He hoped to take the Saxon capital in two or three days, but the defenders were stout-hearted beyond his calculation. After he had wasted more than a fortnight before the walls, the news that Glatz had fallen and that Breslau was in danger compelled him to resume the dreary tramp towards Silesia. His prestige and his position had suffered alike, and his mood was more dejected than ever. Philosophy, he professed, was his only consolation. Since nothing worse could happen to him than what he looked for, he could have no occasion for disappointment. He was determined to hold fast to duty during the brief space that might still separate him from the abyss. It was no great matter, he told Finckenstein, whether they were crushed a month sooner or a month later. The death of his old servant, Podewils, affected him little, for it seemed but a small item in the general ruin of the State.
Thus began the month of August, 1760, in which Frederick and his army dispelled by their own valiant deeds some of the darkest clouds that hung over Prussia. They were escorted into Silesia, where Soltykoff’s Russians and Laudon’s Austrians awaited them, by the armies of Daun and Lacy, which marched, said the King, like the vanguard and rear-guard of their own force. Thanks to the stout-heartedness of the Prussian general Tauentzien, Laudon had summoned Breslau in vain. Now, however, he effected a junction with Daun, and the united Austrian forces outnumbered Frederick by three to one.
At no moment of his long career, not even when he galloped from the field of Mollwitz nor when he gathered round him the wreckage after Kunersdorf, had the King’s plight seemed so desperate as now. He himself upon whom all depended was in the depths of dejection. He had with him only some 30,000 men, and Kay, Kunersdorf, Maxen, Landshut, Dresden formed an unbroken series of disasters. Against him were some 90,000 Austrians, commanded by Daun, to whom his royal mistress had sent the most unequivocal instructions to fight, and by Laudon, to whom military instinct no less clearly dictated battle. They barred Frederick’s path both to Breslau and to Schweidnitz, and brought his force to the verge of starvation. Across the Oder the Russians were masters of the land, waiting only for the tidings of victory to pour a new host over bridges which they had already built. To retreat was to abandon Silesia, to stand still was to be starved or crushed, to attack was beyond the imagination even of a Frederick. Prussian officers talked of a new and greater Maxen, and the British ambassador, Mitchell, burned his papers.
PLAN OF LIEGNITZ, AUGUST 15, 1760.
At last Frederick moved. Having learned from a drunken deserter that Daun was planning a surprise, he resolved to march towards the Oder, preferring the neighbourhood of the Russians on the right bank to a situation which had plainly become untenable. On the evening of August 14, 1760, the Prussians stole away from their camp and occupied a strong position to the north-east of Liegnitz. On the western side, where Daun’s attack might be looked for, the ground was admirable for defence. Behind the stream of the Schwarzwasser rises a steep and sudden bank, shaped like a natural bastion. This was manned by the right wing, encamped on a champaign so level that it forms the Liegnitz drill-ground to this day. Further north-east a gentle slope descended from the lines of the Prussian left to the little village of Panten and so to the river Katzbach. There through the moonlit night the men lay under arms, forbidden to cheer themselves with song, but filled with an expectancy that banished sleep. The King, who shared all their privations, wrapped himself in his cloak and snatched a brief rest by a watch-fire after satisfying himself that all was ordered aright.
Till dawn the stillness was unbroken. Then in a moment blazed up one of the shortest and most brilliant fights of the whole war. A breathless messenger cried that the enemy—Laudon—was attacking in force on the extreme left. Frederick hurried off to oppose him. Had the attack been made fifteen minutes earlier, he declared, the issue would have been far different. But the Prussians profited much by their stealthy change of camp. Laudon’s march was a part of Daun’s concerted attack upon the position that they had quitted seven hours before. The result of their movement was that Daun hardly reached them, while Laudon, who expected to surprise their baggage, was himself surprised. Marching without a vanguard, he found himself committed to an uphill fight without support from Daun. None the less he attacked with such swing and dash that the Prussian left was well-nigh cut in two, It was saved by the infantry, who first valiantly held Panten and then set it on fire. This checked the Austrian advance and enabled the Prussians to make good use of their position. About an hour and a half after the first onset Laudon retired across the Katzbach unpursued. The Prussians claimed to have killed or wounded 6000 men and captured 4000—a total loss thrice as great as their own. They had thus annihilated nearly one-third of Laudon’s force, and—what was even more important—they had rent the net that was closing round them. Daun had appeared in sight of the Prussians only to learn of Laudon’s disaster and to retire. Henceforward it was beyond the power of the Empress to induce her favoured field-marshal to attack.
The moral gain was perhaps the greatest of all the advantages that Frederick derived from Liegnitz. “A second edition of Rossbach,” as he called the battle, was the best proof that Prussian valour and leadership and luck had none of them vanished from the earth. The King, who had his coat torn by one ball and his horse wounded by another, ascribed the victory to the favour of fortune and the bravery of his men. No other judge, whether Prussian, Austrian, or Russian, could fail to ascribe a great share in it to the King. The value of this renewal of prestige was apparent almost every day that the war had yet to run. However huge the masses of Austrians and Russians might be, they were usually content to watch Frederick at a respectful distance. The initiative was thus often abandoned to the weaker side and the value of Frederick’s army enhanced threefold.
Yet nothing could demonstrate more clearly than their movements after Liegnitz how weak the Prussians were. Frederick’s departure from the field of victory was in truth a flight, but a flight which covered the fugitives with glory. Young Lieutenant Archenholtz, who was among the victors, tells the astounding tale of how
“this army, spent with bloody toil and girt by mighty hosts, must press on without rest and without delay, and yet must bear with it every gun and man that had been taken and all the wounded as well. These last were packed into meal-wagons and bread-wagons, into carriages and carts, no matter whose they might be. Even the King gave up his. King and generals gave up their led horses to carry the wounded who could ride. The empty meal-wagons were broken up and their horses harnessed to the captured guns. Every horseman and driver must take with him one of the enemy’s muskets. Nothing was left behind, not a single wounded man, Prussian or Austrian, and at nine o’clock, four hours after the end of the battle, the army with its enormous load was in full march.”