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Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in. Super Producer Max Williams, Noel Brown, Ben Bollen. Here we're in Media rests on a crazy story.
It's true.
Let's jump right back into our conversation with Ben from Badass of the Week on one of the most ridiculous self owns in the history of combat.
So our boy is forty seven years old. In a burst of humility, he sees himself as a superhuman figure.
Yes, yes, And so he marches two hundred and thirty thousand soldiers to the border with Turkey or with the Ottoman Empire and launches this attack. He divides him into five armies. And you know, right now, at this time period of the story, there's a pretty natural border between the Austro Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, generally mountain ranges and rivers, which is usually how we divide up property and humanity, right, And so he is going to
attack into Serbia. He's got a lot of support there. He's going to liberate Belgrade's where he wants to go. So he marches his guys through these passes. He surrounds Belgrade and he's going to retake it for the Serbs, and people are pretty excited about this. But he gets there and he kind of like half ass surrounds it, doesn't do like a doesn't fully and doesn't lay siege to it. They don't even say it's a siege because he didn't do it quite right. And then he's getting mad.
I know, he's writing all these angry letters to the Russians, like where are you guys? I thought you were coming here to help me ston circle this And you know, as he's marching through, he just very limited like Turk resistance on the way to Belgrade, and he's kind of expecting that, like, I am going to this is going to be my moment. I am the liberator of the Balkans, I am expanding the Austro Hungarian Empire. I'm going to
win a great military victory. And everywhere I go, the Serbian and Croatian and Bosnian people, Romanians, Moldovans, they will be lining the streets with flowers and wine and to celebrate the emperor arriving to liberate them from the oppression of the.
Turks, rejoice, it is I come to free you from your bomb.
Yes, except all of those people are Orthodox, they're not Catholic, they don't want to be Catholic, and they're not that excited about the Austro Hungarian army marching in. This guy was willing to trade an entire region of his own people like he's an enlightened despot, but he's still a despot. And to a lot of these people in this region, this isn't that much better. I just pay my taxes
to somebody else. Now, you know, maybe they'll cut my hand off, but like, yes, six to one have to we're kind of hoping for the Russians actually, or self distermination.
Right right, It's like how diet soda is still soda and some of these people in this town don't want the soda this guy is selling.
Yeah, so he's not getting he was expecting, like, you know, flowers and parades and also soldiers to kind of flock. Oh it's here now, it's time for the resistance to rise up. And that doesn't happen for him, and so he doesn't encircle Belgrade. He's stuck there and it's the middle of summer and the heat is starting to kill people or get heat exhaustion on people. The couple horrible diseases hit the like plagues, you know, whatever, malaria or
whatever's going on in the region. There's illness and disease and heat, and his guys start dying and they haven't even begun the siege yet. There's he's got two hundred and thirty thousand guys. There's like six thousand defender in Belgrade.
It's not a lot, right, he outnumbers them massively, but he can't surround them or he doesn't surround them, and and he's moving slowly, and his guys are either dropping dead or getting so incapacity they can't fight, or just leaving, being like this this sucks, Like this guy's always doing a lot of the soldiers in this army are you know, they're they're either conscripts who are forced to be there, or they're mercenaries. We are just there to get paid.
And at some point you're like, this isn't worth it. And the other component is there was no background checks to enter the Austro Hungarian army, so all these guys are like escaped criminals or like fugitives from justice or whatever, like just like, oh, whatever, I'll join the army.
I'm just laughing because like we'll do an episode on French Foreign Legion later.
And it's like that, yeah, exactly.
But I'm picturing now as just sketch comedy. I'm picturing the interview that someone has joining. You're like, Okay, your CV is looking pretty solid. Done. See you've done a couple of b and ees, a little bit of heresy. Uh, just the.
Slow pan, just like the Austrian army assembled and you do the slow pan across them and like some of the guys would like smoke, and some of them are like sharpening knives, you know.
But that's that's internal dissension. Right. We already know they're not an ideologically unified force other than, as we pointed out earlier, common cause against the enemy the Ottoman Empire.
Yes, and now now things are going badly, right. They were expecting one thing and they're getting real war, which is not fun and glorious and exciting. It's it's hard. And and then well there's they still haven't fully surrounded Belgrade.
Uh.
They they get news that the Turks have mobilized, and they are sending. They're sending an army to come fight them, and it's a big one. It's more guys than they thought they were going to have. And it's on the way.
Max, can we get some ominous war on the horizon? Music?
Perfect? Perfect? So the Turks have crossed the Danube River into basically Romania and they are marching for Belgrade. They are going to come and fight for the city and they're going to come fight the Austro Hungarian Empire. And there's a big one and there's a lot of them. And on the way you start to see reports coming in first from civilians showing up and being like, the Turks are coming, and they think, we wanted you guys here,
and we asked for you guys here. So they're mad and they're burning stuff and they're enslaving people, they're carrying people off, they're killing people, they're doing bads, they're torturing people, they're burning our farms. It's bad. And there's a lot of them and they're like, oh, shoot, there's a lot of guys. And then you start to get news from one of those five armies that Joseph had dispatched. He dispatched one to kind of guard his flanks. Some of
those guys start showing up. They're like, yeah, there's there's a lot of them, and they kick their ass and we're running. And so starts to be worried that the Austrian army in the Banat Basin, which is in western Romania, they're badly defeated. They break and run and they get news to Joseph the second that like you've you've lost, You've lost this flank, and he's like, okay, we got to go. Let's abandon, like you guys stay here at Belgrade.
I'll take twenty thousand guys. I'll rush out to reinforce these retreating troops. Once they see me, they'll all rally, of course, and they'll all fight for me, and we'll I'll lead them on this great military victory against this big army that's coming. Okay, you know, the reports are getting around the camp that any Austro Hungarian soldiers, any Christian soldiers who aren't willing to renounce their faith, are being killed by the Turks in various horrifying ways, like
Turkish prison is a meme for a reason. In European warfare, there's rules. The rules get broken constantly, but they at least have them written down.
There's something on paper.
Yes, this is illegal what you were doing. You can't be doing this to me. Oh ow ow right.
But there's still you know, I think this is a very important point about the xenophobia that's that's inherent to this. You know, there's there's now a bunch of people saying, hey, our denominations may differ, we may not speak the same language. But these foreign hordes.
Yeah, it's bed. They're riding on horses, they have the funny hats, they got the mustaches, doing bad stuff to people, you know, and and stuff gets exaggerated, right like maybe, I mean likely a lot of this stuff isn't happening, or at least isn't that common, but the story gets passed around. One guy gets his fingernails pulled out, and all of a sudden, everybody's talking about it, you know
what I mean. So you get these stories and it's starting to you know, these guys are here, they're maybe starting to be a little shaky, and their confidence of just with the second they're an enemy. They're in a land that is you know, enemy controlled. But also the people here don't really want you there as much as you think they did. So Joseph starts to march out to fight this army with his twenty thousand guys to
reinforce this falling position. And he gets word as he's marching there that oh wait, there's a second Turkish army coming from a different direction and it's swinging around behind you. Okay, crap, retreat, Okay, fall back. So they fall back. They abandoned Belga. They fall back to the mountain pass that we had talked about before, which was the part of the original border. So okay, we fall back to the mountains. We are going to find this mountain pass. So we're going to
guard this mountain pass. That's that's what That's what they did at Thermopola. That's what we're gonna do. We'll guard this pass. So they traveled to Transylvania in Romania, Bookie go on ominist ominist location. They're in the They're in the Timiserna Gap, which is a mountain pass in southwestern Romania and the Transylvanian Alps near a town called karen Sebbi's. So this is if they're gonna like the Turks. He's
given up the flat lands to the Turks. You can't really fight them there anyway, because you at this time period we're fighting with rifles and bayonets. You can form a square, but it's not like it's not one hundred percent when you form a square. The Turks not only have amazing cavalry, which is a huge advantage in open ground, but they have amazing artillery, which is also awesome and open ground. So they'll blow your squares up with artillery and then ride the horses into the gaps, and you
can't stand against that. You don't want to fight Turks and open ground. You want to fight them on in cities or in mountain passes, in fortifications. You can't just march out and engage them too.
You want to like bottleneck, you want to force them into a siege attempt. You have to find some sort of as you were saying, Ben, some sort of geographic barrier to even the odds a little bit, because if we're on flat, open ground, you're about to get a standbold.
Yes, exactly, not constantinople. Nobody's business.
But we had to do it.
We had to do it heart time. Finally, finally, a moment to drop that.
Ref I'm so proud of us for holding to.
That moment, for so exercising restraint. Yes, a little bit.
Yeah, I was purposely not using the term, not not referring to the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
You knew, you knew, because.
We had to wait, We had to the pull that out.
The right.
So he's fallen back, he's marched out. He hasn't really engaged the enemy. There's one side of his enemy, of his force has been defeated. He's falling back already to the border. And now he's in this mountain pass that connects the plane which is in the Romanian area to the Hungarian plane, which is his empire. Right now, these guys are marching and they're they're burning and destroying things. Now he's got he's not in tact any enemy positions.
He's not liberating Serbia. He's defending his own lands now from the Turks who are coming to get revenge on him. Okay, there's a lot of them, and we don't know how many there are, we don't know where they're coming from, but they're out there. Okay, So this brings us all of this is to set the stage for the Night of September fifteenth, seventeen eighty eight, which, like most things in history and in current events. We talked about this when I was on to talk about the Kung Fu werewolf.
You guys dealt with this with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The story here is the events are uncertain and debated. We can't agree on things that are happening in the world right now as a society, so understanding exactly what happened at various time periods of history is tricky. Also, the version I will tell is the official version of the story of the Battle of Karen Debe'z that has been recounted over and over again for the last couple
of centuries. I feel like that's a safe place to start. Okay, Okay. It is late at night, September fifteenth, seventeen eighty eight. The army is camped up. I've got one hundred and seventy two thousand men who have assembled. They've had this false start with they had to go back. They came out, they didn't really meet the enemy, but they're already losing. They're not confident in their commanders. They've fallen back to
this location. They're not really sure what's going on. Joseph the Second is in camp with them, probably doing his Joseph the Second thing.
Guys, I'm so great.
I just haven't had a chance to fight these guys yet.
I'm super genius.
I've heard you've all heard about despots, but my bros, I'm enlightened.
Yes, I'm a real Can we take a quick moment a despot? Like it's sort of a dated term. Maybe it's not. I guess people refer to certain dictator, but is there a difference from a dictator and a despot. Despot usually refers to someone with royal blood, right.
I don't know. I mean I do think of doctor Doom. That was what you said when we brought up despot. I always feel like it has this negative connotation, but I'm not certain could be one of those things where like it just got blown out of proportion over time.
Yeah, guys were very pro Victor Vaughan Doom on this podcast. You know he's got some great ideas about governance.
Uh No, it's I mean I saw a great thing once and somebody was like, in defensive doctor Doom. Fools is a gender neutral way to address a room.
I think a despot. It's maybe it's like a spectrum, right, I'm freestyling here. A despot means someone who rules with an iron fist. They have absolute power. So a dictator is maybe auditioning to become a despot in that spectrum.
Was Roman too, like that was like a Roman office, and you could like it was the person who dictates things is like the Latin for that. So I think it could be because you have Cincinnatus, you have a couple of like Sala, you have a couple of people who weren't kings but they were dictators. But maybe a despot, like you said, Blood, I'm not sure. He didn't like any talk about when he went to Paris and met the king and queen there, he was just like, I
don't like all this French Revolution stuff brewing. Right, this is seventeen eighty eight. The best feel is a year later he went there and he's like, I don't like He's like, the Enlightenment's cool, but I don't like all this talk about get rid of the kings.
That's crazy. Es come on, and you guys are yeah, And he was.
When he came back from that, he was he started getting extremely repressive with people who were talking about maybe doing away with the aristocracy. He kind of could see the French Revolution coming and was scared of it.
And so he is.
He has done some cool things and some very progressive and forward thinking things. But he also wouldn't hesitate to throw you in jail and pull your fingernails off if he thought you were going to have a revolution against it.
You could have different ethnicity, or you could have different religious beliefs, so long as at the end of your talk or at the end of your sermon in the mosque, the templar, the church, you say, and that is why the king is cool.
Yes, God save the King. Yeah, yeah, you know, you had to think whatever you want. But when he showed up and was like, I'm a military genius, you had to agree with him. You were gonna be.
So here we are where things are not looking well right, things things.
Have been so people are So you're at this camp and it's nighttime. We've got the campfires up rows after rows of tens one hundred and seventy two thousand people. That's like two NFL stadiums, right, A lot of people lined up, equipment, weapons, all in camps. They're all they're all intense. They're set up. They're arranged by nationality, because you need to understand the orders being given to you by commanding officers. So like the Italians are together, the
crow outs the Serbs. You know, they don't want to they don't really like each other that much, so they kind of stay in their own little groups. You've got the artillery, you've got cavalry, you've got infantry. And everyone's nervous, right, everyone's on edge because the Turks are out there and they're coming, and there's going to be a battle in the next couple of days. And these guys, a lot of these guys haven't had a battle in this war yet.
They've been waiting for it for years. They've been building up to this. They've been marching here. They're sick, they've they're they're they're dying. A lot of these guys are deserting them. Ral is kind of low. They're nervous, they're hungry, a lot of them are sick because these these plagues are passing around through the camp. Bad guys are coming. We got to be ready, okay. So as militaries do, they dispatch a patrol, a night patrol to go out to scout out see if you can, you know, see
where the bad guys are. Right, if you go, make a ride around, if you see anything, let us know if if the Turks show up, you know, come back down the alarm. So they send out this group of cavalry men, light cavalry. They're called hussars, but they basically they have a light They carry a rifle and a light sword. They don't wear armor, and they ride these lights.
A lightsaber, I'm sorry, a light sword. This is where my mind amass, laser swords, plasma rifles. This is my travel sword, you know, this is my Yes, lightweight and easy to take on the road.
Yes, okay, So they they're traveling light. They ride out to do the patrol and they cross the mountain pass. They start riding around looking for bad guys. Uh, And they see a fire in the distance and they roll up to it. And we are in Romania right now, and it is a camp of well you'll see them referred to as gypsies, but we will refer to them
as Romani Romani people. They are set up. They have this camp and they have wagons and you know, there's always this kind of mysterious air around this this particular like group of people because they have they have they're having this awesome party, right, they have girls and they wear bells in that jingle when they dance, and they're dancing in the music, and they've got kegs and they've got wine, and they're having this huge party, like completely
oblivious to the fact that maybe maybe because there's a big army there and they're like, hey, why you guys, come buy our stuff. But like they're in what would be the battlefield tomorrow, but there's this camp of people out there and they're having a party, and these Hussars roll up to it and they're like, well, this is
pretty cool. What's going on here? And they're like, oh, hey, we're selling booze, we got we have schnops, we have wine, we've got you know, music, everything's you know, this is awesome. Come join our party and hussar.
By the way, for everybody playing a log at home, that's Hungarian cavalry, right.
Yeah, yeah, this is a light cavalry. So yeah, from most Hungarians, these guys are kind of you know, Hussars are known for like bravado. They would they would wear a lot of stuff on their uniforms, and you know, they're they're the kind of guys that, like like the fighter pilots of this time period, right, they're kind of they're the big deal. They walk around like they own the place. You know, they're the cool guys. Uh, they
get all the cool missions. They do this the recon stuff, and they get to have the glorious charges on the enemy. You know, you the infantry fights the enemy, they shoot at them and then we ride around and win the battle. That kind of thing, right, it's the mentality of these stars.
Sort of like the surgeons of war.
Yes, yeah, they're the superstars. They're the the you know, the the star player here. And and so they show up and they're like hell yeah, buckets of booze and girls and music, like yes, we're in. And they have money, and so they they start paying. They start buying all this stuff, and they're having this party and it gets a little rowdy. They start getting a little drunk, having
a good time. Like I said, a lot of some of these guys are some of these guys are like lesser nobility, right, some of these guys are wanted criminals. So it's a whole mix of things, and so these guys start drinking and singing and doing karaoke and all that, and uh, eventually back at camp, word is getting back like, hey, our scouts haven't returned. Uh that's bad, Like we need to go find out where these guys are because maybe they were taken by the Turks. Maybe turks got them.
Let's go, we gotta go. We gotta send out attachment to go get these guys. So they put together a group of whoever there's you know, various watches like night watches kind of thing, and so they take a group of infantry that was on patrol that night and they're like, you guys, go do the rounds. Here's where they were gonna go. Follow their tracks, see if you can find these guys. And if it's Turks, like let us know. Quickly starts to where it starts to go around the
camp that like, these guys haven't returned. Okay, what's happening. So the infantry goes out to try to find these guys. They're they're also dressed lights so they can run fast if they need to. There's a chance they're gonna have
to outrun Turkish cavalry. Back to friendly lines so they head out and they see the campfires of the Romani camp, and they see the Hussars dancing, and I imagine they're like half out of their uniform at this point, like waiting stuff, like they're trading like their swords for booze, that kind of thing. And the soldier the infantry shows up and they see all this, and now the infantry is presented with two options. Number one, observe and report
number two, let's do with this. Let's go investigate this party because this looks like fun. So they choose the second, of course. So the infantry goes up and they're like, hey, guys, what's going on. And the Hussars are like, get the hell out of here. We're having a party. And the infantry is like, we got some money, and the Hussars like, there's not enough booze for you, guys. There's not enough booze and girls and music to go around. This is our party. Get out of here, you know, want to
go back to whatever you do? Tell them we're fine, tell them there's no turks, and say okay, get out of here. Okay. So the infantry is like, no, I don't want to. I want booze and music and dancing and party, and the Hussars at some point drunkenly form a barricade between themselves and the infantry, Like they fortify the booze wagons, like they flip some of the carts over and they like take cover behind them, and they form like a military defensive position around like.
A frat weekend, like rush weekend gone wrong.
It totally is right. You throw the couch out there, you flip the couch, you get up there, you start throwing rocks or whatever, and yeah, and that's it. So the Hussars build defensive fortifications around owned the girls and booze and music, and they're like, you can't come over here. And the soldiers now are getting angry, Like the infantry is getting angry because they're like, what are you talking about?
This this bowl right like and so at some point there's more yelling and screaming and arguing, and at some point during this it starts to get pretty heated.
There.
These guys are screaming and yell each other, grabbing each other now and at some point, a shot, a gunshot goes off. Yes, so you know, in thinking about this and I don't know this for sure, But in thinking about this, my guess would be that it was probably some somebody with some rank firing a gun up in the air to be like, hey, everybody settled down, like
we're going to babblah blah blah blah. You know, some sergeant, some grizzled guy just being like, here's the together, right, yes, right, Okay, So somebody fires a gun up in the air to try to get her body's attention. It doesn't work. It drives these guys into a frenzy and they start they think they're being shot at. They think somebody shot one of the other guys in the group, and they start
fighting for real. They start punching and wrestling and like a swords are drawn and like another gun shot goes off, and yeah, yeah, it was like these guys were kind of worked up to this fever pitch right, like the enemy's coming blah blah, and they get this one moment where they can relax and then suddenly.
It's like, oh, shoot, like the war's like ah, and.
So they start fighting each other.
Oh my gosh, who knew that a gunshot would uh maybe freak out veterans of war.
Yeah, and so now we have a problem because back at the camp, we sent out our cavalry, they didn't return. We sent out our infantry, they didn't return. And I know what a gunshot sounds like, that was a gunshot. We had a problem. Something bad has happened. And so they start to wake people up, like get up, get up, like, hey, the Turks might be here now right, there's something's going on.
Everybody wake up, so oh crap, Okay, what's happening. And then at some point this game of telephone across these hundred and seventy two thousand people, it's like it goes from like we don't know what's going on to like the Turks, the Turks are here, Like we get up, battles coming, like it was gonna be a fight, Like we get your stuff together, get fall in, load your weapons, let's go. Then there is more confusion back at the
Romani camp. People are fighting and it's starting to get out of hand, and some people are starting to leave and go back to the camp. And at some point in this these guys are like really battling it out now,
like people are getting hurt in the fight here. And at some point the camp guys in the camp start seeing guys coming through, coming across the field towards them, and they think it's the Turks and they open fire on them, and they open fire on them with artillery and guns, and like as soon as the first guy starts shooting at something moving around in the dark, everybody starts shooting it.
Moving up there, shooting. He's unloading his clip. I want to I want to.
Shoot it shot gun.
This whole war serious, Well, it's like also, you know, you move as a unit, right, if you get that first report, then it means you have to do your job as well. And this is way before you know night vision.
Yeah, or they're really just shooting at shapes in the dark that they don't know what they are. So gunfire starts to come in on this battle at the camp, and everybody in the camp starts to panic. The Hussars drunkenly get on their horses and take off running. But where are they gonna un They're gonna run to their camp because turns out they think they're under attack by the Turks also, so they go running back to their
camp to report, like the Turks are here. The Turks are here, And so within moments of this firing starting. You have a squadron or at least a company of guys on horseback wearing funny hats that were inspired by the must.
These are the tall boys, right, like the like the Guards and the Wizard of Oz kind of right, yeah, yeah, picturing here, okay yep.
And cylindrical fur lined yes, yes, and.
The Turk is cab where it's just a smaller version of that same hat, so it's just a little bit shorter but the dark. So the these guys start running. The Hussars start running back to the camp with their swords out, yelling like the Turks the Turks, and these guys think they're the Turks, so they start shooting at them. The Hussars make it into the camp and start riding
around the camp. So a lot of these guys who are waking up being like what's going on, they wake up to like horses running through their camp and they're like, oh, cramp, like the Turks they ambushed us, like our stupid emperor couldn't figure it out. Now we're now we're gonna die, and everybody's in our camp. They're already here killing everybody, and so people come out and they just start shooting at whatever they see, which is just movement everywhere in
the camp. Everybody's coming out and shooting it in the dark at each other.
That Danny DeVito and always sunny. So anyways, I started bling a.
Yeah, that's exactly what this is how you do it navigate.
The officers in charge, the ones who maybe kind of have an idea of what's going on, they're yelling to stop.
They're yelling halt, halt, halta, which is German first stop there is they're Austrians, right, halta alta Austrian army, and and the Croatians and the and the Italians and the Serbs are hearing a lah a la allah and so they're like, oh, they're everywhere, and so they start shooting and there's gunfire and the army, the Austrian army defeats itself and retreats, so they run away from the camp.
Everybody's ben I have to possess there. Can you say that? Said? It's again?
Yeah, he's pretty good.
Yes, the Austrian Army defeats itself and yeah, and the.
Real cell phone there man, Yeah, yeah.
Guys, we're kicking asses, right.
Yeah, we are getting crushed by these guys, so they fight. It's a fighting withdrawal. So they're falling back and still firing into the darkness, right and to the point where the artillery is there, right, And you've got these guys and artillery at this point is cannons that are and wagons full of ammunition that are being pulled by horses, right, and they've brought them to the camp. They're in the back of the camp. They're in this position where they can be brought up to fire if they need to.
But the guys who run the cannons, they ride on these wagons, on these horses. If the enemy's into camp with you, you're you're dead meat, right, What are you gonna do? Maybe you can fire this gunpoint like at them before you get cut down by somebody else. So these guys are like, the turks are here, we're toast. Let's get
out of here. So they cut the reins on the horses, get on the horses and ride them off, leaving the wagon and the cart of ammunition behind, because you can't you're never gonna outrun the turks dragging all that stuff. So they they cut the way ride off on the horse is and leave the artillery and the ammunition. There's a story that the payroll for the army was also left behind the battle, just the war chests full of their their pay.
No one was snared, even that the accountants took a lot.
Yes, yes, there is some speculation that somebody might have made off with that and might not have been left for the Turks, but it was not found.
You can't prove a thing. The Statute of Limitations is passed.
Yes, far far far past, so okay.
There's also a story that in the confusion, Emperor Joseph the Second gets on a horse and tries to rally his men, and the horse panics and knocks him off and he falls into a creek.
Oh, not a great look.
Not a good look. So they fight a retreating battle against themselves, and the next day or a couple of days later, the Turkish armies arrive. The two Turkish forces arrive, and as the story goes, they show up and there's just a field of Austrian Hungarian soldiers, cannons, wagons, ammunition. Maybe those payroll chests there are somewhere between the numbers ranged from five hundred to ten thousand, ten thousand being
an extremely high number. But that's the number you see quoted a lot for this, just dead, missing or wounded left on the battlefield. So the Turkish army shows up, they have won the Battle of karen Seb's and they weren't even there.
They retroactively want it.
Just on intimidation, just on reputation alone, just on.
Street rep That's crazy, Ben, Do we know anything about how the Ottoman or Turkish forces reacted when.
We have one? So the sources on this are a little messy, which is why people are like, you know, people sometimes have our arguments about the historical historiosity of this battle. Right, we know there was an Austrian army there at that time. We know that they were in an extremely defensible position, knowing that an enemy army was coming, and we know that they abandoned it for unknown reasons, undisclosed reasons that they left that position and didn't give
reasons why. There was an article written about it in an Austrian newspaper a month after the battle. That gives kind of like there was a It gives kind of like a there was some confusion and some people died, and some houses got set on fire, and we anyway, in the confusion we had, we had to abandon the position. And basically the Turkish report on it is this is similar where they are like, we're not sure what happened here, but there must have been some confusion in the Austrian
ranks and we took their position. Okay. It is interesting. I always think of this when I'm talking about this battle, that the Austrian flag at this time is a two headed eagle, like there's fighting itself. But I'd also say that, like, if this happened to my army, I would try to convince people it didn't.
Also, yeah, you want to you, especially if you're an enlightened despot, Yeah you would, and you already run the educational institutions. You would want to.
This is said, look for the military genius thing, right, and you're in a society where anybody who says you're not a military genius is going to go to jail.
So you gonna manage the pr keep track of which fingernails get to stay in the fingers and yeah, have to get ripped out.
So they retreat, and Joseph immediately after this goes home. After this time goes home. He's despondent. He's sick. He has some pulmonary issue and he's gonna he dies of it within like two years of this battle. He goes back and he's in really bad health and he's super sad about the way everything went down. Doesn't return to the battlefield, which also lends some credence to this story. The first version we see of this story was written
forty forty years after the battle. That with all those details, right, and there's some being people being like, well, this guy just didn't like Joseph. But you know, a lot of the without another accounts, without another first hand account of what happened here, and a conflicting story, I think we have to go with this story. And all of the stuff that happens after this kind of fits the mold, right, Why would they give up this position without without a fight.
And then Joseph immediately goes home and is sad and he's sick. Maybe he did fall in a creak and got pneumonia or something, but uh, yeah, so he goes home. He dies in seventeen ninety and uh and that's kind of the battle of Karen Sebb's.
The war continues, guy, I feel no let's pause though, because now I feel bad for making fun of them, Like we dunked on him pretty hard.
Yeah, I mean it kind of kind of. I mean, he does die a couple of years later, but he was old. Remember super That's Super Bowl. Oh my god, that's a good life right for that time.
Yeah.
The war continues. The Austrians regroup without Joseph running the army. The armies under the command of a guy named Prince Josiahs of Saxe Coburg. He's really effective. He teams up with the Russian general Alexander Suvarov, who's like one of the greatest war heroes in military geniuses of all time. They defeat the Turks, They drive them out of Serbia
and Croatia and the Balkans in Romania. They sign a peace treaty that gives the Russians a bunch of lands from the Turks in exchange for Austria Hungary giving back Serbia and Croatia and Romania and the Balkans and all that. So the end of the war. The treaty signed that ends this war in seventeen ninety one, Austria Hungary. Austria Hungary gains no additional territory. Serbia is liberated for about a year and then returned to the Tarts and were really mad about it.
Hey, can I share? Can I share with all of us? The epitaph on Joseph the Second's grave by all means it's it's uh, it's not. I don't know. We knowing all that we know now over these past few episodes, I'd love to hear what we think about this. He's buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, and his epitaph, at least his request was here lies a ruler who, despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors, and.
He wrote that he will okay, well, then wait a minute, let's reassess here for a second.
That means he had a little bit of humility and self awareness.
He took an inventory.
I think it would seem so I feel like stumbling.
Yeah, yeah, well I sure would be so.
I guess the big takeaway here, Ben is that we should invade parts of Europe.
Right land war in Europe? Yeah yeah, it's usually goes well for people. Let's do in Europe? What can go wrong?
What could go wrong?
So much? Did you not listen to the episode.
I think the world here and I think the moral here is is uh, the importance of communication, communication between different working forces, leadership, communication and people skills, people skills, Yes, and maybe leave things to maybe leave like important jobs to people who know how to do them.
Yeah, I wonder some advice that might apply to some Okay, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Here's a horse in the hospital, as our pal John mulaney said, And how amazing would it be to hear the accounts of the horses involved in these shenanigans in this crazy friendly fire incident.
I think we have a Disney movie in the making, the very least Pixar. Yeah, yeah, okay, maybe who should we pitch first? I think John mulaney should be the voice of the lead horse.
Yeah, he's got it in him.
He doesn't do enough animated voices. I think he's got a great voice.
Ben, you should do some animated voices as well. Can we just volunteer you for that until you after the fact.
Yeah, sure, I'll I'll voice.
It's already happened. You heard it here first, folks. Ben will be the voice of the of the Plucky Dog.
The animated adaptation of Homeward bound excellent, I can do that.
Yeah, just bote up on the Turkish of the time, bonus points for Hungarian and and honestly thank you.
Start right.
It doesn't look.
Surely not difficult.
It didn't take me. It didn't take me twelve minutes of practicing to pronounce Karen Stebbies correctly.
All right, I think you got it.
And I don't think I did because I think it's a it's a it's like a Karen Stebbish. I think it's like a stage at the end. So all right, well is not good.
You say that now, but we've got the whole weekend, man, So Ben.
Something to do with my forty fifth year of life is to learn that that's Romanian.
There we go. Happy birthday to you, Uh, to you, Ben Thompson, uh, the creator of bad Ass of the Week. Man. I we didn't know that you were recording with us on your birthday, Noel, I would have asked to reschedule.
It's the only work. We gotta get it done.
Yeah, we would have brought something.
Well, not only is it your birthday, it's the one hundredth birthday of Badass of the Week, the podcast.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. This will be because I'm gonna run this on my feet. This will be episode one two for me, So that is exciting stuff.
Here's too Well, while I'm bond, we didn't make the cut for one oh one, one o two is a plenty good consolation.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, And we will also have this as a two part series over on Ridiculous History. Folks, if you like our show, you are going to love our brother Ben's show. Do check out Badass of the Week spoiler light spoilers. You can find Ben Noel and Ben hanging out in past episodes as well, so dig through the catalog, check out the archives. Ben. Where can people learn more about your work.
Well, we can go to the website Badass of Theweek dot com. And you know, Badass of the Week is the name of the podcast. We update every week on Tuesdays, usually with a great badass from history. This week we were trying to be a little bit have a little bit more fun with it for there.
The character is the war you know.
Yeah, My favorite character is the horse who said no way, I'm getting out of here, you know what I mean.
The horse was the one who was like, yeah, the horses wing to fire the gun and started the confusion.
I think John mulaney would play the more timid horse, and then maybe we could have Eric Bautista come in and play one of the more aggressive kind of war horses.
Who else we got.
Bill Burr Gilbert It would be a perfect horse with an attitude. John mullaney as a horse is more observational humor, like that's.
The protagonist, the John Mulleney horse.
Guys, I don't know if these are Turks or Hussars.
I mean maybe we could make an argument here, you know, like you said, like you know, we've kind of been been dunking on just with the second, but reading that epitaph, like there is something about like learning from your mistakes. There is something about us, about being able to recognize that, like having laws in place that like you can't criticize me only two at the end of your life realize actually there's some value in what these people were saying.
And I should have listened, you know, having some kind of self realization in that way kind of kind of cool.
I agree, So points for humility on your death, Ben, Yes, betterly than ever.
And that is part two. Nol I fear I may have gone a little bit overboard. You know, I love birthdays, man, They're like the only real New Year's there's there. They're the perfect holiday and gosh, starret it. Ben Thompson took time from his own birthday to explore this story with us.
What a guy. Thanks the Bens, and thanks to the Knowles.
Thanks to, of course, our super producer Max Williams and his biological brother, our composer Alex Williams. Who else, who else? Who else?
Oh? You know who else?
Ben, Christopher asiotas you, Jeff Coats here in Spirit, Jonathan Strickland, the quiz ser Aj Bahamas, Jacob's the Puzzler.
Yeah, Rachel Big Spinach, Lance the rude Dude's a ridiculous crime and oh, I forgot to say it. I owe Aj Bahamas and emails. So we're gonna follow up with that. In the meantime, Noel, I think we came up with some really good voice casting for our animated version of this friendly fire incident. You and I have to figure out.
Which characters we will play.
Oh man, I gotta be the bag man, even an animal form.
We'll see the next time.
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