instigating and bringing upon the country the calamities of a great war.
This act had a bad effect, especially on the army, tending also to
heighten the personal antagonism between Kossuth and Gorgei. But its
worst consequence was that it gave Russia a pretext for armed
intervention. The Emperor Francis Joseph entered into an alliance with
the Czar of Russia, the purpose of which was to reconquer seceded
Hungary and ultimately to crush her liberty.

One more brilliant victory was achieved by the Hungarian arms before the
fatal blow was aimed at the country. The fortress of Buda was taken
after a gallant assault, in the course of which the Austrian commandant
bombarded the defenceless city of Pest on the opposite bank of the
Danube, and thus the capital, too, was restored to the country. Yet
after this last glorious feat of war, good fortune deserted the national
banners. The grand heroic epoch was hastening to its tragic end. Two
hundred thousand Russians crossed the borders of Hungary, and were there
reenforced by sixty thousand to seventy thousand Austrians, whom the
Viennese Government had succeeded in collecting for a last great effort.

It was easy to foresee that the exhausted Hungarian army could not long
resist the superior numbers opposed to them. For months they continued
the gallant fight, and in one of these fierce engagements Petofi, the
beloved poet of the nation, lost his life; but in the month of August
the Russians had already succeeded in surrounding Gorgei's army. Gorgei,
who was now invested with the supreme power, perceiving that all further
effusion of blood was useless, surrendered, in the sight of the Russian
army, the sword he had so gloriously worn in many a battle, near
Vilagos, on August 13, 1849. The remaining Hungarian armies followed his
example, and either capitulated or disbanded. The brave army of the
_honveds_ was no more, and the gallant struggle for liberty was put an
end to by the Russian forces. Kossuth and many other Hungarians sought
refuge in Turkey.

Above Komorn, the largest fortress in the country, alone the Hungarian
colors were still floating. General Klapka, its commandant, bravely
defended it, and continued to hold it for six weeks after the sad
catastrophe of Vilagos. The brave defender, seeing at last that further
resistance served no purpose, as the Hungarian army had ceased to exist,
and the whole country had passed into the hands of the Austrians,
capitulated upon