To a high-spirited nation this blow was almost worse than death.
Hardly a word was spoken among all the sad company. Women wept, strong men bowed their heads and shuffled along like felons. Even I, who loved Görgei, felt a spasm of indignation that he had not chosen to sacrifice his country rather than consent to such humiliation.
Yet the sight of his broken army showed he could have done nothing else.
Ragged, shoeless, half-starved, without ammunition, exhausted by hundreds of miles of terrible marching, hemmed in on all sides by the victorious enemy, what could these brave fellows have done?
There was only one answer, which came from a woman--hardly more than a girl, in fact--who stood near me.
"They should have died!" she cried passionately. "I have a brother and a sweetheart over there, and I would willingly have lost them to spare our country such disgrace."
A murmur of applause arose from the bystanders, and when one--an old man who had seen many years and much sorrow--ventured to object, I thought the crowd would have torn him in pieces.
The disputes, the endless squabbles, the different aims of the insurgents, the bitter enmity between the national party and the republicans, were all forgotten in this sad hour.
"O land of the Magyars! land of the Magyars! that it should ever come to this!" cried another woman in heart-breaking accents. "I would give husband, father, brother, sons, everything to wipe out this eternal shame from my native land!"
"And cry your eyes out for them afterwards!" exclaimed Mecsey roughly. "What good will twenty thousand dead men do Hungary? Let them live, woman, and bide their time. The turn of the black and yellow dogs will come."