At Hohenfriedberg the Prussian king Frederick II was thirty-three years old and already a seasoned commander, having led his men in battle at Mollwitz in 1741 and Chotusitz a year later. This painting by Johann Schröder (1757–1812) shows the king in a pensive mood after his defeat at Kolin in 1757. By that time, Frederick was widely regarded as an original military theorist as a result of his long experience of warfare.
A nineteenth-century engraving depicts the capture of the Austrian commanders at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on 4 June 1745 by the Prussian troops of Frederick II. Sixty-seven captured regimental colours were paraded past the Prussian king.
By this time, the whole Austrian camp was attempting to come to terms with what had happened and organize a satisfactory defence. Frederick, realizing that his original plan was already compromised, instead ordered the bulk of his foot soldiers, supported by the remaining cavalry, to attack the Austrian lines head-on. They had to cross the small river and as they did so the one bridge collapsed. As the Austrian cavalry advanced, the remaining Prussian cavalry found a ford further downstream and charged to help their stranded comrades. Shocked by the force of the Prussian charge, the Austrian horse broke and scattered. The infantry struggle was intense, with disciplined lines exchanging point-blank musket fire, but at 8.15 some 1,500 horsemen of Frederick’s 5th Bayreuth Dragoons, who had not taken part in the earlier cavalry charge, saw through the smoke of battle an inviting gap opening up in the Austrian lines. They charged at full gallop, crashing into a battalion of Austrian grenadiers who were put to the sword. With no cavalry left, the Austrian line collapsed in minutes and by 9 a.m. the battle was over. The dragoons captured some 67 regimental colours and 2,500 prisoners. Fighting had been brief but savage and 4,700 from the Prussian army were dead or wounded. Austrian and Saxon losses were three times as great. Frederick had the captured colours set up in his headquarters tent, as if he could not quite believe his good fortune.
The war ended a few months later with the Peace of Dresden, and Silesia remained for the moment in Prussian hands. Frederick composed a march in honour of his victory. News of Hohenfriedberg made Frederick overnight into a European military celebrity but the victory, which owed much to the element of surprise, was brought about partly through luck and partly through the disciplined fighting power of Prussian units when faced with taking initiatives in their own part of the battle. Deception, however effective it might be, still required a thorough exploitation in combat to make it worthwhile, as Frederick, the philosopher-king, found out in his first battlefield action.
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No. 62 BATTLE OF THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM
12–13 September 1759
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Almost as famous as the image of Admiral Lord Nelson dying at the Battle of Trafalgar is the 1770 painting by Benjamin West of Major General James Wolfe as he breathed his last in the closing moments of a battle against the French outside Québec, then the capital of Canada. The battle is best remembered for Wolfe’s inspirational idea to scale the sheer cliffs of the St Lawrence River and surprise the French army at their summit. In reality, the deception happened by chance, through the hazard of the unpredictable tides of the river. The effect of surprise on the subsequent battle was decisive. As news arrived that the French were fleeing in disorder after a battle that lasted no more than a few minutes, Wolfe is said to have uttered the words ‘I die contented.’
The struggle between the French and the British for control of North America, supported by the local emigrant population and American Indian allies, reached its peak during the Seven Years War (1756–63) in which French claims in America and India were defeated by British arms. In 1759, the British government decided that the moment had come to besiege and capture the capital of New France at Québec. Wolfe was sent 7,400 officers and men, supported by 300 gunners, to capture the city. At the end of June 1759, his flotilla arrived in the St Lawrence and the force disembarked at Îsle d’Orléans, a few miles downriver from Québec, which stood on a high promontory protected by cliffs, woods and water. The most favourable approach to the city was across a wide and shallow river beach known as the Beauport Shore, and it was there that the French commander, General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, Marquis de Saint Veran, positioned most of his forces and artillery in anticipation of a British assault.
The natural protection afforded to Québec made a direct approach dangerous. When Wolfe finally attempted a limited raid on Beauport on 31 July, the attackers took heavy losses from entrenched French fire, leaving 210 dead and 230 wounded. He continued to undertake probing reconnaissance for weeks, but could find no suitable spot from which to attack. Ill and despondent, he asked his subordinate commanders for their opinions. They unanimously favoured moving further upriver to find an undefended section of shore. Wolfe was reluctant, but his options were narrowing. With every passing week came the looming threat of ice at the mouth of the St Lawrence. British ships sailed upriver. In response, the French moved troops and cavalry under Colonel Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to defend an area over 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Québec. As Wolfe sailed up and down the river between the fleet and his camp at Îsle d’Orléans, he observed an entry point that had been overlooked, a narrow road leading up from the river, sided by cliffs, at Anse au Foulon. Dismissing the earlier plan, he ordered his forces to land at Foulon on 13 September so that they could reach the plain in front of the city at dawn before the French could react.
The famous scaling of the cliffs below the Plains of Abraham came by accident. The units assigned to disembark and capture the narrow road from the small French picket posted there were swept further down the beach by the tide and found themselves at the base of a cliff about 50 metres (160 feet) high. While some troops went to capture the road, William Howe led the light infantry up the cliff face, clinging to ledges and scrub, until they reached the top. A highlander, Captain Donald MacDonald, spoke enough French to persuade the French picket in the dark that his soldiers were their replacement, allaying suspicion. While Howe led his men up the cliff, Wolfe and the rest of his force cleared the defensive fortifications on the narrow road and toiled up to the plain, carrying at least two of their artillery pieces. He formed his 3,111 men in a horseshoe formation, with 1,750 of them facing the French army camped outside the city, and the rest on each side facing the French Canadian sharpshooters and militia. The British were drawn up in two lines, prepared for alternate shooting, one line after the other, but the central battalions had been instructed in a new tactic by Wolfe. As a French column approached, Wolfe had told his men to hold their fire until the last moment, then to open their ranks to let the column pass through, firing all the time at the column’s now-exposed flanks.
Montcalm was caught entirely by surprise. He had expected an imminent assault on the Beauport Shore. He ordered his army, estimated at 1,960 regulars and 1,500 militiamen, to engage the enemy but it emerged disorganized and unprepared. His columns moved forward firing at will and were hit by fierce flank fire from the left and right of Wolfe’s line at a distance of only 40 metres (130 feet). The centre held their fire until the French were only 20 metres (65 feet) away, when they released a deadly fusillade that killed most of the approaching officers. Subjected to further heavy flanking fire, the French broke up, turned and fled back towards the city, leaving 150 dead and 370 wounded on the field. The whole battle lasted only a few minutes, but long enough for Wolfe, as he stood on a small rise to observe the course of the battle, to be hit three times by Canadian marksmen hiding in the nearby bushes. He died a few minutes later as his own officers rushed up with news of the French collapse.
This eighteenth-century engraving is based on a drawing made by a soldier in Major General James Wolfe’s army. It shows the British victory in September 1759 over the French on the Plains of Abraham in front of the city of Québec. The successful transfer of troops up the steep cliff face, seen in the foreground, gave Wolfe the advantage of surprise over his French adversary, General Lou
is-Joseph de Montcalm.
Québec surrendered five days later, and although the British garrison was defeated in a second engagement on the plains on 20 April 1760, the city was not recaptured. Three years later, the French conceded defeat and New France was granted to the British. Much had depended on the success of surprise and it had taken Wolfe months to work out how to effect it, even if the final scramble up the cliffs had been a purely serendipitous event. In war, wrote Wolfe in 1757, ‘something must be allowed to chance and fortune’.
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No. 63 SIEGE OF YORKTOWN
29 September – 19 October 1781
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The surrender of a British garrison at the small Virginia port of Yorktown on 19 October 1781 proved to be the key moment of the American War of Independence. When the British prime minister, Lord North, was told of the disaster he famously exclaimed, ‘Oh God! It’s all over.’ Yet it was a battle that might never have taken place but for a key deception perpetrated by the American Continental Army’s French ally. George Washington, the American commander-in-chief, wanted to besiege and, if possible, capture the British-held area of New York. The French commander, Lieutenant General Comte de Rochambeau, thought New York too well defended and instructed an approaching French fleet to sail for Chesapeake Bay, off the Virginia coast, not to New York. Washington’s hand was forced. He ordered a move south, with the British headquarters at Yorktown as his destination.
The campaigns prior to 1781 left the balance poised between the British with their royalist American allies on the one hand, and the American Continental Army with its French allies and local irregular militia on the other. The British army in the south, commanded by Lieutenant General the Earl Cornwallis, having failed to take control of North Carolina, set out for Virginia in April 1781. Here Cornwallis was reinforced by troops sent from New York and the local British garrison. Instructed to find a port on the Virginia coast that he could fortify, he chose Yorktown near the mouth of the Chesapeake. On a high promontory, he calculated that it would be difficult to take as long as the Royal Navy could supply him. Control of the sea was essential to British strategy in the American war. On 29 July, he moved 7,000 British and Hessian mercenary troops into the town. Across the estuary was the small town of Gloucester, which Cornwallis saw as a possible site to which his forces could retreat if Yorktown were threatened.
That summer the initiative lay with Washington. He asked Rochambeau to bring his 5,500 soldiers to join him at White Plains, New York, with a view to investing the city. The French accepted Washington as their commander, too, but when news came that the French Rear Admiral François de Grasse had escaped the British blockade of France and was heading to the West Indies, Rochambeau used the opportunity to undermine his ally’s strategy. He wrote in secret to de Grasse that his substantial fleet of twenty-six ships should sail for Chesapeake Bay, not for New York. This would make a move south, under the protection of French guns, more sensible. When Washington discovered that de Grasse was intent on sailing to Virginia he accepted that New York would now indeed be difficult to capture. A move south, however, required a second deception. The British commander-in-chief in America, General Sir Henry Clinton, was based at New York, uncertain of Washington’s plans but anxious to strengthen his position. He assumed New York would be the principal battlefield in 1781, and even ordered Cornwallis to send 3,000 men north to assist him. Very few were in fact sent, but Washington fuelled Clinton’s anxiety by keeping up the pretence that New York was his goal. Dummy camps were set up and filled with regular activity for the British to see, boats were built for possible river crossings and spies and rumour-mongers were sent into the British-held zone to confirm that a great siege of New York was in preparation.
The Yorktown monument in the Colonial National Historical Park, Virginia, commemorates the decisive victory over a British force in October 1781. The battle opened the way to the independence of the United States.
On 19 August, Washington and Rochambeau set out for the 700-kilometre (450-mile) march to Yorktown. Extensive preparations had been made in advance to ensure supplies of cereal and animals along the way, while large siege guns were found for shipment by sea and river. A sizeable army of 4,000 was left in front of New York to sustain the deception. The remaining 4,000 French and 3,000 American troops began the march as if going to New York, then swung south. By the time Clinton realized he had been duped, it was too late to organize a large rescue mission for Cornwallis, and reinforcements did not finally sail until the very day that Yorktown was surrendered, 19 October. On 14 September, after three arduous weeks of marching and sailing, the American and French force arrived in Virginia, where it rendezvoused with troops serving under Major General Marquis de Lafayette, the young French officer who had devoted his career to the cause of American independence.
Altogether Washington now commanded an army of 19,000 men, 12,000 of them regular soldiers. As Washington moved south, a battle being fought at sea was to give him a decisive advantage. The French fleet arrived at Chesapeake at the end of August and was challenged a few days later by the British squadron lying off New York, commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas Graves. Neither side won a clear victory, but on 13 September, Graves retreated north, allowing a small French squadron under Admiral Comte de Barras to come south with supplies and reinforcements under the protection of the larger French fleet. Yorktown was now cut off from help from the sea.
Cornwallis had used his two months in the port to build up its defences. Some sixty-five cannon were dispersed around the perimeter and at Gloucester. Eight redoubts were built outside the main fortifications as strongpoints to hold up the enemy. The town had reasonable supplies of food but ammunition was limited. On 29 September, the enemy arrived and surrounded the town, with three divisions commanded by Rochambeau on the left, and three divisions under Washington on the right. The French commander had experienced many sieges in Europe so his expertise was used to build the first parallel line opposite the British fortifications. The engineers and labourers worked only at night to avoid British cannon fire and by the end of the first week of October they had a system of trenches, bunkers and batteries in place. The siege guns were drawn along poor roads by teams of horses and oxen and were not all in place when Washington ordered the opening salvo at 3 p.m. on 9 October after more than a week of bombardment from British guns.
The unexpected arrival of the enemy army had alarmed Cornwallis, who ordered all but three of the redoubts to be abandoned without a fight. He posted some 1,500 men across the river in Gloucester to forage for supplies and food, but they were beaten back by a covering French force. The blockade was complete. The town was shelled mercilessly while Washington ordered red-hot cannon balls to be aimed at ships in the harbour. Two vessels burned out completely. After two days of firing Washington was confident enough to order a second parallel line to be constructed. Under heavy cannon fire, the engineers dug a line of trenches and artillery sites only a few hundred yards from the British line. Cornwallis sent a troop of 350 men to infiltrate the line and spike the cannon, and although under cover of darkness they succeeded in slaughtering the gunners and knocking out six guns, the cannon were back in action the following day. On the night of 14 October, Washington and Rochambeau ordered men forward to seize two redoubts that blocked the American line. They were captured after a fierce fight, bayonet to bayonet. Cornwallis could see that the remorseless cannonade would sooner or later breach the defences while it wrought havoc in the town and port. On 16 October, he ordered his troops to board the small boats still left in the harbour to cross to Gloucester with the hope of breaking out through weaker French lines. As the evacuation began, the weather turned stormy and the plan had to be abandoned.
This painting (c.1836) by the French artist Louis Charles-Auguste Couder (1790–1873) shows the black-coated George Washington and his commanders in their camp outside Yorktown. The French commander, the Marquis de Lafayette, can be seen behind Washington’s left shou
lder. The central figure is the French commander, the Comte de Rochambeau.
On 17 October, after conferring with his officers, Cornwallis decided to surrender. It took two days of negotiation, but on the morning of 19 October Cornwallis signed. It was a humiliating moment for British arms. The 8,087 British and Hessian soldiers and sailors were made to walk a mile through the lines of French and American troops to a field where they deposited all their weapons. All except the senior officers became prisoners-of-war. Losses for both sides had been low, given the importance of the victory. The French and Americans lost 75 dead, the British 156. For fewer than a hundred men, Washington sparked off the process that led to negotiations in Paris the following spring and, after protracted discussion, to the Treaty of Paris that secured the independence of the United States of America.
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No. 64 BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIG HORN
25 June 1876
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Among the modern legends generated by war, few are more compelling than the story of Custer’s ‘Last Stand’ in the Indian wars of the 1870s. Today, visitors to the battlefield are shown Last Stand Hill. There are heroic paintings of George Armstrong Custer, surrounded by American Indians, battling vainly to the last bullet. The reality, however, bore little resemblance to the legend. The battle’s outcome was the product of Custer’s hubris – he thought of himself as the greatest Indian-fighter of his day – and of his sheer tactical incompetence. Above all it was testament to the cunning and courage of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors, among the last American Indians to bend the knee, and of their remarkable commander, Chief Sitting Bull.
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 28