The Prussian army was now advancing almost north. The new Austrian line lay at right angles to its first position, and, as drawn, encircled the village. The Prussians, within half an hour, attacked them in this new position. A bitter contest ensued around the churchyard and some windmills on the hills beyond. The Austrian line was badly mixed up. In places it was thirty to one hundred men deep, and the Prussian guns cut great furrows through the mass. Still the resistance was so stubborn that Frederick was compelled to put in his last man.
Meanwhile Lucchesi, whose misconception had caused the defeat of the Austrian left, debouched with his cavalry upon the Prussian left, which was engaging the enemy on the west of Leuthen. This diversion was well intentioned and came near to being fatal. But the Prussian squadrons left by the king on the Scheuberg hills, emerging from their hiding when the Austrians had somewhat passed, fell smartly upon their flank and rear. Lucchesi was killed and his cavalry scattered; the flank of the enemy’s new line was thus taken in reverse, and the position soon made untenable. Prince Charles was compelled again to beat a hasty retreat.
A third stand was attempted at Saara, but to no effect. The defeated Austrians poured pell-mell over the bridges spanning Schweidnitz Water. The Prussian cavalry followed them some distance.
In this astonishing victory, which was won in three hours, the Prussian loss was six thousand two hundred killed and wounded out of thirty thousand men. The Austrians, out of over eighty thousand men, lost ten thousand in killed and wounded, and twelve thousand prisoners on the field of battle, fifty-one flags, and one hundred and sixteen guns. Within a fortnight after, nearly twenty thousand more men, left by Prince Charles at Breslau, were taken prisoners.
Prince Charles crossed the mountains and reached Königsgrätz with a force of but thirty-seven thousand men, of whom twenty-two thousand were invalided. So much alone was left of the proud army which was to give the coup de grace to doughty Frederick.
By this victory, whose like had not been seen since Cannæ, and which is, tactically considered, distinctly the most splendid of modern days, Frederick rescued himself from immediate disaster, and earned a winter’s leisure in which to prepare for the still desperate difficulties before him. The most threatening matter was the Russian army; the one comfort a subsidy from England. Pitt was clear-sighted in his help to the king.
Frederick is by no means as distinguished a strategist as Napoleon, but he is a more brilliant tactician. He was not a conqueror; he was a king defending his territory. While theoretically on the defensive, he kept the initiative and was always the attacking party. Surrounded as he was by enemies, his strategy was confined to selecting the, for the time, most dangerous opponent and making an uncompromising onslaught upon him. During the Seven Years’ War he was placed somewhat as was Napoleon in the campaign around Paris, in 1814, and flew from one margin of his theatre of operations to the other. But Frederick won; Napoleon lost. It was Frederick’s fortitude, unmatched save by Hannibal, which carried him through.
In 1758, true to his custom, Frederick took the field before the enemy and surprised him by a march into Moravia and a sudden siege of Olmütz. But Frederick, like Hannibal, was never happy in his sieges. This one was interrupted by Daun from Königsgrätz, and ended in the capture of one of Frederick’s convoys by the active partisan chieftain Laudon. Frederick was forced to retire, but he did so deliberately and with all his trains. One of the most remarkable qualities of the king was the dread he inspired, even in defeat. As the Romans avoided Hannibal, so the Austrians never ventured to attack Frederick in disaster. Napoleon by no means rose superior to misfortune in the manner of Frederick. In this instance the enemy attempted no pursuit, and to Daun’s utter consternation, instead of retreating on Silesia from whence he had come, Frederick made a forced march around the Austrian flank, captured and established himself in Daun’s own fortified camp, and there feasted his men on Daun’s supplies. He had absolutely checkmated the Austrian general. This turning of the tables almost provokes a smile. (July.)
From Königsgrätz, however, Frederick was soon called against the Russians, who had advanced as far into Prussian territory as Frankfurt. He marched rapidly northward, met the enemy at Zorndorf, and by a beautiful movement around their position established himself on their communications. Then with his thirty thousand men he boldly assailed the fifty thousand Russians strongly entrenched on Zorndorf heights (August 25). The Russians have always been stubborn fighters, but they now met a man who would not take less than victory. There ensued one of those horrible butcheries which these tenacious troops have so often suffered rather than yield. Frederick won the day, but it was with a loss of ten thousand four hundred killed and wounded out of his thirty thousand men,—more than one-third,—in a few hours, while the Russians lost twenty-one thousand men and one hundred and thirty guns. Frederick, however, from sheer exhaustion, allowed the Russians to retire without pursuit, and singularly enough he neglected to seize the Russian wagon-camp, which was absolutely under his hand. This was an undoubted error; but he had eliminated the most grievous danger from his problem, which was all he had in view.
He was now obliged to hurry back to draw Daun away from Dresden. This he accomplished; but Daun still stood athwart his path to Silesia, which the king must reach to relieve the siege of Neisse. In endeavoring to elude the enemy he ran across him at Hochkirch, and, in one of his not unusual fits of unreasonable obstinacy, sat down in a recklessly bad position within a mile of the Austrian front. Here he remained four days. “The Austrians deserve to be hanged if they do not attack us here,” said grim Field-Marshal Keith. “They fear us worse than the gallows,” replied the king. But just as Frederick was preparing a new flank march, Daun, who had ninety thousand men, fell upon the Prussian army of less than forty thousand, and, despite the best of fighting, fairly wrested a victory and one hundred guns from the king (Oct. 14). For all which Frederick retired from the field in parade order—merely shifted his ground, as it were—and again camped within four miles of the battle-field. “The marshal has let us out of check; the game is not lost yet,” quoth he. From here, within a few days, Frederick made another of his wonderful turning movements, and this time actually seized the road to Silesia. Thus in spite of a defeat and of numbers he had gained his point. The Austrians raised the siege of Neisse at the mere rumor of his approach, and this campaign of marvellous marches left the king in possession of all that for which he had been contending.