Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War
Page 4
This hammering put the Prussians at a disadvantage. The 13th Infantry of Major-General von Itzenplitz,14 where Bräker was in the ranks, was one of those now in harm’s way. “Big chunks of hot metal went flying over our heads, throwing up clots of earth and plucking men from the ranks.”15
The response was in kind, until the head of the Lobosch was filled with Prussians and light Austrian parties (mostly Pandours) blasting away quite energetically at each other. While this was taking place, the Prussian right, bent back and placed on and near the Homolka, was yet to be in the fire. In the plain below, the Prussian cavalry formed up, and a small body of horse (including the Bayreuth Dragoons) was held in readiness to the south of the Homolka. On the left, where Manteuffel and company were springing on the Lobosch, the intensity of the fight was growing.
General Quadt16 had been charged off, under the direction of the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern, to strike from the Prussian right against the light hussars at the foothills in his immediate front.17 Quadt knew the business at hand, and he plunged right in. In the course of this struggle, the general was shot when a ricocheting round exploded nearby. The intensity of the blow knocked Quadt backwards from his horse with a mortal wound. This was among the factors limiting the Prussian success here.
Another factor was the unanticipated Austrian preparation for the fight.18 Browne, on his part, had a slight edge in numbers, with some 26,500 infantry in 15 regiments, plus four Croat battalions, 7,500 cavalry in 12 cavalry regiments, and 94 guns. This slight numerical superiority on the part of the Austrians was offset by the superior training of the bluecoats. And the latter, under their King Frederick, had never yet been beaten on a battlefield.
Now the general prospects among the Prussian rank-and-file for victory were good for the most part. There were exceptions. Among the latter, the Swiss soldier Ulrich Bräker, already mentioned, has left an interesting account of the battle.19
Meanwhile, the battle was fully involved. After a slight scuffle, the tandem team of Manteuffel and Prince Moritz20 finally cleared the lower reaches to the Lobosch. The enemy, stooped behind the stone walls, could not maintain a steady fire and they were forced back towards Lobositz and the Morellen-Bach stream. Though the ground in front of the rise was secure, the Prussians could not advance farther due to the terrain’s difficulties and the possible nearness of the main Austrian army. Both of these problems were aggravated by the murky, thick fog. And, of course, the Croats still held the hill itself.
Nevertheless, the annoying fire on the Prussian left continued, when the mist momentarily thinned. The king then (about 0800 hours) perceived an enemy body of cavalry, which he took to be about ten squadrons, perhaps 1,500 riders, forward of his own center cavalry. The enemy were busy maneuvering about in what appeared to be a shaky sidled formation.
Frederick took this force, along with those driven from the Lobosch, to be Browne’s rearguard. As it turned out, this was O’Donnell’s advance guard, consisting of 12 grenadier companies and six squadrons of dragoons,21 which Browne was energetically pushing reinforcements up to join. The king assumed the enemy had left these forces to slow down a pursuit and shield their rear from attack while they stole a march around the bluecoats to Schandau to get the Saxons out of Pirna. Probably with the intention of forestalling such a move, Augustus Wilhelm told the king he needed to get troops into the valley right away. They simply had to figure out what the enemy were up to. So Frederick ordered forward 20 cavalry squadrons—under the bright Lt.-Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Kyau22—to charge the enemy horse.23 Once done with that task, this force was to pursue Browne, assuming the charge was successful. By then, the Homolka and the Lobosch were basking in the sun, but that aggravating haze was still enveloping the valley, still causing hesitation.
Kyau immediately expressed a concern the fog may hold more than the king imagined, but was ordered to his business anyway. He informed Frederick he had reason to believe a sizeable enemy force was present at Sullowitz, although obey the order he did.
This force, with two guns to go ahead to shell the enemy’s position, charged downhill into the Austrian horse, routing and chasing it back into the mist just about 0830 hours. Major-General Nikolaus Andreas von Katzler’s 11th Cuirassiers got the ball rolling, slamming hard into the Austrian Cordova Cuirassiers opposite to him. This blow spread much confusion, but Katzler was temporarily lost in the bargain and his unit lost 82 men in a short firefight.24 Katzler went down at the very start of the action.25 Undoubtedly, what kept his unit going was the press of the other Prussian forces, who were advancing up fast behind it.
The Austrians should have been in desperate straits just about this point. But as soon as they alighted in the mist, the Prussian riders encountered thick masses of enemy artillery fire (to the left of the charging horsemen). These latter opened a most murderous fire, inflicting heavy losses, and compelling the Prussian horse to recoil.
Nor was the job left to the artillery alone. From the vicinity of Sullowitz, two full regiments of Austrian cavalry, under General Count Joseph Luchessi, sprang forward to outflank the new intruders. These were the 29th Cuirassiers and the 33rd Cuirassiers. This move was made possible only because the valiant Guard de Corps (13th Cuirassiers, Colonel Hans August von Blumenthal) unaccountably failed to strike at Sullowitz, bristling at that moment with Austrian bayonets. Nonetheless, the oversight was soon corrected by Colonel Blumenthal himself, at a terrible personal price.
He charged forward straight into the fray. Shortly, the colonel’s horse was set down, rather forcefully, by a nearby exploding cannon shot. This left Blumenthal in an awful predicament; he was exposed without a horse and knocked around in the midst of the enemy. Within a few moments, Blumenthal received a number of serious cuts from the enemy’s sabers. A couple of his men rescued the colonel before the enraged Austrians could finish the job; the effort proved futile, as he died of his wounds soon after.
Meanwhile, Blumenthal’s men continued their valiant effort. The focus of the 13th’s charge shifted directly to the left of the obstacle. Blumenthal’s neighbor, the 5th (Bayreuth) Dragoons, disdaining the danger, plunged headlong into the firefight. Their effort forced back the Austrian horse, saving the Prussian left.
A little to the west, two additional regiments strove to strengthen the Austrian line along the Morellen-Bach towards Lockwitz. These latter were the 29th and the 33rd Cuirassiers, heavy cavalry, led by Prince Löwenstein. Löwenstein was needed there. The Prussian horse certainly had the capacity to cause Browne’s defeat. This was a threat too great to ignore. The progress of the first attack had been blunted, but largely from the much more effective artillery fire.
Löwenstein’s horse went right to work. When the former appeared, the Prussian cavalry had already completed its business. The ride up had been long, the artillery fire devastating, and the horses themselves were suffering from a shortage of fodder. So the bluecoats were paused, taking in a well-deserved breather, when the enemy was suddenly upon them. As the progress of Löwenstein’s charge naturally carried the attack past the confines of the Morellen-Bach, the Prussians made a break for it. Some of the Prussian troopers were trapped in the marsh. The Austrian pursuit did not break off until most of the Prussian horse was “sheltering” under the Prussian batteries. Bräker, as an witness to the panorama, now saw riderless horses, some even dragging their entrails, dotting the disturbing scene.26 The stunned units finally got steadied again at the bottom of the Lobosch.27
In this same firefight, the valiant Austrian general of horse, Lt.-Gen. Alois Count Radicati, was mortally wounded, suffering a severed leg from a cannonball.28 Frederick, who had been watching from above, saw the vapor clear away to reveal the whole Austrian army stretched out in the valley below, instead of just Browne’s rearguard like he originally thought. Kyau had been right all along.
Then the king saw the survivors of the first wave and the rest of the cavalry forming up to charge again, and sent off an order to hold off the second cha
rge. Too late, the reinforced cavalry (more than 10,000 strong, with eight squadrons of cuirassiers and eight of dragoons) glided back into the thinning mist about 1130 hours, sweeping the enemy back once more. The sight must have been awe-inspiring: Europe had not seen such masses of cavalry engaged in battle like this in half a century. Unperturbed, the Austrian guns renewed their pounding. In spite of it all, the Prussian cavalry charge made steady forward progress. The Austrian 1st Dragoons (Erzherzog Joseph) received the full brunt of this new Prussian attack. It was overwhelmed. With the range narrowing, with every boom of the guns, men seemed to be torn from the ranks. Nonetheless, on the bluecoats pressed, the finest troops the age had to offer.
There was an inevitable price to pay for such heroics. The 2nd Cuirassiers of Prince Wilhelm’s cavalry was at the very front of this charge. It lost 10 officers and 127 of its men in a few furious moments of heavy, unforgiving fighting.29 The 5th Cuirassiers, its immediate neighbor here, lost 10 officers and 128 men, including the commander, Major-General David Hans Christoph von Lüderitz.30 An exploding cannon shot detonated nearby, killing that unfortunate man instantly.31 The tale was much the same for Lt.-Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Rochow’s 8th Cuirassiers; fully 146 men and officers were laid low in this stroke.32 Even Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, the future favorite cavalry master, was involved in the sanguinary struggle.33
The cavalry came upon a ditch of some ten feet, but they lunged across the obstacle and charged ever farther into the mist. Right away, however, their progress was stopped dead by a swampy brook. It was the Morellen-Bach Water. Circumstances were dire for a time. One observer wrote candidly of the Prussian host “many horses were too weak to struggle up the high bank” from the valley below.34 So the valiant Prussian effort disintegrated in passing the swamp, as many men were unable to make even the initial attack. The Prussians’ progress halted, the Austrians turned more cannon upon them (the battery near Lobositz), flanked on one side by the grenadiers and on the other by the 20th (Lt.-Gen. Graf Colloredo), with the 36th of Browne.
Now for the first time, many of the bluecoats realized the enemy were not the same old foe they had been used to dealing with. Moreover, even the Austrian weapons had been improved in the interim. Their soldiers now had iron ramrods. The effect was to greatly facilitate their rate of fire.35 Most disturbing, that vast increase in effectiveness was being abundantly demonstrated to those forces just then engaged in attacking Browne’s lines. With this, the bluecoats did an about-face, drawing back out of range.
Not all made it. A number of Prussian horsemen entered the bog in their retreat and could not free themselves. The 9th Cuirassiers of Prince Johann von Schöinach-Karolath and the 1st Hussars (Michael von Szekely) were flung, valiantly, into the path. With their horses fatigued from the two melées, some troops had to be extricated. This generally meant leaving the poor equine companion to its fate. Colonel Seydlitz, for one, had to be “fished” out of the bog.36 As soon as the badly shaken cavalry units returned, Frederick had them posted to the rear of the Lobosch, out of harm’s way. Their losses had been enormous. The horses themselves were bone-tired. They had been working all day although “having had neither fodder nor water for thirty hours.”37
By then, it was nearing 1200 hours, and the fog was receding. So, even as his second charge was ending, the king could finally see much of the flat land below and more clearly what the situation was. For the first time, he could see Browne’s entire army, which was not retreating at all, but fully ranked for an involved battle. Frederick discerned the main body behind the Morellen-Bach, which was crossable at only two bridges. The Austrian commander had been careful to charge off cannon to guard the approaches to both, belching fire into the masses of Frederick’s infantry near the Lobosch by that point.
One bridge veered off through the southern end of the low pasture to the road from Radositz and Homolka to Sullowitz. A more important second one completed the route from the latter to Lobositz. It connected Browne’s army at the Morellen-Bach above Sullowitz. The army stretched from Lobositz to Tschirskowitz, in the valley area, and was cut in two below Lobositz. Browne’s left wing cavalry was deployed in such a way to take advantage of any outflanking movement on the Austrian center by the Prussians.
At Lobositz itself, many redoubts had been dug in the last few days, complete with batteries to provide cover, and a considerable force of Austrian infantry and cavalry, commanded by Lt.-Gen. Carl Kager von Stampatch (10th Cuirassiers), and O’Donnell’s 14th Cuirassiers, just to the south of Lobositz reaching the Morellen-Bach. The advanced guard was pushed forward to the support of the Croat parties on the Lobosch. The position was strong, except in the lower ground near the Morellen-Bach: here Frederick stood a good chance of breaking through.
To partially compensate for this weak link in his lines, Browne pushed reinforcements up to that portion of his front. But there was a far more important position that the Austrians needed: the Homolka. Had Browne occupied the rise—and then held it in force—the day might have turned out much differently than it did.38 The Austrian light parties had withdrawn to the vineyards forward of the Morellen-Bach, their backs to Browne’s main army.
There they could be of little further use to Browne, who was hastily strengthening his right flank near Lobositz, while the king was preparing to attack thereabouts. Three regiments of bluecoats, led by Bevern, poured down into the vineyards from the Wehlhoten end of the line (about 1300 hours), while Austrian reinforcements were moving up to strengthen their hold on the valley below the Lobosch and to prepare an assault to secure the hill once and for all. The valiant Colonel Lacy, leading part of the 37th Infantry (Major-General Joseph Esterhazy) and the 40th Infantry (General Count Carl {Jung} Colloredo), with a detached body of grenadiers, was leading this effort (about 1230 hours). Bräker, in the 13th of Itzenplitz, was in the midst of this particular fight. He wrote later of his apprehension upon approaching the Austrian lines, with some of his companions falling victim to the accurate enemy fire. Moreover, “the rampart was already packed with dead and wounded.”39
The Austrian irregulars took advantage of the thick vineyards to pepper the bluecoats from cover. The Prussians were left to try to knock down individual targets of an enemy who not only had the point of vantage over them, but were largely out of sight. Now the bluecoats demonstrated some genuine versatility. The British regulars of Major-General Edward Braddock had encountered a similar situation the previous year in the woods of North America.40 At that time, the redcoats stood to their ranks in the midst of an ambush, and tried to fight a virtually invisible enemy lurking behind rocks and trees without breaking cover. At Lobositz, the Prussians kept to their ranks for only a few minutes, then dispersed for cover to fight the enemy on his terms using his methods. That singular factor made the “playing field” more even.
This development could not help but use up cartridges prodigiously. The stroke up the Lobosch was guided by Kleist’s 27th Infantry.41 For this brave effort, this unit was to be well battered by the end of the day. Kleist was mortally wounded and 290 men of the regiment were killed or wounded.42 The carnage was not confined to one regiment. Major-General Ernst Ludwig von Kannacker’s 30th Infantry was just as hard-hit; it lost 275 on that day, most of them probably in that first charge.43 Even Bevern, riled up by the ferocity of the moment, when confronted with the inevitable shortage of ammunition, told the troops to use their bayonets.
Browne, by holding the Lobosch, intended to outflank the Prussian lines and drive Frederick from the field. Without the Lobosch, the king could not maintain his position. As for the Prussian Majesty, his plan was to seize Lobositz, roll up the Austrian lines, and compel Browne to depart. To prevent this distinct possibility, Browne had already ordered off Lacy. The fight at the Lobosch now started to draw in all available units on both sides.
The Prussian attack itself was with great vigor, and the whitecoats were driven back on Lobositz and Wehlhoten, while the entire Prussian left swept
towards the village. Duke Ferdinand’s 5th Infantry pointed the way. It took the brunt of the artillery response from the enemy at this point, losing 98 dead and 30 wounded or missing.44
Lacy fought for his position stubbornly, refusing to give way. Browne hurried three more infantry regiments forward. The 17th Infantry of Kollowrat, the 1st of the Emperor Francis Stephen (Kaiser) and the 33rd Infantry of Nicolaus Esterhazy were sent. But it so happened that the Prussian presence thereabouts was much stronger, and the fighting became especially ferocious. Lacy received a bad wound in the process, which incapacitated him. That development settled matters. With the sight of the colonel going down, most of the Croats with him took the opportunity to flee.
By about 1300 hours, with the preliminaries at an end, the contest was fully in deadly earnest. Prussian howitzers battered at the Austrians, but the latter made a sustained defense, all the more so as a steady stream of reinforcements were reaching them. Browne sent his left wing commanders orders to cross the Morellen-Bach at the bridge at Sullowitz to join the battle. Nothing daunted, the Prussian spotters on the Homolka turned more emplaced batteries upon these newcomers.
The work of the Prussian guns was most effective. The whitecoats, with heavy losses, could not fulfill orders. The movement, which might have had serious consequences for the Prussians, was thereby staved off. The battle would be decided in front of Lobositz itself. Moreover, that last exchange had used up almost all of the shot for the big guns.
By that point, the Prussian left had passed the vineyards and reached the lower ground. The Austrians were stubborn, and the Prussian command ordered forward on the double the reinforcements arriving at the Lobosch, including those of Major-General Johann Dietrich von Hülsen, and the remaining forces behind the Lobosch. The right was given the task of holding the Homolka as well as covering the Lobosch against attempts to retake it. The Austrian defense was determined, and once more a fierce firefight broke out.