What did 102 days of Romanian Budapest cost?

20 July – 3 August 1919

The Szolnok bridge goes up on 26 July — and three nights later 84,000 men are across the river at Fegyvernek.

On 20 July 1919, on the east bank of the Tisza, the Romanian bridgeheads come under fire: the Hungarian Red Army is across the river. By 24 July the Romanian northern group counterattacks and retakes Kunhegyes and Fegyvernek; on 26 July the Hungarians blow the Szolnok bridge behind their retreat, and the east bank is Romanian again. Then, on the night of 29–30 July, under cover of decoy attacks, 119 battalions — 84,000 men with 392 guns and 60 cavalry squadrons — cross the river by surprise at Fegyvernek. On 31 July the Hungarian Army falls back toward Budapest; on 1 August the Revolutionary Governing Council resigns and Béla Kun flees toward Austria. The road to the capital lies open, and nothing in the armistice papers says where it ends.

3–4 August 1919

400 horsemen in the evening, a whole army by noon — and a parade through a capital whose government has just evaporated.

On the evening of 3 August horses' hooves ring on Budapest's cobbles: General Gheorghe Rusescu rides in at the head of 400 horsemen — three squadrons of the 6th Cavalry Regiment. Until noon on 4 August those 400 soldiers with two guns are the only authority in a city of nearly a million; then the bulk arrives, the flag goes up over Buda, and the parade marches past General Moșoiu. The drive had cost 123 officers and 6,434 soldiers, and by 8 August the bag counts 1,235 Hungarian officers and 10,000 men taken, with 350 guns and 87 airplanes. The advance halts at Győr. Budapest, which changed regimes twice in a week, now has a Romanian garrison and no instructions from Paris on what to do with it.

August – November 1919

A policeman without a carbine, a market with fixed prices — and four Allied generals writing down every wagon.

On Budapest's streets the Hungarian policeman walks his beat without a carbine: of 3,700 policemen only 600 have a weapon — Romanian patrols keep the rest of the order. General Marcel Olteanu, military governor from August to November, has to make the city work: Romanian offices run the administration until Allied pressure hands both back. To feed the troops and bill the war, the command fixes prices and sets quotas: at Debrecen wheat is fixed at 90 crowns against 120–140 on the market, a farmer keeps one year's seed plus 120 kg of bread-stuffs and 75 kg of potatoes per mouth, and meat shrinks to three days a week. Watching over all of them is the Inter-Allied Military Mission — Bandholtz, Gorton, Graziani, Mombelli — in open discord with Bucharest. On 5 October Bandholtz stops the removal of the National Museum's treasure on the museum steps; on 12 September Brătianu had already resigned rather than bow to Paris; on 23 October Sir George Clerk arrives to arrange the exit.

14 November 1919 – 4 June 1920

The Romanians march out on the 14th, Horthy rides in on the 16th — and seven months later the map is redrawn at Trianon.

On 14 November the Romanian columns march out of Budapest under the Clerk agreement of 5 November; two days later, on 16 November, Admiral Miklós Horthy enters at the head of the National Army and accuses the capital of betraying Hungary by backing Bolshevism. The last Romanian units leave Hungarian soil in the spring — on 25 February by some accounts, on 30 March 1920 by others. Then, on 4 June 1920, in the Grand Trianon at Versailles, Benárd and Drasche-Lázár sign the treaty that redraws Hungary's borders; it takes effect on 26 July 1921. Its Article 181 sets up the very procedure under which Budapest would bill Bucharest: damage registration closes on 30 September 1921 and the Hungarian note goes to Paris in 1922. The ledger outlives the occupation by years.