Results of the Battle of Rossbach.—The Attack upon Breslau.—Extraordinary Address of the King to his Troops.—Confidence of the Prussians in their Commander.—Magnificent Array of the Austrians at Leuthen.—Tactics of Frederick.—The Battle Hymn.—The Battle and the Victory.—Scenes after the Battle.—Recapture of Breslau by Frederick.
The battle of Rossbach was fought on the 5th of November, 1757. Frederick had but little time to rejoice over his victory. The Austrians were overrunning Silesia. On the 14th of the month, the important fortress of Schweidnitz, with all its magazines, fell into their hands. Then Prince Charles, with sixty thousand Austrian troops, marched upon Breslau, the principal city of Silesia, situated on the Oder. The Prince of Bevern held the place with a little over twenty thousand Prussian troops. His army was strongly intrenched outside of the walls, under the guns of the city.
On the 22d of November the Austrians commenced their attack from five different points. It was a terrific conflict. Sixty thousand men stormed ramparts defended by twenty thousand as highly disciplined troops, and as desperate in valor, as ever stood upon a battle-field. The struggle commenced at three o’clock in the morning, and raged, over eight miles of country, until nine o’clock at night. Darkness and utter exhaustion terminated the conflict. The Austrians had lost, in killed and wounded, six thousand men, the Prussians eight thousand.
Prince Bevern, aware that the battle would be renewed upon the morrow, and conscious that he could not sustain another435 such struggle, withdrew with his Prussian troops in the night, through the silent streets of Breslau, to the other side of the Oder, leaving eighty cannon behind him. The next morning, in visiting one of the outposts, he was surprised by a party of the Austrians and taken prisoner. It was reported that, fearing the wrath of the king, he had voluntarily allowed himself to be captured. General Kyau, the next in rank, took the command. He rapidly retreated. Breslau, thus left to its fate, surrendered, with its garrison of four thousand men, ninety-eight pieces of cannon, and vast magazines filled with stores of war. The next day was Sunday. Te Deums were chanted by the triumphant Austrians in the Catholic churches in Breslau, and thanks were offered to God that Maria Theresa had reconquered Silesia, and that “our ancient sovereigns are restored to us.”
These were terrible tidings for Frederick. The news reached him at Gorlitz when on the rapid march toward Silesia. Prince Charles had between eighty and ninety thousand Austrian troops in the reconquered province. Frederick seemed to be marching to certain and utter destruction, as, with a feeble band of but about twenty thousand men, he pressed forward, declaring, “I will attack them if they stand on the steeples of Breslau.”
On the evening of the 3d of December, 1757, the king arrived at Parchwitz, in the heart of Silesia, about thirty miles from Breslau. Here the wreck of Prince Bevern’s army joined him. Thus re-enforced, he could bring about thirty thousand men into the field. He immediately, in the night, assembled his principal officers, and thus addressed them; the words were taken down at the time. We give this characteristic address slightly abbreviated:
“My friends, the disasters which have befallen us here are not unknown to you. Schweidnitz is lost. The Prince of Bevern is beaten. Breslau is gone, and all our war-stores there. A large part of Silesia is lost. Indeed, my embarrassments would be insuperable were it not that I have boundless trust in you. There is hardly one among you who has not distinguished himself by some memorable action. All these services I well know, and shall never forget.
“I flatter myself that now nothing will be wanting of that valor which the state has a right to expect of you. The hour is436 at hand. I should feel that I had accomplished nothing were I to leave Silesia in the hands of Austria. Let me then apprise you that I intend to attack Prince Charles’s army, which is nearly thrice the strength of our own, wherever I can find it. It matters not what are his numbers, or what the strength of his position. All this by courage and by skill we will try to overcome. This step I must risk, or all is lost. We must beat the enemy, or perish before his batteries. If there be any one who shrinks from sharing these dangers with me, he can have his discharge this evening.”
The king paused. A general murmur of applause indicated the united resolve to conquer or to die. Frederick immediately added:
“Yes, I knew it. Not one of you will forsake me. I rely upon your help and upon victory as sure. The cavalry regiment that does not, on the instant, on order given, dash full plunge into the enemy, I will directly after the battle unhorse, and make it a garrison regiment. The infantry battalion which, meet with what it may, shows the least sign of hesitating, loses its colors and its sabres, and I cut the trimmings from its uniform.
“I shall be in the front and in the rear of the army. I shall fly from one wing to the other. No squadron and no company will escape my observation. Those who act well I will reward, and will never forget them. We shall soon either have beaten the enemy or we shall see each other no more.”
After this address to the assembled generals Frederick rode out to the camp, and addressed each regiment in the most familiar and fatherly, yet by no means exultant terms. It was night. The glare of torches shed a lurid light upon the scene. The first regiment the king approached was composed of the cuirassiers of the Life Guard.
“Well, my children,” said Frederick, “how do you think that it will be with us now? The Austrians are twice as strong as we.”
“Never you mind that,” they replied. “The Austrians are not Prussians. You know what we can do.”
“Indeed I do,” the king responded. “Otherwise I durst not risk a battle. And now, my children, a good night’s sleep to you. We shall soon attack the enemy; and we shall beat him, or we shall all die.”
437 “Yes, death or victory,” they shouted. Then from loving lips the cheer ran along the line, “Good-night, Fritz.”
And thus the king passed from regiment to regiment. Perhaps no commander, excepting Napoleon, has ever secured to an equal degree the love of his soldiers. It is said that a deserter was brought before him.
“What induced you to desert me?” inquired the king.
“Alas! your majesty,” the man replied, “we are so few, and the Austrians are so many, that defeat is certain.”
“Well,” the king replied, kindly, “try it one day more. If we do not mend matters, you and I will both desert together.”
The Austrian army, which outnumbered the Prussian over three to one, was in a camp, very strongly fortified, near Breslau. A council of war was held. Some of the Austrian officers, dreading the prowess of their redoubtable opponent, advised that they should remain behind their intrenchments, and await an attack. It would, of course, be impossible for less than thirty thousand men to storm ramparts bristling with artillery, and defended by nearly ninety thousand highly disciplined and veteran troops.
Others, however, urged that this was ignoble and cowardly; that it would expose them to the derision of the world if they, with their overwhelming numbers, were to take shelter behind their ramparts, fearing to attack so feeble a band. Prince Charles, anxious to regain lost reputation, and elated by the reconquest of Silesia, adopted the more heroic resolve, and marched out to meet the foe.
With great joy Frederick learned that the Austrians had left their camp, and were on the advance to attack him. He immediately put his little army in motion for the perilous and decisive conflict. It was four o’clock Sunday morning, December 4, 1757, when Frederick left Parchwitz on his march toward Breslau. He was familiar with every square mile of the region. The Austrians were so vastly superior in numbers that many of them quite despised the weakness of the Prussian army. Many jokes were tossed about in the Austrian camp respecting the feeble band of Frederick, which they contemptuously called the “Potsdam Guard.”
The Austrians, on the careless and self-confident march toward Parchwitz, had crossed the Schweidnitz River, or Water, as it438 was called, when they learned that Frederick, with a tiger-like spring, had leaped upon Neumarkt, an important town fourteen miles from Parchwitz. Here the Austrians had a bakery, protected by a guard of a thousand men. Seven hundred of the guard were instantly sabred or taken prisoners. The rest fled wildly. Frederick gathered up eighty thousand hot bread rations, with which he feasted his hungry troops.
MAP OF THE LEUTHEN CAMPAIGN.
Early on Monday morning the Prussians advanced from Neumarkt, eight miles, to Borne. Here they met the advance-guard of the Austrian cavalry. It was a dark, foggy morning. Frederick, as usual, was with his vanguard. Almost before the Austrians were conscious of the presence of the foe, they were assailed, with the utmost impetuosity, in front and on both their flanks. Instantly they were thrown into utter confusion. The ground was covered with their dead. Their general, Nostitz, was fatally wounded, and died the next day. Five hundred and forty were taken prisoners. The bleeding, breathless remnant fled pell-mell back to the main body, a few miles in the rear.
Frederick, pressing forward directly east, toward Leuthen, ascended an eminence, the height of Scheuberg, whence he beheld,439 directly before him, the whole majestic Austrian army. It extended for a distance of about five miles, drawn up in battle-array across his path, from the village of Nypern on the north, through Leuthen, to the village of Sagschütz on the south. So distinctly were their military lines spread out before the eye that Frederick, with his glass, could count them, man by man. Carefully the king studied the position of the enemy, and formed his plan of attack. He designed, while bewildering the Austrians by his man?uvres, to direct the whole concentrated strength of his army upon their extreme left wing. He hoped thus, by the desperate impetuosity of his attack, to roll that whole left wing together in utter ruin before the centre or the right could come to its aid. He would then press on, with numbers ever overpowering the Austrians at the point of attack, until the whole line, five miles in length, was annihilated.
An eye-witness thus describes the tactics by which Frederick executed his design: “It is a particular man?uvre which, up to the present time, none but Prussian troops can execute with the precision and velocity indispensable to it. You divide your line into many pieces. You can push these forward stair-wise, so that they shall halt close to one another. Forming itself in this way, a mass of troops takes up in proportion very little............