"Chutkalai! You mad dog! I'm no traitor! I'm the chief of police of Pest! I'm here to arrest traitors! Cease fire!"
The bald, bearded giant roared, but the only answer was more Congreve Rockets.
Congreve Rockets were inaccurate and not particularly destructive, but that was only by comparison. No matter what weapon you used, it would be devastating against a crowd packed together like sardines.
Besides, the Congreve Rocket's main purpose wasn't to kill enemy troops, but to burn down buildings. The Danes could attest to that.
Chutkalai's attack plunged the crowd inside the Grand Hotel Pest into chaos. But soon, some people came to their senses. They were only there to watch the excitement and mooch food and drink—they weren't traitors!
So some began loudly protesting their innocence and tried to leave the Grand Hotel Pest.
But the only things waiting for them were bullets and rockets. Clearly, Chutkalai had no intention of sparing anyone. Compared with identifying opposition members one by one, wiping out every suspect at once was obviously easier.
Besides, the Austrian Army was bearing down on them, and the Hungarian government had no time to sort people out one by one. What they needed now was to concentrate all their strength on the coming attack.
In theory, if the Austrians traveled by ship, their troops could reach the outskirts of Buda-Pest in a day.
With forced marches, they could certainly make it in less than two weeks. Even by the most optimistic estimate, the Austrians would be at the gates of Budapest within a month.
At the time, Budapest and its surrounding areas had fewer than thirty thousand regular troops, about six thousand police and gendarmes, and twenty thousand recruits still in training.
At first glance, that didn't sound like a small force. But in