Free The Phoenix Land by Miklós Bánffy

Gisella (now Vorosmarty) Square, we met a huge crowd. The whole square was packed with men, shoulder to shoulder. The reason we had noticed nothing and made this so unexpected was their total silence. There was something essentially dramatic and sinister about this mute voiceless multitude, something far more menacing than if they had all been shouting and noisy. There must have been several thousand men gathered there – and not a sound. Every window was dark except, far away at the corner of Váci Street, there were lights in the windows of the Károlyi party headquarters. Through those windows the outlines of men moving to and fro could vaguely be seen, and maybe some speeches were being made there, but this I do not know for certain as no sound reached us. We asked some men standing nearus what had happened, but they did not answer. They just shrugged and turned away.
    Then we decided to go to Jószef Square.
    Only a few steps from there two lovers stood entwined, caring nothing for what was going on around them, perhaps even finding a good opportunity amid the general chaos. Oblivious to their surroundings and clinging tightly together they went on kissing happily.
    Heltai laughed. ‘That’s Budapest for you!’ he said as we hurried on.
    On the far side of Jószef Square a barricade had been built, and the soldiers manning it would not let us through to the Chain Bridge. They were from a Bosnian regiment, and we heard later that they had been sent to replace the 32nd Infantry who had had orders to close Dorottya Street and Vigado Square but who had not only let the demonstrators though without a word of protest but also, in good part, left their own ranks and joined them. Now, however, every street leading to the Danube was closed by the loyal Bosnian regiment. Here again not a voice was to be heard, not even a command. The only sound was the rhythmic beat of the soldiers’ iron-studded boots. That dark night was the last occasion when anyone was to hear the measured tread of the Imperial Habsburg army on the march.
    Notes
    4 . Károlyi’s version of this visit to Vienna and of the events which follow is significantly different in many respects: see Memoirs of Michael Károlyi (Jonathan Cape, London, 1956).
    5 . Bánffy is here quoting from the account published by the Budapest newspaper Az Est .

Chapter Two
    It was only on the following day that we learned everything that had happened at the Chain Bridge.
    From early in the morning Archduke Joseph had spent the day in his palace in the fortress of Buda, negotiating with various politicians in an attempt to form a government. Mihály Károlyi was due to join him in the evening. While he was there, István Friedrich and László Fényes, from their party headquarters, decided to lead the crowd that had gathered there – a crowd, it transpired later, that consisted mainly of workers from the outlying districts of the city – up to the fortress to ensure the appointment of Károlyi as prime minister by a show of force. ‘To Buda!’ they cried just as they had on the previous Friday.
    With their two leaders at their head, the mob moved off only to find that the army had blocked Dorottya Street and formed a solid cordon in Maria-Valeria Square. There they learned that access to the Chain Bridge was also barred by the armed forces. Nevertheless, everything went well with them at first. The first two lines of guards made no resistance and let them through, as did the soldiers at Ferenc-József Square. There were police guarding the entrance to the Chain Bridge, but they only put up a token resistance, and soon the crowd had broken through. There, just where the stone lions stand, was a line of gendarmes.
    This was serious. Some men tried to climb up from the roofs of the warehouse that stood below and so get onto the bridge behind the gendarmes. At this point they were met by a round of rifle fire, while the mounted police charged the crowd with drawn sabres.