Neither the Albanians nor the Ottomans had expected the war to end so abruptly.
The main engagement had turned into a one-sided slaughter. In truth, they had overlooked a few things: Albania's mountain clansmen were not skilled at set-piece battles. They excelled at guerrilla warfare. What ultimately doomed them was not a pitched battle, but an ambush.
Outdated equipment, inadequate training, obsolete tactics, loose organization, faulty intelligence, virtually no supplies, and an impatient mindset.
Before the war began, Albania's mountain clansmen had nearly every disadvantage stacked against them. The Austrian army, by contrast, had been fresh and ready for battle. It was hardly surprising that they won by an overwhelming margin.
At this point, however, the Ottoman Empire's envoy was not panicking. On the contrary, he was even more excited. Surely such a crushing defeat would rouse the clansmen's fighting spirit, and they would begin taking revenge without cease.
Events unfolded much as the Ottoman envoy had expected. The clansmen's courage was commendable: they had not been cowed by their crushing defeat. Instead, they prepared to take revenge on the Austrian Empire.
This time, though, they did not form a united army. Each tribe fought on its own. Their forces were smaller, but their organizational efficiency improved dramatically.
They began sabotaging roads and bridges, burning villages, and hiding the old, the young, women, and children in the mountains. Then they set up ambush points along the roads, preparing to resist the Austrian army's advance with all their might.
The Austrian army, however, did not continue its advance. Instead, it withdrew to the border region.
The Austrian Empire's actions seemed utterly unreasonable. In the eyes of the Ottomans and the southern Albanian tribes, the Austrians should have been in a hurry. They should have wanted to push quickly through the southern