Surrender at Ozora
The Surrender at Ozora, was an important event of the early stage of the Hungarian War of independence of 1848-1849. The 9000 strong Croatian corps which invaded the Transdanubia region of Hungary, trying to join the Croatian main army led by Lieutenant General Josip Jelačić, which was sent by the Habsburg Empire to chase away the revolutionary government of Hungary, and reimpose the total imperial suvereignity over the country, was forced to surrender by Hungarian regular and insurrectionist forces led by Major Artúr Görgei and Colonel Mór Perczel. Thanks to this the Croatian invasion and the Habsburg plans against Hungary suffered a total defeat. Background On 11 September 1848, the Croatian troops sent by the Habsburg Empire to depose the Hungarian revolutionary government led by Lajos Batthyány, crossed the Dráva river. Ten days after the Croatian main army led by Lieutenant General Josip Jelačić crossed the at Légrád, another large force led by Karl Roth crossed the river to march eastwards across the Danube towards Pest-Buda. Jelačić initially planned the campaign to join his army with Roth's corps somewhere in the region of Székesfehérvár before reaching the capital, but the favorable start of the campaign, such as: the retreat of the hugely outnumbered Hungarians and the mass desertion of the officers, as well as the changing sides of many military units from the Hungarian to the Croatian side, gave him enough confidence to overconfidently engage in battle with the Hungarian troops led by Lieutenant-General János Móga before the corps of Roth arrived, which ended in the Croatian defeat in the Battle of Pákozd on 29 September. Jelačić, after this defeat, simply abandoned the approaching to his aid reinforcements, and retreated towards Vienna, while Major-General Karl Roth and Nicolaus Philippovich von Philippsberg pushed on northwards, unsuspecting what had happened. The Hungarian general staff, expecting the arrival of the new army corps, even tried to increase the generals' unsuspicion, by blocking the routes to the south, and thus also blocking information about the battle of Pákozd to reach them. After the defeat of Jelačić, the National Defence Commission (the temporary de facto Hungarian government led by Lajos Kossuth), which took office on 2 October and replaced the Batthyány government, saw an opportunity to try forcing the Croatian column to surrender. Prelude As seen above, on 21 September, Major General Karl Roth's Slavonian division of about 9,000 men, made up of border guards and poorly equipped Seressaners, entered Hungary at Drávasztára, with the purpose to march through the counties of Baranya and Tolna to join Jelačić's army. However, the march of the Croatian troops was not met with a happy, submissive, or cooperative population, but with active resistance, which caused increasing losses for the Croats. Already after the Croatian invasion, Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány wrote a letter to the főispáns and government commissioners of the Transdanubian counties asking them to hinder the enemy at all costs, to obstruct him, to prevent him from getting food, to encourage the population so that the enemy