The battleground was an unusual one. In order to reach the village and the Austrian troops, the Hungarians needed to cross a heavily forested area (Királyerdő, the King’s forest). The treeline ended in a narrow field, widest in the center of the line. Both sides concentrated their cavalry here, while the infantry was deployed to the north and south. Beyond the field, on the heights, stood the Austrians. The village was located in the southern part of the field, forming a heavily fortified salient of the Austrian line. To the south, on the Austrian right, Jelačić’s I. corps occupied Isaszeg, facing Klapka’s I. corps. To the north, between the forest and Gödöllő, stood Schlik’s III. corps, facing Damjanich’s III. corps.

The battle began at 13:00 with Klapka and Damjanich engaging the enemy vanguard in the forest. The Austrian and Croatian light cavalry gave ground but set fire to the forest as they retreated. The Hungarians pushed through. Once clear the burning treeline and onto the field they found themselves face to face with the Austrian elevated positions. Klapka attacked Jelačić at Isaszeg but was beaten back. Soonafter Damjanich charged Schlik’s position but was equally unsuccessful. As the infantry charged on the wings, a giant cavalry mêlée has formed in the middle, with the superior Austrian line cavalry twice outnumbering their lighter Hungarian counterpart. Horse-to-horse fighting was – contrary to most depictions – relatively bloodless and thus the Hungarian hussars, despite being outclassed by Austrian cuirassiers, managed to hold their own, pinning the best Austrian units in fruitless fighting. On the sides, however, the Hungarian situation was critical. Klapka panicked once again and decided to leave the field, while Schlik’s forces repelled Damjanich and went on the offensive. By 15:00, the Hungarian left was routing, and the right dangerously pressured.

It was during this time that word reached Görgey in his headquarters that the battle with the Austrians – previously expected to take place a day later – had begun, and that it was about to be lost. He rushed to find Klapka and gave him such an earful that he gathered his forces and chose to face the Austrian musketfire over Görgey's words.

With the I. corps reengaged, Görgey went to deploy Aulich’s II. corps that was just entering the battle. He positioned it in the middle of the Hungarian line, covering Klapka’s reforming left flank, and assisting Damjanich on the right in his fight against Schlik. After this Görgey rode on to Damjanich. After listening to the old man’s angry outburst directed at Klapka, the commander-in-chief ordered him to hold his position at all costs before heading back south towards the main cavalry mêlée in order to micromanage the crucial part of the battlefield.

Görgey's order to Damjanich to hold implies that he acted under the assumption that the VII. corps was advancing from the north. Before riding into the thick of battle a messenger informed him that Gáspár – temporary leader of the VII. – was moving in from the north to outflank Schlik. If Damjanich held out, while Aulich and Klapka took Isaszeg, the arrival of the VII. could have delivered the knock-out blow to the tiring Austrian army.

Klapka rallied his troops, and with Aulich’s help he took the village, unbalancing the enemy line. In the meantime, Damjanich had to hang on for dear life. The Hungarian and the Austrian III. corps continued the battle well into the night – the VII. corps was a no-show. It turned out the messenger’s report was false, of Gáspár’s 15,000 men, only a couple thousand had advanced under György Kmety’s own initiative. Schlik realized he was getting flanked, and that he was getting nowhere with Damjanich, so at about 23:00 he ordered his forces to disengage and retreat. The battle was won.

Analysis of Phase I.

The trio of battles of Hatvan, Tápióbicske, and Isaszeg were a shock victory, and their effect on troop morale cannot be overstated. History gives the credit to the Hungarian hussars’ superior scouting, and the infantry’s death-defying bayonet-charges. Tactically, it was Görgey et al.’s superior maneuvering that made victory possible. At Hatvan, an enlarged VII. corps faced Schlik’s III. corps, 15,000 men against 11,000. Tápióbicske saw two Hungarian corps, with 22,000 men against a single one of the Austrians with 15,000. Isaszeg, the largest battle of the campaign saw the full Hungarian army of 45,000 (though only 31,000 participated) facing two corps with a total of 26,000 Austrians.

Despite being outnumbered in this theatre of the war, the Hungarians could deploy more men in all three engagements, as their units had been led with creativity, precision, and speed (excepting the mishap with VII. corps which was down to a lack of initiative from its commander and unlucky miscommunication). At any point during the early phase of the campaign, Görgey’s forces were within a day’s march distance from each other, whereas the Austrians protected a line that was 60 kilometers long, stretching from Vác to Gödöllő, allowing for a defeat in detail à la Napoleon’s Italian Campaign of 1796-97. Overconfidence, faulty intelligence, and a lack of coordination led to the most serious defeat to Austria since the War of the 5th Coalition in 1809.

Some argue that if the VII. corps had advanced at Isaszeg, the Austrian army could have been annihilated, and the war could have been won at Isaszeg, and therefore Görgey made a major error by not double-checking on Gáspár’s position. This opinion was used as basis to further the traitor-mythos against Görgey that arose after the war, but it is false. First, only the Austrian III. corps was in any danger of envelopment. It had 11,000 men, about 20% of the Austrian main army (and less than 10% of all Austrian forces in Hungary). Second, Schlik was a good commander and has escaped from worse odds before, so him getting utterly crushed at Isaszeg from a simple flanking maneuver is highly unlikely. Third, warfare in that period was weird. Infantry attacks alone could wear down an enemy, but to achieve a major breakthrough and destroy whole units, one needed mobile, horse-drawn artillery pieces and heavy cavalry units. Of the former Hungary was in short supply, while the latter was completely nonexistent in the Hungarian army. Despite the immense post-war hype, the Hungarian hussars (their undeniable efforts in scouting and in the mêlée notwithstanding, a true testament to their versatiliy) failed miserably to give chase even to previously shattered Austrian units, taking heavy losses in each attempt. As with many other revolutionary armies, it was the infantry that carried the day in each of the three battles, and like its counterparts, it suffered dearly for it – total Hungarian combat losses amounted to about 2,000 dead and wounded while the Austrians lost half that number. While the VII. corps would have been a welcome addition at Isaszeg, its absence would have been felt only if the Austrians had resisted Klapka and Aulich’s second charge. In my humble (but informed) opinion, complete annihilation of any Austrian unit could only have been possible if the Hungarian flanking attempt had not been discovered at Tápióbicske, and even then the possibility is scant.

Vienna, we’ve got a problem – April 7 to April 26.

Immediately after Isaszeg, Kossuth met Görgey in private in his headquarters. The Governor-President, who, until a week ago had been pleading with Windisch-Grätz to come to the negotiating table, now saw fit to outline his plans to declare Hungary’s independence. Görgey vehemently disagreed. Up till now, the army had been fighting to uphold the 1848 April concessions agreed to by the Austrian court, and then violated by them in October. A declaration of independence would not only turn every Hungarian officer into an oathbreaker, it would upset the delicate balance of power that was the Concert of post-Napoleonic Europe. Every government from London to St. Petersburg would fear – and fight against – the new source of uncertainty, he argued.

Kossuth saw that he was getting no support and quickly changed topics. He once again tried to meddle in the military’s affairs by urging Görgey to attack Pest-Buda. This time, the supreme commander’s reaction was more composed. He simply reminded Kossuth that taking Buda castle from across the Danube was impossible, and suggested that he return to Debrecen as “the nature of the upcoming troop movements would put his person into considerable danger if he continued to stay with the army”. On April 10, Kossuth decided to return to Debrecen. This, by the way, was at the absolute height of Kossuth and Görgey's relations who were both drunk on victory at the moment and even agreed to be on first-name-basis.

On the same day, Damjanich and Klapka reached Vác, some 30 kilometers north of Pest. There they found the rearguard of Windisch-Grätz’s forces, absent from all three previous battles, still anticipating an attack from a non-existent Hungarian army corps supposedly operating to the north-east of the capitals. After heavy house-to-house fighting that saw Major Földváry failing to repeat the same stunt he pulled at Tápióbicske (this time the desperate standard-bearer managed to hold onto the battalion's colors and keep his life), as well as Austrian Colonel Götz fall in battle, the I. corps and III. corps captured the town.

The plan of phase two of the Spring Campaign was this: Aulich, with the II. and VII. corps stays under Pest to convince Windisch-Grätz that an attack against the capitals is imminent, while Klapka and Damjanich with the I. and the III. follow along left bank of the Danube and make a dash to relieve the besieged fortress of Komárom – 60 kilometers to the west of Pest-Buda. The victory at Vác was crucial for both parts of the plan, which, if successful, would keep the strongest fort in the country in Hungarian hands, save its defenders, and cut off the main Austrian army from Vienna. As this was unfolding, the beaten Austrian main army retreated to the right bank of the Danube at Buda and sabotaged the bridges behind them. This freed up the VII. corps which was now able to follow the I. and the III. corps to the north in their desperate rush towards Komárom. Aulich stayed under Pest, pretending to have three times as many men as he really did, while the rest of the team went north.

The Austrian reply to the earlier defeats came on April 15. Windisch-Grätz was sacked and replaced with an aging Ludwig von Welden, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars. Just as Görgey, Welden also planned a flanking attack from the north, and was able to assemble a new force of 20,000 men from Bohemia and Upper Hungary. On April 17 the two forces made contact with each other along the Garam (today Hron, in Slovakia) river where Welden was reportedly astonished by the speed of the Hungarians' advance, calling them “the hordes of the ghost Görgey”. On April 19 as battle was looming, Welden suddenly felt sick and returned to his quarters, but ordered his subordinate, Wohlgemuth, to attack the Hungarians as they are attempting to cross the river.

However, it was Klapka and Damjanich who moved first. They completed their crossing before the Austrians could realize, and fell on them as they were forming up. Görgey observed the battle of Nagysalló (Tekovské Lužany) from a hilltop at Léva (Levice), preparing to intervene, as he was forced to do at Isaszeg and Tápióbicske, only if it turned critical for the Hungarians. This time, it did not. The battle was a bloody affair and it even saw a rare case of the two infantry lines crashing into each other with bayonets and grenades for a desperate free-for-all. Many Austrian units were caught with their pants down in their quarters and the Hungarians had to lay siege for every house in the village to clear them out. In the end, a spirited cavalry charge broke and routed the Austrian infantry. The way to relieve Komárom was clear.

The fortress of Komárom had been the single most important location of the war. Its position between Pest-Buda and Vienna made it strategically invaluable, while the fact that it was built upon both sides of the Danube and extended to the Vág (Váh) confluence meant that it was very difficult to effectively encircle. Fully stored, it could house up to 30,000 men with 300 guns. To capture the fort, the besiegers needed to raze its walls to the ground with heavy artillery. That’s exactly what the Austrians had been doing since December. The fort with its garrison of 12,000 men, most of them rookies, had been under siege since the beginning of the Winter Campaign, but the bombardment had only started in its earnest in March. General Simunich had 14,000 men conducting the siege, covered from the east by the main Austrian army at Pest-Buda and from the north by an additional army corps.

This latter force had been the one that was so firmly beaten at Nagysalló. A day later reinforcements started to arrive in the fort, and on April 22 the main Hungarian army descended on the Austrian siege lines, clearing it entirely on the north side of the city. Under heavy enemy bombardment, Görgey ordered a bridge to be built and on early April 26, Görgey, Damjanich, and Klapka crossed over to the southern side of the Danube. In a surprise attack they forced the enemy to give up their remaining siege lines. The Austrian side was reinforced by the main army arriving from Pest-Buda, and counterattacked. A tense, 14-hour fight ensued with the Hungarians being outnumbered 2 to 1. Relying on the fort’s defenses and making use of the captured Austrian siege lines, Görgey, Damjanich, and Klapka held, and the entire Austrian force withdrew to the west – as had been Welden's intention since Nagysalló. It was during this time that the Hungarian army ran out of gunpowder – and I don’t mean they had to start conserving it or rationing it, I mean at 15:00 their cannons went silent and the army just stood there watching the Austrians clear off the battlefield.

Analysis of Phase II.

Nagysalló was a crushing defeat of the Austrian forces and the most decisive Hungarian victory in a pitched battle of the war. Klapka claimed roughly 3,000 Austrian casualties including 2,000 prisoners, with more of the Austrian corps disintegrating in the next few days, for 700 Hungarians. Komárom saw the entire Austrian army clear Hungarian territory, losing another 2,000 men, 7 siege guns, and plenty of supplies. Much like in Phase I., the Hungarian plan to encircle the Austrian army in a lightning move was compromised (this time, by the appearance of the auxiliary force on the left bank of the Danube) and eventually thwarted by a general westward retreat.

Görgey’s ambitious plans, mimicking Napoleon’s Battle of Ulm led to an unimaginable series of victories. On the leadership’s part, a focus on proper military objectives (Komárom instead of Pest-Buda), intelligent movements (using the terrain, in particular, the Danube river to separate the Austrians), and great speed (six major battles within 24 days) made success possible.

Phase II., however, showed what had been one of the most major weaknesses of the whole campaign: Hungary had only one Görgey, when it needed two, or even three. The precision, discipline, and strategic thinking he brought to the main army was not complemented by a competent organizer in the hinterland – the army’s supply problems from the Dembiński days had only gotten worse, as illustrated by the ending of the Battle of Komárom. Furthermore, as Isaszeg had also shown, the Big Four needed at least a fifth member who could match the quartet’s abilities at the head of an army corps. At Komárom, for lack of an alternative, Görgey took personal command of the VIII. corps, formed from the fort’s rookie garrison and fought on the right flank – facing a certain General Haynau on the opposite side. Hungary needed Görgey the organizer, Görgey the commander in chief, and Görgey the army corps leader, but had to make do with only one at a time.

The crossroads of Komárom – April 27 to May 3.

The army was victorious, but it found itself at a critical juncture in many ways. On April 14, barely a week after Isaszeg, the political leadership declared Hungary’s independence. "The house of Habsburg-Lorraine, perjured in the sight of God and man, had forfeited the Hungarian throne." the declaration read. Kossuth’s efforts in bringing this move to a head was as impressive as it was devious. He bargained, threatened, and lied his way to get the votes. Most notably, he assured the representatives that Artúr Görgey himself – whose rising popularity he now feared more than anything – was with him in his cause.

Görgey was shocked, while the army's reaction was mixed to say the least. Many celebrated, but a large part of the officer corps, especially the ethnically non-Hungarians, found themselves in an impossible position. Not only did this move make every chance of a compromise with Vienna impossible, this meant certain death for every officer in case of a defeat. For much of the army, particularly for those units who were part of the Imperial army until 1848, the fight was only about the breach of Hungarian autonomous territory by Jelačić's and Windisch-Grätz’s invasions. Phase II. of the spring campaign freed the country (with the exception of Buda Castle), but now Kossuth’s decision destroyed what was left of the legitimacy of the April constitution. The only possible way out for the officers to avoid treason charges was to seek commissions away from the frontline, but doing so would mean betraying the cause they fought for. It was an impossible moral choice. Aulich requested sick leave, while Damjanich and Klapka had taken up political roles – though Damjanich broke his foot in a freak accident before he could assume his post, ending up as a garrison commander in Arad fortress instead.

Of the Big Four, only Görgey remained. With his notable – and borderline sociopathic – lack of fear he always chose the option that carried more danger to his life. He wanted to see things through to the end, but never stopped believing an autonomous, Habsburg Hungary. Now he faced another impossible choice: take the men, drunk with victory, but shaken by the losses, hindered by the lack of supplies, and confused by the political situation towards Vienna in the west, or towards Buda Castle in the east.

Görgey knew that Austria needed to be beaten again if he wanted any terms of peace. The enemy armies were on the run, and Vienna showed last year twice that its revolutionary sentiment against the Habsburgs was strong. But he also knew that without reliable supply of gunpowder, reserves in men, and able officers, he had no chance to beat the 75,000 Austrians he had evicted from the country (though at the time only 50,000 of those were in fighting shape). Those men were now regrouping before Vienna, while Görgey could only count on a mere 30,000 for offensive operations.

On the other hand, taking Buda would shorten his supply lines, and give a capital for the newly born nation. Hopes were still high on Kossuth’s part that the declaration of independence would stir up international support for the Hungarian cause, but without a capital, that cause could not be taken seriously. With Kossuth’s assent this time, the army marched on Buda, in hopes of a quick victory.