Meantime, on November 18, Brentano joined up with Sincère at Nothnitz. This move left Dresden covered by a bare force of 4,000 men under Prince Esterhazy. Brentano, prompted by orders, sortied from Welschhofe on to Gombsen to try to conduct a reconnaissance of the enemy’s lines. Instead the commander was flung back rather violently from whence he had come about 1600 hours courtesy of a strong Prussian artillery fire, followed by a short ground attack. Brentano, his men riddled by the merciless artillery fire, paused at Kauscha-Sobrigau.
Meanwhile, Austrian scouting patrols did their best to feel out the overall position the enemy held. Near to Dohna, General Kleefeld, bolstered by the presence of General Ried, with some 4,200 men was being opposed by the ever vigorous Wunsch. The Prussians, for their part, operated under a profound lack of intelligence. For one thing, General Finck found himself unable to recruit spies to operate behind enemy’s lines to secure military intelligence. He then assumed, no doubt from past experience, that the Imperialists and Austrians would break apart for the winter quarters as they retreated out of Saxony. Further, thanks to his secure occupation of Maxen, Daun would have to resort to falling back by the far rougher right bank of the Elbe through Rumburg.22
But if their enemies could not secure the services of reliable intelligence agents, neither could the Allies. So their knowledge of the Prussian dispositions remained limited as well. One thing was crystal clear, though: Brentano & Company did not have the will nor the strength by themselves to take on Finck’s men, by then so clearly implanted to stay at Maxen.
Finck, for his part, had initially held some reservations about the mission to Maxen; that much was correct. But on-going correspondence with the exuberant Frederick caused even the normally level-headed Finck to catch the “overoptimism fever.”
Even under the confidence he was under, the king still kept a small force under Major-General Schenckendorf at Herzogswalde. Wunsch kept another base between Ploschwitz and Dohna. Meanwhile, Daun maintained his grip upon the Saxon capital. Brentano was then ensconced ranging from Sobrigau over on Babisnau. The Imperials were deployed from Gross Cotta, Liebstadt, Glashütte, and Bärenstein. The Kleefeld-Ried duo were up to Gross-Sedlitz, while Pálffy set up shop at Mügeln. Dresden had a garrison of ten full battalions under our old friend from Olmütz, Field Marshal von Marschall.
Daun had not wanted to advance out in the first place; but he was on the hook.23 When Kleist pressed off ahead of him and nearly torched Daun’s magazine at Aussig, the countryside folk were in fear. It was the contention of professional soldier Henry Lloyd that the countryside was so exhausted that Marshal Daun could not have maintained himself in Saxony with his men; “these immense armies could not have remained in Lusatia a week longer.”24 The aggression of the Prussians was evident. The marshal was quick to realize that the threat could not go unchallenged.25
As Daun took up post at Plauen Chasm, Frederick pressed on to his former headquarters, at Wilsdruf, pushing off Ziethen on Kesselsdorf with the van to look after Finck and the enemy there in front. By this point, the king was really sweating it out.26 Daun quickly made his plan to deal with the pesky Finck, spurred on by Lacy,27 who recognized the folly of doing nothing with foes such as the bluecoats under the circumstances. Daun’s decision was to attack, after he had surrounded, Finck’s detachment in the hills about Maxen. The real question was, “Could the Austrian light troops conceal what was occurring from Frederick’s prying eyes while the main body set about the business at hand?”
Actually the attack plan was a rather simple one: the Imperialists (12,000 men), were to close up on the southeast side of Finck’s position; while 3,000 more men closed in from the north, and Daun himself led about 26,000 additional troops against the western end of the post hastily. This combination of about 41,000 men as opposed to the 13,000 or so with General Finck were deemed sufficient to extinguish the latter. The Prussians had about 10,000 infantry and 3,500 cavalry.28
If Frederick, now on the northern extreme of the rim of hills of which the Plauen-Chasm formed the border, did not interfere with the operation, the surrounding/capture of Finck’s command should be successful.29 To fulfill the plan, a portion of the Imperialists were already to the southwest of Finck’s lines and the remainder were preparing to cross the Elbe and march to join with them, while General Sincère (leading the 3,000-man detachment) was preparing for his part. What the allies did not accomplish by themselves, was done inadvertently by of all people Frederick himself.30 As soon as Finck reached Maxen, he had reported to the king he had arrived there. The latter promptly ordered him to draw in the men (some 3,000 strong under General Lindstedt) left at Dippoldiswalde, so Finck could strike with his full strength against the enemy when the opportunity arose. Finck, needless to say, drew in his detachment, leaving only a token force to hold Dippoldiswalde (although reinforcements were within reach in case of need). Finck was expecting a supply convoy the morning of November 18 and did not wish to see it snared by the enemy.
On the next day, Finck observed Daun’s own vanguard approaching Dippoldiswalde. The question must now arise, “Did Finck have a chance of cutting his way through the as yet still thinly spread enemy or was his fate already sealed?” The answer, of course, is yes. He could even then have hacked his way through the enemy screen and rejoined Frederick. Why he did not is equally evident to those who have studied the character of the Prussian leader intimately. Finck did not wish to confront the anger of his royal master, a man who did not like to be told he was in the wrong about anything. Perhaps, therefore, just to justify the Prussian monarch’s orders, Finck decided to stick it out.
The king, it may be argued, was not in the best frame of mind just then, and possibly his desire to “get-even” with Daun may have just gone to his head. In any event, Frederick was just as responsible for what ensued as was Finck; if not more so.31 Frederick gave the general an ambitious assignment, then promptly saddled him with insufficient forces, and finally issued no orders for a withdrawal once the situation had soured.
That day General Finck went to the hills thereabouts to watch the movements of the foe and could not deny that they were drawing in against him. His use of the spyglass enabled him to ascertain the maneuvers. Finck espied the Imperialist march up the bank of the Elbe towards the hamlet of Dohna, and at once sent off Wunsch, who drove the intruders out of the place. Simultaneously, he sent word to Frederick of these events. That was academic, for the latter already knew; there was little he could do. The king had Ziethen, that master of hussars, out scouting. By then he had discerned the Imperialist move, as well as much more besides. In addition to the enemy move on Dohna, Sincère was busy behind him trying for Dippoldiswalde (with Finck’s blind obedience to his master’s instructions making this job easier), which Ziethen learned from an enemy deserter.
He had immediately informed the king, who merely forwarded the intelligence, with an addendum to Finck to expect some fighting from all of these moves. That was putting it mildly. This turned out to be the last message to Finck which the latter actually received (due to the interception of couriers by the Pandours).
As far as his camp at Maxen, Finck was astride a plateau surrounded by valleys and woods which could easily conceal an enemy attack force. Maxen the village, happily, was well-placed; it was astride the two main roads which led off into Daun’s “Promised Land,” Bohemia. Unfortunately, Finck did not have enough men to really turn the Austrians out of their camp. Part of the general’s purpose was to gather intelligence about the movements of the enemy. For this purpose, Finck had been supplied with more than sufficient cavalry to facilitate this important task. But the line-of-retreat through Dippoldiswalde was fragile at best, although General Finck was doing his best to keep his men as close together as he dared. Like the rest of the Prussians until the Battle of Maxen, Finck was not sure whether Marshal Daun intended to retreat into Bohemia—or to attack his position.
The Imperialists set out to help their Austrian allies. Prince St
olberg set out on November 19 aiming for Burkhardswalde, bringing with him six battalions, six grenadier companies, and a regiment of dragoons with some ordnance (some 9,000 men all told). He was to provide the principal Imperial participation in the forthcoming affair. The number of forces collaborating in this culmination of the Campaign 1759 on the Allied side in Saxony was impressive, but did include a disproportionally large number of cavalry units: 42 full squadrons, and 25 battalions of fusiliers, another five of grenadiers. The large cavalry command was assigned to General Carl O’Donnell, while Sincère drew the honors of leading the infantry command.
Considering the still horrible weather, the infantry might have actually had the advantage. The foot soldiers could more readily traverse the rough topographical features and tolerate the adverse weather conditions. Besides, the cavalry arm had a high number of horses incapacitated, with very few remounts available. General O’Donnell himself had applied for sick leave to return home for the winter even before the Maxen episode. Zweibrücken remained back in Dresden, and Serbelloni was chugging along with his usual low degree of cooperation. The Allies would be the ones doing the attacking, so the bitter cold was bound to affect them more adversely than the defending bluecoats. The attackers scouted the area by moving up on November 19 just after midnight, although the main body did not go forward until about 0700 hours. Although the marshal continued to exercise nominal command, General Buccow was the commander on the spot. The initial body—the Szėchėny Hussars—clashed with a Prussian bread wagon moving from Dippoldiswalde on to Reinhardtsgrimma, under the escort of some of Ziethen’s fine hussars. The attacking men struggled through the thick woods, their progress impeded still further by the now ever present snow. And the force escorting the wagons were first-rate troopers; the upshot was, the bluecoats managed to bring most of the convoy through to its destination. Sincère was up by then, passing along the ranks to inspire the men, and the overeager pursuers did indeed manage to follow up the retreating entourage all the way to Reinhardtsgrimma. Prussian losses were 17 men and seven wagons.
The allied posts, following the skirmish, paused; with the left flank over by Oberlaslich with the right on Malter. But the “eyes” were largely blind. In spite of the enemy’s best efforts, Finck’s lines were largely obscure. The entire strike force, some 32,000 men, was available to go when the mission was ready. Major-General Carl Ludwig von Seckendorf held the post at Malter, while Marshal Daun, whose heart never seemed to be in the mission anyhow, after a short jaunt to the front, immediately returned to Dresden to “secure the capital” (not to mention get dry and thaw out). As for Finck, he tried to communicate his latest take on affairs, reiterating that the marshal was preparing to march for Bohemia.
Really, this misplaced optimism was to be very short-lived, for during the course of the bitterly cold night, disturbing word circulated in Maxen, courtesy of one of the few spies the Prussians had managed to recruit, the Allies would be attacking from three sides with the dawn. The intelligence was at least suspected at the royal headquarters. Major-General Schenckendorf, posted at Braunsdorf with pickets extending into the Tharanter Wald, was alert. The general’s patrols picked up on a large force of the enemy (six regiments of cavalry and seven of infantry) moving towards Dippoldiswalde that very morning. The king must have been stunned. This disturbing communication was supplemented by the sounds of shot fired in anger emanating from the direction of Finck’s lines. That was enough. Frederick at once ordered off General Hülsen to go help his hard-pressed comrades.
But the king was still suffering from an acute case of overconfidence, and quick to enunciate that Finck could only be opposed by the forces of Brentano and Sincère, which, while a nuisance, could not actually endanger either the safety of Finck’s men or the security of their mission. Finck’s men did not sight Daun’s actual attack force because of the prevailing fog until late on November 19 at Oberhäslich. The Prussians were unable to form up to attack the enemy due to the impending darkness. There was little likelihood of a bluecoat attack after that, for the Austrians, stiffened by the wise counsel of the ever resolute Lacy, had no plans to withdraw. Lacy promoted a scheme to strike at Finck’s lines when almost no one else among the officer corps thought it would succeed or even that it was far too ambitious. Eerily similar to the situation prevailing, in 1758, during the whole Hochkirch debâcle.32
Really, though, the Austrians could only draw nearer to Finck’s position solely by the road of Reinhardtsgrimma heading through Hausdorf. Although Finck had to be aware of that singular fact, he failed to act. The general could quite easily have set up blocking posts along the road, including doing all he could to make the footing in the passages as inhospitable as possible. General Platen was even then in position at Reinhardtsgrimma, where he had three grenadier battalions and eight squadrons of horse, along with one battalion from the Zastrow regiment. To keep his post there potentially was very important, instead Finck ordered him to fall back on Hausdorf. As it turned out, abandoning the position of Reinhardtsgrimma was the decisive event on which turned the success or failure of the Allied mission against the enemy ensconced in Maxen.
Instead, the Prussians pulled further and further back into the Maxen post itself. Of course, there was more than the unusual caution of Finck at work here. The topographical features of the ground forced the bluecoats into the position, limitations and all. But the Prussians had to cover the entire station, kinks and all. Total Prussian strength concentrated around the region thereabouts to Maxen amounted to 13 battalions, some of them weak, but a plentiful body of cavalry (32 full squadrons).33 At Ploschwitz, General Wunsch was preparing to oppose the Imperials at Dohna. This would have been a perfectly acceptable situation, except the Imperialists were not at Dohna. This would help undo Finck at Maxen, as it turned out.
Meanwhile, about 0300 hours on November 20, O’Donnell had his men ready to go, with the tents struck. The actual march commenced about 0700 hours, with the Szechenyi Hussars along with a body of Croats led the way, while General Siskovics brought forward the second wave. And there was the usual added complication that the attack was to be carried forth by three entirely independent corps, with all the problems attendant upon such matters. At Hochkirch, just a little more than a year before, and at Torgau, in about a year hence, the aggressors encountered similar problems.
Daun himself appeared as the march up began at 0700 hours, and, just west of the village of Reinhardtsgrimma, held a council-of-war. Conflicting, troubling reports were received. Scouts reported the snowy terrain was steep and subject to slipping by the attacking troops, while the Prussians would be at an advantage as they merely had to wait upon the enemy. After much wrangling, during which time allied patrols actually got out on the pathways and cleared them up, about 1100 hours, the marshal himself led off the men towards Finck’s post. With the advance of the enemy, General Platen fell back from Hausdorf. Marshal Daun, espying Finck’s posture, promptly ordered forward his big guns. Eight 12-pounders commenced shelling the shocked bluecoats, joined quickly by other Austrian pieces. Some of the attackers found several of the crucial summits, which should have been held by Finck’s desperate men, actually unoccupied, including even an unguarded pathway beyond Reinhardtsgrimma that led straight up to the Maxen position.
As the Austrians surmounted the plateau, it was already noon. As for Finck, instead of launching strikes as soon as the enemy appeared to drive them back beyond the edge of the woods, he merely pulled his men closer in upon the Maxen position. The Prussians operated under a fundamental weakness: the post at Maxen was surrounded on all sides by woods and valleys. So, even if it was hard to make out the Prussian posts, it was equally difficult for the bluecoats to make out the Austrian preparations.
Finck shook his force facing Hausdorf and vicinity, namely Billerbeck and Benckendorf’s men, in order to face the coming storm. As for the position of his men as a whole, when the bluecoats tried to strike the tents, they were frozen so hard to the ground w
ith such firmness that the fabric and parts of the tent skeleton stayed stuck to the ground. This served to reduce even more the greatly downsized maneuvering room available for the bluecoats on that cold November day.
Meanwhile, as Siskovics emerged from the tree lines, he dispatched a force towards his right to seize one of the nearby heights. This was occurring while Marshal Daun was ordering up his big artillery to start blasting away.
As for Finck, he had already called off two of the battalions over by Hausdorf. As Austrian artillery started its deadly work, Finck pulled back the rest of his men from over by Hausdorf. This crucial mistake immediately gave the marshal some maneuvering room to form up his numerous strike force. However, General Finck was able to utilize the defensive posts that had been erected during the 1758 campaign to help him out.
The Austrian attack as it finally developed was composed of five columns. The right flank column had 14 squadrons, the left flank caravan boasted 11 squadrons, under the command of Stampatch; Siskovics led up the assault, while Dombâle led nine battalions hard by the right flank, to the left was another nine battalions under d’Aynse. The forces involved certainly outnumbered the bluecoats, but the separateness of the branches really gave the nominal advantage to General Finck and his men.
Nevertheless, events progressed on. The initial assault, about 1400 hours, which was aimed against the main heights where Finck had set up shop, carried them almost immediately, as only a single regiment covered the position.34 Apparently Finck had deployed his main force behind the rises within the village of Maxen itself. Finck had just 13 battalions and 32 squadrons from his total there, while Wunsch was keeping five battalions and three squadrons over at Dohna—there to oppose the attackers. Most of the Prussians, before the battle commenced, were actually under cover of canvas, away from the bitter elements, while the allies had been exposed to the bitter cold ever since the march-up. As for Finck, he spent most of the early battle on the Scheeberg, peering through a telescope and trying his best to make sense of the enveloping mess.
Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War Page 70