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The political situation wasn't clear. The legal ruler of the country was still Ferdinand, then Franz Joseph (tho he wasn't crowned yet, and was considered as a usurper by the Diet, ie. the parliament), but now the country found herself fighting them. This presented a dilemma for the officer corps of the Defense Forces, more precisely for those who took an oath for the king. This dilemma and the seemingly unavoidable defeat induced a mass desertion among the officers, about one third of them left the service. (Note: the Hungarian army consisted two main types of units: freshly organized national guards and "old" k.u.k. units with k.u.k. officers who chose to obey the Hungarian government for a reason or another, and were integrated into the body of the Defence Forces. Also I call units inaccurately as armies, they are brigades, divisions, and corps, I just don't want to add more pointless work to look up which was which.) So in the early January of 1849 Görgey gave a proclamation. He shifted the blame onto the wartime government for the situation the army found itself in - he saves himself saying he takes the blame for following their faulty orders - then he collected his view into four points: the operation of the army should be based on the constitutional Laws of April (of 1848) signed by king Ferdinand V, he refuses and will fight any kind of republicanism, he only accepts commands from the legitimate minister of defence, he will only accept any deal with the enemy as legal if it is based and the constitution and saves the honor of the army (if it ensures they aren't committing treason with their struggle). With this move he managed to stop the desertion of the officers (tho some argue that officers stopped leaving their units as well where they got to know about the proclamation much later), however it led to some tensions with the wartime government and kinda implied he won't obey to Kossuth's orders.