These sacrifices on the part of the country had become a matter of urgent necessity. The Serb and Wallach insurrection assumed every day larger proportions, while the Croats, under the leadership of Jellachich, entered Hungarian territory with the fixed determination of depriving the nation of her constitutional liberties. But the Hungarian Government was already able to send an army against the Croatians, who were marching on Budapest, plundering and laying waste everything before them. They were surrounded by the Hungarian forces, and a part of their army, nine thousand men strong, was compelled to lay down its arms, while Jellachich, with his remaining forces, precipitately fled from the country. The young Hungarian army had thus proved itself equal to the task of repelling the attack of the Croats, but the recent events were nevertheless fraught with the gravest consequences.
The news of the Croatian invasion filled the Hungarians with deep anxiety, and the extraordinary excitement caused by it cast a permanent cloud over the soul of that great and noble man, Count Szechenyi. The mind of the great patriot who had initiated the national movement gave way under the strain of the frightful rumors coming from the Croatian frontier. He had been ailing for some time, and his nervousness increased so greatly under the pressure of the great events following one another in rapid succession, that when the news came that the enemy had invaded the country he thought Hungary was lost. His despair darkened his mind and he sought death in the waves of the Danube. His family removed him to a private asylum near Vienna, where he recovered his mental faculties, and even wrote several books. But he was never entirely cured of his hallucination, and, exasperated by the vexations he was subjected to by the Viennese Government, even in the asylum, the great patriot put an end to his own life on April 8, 1860, by a pistol-shot.
Jellachich's incursion had other important political consequences. The attack on Hungary had been made by Jellachich in the name of the Viennese Government, and the intimate connection between the domestic disorders and the court of Vienna became more and more apparent. This state of things rendered inevitable a struggle between Hungary and the unconstitutional action of the court. The Austrian forces were arming against Hungary on every side. Vienna, too, rose in rebellion against the court, and now the Hungarians hastened to assist the revolutionists in the Austrian capital. Unfortunately the young national army was not ripe yet for so great a military enterprise, and Prince Windischgraetz, having crushed the revolution in Vienna, invaded Hungary.