Battle of Olasch
Copper engraving
| date | August 26, 1696 |
|---|---|
| place | Olashin / Cenei , Romania |
| output | Ottoman victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 38,000 | 60,000 |
| losses | |
|
approx. 3,000 |
approx. 4,000 |
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The Battle of Olasch , also known as the Battle of the Bega , was a military conflict during the Great Turkish War that took place on August 26, 1696. The armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire met in it . The battle resulted from the ultimately successful attempt by the Ottomans to relieve the city of Timisoara , which was besieged by the imperialists . The fight ended in a draw despite heavy losses on both sides.
prehistory
The imperial army under the command of the Saxon Elector Friedrich August von Sachsen planned to take the Ottoman fortress Timisoara in the summer of 1696 . He left a corps with Titel . However, the preparations dragged on, so that the siege could not begin until August 3rd . On the other hand, the Ottoman Sultan Mustafa II brought up a relief army . He went in Pancevo on the Danube and reached on 15 August, the Timis . In a council of war , the imperial command decided on August 19 to temporarily lift the siege and to face the opposing army south of the city. When the imperial army approached the Ottoman , this near Párdány (Pardan) had taken an entrenched position between two swamps . Friedrich August originally had no intention of attacking this position. Instead, he planned to maneuver himself to the corps at Titel via Becskerek , to unite with them and to cut off the Ottomans from their base in Belgrade . Mustafa II saw through this intention and thwarted Friedrich August's plans with a flank march.
course
On August 26, 1696 there was a battle on the Bega River . Both sides had initially tried to avoid each other. Mustafa II had cleverly pushed himself up to the fortress and stood closer to it at the beginning of the fight, with which he had already succeeded in relieving the city. Friedrich August decided against the votes in the council of war to attack, in order to achieve a success. The left wing advanced against strong artillery fire and ran against the Ottoman field positions. At this point, however, Mustafa II had his cavalry line up for a counter-attack, which threw back the left wing of the imperial family. The Saxon battalions Jordan and Bornstädt suffered particularly high losses. Only the intervention of the imperial cavalry stabilized the situation for the imperial ones again, but Field Marshal Donat Graf Heissler was fatally wounded in battle . (He died five days later in Szeged ). When it got dark, the fighting ended. The center and the right imperial wing had also come into action. While they have also had little success, they have not suffered any setbacks. The next morning the two armies faced each other in order of battle, but neither dared to attack again.
consequences
The battle ended in a tactical draw. However, Mustafa II maintained the Timisoara fortress and was thus able to achieve an operational success. The imperial army took control of the Bega and united with the separate corps at Titel. After the battle, Friedrich August was accused by the imperial generals of the war council of having been drunk during the fight. But he said the generals had not done their job. In the autumn of 1696 the elector resigned because he wanted to get involved in the question of the Polish succession to the throne. His successor in the supreme command was Prince Eugene of Savoy .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Tony Sharp: Pleasure and ambition: the life, loves and wars of Augustus the Strong, 1670-1707 , London 2001, pp. 125, 279
- ^ David Chandler: Warfare in the Age of Marlborough , London 1976
- ↑ a b c Max von Turek: Turkish Wars of the Austrians , in: Bernhard von Poten (Ed.): Concise Dictionary of All Military Sciences , Vol. 9, Velhagen & Klasing, Leipzig / Bielfeld 1880, p. 196
- ↑ Georg Piltz: August the Strong - Dreams and Deeds of a German Prince , Berlin (East) 1986, p. 44f
- ↑ Georg Piltz: August the Strong - Dreams and Deeds of a German Prince , Berlin (East) 1986, p. 45
literature
- Max von Turek: Turkish Wars of the Austrians. In: Bernhard von Poten (Ed.): Concise dictionary of the entire military sciences , Vol. 9, Velhagen & Klasing, Leipzig / Bielfeld 1880, pp. 187–198.
- Paul Haake: The Turkish campaigns of August the Strong 1695 and 1696. In: New archive for Saxon history and antiquity , Vol. 24 (1903), pp. 134–154.
- Georg Piltz : August the Strong. Dreams and deeds of a German prince. New life publishing house, Berlin (East) 1986. ISBN 3-355-00012-4
- Tony Sharp: Pleasure and ambition. The life, loves and wars of Augustus the Strong, 1670-1707. IB Tauris, London 2001. ISBN 978-1-86064-619-5 ( limited online version in Google book search)
- Hans-Joachim Böttcher : The Turkish Wars in the Mirror of Saxon Biographies , Gabriele Schäfer Verlag Herne 2019, ISBN 978-3-944487-63-2 . Pp. 173-183.