Battle of Olasch
1696 battle in the Great Turkish War
The Battle of Olasch (also Ólas, Ulaş, Olaschin) took place after a Habsburg Imperial army led by Saxon Elector General, Augustus II the Strong, laid siege to Turkish held Temesvár. On 26 August 1696, after learning that Sultan Mustafa II's relief army was crossing the Danube at Pancsova, Augustus gave up the siege and headed to meet the Ottoman army. The battle near the Bega River resulted in a draw after both armies retreated with heavy casualties on both sides. Strategically, the Ottoman army's campaign can be considered a success, as it achieved its goal of retaining Temesvár.
Battle
The battle of Olasch started late in the day, around five in the evening. During the battle, the left wing of the Imperial army took heavy casualties, in contrast to the centre and the right-wing that had the better of the action. At night the fighting stopped and the next day both armies withdrew from the battlefield. The Imperial commander Heissler of Heitersheim was wounded or died days later after the battle. 3,000 Habsburg soldiers killed or wounded. The Turks lost 4,000 men.
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This entry incorporates text from “Battle of Olasch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.