Battle of Leuthen

On 5 December 1757, at the Silesian village of Leuthen, now Lutynia in Poland, some 10 kilometres north-west of Breslau (Wrocław), Frederick the Great of Prussia routed an Austrian army about twice the size of his own. Using low hills to hide a flanking march, he struck the weak end of the Austrian line and broke it within hours. The victory, perhaps the finest of his career, undid Austria's gains of 1757 and kept Silesia in Prussian hands during the Seven Years' War.

The rivalry between Frederick and the Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa went back to 1740, when Prussia seized the rich province of Silesia, a conquest confirmed in 1748 at the end of the War of the Austrian Succession. Maria Theresa wanted it back. In the "Diplomatic Revolution" of the mid-1750s, Austria allied with its old enemy France, while Britain sided with Prussia.

The war began in 1756 with Frederick's invasion of Saxony. In 1757 he beat the Austrians at Prague in May and then crushed a much larger French and imperial army at Rossbach on 5 November. While he was in the west, however, the Austrians under Prince Charles of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's brother-in-law, retook Schweidnitz and Breslau. Frederick hurried back with 22,000 men, covering about 274 kilometres in 12 days, and gathered the survivors of the Breslau garrison. With roughly 33,000 to 36,000 troops and about 167 guns, he found some 65,000 Austrians drawn up near Leuthen.

Charles and his deputy, Leopold Joseph von Daun, had placed their army facing west along a front of several kilometres, with Leuthen in the centre. Frederick knew the ground well from earlier manoeuvres. He also had one of Europe's best-drilled armies, whose infantry could fire faster than most opponents and march in precise formation.

Early on 5 December, in fog, Frederick advanced towards the Austrian right. A cavalry force stayed there to keep up the pretence of an attack, and Charles responded by moving his reserves north. Meanwhile the main Prussian columns turned south, hidden behind a chain of hillocks, marched across the Austrian front, and emerged beyond its southern end. There they wheeled into line almost at right angles to the Austrian left, a manoeuvre known as the oblique order. Hidden artillery stood ready behind the knoll called the Butterberg.

The Prussian attack fell first on Württemberg troops, who fired steadily before fleeing and carrying Bavarian units with them. The Austrian flank commander, Franz Leopold von Nádasdy, asked for help but Charles still expected the real blow in the north. When the Austrians finally shifted troops south, they had to cover a front stretched to nearly 10 kilometres. Prussian grenadiers stormed Leuthen itself, fighting through the churchyard and streets in close-packed, bloody combat, while heavy guns on the Butterberg pounded the defenders. A late Austrian cavalry counter-attack was struck in flank and front by Prussian squadrons under Hans Joachim von Zieten and Georg Wilhelm von Driesen, and its commander, Count Lucchesi, was killed. The Austrian army collapsed and fled towards Breslau.

Snow halted the pursuit. A later, perhaps legendary, story has the Prussian army singing the hymn "Now Thank We All Our God" on the battlefield. Austrian losses came to about 22,000, including some 12,000 prisoners, along with 116 guns. Frederick lost about 6,300 men, around a fifth of his army. He besieged Breslau from 7 December, and the city surrendered on 19–20 December. Charles was replaced by Daun and never again led the army.

Leuthen became a model of eighteenth-century linear tactics, helped by Prussian ammunition wagons that moved with the advancing infantry. Together with Rossbach, it probably saved Prussia from defeat. Napoleon later praised it as a masterpiece of manoeuvre and resolution.

Our 1783 map shows Silesia as part of the Kingdom of Prussia, bordering the Habsburg Monarchy, as confirmed by the war's end in 1763.