Battle of Prislitz (Napoleon's World)

The Battle of Prislitz was an engagement on June 19, 1813 in eastern Hungary near the Austrian border with the Ottoman Empire, where Napoleon's Grand Army surprised the Austrian Imperial Army's eastern corps with an attack from the Ukraine. The battle, while relatively bloodless, scattered the Austrian forces across a wide swatch of terrain, allowing Napoleon's armies to engage and defeat them individually over the next three days until the rout of the main disorganized Austrian force and its haphazard reinforcements at Budapest on June 24. The "Prislitz Surprise," as some refer to it, is regarded as one of Napoleon's crowning achievement's of tactical prowess and is cited as the reason for his surprisingly quick crushing of Austria within the matter of weeks in the summer of 1813, especially coming so recently after his bloody campaigns in Russia.