In 1788 an Army Fought Itself in the Dark and Hundreds of Its Own Soldiers Died

 On the night of September 21 and 22 in 1788 the Austrian army suffered one of its worst defeats of the Austro-Turkish War.

The Turks were not involved.

The Austrian army defeated itself.

What Happened

The Austrian army of around 100,000 men had set up camp near the town of Karansebes in what is now Romania. A group of cavalry scouts crossed a river to look for Turkish forces. Instead of enemy soldiers they found a group of Romani traders who were selling schnapps.

The scouts bought the schnapps and started drinking.

When the infantry arrived to cross the river the cavalry did not want to share. They set up an improvised barrier to keep the infantry out. An argument broke out.

Someone fired a shot. Nobody is entirely sure who.

In the dark and confusion that followed soldiers started shouting that the Turks were coming. The cry spread through the camp. Soldiers who had been asleep woke up in a panic and grabbed their weapons. In the darkness and noise the different ethnic groups that made up the Austrian army, Germans, Czechs, Croatians, Italians, and others, could not communicate clearly with each other. When soldiers shouted warnings in one language soldiers who did not understand that language assumed they were enemy soldiers.

The entire army started fighting itself.

Artillery opened fire on its own troops. Infantry charged into infantry. Cavalry rode over their own men.

By the time dawn came the army had scattered across miles of countryside. Somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 men were dead or wounded depending on which historical account you read. The precise number was never confirmed because the records of the chaos are themselves chaotic.

When the actual Turkish army arrived two days later they found the site of a massive battle with no enemy. They advanced almost unopposed.

What This Tells Us

The Battle of Karansebes is funny in the way that only things that happened to other people are funny. For the people involved it was a catastrophe.

It happened because of a chain of small failures that combined into a disaster. Alcohol. Communication breakdown between soldiers who spoke different languages. Panic spreading faster than clear information. Command structures that collapsed when the confusion started.

None of those things are unique to the 18th century Austrian army. They are failures that happen in any large complex organization operating under stress.

The specific details of drunk cavalry and schnapps traders are colorful. The underlying story of how chaos compounds and spreads through systems is relevant to understanding almost any organizational disaster in history.

It also makes for one of the most extraordinary military stories ever told. An army of 100,000 men. Not one Turkish soldier. And somehow thousands dead.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

Australia Declared War on Emus in 1932 and the Emus Won

 In 1932 the Australian government declared war on emus.

This is not a joke. It is documented military history. And the emus won.

What Happened

After World War One the Australian government gave former soldiers land grants in Western Australia to farm. The area was already home to large populations of emus. Large mobs of emus, sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands, were destroying the crops the farmers had worked hard to establish.

The farmers appealed to the government for help. The government's response was to send the military.

In November of 1932 a small military unit arrived in Western Australia armed with two Lewis guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Their commander was Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery. Their mission was to reduce the emu population.

What they found was not what they expected.

The emus scattered whenever soldiers approached. The birds moved in small groups that were hard to target and impossible to herd together for efficient elimination. When soldiers did manage to open fire the emus absorbed bullets with what observers described as supernatural durability and kept running.

Major Meredith noted that the emus seemed to be able to face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. He said they could face bullets like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop.

After several days of mounting ammunition expenditure and minimal emu casualties the operation was called off.

It was restarted a few weeks later. It went the same way. The military withdrew again.

The ornithologist overseeing the operation recommended the campaign be abandoned. A parliamentary debate in Canberra discussed the failure. A member of parliament suggested the Major involved should be given a military medal but with emus on it.

What the Emus Did Right

Looking at this from a purely tactical standpoint the emus did several things that made them nearly impossible to fight effectively.

They dispersed when threatened instead of bunching together. This is an excellent counter to area weapons like machine guns which require concentrated targets.

They were fast and unpredictable on open ground.

They were physically tough. Emus are large birds built for running across harsh terrain.

None of these were strategic decisions. They were just what emus do. But they were enough to defeat a military operation backed by the Australian government.

The emus were declared the winners by virtually everyone who studied the operation afterward including Australian ornithologists and military historians.

The farmers eventually got relief not from guns but from fencing programs that kept the emus off the crops.

The Great Emu War is funny. It is also a genuinely interesting story about the limits of military solutions to problems that require different approaches. Sometimes the problem is not one that bullets can solve.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

Religion Is Still Being Used to Control People Right Now and Here Is How to See It

 Everything we have talked about in this series, the pharaohs claiming to be gods, the Roman emperors absorbing Christianity into the imperial structure, the Crusades launched for political as well as spiritual reasons, might feel like ancient history.

It is not.

The same patterns are operating right now. The tools have been updated. The underlying mechanics are identical.

What the Pattern Looks Like

Every time a government or political movement uses religion as a tool of control it follows the same basic structure.

Step one. Attach your political agenda to God's will. Not just claim God's blessing but claim that your specific policy positions, your specific enemies, your specific version of social order, are divinely commanded. Anyone who disagrees is not just politically wrong. They are opposing God.

Step two. Use religious identity as a loyalty test. If you are a true believer you support the political agenda. If you oppose the political agenda you must not be a true believer. This makes religious identity and political identity the same thing and makes dissent feel like apostasy.

Step three. Identify an enemy who threatens both the religious and political order. The enemy might be a foreign power, a religious minority, an ethnic group, a political movement. The important thing is that opposing this enemy is framed as a religious duty.

Step four. Promise spiritual rewards for political loyalty. Those who support the cause are not just good citizens. They are soldiers in God's army. Their sacrifices serve a cosmic purpose. Their suffering is meaningful because God is watching and will reward them.

This is the structure of the pharaoh's claim to divinity. It is the structure of the medieval church's claim to political authority. It is the structure of every theocratic government that has ever existed. And it shows up in various degrees in political movements that would not call themselves theocratic.

How to Recognize It

When a political leader claims their authority comes from God rather than from the consent of the governed that is a warning sign. Democratic legitimacy comes from the people. Divine mandate is not subject to election.

When a political movement frames its policy agenda as God's will in ways that make disagreement impossible without challenging faith that is a warning sign. Legitimate religious belief and legitimate political disagreement can coexist. When they cannot that is worth examining.

When religious identity and political identity become completely fused so that leaving one means leaving the other that is a warning sign. Religion and politics are not the same thing. When they are treated as identical someone is benefiting from that fusion and it is usually not ordinary believers.

When political enemies are described in religious terms, as evil, as spiritually corrupt, as agents of darkness, rather than as people with different views that is a warning sign. Dehumanizing opponents through religious language has historically preceded some of the worst violence in human history.

What Is Worth Defending

None of this is an argument against religion itself. Human beings need meaning, community, moral frameworks, and ways of engaging with the questions that science alone cannot answer. Religion has served those needs for all of human history and continues to serve them.

What is worth defending against is the use of religious institutions and religious identity by political actors to serve their own power interests rather than the genuine spiritual needs of their followers.

The pharaoh who claimed to be God was not trying to help his people get to heaven. He was trying to make them easier to govern. Every ruler since who has wrapped their politics in the language of divine will has been doing the same thing.

Knowing that history does not make you anti-religious. It makes you a harder person to manipulate.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.