page_title: Siege of Buda (1849)
section_title: The castle before the siege
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Buda (1849) / The castle before the siege
caption_attribution_description: English: The people of Pest welcoming the first Hungarian Hussars
context_page_description: The Siege of Buda was the siege of the Buda castle, part of the twin capital cities of the Kingdom of Hungary, by the Hungarian revolutionary army led by General Artúr Görgei during the Hungarian War of Independence. Part of the Spring Campaign, the siege began on 4 May 1849 and ended with the Hungarian capture of the castle by assault on 21 May. Actually it was the only fortress in the whole war to be taken by storm by the besiegers on either side. All the rest only capitulated after agreements between besiegers and besieged. The siege of Buda was also the shortest siege of the war. The senseless bombardment of Pest by Major General Heinrich Hentzi, the Austrian commander, destroyed the classicist buildings on the shores of the Danube, but other parts of the capitals also suffered heavy damage because of the artillery duels between the two sides. The capture of Buda Castle completed the liberation of the Hungarian capital cities. Thanks to this, the second Hungarian revolutionary Government led by Bertalan Szemere together with Governor-President Lajos Kossuth returned from Debrecen, the interim capital of the Hungarian revolution, to the real capital of Hungary.
context_section_description: The Turkish occupation of Buda ended on 2 September 1686, after a bloody siege by the Austrians. After that, the castle was the property of the Hungarian king (who was at the same time Holy Roman Emperor until 1804, and after that Austrian Emperor), and was defended by foreign (not Hungarian nationality) soldiers led by a foreign officer. After the Hungarian revolution succeeded and the Batthyány Government was formed, the castle was still defended by foreign soldiers who had to recognize the Hungarian Government's authority. Because he did not want to do so, the commander of the garrison, Lieutenant General Karl Kress resigned and left on 11 May 1848. So too did those foreign units stationed in the castle who were against the Hungarian revolution, like the Italian 23rd infantry regiment, who clashed with the newly conscripted Hungarian soldiers on 11 June 1848, resulting in many deaths. After this conflict, on the orders of the Hungarian War Ministry, the Italian 23rd infantry regiment was withdrawn from Hungary.
  Following the Imperial campaign against Hungary led by Field Marshal Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz that began in mid-December 1848, the ensuing retreat of the Hungarian armies, and the Hungarian defeat in the Battle of Mór, the Habsburg troops entered the Hungarian capitals on 5 January 1849. The free Hungarian parliament, the National Defense Committee (interim government of Hungary), and a long convoy of civilians with all their possessions fled through the cold and snowy winter east to the Tisza  river, installing the interim capital at Debrecen. The first thing Windisch-Grätz ordered after entering Buda was the occupation of the castle and the Gellért Hill. Windisch-Grätz named Lieutenant General Ladislas Wrbna as the commander of the Buda Military District, in other words the military commander of the imperial troops in the capitals. But at the end of February, when the commander-in-chief prepared to attack the Hungarian army, he took Wrbna with him on the campaign, leaving Major General Heinrich Hentzi, commander of the imperial garrison of the Castle of Buda, to take over command of the troops in Buda and Pest.
  During April 1849 the main imperial force led by Field Marshal Windisch-Grätz suffered one defeat after another and retreated towards the western border of Hungary. The Hungarian victory of Nagysalló on 19 April had decisive results for the imperial occupation forces stationed in Hungary. It opened the way towards Komárom, bringing its relief to within just a couple of days’ march. At the same time it put the imperials in the situation of being incapable of stretching their troops across the very large front which this Hungarian victory created, so instead of concentrating their troops around Pest and Buda as they had planned, Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden, Windisch-Grätz's replacement as the Imperial commander-in-chief in Hungary, had to order the retreat from Pest to avoid being caught by the Hungarian pincers. When he learned about the defeat at Nagysalló on the morning of 20 April, he wrote to Lieutenant General Balthasar Simunich, the commander of the force besieging Komárom, and to Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, the Minister-President of the Austrian Empire, that in order to secure Vienna and Pozsony, from Hungarian attack he was forced to retreat from Pest and even from Komárom. He also wrote that the morale of the imperial troops was very low, and because of this they could not 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 Hungarian attack. He ordered Jelačić to remain in Pest for a while, and then 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.
  On 24 April the last imperial soldiers left Pest. That same morning at 7 o'clock seven hussars, from the Hungarian II Corps entered the city, welcomed
caption: The people of Pest welcoming the first Hungarian Hussars who entered in Pest on 24th April 1849
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