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March 15 is here again, national holiday, haven't even checked what's going on in the media, the country is in lockdown mode, daddy government took away the freedom lollypop from his kids and won't give it back until we don't do as we were told and get a vaccine. Anyway, it's 1848-49 time again, the time we take back our freedom and independence. Or not. Often discussed as a missed opportunity - to conclude the struggle early on with a positive outcome (positive for us) - is the battle of Schwechat, or rather the small window previously the battle, when an armed rebellion broke out in Wien and we could have moved in to help them to rekindle the Austrian revolution, end the Habsburg tyranny, and so on so forth. But last thing first, let's take care of the battle in a couple of sentences. We had not 30000 men (but something like that) and 70 cannons, while the imperials 80000 men and 210 cannons. Which isn't entirely true since we didn't have to face the full force Feldmaschall Windisch-Grätz mustered together. He divided his troops in two, he sieged Wien and the rebels, and let Jelacic (Croat ban) handle us. I think this shows that his priority was to take back the imperial capital, and clench the rebellion asap. So what our troops faced was a somewhat larger army than ours, but not the full might of it - with the potential of more arriving fast. Hungarian right achieved minor success with a bayonet charge, but the middle - consisting largely of militia and even peasants with scythes - was stuck and the artillery there dueled fruitlessly with the imperial one, and the left wing was late of forming up. Jelacic sent a group of cavalry to charge in the side of our middle. There Görgey (the military dictator of ours discussed above) was in command and he got an order for withdraw from the commander of the army. He obeyed but it didn't do much good for the morale. The untrained troops were confused by the artillery and the retreat, probably the approaching enemy also scared them, and the retreat turned into a disorganized flight. Coincidentally the left wing arrived just in time to stop the Austrian cavalry, still the battle couldn't be helped and our army left. This happened on 1848 October 30.