The Battle of Piski was a battle in the Hungarian war of Independence of 1848-1849 fought on 9 February 1849 between the Hungarian army led by the Polish General Józef Bem and the Austrian army of the Habsburg Commander-in-Chief of Transylvania, Lieutenant General Anton Puchner. As a result of the defeats suffered by Bem against the much superior Austrian army, supported also by Romanian and Saxon militias, and a Russian army of several thousand soldiers, the Hungarian army was about to be pushed out of Transylvania. This is why this battle was a crucial one for Bem. And thanks to the reinforcements sent from Hungary, he could stop the Austrian attack at Piski, defeat Puchner, and restart the fight for the province.
Background
On January 21, after a series of victories that liberated much of Transylvania from the Austrian troops except its southern part, Polish General Józef Bem, leader of the Hungarian army of Transylvania, launched an attack on the enemy's headquarters at Nagyszeben but was repulsed by the Imperial troops under Lieutenant General Anton Puchner. Bem was not discouraged by this unsuccess, and on 24 January he repulsed Puchner's troops in the Battle of Szelindek, then retreated to the more defensible Vízakna. Meanwhile, he sent one brigade to cover Székely Land and another to Déva. The Battle of Vízakna was fought on 4 February. Bem first repulsed the attack of the K.u.K. troops, but then began to attack himself. In so doing, he revealed the smallness of his forces and suffered a terrible defeat. He lost 15 guns and all his baggage. With his army reduced to barely 1,500 men, he headed west to contact reinforcements expected from Hungary.
In the meantime, the situation in the other theatres of war was also becoming critical. Therefore, the military council held in Pest on 2 January 1849 decided to concentrate the main forces in the region of the Middle and Upper Tisza for a Spring Campaign, and in order to maximize its chance of success, it concluded, that Bácska and Bánság should be evacuated by the Hungarian troops. The commander of the troops withdrawing from Bánság, General János Damjanich, learned of Bem's defeat at Nagyszeben in Arad, and decided to send part of his army, 3 infantry battalions, 2 cavalry regiments and 12 guns to reinforce Bem. At the beginning of February, the Committee of National Defence (which was acting as a Hungarian government), headed by Lajos Kossuth and based in Debrecen, sent a part of the forces from Zaránd County led by Lieutenant Colonel József Beke to Bem's aid.
However, making contact with these troops was far from easy, as Puchner was pursuing Bem, while the Austrian garrison of Gyulafehérvár and the Romanian popular uprising did everything in their power to put obstacles in Bem's way towards the west. On 6 February, there were further battles at Szászsebes, and on 7 February at Szászváros, in which Bem's troops suffered further losses. In the meantime, at Puchner's request, 4,800 Russian troops came and assured the defense of Brassó and 2,200 in Nagyszeben. Puchner was thus able to use all his expendable forces against Bem.
In addition to these developments, Bem's northern Transylvanian rear was also attacked by Austrian troops when, on 6 February, Colonel Karl von Urban made a lighting raid from Bukovina and took by surprise an advanced Hungarian outpost between Borgóprund and Marossény, capturing without a shot three infantry companies, a platoon of hussars, two cannons and all supplies before retreating back to Bukovina. Urban returned on 12 February with larger troops. At the Battle of Király-németi that followed, the Austrian defeated the Hungarian army under Major Ignác Riczkó, who died during the battle, and occupied the area from Beszterce to Naszód.
Prelude
The last defensible position on the road from Transylvania to Hungary in the valley of the Maros was at the village of Piski in Hunyad County. Here, about half an hour away from the village, the rapids of the river Sztrigy flow into the Mures. The Sztrigy is a river with very inclined banks, which, although not very wide, is difficult to cross. The bridge over the river east of Piski was therefore crucial. A 40-meter-long strong, two-legged wooden bridge, so wide that two carriages could go across it next to each other, crossed the Sztrigy. A wooden bulkhead was placed in the middle of the bridge, with a carriage road running alongside it on both sides.
The village of Piski lies on the right bank of the river, about 100 paces from the bridge. A short distance from the village, on the north side of the highway, stood a spacious stone customs house and a tavern. The road from Szászváros through Pád to Piski runs westwards along the southern slopes of Mount Staramare, but just before the village of Piski, a few steps next to the hill it turns southwards so that the bridge is only visible when the road turns into it. On the right bank, north of the highway, the terrain is all flat, and to the south are the foothills of Mount Magura. The part of the highway, i.e. the part towards the Maros river, rises gently, while the part towards Strigy, i.e. the village, was steep and covered with forest. This mountain dominated the village of Piski and the bridge. Thus, the position was difficult to get around from the north, while to the south - to Vajdahunyad - it was covered by mountains.
The open area north of the highway, about 2,000 paces, was suitable for cavalry charges. There were no houses on the left bank of the river, and here for a width of 600 paces near the bridge, only the willows and bushes provided some cover for the Hungarian side. Most of the left bank was also flat, crisscrossed by ditches, with a mill and a farmstead here and there. Between the villages of Piski and Dédács there were a few gentle slopes towards the Maros.
Near the bridge, the plain on either side of the road was overgrown with willows and scrub for several hundred paces, and there was a farm on either side of the road. The road led through a tree line towards Déva, about an hour and a half away. The elevation on the left bank offered a good position for the Hungarian guns, while the high ground on the opposite bank offered an even better position for the Austrian artillery, being higher than the left bank. The ice was drifting on the Strigy, and, excepting the bridge mentioned above, only at a mill dam south of the bridge was it possible to cross it with both infantry and cavalry.
Puchner's plan was to encircle Bem's troops between Piski and Déva. To this end, he sent one battalion to Zaránd County to convince the Romanians living there to start an uprising against the Hungarians, and another to bypass Bem's position on the right bank of the Maros. He left a brigade behind in Szászsebes, so that after the destruction of Bem's army, about which he thought that he will achieve it very soon, he could immediately launch it against the Hungarian reinforcements gathering in the area of Medgyes. Puchner was also counting on the detachment led by the Captain of a border guard regiment Czernoević stationing between Déva and Vajdahunyad, as well as the detachment of the Temesvár garrison. However, Puchner was unlucky, because the Temesvár garrison was busy breaking the Hungarian siege of Arad these days.
On the evening of 6 February, after the unsuccessful battle of Vízakna, Bem arrived with his badly battered army in Szászváros, where the next day, attacked again by the pursuing Imperial troops, losing the middle finger of his right hand in the battle, causing him to fall to bed, while the remnants of his army were led to Déva by Lieutenant-Colonel János Czetz, where the relief troops from Bánság had arrived under Major Hrabovszky.
Because Puchner's troops overwhelmingly outnumbered the Hungarians, in the following days the Honvéds performed almost superhumanly, fighting a bloody rearguard action against the Imperials during the retreat, while the Polish commander-in-chief lay virtually incapacitated by his wounds. However, Colonel János Czetz, who temporarily replaced Józef Bem, did an excellent job, and after a few days, the Honvéds were able to join with the auxiliary forces sent by Damjanich, thus increasing the Transylvanian army to 7,000. After that, only one, but more serious task remained: to stop Puchner's troops before they reached the Great Hungarian Plain. This had to be done at a battle fought at Piski.
Bem's retreating army passed through Piski and joined the reinforcements from Hungary at Déva. At the bridge in Piski, he left behind Lieutenant-Colonel Farkas Kemény with the 11th Battalion, two companies of the 15th (Mátyás) Hussars, and 4 guns, who were entrenched in the woods behind the Sztrigy. With this team, he covered Déva, where Bem had retreated. Together with these, and the relief troops from Bánság, Bem's army had now increased again to 10 battalions, 5 regular and 2 irregular cavalry companies and 28 guns. From these, more than 356 men and two cannons had left away before the battle.
When Captain Czernoević heard of the approach of Kemény Farkas on 4 February, he immediately went with his column to Vajdahunyad and from there to Hátszeg, and ordered Prefect Salomon, who was leading the Romanian insurgents remaining at the aforementioned place, to surprise the Hungarians who had marched to Déva with a night raid. This was carried out on the night of 5 to 6 February but was brilliantly repulsed by the Hungarians, who did not enter in panic, and repulsed the attack, so that towards dawn Salomon retreated again to Vajdahunyad, after suffering 180 casualties in the night battle.
On 8 February, from the Imperial headquarters in Szászváros, Lieutenant-Colonel Baron Buseck, with the 3rd Battalion of the Sivkovich Regiment, 2 squadrons of chevau-légers, 1 squadron of pro-Austrian Székely Hussars, and 1 battery of three-pounder cannons was sent in reconnaissance against the Hungarian position at Piski, on which occasion Buseck became convinced that the Sztrigy line was very strongly fortified around Piski and that the Hungarians intended to put up a stubborn resistance there. Puchner then decided to attack the next day and entrusted Kalliányi with the task of carrying it through; the detachment of Czernoević and the Karl Ferdinand combined battalion were ordered to participate in the attack at the same time, for which the latter battalion had to cross the frozen Maros at Bábolna to its left bank.
Kalliány had drawn up at the said place 18 guns north of the highway and 1/2 three-pounder batteries south of it, commanded by artillery-captain Herle, and under cover of the 3rd Battalion, Parma Regiment, and 1 division of chevau-légers. The infantry of the Kalliány and Stutterheim brigades were placed in readiness on the heights south of the highway, and ordered to occupy the Piski bridge after a sustained artillery preparation. Major Kunics commanded the left wing of the Austrian battle formation, and Colonel Baron Stutterheim the center. As a reserve, the cavalry under Colonel Losenau was deployed with a 1/2 three-pounder battery at the eastern exit of Pád. On the right bank of the Maros, a large Romanian mass of insurgents and an Austrian cavalry detachment took up position.
Captain Czernoević left Vajdahunyad with his column only at 9 o'clock in the morning, and at noon, arriving at Alsópestes, instead of trying to attack the left flank and rear of the Hungarians, he took up a "lookout position" along the northern edge of the woods to the south-east of the village, and only sent some patrols forward towards the Maros valley; thus in this way he could not influence at all the course of the battle.