Sándor Végh, Gavin Wax, ‘Michael Kovats’ and Anna Smith Lacey
As America approaches its 250th birthday, the Washington’s Kossuth House honored Colonel Michael Kováts de Fabriczy, the Hungarian hussar whose contributions helped shape the Continental Army’s cavalry during the Revolutionary War.
It was a delight to have Gavin M. Wax, Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State join the festive commemoration.
The evening hosted by the Kossuth Foundation brought together Hungarian participants of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, representatives of the U.S. and Hungarian Defense Forces, and members of local heritage and preservation societies in a joyful celebration of courage, freedom, and the enduring bonds between Hungary and the United States.
The evening featured remarks, music, and a wreath-laying ceremony honoring a figure whose role in American history is often overlooked. Overlooking the ceremony was the bronze memorial relief by sculptor Sándor Györfi that adorns Kossuth House, depicting Kováts in a traditional hussar uniform.
At the center of the program was Kováts himself — a Hungarian-born cavalry officer who arrived in America in 1777 with decades of battlefield experience from Europe. At a time when Washington’s mounted forces were poorly trained and disorganized, Kováts helped transform them into an effective fighting force. Speakers throughout the evening described him not only as a military leader, but as an enduring symbol of the historic ties between Hungary and the United States.
The keynote address was delivered by Gavin Wax, Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State, who placed Kováts’s legacy within the broader context of Hungarian-American relations and the approaching semi-quincentennial of American independence.
“Michael Kováts was a Hungarian patriot and soldier whose courage helped forge the United States of America,” Mr. Wax said, adding that Kováts’s “military expertise helped establish [the United States’] cavalry tradition.
Hungary Foundation Executive Director Anna Smith Lacey followed with remarks tracing Kováts’s extraordinary journey from Europe to the American colonies and his role in building the Continental cavalry into what British opponents would later describe as “the best the rebels ever had.” She also recalled Kováts’s famous 1777 letter to Benjamin Franklin, written in Latin: “Golden freedom cannot be purchased with yellow gold,” he wrote, pledging his life to the American cause.
The evening also highlighted the longstanding efforts of the Kossuth Foundation and its president, Sándor Végh, to preserve the memory of Kováts and strengthen Hungarian-American cultural ties through Kossuth House. Both the Kossuth Foundation and Hungary Foundation serve on the Kováts Memorial Committee, established in 2024 to coordinate commemorations and educational initiatives surrounding Kováts’s legacy and Hungary’s contributions to the American founding era.
Through its America250 initiatives, educational programming, public events, and historical outreach, Hungary Foundation has worked alongside partner organizations to elevate Kováts’s story and highlight Hungary’s contribution to the American founding. Organizers emphasized that the commemoration was intended not only as an act of remembrance, but as part of a broader effort to reconnect Americans with the international dimension of their own revolution.
Nearly two and a half centuries after his death, the ceremony served as a reminder that America’s fight for independence inspired supporters far beyond its shores — and that some, like Michael Kováts, crossed an ocean and ultimately gave their lives for a nation not yet their own.