Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

PLAN OF KUNERSDORF, AUGUST 12, 1759.

Nor was Frederick favoured by the ground. The most casual glance at the two fields is sufficient to show that Kunersdorf, the scene of the bloody drama of August 12, 1759, presented difficulties such as the assailant at Zorndorf never had to overcome. The allies were again encamped on the right bank of the Oder, and were now separated by the broad river from the town of Frankfurt. To march round their position was far more arduous than at Zorndorf. Their left wing was shielded by impassable morasses, and the right by forest. Behind them lay a fortress commanding a well-bridged river, before them a tangled mass of sand-hills, woods, and lakes which seemed to have been designed by nature to impede an attacking force and which was now made still more formidable by art. This position, even if the 16,000 irregulars be ignored, was held by some 40,000 Russians, now veterans in western warfare, aided by 13,000 of the flower of the Austrian army under a captain worthy to cross swords with Frederick himself.

On the other hand, the King had still Seydlitz, but such men as Wedell could ill supply the place of Schwerin, the Old Dessauer, and Keith. Some of his troops were men who had fled before the Russians every year, at Gross-Jägersdorf, at Zorndorf, and at Kay, and whom he could not even trust. Owing to the difficulties of the ground and the King’s impatience, most of the Prussians went into action suffering under privations that would have well-nigh killed ordinary men. They lacked food and drink. After two nights without sleep they must drag themselves and their accoutrements through a manœuvre of nine hours’ duration, now tugging cannon through pine-woods, now clambering over sand-hills under the broiling August sun. Then at noon they were ordered to attack an enemy more numerous than themselves who was resting quietly behind entrenchments in ground of his own choosing.

That they accomplished what they did proves that the Prussians were heroes. Frederick’s design was, as at Zorndorf, to cross the Oder below the Russian camp, to march round it, and then to strike. But the barren waste east of Frankfurt was to him unfamiliar country. At Leuthen and at Zorndorf he had profited greatly by his knowledge of the field. But at Kunersdorf he knew neither the difficulties of the ground nor the extent to which, in one most important particular, those difficulties had been surmounted by the enemy. When he scanned their position from the north-east before completing his plan of attack, he could discern Laudon’s force encamped in a seemingly isolated peninsula in the great marsh which protected the left. He was informed that Laudon and Soltykoff could communicate only by a roundabout way. Not till the issue of the day was dubious did he learn that a new causeway connected the Austrians with the main body of the enemy, and the error proved fatal. Twice in his life Frederick paid dear for imperfect information, but the price of the blunder at Prague was a trifle by the side of the price paid here.

The beginning of the fray was such as to make the end a doubly crushing blow to the King. After long and toilsome preparations it seemed as though victory was assured. When the Prussian van went into action they advanced like fresh men and turned the Russians out of their entrenchments at the point of the bayonet. A second onslaught, better supported, took the enemy in flank and by two o’clock the Russian left was beaten, with a loss of seventy guns. Frederick sent off a courier to carry the tidings of victory to Berlin. The third attack, however, made on difficult ground in the face of cannon at 800 yards and musketeers at fifty, did not succeed until the Prussian infantry had been decimated and its strength almost spent. At this point Frederick’s generals cried “Enough”; but the King, as at Hochkirch, preferred his own opinion. Once more the Prussians stormed forward and for the fourth time they annihilated the Russian line. If one knoll more, the Spitzberg, and the battery upon it were taken, the victory, it seemed, would be complete.

But at this crisis Laudon intervened to save the battery and the day. His grenadiers climbed the knoll when the Prussians were still 150 paces from the top, and drove them back with a volley of case-shot. Frederick ordered up his artillery, but the heavy guns stuck fast in the sand and light field-pieces were of no avail. In the agony of the moment the King lost his head and ordered the cavalry to storm the Spitzberg. As at Zorndorf, Seydlitz declined to sacrifice his troops to a blunder, but this time Frederick was deaf to the voice of reason. He repeated the order and was obeyed. Seydlitz was wounded and his superb squadrons shattered, without the smallest gain. A crushing countercharge headed by Laudon completed the ruin of the Prussian horse, and thenceforward the allies were the attacking side.

Frederick, almost beside himself, continued to demand victory from his men, and the infantry, though it could not go forward, held its ground against the Russians. Laudon, however, contrived the coup de grâce. At about five o’clock he suddenly hurled a fresh Austrian host upon the heroes who had been fifteen hours under arms. The overthrow was complete. Frederick, who sought death in vain, was borne from the field by a party of his own hussars. Amid the chaos he wrote a terse note in French to inform his capital that the game was up. “My coat is riddled with balls; two horses were killed under me; it is my misfortune to be still alive. Our loss is great; not 3000 men out of 48,000 are with me. At this moment all are in flight and I am no longer master of my troops.”

The King’s first thought was that he himself was crushed and that therefore Prussia was ruined. There was indeed good reason for his despair. Even if Soltykoff should allow him to recross the Oder and to rally the remnants of his army he dared not hope to save Berlin. He had fought at Kunersdorf in the belief that an Austrian force under Hadik was advancing towards his capital from the south. If he now attacked Hadik he must expose his rear to the victors of Kunersdorf; if he stood firm against them, Hadik would take him in flank. “Only a miracle could save us,” wrote the Secretary of State.

The downfall of his country seemed inevitable and Frederick was resolved not to witness it. For years he had carried poison. Before using it he spent two days in arranging his affairs. On the plea of a severe illness, he entrusted the army to General Finck and gave directions that it should swear allegiance to the son of Augustus William. He advised the well-to-do citizens of Berlin to fly to Hamburg, the Government to make Magdeburg their asylum, and Schmettau, the commandant at Dresden, to surrender on good terms if he saw no means of succour when attacked.