Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

It was probably for financial reasons that Alajos Stróbl’s 1917 design for a huge monument, meant to be decorated with a dynamic equestrian statue and intended to commemorate the 1st Hussar Regiment, was scrapped. However, a relief honouring the memory of the Cavalry Charge ofGorodok was set up by the entrance to the Kerepesi út Hussar Barracks in 1929. The piece by György Nemes was meant to commemorate the Hungarian heroes who fell on 18 August 1914 in the battle of Gorodok, a bloody engagement of the Galicia theatre, which took a horrible toll. Two hussar regiments of the 5th cavalry division were ordered to storm, across an open field, the powerfully defended Russian forces. The Russians let the hussars dose in on them and when the latter were almost in their trenches, the camouflaged Russian machine-guns opened fire on the fully exposed attackers. “The cavalry charge collapsed in a matter of minutes, and the hussar team, so gallant but a moment before, was a heap of writhing human bodies screaming horribly in its death throes. Not even our oldest and most experienced soldiers had ever seen anything to compare with this act of valiant irresponsibility,” recorded a Russian lieutenant who had witnessed the scene.

When the troops of the Monarchy managed to retake the Galician theatre in 1917, a deputation of the 1st Hussar Regiment was sent out to pay a visit to Gorodok. The deputies took photos of the scene where the death charge had taken place three years before, and Manno Miltiadesz, a painter in civilian life, even painted several pictures on site. It was one of these paintings on which György Nemes later based his plaque depicting the cavalry charge. In 1945 the plaque was removed from the barrack walls, since when it has probably perished. This is regrettable, as the small masterpiece served as a memento of the horrors of war and the helplessness of the human condition.

The relief commemorating the 30th Infantry Regiment was also of modest proportions. Sculpted by Ede Kallós and set in the wall of a former Benedictine secondary school in Rigó utca (District VIII), the triangular piece depicted the single combat of a young Hungarian infantryman and a mounted Russian pikesman. As both warriors were already mortally wounded, it was the figure of the galloping horse in the centre that lent dynamism to the scene.

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