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Battle of Leuthen

Frederick's forces march around the hills to attack the Austrian flank. In the Battle of Leuthen, fought on 5 December 1757, Frederick the Great's Prussian army used maneuver and terrain to decisively defeat a much larger Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine, thus ensuring Prussian control of Silesia during the Seven Years' War and for nearly two centuries afterward. While Frederick the Great was campaigning in central Germany, defeating a combined Franco-Imperial army at the Battle of Rossbach, the Austrians had managed to slowly retake Silesia. Frederick had arrived on November 28 to find that the primary city in Silesia, Breslau, had just fallen to the Austrians. He arrived near Leuthen, 17 km west of Breslau, to find an Austrian army that was twice the size of his own. He realized that he must either win a great victory or suffer a major defeat. The commanders in charge of the Austrian army had earlier argued about whether to march out of Breslau to face Frederick, and Prince Charles of Lorraine had won the argument. The weather was foggy and the entire area had once been a training ground for the Prussian army, so Frederick the Great knew the terrain thoroughly. Frederick marched directly toward the Austrian army with its center at Leuthen, its front stretching fully 4 miles, much larger than the average front of the time. Until the Napoleonic Wars the European armies were quite small for a number of reasons: disease; quality of food and medicine; and the levée en masse had not yet been introduced. The Austrian army was stretched out to such an extent in order to prevent it from being flanked by Frederick, as it was his favorite tactic, but this would ultimately be a key mistake. Frederick had his cavalry launch an assault on Borna as a feint and then face the Austrian right flank, appearing as though it would act as a spearhead for a right flank attack. Screening his army with his cavalry, Frederick moved his well-disciplined infantry toward the Austrian left in columns. But when the heads of the two superbly drilled Prussian columns – the distances between the marching platoons remaining exactly the width of each platoon's front – had passed the Austrian left flank, the columns veered left toward the enemy and continued their march until they had passed beyond the left Austrian flank. Then, on command, the platoons of the columns turned left at Lobetinz, and the whole Prussian army lay in line of battle at nearly a right angle to the left flank of the Austrian position. The whole Prussian army had carried out a maneuver to attack the Austrians in the flank. The weakest soldiers of the Austrian army had been put on the left flank in a position protected by the hills, as their fighting ability was doubted. The Prussian infantry, arrayed in the conventional two lines of battle, then advanced and rolled up the Austrian flank. Frederick was superbly lucky that day: Not only had Prince Charles moved the cavalry from his army's left to the right, but the infantry on the left were Protestant Württembergers sympathetic to the Protestant Prussians. After firing a few half-hearted volleys, they broke ranks in front of the advancing Prussian line. The other Austrian infantry on their left, when beset with murderous 12-pounder Prussian artillery and devastating volleys from the advancing Prussians, quickly broke ranks as well. Video Empire produces videos read aloud. Use the information in this video at your own risk. We cannot always guarantee accuracy. This video uses material from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_..., licensed with CC Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. This video is licensed with CC Attribution-Share-Alike 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... In order to adapt this content it is required to comply with the license terms. Image licensing information is available via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...