Artúr Görgei de Görgő et Toporc (born Arthur Görgey; , ; 30 January 181821 May 1916) was a Hungarian military leader and served as a leading general in the Hungarian Revolutionary Army and played a major role in its military campaigns.
In his youth, Görgei was a talented chemist, with his work in the field of chemistry being recognized by many renowned Hungarian and European chemists. However, now he is more widely known for his role in the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849. As the most successful general and greatest military genius of the Hungarian Revolutionary Army, he was the leader of the victorious Spring Campaign and liberated almost all of Western Hungary from Austrian occupation. In recognition of his military successes, he was awarded by the Hungarian Government and was appointed Minister of War. In the last days of the revolution, he was appointed the "dictator" of Hungary. On 13 August 1849, when he realised that he would not be able to fight newly arrived and superior Austrian and Russian armies, he surrendered his troops to the Russians at Világos, thus ending the revolution.
Görgei's difficult relationship with Lajos Kossuth, the foremost politician and president-governor of revolutionary Hungary, impacted the course of the war of independence, Görgei's military career, and his post-revolutionary life until his death. During his campaigns in the winter and summer of 1848–1849. Görgei clashed with Kossuth over their differing opinions on military operations and because Görgei disapproved of the Declaration of the Hungarian Independence, whose chief proponent was Kossuth. The latter refrained from naming Görgei as commander-in-chief of the Hungarian army, naming weak commanders, such as Henryk Dembiński or Lázár Mészáros, instead, thus weakening the army.
After his surrender to the Russian army, he was not executed, like many of his generals, due to Russian intercession, but was taken by the Austrians to Klagenfurt, in Carinthia, and was kept under surveillance until 1867, when amnesty issued as a result of the Hungarian-Austrian Compromise and the founding of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He then was able to return to Hungary. Over several years of hardships in different parts of Hungary, Görgei unsuccessfully tried to find a suitable job; and his brother, István Görgey, provided him with a place to live in Visegrád, where Görgei lived the last decades of his life.
After Görgei's return and for the rest of his life, Hungarian public opinion was hostile, because of some false accusations. Kossuth's Letter from Vidin, written in the aftermath of Görgei's surrender, instilled a long-lasting hatred of Görgei amongst the Hungarians, many of whom came to believe that he was a traitor. In the 20thcentury, this characterization was challenged by modern research. As a result, Görgei is less often considered treasonous, and his reputation as one of the most talented and successful Hungarian generals of the 19thcentury has been restored, being now regarded as one of Hungary's greatest historical heroes.
Görgey or Görgei? The earlier books and articles about Artúr Görgei usually gave his surname as Görgey, which is how it had been given at his birth. For example, Sándor Pethő's bibliographical book Görgey Artúr (Budapest, 1930), or Artúr's younger brother István Görgey's Görgey Arthur ifjusága és fejlődése a forradalomig [The youth of Artúr Görgey, and his development until the revolution] (Budapest, 1916) and Görgey Arthur a száműzetésben 1849–1867 [Artúr Görgey in exile, 1849–1867] (Budapest, 1918). But, recent historiography spells it Görgei (Róbert Hermann's and Tamás Csikány's works, for example).
In Hungarian surnames, the "y" instead of an "i" (used today), usually appears as the last letter of the names of nobles (as a locative adverb suffix: for example, 'Debreceni', meaning "from Debrecen"), because their names appeared in writing earlier than the names of people of common origin, so the nobiliary surnames retained the archaic spelling of the period when they were first written down. The surnames of the common people, which appeared later, after Hungarian spelling changed, had an "i" as the last letter.
Being of noble birth, initially, Görgei had a "y" at the end of his surname; but during the 1848–49 revolution, a period of an anti-nobiliary reaction, many Hungarians from noble families changed the last letter of their surnames from "y" to "i". For example, the renowned novelist Mór Jókay became Mór Jókai. Görgei similarly changed his name, because of his progressive liberal views. Even after the revolution was suppressed, he kept using Görgei instead of Görgey; and although in some works which appeared after his death, and translations to Hungarian of his works—such as Mein Leben und Wirken in Ungarn in den Jahren 1848 und 1849 [My life and work in Hungary in 1848 and 1849], translated by his younger brother István Görgey in 1911, when the Görgey form is used—Görgei was the preferred form until his death,Görgei Artúr Életem és működésem Magyarországon 1848-ban és 1849-ben Budapest: Neumann Kht., 2004 which is why this article also uses this form.
Early life Görgei was born as Johannes Arthur Woldemár Görgey at Toporc in Upper Hungary (today Toporec, Slovakia) on 30 January 1818 to an impoverished Hungarian noble family of Zipser German descent who immigrated to the Szepes (today Spiš) region during the reign of King Géza II of Hungary (1141–1162). During the Reformation, they converted to Protestantism. The family name refers to their origin from Görgő village (, lit. "of Görgő"), today Spišský Hrhov in Slovakia.
In 1832, Görgei enrolled in the sapper school at Tulln, profiting from a tuition-free place offered by a foundation. Because his family was poor, this was a great opportunity for him; but initially, he did not want to be a soldier. During this period, he wrote to his father that he would rather be a philosopher or scientist than a soldier.Szentgyörgyi István / A kémikus Görgey , Korunk. (2004 VII/11) He spent almost thirteen years in this school, receiving a military education. He decided not to accept money from his family, and ate very little, and wore poor clothes in an effort to train himself for a hard life. Records from the school show that his conduct was very good, he had no errors, his natural talents were exceptional, and his fervency and diligence were constant, being very severe with himself but also with the others..
Despite this, in his letters he wrote that he despised the life of a soldier because he had to obey officers whom he did not respect and that he dreamed about a free and active life that he could not find in the army.. Following graduation, he served in the Nádor Hussar regiment, undertaking the role of adjutant. By 1837, he had reached the rank of lieutenant and entered the Hungarian Noble Guard at Vienna, where he combined military service with a course of study at the university.
Start of a promising career in chemistry In 1845, on his father's death, Görgei happily left the army, feeling that the military life did not suit him, to be a student of chemistry at the University of Prague. He loved chemistry, writing this to his friend, Gusztáv Röszler, who had recommended him to professor Josef Redtenbacher, a great chemist at that time:
Görgei's work in chemistry from this period are worthy of note: he conducted research into coconut oil, discovering the presence in it of decanoic acid and lauric acid. He started his research in the spring of 1847 in Prague but finished the experiments at home in Toporc, sending the results to the Imperial and Royal Academy of Vienna on 21 May 1848. His method for the separation of the fatty acids homologs was not the traditional way of using fractional distillation, but instead using the solubility of barium salts. His research can be summarized as follows: He detected the presence of lauric acid (C12) and decanoic acid (C10) in coconut oil. He produced lauric ethyl ether. He determined some physical properties of the distillation of lauric acidic barium. He discovered that, in coconut oil, the undecylic acid (C11) was a mixture of lauric and decanoic acids.Riedel Miklós / Görgey a vegyész-tábornok, Magyar Kémikusok Lapja. (2016 LXXI/12)
Just before Görgei started his study, a French chemist named Saint-Évre wrote an article in which he announced the discovery of the undecylic acid. At first, Görgei was disappointed that with this announcement his work would be pointless, but then he noticed that the French chemist was wrong in thinking that the undecylic acid was an original, undiscovered acid rather than a mixture of lauric and decanoic acids, which he demonstrated in his study.
Görgei's results were published by Redtenbacher under the title: Über die festen, flüchtigen, fetten Säuren des Cocusnussöles [About the solid, volatile, fatty acids of coconut oil] (Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Classe der k. Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien [Meeting reports of the mathematical and scientific department of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna]. 1848. 3.H. p.208–227); by Justus von Liebig in Heidelberg (Annalen der Chemie und Pharmazie. 1848. 66. Bd. 3.H. p.290–314); and again, more than 50 years later, by Lajos Ilosvay in 1907 in the Magyar Kémiai Folyóirat [Hungarian Chemistry Magazine]. Görgei's skills and achievements in chemistry were praised by Vojtěch Šafařík and Károly Than.
Redtenbacher wanted to hire Görgei as a chemist at the university of Lemberg, but in the end Görgei retreated to the family domains at Toporc, because his uncle Ferenc had died and his widow had asked him to come home and help the family. After the defeat of the revolution, in 1851, Görgei received an award and 40 Hungarian pengős, as an honorarium, from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for his achievements in chemistry during the two and a half years he worked in this field.
Military career
Becoming a general In March 1848, during the early days of the Hungarian revolution, Görgei was in Vienna and Prague, preparing to marry Adéle Aubouin, a French-Huguenot girl, who was the lady companion of a maiden relative of Redtenbacher. Görgei married her in the Lutheran church in Prague. After he finished his research in chemistry at his home at Toporc, he went to Pest, hearing about the 17 May 1848 call of the Hungarian government for decommissioned officers to join the newly established Hungarian army. He was conscripted into the revolutionary honvéd (army) at the rank of captain, with the 5thHungarian battalion, from Győr, to train newly enlisted men. Shortly after that, a former companion-in-arms, Lieutenant Imre Ivánka, Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány's secretary, recommended him to Batthyány to work in the ministry. Görgei worked with Ivánka on a plan to organize the voluntary mobile national guards into four camps and was named captain of the national guard camp at Szolnok. Görgei was later assigned to go to Istanbul and Smyrna (today İzmir) to buy weapons for the newly conscripted Hungarian troops; but soon it became clear that their merchants were not trustworthy. Instead, Görgei was sent to the state factory at Wiener Neustadt to buy percussion caps and to Prague to buy primers from the Sellier & Bellot factory; he accomplished this mission successfully. The egalitarian ideals of the revolution made him change his noble surname from Görgey to Görgei. He first met Kossuth on 30 August 1848, when he proposed building a factory to produce percussion caps and primers, for which the politician promised to obtain funds.Hermann Róbert: Kossuth és Görgei Ikolakultúra 1998/3