#BATTLE OF VIENNA WINGED HUSSARS PATCH#
#BATTLE OF VIENNA WINGED HUSSARS FULL#

While the badass weaponry and armor was unquestionably utilitarian, the Winged Hussars also went that extra mile to ensure that they were armor-crappingly terrifying while charging ahead in perfect formation. Why they needed two different swords is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but I'm pretty sure that I support it. 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. 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. What might be even more awesome then the Winged Hussars' much-deserved reputation as seemingly-invincible shit-wreckers is their completely over-the-top awesome battle gear. 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. 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 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. In 1601, a thousand Hussars defeated a Swedish cavalry force four times that size. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth losses in the battle totaled about 88 men, and most of those clowns weren't even Hussars.

#BATTLE OF VIENNA WINGED HUSSARS PATCH#

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. The combat record of the Winged Hussars stands for itself. 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. 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. 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.

#BATTLE OF VIENNA WINGED HUSSARS FULL#

These daring, brave, unabashedly-feathered badasses crushed throats up and down Europe for two centuries, annihilating battle-tested armies three times their size with nothing more than a huge-ass lance, an awesome set of ultra-cool wings, and a gym bag full of iron-plated armor ballsacks.

Well not only are the wild claims of that infamous engagement dubious at best, but it's time that the Polish cavalry – and particularly the Winged Hussars – get appropriately recognized as one of the most eye-skeweringly hardcore associations of asskickers ever assembled.

Invariably, whenever most people talk about the military prowess of the Polish cavalry, some joker busts out with some intelligent, well-constructed argument that vaguely resembles something along the order of 'YA RITE HOW BOUT CHARGIN NAZI TANKS W HORSIES FTW LOLOLOL OMG I”M HILARIOUS SOMEBODY LOVE ME PLS'.

Battle of vienna winged hussars