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

The center of the Vend region, 143 the half-Hungarian populated seat of the
Muraszombat district 144 was captured without any resistance by another hostile
unit of the South Slav army. The Hungarian government handed a note of
protest to French General Franchet d’Espèrey regarding the advance of the
Serb-Croat forces past the line of demarcation but, before an answer was
received, the ‘capital’ of Muraköz, Csáktornya, as well as being the most
important village of the Lendva area and mainly Hungarian populated, the seat
of the Alsólendva district, was in foreign hands.
The Hungarian War Ministry finally acted and issued orders for the
recapture of the area down to the Mura River. To expel the Serb-Croat forces,
significant forces were concentrated around Szombathely. During the night of
January 2-3, 1919, a 250 or so unit of ‘Vend volunteers’ arrived by train, as
well as a unit composed of irregulars, border guards and gendarmes under the
command of Captain Jenő Perneczky. They recaptured the county seat in the
so-called ‘Muraszombat battle.’ The Hungarian unit attacked the Serb sentries,
first taking the train station, then the center of the village, where the enemy set
up, and made use of, its cannons. The engagement resulted with four Hungarian
wounded and two dead. One was a sailor, Lajos Matisz, who his mates
considered as a hero. During WWI, he served on the battleship SMS Saint
Stephen, which was torpedoed on June 10, 1918 by an Italian torpedo boat and
sunk. Although he was in the icy water for several hours, he survived. During
the action around the train station, he was shot through the heart. The other
Hungarian casualty was Vince Bednyák, a local volunteer with the 83 rd Infantry
Battalion of Szombathely. The Serb defenders lost 20 dead and 8 wounded, and
a further 7 officers and 21 privates were captured. The Hungarians also
captured 2 cannons, 2 machine guns, 100 rifles and a large quantity of
ammunition. 145
After the victorious engagement, the territory northeast of the Mura River
was again under Hungarian control, after the South Slav units gave up
Alsólendva without a fight. To forestall another possible South Slav incursion,
a special force of 500-600 Hungarian soldiers was posted in Alsólendva,
complemented by units of machine guns, artillery and one company of the 9 th
143 The Međimurje (Slovene: Medžimurje) region, essentially the area between the
Mura and Raba Rivers, has been called the Vend-region since the middle of the 19 th
century. It lies in the southwestern corner of Trans-Danubia and was part of the
Kingdom of Hungary from 900 AD to 1919, and of Hungary between 1941 and 1945.
Annexed in 1919 to the Kingdom of Serbs-Croats-Slovenes, then to Yugoslavia, it was
called Prekmurje. In recent decades, it has been called Mura mente, or along the Mura.
See Kocsis, Károly: A Muravidék mai területének etnikai térképe [Today’s ethnic atlas
of the Mura region]. Scale: 1: 200 000. Budapest, 2005.
144 According to the 1910 census, the population of Muraszombat was 2,748 people. Of
that 1,305 were Hungarian (47.5%), 1,310 Vend/Slovenes (47.5%), and 122 Germans.
In: Magyarország Közigazgatási Atlasza. 1914, p. 137.
145 Zsiga, Tibor: Muravidéktől Trianonig [From the Mura region to Trianon]. Lendva,
1996, pp. 52–54.
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