Battle of Pancsova

The capture of Alibunár and Tomasevác, the two most important fortified camps of the Serbs in the Bánság, turned the situation of the Hungarian army in this region so favorable that, if these results had been quickly and properly exploited, it would not have been difficult to annihilate the resistance of the enemy in Southern Hungary. To this end, according to the historian József Bánlaky, the Hungarians should have immediately turned, without long hesitation, with their victorious army against Pancsova and after the capture of which the conquest of Arad and Temesvár, defended by the Austrian imperial army, would become possible by using all the available forces. As part of this operation, Kiss's troops attacked Csákova on 24 December but only managed to capture a few prisoners. Kiss later resisted this order, but in the end, he sent two battalions of the Bánság corps and three of the Bácska corps to Pest. There were also problems on the opposite side, because Voivode Stevan Šupljikac, the Serbian high commander died on 27 December, and the command of the Austro-Serbian corps was temporarily taken over by the Colonel Ferdinand Mayerhofer von Grünhübel, Austria's consul in Belgrade. ==Prelude==

Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General on 22 December A steamer was circulating constantly between Pancsova and Belgrade. More or less parallel to the north-eastern contour of the town, stretching on a distance of about 4,000 paces, run the 50 paces wide, 1–2 m deep muddy and reedy Nadela bara swampy river, on which a stone bridge could be found on the roads leading from Pancsova to Bavaniste, Neudorf and Crepaja. Both banks of the Nadela were bordered by vineyards. The Serbs, preparing for the attack, abandoned the outer line of battlements and occupied the entrenchments directly in front of the city. The line to the right of this, including the military hospital, the public part, and the civilian firing range, will be defended by Captain Scharich with the 2nd Illyrian-Banatian Battalion. The line to the left from Knichanin's defenders, including the roads to Franzfeld and Jabuka as far as the Temes River, was assigned to Captain Kossanić, with 2 battalions of the German-Banatian border guard regiment and 1 squadron of Pétervárad border guards. Three Pétervárad battalions and 6-pounder guns led by Captain Mihajlo Jovanović were assigned to be the reserve, being placed behind the center, where the road from the churchyard to the courtyard of the treasury building met the road to Neudorf. The larger part of the Pancsova National Guard battalion was assigned to the main square. All the guns were used to defend the front line, except the reserve guns. The Serbs believed that the Hungarians would attack the defensive line from the direction of Neudorf. The reason for this belief was that the Hungarian army camped at Franzfeld, and the shortest line of advance was the Franzfeld-Pancsova road, and it seemed natural that they would deploy for battle on the right and left sides of the road. However, as we shall see, the attack came from a different direction. ==Battle==

The Hungarian army arrived in front of the town in the morning of 2 January. The guns were placed 4 by 4 in the half-closed redoubts built on the outskirts of the town, and 1 by 1 in the trench of the promenades. Imperial artillerymen had recently been assigned to the Austrian Serb corps, and they were handling the heavy artillery. The army was also impatient, some soldiers of the 9th (Red Hatted) Battalion were already pointing their guns at Kiss. As usual, Kiss was perplexed, as he felt that the Hungarian artillery was not yet sufficiently prepared for the attack, The Serbs, especially Knićanin's Servians, pursued the retreating troops vigorously along the Franzfeld road, but without any serious success. When the night fell, the Serbs gave up the chase. The two flanking columns which were advancing from Nagybecskerek and Fehértemplom also retreated, without directly contributing to the battle. They probably had no orders to do so, as their mission was to secure the main column against flanking operations. The course of events proves that it was a mistake not to attach these two separate columns to the main column, and not to unite all available forces for this important enterprise. ==Aftermath==

The Hungarian corps reached Petrovo Selo in a more or less orderly manner, but here all order broke down. From here the retreat continued to Alibunar and then to Zichyfalva, and dozens of exhausted soldiers froze to death on the way. The 9th Battalion alone lost 30 soldiers, and another 40 soldiers had their hands, feet, noses or ears frozen. To go all day, all night, without a morsel of food, in the most bitter cold, in the most desperate march, after two sleepless nights and three days of such strenuous marching - that would ruin anyone, wrote the already quoted Hungarian soldier. Although the attack was made with battle-hardened troops, the retreat demoralized them almost completely. The attack, carried out at the wrong time and with the wrong forces, also fundamentally compromised the earlier results. Consequently, on 5 January, Colonels Damjanich, József Nagysándor, and Rudics, at the request of the army, requested Government Commissioner Sebő Vukovics to call on Ernő Kiss to resign from command, which he did, and János Damjanich, who had been appointed General, took over the command. According to their own records, the Serbs lost 6 dead and 8 wounded. The Hungarians lost only a few men in the battle, 59 dead and 43 wounded at Pancsova; but many died in the terrible cold. According to one Serbian account, the number of Hungarians killed and frozen was 800. But the moral loss was all the greater. The battered troops of the Hungarian army marched partly to Nagybecskerek and partly to Versec. As a result of this battle, the Serbian forces avoided disaster, all the more so because the Hungarian army corps in Bánság soon received the decision of the Military Council from Pest of 2 January 1849, according to which the Hungarian troops had to evacuate the Délvidék (Southern Province) until the Maros line and march to the Central Tisza region. Thus, by mid-January the Serbs had already launched an offensive, and by early February they had occupied the counties evacuated by Hungarian troops. Only the fortress of Pétervárad and its environs, Szabadka, and its environs remained in the hands of the Hungarian troops. == References ==