The Battle of Leuthen was fought on 5 December 1757 between Frederick the Great's Prussian Army and an Austrian army commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine and Count Leopold Joseph von Daun. Frederick used maneuver warfare and knowledge of the terrain to rout the larger Austrian force completely. The victory ensured Prussian control of Silesia during the Third Silesian War, which was part of the Seven Years' War.
The battle was fought in and around the town of Leuthen (now Lutynia, Poland), 10 km (6 mi) northwest of Breslau, (now Wrocław, Poland), in Prussian (formerly Austrian) Silesia. By exploiting the training of his troops and his superior knowledge of the terrain, Frederick created a diversion at one end of the battlefield and moved most of his smaller army behind a series of low hillocks. The surprise attack in oblique order on the unsuspecting Austrian flank baffled Prince Charles, who took several hours to realize that the main action was to his left, not his right. Within seven hours, the Prussians had destroyed the Austrians and erased any advantage that the Austrians had gained throughout the campaigning in the preceding summer and autumn. Within 48 hours, Frederick had laid siege to Breslau, which resulted in the city's surrender on 19–20 December.
Leuthen was the last battle at which Prince Charles commanded the Austrian Army before his sister-in-law, Empress Maria Theresa, appointed him as governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and placed Leopold Joseph von Daun in command of the army. The battle also established beyond doubt Frederick's military reputation in European circles and was arguably his greatest tactical victory. After the Battle of Rossbach on 5 November, the French had refused to participate further in Austria's war with Prussia, and after Leuthen (5 December), Austria could not continue the war by itself.
Background
Although the Seven Years' War was a global conflict, it acquired a specific intensity in the European theater as a result of the competition between Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, and Maria Theresa of Austria. Their rivalry dated from 1740, when upon Maria Theresa's ascension, Frederick had attacked and annexed the prosperous province of Silesia. The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) between Prussia and Maria Theresa's allies, awarded Silesia to Prussia. Maria Theresa had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances and intended to regain her ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire and to reacquire Silesia. Similarly, France sought to break the British dominance of the Atlantic trade.
In 1754, escalating tensions between Britain and France in North America offered the Empress the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's ever-growing power. France and Austria put aside their old rivalry to form a coalition of their own; Maria Theresa agreed that one of her daughters, Maria Antonia, would marry the Dauphin of France, and her chief ministers negotiated a military and political pact advantageous to both parties. That drove Britain to align herself with George II's nephew, Frederick II. Their alliance also involved the Electorate of Hanover, which was held in personal union by George, along with George's and Frederick's relatives, who ruled the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel. That series of political manoeuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
When war broke out in 1756, Frederick overran Saxony and campaigned in Bohemia, where he defeated the Austrians on 6 May 1757 at the Battle of Prague. Learning that the French forces had invaded his ally's territory of Hanover, Frederick moved west. On 5 November 1757, an infantry regiment of about 1,000 men and 1,500 of his cavalry defeated the combined French and Austrian force of 30,000 at the Battle of Rossbach in a 90-minute battle. In his absence, however, the Austrians had managed to retake Silesia: the Empress's brother-in-law, Prince Charles, took the city of Schweidnitz and moved on Breslau in lower Silesia.
Heading back to Silesia, Frederick learned of the fall of Breslau in late November. He and his 22,000 men covered 274 km (170 mi) in 12 days and, at Liegnitz, joined up with the Prussian troops who had survived the fighting at Breslau. The augmented army of about 33,000 troops, with approximately 167 cannons, arrived near Leuthen to find 66,000 Austrians in possession.
Terrain and troop strengths
Most of Lower Silesia is a rolling plain of fertile land. It includes black and alluvial soils near Breslau (Wrocław) and in river valleys, mixed with more sandy soils. Between the Oder river and the foot of the Sudeten Mountains, it has mild climate, fertile soils and extensive water network, which made it a coveted agricultural resource.
In the area northwest of Breslau, the absence of steep hills makes the observation of an approaching enemy easy, and the relative flatness limited hiding manoeuvers. The presence of alluvial soil guaranteed relatively-soft ground, less than what Frederick would face at Kunersdorf in 1758 but enough to provide the occasional natural bogs to bar the passage of troops in some locations or to muffle the sound of marching and horses' hooves. The area around Leuthen included several hamlets and villages: principally, Nypern, about 5.6 km (3 mi) north; Frobelwitz, also to the north, about halfway between Leuthen and Nypern; Gohlau, 3 km (2 mi) to the southeast; and Lissa (now a district of Wrocław), 6.1 km (4 mi) to the east. A road connected the villages of Borne, Leuthen, and Lissa with Breslau, across the Oder River and its tributaries.
Habsburgs
Aware of Frederick's approach, Charles and his second-in-command, Count Leopold Joseph von Daun, positioned the army facing west on a 8 km (5 mi) front in country of undulating plains. The Prince deployed his troops in two lines, the right wing at his northernmost point, anchored at Nypern. Leuthen served as the Austrian centre. Charles established his command post there by using a church tower as his observation post and stationing seven battalions in the village itself. The majority of Charles' forces stood on his right wing. A small advanced post stood at Borne, but with Frederick's arrival in force, it withdrew immediately to the east. The Austrian position intersected at right angles with the principal road between Borne and Breslau and passed through Frobelwitz and Lissa. He secured Nypern with eight grenadier companies and placed his cavalry at Guckerwitz (now Kokorzyce, part of the village Krępice). The Austrian line extended as far south as Sagschütz (now Zakrzyce), where his cavalry stood at right angles to the infantry and created a line between Sagschütz and Gohlau. The positions were secured with additional grenadiers and pickets. Troops filled villages and woods, and hastily made abatis and redoubts. Pickets guarded all communication points as well as road and path crossings. The left wing was his shortest, with cavalry placed at the far end, near a stream by the village of Gohlau. Charles had an amalgamated force of Habsburg troops, including several contingents from the Military Frontier and imperial troops from the Duchies of Württemberg and Bavaria.
Prussia
Frederick had learned the countryside by heart on previous maneuvers. On 4 December 1757, from his position on the Schönberg, a knoll about 1.5 km (1 mi) west of Borne, he surveyed the familiar landscape with his generals, and a plan emerged. In front of him, a cluster of low hills dotted the landscape along an axis approximately parallel to the Austrian line. He knew the names of the hills: Schleierberg, Sophienberg, Wachberg and Butterberg. They were hardly hills, more like hillocks, but were high enough to provide a screen for his troops. Facing an army twice his size, he had to rely on his own army's tactical training and to use the terrain to maneuver his men into an optimal position. Frederick had one of the finest armies in Europe: any company of his troops fired at least four volleys a minute, and some of them could fire a phenomenal five, which was twice the rate of fire of most other European armies. The Prussians could maneuver better than any of the armies in Europe and could march faster, and they had just come from a resounding success at Rossbach. His artillery could quickly deploy and redeploy to support his infantry. His cavalry, superbly trained, could maneuver and charge with horses flank to flank and riders knee to knee and move at a full gallop.
Battle
Prussian feint
The foggy weather made it difficult to see positions from either side, but Frederick and his commanders used the fog to their advantage. Leaving a cavalry unit and a cluster of infantry in front of the northernmost end of the Austrian line (the Austrian right), Frederick deployed the remainder, the bulk of his forces toward Leuthen itself. Charles saw them start their redeployment and may have interpreted the maneuver as withdrawal at least for a while.
At 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, Frederick moved toward the Austrian right wing in four columns, with infantry in the inner two and cavalry in the outer two. Using the knolls to block the Austrians' view of his movements, Frederick shifted the two columns of infantry and one of cavalry obliquely to his own right. The leftmost column of cavalry remained behind to convince the Austrians that it was still approaching directly at the latter end of the Austrian line, near Frobelwitz. The visible distraction screened Frederick's intent of executing an oblique maneuver like the one that he had used successfully only weeks earlier at the Battle of Rossbach. Prince Charles, watching from his vantage point, moved his entire reserve to his right flank. That not only weakened the left flank but also stretched his front from Leuthen past Frobelwitz and on to Nypern and extended it well beyond its original 4 km (2 mi).
While a single column of cavalry mesmerised Charles at his rightmost flank, the rest of the Prussians continued undetected, behind those hills across the Austrian front and overreached the Austrian left wing.
Oblique maneuver
The Prussian infantry marched southward and remained behind a line of low hills, out of the Austrians' sight. When the heads of both superbly-drilled Prussian columns, the distances between the marching platoons remaining exactly the width of each platoon's front, had passed the Austrian left flank, the columns veered left toward the enemy and continued their march until they had passed beyond the left Austrian flank. On command, the platoons of the columns then faced left at Lobetinz, and the whole Prussian army stood in line of battle, two to three men deep, at a nearly-right angle to the weakest point of the Austrian left. Similarly, Hans Joachim von Zieten's cavalry had traversed the entire Austrian front and positioned itself at a 45-degree angle to the Austrian flank.
The Prussian artillery perched on the reverse slopes of the Butterberg and was hidden from the Austrians' view while it prepared to move to the crest to time their bombardment with the infantry's attack. The bulk of the repositioned Prussian army now faced the smallest component of the Austrian line. The only column of Prussian cavalry and the small reserve of infantry remaining at the Austrian far right continued to demonstrate in front of the Austrians and even moved further north, as if an attack would occur there.
Attack
The Austrians were astonished at the Prussian appearance on their left flank, but the objective was soon clear. The Prussian infantry, now arrayed in the conventional two lines of battle, advanced on the weakest part of the Austrian line with the intention of rolling up the flank. The Austrian colonels on the scene did their best by turning their own lines 90 degrees and trying to take advantage of a shallow ditch, which faced the Prussian line. Franz Leopold von Nádasdy, who commanded the flank, asked Charles for support, a request that was ignored. Even in the late morning, with most of the Prussian army on his left flank, he still believed that any attack would come at the northern flank. Most of the men in the first Austrian line were Württembergers, Protestant troops whose willingness to fight the Lutheran Prussians had been called into question by the Austrian command. The Württembergers held out and maintained steady musket fire until the mass of Prussians emerged through the haze of gunpowder. They then ran for their lives, sweeping the Bavarians deployed by Nádasdy to support his flank with them.