Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War
Page 12
With the marsh past, the bluecoats attacked the Austrian entrenchments directly. On the Prussian left, at the southward side of the rise, a sanguinary, bloody battle was raging, from one end of the long line to the other. Even the king was in the midst of the fray. It was during this second charge when Frederick lost one of his best field officers.
About 1050 hours or so, Marshal Schwerin, seeing the bloody repulse of even his own 24th Infantry, dashed forward, seized the Prussian staff colors from Staff Captain Caspar Friedrich von Röhr40 and charged towards the enemy’s lines, shouting, “Come on, children, Come on!” His men, seeing him in the midst of the action, turned around and followed the marshal back into the attack at full run. Then the grapeshot rained down upon them, and Schwerin, his ancient body riddled by wounds, fell from his horse, stone dead. The battle standard toppled at his side.41 Five bullets had done their business. Four penetrated his chest, and one took him behind the ear, punching a big hole in his head.42 Schwerin was forever silenced.43
The marshal’s aide, Captain Alexander von Platen, no doubt horrified by the sight, grabbed the colors from his fallen comrade, and continued on with the attack. He, too, was severely wounded and died the next day. Schwerin’s men, enraged by the death of the marshal, and strengthened by the timely arrival of the second line of Prussian infantry and Ziethen’s cavalry, now struck with renewed vigor the enemy positions on and near the Sterbohol. The 24th lost heavily for their trouble. Thirteen officers and 522 men from the regiment fell that day.44 Even the king, who was never one to pass out compliments readily, wrote of the “bravest of the officers and the greater part of the … [men] lay stretched out on the ground.”45 He was referring to the 24th Infantry. As for Schwerin’s death, the king, in his History, described his demise as “terminating a glorious life by a death covering it with a new luster.” Of course, that was long after the fact. He also later estimated the value of Schwerin as like that “of 10,000 men.”46 Just, then, however, more urgent business pressed.
Austrian resistance was savage, but new Prussian reinforcements were shoved almost willy-nilly into the struggle. A new heavy battery had been advanced in the press of business close by Hastowitz while a full 12 battalions of the rearward Prussian line strode forward to strengthen the Prussian center forces. Hautcharmoy and Major-General Joachim Christian von Tresckow led this new body of men.
Confusion began to spread through the ranks of the Prussian hussars. Ziethen resorted to extraordinary measures to rally his men. One of the king’s nearby commanders, General Moritz Franz von Wobersnow, rode up to Ziethen and urged him to stem the flight. Wobersnow told Ziethen he needed to “set a few examples,” i.e., shoot a few of the panic-stricken hussars. Ziethen wouldn’t resort to such measures, and the arrival of a relief force of cavalry (25 more squadrons) resolved the matter. To his credit, the hard-pressed Ziethen acted at once, drawing the new troops and his dragoons to act as a screen. Behind this shield, the unsteady hussars were given a moment to rally. Ziethen launched into a brief, impromptu speech to “rally the troops.” And place the burden of the battle upon his and their backs. “Gentlemen! … we have to undo this damage and bring on victory.”47 The attitude displayed by Ziethen was by no means unique in the Prussian army, or in the Austrian foe. Many long-forgotten heroes on that day did their best as well. Ultimately, the Prussian efforts turned the tide. The Sterbohol was gained, for the moment.
As for Browne, he was in the thick of the fighting, ordering up new battalions from the left to bolster the now sagging Austrian right, and contesting every inch of ground. About 1030 hours, a cannon-shot burst close-by and tore away part of the Irishman’s left ankle and foot, forcing him to relinquish direction of the battle effort on that side.48 Simultaneously, a counterattack he had just organized regained the Sterbohol temporarily. A dozen Prussian guns were captured in this fresh effort. Masses of new Prussian infantry brought this now leaderless counterattack to a rapid halt under a heavy fire. But the fight for the Sterbohol was but one part of the battle.
On the Prussian left, the combat was seesawing back and forth. Ziethen having just received his fresh cavalry, the bluecoats attacked again in greater strength. Once more driven back, Ziethen sent some of his horse galloping around the enemy to finally outflank them.
While this was taking place, the 4th Cuirassiers (Field-Marshal Count Friedrich Leopold von Gessler) pushed Schönaich’s formations round the pond dam south of the Sterbohol. This movement by the front line of the Prussian left came under heavy artillery fire immediately, but Schönaich rallied his troopers and led them forward three times. This bold maneuver had helped gain the time Ziethen required to rally his hussars. However, this unit did not sustain the high rate of casualties like their comrades in the initial attack on the Sterbohol. Gessler lost 112 men and 83 horses in this action.49
The Austrians, unable to see Gessler’s move, were taken by surprise. Ziethen struck from the front with a renewed determination. The whitecoats, who had but 19 squadrons at hand, recoiled. This final stroke drove most of the Austrian horse back upon Nussel and they did not rally again for the rest of the day. Prince Charles, seeing these unfolding developments, galloped up to rally his horse. There was precious little he could do. Lt.-Col. Schulze was met with a mute stare from the prince when he asked for instructions. The shaken horse would not rally with the Prussians on their tail, and Charles got an untimely “wound.”50 Equally unexplainable is this nearly headlong flight displayed by the Austrian cavalry just south of the Sterbohol.51 By the time of Ziethen’s third, decisive charge, the entire area was shrouded in dust and confusion, although that wing of Charles’s army was uncovered.
Lt.-Col. Schulze gathered a small command to hold the ground close to the area where Marshal Browne had fallen; the latter was scooped up and carried on an artillery caisson nearly into Prague. The press of fugitives overturned the contraption, and the fallen marshal was snatched from premature death by Baron von Weisch. The latter hoisted him on to a nearby available horse and escorted him personally on into the city.52
Meanwhile, as the bluecoat cavalry was engaged in its business, their foot comrades battered the Austrian posts on the Sterbohol. Prince Ferdinand (with the Prussian right) near 1100 hours attacked Königsegg’s and Pálffy’s men near Kej. Hautcharmoy led a newly organized 22 battalions of Prussians in this fresh effort, which included Tresckow’s and Bevern’s forces. The attack was disjointed, a general rather vague probe being made, rather than a single massive stroke which might have ended matters right there and then. Despite claims that the king ordered this attack, he was too busy to do so.53 A more likely estimate is that Frederick, once he discovered the move underway, did not issue a countermand order.54
Colonel Johann Hertzberg led his own 12th Infantry, as well as the 18th (Prince of Prussia) and that of Major-General Ernst Ludwig von Kannacker (30th Infantry), straight across Manstein’s immediate front on this important mission. This smashed into the 28th Austrian Regiment (Wied), the anchor on the northern part of the Austrian flank. At first, this new body of men saw only vacated enemy cavalry quarters (and, apparently, due to some atmospheric phenomena, did not even hear the sounds of battle), but soon Hertzberg was in position to outflank the enemy. A most bitter tussle now ensued. Hauthcharmoy was mortally wounded during the height of this attack (he died on May 16), but Tresckow took control. Nothing daunted, the bluecoats finally regained their prize again.
When the Sterbohol thus fell for the final time, the ruining of the Austrian right was complete, and the disordered troops fell back towards the Sazawa, abandoning their batteries and the prepared works. Frederick’s infantry and Ziethen’s horse overlapped the old Austrian line and raced for Neu-Straschnitz. New enemy formations of horse and infantry prepared to form a last stand between the Žižkaberg and Maleschitz. The right was beaten not much later than 1100 hours. Soon after midday, the issue was settled on this side.
Elsewhere, in the high ground at the elbow of the Austrian righ
t, between Kyge and Hlaupetin (specifically at Hrdlorzez), the Austrian lines had been dangerously thin since the first deployment. As the whitecoats changed their formations to meet the Prussian threat to the Sterbohol, a gap was opened in their lines—between the 28th, the Mainz regiment, and the 22nd—which could not be plugged at the moment because of the fully involved battle. Three Prussian regiments, the 28th, 29th, and 32nd Infantry, stood before the gap. They were led by Manstein, who had a fiery nature anyhow. The chasm grew as pressure against the Sterbohol’s defenders mounted, and the Austrians shifted more and more of their reserves, as well as their attention, into the pandemonium raging at the Sterbohol. Soon the breach had widened beyond the marsh, covered only by the artillery and the difficulties of the ground. Manstein, carefully surveying the enemy’s lines, soon espied the gap, and recognized what an opportunity he was being presented.
For a time, he kept his ground, then impetuously marched his troops right against that position. Frederick, busy with the developments of the fight further south, ignored sending orders to his right wing commanders. But Manstein soon encountered heavy enemy fire and would have likely fared poorly had he not been reinforced. Ferdinand and Prince Henry (the latter leading the Itzenplitz Regiment) moved up to his aid. The Austrians countered by trying to fill the opening in their main line, but by then it was far too late. New forces were pressed up to help.
General Ferdinand Philipp Harsch brought his 50th Infantry up on the double, and the 56th Infantry (Antoine, Comte de Mercy d’Argenteau). The eleventh-hour effort by the Austrians was gallant, but futile. Although the whitecoats briefly held their ground, and even managed a couple of counterattacks, the battle was lost. Prince Henry, Frederick’s noted and soon to be most famous brother, led his regiment up to Hlaupetin to storm an enemy battery there just as the Austrians began to retire.
Henry was aided, it might be said, by the actions of Lt.-Gen. Giorgio Clerici and General Perroni, who marched their Austrian units towards Maleschitz about 1300 hours to stiffen the battle effort thereabouts. This effort would help dilute the Austrian formations. Clerici, in the rush of the moment, was able to form only four battalions of the 11 under his command to go confront the Prussians storming into the gap. For the Austrians, General Carl Gustav Kheul was doing his best to reform the main part of the army into a new battle line between Maleschitz and Hrdlorzez. The general was attempting to swing the surviving elements of the army around, while being pounded by the enemy in the midst of a terrible fracas. In the process, Kheul was using seven of Clerici’s battalions to help stiffen the line.55
In fairness, it must be said that the pressure on General Kheul was enormous about then. In the process, though, the commander was ignoring instructions to commit Clerici’s full strength in the effort to stem the Prussian advance through the gap. Browne had apparently ordered this very move earlier; his wound almost immediately afterwards prevented him from following it up. Prior to this, General Kheul had received a stinging reprimand from Prince Charles for questioning orders. This did not go over so well for the stubborn officer. He kept where he was, despite written orders from Charles to the contrary. Only when Prince Friedrich Michael von Pfalz-Zweibrücken (who would later play such a prominent role in the war) personally delivered the order telling him to move out at once did General Kheul act. His effort was not deficient by any means. The location was along a ridge, and the bluecoats suffered renewed hardships as they tried to storm this station up the hill from the valley floor below.
The new Prussian effort turned out to be a costly one, thanks to Kheul’s stubbornness. The 1st Infantry of Winterfeldt, which had opened the battle with a supreme effort, was savaged again. It suffered over a thousand casualties in the storming of a nearby battery.56 In fact, the valiant attacks told in total losses: 22 officers and 1,168 of other ranks.57 The regiment drove forward “in the midst of a hail-storm of grape as if it had been at a review.”58
Both Prince Charles and Browne were out of commission by this point. The new move by Clerici-Perroni caught the Prussians off guard momentarily. The Austrians tried to regain the initiative. Prince Henry’s guns on the left then opened a devastating fire while the impetuous Manstein once more attacked the enemy. His stroke smashed uphill in an effort to outflank the newcomers, while the packed formations of another royal brother, Ferdinand of Brunswick, tumbled into a head-on stroke. Clerici and his troops endeavored to hold the Taborberg, in spite of the weight of superior enemy numbers, but when Perroni was killed and Clerici tumbled to the ground with severe wounds, the whitecoats gave up and retired.
In the long run, General Kheul’s hesitation to obey orders did prove costly, despite its momentary benefits. Too late, he finally shifted the rest of Clerici’s men towards the struggle raging near the gap. Austrian units, like the hard-pressed Mainz auxiliary unit, were wavering, and though the Duke of Arenberg and Prince Xavier of Saxony tried personally to head off disaster by plunging right into the struggle, their efforts were futile. The Austrian formations hard-by were running low on ammunition (the drivers of the supply wagons had apparently fled).59 Prussian losses, in this whole process, had not been cheap. The 23rd Infantry of General Forcade paid dearly for their efforts: 22 officers and 602 other ranks had fallen.60 Some of the best Prussian officers fell at Prague.61 For instance, valiant Major-General Schöning (of the 46th Infantry) had been mortally wounded. This fine officer died on May 16.62
Not all of the formations suffered in equal measure, of course. Schönaich’s 6th Cuirassiers, for example, led the deciding stroke from the right against the faltering Austrian center. The tally sheet was two officers and 50 men “in part from its own mistaken fire.”63 Another of the anchor cavalry, the 9th Cuirassiers of Lt.-Gen. Johann Carl Friedrich of Schönaich-Carolath (not to be confused with the other commander of similar name), swept from Podschernitz to Sterbohol, battered the enemy’s second line, striking and breaking through near the village, scooped two battle flags, and made off with their prizes.
Henry, fired up with the intensity of the moment, shoved his embattled men forward between Hlaupetin and the Žižkaberg between Königsegg’s command. Overly eager, a stream in the way, the prince plunged in, struggled, and had to be pulled out. Nevertheless, his presence during this phase, even in a soaking wet uniform, was a tonic to his men. The king himself said Henry’s actions “played a decisive part in the fighting on the Prussian right wing.”64 Further demonstrating his potential, Prince Henry tried to lead the victors in pursuit of the faltering whitecoats. Kheul’s cavalry attempted to stem this pursuit with a series of vigorous counterattacks. The Austrians still could do much harm. Frederick himself was nearly taken captive by enemy cuirassiers, but escaped by taking refuge with the Stechow Dragoons.65 This particular unit had participated in the flank attack from the south while Ziethen launched his reorganized cavalry in an attempt to encircle the Austrian forces from the west. Colonel Georg Friedrich von Winterfeldt, the regiment’s commander, was lost in the ensuing commotion.
Finally, about 1500 hours, the last futile Austrian counterattacks were beaten off. The whitecoats, outflanked and taken in the rear, retreated rapidly. Before this, just about 1330 hours, the 2nd Dragoons, heavily involved near the Sterbohol, had lost its leader, Major-General Christian Friedrich von Blanckensee,66 in the midst of a sanguinary struggle. Blanckensee went down fatally wounded, but still fighting it out in stopping those last desperate Austrian counterattacks. His particular unit was more fortunate than some. It lost 62 casualties in the battle.67 The Sterbohol had been finally conquered from all of these efforts, for the final time on that eventful day.68 The enemy were beginning to withdraw. Manstein and Ziethen passed the Žižkaberg, and arrived at Nussel, late the headquarters of the beaten Austrians.
Ziethen’s cavalry sadly went “missing” about that point. The king thought to send the cavalry of Ziethen, but “unfortunately, however, it was occupied in plundering the baggage of the flying enemy.”69 Other sources are more specific
. “Ziethen with the reserve overthrew the Austrian cavalry.” Next, though, the specter of liquor reared its ugly, untimely head. “His troopers came upon one of the enemy’s camps [at Nussel] and drank so deep … they were of no more use.”70
Meanwhile, Gessler’s timely lunge around the ponds near Sterbohol had been the capper. Katte’s 4th Dragoons, stationed next to the pond dam, lost 59 men, while the 6th Hussars of Colonel Johann Paul von Werner (late of the Austrian army), in one of the most fully involved efforts of the day, rolled up the hard-pressed cavalry of Stampatch and Hadik from behind. Werner’s supreme effort drove the shattered enemy to flight; they lost no less than 1,200 prisoners and ten battle flags in the process.71 The Austrian army appeared to be coming apart at the seams. A golden opportunity was clearly at hand. The thought provoking question must be broached, “What if Ziethen’s troopers had been available right then?” Instead, of course, they were busy drinking away as their comrades rode up. As for the king, he rode up to Branik, and reached there just as the battle ended.
The shattered Austrians, to the tune of nearly 40,000 men, fell back into the makeshift works they had to the right and rearward. The bluecoats, who had bought this latest victory dearly, pressed after them. This “pursuit,” thanks to the failure of Ziethen’s horse, was far more limited and on foot compared to what might have transpired. The follow-up effectively ended at the gates of Prague.72
Closing the gates, together with the crowds of fugitives jammed into the city streets, halted the Prussian pursuit finally. Another 16,000 or so escapees made their way up the Moldau to join up with Marshal Daun. Once they were reunited in some order at Beneschau, that is. Some 10,000 of the cavalry, under General Johann Franz Freiherr von Brettlache, Stampatch and Lt.-Gen. Carl Claudius Graf O’Donnell, made their way off to link up with Daun. The exhausted Prussians could do no more. Prussian units were scattered about, disorganized and the commander of a regiment did not know where his men were. The victors of the battle were often not in much better shape than the vanquished.73