The First battle of Komárom was one of the most important battles of the Hungarian War of Independence, fought on 26 April 1849, between the Hungarian and the Austrian Imperial main armies, which some consider ended as a Hungarian victory, while others say that actually it was undecided. This battle was part of the Hungarian Spring Campaign. After the revolutionary army attacked and broke the Austrian siege of the fortress, the Imperials, having received reinforcements which made them numerically very superior to their enemies, successfully counterattacked, but after stabilising their situation, they retreated towards Győr, leaving the trenches and much of their siege artillery in Hungarian hands. By this battle the Hungarian revolutionary army relieved the fortress of Komárom from a very long imperial siege, and forced the enemy to retreat to the westernmost margin of the Kingdom of Hungary. After this battle, following a long debate among the Hungarian military and political leaders about whether to continue their advance towards Vienna, the Habsburg capital, or towards the Hungarian capital, Buda, whose fortress was still held by the Austrians, the second option was chosen.
Background
The main purpose of the 1849 Hungarian Spring Campaign led by Artúr Görgei was to push the Habsburg main armies out of Hungary towards Vienna. The first phase of the Spring Campaign was successful, and the Hungarian victory at Isaszeg (6 April 1849), forced the imperial forces to retreat from the territory east of the Hungarian capitals Pest and Buda. On 7 April 1849 the Hungarian commanders elaborated another plan for the second phase of the campaign. According to this the Hungarian army was to split: General Lajos Aulich remained in front of Pest with his Hungarian II Corps and Colonel Lajos Asbóth's division, demonstrating to make the imperials believe that the whole Hungarian army was there; thus diverting their attention from the north, where the real Hungarian attack was to start with I, III and VII Corps moving west along the northern bank of the Danube to Komárom, to relieve it from the imperial siege. Kmety's division of VII Corps was to cover the three corps's march, and after I and III Corps had occupied Vác, that division was to secure the town, while the rest of the troops together with the two remaining divisions of VII Corps were to advance to the Garam river, then head south to relieve the northern section of the Austrian siege of the fortress of Komárom. After this, they had to cross the Danube and relieve the southern section of the siege. In the event that all this was completed successfully, the imperials would have only two choices: to retreat from Middle Hungary towards Vienna, or to face encirclement in the Hungarian capitals. This plan was very risky (as was the first plan of the Spring Campaign too) because if Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz had discovered that only one Hungarian corps remained in front of Pest, he could have attacked and destroyed Aulich's force, and thereby could easily cut the lines of communication of the main Hungarian army, and even occupy Debrecen, the seat of the Hungarian Revolutionary Parliament and the National Defense Committee (interim government of Hungary); or he could encircle the three corps advancing to relieve Komárom. To secure the success of the Hungarian army, the National Defense Committee sent 100 wagons of munitions from Debrecen. In the Battle of Vác on 10 April the Hungarian III Corps, led by János Damjanich defeated Ramberg's division led by Major General Christian Götz, who was mortally wounded.
Even after this battle, the imperial high command led by Field Marshal Alfred I, Prince of Windisch-Grätz was unsure whether the main Hungarian army was still in front of Pest or had already moved north to relieve Komárom. They still thought it possible that it was only a subsidiary formation that had attacked Vác and was moving towards the besieged Hungarian fortress. When Windisch-Grätz finally seemed to grasp what was really happening, he wanted to make a powerful attack against the Hungarians at Pest on 14 April, then to cross the Danube at Esztergom, and cut across the path of the army which was marching towards Komárom, but his corps commanders, General Franz Schlik and Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić refused to obey his commands, so his plan, which could have caused serious problems for the Hungarian armies, was not realized.
Because of his series of defeats at the hands of the Hungarians from the start of the Spring Campaign, on 12 April emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria relieved Windisch-Grätz of his command. Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden, the former military governor of Vienna, was designated commander-in-chief in his place, but until Welden arrived, Windisch-Grätz had to hand over to Lieutenant Field Marshal Josip Jelačić as interim commander of the imperial armies in Hungary. But this change in the leadership of the imperial forces did not bring lucidity and organization to the imperial high command, because the first order Jelačić gave after his interim command began was to call off Windisch-Grätz's plan of concentrating the imperial armies around Esztergom, and to end any chance of carrying out this by no means bad plan.
Görgey, who had installed his headquarters in Győr after the battle there, ordered Damjanich's III Corps to advance towards Léva on 11 April, and Klapka's I Corps on the 12th. Their place in Vác was taken by VII Corps under András Gáspár, then after that too departed on the same way, Vác was occupied by György Kmety's division. On 15–17 April the Hungarian army consisting of Klapka's I Corps, Damjanich's III Corps, and two divisions of VII Corps reached the Garam river, under the overall leadership of General Artúr Görgei. Here, on 19 April, at Nagysalló, they met with the troops of Lieutenant General Ludwig von Wohlgemuth and his new imperial troops mustered from the following Habsburg hereditary lands: Styria, Bohemia, Moravia and the capital Vienna, and reinforced with Jablonowski's division (which had fought in the Battle of Vác 10 days earlier). The imperials were defeated and retreated towards Érsekújvár. The Hungarian victory of Nagysalló brought about serious results. 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 uniting their troops around Pest and Buda, as they had planned, Feldzeugmeister Welden had to order the retreat from Pest which was in danger of being caught in the Hungarian pincers. When he learned about the defeat on the morning of 20 April, he wrote to Lieutenant General Balthasar Simunich, the commander of the forces besieging Komárom, and to Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg, the Minister-President of the Austrian Empire, telling them that in order to secure Vienna and Pozsony from a Hungarian attack he was forced to withdraw the imperial forces 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 a substantial garrison in the fortress of Buda to defend it against Hungarian attack. He ordered Jelačić to remain for a while in Pest, 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.
Prelude
On 20 April the Hungarian VII Corps reached Nagybénye, then Kéménd, where it encountered a brigade of the Imperial II Corps led by Major General Franz Wyss coming from Párkány. The Austrians were forced to cross the Danube and retreat to Esztergom, but General András Gáspár did not send his cavalry to pursue the enemy,
even though he had the chance to cause them heavy losses.
On 20 April, the Hungarian I and III Corps started their march towards Komárom. On 22 April, the two Hungarian corps reached Komárom, breaking the northern section of the imperial blockade around the fortress. On the same day, the garrison of Komárom broke out from the Nádor defense line against Sossay's brigade on the Csallóköz, forcing the imperials to retreat to Csallóközaranyos, then to Nyárasd. The imperials lost 50 men and 30 horses, losing also the connection with the Austrian siege corps from the right bank of the Danube, as the result of the fact that the Hungarian sortie troops, under the command of General János Lenkey, destroyed the bridge from Lovad across the Danube. Hearing that Lieutenant General Wohlgemuth, who had retreated west of the river Vág, after his defeat at Nagysalló, was now advancing east again towards Érsekújvár, Görgei ordered the newly arrived VII Corps to deploy at Perbete, to secure the rear of the Hungarian army against possible attack. The rest of the Hungarian corps were waiting the raft bridge over the Danube to be finished, which after intense work, was finished in the night of 25 to 26 April.
The Hungarian chief of staff Colonel József Bayer was designed to elaborate the battle plan for the liberation of Komárom, but, because he was against this maneuver, called in sick, so General György Klapka assumed this responsibility. According to this, five brigades were to cross the Danube during the night of 25/26 April: Kiss's and Kökényessy's brigades were to cross on the raft bridge constructed in haste to replace the pontoon bridge destroyed by the Imperials, and to deploy in the bridgehead to the right of the so-called Star rampart (Csillagsánc); then they were to be followed by Sulcz's and Zákó's brigades of I Corps deploying on their right, occupying the redoubts on the right wing of the fortress; and Dipold's brigade was to cross before midnight on boats and prepare to attack towards Újszőny. The attack was to be started by Colonel Pál Kiss's brigade against the Monostor fortress, also known as the Sandberg, with Kökényessy's brigade in support. Lieutenant-Colonel Bódog Bátori Sulcz's brigade was to attack and take Újszőny. Then all these brigades were to attack the open ground beyond the Monostor, while a strong detachment sent across the river from the Danube island by Major General Richard Guyon was to attack the Imperials in the rear.[31] With this plan Görgei hoped to occupy all the Austrian siege fortifications and the surrounding heights, and after the arrival of the remaining infantry units, cavalry and artillery of I and III Corps, then to start a general attack supported by VII Corps, and to push the Imperials towards Győr, while VII Corps was to remain in reserve.
In the meantime on 21 April Lieutenant General Balthasar von Simunich wrote to Lieutenant General Anton Csorich, that Görgei had entered Komárom that day, and that an attack on the Imperial besieging forces on the southern bank of the Danube was imminent. He therefore asked his colleague to send him cavalry and artillery reinforcements. On the 24th he informed Csorich that the Hungarians had reconstructed the bridge across the Danube, and had started to cross the river on it and on rafts. He asked Csorich to bring his troops to Herkálypuszta by the morning of 25 April at the latest, to help him against the Hungarian attack.
In accordance with Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden's orders as outlined above, the Imperial troops completed their evacuation of Pest on 23 April, whereupon General Lajos Aulich and his Hungarian II Corps entered the city on 25 April. Welden ordered Major General Franz Wyss to move his brigade to Tata, Major General Franz de Paula Gundaccar II von Colloredo-Mannsfeld to have his brigade retreat from Esztergom to Dorog, and Schwarzenberg's division to move from Buda to Esztergom, thus withdrawing all Austrian troops from the region of the Danube Bend (except the garrison of Buda under Major General Heinrich Hentzi) and concentrating them around and near Komárom, to be available in the event of a battle at Komárom. Welden had finally understood that the Hungarian forces east of Pest (Aulich's II Corps) were not so overwhelming as to be a real threat to the imperials if they retreated from their secure positions in Pest and the Danube Bend towards Komárom. This is why they could concentrate around Komárom, to resist the main Hungarian force preparing to attack them there. But Görgei hoped that his deception plan was still working, which is why he ordered the crossing of the Danube to attack the Austrians concentrated there, hoping to use his supposed numerical superiority to destroy them, and thereby to encircle those forces which he thought were still in the Danube Bend. He was warned by his chief of general staff Colonel József Bayer, among others, that crossing south of the Danube was a very risky plan, but Görgei would not change his mind.
Opposing forces
The Hungarian army
Left wing
Major General György Klapka
I. corps;
1. division;