The Hungarian War of Independence was one of the largest European conflicts of the 19th century, lasting a year, encompassing a dozen major battles and many smaller actions and sieges, with half a million men under arms by its end. Yet it remains strangely obscure and overlooked by the Anglophone world, perhaps because of the inaccessibility of Hungarian-language sources for most English readers, combined with the limited number of German-language sources due to Austria’s embarrassment about the whole episode.
This book is the second of two volumes which together provide a complete history of this neglected war. The first, Hungary 1848: The Winter Campaign, covered the initial period of the war in which the Austrian army was defeated and expelled from Hungary, obliging the Kaiser to seek help from the Tsar. The present volume covers the decisive second half of the war. Brilliant Hungarian maneuvers and gallant defense defied and delayed the Austrian and Russian armies invading from all points of the compass and even won some notable victories. Despite the victories, the inexorable arithmetic of allied numerical superiority led ultimately to Hungary’s defeat.
This work is a translation of the Austrian official history of the Summer Campaign. It therefore provides a detailed and authoritative account of this dramatic campaign, replete with fascinating episodes and invaluable factual data, in English for the first time ever. It is comprehensive in scope, addressing the secondary theaters in Transylvania and southern Hungary as well as the main western and northern fronts. It includes extensive information about orders of battle, precious nuggets about uniforms and weaponry, actual dispatches reproduced verbatim, and accounts of myriad actions from tiny skirmishes up to major battles such as Pered, Komorn and Temesvár. Over 20 campaign and battle maps enable clear understanding of this war’s dynamic and complex operations. The translation of the original text is complemented by extensive scholarly annotation providing both critical analysis and additional data or contextual information. No other work in English approaches this level of detail.
