The air outside Karansebes was freezing, and the Austrian army was exhausted. It was 1788, they were at war with the Ottoman Empire, and everyone’s nerves were shredded. A small troop of hussars (cavalrymen) rode ahead to scout for the enemy. They didn’t find any Ottoman soldiers, but they did find a group of locals selling schnapps. Naturally, they bought the whole supply.
An hour later, a group of infantrymen marched up, tired, cold, and sober. They saw the hussars partying and demanded a drink. The hussars refused, quickly building a makeshift barricade around the alcohol barrels. A shouting match turned into pushing, a fistfight broke out, and then, in the pitch black someone fired a pistol.
Panic is a virus. In the dark, a soldier screamed, “The Turks! The Turks!”
The infantrymen, thinking they were being ambushed, fled in terror. The hussars, drunk and confused, thought the same thing and charged blindly after them. The army was made up of soldiers from different countries who didn’t speak the same language. When German officers started yelling “Halt! Halt!”, the non-German soldiers mistook the word for “Allah! Allah!” and assumed the enemy was already inside the camp.
Artillery crews began firing cannons into the dark at their own moving troops. Men turned on men, hacking away at shadows. By the time the sun came up, the entire army had completely scattered in a chaotic retreat, leaving thousands of their own wounded or dead. When the actual Ottoman army arrived two days later, they found a completely empty battlefield littered with broken wagons and discarded weapons.
Interesting