Two very different battles fell on 30 October. In 1805, at Caldiero east of Verona, Marshal Masséna threw the French Army of Italy against Archduke Charles's entrenched Austrians in a battle that ended at nightfall with no clear winner, and historians still argue about the result. The archduke retreated all the same, because Napoleon had already crushed Austria's main army at Ulm. On 30 October 1920 Kâzım Karabekir's Turkish army took Kars, the great frontier fortress of the young Republic of Armenia, almost without a fight. Within weeks Armenia had lost the war, much of its territory and, by the end of the year, its independence.
Battle of Caldiero, 1805: Masséna against Archduke Charles
30 October 1805 · 221 years ago
At Caldiero east of Verona, Marshal Masséna's French army fought Archduke Charles's Austrians in the Third Coalition war. The French held the village of Caldiero after it changed hands several times, but were checked elsewhere, and Charles withdrew during the night.
Read the full story of Battle of Caldiero, 1805: Masséna against Archduke Charles ›Fall of Kars, 1920: the fortress that fell without a fight
30 October 1920 · 106 years ago
During the Turkish-Armenian War, Kâzım Karabekir's Turkish army stormed the fortified city of Kars, held by the First Republic of Armenia. Armenian resistance broke, and the fall of Kars opened the road to Alexandropol and effectively decided the Turkish invasion of Armenia.
Read the full story of Fall of Kars, 1920: the fortress that fell without a fight ›Also on this day
In 1918 the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice with the Allies aboard the British battleship Agamemnon in Mudros harbor, on the island of Lemnos. It opened the Dardanelles and the Bosporus to the Allies, ordered the demobilization of the Ottoman army and ended hostilities at noon the next day. For the wider story, see our article on how World War I ended.1
