The young people who had followed Petofi to Vienna were not merely hot-blooded youths. In fact, Kossuth hoped to give the Austrians a little taste of Hungarian shock.
These young people had all been carefully selected, and quite a few of them were university students.
Yet precisely because they were the cream of the crop, their powers of observation and breadth of knowledge far surpassed those of ordinary people. They were also less likely to have their eyes clouded by fervor, so they could see the gap between the two sides more clearly.
They had already been shocked once before the mighty fortress at Pressburg. On one side stood a huge Star Fort, armed to the teeth, with high walls, deep moats, guns and cannons bristling everywhere, and troops in perfect order.
The enormous moat in front of the fortress, thirty meters wide, was practically an impassable chasm.
Normally, however, the moat behind the glacis would not be dug so wide. By the British standard, it was thirty feet (9.144 meters); the French standard set in the early nineteenth century was fifteen meters.
But by then, the Austrian Empire's weapons had already been upgraded, and soldiers were generally equipped with rifled guns. Defensive doctrine had also changed somewhat, with artillery's importance and rate of use greatly increased.
On top of that, the widespread use of rockets and the return of defensive grenades had transformed siege warfare. Defenders no longer feared the attackers' sapping operations, much less massed infantry charges. Sieges had become contests of firepower and endurance.
In fact, this was deliberate on Franz's part. When it came to firepower alone, Austria would never lose.
Though the clash of blood and iron stirred the soul, the best strategy was to draw the enemy into a field where one's own side