However, a strong candidate for the most pointless battle of all time was a European skirmish that purportedly took place from Sept. 21 to Sept. 22 in 1788. In this altercation, there was no winner and no loser, as the victor and the defeated were one and the same — the Austrian army.

It’s a confusing scenario that was equally perplexing to the Austrians, who, at the time, were engaged in the Austro-Turkish War, waged from 1787 to 1791 against the Ottoman Turks, author Eric Durschmeid, a former war correspondent for the BBC, wrote in his book “The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History” (Arcade Publishing, 2016).

Austrian soldiers launched a deadly response to what was perceived as a Turkish attack, and the battle was joined near the town of Karánsebes (also spelled Caransebeș) in what is now Romania (then Transylvania). But when the smoke cleared, the Austrian army discovered that they had been battling themselves all along, though accounts vary about the scale of the carnage, according to Durschmeid.