hi i'm indy neidell and this is another
exciting episode of out of the trenches
where I sit here in the chair of wisdom
and answer your questions about the
Great War
Alexander Ivanovitch writes shame there
wasn't anything about Moy Kovich in the
episode from January 7th 6500
Montenegrins vs. 30,000 Austrians a
Thermopylae of its kind surely a
tactical Montenegrin victory which
allowed the Serbian army to endure and
fall back to Albania and later Greece
true I apologize for that that is
totally my fault
this was an important battle and it does
deserve mention it was on the 6th and
7th of January 1916 austria-hungary had
invaded Montenegro and the Montenegrin
army was not only hugely outnumbered as
you say but was also seriously lacking
in supplies now this was actually
Orthodox Christmas time hence the name
bloody Christmas and the Austrian forces
attacked 30,000 strong against about a
fifth that many Montenegrins undercount
vuko tits or Vukovich I'm not certain
how to pronounce his name somebody will
write in and correct me I guarantee they
bombarded the city itself with artillery
and attacked the Montenegrin who had dug
in Austrian attacks were repulsed again
and again on the 6th and several
thousand Austrian soldiers were killed
the following day they resumed the
attack and were once again beaten back
with both sides suffering heavy
casualties much of the fighting both
days was hand-to-hand bayonets knives
and clubs by the end of the second day
the Austrian forces had retreated and
Malkovich remained in Montenegrin hands
the courage and the heroism of the
vastly outnumbered defenders became the
stuff of legend and rightly so and
austro-hungarian colonel Reiner had this
to say the courage of the Montenegrin
soldier has no equal in the history of
wars attacking the bayonets of the enemy
with his bare hands on the terrain of
mojko vats for days stopped them much
more numerous austro-hungarian army
equipped with modern arms that's pretty
serious praise Drago man 51 writes hello
I've heard a lot about artillery now but
I'm wondering what is the biggest piece
of artillery that was used in the First
World War
was there something like railguns
greetings from Belgium that's with an
exclamation point okay greetings from
Berlin
the Paris guns were the biggest of all
the Germans built and used them for a
few months in 1918 to shell Paris from
well over a hundred kilometers away they
were actually only good only any good
against city sized targets and they were
designed to instill fear more than make
actual physical damage the shells took
several minutes to reach the target and
they were the first man-made objects to
ever reach the stratosphere I mentioned
that once before that's a really cool
piece of trivia the first man-made
objects ever to reach the stratosphere
were the shells from the Paris guns they
go like 40 kilometers high and nobody
beat that actually until the v2 tests in
the early 1940s the guns were 34 metres
long that's a hundred and eleven feet
the shells were a hundred and six kilos
so more than two hundred and thirty
pounds and you can imagine how fast they
were going when being shot that far
funny thing these guns were the first
guns ever that the artillery masters had
to take into account the rotation of the
earth when they were targeting that's a
big gun and another nice piece of trivia
they fired a few hundred shells did a
lot of property damage in Paris and
wounded or killed like a thousand people
but they were removed to Germany when
the Allies began to get the upper hand
in 1918 interestingly under the Treaty
of Versailles the Germans were supposed
to turn over a Paris gun an entire Paris
gun to the Allies but they never did max
Komori [ __ ] max Komori hurts
sorry max Komori hurts right what advice
would you have to students in middle and
high school like myself who would be
interested in going into a field of
history and many thanks to you and the
background crew hey max thanks you guys
okay say thank you max thank you max
thank you max okay well um let me see
advice
never treat history as history if you
want to make it real I mean think of the
players and the things they're doing as
things that you could actually watch
happen like it was happening now I
remember that you know when I was
younger you know at first it's all just
names and dates and that doesn't really
give you anything but to see it as being
really real to really make yourself see
it as being really real then it makes
sense um like historical novels like
really good historical novels do a great
job of bringing things alive and making
you realize that you're no different and
I'm no different from the people who
lived and 500 years ago I mean you just
have like a better toilet and more
things to occupy whatever free time you
have but you're the same you want to
make history fun you want to make it
something you want to do something you
really want to continue with read
something like like Hilary Mantel's Wolf
Hall right it's like a great historical
novel like that but if I had one piece
of advice for budding historian never
ever under no circumstances believe that
what the winner said about a battle or a
political controversy is a totally
accurate story of what actually happened
and there's you should go to war history
online as well if you want to learn all
kinds of cool stuff about war and
history when you're online and if you'd
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work on the show how I write things and
a little bit more about what my
fantastic life is like you can click
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me and Stockholm last summer don't
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