Day 7: Torgau

The church at Elsnig where Frederick recovered from being hit by a spent musket ball during the battle of Torgau.

We travelled northwest of Dresden today to visit the site of the Battle of Torgau, fought in 1760 between Frederick of Prussia and Leopold Daun of Austria. It was a bit rainy today so most of my battlefield pictures were taken on my iPhone so as to keep my iPad dry. I will have to transfer photos from the phone to the pad at a later date. I did manage to snap a few pix from the bus towards the end of the visit.

Torgau was one of the Prussian depots on the Elbe River and the site of the last piece of high ground before the terrain opened up into the flat Northern German Plain that extends all the way to the North and Baltic Seas. So Torgau had double strategic importances to Frederick. Frederick borrowed the Austrian style of attacking in various columns all timed to arrive at the Austrian position at the same time. This was a departure from the usual Prussian tactics. Three columns were designated to march from the south, through the woods, north of the Austrian deployment on the Torgau ridge and hopefully catch the Austrians by surprise with an attack in the rear. Daun sensed this and shifted the facing of his army to the north.

Meanwhile, Zieten's corps remained south of the ridge and was supposed to pin the Austrians in place, but this did not happen as noted above with Daun's redeployment.

So Fredererick's army emerged from the woods and to his horror he found that he was looking down the barrels of the Austrian artillery. He had no idea where Zieten was and since he was committed to battle, the attack was launched, spearheaded by nearly all of his grenadier battalions.

The terrain of Torgau is such that one cannot hear the sound of battle from one side of the plateau to the other, so Zieten could not hear that Frederick had started the battle. The Prussians were getting slaughtered, but they kept on attacking. At one point, Frederick was hit by a musket ball, which knocked him senseless ( no, he did not run away from the battle as some pro Austrian writers might suggest) and he was removed to the church at Elsnig to recover.

Meanwhile, Zieten finally arrived in the rear of the Austrian position, via the town of Suptitz. One of his aides found a causeway through the mashy ground in the area and so the Prussians advanced forward. Additional luck came in the form of a re-entrant that obscured the Prussians from the Austrians up on the plateau. Thus did the Prussians arrive on the plateau late in the day and cause the Austrians to retire from the battlefield. It was a tactical and Pyrrhic victory for the Prussians, but the losses were staggering.

Door to the Elsnig church

The causeway near Suptitz where Zieten's corps traversed when it snuck into the rear of the Austrian lines.

A view of the open ground at Torgau showing the slight rise of the plateau where the Austrian army deployed. I believe that this where Frederick's grenadiers attacked and were massacred by the Austrian artillery.

Typical farmhouse construction of the 18th Century, for those who would like to build models.

One interesting note about the battle, the Austrians expended nearly all of their ammunition by the conclusion of the battle and thus were not able to fire at Zieten's corps when it arrived at the end of the battle.

Mm

Day 6: Hohenfriedberg & Leuthen

Mollendorf's Gate at the Leuthen Church

Today we travelled into Poland to see The Big One: the Battle of Leuthen fought on December 5, 1757 as well as Hohenfriedberg, fought in October 1745. Leuthen is Frederick the Great's military masterpiece in which he employed the oblique order tactic to perfection, allowing the 39,000-man Prussian army to defeat the larger  Austrian army of 65,000 troops.

Hohenfriedberg was fought in 1745, during the Second Silesian War and is notably for several things: (1) it was the largest battle ever fought in Silesian with over 120,000 total combatants, and (2) it is the battle in which the Prussian Bayreuth Dragoons won everlasting fame with their cavalry charge that routed the Austrian army, capturing 5 cannon, 67 colours, and 2,900 men in a span of only 20 minutes, while losing only 94 men.

Information sign at Hohenfriedberg 

Memorial at Hohenfriedberg.

The ground over which the Bayreuth Dragoons charged into the Austrian army.

Here are some pictures taken at the site of the Battle of Leuthen:

Mollendorf's Gate

The inside of the church courtyard showing how high the walls were.

Charles Grant and Ken Bunger stand guard outside the church walls, depicting the height of the walls relative to that of a man.

The unusual corner turrets of the churchyard walls.

A view of Leuthen from the church.

The approach March or attack of the Prussian army from south to north.mbarely visible in the background are the two church spires in Leuthen 

The flat open terrain outside of Leuthen

I was last in Leuthen in 1998 and I'm sorry to report that suburban development is starting to envelope the town of Leuthen. There were many new houses built since my last visit and I could see several,blocks of row houses being built just to the north of the town. I dare say that in about ten years the whole battlefield will be lost to the developers as Leuthen has become a bedroom suburb of Wroclaw.

Day 5: Hochkirch

We visited both Maxen and Hochkirch today and I want to have two separate threads on each battle to do them justice. We also visited Freiburg but much of the battlefield is covered with suburban sprawl and development, so it is not as interesting as the other sites.

The village of Hochkirch.

Hochkirch was fought in October 1758 and saw Frederick's army nearly getting captured en masse by the Austrian surprise attack at dawn. The Austrians attacked the Prussian position from four or five different directions in converging columns of attack across a ten mile long front. This new tactic was a complete departure from the traditional style of linear warfare. 

The Der Alter Fritz Gasthaus is closed and out of business.  There is a business opportunity for someone here.😄

The tower of the Hochkirch church, which can be seen for miles from the town.

Entryway into the church courtyard, held to the very last man by Major Langen and the Margraf Karl regiment (IR19) a 2nd battalion.

Christopher Duffy (wearing the tie) explains what happened here.

The Bluttgasse where many an Austrian and Prussian died during fierce fighting for the village.

Langen's Gateway, where the Prussians made a sortie to escape.

Yes, those holes in the door are bullet holes. There are also six 12-pounder round shot buried in the walls of the church.

Inside the churchyard 

Three 12-pound shot were used for decoration on this wall.

Charles Grant (the Wargame rules author) points out the way to Tod Kershner (Age of Reason rules author)

The view outside of town towards the Prussian camp positions.

Entry to the church

Inside the village

Langen's Gateway.

Monument honoring Langen and his men

Fritz

Day 4: Kolin

Austrian victory monument at Kolin

We left Prague this morning and headed east for the short trip to Kolin, the site of Frederick's first defeat by the Austrians.

The short summary of the battle goes like this: after the Prussians defeated the Austrians at the battle of Prague in May 1757, there were 35,000 Austrian troops bottled up inside the city's walls while the remainder of the army was scattered all over the countryside. It was a dark day for the Habsburg monarchy as it's very existence was on the line. General Leopold Daun was given the task of collecting all available Austrian soldiers into a new army and to rescue Prague from the Prussians.

Daun was able to assemble a significantly sized army well to the east of Prague, and as he gathered in more troops he tried to bait Frederick into pursuing him and split the,Prussian army into halves: one army under Marshall Keith besieging Prague, and the other army under Bevern keeping an eye on Daun.

Daun now changed his strategy from falling back from Prague into an advance on Prague. News had reached him that Prague was running short on supplies and would soon be forced to capitulate to the Prussians. As Daun advanced west towards Prague, Bevern's force of approximately 13,000 men retreated towards Prague. Frederick perceived that things were starting to get serious, so he sent reinforcements to Bevern and gradually raised the total to about 34,000 troops. Daun's army now numbered 54,000 men. Oddly enough, Frederick underestimated the size of Daun's army whereas Daun overestimated the size of Frederick's army. Daun believed that Frederick had the major portion of the Prussian army with him.

The two armies faced off with the wet and marshy Beczvarka Stream separating the two. The Austrian position was too strong to attempt a frontal attack, so Frederick endeavored to march around the Austrian left flank and roll its army up from the flank.

His plan was for the attacking wing of his army to march to the village of Krechor, then wheel right and attack the Austrians from east to west. Daun anticipated this move, after all , he could see everything that the Prussians were doing from his vantage point atop the high ground that ran parallel to the Kaiserstrasse.

Here is a panorama shit over three pictures from the view point of the Austrians atop Krechor Hill ( from left, center to right in that order below)

Hulsens attack was from left to right along the line of the trees leading to Krechor village.

Krechor Church

Krechor village

The Swedish fort situated to the west of Krechor village 

Lunch break at the Slati Slunce Inn above and below.

The battle of the Cauldron reached its critical moment atop the small rise in the ground shown above. The Austrian De Ligne Dragoons (DR31) came thundering over the rise and rolled up the Prussian infantry, which was moments away from breaking open the Austrian center.

Day 3: Lobositz

The Lobosch Hill at Lobositz, infested by Croats in 1756, but a very quiet place today.

Messes Bunger, Rubottom and I checked out of the Hotel Otto this morning ( after another brief stop at the Berliner Zinnfiguren store - Hey! The hotel is only one block away from  BZ, why do you think that we picked it as our place to stay?) and taxied to Tegel Airport where we met up with the rest of the Duffy Trip crew at 11am. There are twenty of us on the trip with representatives from Sweden, Germany, Italy, Canada, the UK and the USA, many of whom are familiar faces from trips of yore. 

Boarding the bus at Tegel. John Curran on the left and Ken Bunger on the right.

We departed Tegel around 11:30pm and headed south on the autobahn for Dresden and our ultimate destination of Prague, in the Czech Republic. Our first stop was the battlefield of Lobositz, site of the battle fought in 1756. Christopher Duffy briefed us along the way about the topography in the theatre of war, which provided a better understanding of why campaigns were fought in certain parts of Germany.

Travel by coach: you can just make out the Elbe River on the left.

I endeavor to learn something new on every battlefield tour and what I learned is that initially Frederick had no specific plans or strategy at the outset of the SYW. He believed that Saxony was ready to fall in with the Austrians, whereas in fact, Saxony wanted nothing more than to be a neutral power in the coming war. Once he invaded Saxony and had bottled the Saxon army up in the camp at Pirna, his objective was nothing beyond the capitulation of the Saxon army before the Austrians, French and Russians could mobilize their armies and intercede in the theatre of war.

Hans von Winterfeldt, he egged on Frederick to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Saxony in 1756.

And since Frederick had no specific plans or strategy, it was hard for the Austrian commander Marshal Ulysses von Browne to divine what Frederick was up to. Thus Browne's objective was to rescue the Saxon army from the trap at Pirna and bring it over to the Austrian side.

 

The Elbe River valley between Aussig and Lobositz. Croats positioned on the opposite or left blank, did an effective job of whittling down a regiment of Prussians that passed this way whilst guarding a supply convoy. happily, no shots were fired today, other than those from cameras.

The two armies collided almost by happenstance at Lobositz, just across the Saxon border with Bohemia. From Dresden, we followed one of the main routes into Bohemia along the Elbe River, via the towns of Aussig and Lobositz.

Lobositz was really a reconnaissance in force by the Prussians. Marshall Keith had found  von Browne's army there and Frederick brought up more of the army from Pirna to add a little more punch to his forces. Von Browne really had no interest in having a battle, settling instead on a delaying action.

The town of Lobositz. I almost got run over by a car as I stood in the road taking this picture.

The Homolka Mound. Frederick placed his artillery on the rise on the left where there is an open notch between two clumps of trees.

The line of the Morellanbach lies where you see the church steeple and the line of trees. Von Browne positioned most of his army behind this boggy ground.

The gist of the battle is this: Frederick's army poured out of the Elbe River valley and they could not see the Austrian positions due to the dense fog that morning. Von Browne's right flank (commanded by Lacy) rested on the Lobosch Hill, which was clogged with vineyards and infested by Croats. von Browne's center was held by his cavalry, as the center was really the only logical ground on which to employ cavalry. His left flank was posted behind the Morellanbach steam, out of harms way.

Frederick launched his cavalry into the fog to find the enemy and soon his cuirassiers came steaming back with many an empty saddle. The Austrian cavalry got caught up in the counterattack and received rough handling by the second line of Prussian cavalry. The Prussian 12-pounders on the Homolka Mound opened up on anything that they could see as the fog began to lift. Over on the Austrian left, Lacy's Croats and grenadiers were gradually pushed off the Lobosch Hill by Bevern's Prussian left wing. Once the Lobosch Hill was cleared of the enemy, the Austeian right wing was compromised and had to withdraw from Lobositz and join the rest of von Browne's army on the far side of the Morellanbach. Neither general had any incentive to continue the fighting and so the battle ended there, in somewhat of a draw.

Some pix of the Theresianstadt fortress are shown below, a fine example of Vauban style fortifications.

As the sun set and the sky opened up with rain, we arrived in Prague and checked into our hotel, eager for some rest, a good meal and looking forward to seeing Kolin tomorrow.