The Battle of Kunersdorf occurred on 12 August 1759 near Kunersdorf (now Kunowice, Poland) immediately east of Frankfurt an der Oder. Part of the Third Silesian War and the wider Seven Years' War, the battle involved over 100,000 men. An Allied army commanded by Pyotr Saltykov and Ernst Gideon von Laudon that included 41,000 Russians and 18,500 Austrians defeated Frederick the Great's army of 50,900 Prussians.
The terrain complicated battle tactics for both sides, but the Russians and the Austrians, having arrived in the area first, were able to overcome many of its difficulties by strengthening a causeway between two small ponds. They had also devised a solution to Frederick's deadly modus operandi, the oblique order. Although Frederick's troops initially gained the upper hand in the battle, his limited scouting, combined with the strong defensive preparations of the Allied troops, gave the Russians and Austrians an advantage. By afternoon, when the combatants were exhausted, fresh Austrian troops thrown into the fray secured the Allied victory.
This was the only time in the Seven Years' War that the Prussian Army, under Frederick's direct command, disintegrated into an undisciplined mass. With this loss, Berlin, only 80 kilometers (50 mi) away, lay open to assault by the Russians and Austrians. However, Saltykov and Laudon did not follow up on the victory due to disagreement. Only 3,000 soldiers from Frederick's original 50,000 remained with him after the battle, although many more had simply scattered and rejoined the army within a few days. This represented the penultimate success of the Russian Empire under Elizabeth of Russia and was arguably Frederick's worst defeat.
Seven Years' War
Although the Seven Years' War was a global conflict, it took on a specific intensity in the European theater based on the recently concluded War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle gave Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, the prosperous province of Silesia as a consequence of the First and Second Silesian Wars. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances; she was intent upon regaining ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire as well as reacquiring Silesia. In 1754, escalating tensions between Great Britain and France in North America offered France an opportunity to break the British dominance of Atlantic trade. Recognizing the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's growing power, the Empress put aside the old rivalry with France to form a new coalition. Faced with this turn of events, Britain aligned herself with the Kingdom of Prussia; this alliance drew in not only the British king's territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his and Frederick's relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. This series of political maneuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
At the outset of the war, Frederick had one of the finest armies in Europe: his troops—any company—could fire at least four volleys a minute, and some of them could fire five. By the end of 1757, the course of the war had gone well for Prussia, and poorly for Austria. Prussia had achieved spectacular victories at Rossbach and Leuthen and reconquered parts of Silesia that had fallen to Austria.
The Prussians then pressed south into Austrian Moravia. In April 1758, Prussia and Britain concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention in which the British committed an annual subsidy of £670,000. Britain also dispatched 7,000–9,000 troops to reinforce the army of Frederick's brother-in-law, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Ferdinand evicted the French from Hanover and Westphalia and re-captured the port of Emden in March 1758; he crossed the Rhine with his own forces, causing general alarm in France. Despite Ferdinand's victory over the French at the Battle of Krefeld and his brief occupation of Düsseldorf, the successful maneuvering of larger French forces required him to withdraw across the Rhine.
While Ferdinand kept the French occupied, Prussia had to contend with Sweden, Russia, and Austria, all of which wanted to carve out a piece of Prussia for themselves. Prussia could lose Silesia to Austria, Pomerania to Sweden, Magdeburg to Saxony, and East Prussia to Poland or Russia: an entirely nightmarish scenario. By 1758, Frederick was increasingly concerned by the Russian advance from the east and marched to counter it. Just east of the Oder river in Brandenburg–Neumark, at the Battle of Zorndorf, on 25 August 1758 a Prussian army of 35,000 men fought a Russian army of 43,000. Both sides suffered heavy casualties but the Russians withdrew, and Frederick claimed victory. At the Battle of Tornow a month later, a Swedish army repulsed the Prussian army, but did not move on Berlin. By late summer, fighting had resulted in a draw. None of Prussia's enemies seemed willing to take the decisive steps to pursue Frederick into Prussia's heartland. The Austrian Feldmarshalleutnant Leopold Josef Graf Daun could have ended the war in October at Hochkirch, but he failed to follow up on his victory with a determined pursuit of Frederick's retreating army. This allowed Frederick time to recruit a new army over the winter.
Situation in 1759
By 1759, Prussia had reached a strategic defensive position; Russian and Austrian troops surrounded Prussia, although not quite at the borders of Brandenburg. Upon leaving winter quarters in April 1759, Frederick assembled his army in Lower Silesia; this forced the main Habsburg army to remain in its staging area in Bohemia. The Russians, however, shifted their forces into western Poland–Lithuania, a move that threatened the Prussian heartland, potentially Berlin itself. Frederick countered by sending Generalleutnant Friedrich August von Finck's army corps to contain the Russians. Finck's corps was defeated at the Battle of Kay on 23 July. Subsequently, Pyotr Saltykov and the Russian forces advanced 110 kilometers (68 mi) west to occupy Frankfurt an der Oder on 31 July (on Germany's border with present-day Poland). There he ordered entrenchment of their camp to the east, near Kunersdorf. To make matters worse for the Prussians, an Austrian corps commanded by Feldmarshalleutnant Ernst Gideon von Laudon joined Saltykov on 3–5 August. King Frederick rushed from Saxony, took over the remnants of Generalleutnant Carl Heinrich von Wedel's contingent at Müllrose and moved toward the Oder River. By 9 August, he had 49,000–50,000 troops, enhanced by Finck's defeated corps, and Prince Henry of Prussia's corps moving from the Lausitz region.
Preliminaries
Terrain
The terrain surrounding Kunersdorf suited itself better to defense than offense. Between the Frankfurt dam, a long earthen bulwark that helped to contain the Oder river, and to the north of Kunersdorf itself stretched a 3 km (2 mi) line of knolls; Judenberge (Jews Hill), Mühlberge (Mill Hill) and Walkberge (also spelled Walckberge). None was more than 30 m (98 ft) high. The hillocks were steeper on the north side than the south, but bounded by a marshy, boggy meadow called the Elsbusch, or the Alder wasteland. East of Kunersdorf and the Walkberge, the Hühner Fliess (Fliess means running water) was joined by another stream that tumbled between two more hillocks. Past the Walkberge and beyond the Hühner stood two more promontories at Trettin.
Several ravines intersected the ridge of hillocks: starting at the northeastern end, the Bäckergrund joined the Hühner Fliess. Just east of the Walkberge a small ravine separated the Walkberge from the Mühlberge. Another narrow roadway cut through the Mühlberge ridge, then a second narrow depression, known as the Kuhgrund (cow hollow), lay west of that. Beyond the Kuhgrund, the ground rose again, then dipped into a fourth hollow in which lay a Jewish settlement known as a shtetl, and the ground rose into the Judenberge; from this point, one could overlook most of Frankfurt and its suburbs. To the southeast lay a variety of small promontories, called the Grosser- and Kleiner-Spitzberge. Like the northwest side of the ridge, this ground was covered with small ponds, streams, marshy fields, and broad meadows. Natural features—ponds, causeways, swamps—would restrict wide movements on some of the terrain. To the east and north of the entire landscape lay the Forest of Reppen. Here the ground itself was sandy and unstable. The scrub forests were threaded with streams, springs, and bogs of all kinds.
Allied dispositions
The Russian army, which before the battle of Kay had about 40,000 men and lost 4,804 in the battle, after the battle of Kay had about 35,000 men. After the battle of Kay, it was joined by Pyotr Rumyantsev's corps of 7,000 men and the Austrian army of General Laudon. On August 4, 1759, according to the inspection, the total number of the Russian army was 41,248 people. This number included the regular army of 33,000 people and irregular—about 8,000 light cavalry of the Cossacks and Kalmyks. During the battle of Kunersdorf Saltykov left a detachment of 266 men in Frankfurt and had 41,000 for the battle. The Austrian army had on 4 August 18,523 men. These figures are reflected in the documents and are used in Russian scientific literature. There are also numerous overestimates of the Russian army, originating from German and English sources—for example 79,000, 64,000, 69,000 and even 88,000—these numbers are not based on documents. For example, the number 79,000 comes from the addition of 55,000 Russians and 24,000 Austrians, and 55,000 Russians are, in turn, the result of an army that had an initial strength of 60,000 people, lost about 5,000 at the battle of Kay. In fact, 60,000 is the total number of all Russian troops in Prussia, including garrisons in different cities, troops for the protection of communications and so on.
A portion of the Russian force remained in Frankfurt as the Allied advanced guard. Saltykov had expected the Austrian commander-in-chief's entire army to arrive; instead a mere wing under Laudon's command came to his aid. Their collaboration was complicated by their personalities. Neither Laudon nor Saltykov had great command of operational arts. Saltykov did not like foreigners; Laudon thought Saltykov was inscrutable. Neither liked conversing through translators, and both mistrusted each other's intentions.
Laudon wanted a fight, so he swallowed his differences and joined the Russians in building fortifications. Saltykov established his troops on a strong position from which to receive the Prussian attack, concentrating his force in the center, which he calculated was the best way to counter-act any attempt by Frederick to deploy his deadly oblique order. Saltykov entrenched himself in a position running from the Judenberge through the Grosser Spitzberge to the Mühlberge, creating a bristling line of fortifications, and faced his troops to the northwest; the Judenberge, most heavily fortified, fronted what he believed would be Frederick's approach. He and the Austrian troops were stretched along the ridge that ran from the outskirts of Frankfurt to just north of the village of Kunersdorf. Anticipating that Frederick would rely on his cavalry, the Russians effectively negated any successful cavalry charge by using fallen trees to break up the ground on the approaches.
Saltykov had little concern about the extreme northwestern face of the ridge, which was steep and fronted by the marshy Elsbruch, but a few of the Austrian contingents faced northwest as a precaution. He expected Frederick to attack him from the west, from Frankfurt, and from the Frankfurt outer city. The Russians constructed redans and flèche to protect all the potentially weak points of their fortifications; they built glacis to cover the most shallow of the hills, and scarps and counterscarps to protect seemingly weak points. Abatis not only littered the hillsides, but dotted flat ground. By 10 August, his scouts had told him that Frederick was at the far western edge of Frankfurt. Accordingly, Saltykov took everything he could from the city by way of sustenance, all oxen, sheep, chickens, produce, wine, beer, in a flurry of ransacking.
Prussian plans
While Saltykov plundered the city and prepared for Frederick's assault from the west, the Prussians reached Reitwein, some 28 km (17 mi) north of Frankfurt on 10 August, and built pontoon bridges during the night. Frederick crossed the Oder in the night and the next morning, and moved southward toward Kunersdorf; the Prussians established a staging area near Göritz (also spelled Gohritz on the old maps), about 9.5 km (6 mi) north-northeast of Kunersdorf late on 11 August with about 50,000 men; of these, 2,000 were deemed unfit for service and stayed behind to guard the baggage.