National grieving day: 5 facts that put the tragedy of the 13 Martyrs of Arad into a different perspective
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October 6th is a national grieving day in Hungary, as the 13 generals of the Hungarian Revolution were killed on this day in 1849 in retaliation in Arad. The generals and other fallen heroes of the Revolution are still respected and mourned today by Hungarians.
1 – Even though they fought for Hungary, not all of the 13 martyrs were Hungarians or of 100% Hungarian origins – half of these ‘exceptions’ could not even speak Hungarian. However, Hungarian history refers to them not by their original names but by the Hungarian versions of their first names:
- Károly Leiningen-Westerburg was of German nationality
- Lajos Aulich was German too, and he never even learnt to speak Hungarian
- György Lahner was also German
- Ernő Poeltenberg was of Austrian origins – though he learnt a bit of Hungarian, they were mostly swearwords which entertained his soldiers a lot
- János Damjanich was a Serbian national who enlisted in the Hungarian army in the hopes that if the Hungarians are victorious, they will grant more rights to the Serbs than the Habsburgs did
- Károly Knezics was Croatian
- Ernő Kiss and Vilmos Lázár were of Armenian ancestry; their respective families immigrated to Hungarian territories in the 1600-1700s.
2 – Hanging was considered humiliation for a person of high military rank at that time thus the martyrs were supposed to be shot. The Austrian general who was tasked with planning and carrying out the execution felt that
the martyrs did not deserve the bullet and should be humiliated publicly, for they have surrendered to the Russian forces instead of the Habsburg Empire.
Eventually, Haynau promised the bullet to four out of the thirteen martyrs, who were executed before the rest of them:
