There came an awful day. We learned that as the result of the insidious propaganda of Károlyi’s agents and his press, a Hungarian division and a Viennese regiment had laid down their arms.... It was through this break that the forces of the Entente had crossed the Piave. Our forces repelled them in a supreme effort. Then the English tanks came into play. These were too much for the nerves of our men, whose discipline had been slackened by several months’ intrigue. They mutinied, and it was reported that in the confusion General Wurm was killed by his own men.
In Budapest the papers which appeared were blanked heavily by the exertions of the censor, but in the streets people already spoke openly of the National Council and proclaimed loudly that one could take the oath of allegiance to it at the rooms of Károlyi’s party. There was an astonishing number of soldiers in the crowd. I noticed then for the first time how many sailors walked the streets. Where did these come from?
Next day was Sunday, October the 27th. I recollect clearly that I did not leave the house. Within the last few days most of the inhabitants of the villas in our neighbourhood had moved in haste in to the town. It was quiet, and I pruned the shrubs in our garden.
It was only through the newspapers that I learned what had happened. Advised by Károlyi, the King had received at Gödöllö the day before the Radical journalist Oscar Jászi and the two organisers of his party, Zsigmond Kúnfi and Ernest Garami, both Socialist journalists. Károlyi’s press was shouting victory, and having obtained all it wanted, it began to see red and started to defame the King. Poor young King! The reception was a sad and useless concession. These men were revolutionaries and poisoners whose due was not an audience but a warrant of arrest. Even now everything could have been saved, all that was wanted was a fist that dared to strike. But the King’s beautiful hands, according to Jászi’s report of the audience, only toyed nervously with his rings.... Their Majesties went in the evening to Vienna. They left their children in the royal castle and took Károlyi with them in the royal train.
COUNT MICHAEL KÁROLYI AND HIS ENTOURAGE.
Károlyi Böhm Pogány
The morning papers spoke of “Károlyi, the Prime Minister designate of Hungary.” There was to be a monster meeting in town in front of the House of Parliament. The workmen appeared in full force. Lovászy, Count Batthyany, and “comrades” Garbai and Pogány made revolutionary speeches. A group of workmen, to show their approval of these measures, carried a gallows on which a doll dressed like Tisza in red hussar breeches was suspended. In the evening the crowd went to the railway station to receive Károlyi on his return from Vienna.
Later in the day my brother Géza telephoned to me from Baden (near Vienna); he had just come from General Headquarters. Archduke Joseph and Michael Károlyi had come in the same train. The King had recalled the Archduke from the Italian front and sent him as homo regius to Budapest. The Archduke obeyed, though he would have preferred to return first to his troops and come back at their head to restore order in the capital. The King, however, vetoed this plan. Two unfortunate blunders. The Archduke arrived without backing, and Count Károlyi infinitely offended in his vanity. The youths of the Galilee Circle were waiting for the latter at the railway station, and he shook his long yellow hands in the air and shouted: “I will not forsake Hungary’s independence.”