The Austrians refused to release Imperialist units to cover the Reich, and as long as Austria remained at war with Prussia, it lay open to the incursions of Prussian raiders. The Reich Diet was induced to thus seek peace with the Prussian king. And, on November 24, the Austrians themselves, worn out and realizing that they could not conquer Prussia alone (with the Imperialists wavering already and the French on the verge of peace with the British), finally approached Frederick’s court to have a truce. But this was only for themselves, as Prince Stolberg took his Imperials into the Reich to defend it.
Stolberg arrived at his destination in late December, but as Kleist had already moved off for home (December 13), there was no enemy present there. The Prussians took winter quarters in Meissen-Freiberg region, Frederick himself once again at Leipzig (December 5). Thus finally ended the military operations of the long, bloody Seven Years’ War in Germany. All of the nations were now ready for peace; all that remained was in working out the details.29
The final drama of the war, the peace negotiations, was almost anticlimactic considering the duration and scope of the war. The Prussian representative, Ewald von Hertzberg, met, along with other Prussian diplomats, with Allied representatives in that same old hunting lodge at Hubertusburg that Frederick had pillaged once upon a time.
The Austrian representative, Heinrich von Collenbach, at first held tough; he demanded that Glatz be handed over to the Habsburgs and that Prussia should pay compensation to Saxony, but caved in when Frederick, too, held tough. Glatz was not to be turned over to the Austrians, if the king could do anything about it. Eventually, both sides agreed to return to the status quo of before the war. Finally, on February 15, 1763, the two major opponents officially ended the war by their signatures on the Treaty of Hubertusburg. It had been a long, bloody and costly war, and, no doubt, both in Berlin and Vienna, not to mention Versailles, people were glad that it was finally over with. On February 10, the British, French, and Spanish had already signed the Treaty of Paris, ending their hostilities. As for Frederick, he made his way back home to Berlin, incognito. The crowds gathered, rumors flew about the impending arrival of Prussia’s great king back “home.” The people gathered all right, to greet their monarch, and waited, and waited. March 30, 1763. When the next dawn came, Frederick was back at his desk. Working. Such was the measure of the man!
What had been the cost of the war? The combatants suffered about 500,000 dead, nearly 200,000 of these being Prussian.30 In fact, the population of Prussia had stood at about 4,400,000 persons before the war, now it totaled about four million even. The Allies had collectively suffered in about equal measure, although individually had gotten off lighter than Prussia. There had been a tremendous amount of damage inflicted upon the entire region of Central Europe, most especially in Germany. There was much work to be done. Such was the war’s heritage.
PART IX. MAPS
Prussian Invasion of Saxony
Battle of Lobositz
The March to Relieve the Saxons
Prussian Invasion of Bohemia
Battle of Reichenberg
The Battle of Prague
The Battle of Kolin
The Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf
The March to Zittau
Stalemate at Eckartzberga
The Battle of Moys
Encounter at Gotha
Battle of Rossbach
The Battle of Breslau
Battle of Leuthen
The Siege at Olmutz
Ambush at Domstadtl
The Siege of Cüstrin
Battle of Zorndorf
Battle of Hochkirch
Battle of Züllichau
Battle of Kunersdorf
Engagement at Löthain
Battle of Pretzsch
The Battle of Maxen
Engagement of Meissen
Battle of Landshut
Battle of Liegnitz
Battle of Strehla
March to Torgau
Main Action at Torgau
Engagement at Saalfeld
Stalemate at Bunzelwitz
Engagement at Rothmühl
Clash at Zarnglaff
Siege of Treptow
Engagement at Adelsbach
Engagement at Döbeln
Battle of Burkersdorf
Engagement at Teplitz
Battle of Reichenbach
Battle of Freiberg
Chapter Notes
Introduction
1. Leopold Ranke, Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg and History of Prussia, During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 3 vols., translated by Sir Alexander and Lady Duff Gordon (Published in 1849 originally; reprinted by Greenwood Press, New York, 1968), II, 104–105.
2. Alan Palmer, Frederick the Great (London: Book Club Associates, 1974), 81–82.
3. Rupert Furneaux, The Seven Years’ War (London: Book Club Associates, 1973), 29–31.
4. Victor Thaddeus, Frederick the Great: The Philosopher King (New York: Brentano’s Publishers, 1930), 303.
5. Anonymous, A Complete History of the Present War, from its commencement in 1756, to the End of the Campaign 1760. (London: 1761), 117–120.
6. Herbert H. Kaplan, Russia and the Outbreak of the Seven Years’ War (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 55–57; Herbert Butterfield, Ed. Man on his Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship, especially “The Reconstruction of an Historical Episode: The History of the Enquiry into the Origins of the Seven Years War,” pages 142–167.
7. Kaplan, 15; Anton Balthasar König, Biographisches Lexicon aller Helden und Militairpersonen, welche sich in Preuβischen Diensten, herühmt gemacht haben Four Volumes (Berlin, 1788–1791).
8. Palmer, 122–123.
9. Complete History of the Present War, 127.
10. Kaplan, 31.
11. Furneaux, 126.
12. Kaplan, 31.
13. Max Lehmann, Friedrich der Grosse und der Ursprung des Siebenjährigen Krieges (Leipzig, 1894), 38–56, 85–105. This work contains a useful compilation of the quarters of the Prussian army leading up to the outbreak of war. Frederick the Great, a prolific writer, labored at some length in his history of this war to justify the measures he took. A perfect example that history is, indeed, written by those left standing.
PART I
Chapter 1
1. Helden-Staats-und Lebengeschichte Friedrichs des Andern (Helden Geschichte), edited by Christian Frederic Hempel (Frankfurt-on-Oder and Leipzig: 1746–1764), seven volumes, III, 530–609.
2. Friedrich A. Retzow, Charakteristik der wichtigsten Ereignisse des siebenjährigen Krieges, in Rucksicht auf Ursachen und Wirkungen, two volumes (Berlin: 1802), 46–78; Arnold Schaefer, Geschichte des siebenjährigen Krieges, three volumes (Berlin: 1867–1874), I, 203–225; Lehmann, 85–89; Theodor von Bernhardi, Friedrichs der Grosse als Feldherr, two volumes (Berlin: 1881), I, 36–50; Johann Friedrich Seyfart, Lebens-Regierrungs-Geschichte Friedrichs des andern, three volumes (Leipzig: 1785–1788), II, 262–278; John Dobson, Chronological Annals of the War: From the Beginning to the Present Time, in Two Parts. Part I, Containing from April 2, 1755, to the End of 1760. Part II, From the Beginning of 1761, to the Signing of the Preliminaries of Peace (Oxford: 1763), 10–11.
3. Antoine Henri Baron de Jomini, Treatise on Grand Military Operations: Or A Critical and Military History of the Wars of Frederick the Great (New York: 1865), three volumes, I, 76; Antoine Henri Baron de Jomini, Traité des Grandes Opérations Militaires, contenant L’Historie critique des Campagnes de Frédéric II, comparées à celles de L’Emperur Napoléon, four volumes (Paris: 1811), I, 4–13; Richard Waddington, Louis XV, et le renversement des alliances: Préliminaires de la Guerre de Sept Ans, 1754–1756 (Paris: 1899), 1–10. Part of a five volume set, La Guerre de Sept Ans, published between 1899 and 1914.
4. Grosser Generalstab, Kriegs geschichtliche Abteilung, Ed., Die Kriege Friedrichs des Grossen, Part 3: Der Siebenjährige Krieg, 1756–1763, twelve volumes,
Vol. I: Pirna und Lobositz (Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1901), 170–262.
5. Karl Friedrich Pauli and Christoph Peter Franken, Leben grosser Helden des gegenwärtigen Krieges, nine volumes (Halle: 1758–1764), VII, 137–154.
6. A very historical town not welcome to the Prussian bluecoats.
7. Pauli, III, 3–42; König, I, 223–230.
8. Den Offizieren des Groβer Generalstabs, Geschichte des Siebenjahrigen Krieges, in einer Reihe von Vorlesungen (Als Manuskripte zum Gebrauch der Armee gedruckt), mit Benussing authentischer Quellen: ErsterTheil, Die Feldzuge von 1756 und 1757, six volumes (Berlin: 1824), I, 81–96; König, I, 220–222.
9. Karl Heinrich Aster, Beleuchtungder Kriegswirren zwischen Preuβen und Sachsen vom Ende August bis Ende October 1756: Mit einem Ruckblick auf Zustand, Geist und Bildung der beiden Armeen (Dresden: 1848), 89–107.
10. Complete History of the Present War, 141–143.
11. Much detail on the whole situation can be gleaned from Rene Hanké, Brühl und das Renversement des alliances: Die antipreussiche Auβenpolitik des Dresdener Hofes, 1744–1756 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2006), 291–322.
12. This statement needs to be qualified since, although Frederick had not openly coveted Saxon territory, the opportunistic leader had hinted at redrawing the political map of Saxony for nearly a decade by then. There can be little doubt that the forlorn Saxony was viewed as a legitimate prize to be had to further Prussian ambition. This could also help explain the Prussian monarch’s decision to move through Saxony, instead of through Moravia, in the first place.
13. In view of their iron discipline.
14. The civilian population had a different reaction to the Prussians than the Saxon army. The Saxon military from the first treated their Prussian “brethren” as hostile. In fact, “Augustus’ subjects… proved remarkably well disposed towards the Protestant hero from the north” (Christopher Duffy, The Wild Goose and the Eagle: A Life of Marshal von Browne 1705–1757 [London: Chatto & Windus, 1964], 206). There is a German language translation of this work, Feldmarschall Browne: Irisher Emigrant, Kaiserlicher Heerführer, Gegenspeiler Friedrichs II von Preussen (Vienna: Verlag Herold, 1966.) This ultimate edition includes a listing of Irish soldiers in contemporary Austrian service, which is, unfortunately, not found in the more accessible English edition.
15. John Almon, An Impartial History of the Late War (London: 1763), 171.
16. Aster, 117–119.
17. Johann Ferdinand Huschberg with Heinrich Wuttke, Die Drei Kriegsjahre 1756, 1757, und 1758 in Deutschland (Leipzig: 1856), 45–51.
18. Between Hohenstein and the outskirts of Dresden on the upper side of the Elbe, intersecting the road from Stolpen on the Saxon capital.
19. Helden Geschichte, III, 613–627; Jomini, Traité, I, 1–43.
20. Aster, 39–50.
21. For readers interested in more detail of Brühl’s extravagance, there is a fine account in Ludwig Reiners’ Frederick the Great: A Biography (translated by Lawrence P. R. Wilson [New York: G. P. Putnam Sons, 1960], 165–166.) Also, the Aster reference above goes into much detail on this individual, a key player in Saxon politics. In many ways, Brühl was a weight upon the shoulders of the Saxons; Aladár von Boroviczény in Graf von Brühl: Der Medici, Richelieu und Rothschild seiner Zeit (Zurich: Amalthea-Verlag, 1930) makes clear Brühl’s complicity into trying to whitewash the Saxon king’s knowledge of unfolding events (473–478).
22. David Fraser, Frederick the Great (New York: Fromm International, 2000), 318.
23. If any people should doubt the boldness of Frederick, why did the Austrians?
24. There was an additional, albeit less obvious, reason for Austrian reluctance to fully prepare their field army without absolute necessity: money. “[T]he Austrians did not have the money to hold large bodies of troops together for any length of time” (Christopher Duffy, The Armed Forces of Imperial Austria 1740–1780 [New York: Hippocrene Books, 1977], 170).
25. Seyfart, II, 268.
26. Züverlassige Lebens-Beschreibung Ulyses Maximilian, des heil Römische Reichs Grafen von Browne (Frankfurt and Leipzig: 1757), 111–112.
27. Duffy, Wild Goose, 202.
28. Used interchangeably from this point on with regard to the Austrians. Just like the term bluecoats will be used interchangeably with Prussians, greencoats with Russians, from this point on, etc.
29. Complete History of the Present War, 137–138.
30. Almon, 172.
31. R. Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great (Westminster: 1899), 196–198. This through the application of five key points that could not help but accomplish the underlying purpose, according to this line of reason.
32. Leopold von Ranke, Der Arsprüng des Siebenjährigen Krieges (Leipzig: 1871), 168–180.
33. Who had taken the aforementioned Williams’ place at Berlin.
34. Andrew Bisset, ed., Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell, K. B., two volumes (London: 1850), I, 200.
35. Alfred Heinze, Dresden im Siebenjährige Kriege (Dresden: 1885), 2–3; Pauli, IV, 3–76; König, II, 261–267.
36. The Prussians there snared “five hundred cannon and ten thousand muskets” (Robert B. Asprey, Frederick the Great: The Magnificent Enigma [New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1986], 428).
37. Thomas Campbell, ed., with Frederic Shoberl, Frederick the Great: His Court and Times, three volumes (London: 1848), III, 3.
38. Frederick was careful to preserve the dignity of the queen of Saxony-Poland, but he simply required the official state papers to justify his “occupation,” likely as much in his own mind, as well as the rest of Europe. Marshal Keith was most gracious to her majesty, who alone kept the keys to the archives. When she tried to interfere in person to prevent the confiscation, Commandant Wylich, Dresden’s acting ruler, “prostrated himself, spoke of the necessity of fulfilling royal orders… [even] if he must have recourse to force” (Johann Wilhelm H. von Archenholtz, Geschichte des siebenjährigen Krieges in Deutschland [Berlin: 1793], 12–13). The implication was obvious, and the key was finally produced after that unpleasant exchange. With the Prussian monarch taking the time to justify the irruption into Saxony in the first place, this treatment of the Saxon monarchy, although seemingly necessary, was surprising (Karl August Ludwig Philipp Varnhagen von Ense, Leben des Feldmarschalls Jakob Keith [Berlin: 1844], 117–118).
39. Almon, 178.
40. Herbert Tuttle, History of Prussia, four volumes (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1896), IV, 3–4.
41. “This position was exceptionally strong by nature alone, and art required little for it to be formidable” (Archenholtz, I, 8).
42. Olaf Groehler, Die Kriege Friedrichs II (Berlin: Deutscher Militarverlag, 1968), 84. Die Kriege provides a detailed make-up of the invasion forces (Vol. I, 191–195).
43. Aster, 50–60.
44. As an example of the general unpreparedness of the Austrian army, there was a distinct shortage of ammunition as “the magazines were practically empty of flints and cartridges” (Duffy, The Wild Goose, 201). How could the army take the field under these conditions?
45. Ranke, 225–234.
46. Fraser, 319.
47. Die Kriege, Part 3, I, 233–234; Aster, 281–285.
48. 1756 Horace St. Paul, 3–4.
49. Pauli, III, 92–112; König, III, 4–12.
50. Besides boasting a garrison of some 1370 men (Aster, 17).
51. Pauli, V, 159–214.
52. Karl August Ludwig Philipp Varnhagen von Ense, Leben des General Hans Karl von Winterfeldt (Berlin: 1836), 117–120; König, IV, 229–237. On Lestwitz, König, III, 404–406.
53. Campbell, III, 14.
54. “A soldier grown old in the [P]russian service, and a particular favorite of the [K]ingdom” (Complete History of the Present War, 143–144); Pauli, I, 63–130.
55. Philip Haythornthwaite, Frederick the Great’s Army 3 Specialist Troops (London: Osprey, 1992), 18.
56. Frederick II, History of the Se
ven Years’ War by Frederick the Great, two volumes, trans. Thomas Holcroft (London: 1789), I, 78; Pauli, II, 48–49; König, III, 251–252.
57. 1756: The War in Bohemia: The Journal of Horace St. Paul, ed. Neil Cogswell (Guisborough, England: Gralene Books, 1996), 11.
Chapter 2
1. Dopsch, 19–70, examines much of the literature on the battle available prior to 1892. It is invaluable for some of the cited sources are not readily available in one setting. Alfred Dopsch, Das Treffen bei Lobositz, 1 Oktober 1756: Sein Ausgang und seine Folgen (Vienna: Verlags-Buchhandlung Styria, 1892); Seyfart, II, 271–278.
2. Huschberg, 70–72; Alfred Ritter von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresia: Maria Theresia und der Siebenjahrige Kriege 1756–1763 (Vienna: 1875), 17–21. Vol. V (part of the exhaustive ten-volume Geschichte of Arneth referred to below).
3. Reihe von Vorlesungen, I, 96–109.
4. Günter Dorn and Joachim Engelmann, Die Schlachten Friedrichs des Grossen: Führung, Verlauf, Gefechts-Szenen, Gliedrungen Karten (Augsburg: Weltbild Verlag, 1996), 40.
5. Pauli, II, 1–62.
6. The king wrote about that morning: “a thick fog, extending over the plain prevented objects from being distinctly seen” (Frederick II, Seven Years’ War, I, 78).
7. Ulrich Bräker, Der arme Mann im Tockenburg (Zurich: 1789), 115.
8. Carl von Decker, Die Schlachten und Hauptgefecht des Siebenjährigen Krieges, mit besonderer Bezugsnahme auf Gebrauch der Artillerie (Berlin: Posen, Bronberg, 1837), 31–45.
9. The General Staff history says approximately 28,500 Prussians were opposed to 35,500 Austrians (Die Kriege, Part 3, I, 259). On the other hand, another source states “the Austrians were almost twice as numerous as their adversaries” (Campbell, Frederick’s Court and Times, III, 17).
10. This consisted of four 24-pounders, five 12-pounders, and a couple of howitzers.
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