battle of Komárom, practically ended the Spring Campaign, achieving their main purposes: the relieving of Komárom and the expulsion from Hungary of the main imperial armies. The greatest success of the royal-imperial Austrian army was that they could retreat to the Rába river, close to the Western border of Hungary without falling in the encirclement of Görgei's army, and without having heavy losses.

During the Spring Campaign, the Hungarian National Defense Committee (interim government of Hungary, created after the free Hungarian government, under the lead of Lajos Batthyány, resigned on 2 October 1848, and the new government was refused to be recognized by the emperor and King of Hungary, Ferdinand I of Austria) and as a response to the 4th March 1849 Olmütz Constitution, which abolished the Hungarian Constitution and the April laws, deposing Hungary from all of its liberties, degrading it to a simple Austrian province, on 14 April 1849 Hungary declared its total independence from the Habsburg Empire, seeing the great victories of the Hungarian National Army as an opportunity to respond to the Austrian cinstitution. As a result of this declaration of independence, on 2 May the new Hungarian Government under the leadership of Bertalan Szemere, in which Görgei became Minister of War, and his election was of course a consequence of his victories on the battlefield.

After the relief of Komárom from the imperial siege, and the retreat of the Habsburg forces to the Hungarian border, the Hungarian army had two choices where to continue its advance. One was Pozsony and Vienna, in order to force the enemy to fight finally on his own ground, or to return eastwards and to occupy the Buda Castle held by a strong imperial garrison of 5000 men, under the lead of Heinrich Hentzi. Although the first choice seemed very attractive, but it was nearly impossible to achieve a success. While the Hungarian army gathered before Komárom had less than 27 000 soldiers, the imperial army which waited them around Pozsony and Vienna was more than 50 000 strong, so it was two times bigger than Görgei's forces. Furthermore, the Hungarian army was in shortage of ammunition. On the other hand, the capturing of the Buda castle seemed more achievable at that moment, and besides it was also very important from many view-points. It could be achieved with the available Hungarian forces, a strong imperial garrison in the middle of the country could have represent a big danger if the main Hungarian army wanted to move towards Vienna, because the attacks made from the castle, would have cut the Hungarian supply lines, so it needed a Hungarian blockade with important forces in order to prevent them to come out. Furthermore, the presence of Josip Jelačić's corps in Southern Hungary made the Hungarian commanders to think that the Croatian ban could advance towards Buda in any moment to relieve it, cutting Hungary in two. So the Hungarian staff understood, that without taking the Buda Castle, the main army cannot make a campaign towards Vienna, without putting the country in a grave danger. Besides the military arguments, in favor of the siege of Buda stood political ones too. The Hungarian parliament, after the declaration of the independence of Hungary, wanted to convince the foreign states to acknowledge Hungary's independence, and they knew that they have more chance of achieving this after the total liberation of their capital city Buda-Pest. And the capital city also included the Buda castle. So the council of war held on 29 April 1849 decided to besiege the Buda Castle, and only after the arriving of the Hungarian reinforcements which from southern Hungary, they will start an attack against Vienna to force the empire to ask for peace and to recognize the independence of Hungary.

Görgei learned from an imperial officer captured in the battle, that the intervention of the Russian army against the Hungarian revolution is imminent. The Austrian government, seeing that they cannot crush the Hungarian revolution by themselves and their allies from among the nationalities from Hungary, decided to start discussions with the tsar about a Russian intervention at the end of March, than the official Austrian request for the intervention was sent on 21 April. The Austrian government asked only for a few ten thousands of Russian troops under imperial leadership, but tzar Nicholas I of Russia decided to send 200 000 soldiers and put other 80 000 to preparedness to enter in Hungary if needed. This meant that he prepared to send 1/4th of Russia's military power in Hungary. This huge army, together with the 170 000 soldiers of the Habsburgs, together with the several tens of thousands of Serbian, Romanian and Croatian nationality troops fighting against the only 170 000 Hungarian soldiers, represented an invincible force for them. So in the middle of the happiness about the liberation of much of Hungary, after the victories of the Spring Campaign, the concern about the imminent Russian attack started to be felt by the Hungarians.