<P> After Vienna was recaptured by imperial forces, General Windischgrätz and 70,000 troops were sent to Hungary to crush the Hungarian revolution and as they advanced the Hungarian government evacuated Pest . However the Austrian army had to retreat after heavy defeats in the Spring Campaign of the Hungarian Army from March to May 1849 . Instead of pursuing the Austrian army, the Hungarians stopped to retake the Fort of Buda and prepared defenses . In June 1849 Russian and Austrian troops entered Hungary heavily outnumbering the Hungarian army . Kossuth abdicated on August 11, 1849 in favour of Artúr Görgey, who he thought was the only general who was capable of saving the nation . However, in May 1849, Czar Nicholas I pledged to redouble his efforts against the Hungarian Government . He and Emperor Franz Joseph started to regather and rearm an army to be commanded by Anton Vogl, the Austrian lieutenant - field - marshal . The Czar was also preparing to send 30,000 Russian soldiers back over the Eastern Carpathian Mountains from Poland . </P> <P> On August 13, after several bitter defeats in a hopeless situation Görgey, signed a surrender at Világos (now Şiria, Romania) to the Russians, who handed the army over to the Austrians . </P> <P> Slovak Uprising was an uprising of Slovaks against Magyar (i.e. ethnic Hungarian) domination in the Western parts of Upper Hungary (present - day Western Slovakia), within the 1848 / 49 revolution in the Habsburg Monarchy . It lasted from September 1848 to November 1849 . During this period Slovak patriots established the Slovak National Council as their political representation and military units known as the Slovak Volunteer Corps . The political, social and national requirements of the Slovak movement were declared in the document entitled "Demands of the Slovak Nation" from April 1848 . </P> <P> Revolutionary movements of 1849 faced an additional challenge: to work together to defeat a common enemy . Previously, national identity allowed Habsburg forces to conquer revolutionary governments by playing them off one another . New democratic initiatives in Italy in the spring of 1848 led to a renewed conflict with Austrian forces in the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia . At the very first anniversary of the first barricades in Vienna, German and Czech democrats in Bohemia agreed to put mutual hostilities aside and work together on revolutionary planning . Hungarians faced the greatest challenge of overcoming the divisions of the previous year, as the fighting there had been the most bitter . Despite this, the Hungarian government hired a new commander and attempted to unite with Romanian democrat Avram Iancu, who was known as Crăişorul Munţilor ("The Prince of the Mountains"). However, division and mistrust were too severe . </P>

What problems threatened the hapsburg empire in the 1840