The winged hussars

[crazyladybutterfly]

[Hamlet]

An amazing story, pretty damn symbolic now too given what's been happening to Europe lately.

[War Chef]

For you:

[crazyladybutterfly]

The hussars as we know them first show up on the scene in the early 16th century as part of a hammer-smashing army of stone-cold motherfuckers under the Hungarian King Stefan Bathory. Bathory (who fought the Turks alongside Vlad the Impaler and was an ancestor of the infamous virgin-cidal blood countess and psychopath Elizabeth Bathory), basically levied the cavalry force by conscripting one out of every twenty Polish and Lithuanian peasants to strap on a pair of wings and a suit of heavy armor and start piercing the faces of anyone stupid enough to step to Eastern Europe. Over the next two hundred years, these ordinary dudes morphed into a ten-ton anvil of pointy justice that would go up against some of the toughest armies the world had to offer and completely fuck them inside out.

In 1577 a massive charge of this ultra-heavy cavalry unit smashed a German army from Danzig, blitzing into the teeth of a 12,000 man force and crushing them until all that remained was a well-trampled patch of red where the enemy army once used to be. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth losses in the battle totaled about 88 men, and most of those clowns weren't even Hussars. In 1601, a thousand Hussars defeated a Swedish cavalry force four times that size. At the Battle of Kircholm four years later, the Hussars (whose commanders' completely badass motto was "Kill First, Calculate Later"), sent 1,000 lancers in a charge against 11,000 Swedish infantrymen and cannons for some reason, and incredibly, despite the ridiculous idiocy of sending your elite troops on such an impossible mission, the friggin' Hussars jammed their poles (OMG AWESOME PUN FTW) into anything they could find and not only emerged victorious, but utterly slaughtered their opponents army, hacking the broken infantry units into giblets as they fled the field. Amazingly, that wasn't even the most impressive shit this mobile last stand accomplished in its proud heritage as the Commonwealth's premier exporter of busted-up faces. At the Battle of Klushino in 1610, the Hussars were outnumbered ten to one, and still somehow came out on top, utterly annihilating an army of 40,000 Swedes and Russians with just 4,000 lancers.

These guys went with the heaviest armor they could find, decking themselves out in fully-articulated plate mail at a time when most European armies were switching away from breastplates and over to firearms, but these ferocious warriors didn't even give a crap about rushing at state-of-the-art muskets with hand-to-hand combat weapons. Their primary implement of facial demolition was a lightweight (yet still completely insane) 19-foot lance capable of outreaching even the most well-endowed infantry spear hedges, and after they splintered that up the asses of their foes, the Hussars could fall back on pistols, a dagger, and one of two different types of swords.

Their armor was burnished and well-polished so that it gleamed in the sunlight (most Renaissance-era knights preferred black armor because it was more resistant to rust), they wore brightly-colored heraldry, and OH YEAH they also had giant-ass fucking wings strapped onto their backs. These wings, which were made of ostrich or eagle feathers glued onto wooden frames that arched up and over the back, made an insane whistling noise while the Hussars were charging, completely unsettling, terrifying, and overawing the enemy in the brief moments between when they said, "holy shit WTF" and when they had a kebab skewer jammed into their eye sockets at about a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Some of the Hussars also used to up the "wow factor" by stuffing severed heads down the tips of their weapons and charging into battle with a lance-full of heads, which sounds pretty gnarly.

The hussars were also super-well-trained, capable of changing directions and altering their formations in mid-charge, and then plowing through their enemy, circling around, and hitting them again from the rear.

While they have a long and illustrious string of asskickings under their heavyweight championship belts, the Winged Hussars' finest hour came during the epic Battle of Vienna in 1683, when the Ottoman Turkish armies were busting nuts across Eastern Europe looking to conquer all of Christendom. With the main body of the Holy Roman Imperial army completely surrounded and besieged by over 200,000 Turkish warriors, the badass Polish King Jan Sobieski led the single hugest and most balls-out cavalry charge in history. Their wings fluttering and zipping like creepy, spear-flinging birds of prey, three thousand Winged Hussars plowed into the Turkish force, driving them back, plundering their supply train, and driving the Turks from the field. It would be the furthest West the Ottoman Empire would ever advance, and it was the Poles who had finally stuffed them like Shaq blocking a layup attempt by Verne Troyer.

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/hussars.html

[Dick]

I wonder if they banned this movie, made in 2012, in western Europe. It's not PC!

[crazyladybutterfly]

The Winged Hussars were one of the most effective military forces in the world. They lost only a fraction of their battles and they were undefeated for 125 years.

The word “hussar” derives from the Hungarian Huszár. Exiled Serbian warriors introduced hussar horsemen – light cavalry armed with hollowed lance, Balkan-type shield, and sabre.
The first recorded evidence of hussars can be found in Polish treasury books dated 1500. Initially these troops were considered only light cavalry and were composed mainly of foreign mercenaries, called “Racowie”, (in Polish) meaning “from the Serbian state of Ras”.

By the second half of the 16th century and after Stephen Báthory’s reforms, hussars had been transformed into heavily armored shock cavalry.
The true “winged hussar” arrived with the reforms of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Stephen Bathory in the 1570s and was later led by the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Jan III Sobieski.
Until the reforms of the 1770s, the husaria banners were considered the elite of the Polish cavalry. It was not until the 1570s that the Polish Hussars finally came into their full glory. This was the Golden era, when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had become one of the largest, most powerful and most populated nation in all of Europe. To differ from Hungarian hussars, Polish-Lithuanian hussars came with their own style and their armor was entirely different.
Each of the hussars was recruited from wealthier Polish and Lithuanian nobility, and together they were referred to as the “szlachta”.

The Polish-Lithuanian hussars’ primary battle tactic was the charge. They carried the charge to, and through the enemy. This was a key to their victories. They also tended to repeat the charge several times until the enemy formation broke (they had supply wagons with spare lances). The charging attack and heavy weight of their armor and horses guaranteed victory for nearly two centuries. The hussars fought with a long lance, a szabla (sabre), 1 or 2 pistols, and often with a carbine or arquebus, known in Polish as a bandolet, and sometimes a war hammer or light axe.

As guns and artillery improved, heavy cavalry had less and less uses on battlefield. Winged Hussars were finally disbanded in 1776, when they were succeeded by much lighter Uhlans, light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols.

Read more: http://www.messagetoeagle.com/winged...#ixzz4aDxJqxZA

Read more: http://www.messagetoeagle.com/winged...#ixzz4aDxAqG2W

Read more: http://www.messagetoeagle.com/winged...#ixzz4aDwoih7T

Read more: http://www.messagetoeagle.com/winged...#ixzz4aDwZd5cD
Read more: http://www.messagetoeagle.com/winged...#ixzz4aDwQfcVB

[Dick]

The Winged Hussars were one of the most effective military forces in the world. They lost only a fraction of their battles and they were undefeated for 125 years.

The word “hussar” derives from the Hungarian Huszár. Exiled Serbian warriors introduced hussar horsemen – light cavalry armed with hollowed lance, Balkan-type shield, and sabre.
The first recorded evidence of hussars can be found in Polish treasury books dated 1500. Initially these troops were considered only light cavalry and were composed mainly of foreign mercenaries, called “Racowie”, (in Polish) meaning “from the Serbian state of Ras”.

Gusar/Hussar means mercenary.

[Anthony PV]

Who will win? The Polish winged hussars or the traditional Hungarian hussars?



← Me, trying to drive a wedge between two allied nations...

Post-scriptum: Since when does the OP has an interest for military history?

[Peterski]

19-foot lance capable of outreaching even the most well-endowed infantry spear hedges

Crazylady just admit - you want to be stabbed by a Polish lance.

[crazyladybutterfly]

In 1529, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman “the Magnificent” marched into the heart of Europe; attempting to capture the city of Vienna, capital of the Hapsburg-led Holy Roman Empire. This first Siege of Vienna ended in failure for the Turks; temporarily halting their advance.

The central Balkans became the frontier between Christian and Muslim for the next century-and-a-half; in a desultory war of raid and counter raid. Then, in 1683, the Turks were back, again laying siege to the Hapsburg capital, Vienna.

Europe may have looked ripe for conquest to the Sultans and their viziers in Constantinople (later Istanbul). The Protestant Reformation had given rise to the Wars of Religion in France; and the devastating 30 Years War in Germany (which killed an estimated 25%-40% of the population). Though the Peace of Westphalia had brought active hostilities to a close, the Protestant and Catholic states were still deeply divided.

Europe was not only divided along religious lines, but along national lines as well. Poland was not the only nation beset by troublesome neighbors. The Hapsburg rulers of Austria were under pressure from the expansionist policies of the French “Sun King“, Louis XIV; who was pushing the borders of France into Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland. This threat to their German possessions had Hapsburg Austria fixated on their western borders.

Against this backdrop, the Turks prepared for a renewed thrust into central Europe. Carefull preparation over many years, building up supply depots, repairing roads, and the massing of troops came to fruition in 1683. A massive Turkish army (estimated by various sources as between 150,000 and 300,000 strong), led by the Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa, marched north from Adrianople on April 2, 1683. Their goal: the conquest of Vienna!

By mid-July, the Turks were before the city. The second siege of Vienna began.

From July 14, when the Turks began bombarding the city with 300 guns, till mid-September the siege went on. Though the garrison was small (only some 2,000 troops, augmented by civilian militia) and the defenses incomplete; the city held out desperately. Much of the battle was conducted underground, where Turkish miners, tunneling under the defenses and attempting to plant explosives, were met by Austrian counter-mines. Fierce battles took place above and below ground; with the defenders slowly losing ground.

By September, the city was in desperate straits, and its fall was imminent. The century-and-a-half long goal of the Ottoman Sultans, to seize Vienna and use it as a spring-board for Muslim expansion into the heart of Europe, seemed within their grasp.

In early September, a relief force was coming to the city’s aid. This coalition force consisted of 47,000 troops from Austrian and Holy Roman Empire (Germans) led by Charles Duke of Lorraine; and a Polish army some 37,000 strong, led by King Jan Sobieski. The cream of this force was the Husaria, 3,000 strong.

On September 1o, the coalition army formed made its way through the Wienerwald, the series of forested hills ringing Vienna to the south and west. Their destination was the Kahlenberg ridge overlooking the Vienna plain, where lay the Turkish camp. It was incredibly rough going; Fortunately for the allies and for the city, the Turks did little to oppose their advance; as Kara Mustafa concentrated on capturing the city before the relief force could arrive. This failure to oppose the allies in the difficult terrain of the Wienerwald was to prove a fatal error.

On the morning of September 12, the allies had obtained their goal; and were poised to attack onto the plain. Kara Mustafa could no longer ignore the coming relief force. Leaving troops to continue the assault on the city, he deployed the bulk of his army in line facing the allies advancing from the Kahlenberg ridge.

All day long the allied infantry, supported by artillery hauled at great pains through the forested Wienerwald, slogged forward through the broken terrain. Lorraine and his sub-commanders found themselves fighting countless minor skirmishes over every farmhouse and vineyard, as the allied forces inched forward.

On the allied right, Sobieski and the Polish forces were the last to arrive in position, having the furthest to travel and very tough terrain to traverse. Finally, at 1 PM the Poles were in position atop the Kahlenberg. The advance was led by infantry as they pushed through broken terrain, clearing away Turkish skirmishers and brushing off periodic attacks. At 2 PM, the Polish Royal Army came in-line with the rest of the struggling allies. A great cheer rose from the Imperial troops, greeting the Poles’ arrival.

By 4PM the Polish advance had reached the flat ground necessary for a successful charge. Now the Hussars moved to the front, through the intervals in the infantry line.


First a few companies were detailed to probe the enemy’s center, where they succeeded in disordering the Turkish first line. As the Poles withdrew, the Ottoman commander on the Turkish left must have thought the Poles were now vulnerable to counter-attack; and ordered the Ottoman cavalry on that wing to attack Sobieski’s horsemen.

Clearing a last line of vineyards, the Hussars now began a charge in mass. With the cry of “Jezus Maria ratuj“, the password of the day on their lips, and their king at their head, the Poles advanced at a canter. The Imperial infantry to their left paused in their own attack to take in the awe-inspiring sight. At 50 paces, with the order “Zlozcie kopie” (“lower lances!”) the Hussars broke into full gallop, lances lowering like “stalks of rye in the wind”. Into the oncoming Turkish cavalry, Sipahis and akinci, they tore!

Scattering the Turkish outriders, Sobieski now ordered the Hussars to charge home against the center of the Turkish camp. With an audible crash and shattering of lances they smashed home into the Janissaries. The Turkish line recoiled, and after receiving still another charge from the far-right squadrons of Polish horse crumbled. Soon the entire Turkish line was fleeing headlong in a disorderly mob from the pursuing Hussars.

The siege was over, and Vienna was saved. The Turkish drive into central Europe ended in defeat; and in the coming years the Imperial forces, led by the brilliant Prince Eugene of Savoy would drive the Turks out of Hungary entirely.



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