Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War

by Herbert J. Redman

  Meanwhile, Tresckow attacked Wied’s and Sincère’s troops before him. About 1530 hours, this charge developed as his infantry surmounted the slope of Krzeczhorz Hill, plunging forward blindly through the cornfields. Sincère’s first arrivals greeted Tresckow, and a furious musketry opened as the Austrian commander fed the remainder of his men into the fight. Just about then, the Eichenbusch was swarming with men engaged in a deadly struggle. Hülsen sent back for additional men and three grenadier battalions—the 9th–10th grenadiers of Bahr and the 1st battalion of Garrison #1—were shafted from the main force to go help Hülsen. The reinforcements were used to bridge the gap with Tresckow, which was widening.

  The Austrians likewise got up reinforcements. Daun sent Lt.-Col. Marquis Fiorenza with six full companies of grenadiers, plus four cannon, to go help out the Banal Croats. The latter were clinging to the churchyard. Major Soro’s full battalion strove to cover the line towards Serbelloni’s men, while Fiorenza constituted a thin connecting force to the Croats. Fiorenza took post facing Krzeczhorz, from which Hülsen debouched a second time about 1430 hours. The opposing forces engaged in a brief but furious artillery exchange first. In this second attack, the reinforced bluecoats seized the Eichenbusch. Fiorenza’s force was shattered, and he himself killed. Tresckow, his men enduring a stiffening of enemy resistance as well as deadly cannister fire, fell back to rally. Ziethen, seizing his opportunity, galloped off in pursuit of the defeated Austrian vanguard. He was about to ride down the Banal Croats on their way back to the Eichenbusch when a strong Austrian cavalry (three squadrons of the Kaiser Hussars) plowed into his men, temporarily disordering them. Nádasti rallied nearby, and for the rest of the battle Ziethen and his Austrian opponent would snipe at each other almost continuously.

  Starhemberg would not suffer the Prussians to keep the Eichenbusch. He scraped together what men he could, and, simultaneously, Nádasti was rallying the Croats, who had actually been in a tempest for longer than anyone (including themselves) might have expected. Now the vaunted Stechow Dragoons and Warnery’s 3rd Hussars were struck by Starhemberg’s hastily gathered horse. The bluecoats, staggering for the moment under the impact, reeled back upon Kutlirz. Hülsen’s men, ensconced on the eastern end of the Eichenbusch, were then struck by some of Starhemberg’s solid lines from the west. The whitecoats commenced an orderly platoon fire, which forced Hülsen’s men back. They abandoned three guns. Here the Austrians clearly had the enviable advantage of position and forces.

  Daun had provided this force of batteries and light troops to give support for this side of the Austrian army, and it worked. His foresight saved the left, for Ziethen, despite his best efforts, could proceed no further. Wied, about 1500–1530 hours, moved up to provide reinforcements, part of the reserves. Meanwhile, an order to bring forward 12 guns from the reserve, these to move southwest of Krzeczhorz, would allow for a pounding if Ziethen persisted. As for Hülsen, he ordered a fire of some intensity while he awaited more reinforcements with which to regain his post. An expected timely reinforcement never did arrive, only the scattering already referred to, but Hülsen was persuaded by his subordinates to launch an attack before the enemy gained too much strength. A new stroke drove out the Austrians temporarily, but this episode would demonstrate just how far the Austrian foot soldiers had developed in discipline.

  Starhemberg pressed the 7th Infantry, the 31st (Haller), and the Gaisrück regiments in a hurry to form a new line thereabouts. These troops were being pounded by Prussian artillery. The well-respected battle account of Hoen relates that “without firing a shot it [the 42nd Infantry of Major-General Rudolph Karl Graf Gaisrück] advanced.”15 All of this was done with the steadiness of the parade ground. Wied struck between Bristwai and Krzeczhorz, but Tresckow and Hülsen would have none of it. The Austrians were aided by Lt.-Col. Benkendorf’s Saxon cavalry. Normann’s 1st Dragoons, nothing daunted, drove into Kolin.

  Sincère attempted to aid Wied, shaking his formations into a full march from Pobortz Hill. Serbelloni, ever the sluggard, was ordered to shift his cavalry “immediately” to give Wied assistance. Normally dilatory, Serbelloni chose the day of the Kolin battle to give the most energetic performance of his career. Hülsen’s artillery hammered Serbelloni’s horse as it emerged due south of Krzeczhorz rise. But Serbelloni stayed put, and kept shifting his riders in and then out of the telling artillery fire. Both lines of cavalry suffered, but the critical position was held while Sincère and Starhemberg were moving up. With Sincère’s arrival, Serbelloni led his battered horse behind Starhemberg, who was himself forming a solid second line behind Sincère’s men.

  By 1630 hours, Wied had withdrawn his shaken forces back to their starting point. At that juncture, the fighting paused briefly, so we can examine what had been going on elsewhere on the field.

  According to the king’s plan, the battle should have been fought solely in Hülsen’s quarter. But war is nothing if not unpredictable, and at Kolin, the Prussians showed a distinct lack of adequate communication and cooperation. Mistakes in judgment caused General Hülsen to be deprived of the reinforcements he needed to win the battle. For example, the heavy artillery did not reach the scene and get set up to render support to the forces of Manstein, Moritz, and Hülsen until 1600 hours or so. Some of this is explainable, though, by the continuous shifts in the Prussian plan. Just who ordered what and why, even when, still remains a bit unclear to the present. Still, one has to pity the horsed artillery drivers and the artillerists of the Prussian army during this period. They often had to back track just to try to keep up with the more speedily moving cavalry and foot soldiers. Neither the Prussian infantry nor the artillery lost Kolin all by themselves, just as they had not won other battles by themselves.

  As Manstein’s men marched past the enemy’s center (he was about three miles from Hülsen’s post), they were attacked by Croats. The latter swarm were apprehensive because the march of Manstein’s men had brought the latter very near to their concealed positions. Soon a general fire was directed at the bluecoats. General Manstein, impatient by nature, tried to ignore this fire until intelligence filtered down the Croats needed dealt with.16 He ordered his men to concentrate on the cornfield. A full battalion (the 2nd from the 20th Infantry) wheeled out of line and moved into the cornfield. The irregulars gave way at once, but were soon enough back, reinforced. Manstein now directed a general assault with his whole force right there. This quickly disordered the entire Prussian battle line.17 To compound a bad situation, the commands of Bevern, Schönaich, and Prince Moritz, forgetting the clear instructions of the king to avoid an engagement on this side, moved right to the attack.

  Bevern moved up to support Manstein towards Chotzemitz, while a chilling sight the men espied! An almost perfect column of troops strove forward to meet them. This had to be the men moving up to stiffen Andlau’s position. These soldiers “kept rank just like on parade ground.”18 Schönaich advanced his cavalry at Puebla’s flank position. Soon the whole line, from Manstein on, was in the thick of the action. This meant that the Prussian right, which never should have attacked at all, was involved fully in a general melée with the enemy. Major Mistake #1.

  Major Mistake #2 was the fault of the Prussian king himself. Frederick had taken post at the “Friedrich’s Berg” to watch his ordered assault by Hülsen against Krzeczhorz (judging, incorrectly as it turned out, this attack was successful). The king might have already started to regret his decision to give battle. The reports about large enemy troop concentrations seemed to be very solid. About 1400 hours, halt was called to see how Hülsen & Company fared against the Austrians before them. About 1500 hours, the main Prussian body moved out, and Frederick, prevented by the rolling ground from perceiving Austrian movements, failed to discern Wied’s shift towards Krzeczhorz. So Frederick assumed that Hülsen’s opposition was limited in strength. However, scouts were bringing in reports of dust clouds rising beyond the hills, indicating some movement eastward. These latter reports were not rece
ived until after the king had already issued the order to march, though. Already the seeds of a deadly idea were taking root in the monarch’s head.

  He observed Prince Moritz, in command of the Prussian center, marching his troops to the support of Hülsen. Frederick left his post and raced towards Moritz’ command, with the idea of completing Daun’s overthrow by a bold, final stroke. It fell to the lot of Prince Moritz and his command to deliver that stroke.

  The king instructed Moritz (who was by then in front of Bristwai) to face to the right and go in against the enemy positions in front of him, or so the prince thought. The Austrians were in strength on the Krzeczhorz Berg. Here Sincère was holding the strongest part of Daun’s lines. An attack here offered almost no chance of succeeding with the forces at Moritz’ disposal. Frederick’s aim was for Prince Moritz to support Hülsen by diverting the attention of the enemy away from Krzeczhorz village. But not at Krzeczhorz Berg.

  When we look at this situation from a more detached perspective, it is clear what the monarch had in mind on that hot June day so long ago. Moritz was to wheel to his half-right, march to relieve some of the pressure on the Prussian left by a shorter way, and end up attacking the enemy right rather than in front of Bristwai. But, judging from the reaction of Prince Moritz, he obviously thought the king was ordering an attack against Bristwai. To this he rightly objected. Frederick again ordered the prince to obey, but, after a pause, there was again an objection. The monarch, now beside himself with anger, dashed up to Prince Moritz, drew his saber (the first time he had ever drawn his sword in the course of a battle), and inquired whether the prince would obey orders at all.19

  Prince Moritz gave in at last,20 and immediately ordered the necessary turning movements. Frederick returned to his post, in what mood can be guessed at. Turning his scope towards the prince’s quarter, the king perceived, with both horror and amazement, that the men had turned all right, but they were now marching straight at the enemy lines in front, and not towards Krzeczhorz village, as he had intended. Hastily, new instructions were scribbled up and sent by rider. The new order was to turn to Moritz’s half-left, which should take his men belatedly to the spot they were most needed, over by Tresckow. These were the second group of instructions, apparently issued after the dust clouds indicated a shift in the enemy and a likely weakening of their posts hard-by. As a matter of fact, this so-called “weakening” was not happening, because Daun had many more men at his beck and call compared to the king. So he could readily pack more men at key points than Frederick could.

  Ziethen had been mauled by Wied’s counterattack, so he was unable to render the assistance Moritz no doubt needed about then. The latter received his new order just in time, delivered by Captain the Marquis de Varenne. Unfortunately, Moritz made the left turn from where he then was, and so arrived in front of Krzeczhorz on the Austrian front. Here the prince’s men were separated from the Prussian left by the enemy, and so his attacks became uncoordinated with his neighbors.

  Prussian losses in all of this were frightful. Even Prince Moritz narrowly escaped death when a bullet killed the horse he had just mounted. Why did the prince continue the attack with the odds so clearly set against him? Perhaps he believed he was not facing a substantial force and that most of the Austrians had been shifted towards the east. A similar fallacy confronted Manstein’s attack. The king himself arrived behind Manstein’s now fully involved troops, but did not order the attack broken off, because “there were no means of retreating without loss of the battle.”21

  Along the whole Austrian line there were fierce bouts of bayonet, musketry, and cavalry charges. Daun’s army had shot off enormous quantities of ammunition by that point, and were running low on cartridges. Runners were soon scouring the dead and wounded for shot. One deliciously factual story has the drummers in one regiment cutting off the tops of their drums and flipping them over, making carriers for the cartridges.22 Daun, watching from his command post, sent reinforcements to threatened areas, and gave orders to dismantle the batteries and start preparing for a general retreat if the situation worsened.

  As it was, the situation quickly became desperate for both sides. The Prussian center and right were attacking Andlau’s command on the Przerovsky Berg; the latter was superior in number and backed up by formidable batteries. Hülsen’s own 21st Infantry, at the Krzeczhorz Hill, was savaged by the fire of 16 heavy cannon, along with the whole command. Manstein entered the fray at that point. In front of Chotzenitz, the 17th Infantry (Manteuffel) fought a bitter battle to keep the line of retreat open. Manstein hastened against the Przerovsky Berg. By 1630 hours, he had launched three massive assaults, but was repelled at each one with nearly crippling results. The final attack still failed to turn Andlau out of line, but Manstein was badly wounded and had to be taken from the field.

  In Hülsen’s quarter, the struggle had continued. Wied’s stroke having ended, General Pennavaire received orders from the king to bring his forces into the culminating action to the ridge southwest of the still burning Krzeczhorz village. Pennavaire had 20 cavalry squadrons, but Ziethen’s help was held up because his hussars had dispersed into small firefights with the enemy. The aged warrior—he was 67 in June 1757—finally got moving after 1730 hours. Fully another half an hour elapsed before the ten forward squadrons were shaken into a slow-developing trot attack. The rest had been held up by the difficult ground.

  This “attack” gradually made its presence felt. Before Pennaivaire’s horse rode up, Serbelloni’s cavalry withdrew. This was unrelated to the charge and likely in response to an errant, and unauthorized, order to retreat. General Kalkreuth’s horse (22nd Cuirassiers), together with the 20th Cuirassiers of Major-General Friedrich Hannibal von Schmerzing, were thus temporarily put out of action. Flushed with success, Pennavaire turned his men and charged at Gaisrück’s 42nd Infantry. The latter, together with its neighbor the 14th Infantry (Colonel Nicolaus Leopold Prince zu Salm-Salm), were unfettered. They held the foe at bay long enough for swarms of Austrian horse to appear. Starhemberg demonstrated good stability again, and his cavalry struck the Prussian left, while Kollowrat’s 37th Dragoons and the Saxon Garde Carabineers galloped straight into Pennavaire’s hard pressed right.

  Starhemberg’s attention was diverted by Prince Moritz, who now attacked him with the cavalry reserve of Major-General Christian Siegfried von Krosigk23 to the eastwards of Krzeczhorz. This new stroke had been “invited” by Wied. In the process of pursuing the Prussians of Ziethen opposite him, he outdistanced any support towards Krzeczhorz, away from the Eichenbusch. Krosigk led this attack in person. The 1st Dragoons (637 strong) of Normann attacked Wied’s men. He took 40 pieces of artillery and five battle flags in the process. Then Krosigk continued forward quickly until a “lethal cannister shot, which took him in the stomach below the breastplate, threw him to the ground.”24 This group soon found the going too much when Krosigk was killed in action. Seldom could unsupported cavalry overcome determined infantry; Kolin was to be no exception. But the bluecoats tried. Up and coming star Colonel Seydlitz took over for the fallen Krosigk. With the 2nd Cuirassiers of Crown Prince Augustus Wilhelm, the 8th Cuirassiers, and the Normann Dragoons, he attacked and hacked to pieces the 31st Infantry of the Austrian Haller. The attack wended southwest from Krzeczhorz, defeating the Württemberg Dragoons and the former Saxon Carabineers in the process. This eliminated Wied’s group, and ultimately uncovered Starhemberg’s and Sincère’s lines. Now the valiant Austrian regiments of Deutschmeister and Baden-Baden were ridden down by the surging Normann Dragoons.

  But Daun’s army was not finished just yet. One of Wied’s regiments, the 14th of Salm-Salm, finally got stabilized and moved to fill the vacuum left by Haller’s ill-fated formation. There it linked up with Neipperg and Gaisrück. With Wied’s formations faltering, Serbelloni one more time had to insert his units into the front line. Again, he acted with uncharacteristic vigor.

  Elements of the Hülsen-Tresckow forces joined the new combat.
Wied had just three battalions left, and they unceremoniously “retired” at this new enemy’s sudden advent. The crisis for the Austrian right was at hand. Major-General Lützow with the Kollowrat Dragoons went flying in, going around Wied’s milling mass, about 1630 hours. All Lützow got for his effort was killed, and his fine formations were shattered by the Normann Dragoons. A few moments after, two squadrons of the Saxon Garde joined the fray. Seydlitz routed them with little trouble. A lull had been gained, and might have proven decisive had there been any reserves. The pity was General Manstein’s ill-conceived stroke through the cornfields really harmed the whole Prussian battle effort, although he was not alone to blame by any means.

  Seydlitz pressed the enemy as hard as he could, but there was no giving against insufficient numbers. After a furious fight of some duration, the Prussian riders had had enough. They broke up and flew towards the rear, even trampling some of their own men in the process. It was not the Prussian cavalry’s best hour. As for Hülsen, he had been fought to a standstill, and could do little more than hold his ground. The king knew the situation was critical.

  Here, for the first time, he became an active participant in a desperate battle. Between 1600 and 1630 hours, Frederick attempted to set a personal example in a struggle now beginning to sway against him. He marched the 35th Infantry (Colonel Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig, Prince of Prussia) up the Kamayak, sword in hand. Then, he directed the 1st battalion of Anhalt-Dessau’s 3rdInfantry up the Przerovsky.25 It was about this time when an increasingly frustrated king asked his exhausted men, “Rogues, do you wish to live forever?”26 Meanwhile, the 25th Infantry of Kalckstein was forced to fight a desperate defense from Brzezan to Chotzenitz. This unit, whose officers must have spent themselves unselfishly, lost one in three of their numbers as well as heavy losses among the men.27

  The Prussians finally managed to penetrate the enemy lines at several points and threw back the equally tired occupants. Daun responded with a charge of Saxon light cavalry, which failed to flush out the bluecoats, although Pennavaire was forced back. The 21st Infantry of Hülsen was savaged. Two hundred and fifty men were captured, including Tresckow—who was leading the left wing—200 wounded had to be taken to the rear, and there was a grand total of 500 dead, including 11 officers.28 The Saxons, after a desperate fight, were finally forced back to their own lines. Daun was on the point of ordering retreat now.