page_title: Battle of Tápióbicske
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Tápióbicske / Battle
caption_attribution_description: Magyar: Földváry Károly honvéd ezredes az olaszországi magyar légió zászlajával. Színezett albumin (1863)
context_page_description: The Battle of Tápióbicske was a battle in the Spring Campaign of the Hungarian War of Independence, fought on 4 April 1849 between the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian Revolutionary Army. The Habsburg forces consisted of the I Corps of the Imperial Army led by Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić. The Hungarians deployed I and III Corps led by General György Klapka and General János Damjanich respectively. The Hungarians were victorious, and thanks to this, the main Hungarian armies advanced towards the Hungarian capitals, forcing the Austrian high commander, Field Marshal Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz fight 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.
context_section_description: Klapka's force was led by the Dipold brigade in the vanguard, followed by the rest of the army in this order: the Bobich, Sulcz and Zákó brigades (named after the officers who led them), then the cavalry division led by Colonel Arisztid Dessewffy. The vanguard crossed the Tápió river, then 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 ran into the Bobich-brigade which had just crossed the river and deployed its horse battery. Their infectious panic routed Bobich’s infantry and artillery as well, then also the Sulcz and Zákó brigades.
  This predisposition to panic was a common problem in the Hungarian revolutionary army because, especially in the first months of the Hungarian War of Independence, they often used irregulars alongside the regular soldiers. The panicking irregulars caused major problems, for example in the Battle of Schwechat.) This was due to the poor quality of their training, or the short period of their instruction, caused by the urgent need for new troops to replace losses and the pressures of defending a country attacked from every direction, and the unpreparedness and lack of training of the officers; all of these down to the fact that the Hungarian army was only a few months old, while its enemy, the Habsburg army was the product of many centuries of uninterrupted institutional tradition.
  The Hungarians also lost an entire battery because the gunners confused the attacking enemy infantry with theirs, due to them having the same colour uniforms. Seeing all these misfortunes, Klapka sent the I. (Császár) and VIIIth (Koburg) hussar regiments to attack the Croatian Ban's Hussars, who were pursuing the Hungarian infantry. At the head of the I. Hussar Regiment was Major Alajos Sebő, a very good officer, while at the head of the Croats was Major Hermann Riedesel, a strapping man, one of the best duelists in the imperial army. The two men knew each other. Riedesel challenged Sebő to a duel, and this he accepted, despite fearing that he would certainly be killed, as he said later, to set a courageous example for his regiment, which was known as one of the weakest in the Hungarian army. After they had charged each other twice, neither of them was wounded, but on the third charge, after Riedesel had injured his hand or arm, Sebő made his smaller and quicker horse push the Austrian officer’s horse, causing him to lose his balance, then struck him down with his sword, slashing Riedesel's face, who fell down dead. Twenty years later this duel inspired the great Hungarian novelist, Mór Jókai, in his description of the duel between two of his fictional characters, the Hungarian hussar Richárd Baradlay and the Austrian officer Otto Palvicz in the 23rd 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 Croat cavalry back, but were halted by the imperial artillery and a brave attack by the Croat border guard battalion, which forced them to retreat to the other side of the Tápió river. This again caused chaos among the Hungarian troops, who started a hasty retreat, which was contributed to by the fact that Klapka lost contact with his troops while trying to cross the river far from them. The Rastić and Sternberg brigades crossed the river via the bridge, took 10 Hungarian cannon and 4 ammunition caissons, and captured two Hungarian officers and 123 men. The Croat batteries fired at the retreating Hungarians, who were fortunate that the terrain on this side of the river was quite broken ground, so their cavalry could not do its job of pursuing the retreating forces. At this dramatic moment Görgei arrived on the scene, and tried unsuccessfully to stop the I Corps soldiers’ retreat and to get them into battle order.
  The battle seemed to be lost, until Damjanich's III Co
caption: Károly Földváry as a soldier of the Hungarian Legion fighting in the Italian War for Unification. Foto: 1863
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