The face of the leader—the face of the people and of the army. The face of the soldiers of our war of liberation in 1848 was the face of Görgei, of Kossuth, of Petöfi. The face of Hungary of the Great War was the sad, resolute face of Stephen Tisza. The face of the October revolution was Michael Károlyi.... And the face of this detachment with the red flag was the officer heading it.
Behind him the infantry came in irregular formation, many of the soldiers smoking. Guns rumbled after them; two gunners sat jolting on one of the guns, red ribbons floating from their caps. They were smoking too.... The crowd went on. A battery of field artillery followed, and Hussars rode at the end. One trooper signalled to a lady friend of his who was passing, stopped his horse and had a nice, comfortable chat with her from the saddle, then he galloped after the rest.
Somebody said: “The whole garrison is here! They are going to Buda.” “What for?” Nobody knew. Meanwhile the red flag was climbing up the hillside towards the royal castle.
The city and the other quarters of the town knew nothing of this procession. Nobody troubled about it. The citizens of Budapest were apathetic and indifferent, and thought no more about it than did the bridge which suffered the procession to cross it. Men continued to live their precarious lives and everything seemed to be the same as yesterday, but in the afternoon came the news that this garrison had caused the downfall of the War Minister! The Soldiers’ Council and Joseph Pogány had ousted Albert Bartha.
It happened in the castle, on St. George’s Square. I heard of it from an eye-witness. The infantry stood in a row, with machine-guns and the artillery behind them. And while threats against Bartha were shouted, the malicious face of Joseph Pogány-Schwarz appeared in one of the windows of the building occupied by the Soldiers’ Council. The officers on horseback saw him and shouted his name and cheered him. Then the demonstrators cheered Károlyi. Meanwhile a delegation of the garrison’s confidential men, led by Dr. Mór, a reserve officer, went up to the Prime Minister and presented him with a paper containing the demands of the garrison.
Károlyi received the delegation in deadly fear.
The soldiery down in the square turned their guns and machine-guns on the War Office.... That is how they waited for an answer. As a matter of fact most of the men did not care what happened. It was the confidential men who told them how to come here, and what to demand, and accordingly they came and demanded: “Let Bartha resign and be replaced by a civilian Minister of War who will organise a democratic army. The staff-officers must be dismissed from the War Office, and the proclamation concerning the Soldiers’ Council and the Confidential Men, suppressed by Bartha, must be put into execution at once. All the Minister’s special officers’ detachments are to be disbanded.” Finally they demanded that the officers should in future be elected by the ranks, and that rankers should be qualified to become officers.
In the reception-room of the Prime Minister, Károlyi addressed the deputation, submitted, promised everything and—gave up Bartha.
“I saw with pleasure,” he said, “the many thousands of soldiers, because it has afforded me the evidence of my own eyes that the Hungarian Government is not defenceless, but has a powerful army at its back.”
As a matter of fact, at that moment the powerful army was not standing at his back but opposite him; an army that was good for nothing but to demonstrate in Budapest, and whose heroism was directed against his War Office, upon which its guns were trained.