Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you,
Speaker 2: as always so much for tuning in. Super Producer Max Williams,
Speaker 2: Noel Brown, Ben Bollen. Here we're in Media rests on
Speaker 2: a crazy story.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 4: Let's jump right back into our conversation with Ben from
Speaker 4: Badass of the Week on one of the most ridiculous
Speaker 4: self owns in the history of combat.
Speaker 2: So our boy is forty seven years old. In a
Speaker 2: burst of humility, he sees himself as a superhuman figure.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, And so he marches two hundred and thirty
Speaker 5: thousand soldiers to the border with Turkey or with the
Speaker 5: Ottoman Empire and launches this attack. He divides him into
Speaker 5: five armies. And you know, right now, at this time
Speaker 5: period of the story, there's a pretty natural border between
Speaker 5: the Austro Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, generally mountain
Speaker 5: ranges and rivers, which is usually how we divide up
Speaker 5: property and humanity, right, And so he is going to
Speaker 5: attack into Serbia. He's got a lot of support there.
Speaker 5: He's going to liberate Belgrade's where he wants to go.
Speaker 5: So he marches his guys through these passes. He surrounds
Speaker 5: Belgrade and he's going to retake it for the Serbs,
Speaker 5: and people are pretty excited about this. But he gets
Speaker 5: there and he kind of like half ass surrounds it,
Speaker 5: doesn't do like a doesn't fully and doesn't lay siege
Speaker 5: to it. They don't even say it's a siege because
Speaker 5: he didn't do it quite right. And then he's getting mad.
Speaker 5: I know, he's writing all these angry letters to the Russians,
Speaker 5: like where are you guys? I thought you were coming
Speaker 5: here to help me ston circle this And you know,
Speaker 5: as he's marching through, he just very limited like Turk
Speaker 5: resistance on the way to Belgrade, and he's kind of
Speaker 5: expecting that, like, I am going to this is going
Speaker 5: to be my moment. I am the liberator of the Balkans,
Speaker 5: I am expanding the Austro Hungarian Empire. I'm going to
Speaker 5: win a great military victory. And everywhere I go, the
Speaker 5: Serbian and Croatian and Bosnian people, Romanians, Moldovans, they will
Speaker 5: be lining the streets with flowers and wine and to
Speaker 5: celebrate the emperor arriving to liberate them from the oppression
Speaker 5: of the.
Speaker 3: Turks, rejoice, it is I come to free you from
Speaker 3: your bomb.
Speaker 5: Yes, except all of those people are Orthodox, they're not Catholic,
Speaker 5: they don't want to be Catholic, and they're not that
Speaker 5: excited about the Austro Hungarian army marching in. This guy
Speaker 5: was willing to trade an entire region of his own
Speaker 5: people like he's an enlightened despot, but he's still a despot.
Speaker 5: And to a lot of these people in this region,
Speaker 5: this isn't that much better. I just pay my taxes
Speaker 5: to somebody else. Now, you know, maybe they'll cut my
Speaker 5: hand off, but like, yes, six to one have to
Speaker 5: we're kind of hoping for the Russians actually, or self distermination.
Speaker 2: Right right, It's like how diet soda is still soda
Speaker 2: and some of these people in this town don't want
Speaker 2: the soda this guy is selling.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so he's not getting he was expecting, like, you know,
Speaker 5: flowers and parades and also soldiers to kind of flock.
Speaker 5: Oh it's here now, it's time for the resistance to
Speaker 5: rise up. And that doesn't happen for him, and so
Speaker 5: he doesn't encircle Belgrade. He's stuck there and it's the
Speaker 5: middle of summer and the heat is starting to kill
Speaker 5: people or get heat exhaustion on people. The couple horrible
Speaker 5: diseases hit the like plagues, you know, whatever, malaria or
Speaker 5: whatever's going on in the region. There's illness and disease
Speaker 5: and heat, and his guys start dying and they haven't
Speaker 5: even begun the siege yet. There's he's got two hundred
Speaker 5: and thirty thousand guys. There's like six thousand defender in Belgrade.
Speaker 5: It's not a lot, right, he outnumbers them massively, but
Speaker 5: he can't surround them or he doesn't surround them, and
Speaker 5: and he's moving slowly, and his guys are either dropping
Speaker 5: dead or getting so incapacity they can't fight, or just leaving,
Speaker 5: being like this this sucks, Like this guy's always doing
Speaker 5: a lot of the soldiers in this army are you know,
Speaker 5: they're they're either conscripts who are forced to be there,
Speaker 5: or they're mercenaries. We are just there to get paid.
Speaker 5: And at some point you're like, this isn't worth it.
Speaker 5: And the other component is there was no background checks
Speaker 5: to enter the Austro Hungarian army, so all these guys
Speaker 5: are like escaped criminals or like fugitives from justice or whatever,
Speaker 5: like just like, oh, whatever, I'll join the army.
Speaker 2: I'm just laughing because like we'll do an episode on
Speaker 2: French Foreign Legion later.
Speaker 5: And it's like that, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But I'm picturing now as just sketch comedy. I'm picturing
Speaker 2: the interview that someone has joining. You're like, Okay, your
Speaker 2: CV is looking pretty solid. Done. See you've done a
Speaker 2: couple of b and ees, a little bit of heresy. Uh,
Speaker 2: just the.
Speaker 5: Slow pan, just like the Austrian army assembled and you
Speaker 5: do the slow pan across them and like some of
Speaker 5: the guys would like smoke, and some of them are
Speaker 5: like sharpening knives, you know.
Speaker 2: But that's that's internal dissension. Right. We already know they're
Speaker 2: not an ideologically unified force other than, as we pointed
Speaker 2: out earlier, common cause against the enemy the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 5: Yes, and now now things are going badly, right. They
Speaker 5: were expecting one thing and they're getting real war, which
Speaker 5: is not fun and glorious and exciting. It's it's hard.
Speaker 5: And and then well there's they still haven't fully surrounded Belgrade.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: They they get news that the Turks have mobilized, and
Speaker 5: they are sending. They're sending an army to come fight them,
Speaker 5: and it's a big one. It's more guys than they
Speaker 5: thought they were going to have. And it's on the way.
Speaker 2: Max, can we get some ominous war on the horizon? Music?
Speaker 5: Perfect? Perfect? So the Turks have crossed the Danube River
Speaker 5: into basically Romania and they are marching for Belgrade. They
Speaker 5: are going to come and fight for the city and
Speaker 5: they're going to come fight the Austro Hungarian Empire. And
Speaker 5: there's a big one and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 5: And on the way you start to see reports coming
Speaker 5: in first from civilians showing up and being like, the
Speaker 5: Turks are coming, and they think, we wanted you guys here,
Speaker 5: and we asked for you guys here. So they're mad
Speaker 5: and they're burning stuff and they're enslaving people, they're carrying
Speaker 5: people off, they're killing people, they're doing bads, they're torturing people,
Speaker 5: they're burning our farms. It's bad. And there's a lot
Speaker 5: of them and they're like, oh, shoot, there's a lot
Speaker 5: of guys. And then you start to get news from
Speaker 5: one of those five armies that Joseph had dispatched. He
Speaker 5: dispatched one to kind of guard his flanks. Some of
Speaker 5: those guys start showing up. They're like, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 5: a lot of them, and they kick their ass and
Speaker 5: we're running. And so starts to be worried that the
Speaker 5: Austrian army in the Banat Basin, which is in western Romania,
Speaker 5: they're badly defeated. They break and run and they get
Speaker 5: news to Joseph the second that like you've you've lost,
Speaker 5: You've lost this flank, and he's like, okay, we got
Speaker 5: to go. Let's abandon, like you guys stay here at Belgrade.
Speaker 5: I'll take twenty thousand guys. I'll rush out to reinforce
Speaker 5: these retreating troops. Once they see me, they'll all rally,
Speaker 5: of course, and they'll all fight for me, and we'll
Speaker 5: I'll lead them on this great military victory against this
Speaker 5: big army that's coming. Okay, you know, the reports are
Speaker 5: getting around the camp that any Austro Hungarian soldiers, any
Speaker 5: Christian soldiers who aren't willing to renounce their faith, are
Speaker 5: being killed by the Turks in various horrifying ways, like
Speaker 5: Turkish prison is a meme for a reason. In European warfare,
Speaker 5: there's rules. The rules get broken constantly, but they at
Speaker 5: least have them written down.
Speaker 2: There's something on paper.
Speaker 5: Yes, this is illegal what you were doing. You can't
Speaker 5: be doing this to me. Oh ow ow right.
Speaker 2: But there's still you know, I think this is a
Speaker 2: very important point about the xenophobia that's that's inherent to this.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's now a bunch of people saying, hey,
Speaker 2: our denominations may differ, we may not speak the same language.
Speaker 2: But these foreign hordes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's bed. They're riding on horses, they have the
Speaker 5: funny hats, they got the mustaches, doing bad stuff to people,
Speaker 5: you know, and and stuff gets exaggerated, right like maybe,
Speaker 5: I mean likely a lot of this stuff isn't happening,
Speaker 5: or at least isn't that common, but the story gets
Speaker 5: passed around. One guy gets his fingernails pulled out, and
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, everybody's talking about it, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. So you get these stories and it's
Speaker 5: starting to you know, these guys are here, they're maybe
Speaker 5: starting to be a little shaky, and their confidence of
Speaker 5: just with the second they're an enemy. They're in a
Speaker 5: land that is you know, enemy controlled. But also the
Speaker 5: people here don't really want you there as much as
Speaker 5: you think they did. So Joseph starts to march out
Speaker 5: to fight this army with his twenty thousand guys to
Speaker 5: reinforce this falling position. And he gets word as he's
Speaker 5: marching there that oh wait, there's a second Turkish army
Speaker 5: coming from a different direction and it's swinging around behind you. Okay, crap, retreat, Okay,
Speaker 5: fall back. So they fall back. They abandoned Belga. They
Speaker 5: fall back to the mountain pass that we had talked
Speaker 5: about before, which was the part of the original border.
Speaker 5: So okay, we fall back to the mountains. We are
Speaker 5: going to find this mountain pass. So we're going to
Speaker 5: guard this mountain pass. That's that's what That's what they
Speaker 5: did at Thermopola. That's what we're gonna do. We'll guard
Speaker 5: this pass. So they traveled to Transylvania in Romania, Bookie
Speaker 5: go on ominist ominist location. They're in the They're in
Speaker 5: the Timiserna Gap, which is a mountain pass in southwestern
Speaker 5: Romania and the Transylvanian Alps near a town called karen Sebbi's.
Speaker 5: So this is if they're gonna like the Turks. He's
Speaker 5: given up the flat lands to the Turks. You can't
Speaker 5: really fight them there anyway, because you at this time
Speaker 5: period we're fighting with rifles and bayonets. You can form
Speaker 5: a square, but it's not like it's not one hundred
Speaker 5: percent when you form a square. The Turks not only
Speaker 5: have amazing cavalry, which is a huge advantage in open ground,
Speaker 5: but they have amazing artillery, which is also awesome and
Speaker 5: open ground. So they'll blow your squares up with artillery
Speaker 5: and then ride the horses into the gaps, and you
Speaker 5: can't stand against that. You don't want to fight Turks
Speaker 5: and open ground. You want to fight them on in
Speaker 5: cities or in mountain passes, in fortifications. You can't just
Speaker 5: march out and engage them too.
Speaker 2: You want to like bottleneck, you want to force them
Speaker 2: into a siege attempt. You have to find some sort
Speaker 2: of as you were saying, Ben, some sort of geographic
Speaker 2: barrier to even the odds a little bit, because if
Speaker 2: we're on flat, open ground, you're about to get a standbold.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly, not constantinople. Nobody's business.
Speaker 2: But we had to do it.
Speaker 3: We had to do it heart time. Finally, finally, a
Speaker 3: moment to drop that.
Speaker 2: Ref I'm so proud of us for holding to.
Speaker 3: That moment, for so exercising restraint. Yes, a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was purposely not using the term, not not
Speaker 5: referring to the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 2: You knew, you knew, because.
Speaker 5: We had to wait, We had to the pull that out.
Speaker 3: The right.
Speaker 5: So he's fallen back, he's marched out. He hasn't really
Speaker 5: engaged the enemy. There's one side of his enemy, of
Speaker 5: his force has been defeated. He's falling back already to
Speaker 5: the border. And now he's in this mountain pass that
Speaker 5: connects the plane which is in the Romanian area to
Speaker 5: the Hungarian plane, which is his empire. Right now, these
Speaker 5: guys are marching and they're they're burning and destroying things.
Speaker 5: Now he's got he's not in tact any enemy positions.
Speaker 5: He's not liberating Serbia. He's defending his own lands now
Speaker 5: from the Turks who are coming to get revenge on him. Okay,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of them, and we don't know how
Speaker 5: many there are, we don't know where they're coming from,
Speaker 5: but they're out there. Okay, So this brings us all
Speaker 5: of this is to set the stage for the Night
Speaker 5: of September fifteenth, seventeen eighty eight, which, like most things
Speaker 5: in history and in current events. We talked about this
Speaker 5: when I was on to talk about the Kung Fu werewolf.
Speaker 5: You guys dealt with this with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Speaker 5: The story here is the events are uncertain and debated.
Speaker 5: We can't agree on things that are happening in the
Speaker 5: world right now as a society, so understanding exactly what
Speaker 5: happened at various time periods of history is tricky. Also,
Speaker 5: the version I will tell is the official version of
Speaker 5: the story of the Battle of Karen Debe'z that has
Speaker 5: been recounted over and over again for the last couple
Speaker 5: of centuries. I feel like that's a safe place to start. Okay, Okay.
Speaker 5: It is late at night, September fifteenth, seventeen eighty eight.
Speaker 5: The army is camped up. I've got one hundred and
Speaker 5: seventy two thousand men who have assembled. They've had this
Speaker 5: false start with they had to go back. They came out,
Speaker 5: they didn't really meet the enemy, but they're already losing.
Speaker 5: They're not confident in their commanders. They've fallen back to
Speaker 5: this location. They're not really sure what's going on. Joseph
Speaker 5: the Second is in camp with them, probably doing his
Speaker 5: Joseph the Second thing.
Speaker 2: Guys, I'm so great.
Speaker 5: I just haven't had a chance to fight these guys yet.
Speaker 3: I'm super genius.
Speaker 2: I've heard you've all heard about despots, but my bros,
Speaker 2: I'm enlightened.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm a real Can we take a quick moment
Speaker 4: a despot? Like it's sort of a dated term. Maybe
Speaker 4: it's not. I guess people refer to certain dictator, but
Speaker 4: is there a difference from a dictator and a despot.
Speaker 4: Despot usually refers to someone with royal blood, right.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I mean I do think of doctor Doom.
Speaker 5: That was what you said when we brought up despot.
Speaker 5: I always feel like it has this negative connotation, but
Speaker 5: I'm not certain could be one of those things where
Speaker 5: like it just got blown out of proportion over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guys were very pro Victor Vaughan Doom on this podcast.
Speaker 2: You know he's got some great ideas about governance.
Speaker 5: Uh No, it's I mean I saw a great thing
Speaker 5: once and somebody was like, in defensive doctor Doom. Fools
Speaker 5: is a gender neutral way to address a room.
Speaker 2: I think a despot. It's maybe it's like a spectrum, right,
Speaker 2: I'm freestyling here. A despot means someone who rules with
Speaker 2: an iron fist. They have absolute power. So a dictator
Speaker 2: is maybe auditioning to become a despot in that spectrum.
Speaker 5: Was Roman too, like that was like a Roman office,
Speaker 5: and you could like it was the person who dictates
Speaker 5: things is like the Latin for that. So I think
Speaker 5: it could be because you have Cincinnatus, you have a
Speaker 5: couple of like Sala, you have a couple of people who
Speaker 5: weren't kings but they were dictators. But maybe a despot,
Speaker 5: like you said, Blood, I'm not sure. He didn't like
Speaker 5: any talk about when he went to Paris and met
Speaker 5: the king and queen there, he was just like, I
Speaker 5: don't like all this French Revolution stuff brewing. Right, this
Speaker 5: is seventeen eighty eight. The best feel is a year
Speaker 5: later he went there and he's like, I don't like
Speaker 5: He's like, the Enlightenment's cool, but I don't like all
Speaker 5: this talk about get rid of the kings.
Speaker 3: That's crazy. Es come on, and you guys are yeah,
Speaker 3: And he was.
Speaker 5: When he came back from that, he was he started
Speaker 5: getting extremely repressive with people who were talking about maybe
Speaker 5: doing away with the aristocracy. He kind of could see
Speaker 5: the French Revolution coming and was scared of it.
Speaker 3: And so he is.
Speaker 5: He has done some cool things and some very progressive
Speaker 5: and forward thinking things. But he also wouldn't hesitate to
Speaker 5: throw you in jail and pull your fingernails off if
Speaker 5: he thought you were going to have a revolution against it.
Speaker 2: You could have different ethnicity, or you could have different
Speaker 2: religious beliefs, so long as at the end of your
Speaker 2: talk or at the end of your sermon in the mosque,
Speaker 2: the templar, the church, you say, and that is why
Speaker 2: the king is cool.
Speaker 5: Yes, God save the King. Yeah, yeah, you know, you
Speaker 5: had to think whatever you want. But when he showed
Speaker 5: up and was like, I'm a military genius, you had
Speaker 5: to agree with him. You were gonna be.
Speaker 2: So here we are where things are not looking well right,
Speaker 2: things things.
Speaker 5: Have been so people are So you're at this camp
Speaker 5: and it's nighttime. We've got the campfires up rows after
Speaker 5: rows of tens one hundred and seventy two thousand people.
Speaker 5: That's like two NFL stadiums, right, A lot of people
Speaker 5: lined up, equipment, weapons, all in camps. They're all they're
Speaker 5: all intense. They're set up. They're arranged by nationality, because
Speaker 5: you need to understand the orders being given to you
Speaker 5: by commanding officers. So like the Italians are together, the
Speaker 5: crow outs the Serbs. You know, they don't want to
Speaker 5: they don't really like each other that much, so they
Speaker 5: kind of stay in their own little groups. You've got
Speaker 5: the artillery, you've got cavalry, you've got infantry. And everyone's nervous, right,
Speaker 5: everyone's on edge because the Turks are out there and
Speaker 5: they're coming, and there's going to be a battle in
Speaker 5: the next couple of days. And these guys, a lot
Speaker 5: of these guys haven't had a battle in this war yet.
Speaker 5: They've been waiting for it for years. They've been building
Speaker 5: up to this. They've been marching here. They're sick, they've
Speaker 5: they're they're they're dying. A lot of these guys are
Speaker 5: deserting them. Ral is kind of low. They're nervous, they're hungry,
Speaker 5: a lot of them are sick because these these plagues
Speaker 5: are passing around through the camp. Bad guys are coming.
Speaker 5: We got to be ready, okay. So as militaries do,
Speaker 5: they dispatch a patrol, a night patrol to go out
Speaker 5: to scout out see if you can, you know, see
Speaker 5: where the bad guys are. Right, if you go, make
Speaker 5: a ride around, if you see anything, let us know
Speaker 5: if if the Turks show up, you know, come back
Speaker 5: down the alarm. So they send out this group of
Speaker 5: cavalry men, light cavalry. They're called hussars, but they basically
Speaker 5: they have a light They carry a rifle and a
Speaker 5: light sword. They don't wear armor, and they ride these lights.
Speaker 4: A lightsaber, I'm sorry, a light sword. This is where
Speaker 4: my mind amass, laser swords, plasma rifles. This is my
Speaker 4: travel sword, you know, this is my Yes, lightweight and
Speaker 4: easy to take on the road.
Speaker 5: Yes, okay, So they they're traveling light. They ride out
Speaker 5: to do the patrol and they cross the mountain pass.
Speaker 5: They start riding around looking for bad guys. Uh, And
Speaker 5: they see a fire in the distance and they roll
Speaker 5: up to it. And we are in Romania right now,
Speaker 5: and it is a camp of well you'll see them
Speaker 5: referred to as gypsies, but we will refer to them
Speaker 5: as Romani Romani people. They are set up. They have
Speaker 5: this camp and they have wagons and you know, there's
Speaker 5: always this kind of mysterious air around this this particular
Speaker 5: like group of people because they have they have they're
Speaker 5: having this awesome party, right, they have girls and they
Speaker 5: wear bells in that jingle when they dance, and they're
Speaker 5: dancing in the music, and they've got kegs and they've
Speaker 5: got wine, and they're having this huge party, like completely
Speaker 5: oblivious to the fact that maybe maybe because there's a
Speaker 5: big army there and they're like, hey, why you guys,
Speaker 5: come buy our stuff. But like they're in what would
Speaker 5: be the battlefield tomorrow, but there's this camp of people
Speaker 5: out there and they're having a party, and these Hussars
Speaker 5: roll up to it and they're like, well, this is
Speaker 5: pretty cool. What's going on here? And they're like, oh, hey,
Speaker 5: we're selling booze, we got we have schnops, we have wine,
Speaker 5: we've got you know, music, everything's you know, this is awesome.
Speaker 5: Come join our party and hussar.
Speaker 2: By the way, for everybody playing a log at home,
Speaker 2: that's Hungarian cavalry, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, this is a light cavalry. So yeah, from
Speaker 5: most Hungarians, these guys are kind of you know, Hussars
Speaker 5: are known for like bravado. They would they would wear
Speaker 5: a lot of stuff on their uniforms, and you know,
Speaker 5: they're they're the kind of guys that, like like the
Speaker 5: fighter pilots of this time period, right, they're kind of
Speaker 5: they're the big deal. They walk around like they own
Speaker 5: the place. You know, they're the cool guys. Uh, they
Speaker 5: get all the cool missions. They do this the recon stuff,
Speaker 5: and they get to have the glorious charges on the enemy.
Speaker 5: You know, you the infantry fights the enemy, they shoot
Speaker 5: at them and then we ride around and win the battle.
Speaker 5: That kind of thing, right, it's the mentality of these stars.
Speaker 3: Sort of like the surgeons of war.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, they're the superstars. They're the the you know,
Speaker 5: the the star player here. And and so they show
Speaker 5: up and they're like hell yeah, buckets of booze and
Speaker 5: girls and music, like yes, we're in. And they have money,
Speaker 5: and so they they start paying. They start buying all
Speaker 5: this stuff, and they're having this party and it gets
Speaker 5: a little rowdy. They start getting a little drunk, having
Speaker 5: a good time. Like I said, a lot of some
Speaker 5: of these guys are some of these guys are like
Speaker 5: lesser nobility, right, some of these guys are wanted criminals.
Speaker 5: So it's a whole mix of things, and so these
Speaker 5: guys start drinking and singing and doing karaoke and all that,
Speaker 5: and uh, eventually back at camp, word is getting back like, hey,
Speaker 5: our scouts haven't returned. Uh that's bad, Like we need
Speaker 5: to go find out where these guys are because maybe
Speaker 5: they were taken by the Turks. Maybe turks got them.
Speaker 5: Let's go, we gotta go. We gotta send out attachment
Speaker 5: to go get these guys. So they put together a
Speaker 5: group of whoever there's you know, various watches like night
Speaker 5: watches kind of thing, and so they take a group
Speaker 5: of infantry that was on patrol that night and they're like,
Speaker 5: you guys, go do the rounds. Here's where they were
Speaker 5: gonna go. Follow their tracks, see if you can find
Speaker 5: these guys. And if it's Turks, like let us know.
Speaker 5: Quickly starts to where it starts to go around the
Speaker 5: camp that like, these guys haven't returned. Okay, what's happening.
Speaker 5: So the infantry goes out to try to find these guys.
Speaker 5: They're they're also dressed lights so they can run fast
Speaker 5: if they need to. There's a chance they're gonna have
Speaker 5: to outrun Turkish cavalry. Back to friendly lines so they
Speaker 5: head out and they see the campfires of the Romani camp,
Speaker 5: and they see the Hussars dancing, and I imagine they're
Speaker 5: like half out of their uniform at this point, like
Speaker 5: waiting stuff, like they're trading like their swords for booze,
Speaker 5: that kind of thing. And the soldier the infantry shows
Speaker 5: up and they see all this, and now the infantry
Speaker 5: is presented with two options. Number one, observe and report
Speaker 5: number two, let's do with this. Let's go investigate this
Speaker 5: party because this looks like fun. So they choose the second,
Speaker 5: of course. So the infantry goes up and they're like, hey, guys,
Speaker 5: what's going on. And the Hussars are like, get the
Speaker 5: hell out of here. We're having a party. And the
Speaker 5: infantry is like, we got some money, and the Hussars like,
Speaker 5: there's not enough booze for you, guys. There's not enough
Speaker 5: booze and girls and music to go around. This is
Speaker 5: our party. Get out of here, you know, want to
Speaker 5: go back to whatever you do? Tell them we're fine,
Speaker 5: tell them there's no turks, and say okay, get out
Speaker 5: of here. Okay. So the infantry is like, no, I
Speaker 5: don't want to. I want booze and music and dancing
Speaker 5: and party, and the Hussars at some point drunkenly form
Speaker 5: a barricade between themselves and the infantry, Like they fortify
Speaker 5: the booze wagons, like they flip some of the carts
Speaker 5: over and they like take cover behind them, and they
Speaker 5: form like a military defensive position around like.
Speaker 2: A frat weekend, like rush weekend gone wrong.
Speaker 5: It totally is right. You throw the couch out there,
Speaker 5: you flip the couch, you get up there, you start
Speaker 5: throwing rocks or whatever, and yeah, and that's it. So
Speaker 5: the Hussars build defensive fortifications around owned the girls and
Speaker 5: booze and music, and they're like, you can't come over here.
Speaker 5: And the soldiers now are getting angry, Like the infantry
Speaker 5: is getting angry because they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: This this bowl right like and so at some point
Speaker 5: there's more yelling and screaming and arguing, and at some
Speaker 5: point during this it starts to get pretty heated.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 5: These guys are screaming and yell each other, grabbing each
Speaker 5: other now and at some point, a shot, a gunshot
Speaker 5: goes off. Yes, so you know, in thinking about this
Speaker 5: and I don't know this for sure, But in thinking
Speaker 5: about this, my guess would be that it was probably
Speaker 5: some somebody with some rank firing a gun up in
Speaker 5: the air to be like, hey, everybody settled down, like
Speaker 5: we're going to babblah blah blah blah. You know, some sergeant,
Speaker 5: some grizzled guy just being like, here's the together, right, yes, right, Okay,
Speaker 5: So somebody fires a gun up in the air to
Speaker 5: try to get her body's attention. It doesn't work. It
Speaker 5: drives these guys into a frenzy and they start they
Speaker 5: think they're being shot at. They think somebody shot one
Speaker 5: of the other guys in the group, and they start
Speaker 5: fighting for real. They start punching and wrestling and like
Speaker 5: a swords are drawn and like another gun shot goes off,
Speaker 5: and yeah, yeah, it was like these guys were kind
Speaker 5: of worked up to this fever pitch right, like the
Speaker 5: enemy's coming blah blah, and they get this one moment
Speaker 5: where they can relax and then suddenly.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, shoot, like the war's like ah, and.
Speaker 5: So they start fighting each other.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, who knew that a gunshot would uh
Speaker 2: maybe freak out veterans of war.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so now we have a problem because back
Speaker 5: at the camp, we sent out our cavalry, they didn't return.
Speaker 5: We sent out our infantry, they didn't return. And I
Speaker 5: know what a gunshot sounds like, that was a gunshot.
Speaker 5: We had a problem. Something bad has happened. And so
Speaker 5: they start to wake people up, like get up, get up, like, hey,
Speaker 5: the Turks might be here now right, there's something's going on.
Speaker 5: Everybody wake up, so oh crap, Okay, what's happening. And
Speaker 5: then at some point this game of telephone across these
Speaker 5: hundred and seventy two thousand people, it's like it goes
Speaker 5: from like we don't know what's going on to like
Speaker 5: the Turks, the Turks are here, Like we get up,
Speaker 5: battles coming, like it was gonna be a fight, Like
Speaker 5: we get your stuff together, get fall in, load your weapons,
Speaker 5: let's go. Then there is more confusion back at the
Speaker 5: Romani camp. People are fighting and it's starting to get
Speaker 5: out of hand, and some people are starting to leave
Speaker 5: and go back to the camp. And at some point
Speaker 5: in this these guys are like really battling it out now,
Speaker 5: like people are getting hurt in the fight here. And
Speaker 5: at some point the camp guys in the camp start
Speaker 5: seeing guys coming through, coming across the field towards them,
Speaker 5: and they think it's the Turks and they open fire
Speaker 5: on them, and they open fire on them with artillery
Speaker 5: and guns, and like as soon as the first guy
Speaker 5: starts shooting at something moving around in the dark, everybody
Speaker 5: starts shooting it.
Speaker 3: Moving up there, shooting. He's unloading his clip. I want
Speaker 3: to I want to.
Speaker 5: Shoot it shot gun.
Speaker 2: This whole war serious, Well, it's like also, you know,
Speaker 2: you move as a unit, right, if you get that
Speaker 2: first report, then it means you have to do your
Speaker 2: job as well. And this is way before you know
Speaker 2: night vision.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or they're really just shooting at shapes in the
Speaker 5: dark that they don't know what they are. So gunfire
Speaker 5: starts to come in on this battle at the camp,
Speaker 5: and everybody in the camp starts to panic. The Hussars
Speaker 5: drunkenly get on their horses and take off running. But
Speaker 5: where are they gonna un They're gonna run to their
Speaker 5: camp because turns out they think they're under attack by
Speaker 5: the Turks also, so they go running back to their
Speaker 5: camp to report, like the Turks are here. The Turks
Speaker 5: are here, And so within moments of this firing starting.
Speaker 5: You have a squadron or at least a company of
Speaker 5: guys on horseback wearing funny hats that were inspired by
Speaker 5: the must.
Speaker 4: These are the tall boys, right, like the like the
Speaker 4: Guards and the Wizard of Oz kind of right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: picturing here, okay yep.
Speaker 2: And cylindrical fur lined yes, yes, and.
Speaker 5: The Turk is cab where it's just a smaller version
Speaker 5: of that same hat, so it's just a little bit
Speaker 5: shorter but the dark. So the these guys start running.
Speaker 5: The Hussars start running back to the camp with their
Speaker 5: swords out, yelling like the Turks the Turks, and these
Speaker 5: guys think they're the Turks, so they start shooting at them.
Speaker 5: The Hussars make it into the camp and start riding
Speaker 5: around the camp. So a lot of these guys who
Speaker 5: are waking up being like what's going on, they wake
Speaker 5: up to like horses running through their camp and they're like, oh, cramp,
Speaker 5: like the Turks they ambushed us, like our stupid emperor
Speaker 5: couldn't figure it out. Now we're now we're gonna die,
Speaker 5: and everybody's in our camp. They're already here killing everybody,
Speaker 5: and so people come out and they just start shooting
Speaker 5: at whatever they see, which is just movement everywhere in
Speaker 5: the camp. Everybody's coming out and shooting it in the
Speaker 5: dark at each other.
Speaker 2: That Danny DeVito and always sunny. So anyways, I started
Speaker 2: bling a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly what this is how you do it navigate.
Speaker 5: The officers in charge, the ones who maybe kind of
Speaker 5: have an idea of what's going on, they're yelling to stop.
Speaker 5: They're yelling halt, halt, halta, which is German first stop
Speaker 5: there is they're Austrians, right, halta alta Austrian army, and
Speaker 5: and the Croatians and the and the Italians and the
Speaker 5: Serbs are hearing a lah a la allah and so
Speaker 5: they're like, oh, they're everywhere, and so they start shooting
Speaker 5: and there's gunfire and the army, the Austrian army defeats
Speaker 5: itself and retreats, so they run away from the camp.
Speaker 2: Everybody's ben I have to possess there. Can you say that? Said?
Speaker 2: It's again?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's pretty good.
Speaker 5: Yes, the Austrian Army defeats itself and yeah, and the.
Speaker 3: Real cell phone there man, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Guys, we're kicking asses, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we are getting crushed by these guys, so they fight.
Speaker 5: It's a fighting withdrawal. So they're falling back and still
Speaker 5: firing into the darkness, right and to the point where
Speaker 5: the artillery is there, right, And you've got these guys
Speaker 5: and artillery at this point is cannons that are and
Speaker 5: wagons full of ammunition that are being pulled by horses, right,
Speaker 5: and they've brought them to the camp. They're in the
Speaker 5: back of the camp. They're in this position where they
Speaker 5: can be brought up to fire if they need to.
Speaker 5: But the guys who run the cannons, they ride on
Speaker 5: these wagons, on these horses. If the enemy's into camp
Speaker 5: with you, you're you're dead meat, right, What are you gonna do?
Speaker 5: Maybe you can fire this gunpoint like at them before
Speaker 5: you get cut down by somebody else. So these guys
Speaker 5: are like, the turks are here, we're toast. Let's get
Speaker 5: out of here. So they cut the reins on the horses,
Speaker 5: get on the horses and ride them off, leaving the
Speaker 5: wagon and the cart of ammunition behind, because you can't
Speaker 5: you're never gonna outrun the turks dragging all that stuff.
Speaker 5: So they they cut the way ride off on the
Speaker 5: horse is and leave the artillery and the ammunition. There's
Speaker 5: a story that the payroll for the army was also
Speaker 5: left behind the battle, just the war chests full of
Speaker 5: their their pay.
Speaker 3: No one was snared, even that the accountants took a lot.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, there is some speculation that somebody might have
Speaker 5: made off with that and might not have been left
Speaker 5: for the Turks, but it was not found.
Speaker 2: You can't prove a thing. The Statute of Limitations is passed.
Speaker 3: Yes, far far far past, so okay.
Speaker 5: There's also a story that in the confusion, Emperor Joseph
Speaker 5: the Second gets on a horse and tries to rally
Speaker 5: his men, and the horse panics and knocks him off
Speaker 5: and he falls into a creek.
Speaker 2: Oh, not a great look.
Speaker 5: Not a good look. So they fight a retreating battle
Speaker 5: against themselves, and the next day or a couple of
Speaker 5: days later, the Turkish armies arrive. The two Turkish forces arrive,
Speaker 5: and as the story goes, they show up and there's
Speaker 5: just a field of Austrian Hungarian soldiers, cannons, wagons, ammunition.
Speaker 5: Maybe those payroll chests there are somewhere between the numbers
Speaker 5: ranged from five hundred to ten thousand, ten thousand being
Speaker 5: an extremely high number. But that's the number you see
Speaker 5: quoted a lot for this, just dead, missing or wounded
Speaker 5: left on the battlefield. So the Turkish army shows up,
Speaker 5: they have won the Battle of karen Seb's and they
Speaker 5: weren't even there.
Speaker 2: They retroactively want it.
Speaker 5: Just on intimidation, just on reputation alone, just on.
Speaker 2: Street rep That's crazy, Ben, Do we know anything about
Speaker 2: how the Ottoman or Turkish forces reacted when.
Speaker 5: We have one? So the sources on this are a
Speaker 5: little messy, which is why people are like, you know,
Speaker 5: people sometimes have our arguments about the historical historiosity of
Speaker 5: this battle. Right, we know there was an Austrian army
Speaker 5: there at that time. We know that they were in
Speaker 5: an extremely defensible position, knowing that an enemy army was coming,
Speaker 5: and we know that they abandoned it for unknown reasons,
Speaker 5: undisclosed reasons that they left that position and didn't give
Speaker 5: reasons why. There was an article written about it in
Speaker 5: an Austrian newspaper a month after the battle. That gives
Speaker 5: kind of like there was a It gives kind of
Speaker 5: like a there was some confusion and some people died,
Speaker 5: and some houses got set on fire, and we anyway,
Speaker 5: in the confusion we had, we had to abandon the position.
Speaker 5: And basically the Turkish report on it is this is
Speaker 5: similar where they are like, we're not sure what happened here,
Speaker 5: but there must have been some confusion in the Austrian
Speaker 5: ranks and we took their position. Okay. It is interesting.
Speaker 5: I always think of this when I'm talking about this battle,
Speaker 5: that the Austrian flag at this time is a two
Speaker 5: headed eagle, like there's fighting itself. But I'd also say that, like,
Speaker 5: if this happened to my army, I would try to
Speaker 5: convince people it didn't.
Speaker 2: Also, yeah, you want to you, especially if you're an
Speaker 2: enlightened despot, Yeah you would, and you already run the
Speaker 2: educational institutions. You would want to.
Speaker 5: This is said, look for the military genius thing, right,
Speaker 5: and you're in a society where anybody who says you're
Speaker 5: not a military genius is going to go to jail.
Speaker 2: So you gonna manage the pr keep track of which
Speaker 2: fingernails get to stay in the fingers and yeah, have
Speaker 2: to get ripped out.
Speaker 5: So they retreat, and Joseph immediately after this goes home.
Speaker 5: After this time goes home. He's despondent. He's sick. He
Speaker 5: has some pulmonary issue and he's gonna he dies of
Speaker 5: it within like two years of this battle. He goes
Speaker 5: back and he's in really bad health and he's super
Speaker 5: sad about the way everything went down. Doesn't return to
Speaker 5: the battlefield, which also lends some credence to this story.
Speaker 5: The first version we see of this story was written
Speaker 5: forty forty years after the battle. That with all those details, right,
Speaker 5: and there's some being people being like, well, this guy
Speaker 5: just didn't like Joseph. But you know, a lot of
Speaker 5: the without another accounts, without another first hand account of
Speaker 5: what happened here, and a conflicting story, I think we
Speaker 5: have to go with this story. And all of the
Speaker 5: stuff that happens after this kind of fits the mold, right,
Speaker 5: Why would they give up this position without without a fight.
Speaker 5: And then Joseph immediately goes home and is sad and
Speaker 5: he's sick. Maybe he did fall in a creak and
Speaker 5: got pneumonia or something, but uh, yeah, so he goes home.
Speaker 5: He dies in seventeen ninety and uh and that's kind
Speaker 5: of the battle of Karen Sebb's.
Speaker 2: The war continues, guy, I feel no let's pause though,
Speaker 2: because now I feel bad for making fun of them,
Speaker 2: Like we dunked on him pretty hard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it kind of kind of. I mean,
Speaker 5: he does die a couple of years later, but he
Speaker 5: was old. Remember super That's Super Bowl. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: that's a good life right for that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The war continues. The Austrians regroup without Joseph running the army.
Speaker 5: The armies under the command of a guy named Prince
Speaker 5: Josiahs of Saxe Coburg. He's really effective. He teams up
Speaker 5: with the Russian general Alexander Suvarov, who's like one of
Speaker 5: the greatest war heroes in military geniuses of all time.
Speaker 5: They defeat the Turks, They drive them out of Serbia
Speaker 5: and Croatia and the Balkans in Romania. They sign a
Speaker 5: peace treaty that gives the Russians a bunch of lands
Speaker 5: from the Turks in exchange for Austria Hungary giving back
Speaker 5: Serbia and Croatia and Romania and the Balkans and all that.
Speaker 5: So the end of the war. The treaty signed that
Speaker 5: ends this war in seventeen ninety one, Austria Hungary. Austria
Speaker 5: Hungary gains no additional territory. Serbia is liberated for about
Speaker 5: a year and then returned to the Tarts and were
Speaker 5: really mad about it.
Speaker 2: Hey, can I share? Can I share with all of us?
Speaker 2: The epitaph on Joseph the Second's grave by all means
Speaker 2: it's it's uh, it's not. I don't know. We knowing
Speaker 2: all that we know now over these past few episodes,
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear what we think about this. He's
Speaker 2: buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, and his epitaph,
Speaker 2: at least his request was here lies a ruler who,
Speaker 2: despite his best intentions, was unsuccessful in all of his endeavors, and.
Speaker 4: He wrote that he will okay, well, then wait a minute,
Speaker 4: let's reassess here for a second.
Speaker 3: That means he had a little bit of humility and
Speaker 3: self awareness.
Speaker 2: He took an inventory.
Speaker 5: I think it would seem so I feel like stumbling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well I sure would be so.
Speaker 2: I guess the big takeaway here, Ben is that we
Speaker 2: should invade parts of Europe.
Speaker 5: Right land war in Europe? Yeah yeah, it's usually goes
Speaker 5: well for people. Let's do in Europe? What can go wrong?
Speaker 2: What could go wrong?
Speaker 3: So much? Did you not listen to the episode.
Speaker 5: I think the world here and I think the moral
Speaker 5: here is is uh, the importance of communication, communication between
Speaker 5: different working forces, leadership, communication and people skills, people skills, Yes,
Speaker 5: and maybe leave things to maybe leave like important jobs
Speaker 5: to people who know how to do them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder some advice that might apply to some Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Here's a horse in the hospital, as our pal John
Speaker 2: mulaney said, And how amazing would it be to hear
Speaker 2: the accounts of the horses involved in these shenanigans in
Speaker 2: this crazy friendly fire incident.
Speaker 4: I think we have a Disney movie in the making,
Speaker 4: the very least Pixar. Yeah, yeah, okay, maybe who should
Speaker 4: we pitch first? I think John mulaney should be the
Speaker 4: voice of the lead horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got it in him.
Speaker 4: He doesn't do enough animated voices. I think he's got
Speaker 4: a great voice.
Speaker 2: Ben, you should do some animated voices as well. Can
Speaker 2: we just volunteer you for that until you after the fact.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, I'll I'll voice.
Speaker 3: It's already happened. You heard it here first, folks. Ben
Speaker 3: will be the voice of the of the Plucky Dog.
Speaker 4: The animated adaptation of Homeward bound excellent, I can do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just bote up on the Turkish of the time,
Speaker 2: bonus points for Hungarian and and honestly thank you.
Speaker 3: Start right.
Speaker 5: It doesn't look.
Speaker 3: Surely not difficult.
Speaker 5: It didn't take me. It didn't take me twelve minutes
Speaker 5: of practicing to pronounce Karen Stebbies correctly.
Speaker 2: All right, I think you got it.
Speaker 5: And I don't think I did because I think it's
Speaker 5: a it's a it's like a Karen Stebbish. I think
Speaker 5: it's like a stage at the end. So all right,
Speaker 5: well is not good.
Speaker 2: You say that now, but we've got the whole weekend, man,
Speaker 2: So Ben.
Speaker 5: Something to do with my forty fifth year of life
Speaker 5: is to learn that that's Romanian.
Speaker 2: There we go. Happy birthday to you, Uh, to you,
Speaker 2: Ben Thompson, uh, the creator of bad Ass of the Week. Man.
Speaker 2: I we didn't know that you were recording with us
Speaker 2: on your birthday, Noel, I would have asked to reschedule.
Speaker 5: It's the only work. We gotta get it done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we would have brought something.
Speaker 4: Well, not only is it your birthday, it's the one
Speaker 4: hundredth birthday of Badass of the Week, the podcast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true. That's true. This will be because I'm
Speaker 5: gonna run this on my feet. This will be episode
Speaker 5: one two for me, So that is exciting stuff.
Speaker 4: Here's too Well, while I'm bond, we didn't make the
Speaker 4: cut for one oh one, one o two is a
Speaker 4: plenty good consolation.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we will also have this as a two
Speaker 2: part series over on Ridiculous History. Folks, if you like
Speaker 2: our show, you are going to love our brother Ben's show.
Speaker 2: Do check out Badass of the Week spoiler light spoilers.
Speaker 2: You can find Ben Noel and Ben hanging out in
Speaker 2: past episodes as well, so dig through the catalog, check
Speaker 2: out the archives. Ben. Where can people learn more about
Speaker 2: your work.
Speaker 5: Well, we can go to the website Badass of Theweek
Speaker 5: dot com. And you know, Badass of the Week is
Speaker 5: the name of the podcast. We update every week on Tuesdays,
Speaker 5: usually with a great badass from history. This week we
Speaker 5: were trying to be a little bit have a little
Speaker 5: bit more fun with it for there.
Speaker 3: The character is the war you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, My favorite character is the horse who said no way,
Speaker 2: I'm getting out of here, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: The horse was the one who was like, yeah, the
Speaker 5: horses wing to fire the gun and started the confusion.
Speaker 4: I think John mulaney would play the more timid horse,
Speaker 4: and then maybe we could have Eric Bautista come in
Speaker 4: and play one of the more aggressive kind of war horses.
Speaker 3: Who else we got.
Speaker 2: Bill Burr Gilbert It would be a perfect horse with
Speaker 2: an attitude. John mullaney as a horse is more observational humor,
Speaker 2: like that's.
Speaker 3: The protagonist, the John Mulleney horse.
Speaker 2: Guys, I don't know if these are Turks or Hussars.
Speaker 5: I mean maybe we could make an argument here, you know,
Speaker 5: like you said, like you know, we've kind of been
Speaker 5: been dunking on just with the second, but reading that epitaph,
Speaker 5: like there is something about like learning from your mistakes.
Speaker 5: There is something about us, about being able to recognize that,
Speaker 5: like having laws in place that like you can't criticize
Speaker 5: me only two at the end of your life realize
Speaker 5: actually there's some value in what these people were saying.
Speaker 5: And I should have listened, you know, having some kind
Speaker 5: of self realization in that way kind of kind of cool.
Speaker 3: I agree, So points for humility on your death, Ben, Yes,
Speaker 3: betterly than ever.
Speaker 2: And that is part two. Nol I fear I may
Speaker 2: have gone a little bit overboard. You know, I love birthdays, man,
Speaker 2: They're like the only real New Year's there's there. They're
Speaker 2: the perfect holiday and gosh, starret it. Ben Thompson took
Speaker 2: time from his own birthday to explore this story with us.
Speaker 3: What a guy. Thanks the Bens, and thanks to the Knowles.
Speaker 2: Thanks to, of course, our super producer Max Williams and
Speaker 2: his biological brother, our composer Alex Williams. Who else, who else?
Speaker 2: Who else?
Speaker 3: Oh? You know who else?
Speaker 4: Ben, Christopher asiotas you, Jeff Coats here in Spirit, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 4: the quiz ser Aj Bahamas, Jacob's the Puzzler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rachel Big Spinach, Lance the rude Dude's a ridiculous
Speaker 2: crime and oh, I forgot to say it. I owe
Speaker 2: Aj Bahamas and emails. So we're gonna follow up with that.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, Noel, I think we came up with
Speaker 2: some really good voice casting for our animated version of
Speaker 2: this friendly fire incident. You and I have to figure out.
Speaker 3: Which characters we will play.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I gotta be the bag man, even an
Speaker 4: animal form.
Speaker 3: We'll see the next time.
Speaker 4: Fox For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.