Page 308 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

308 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

had not come to an end before 24 June. 19
Troops in the Budapest garrisons were on standby on 1 May, but they were not de-
ployed. 20
On 17 June, workers launched a strike in the Carriage, Wagon and Machine Works in Bu-
dapest, a factory under military control. On 20, they clashed with the gendarmerie and four
people were killed. That event generated strikes all over the capital and in the big towns of
the country, as well. The key locations of the capital were reinforced by military troops, the
gendarmerie and the police.
On 18 June, 800 workers started a strike in the salt mine of Marosújvár (Ocna Mureč).
The arrival of the police company of the Imperial and Royal 82nd Infantry Regiment brought
them round.
On 22 June, the workers’ wives demonstrated against food shortage in front of the coal
mine in Nyitrabánya (Handlová). In the course of their clash with the gendarmerie, eight
of them were injured. As a result, a crowd attacked the local gendarme post. Two people
were killed, another two severely injured. 80 soldiers of the Royal Hungarian 14th Infantry
Regiment’s reserve battalion; 70 people from the headquarters of the garrison in Érsekújvár
(Nové Zámky); a machine gun platoon of 50; and a police company of the Imperial and
Royal 26th Infantry Regiment were sent to Nyitrabánya (Handlová). Consequently, miners
took up work in the evening of 23.
At the end of July, the military headquarters in Pozsony (Bratislava) detailed the police
company of the 13th Reserve Battalion to Turócszentmárton (Martin), where riots started
because of the Parliament refusal to authorise some assemblies, claiming that those were
pan-Slavic. 21

the dePlOyMent Of the POlicing trOOPs tO requisitiOn
The increasing difficulties with supplies made the military supreme command get to the
root of food production. The Supreme Headquarters of the Army ordered the deployment
of field army units to requisition as early as on 15 January. 17 battalions and 6 cavalry half-
regiments of the 1st and 7th Armies were commanded to return to Hungary. On 11 March,
the Royal Hungarian 39th (Budapest), the 40th (Zagreb) and the 51st (Temesvár [Timičoara])
Infantry Divisions were withdrawn from the front and were deployed to requisition in the
hinterland, with the primary aim of improving the standard of army provisions. that made
22
the peasantry distrustful, although they had been loyal to the Monarchy until then.
At the end of April, the Royal Hungarian 39th Infantry Division kept Transdanubia and
the southern part of the Hungarian Plain under control, whereas the 51st controlled the re-
gions of Kassa (Košice), Szeged, Nagyvárad (Oradea) and Temesvár (Timičoara), and the
40th had the Croatian territories under control. In addition to the above, the Imperial and
Royal 2nd Infantry Regiment was stationed in Southern Transdanubia; two battalions of the

19 Ibid: 261-268.; Farkas, Márton. Katonai összeomlás és forradalom 1918-ban. A hadsereg szerepe az Osz-
trák-Magyar Monarchia felbomlásában. (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1969): 94-95.
20 Plaschka, Haselsteiner and Suppan. Vol. I: 275-276.
21 Plaschka, Haselsteiner and Suppan. Vol. II: 32-37.
22 Plaschka, Haselsteiner and Suppan. Vol. I: 216-220.