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The Times of India
The Times of India
World
TOI World Desk

The army that went to war with 80 men and returned with 81: Liechtenstein's strangest military mystery

In the summer of 1866, one of Europe's smallest states sent one of history's smallest armies to one of the continent's largest conflicts, and came back having gained a man nobody has been able to officially account for since. Liechtenstein, a tiny principality of roughly 7,000 people wedged between Austria and Switzerland, dispatched 80 soldiers to the Austro-Prussian War, known also as the Seven Weeks' War, in support of its Austrian allies. The soldiers saw no combat, suffered no casualties, drank wine in the mountains, and marched home to a ceremonial welcome in the capital, Vaduz. When they arrived, they numbered 81. Two years later, Liechtenstein disbanded its army entirely and has not raised one since, making that bloodless alpine posting the last military deployment in the principality's history.

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