The nation that initially declared this war
was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who declared war on Serbia. The rest of the world was soon involved. Today I’m going to look at the Habsburg
Empire but mostly just one part of it. Today I’m going to talk about Hungary. I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to a Great War
special episode about the Kingdom of Hungary and World War One. Now, in 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise
established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. This partially re-established the sovereignty
of the Kingdom of Hungary, and Emperor Franz Josef was crowned king of Hungary, which he
had not been between 1849 and 1867. Under the compromise, Austria and Hungary
had separate parliaments, which met in Vienna and Budapest, but they did have three common
ministries, those of foreign affairs, defense, and finance. Franz Josef was the supreme warlord and he
also had the right to dissolve the national assembly, to veto any laws passed by the national
assembly, and to appoint or dismiss any members of the cabinet council. The nearly 50 years of the compromise before
the war were pretty peaceful, and Hungary underwent considerable economic and social
development. Also, from 1849, when 200,000 Russian troops
had helped the Austrians defeat the Hungarians in the Hungarian revolution and war for independence
until December 1914 when the Russians invaded the Uszok Pass, no foreign army invaded Hungarian
territory. The only real military action was the occupation
of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, and that resulted in fewer than 1,000 dead on the Austro-Hungarian
side. Still, in spite of the years of peace there
were big problems within the empire. It was incredibly multi-ethnic, and all of
those ethnicities were only held together by the sovereign and it was in need of real
reform. We’ve mentioned in regular episodes the
enormous language difficulties plaguing the armed forces of the empire, 15 different language
versions of the national anthem, independence movements among pretty much every ethnic group
of the empire, also ethnic groups like Italians or Romanians that wanted to actually belong
to another nation. So in spite of the years of peace, it was
a mess internally. It also had an emperor who, by 1914, was 84
years old and had been on the throne for 66 years, and who was in many ways a relic of
a Europe that no longer existed. Anyhow, back to Hungary, the army, and the
outbreak of the war. The land forces of the empire were in three
separate armies; the common army - recruited from Austrian and Hungarian parts of the empire,
the Austrian Landwehr - from the Germanic provinces, and the Hungarian Honvéd. According to the 1867 agreement, Hungarians
were allowed to raise and maintain their own armed forces. In actual practice during the war, all three
armies fought side by side, though they had different nomenclature - Imperial and Royal,
Kaiserlich und Königlich, Imperial Royal, Kaiserlich Königlich, and Magyar Kiralyi,
Royal Hungarian. At mobilization, the Honvéd infantry was
made up of 32 regiments, known by their garrison headquarters names. For example there was the Miskolci Royal Hungarian
10th infantry regiment. Croatian troops were part of the Hungarian
army, and they served in Croatia, which was subordinate to Hungary in the Empire. Those units took on Croatian names. We’ll talk about them and other troops such
as Slovenians, in other special episodes. After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand
and during the July crisis, Austro-Hungarian army chief of staff Conrad von Hotzendorf
did not experience much resistance to his plans for war with Serbia. Pretty much the lone voice of opposition was
Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza. Already on July 1st, just days after the assassination,
he wrote a memorandum to Franz Josef stating that a hasty aggressive move on Serbia would
be a fatal error. As Romania was lost to the Triple Alliance
of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, and as potential ally Bulgaria was weakened by
the Second Balkan War, Tisza felt that the time was totally unfavorable for war. Once Germany expressed its support for Franz
Josef, and once the cabinet passed a resolution that in the event of a war, Austria-Hungary
would not annex Serbian territory, Tisza conceded. And then the war began and Hungarian soldiers
were immediately involved. Of course, they were involved in the disastrous
invasion attempts of Serbia, which led in just a few months to hundreds of thousands
of Austro-Hungarian casualties. However, there was Austro-Hungarian military
participation early on over on the Western Front. Yep, 4 Austro-Hungarian heavy artillery batteries
were loaned to the Germans for the invasion of Belgium and helped take Liege, Namur, and
Antwerp. They were even used during the First Battle
of Ypres, but were sent to the Eastern Front to fight Russia in early 1915. In December 1914 came the Battle of Limanowa,
which was one of the greatest military victories in Hungarian history. On December 11th, three Hungarian Hussar regiments
were given the task of strengthening the Jablonica Hill defenses and relieving their comrades. At 5 AM, the 9th Hussars under Colonel Othmar
Muhr dismounted and made for the hill, but it had fallen to the Russians during the night
and a vicious melee ensued. The Hussars were cavalry and their equipment
wasn’t really suitable for infantry combat, but fighting with whatever they could use,
including their bare hands, they gained the upper hand. Colonel Muhr was mortally wounded, but by
six AM the Hussars had control of the hill. That was not the end of the fighting. Four Russian regiments tried to re-take the
hill a total of 15 times unsuccessfully. The Russian steamroller had been stopped. The Hungarians took casualties of around 12,000,
the Russians around 30,000. Hungarian troops were also present at Przemysl
fortress during the long months it was under siege by the Russians. In fact, the 20th Szegedi Honvéd Division
was down to only 2,662 survivors from 8,500 by the time they surrendered to the Russians. For their service there is a monument at Margit
Bridge in Budapest. The greatest number of Hungarian troops took
part on the Italian front, and that’s where the greatest number fell. I’ll talk about notable Hungarian service
there in regular episodes when we cover major battles there in future, so I won’t do that
here. I’ll also talk about the notable success
of the 39th Honvéd Division, that used newly developed shock tactics on the Romanian front,
but we haven’t gotten to that yet either. Three Austro-Hungarian Divisions and a Hungarian
one were also deployed on the Western Front in 1918 to beef up the German defenses here. I’m going to talk briefly about the immediate
postwar situation of Hungary. It’s very complicated. In mid October 1918, the Hungarian government,
with the Emperor’s consent, terminated the 1867 Compromise. This happened the same day that Tisza was
murdered. Many people felt that he had been responsible
for the war, which is kind of ironic since he had been the voice of opposition back in
July 1914. On October 31st, Count Mihaly Karolyi became
the new Hungarian Prime Minister and demanded the immediate cessation of hostilities. The Hungarian Democratic Republic was proclaimed
November 16th, with Karolyi as president, universal suffrage, and freedoms of the press
and assembly. Things got messy AFTER that. There was the Hungarian-Romanian war for starters,
which involved Bolsheviks, Hungarians attacking Czechoslovakia, and Romanian troops marching
through Budapest. We’ll cover that in depth when we get there,
it’s not possible to do it here. The Treaty of Trianon, which came directly
afterward, and which is a very divisive issue even today, was dictated by the Entente in
1920 and Hungary had no choice but to agree. It regulated the independent Hungary. It limited the army to 35,000 soldiers including
officers, but most importantly, it took away 67% of Hungarian land, 60% of its population,
89% of the forests, 62% of the railways, and so forth. British Prime Minister Lloyd George had this
to say, “What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the Hungarians. There will never be peace in Southeastern
Europe if every little state now coming into being is to have a large Hungarian irredenta
within its borders. I would therefore take as a guiding principle
of the peace that as far as humanly possible the different races should be allocated to
their motherlands and that this human criterion should have precedence over consideration
of strategy, economics, or communications which can usually be adjusted by other means.” Wise words. I’m going to leave it there, because anything
that came beyond that isn’t really this channel’s business. Today was just a brief look at Hungary and
Hungarian participation during the war, where hundreds of thousands of Hungarian young men
died in the war that Count Istvan Tisza warned against. Thank you Tamás Kloska
