Battle of Königgrätz

Background

In June 1866 the long rivalry between Austria and Prussia over the leadership of Germany became open war. Austria had most of the smaller German states on its side, Saxony among them; Prussia had Italy, which pinned a large Austrian army in Venetia. The Saxon army withdrew from Dresden rather than be overrun and joined the Austrian Nord-Armee in Bohemia under Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Benedek.

Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, used the railways to put three armies on a wide arc along the Bohemian border: the Army of the Elbe and the First Army in the west, the Second Army in Silesia to the east. They crossed the mountains through Rumburg, Reichenberg, Trautenau and Náchod and converged on the Gitschin (Jičín) area. It was a gamble, since for several days the Prussian armies were separated and open to defeat in detail; Benedek, slow to concentrate, never took the chance. A string of frontier actions, ending with Prince Friedrich Karl's defeat of Clam-Gallas's I Corps and the Saxons at Gitschin on 29 June, left the Austrians shaken, and Benedek fell back towards the fortress of Königgrätz.

There, on the low hills between the Bistritz (Bystřice) stream and the Elbe, he halted. The Prussians lost contact and only found the Austrian army on 2 July. Moltke decided to attack the next day rather than let it slip away again. Orders for the Second Army, still a day's march to the north, went by riders through the night, because the telegraph was down.

The armies

Prussia brought roughly 220,000 men to the field (estimates run from about 206,000 to 255,000): the Army of the Elbe under Herwarth von Bittenfeld (about 39,000), Friedrich Karl's First Army (about 85,000) and the Crown Prince's Second Army (nearly 100,000), with King Wilhelm I nominally in command and Moltke directing. Benedek had about 215,000 Austrians and Saxons in seven Austrian corps plus Crown Prince Albert's Saxon corps of 22,000–25,000, with five cavalry divisions and a large artillery reserve.

Each side had one technical edge. Prussian infantry carried the Dreyse needle gun, a breech-loader that could be reloaded perhaps twice as fast as the Austrian muzzle-loading Lorenz, though how much faster is disputed and the Dreyse was not a reliable weapon. Austrian tactics after 1859 relied on massed bayonet attacks, which the needle gun punished. The Austrian artillery, by contrast, was mostly rifled, well handled and superior in range and accuracy; the Prussian gunners were half-way through rearming with Krupp breech-loaders and often fought too far back. Gun totals vary: about 600–770 Austrian and Saxon guns, and some 700–780 Prussian.

The battle

Morning: the First Army on the Bistritz (07:30–11:00). The day began wet and misty. The First Army had left camp at 02:00 and the Army of the Elbe at 03:00. Shortly before 08:00 Austrian guns opened on the Prussians crossing the Bistritz. Horn's 8th Division took Sadowa, but the divisions pushing across the stream around Sadowa and Dohalitz met the Austrian gun line on the slopes of Lipa and Chlum, with Archduke Ernst's III Corps at its centre and Gablenz's X Corps to its south, and could make little headway.

The Swiepwald (08:30–12:00). On the Prussian left, Fransecky's 7th Division entered the Swiepwald, a wood north of the Austrian centre, at about 08:30. The Austrian IV Corps, under Mollinary after Festetics was wounded, and Thun's II Corps were meant to hold the line from Chlum east to Nedelist, facing north. Instead they were drawn west into the wood. Brigade after brigade went in against Fransecky's needle guns; one account has three Austrian brigades wrecked by 09:30. At 11:00 Colonel Pöckh's brigade drove the Prussians back to the edge of the wood, but flanking fire from the 8th Division destroyed it. The Austrians took much of the Swiepwald but spent two corps doing it, and left the northern front facing the Crown Prince almost empty. Benedek ordered them back to their start line; the withdrawal became disorderly. Moltke kept the First Army's reserves back, and the Prussian centre held.

The Saxon flank (morning to 15:00). On the Austrian left the Saxons held the heights around Problus and Prim above Nechanitz. Herwarth's Army of the Elbe pushed them out of Alt Nechanitz early but came on slowly. In the afternoon it attacked again, and the Saxons, after a counterattack of their own, were forced out of Problus and Prim.

The Second Army arrives (12:00–15:00). The Crown Prince's leading corps came into action from about noon, marching south from the Elbe towards Horenowes, Maslowed and Chlum. The 1st Guard Division under Hiller von Gärtringen climbed to Chlum, which fell in the early afternoon; sources give anywhere from 14:15 to 14:45. With it went the Austrian gun line, which the Guards took in the flank and rear. Benedek realised the scale of the disaster only after 14:30, and by about 15:00 he accepted that the battle was lost. Moltke then sent the First Army forward along the whole front.

Counterattack and retreat (15:00–18:30). Benedek threw in his reserve. Ramming's VI Corps and then I Corps counterattacked towards Rosberitz and Chlum from about 15:15, regained part of the village and were shot to pieces; by 16:00 the attacks had failed. The Austrian reserve artillery, re-formed on the heights near Wsestar, and repeated charges by the reserve cavalry divisions covered the retreat. In these charges the Austrian horse lost about 2,000 men and nearly as many horses. Their task was to keep the Elbe bridges open while the beaten army streamed back across the river; Benedek himself crossed at about 18:00. Moltke halted operations at about 18:30.

Aftermath

The Prussian General Staff counted 9,172 Prussian casualties: 1,935 dead, 6,959 wounded and 278 missing. Austrian and Saxon losses are given as anything from 31,000 to about 45,000, with prisoners between some 9,000 and 22,000; the higher totals count the stragglers and captured of the rout. The Saxons lost about 1,500. Austria also lost 187 or 188 guns. More than 900 wounded lay untended for days, and the Saxon nurse Marie Simon, who arrived to care for them, went on to help found the Albert Association, a forerunner of the German Red Cross.

Benedek fell back on Olomouc, and the Prussians pursued south. The last clash came at Blumenau, near Pressburg, on 22 July, with an armistice signed at Nikolsburg (Mikulov) on 26 July and the Peace of Prague on 23 August. Austria was shut out of German affairs and Prussia formed the North German Confederation, the step before unification in 1871.

The arguments continue: whether the needle gun or Moltke's converging plan won the day, how far Benedek's subordinates rather than Benedek lost it, and whether Moltke's "Cannae" was planned or improvised.

Wargaming it

Königgrätz is a whole-army battle on a front of roughly 10 kilometres, with nearly half a million men on the field. Most players will want a scale where the unit is a brigade, or a division on the Prussian side. A grand-tactical game with corps commands, hourly turns and the Elbe and the fortress on the Austrian baseline handles it best. The Swiepwald fight or the Guards' climb to Chlum makes a good battalion-level game on its own.

The terrain decides most things. The Bistritz is a modest obstacle, but the low heights of Lipa, Chlum and Problus give the Austrian guns long fields of fire. The Swiepwald pulls troops in like a magnet, and the Elbe at the Austrian rear makes defeat a catastrophe. Rules need to give the Austrians the better artillery, the Prussians the faster-firing infantry, and the Austrian infantry a doctrine that tempts them into bayonet attacks.

The timetable is the game. The Second Army arrives from the north around midday, and it should be the umpire's secret when. Can the Austrian player resist reinforcing the Swiepwald? Does Benedek, with his reserve intact, strike the First Army before noon, as critics say he should have? What if the Second Army's orders had gone astray in the night?

Maps and pictures