The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

assessed from this perspective.” 18 It is thus unchallengeable that the first
speaker of what was to become axiomatic was, in fact, Mihály Károlyi!
How, then, did the almost-legendary statement, ascribed to Tisza, actually
get said on the following day, Thursday, October 17 on the 824 th sitting of the
Hungarian parliament? During the morning sitting, Count Tisza was first to
take the floor and said the following with regard to political situation following
the government announcement and the ending of hostilities: “Honored House! I
do not wish to play tricks with words. I agree with what the Hon. Rep. Mihály
Károlyi said yesterday, that we lost the war … We lost not in the sense that we
could not carry on with exacting and heroic defense; that we could not but
make the final victory for the enemy very costly. But yes, we lost in the sense
that, due to the shift in the balance of strength, we have no more chance to win
the war and, as a result, we must seek a peace on such terms as our enemies
will accept under the situation. … Hence, I am of the same opinion that, with
our German allies, we offered peace to our enemies based on the Wilson 14
Points and their attached points.” 19
On the day after the coup carried out by the Károlyi government, November
1, King Charles IV released the government, at their request, from the oath (of
allegiance) they swore to him. Later the same evening, the members of the
government took an oath to “Hungary and the Hungarian people” before the
president of the Hungarian National Council, János Hock (1859-1936), who
was appointed to the position by the designated Prime Minister Károlyi, as his
second-in-command. Also on this day, Minister of War, Béla Linder (1876-
1962), ordered that Hungarian forces lay down their arms, while truce talks
were going on in Padua between the Entente Powers and representatives of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Well before this time, beginning in early 1918, encouragement and agitation
towards Austria from the “Greater Germany” circles could be noted among the
Germans of western Hungary. This became particularly worrisome by the fall
when, five days after the creation of the Austrian State Council led by Karl
Renner, on November 17, 1918 it officially declared its claim to the – by this
time independent – western areas of Hungary, made so by the Belgrade military
treaty, 20 signed by the Károlyi government on November 13. The Austrian State
Council stressed that it wished to achieve this not by military means but by a
plebiscite, based on the principle of self-determination as stated in Wilson’s 14
18 Az 1910. évi június hó 21-ére hirdetett Országgyűlés Képviselőházának Naplója
[Parliamentary Record of the National Assembly convened on June 21, 1910]. Vol.
XLI. Budapest, 1918. Athenaeum Irodalmi és Nyomdai Részvénytársaság
Könyvnyomdája, p. 277.
19 Ibid, p. 292. (Bolding mine—J.B.) Count István Tisza was Prime Minister of
Hungary for the second time between June 10, 1913 and June 15, 1917. After that, he
was leader of the parliamentary opposition – the majority, by the way. During this time,
as colonel in the 2nd Hussar Battalion of Debrecen, he also spent several months
fighting on the Italian front.
20 Gagyi, op. cit., p. 6.
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