page_title: Siege of Buda (1849)
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Buda (1849) / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Kossuth's and his families welcoming in the liberated Buda and Pest
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: After the castle was taken, the Hungarian Lieutenant János Rónay found the wounded Hentzi in the hospital to which he had been taken and made the Austrian commander prisoner. Chief medical officer Moritz Bartl told the Hungarian officer that Hentzi was mortally wounded and could not be saved. Rónay treated him gently, but when Hentzi asked to shake hands, he refused, saying he respected him as an excellent general but would not shake his hand because of the bombardment of Pest. 
   Hentzi replied that his guns could have totally destroyed but did not, and that he only fired on those buildings which he had orders to do. As we showed above, Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Welden's orders to Hentzi contained nothing about destroying Pest; he gave permission only to bombard the city on the eastern bank of the Danube in exceptional situations, if the civilians behaved towards the castle in an unacceptable manner, which they did not. 
   Lieutenant Rónay then transported Hentzi to the Hungarian headquarters, but on the way there, in Dísz Square, the people recognized Hentzi and wanted to hurt him because of what he had done to Pest. Only Lieutenant Rónay's forceful intervention saved the wounded general from being lynched. Around this event the legend was born of Artúr Görgei defending Hentzi's dead body from the enraged mob, which was depicted in many contemporary illustrations. When Hentzi reached the Hungarian HQ, many Hungarian officers (Gen. József Nagysándor, Col. Lajos Asbóth, and finally Görgei himself) visited Hentzi and behaved kindly towards him, but when they asked what his wishes were, he replied that he wanted to die. When asked why he wanted this, he replied that he knew that if he recovered, Görgei would hang him, remembering that in his letter demanding the surrender of the castle the Hungarian general had threatened to do so if Hentzi bombarded Pest or blew up the Chain Bridge. Görgei indeed had not forgotten his promise of 4 May, and declared to Lieutenant-Colonel Bódog Bátori Sulcz that he would hang Hentzi the next day if he recovered, saying that the Austrian general did not deserve to be called a hero. In the evening Hentzi's condition became critical, and Rónay sent for a priest, but apparently none could be found, perhaps because no priest wanted to give him the extreme unction. Hentzi died at 1 o'clock in the morning on 22 May. His and Col. Alnoch's bodies were put in two unpainted coffins and sent to the graveyard escorted by a squad of Huszárs to protect the bodies from the people's anger. In 1852 Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria ordered a monument dedicated to Heinrich Hentzi, who did not deserve this because of the senseless damage he caused to the capital cities, and in October 1918 it was finally dismantled.
  The chivalry of the Hungarian officers was not shared by all of their soldiers. Görgei wrote in his order of the day nr. 755/v that after the capture of Buda Castle, some Hungarian soldiers had robbed castle residents’ houses, stealing valuable objects from them as well as from the state properties and archives. He therefore ordered all stolen items to be returned within 24 hours, and that those who did not obey this order would be court-martialled.
  Although General Mór Perczel accused Artúr Görgei of intentionally delaying the occupation of the Buda Castle to give the Austrian troops from around Vienna and Pozsony time to recover, because Perczel wanted to persuade the Hungarian government in Debrecen to bring Görgei before a court-martial, the liberation of the castle created huge satisfaction among the Hungarians which convinced Prime Minister Bertalan Szemere to award Görgei the First Class Military Order of Merit and the rank of lieutenant general. But when he was visited by a Government delegation to invest him with the order and his promotion, Görgei refused. He said that he did not deserve these and did not approve of the greed of many soldiers and officers for rank and decorations, which was not compatible with Prime Minister Szemere's Republican political program, and that by refusing thes
caption: Kossuth and his family being welcomed by the population in the liberated Buda and Pest
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