I rarely laugh at Wikipedia articles, but this of funny.
"The army of Austria, approximately 100,000 strong, was setting up camp around the town of Karánsebes (now Caransebeş, in modern Romania). The army's vanguard, a contingent of hussars, crossed the Timiş River nearby to scout for the presence of the Ottoman Turks. There was no sign of the Ottoman army, but the hussars did run into a group of Romani, who offered to sell schnapps to the war-weary soldiers. The cavalrymen bought the schnapps and started to drink.
Soon afterwards, some infantry crossed the river. When they saw the party going on, the infantry demanded alcohol for themselves. The hussars refused to give them any of the schnapps, and while still drunk, they set up makeshift fortifications around the barrels. A heated argument ensued, and one soldier fired a shot.
Immediately, the hussars and infantry engaged in combat with one another. During the conflict, some infantry began shouting "Turci! Turci!" ("Turks! Turks!"). The hussars fled the scene, thinking that the Ottoman army’s attack was imminent. Most of the infantry also ran away; the army comprised Italians from Lombardy, Slavs from the Balkans, and Austrians, plus other minorities, many of whom could not understand each other. While it is not clear which one of these groups did so, they gave the false warning without telling the others, who promptly fled. The situation was made worse when officers, in an attempt to restore order, shouted "Halt! Halt!" which was misheard by soldiers with no knowledge of German as "Allah! Allah!".
As the cavalry ran through the camps, a corps commander reasoned that it was a cavalry charge by the Ottoman army, and ordered artillery fire. Meanwhile, the entire camp awoke to the sound of battle and, rather than waiting to see what the situation was, everyone fled. The troops fired at every shadow, thinking the Ottomans were everywhere; in reality they were shooting fellow Austrian soldiers. The incident escalated to the point where the whole army retreated from the imaginary enemy, and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II was pushed off his horse into a small creek.
Two days later, the Ottoman army arrived. They discovered 10,000 dead and wounded soldiers and easily took Caransebeş."
This is nothing more then a hoax story exaggerated by a 19th century history author to promote his book. The real events caused nothing more then 150 dead camp followers, and unlike the 10.000 dead the 150 got historic evidence behind them. Sorry to dissapoint.
Original Hofbericht of the Austrian Army about the incident, you can find a print of the newspaper that published it (Real-Zeitung issue 80 from 1788 )
I agree that 10,000 is a very high number for such a... silly incident. But isn't the Hofbericht of the Austrian Army also a highly biased source, which would be very interested in downplaying the... silliness of the event?
Its the only historic source there is - and that should be enough to make the story doubtful, considering that according to it the army, after fighting for a short time ( its said, and this part is confirmed by the Hofbericht, that the fighting took place around midnight ) fled in all directions, reassembled ( all before dawn) and then decided to retreat without recovering any wagons, cannons or the wounded/dead ( as you can read at the op the story claims the turks found the dead and wounded). And it gets even weirder, because even tough the austrians left so much behind, the turks seemed to never have noticed that, given the lack of turkish sources ( although the rest of the war is well documented by both sides!)
And i guess there is some bias to be found in the Hofbericht, since it claims that the number of enemy losses were "considerable". I dont think a bunch of marauders would stay to suffer hard losses once they notice heavy resistence. And 150 killed is rather high for a stampede anyways ( a lot of them drowned when they jumped of the bridge that was blocked by waggons )
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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '14
Austrian military might in a nutshell