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Bizarre Battles, Silly Sieges

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Lt. General
Mar 22, 2008
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Do you know of any ingeniously won sieges or battles?
Battles, sieges and even wars that were won by an unexpected move, dumb luck,...

I just read a post where someone said something about Pereira taking a Castillian castle with cows :eek: (anyone knows more about this?) , that's the kind of thing i would be looking for here.
 
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During the Spanish-Dutch wars of the 16th-17th centuries, a group of Dutchmen seized... Castle Ammersoyen(That one?) by dressing up as Dominican monks and being let inside. Drawing their hidden weapons, they overwhelmed the small garrison and raised their standards over the won fort :D
 
Well, if Tolstoy is to be believed, the French Marshals Ney and Oudinot (?) prevented bridges over the Danube from being blown up by the Austrians by going forward alone and making the Austrians believe a peace had been signed already, while their troops crept up, overwhelmed the Austrians guarding it and took the bridges.

Then of course, there's the Trojan horse story....

Then in the War of 1812, the surrender of Fort Detroit is interesting. General Brock had some native allies with his extremely outnumbered and ill-supplied force, who kept repeatedly jumping in and out of bushes or something like that to make it appear as though there were more of them. The American garrison commander got nervous (both by this 'large' force of natives and their reputation for scalping people...) and so he surrendered the fort on condition that the natives be reigned in. Brock agreed, and captured a huge force, alot of supplies and armaments, all with a ruse.
 
jeffg006 said:
During the Spanish-Dutch wars of the 16th-17th centuries, a group of Dutchmen seized... Castle Ammersoyen(That one?) by dressing up as Dominican monks and being let inside. Drawing their hidden weapons, they overwhelmed the small garrison and raised their standards over the won fort :D
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The Dutch also seized Breda (IIRC) by hiding soldiers in the ship bringing peat to the fortress, and when the ship was let through the gates, they jumped out and overwhelmed the garrison.
 
Avernite said:
The Dutch also seized Breda (IIRC) by hiding soldiers in the ship bringing peat to the fortress, and when the ship was let through the gates, they jumped out and overwhelmed the garrison.
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That war is full of curious examples
For instance Verdugo took Steenwijk scaling the walls, the day before a woman, a Spy in spanish pay, had her hat taken by the wind to the pond circunding the town walls, when she went for it she wasn fact recognizing the depththe pond, and as it was only knee deep the following night Verdugo ordered the general assault.
In 1597 the Spaniards took Amiens with an elaborate trick, Some soldiers disguised as peasants driving a wagon enter the city, but they faked an accident, the wagon losing a wheel just when it was crossing the gates, so that they could not be closed quickly, meanwhile 500 soldiers ambushed the night before in a nearby old church run to the gates, taking the city by storm.
 
Finnish Dragon said:
If we are talking about bizarre battles then we should mention Battle of Karánsebes in September 17, 1788. Losing more than 10.000 men as dead or wounded by friendly fire is bizarre in my books. :D
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Sounds made up, to be honest.

-The only translation is in the Spanish wiki
-The German wiki article on Joseph II and the Austro-Turkish war doesn't even mention it
-There were no Romanian infantry regiments in the Austrian army (granted, I only looked at the Austrian army during the Napoleonic Wars, but close enough), which means there'd only be few Romanians here and there and not enough to put a whole army to flight by shouting 'The Turks'.
-The hussar regiments were all composed mostly of Hungarians (as is the name of the town), although there is no reference to the battle on the Hungarian wiki and no reference to Hungarians in the English article itself.
-It sounds idiotic to begin with and the inclusion of gypsies selling schnapps to travelling soldiers only further heightens this pretension. No self-respecting Hungarian hussar would drink anything but red wine or palinka. :eek:o

Edit: Also, the inclusion of idiotic parts like that it was gypsies selling alcohol, Austrians shooting at shadows in the night with artillery, the soldiers who could not understand each other mistaking Halt for Allah, the drunken party and all, makes it sound like it was written by someone with no knowledge of the area in general or the Austrian army in particular, who wanted to make it seem like he knew what he was talking about by throwing in the words: gypsies, Slavs, minorities, etc.
 
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This is the description given by Joseph II himself in a letter (from M.Z.Mayer monography on the campaign)

"Everythïng was proceeding in the greatest order and we would have arrived
in Caransebes without the enemy's knowledge for it was night All of a
sudden a group of Wallachians.. became alarmed and fired their rifles
which threw a unit of hussars and dragoons into confusion .... They
answered this fire before finally attacking the infantry.... The column in
which I found myself was completely dispersed. Cannons, wagons and all
the tents were turned over, it was horrible; [my] soldiers shooting at each
other! Eventually calm was restored, and we were luckyethat the Turks
were not on our trail otherwise the whole army would have been
destroyed. Nevertheless, we lost not only the pots and tents with
considerable damage to other baggage but also three pieces of artillery."

The loss of 3 pieces is a long way from losing 10.000 men, that is traced back to P. Bernard article on Joseph II, but as he doesn´t mention sources it is probably made up.
 
Wasnt the siege of Carcassonne solved by the defenders in firing a pig over the walls? or is this a myth ?
 
Graf Zeppelin said:
Wasnt the siege of Carcassonne solved by the defenders in firing a pig over the walls? or is this a myth ?
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A pig stuffed with grain, so when it... burst... the besieging Frankish army would think the besieged Moors inside had plenty of food left, and so lifted the siege.

Of course it's a myth!:D

Linky to one of the many Carcassonne touristy sites carrying the story; scroll down to the section about where the name comes from (mythical Saracen female ruler called "Dame Carcas"):
http://www.francemonthly.com/n/0401/index.php
 
Gigalocus said:
I was wandering how long it would take for this one to come up. Everyone here loves it ;)
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Yeah. I really wondered what happened. It seems to be that articles on Caransebes in Wikipedia offer more information about that battle than just articles about the battle of Caransebes. English, French, Hungarian and Italian wiki webpages on city of Karansebes mention the date of that battle shortly if I translated them correctly. I am certain that something happened there in that date, September 17, 1788.
 
Finnish Dragon said:
Yeah. I really wondered what happened. It seems to be that articles on Caransebes in Wikipedia offer more information about that battle than just articles about the battle of Caransebes. English, French, Hungarian and Italian wiki webpages on city of Karansebes mention the date of that battle shortly if I translated them correctly. I am certain that something happened there in that date, September 17, 1788.
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Not really. The English article says "during the wars" and "in 1788". Not exactly specific on either account. The Hungarian article also seems to have been copied directly from the English (especially as on the Hungarian pages for Joseph II and the Austro-Turkish war, there's no reference, as well as no specific article for this battle).

Here's what the reference is on the Hungarian wiki that you mentioned:

1788-ban itt zajlott le a karánsebesi csata a császári hadak különböző alakulatai között, amelyek egymást török csapatoknak hitték. Ezután a törökök akadálytalanul törtek be a városba és felégették.

"In 1788, the battle of Karánsebes took place here, between the various elements of the Imperial army, which believed each other to be the Turkish army. After this, the Turks broke into the town and burned it without any opposition."

No mention of the actual battle, the losses, the exact date or anything.
Plus, the Hungarian wiki has a nasty habit of borrowing material, references and all from the English wiki, just translating it. :(

The German article just mentions how it was part of the Austrian military frontier with no reference to the battle.

The French article mentions the battle as the only bit of history associated with the town. A copying job is most likely the case if that's the only bit of history they have for it. :eek:o

Personally, I think if the battle did happen (which is dubious in the first place), it certainly wasn't 10,000 dead and wounded.
 
Aryaman said:
That war is full of curious examples
For instance Verdugo took Steenwijk scaling the walls, the day before a woman, a Spy in spanish pay, had her hat taken by the wind to the pond circunding the town walls, when she went for it she wasn fact recognizing the depththe pond, and as it was only knee deep the following night Verdugo ordered the general assault.
In 1597 the Spaniards took Amiens with an elaborate trick, Some soldiers disguised as peasants driving a wagon enter the city, but they faked an accident, the wagon losing a wheel just when it was crossing the gates, so that they could not be closed quickly, meanwhile 500 soldiers ambushed the night before in a nearby old church run to the gates, taking the city by storm.
Click to expand...
You also have the "machine from hell" at the siege of Antwerpen, which almost killed the entire Spanish officer corps with a huge explosion, the "siege by mill" of Den Bosch and various tricks by Maurice of Nassau (the peat ship being the best known).
 
Finnish Dragon said:
Yeah. I really wondered what happened. It seems to be that articles on Caransebes in Wikipedia offer more information about that battle than just articles about the battle of Caransebes. English, French, Hungarian and Italian wiki webpages on city of Karansebes mention the date of that battle shortly if I translated them correctly. I am certain that something happened there in that date, September 17, 1788.
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Did you read my previous post $12? I think that it is pretty clear from that what was that "battle"
 
Victor1234 said:
Not really. The English article says "during the wars" and "in 1788". Not exactly specific on either account. The Hungarian article also seems to have been copied directly from the English (especially as on the Hungarian pages for Joseph II and the Austro-Turkish war, there's no reference, as well as no specific article for this battle).

Here's what the reference is on the Hungarian wiki that you mentioned:

1788-ban itt zajlott le a karánsebesi csata a császári hadak különböző alakulatai között, amelyek egymást török csapatoknak hitték. Ezután a törökök akadálytalanul törtek be a városba és felégették.

"In 1788, the battle of Karánsebes took place here, between the various elements of the Imperial army, which believed each other to be the Turkish army. After this, the Turks broke into the town and burned it without any opposition."

No mention of the actual battle, the losses, the exact date or anything.
Plus, the Hungarian wiki has a nasty habit of borrowing material, references and all from the English wiki, just translating it. :(

The German article just mentions how it was part of the Austrian military frontier with no reference to the battle.

The French article mentions the battle as the only bit of history associated with the town. A copying job is most likely the case if that's the only bit of history they have for it. :eek:o

Personally, I think if the battle did happen (which is dubious in the first place), it certainly wasn't 10,000 dead and wounded.
Click to expand...

When I first read the story, I didn't believe it, looking around on google, I found several websites confirming the details ...
 
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