Battle of Kunersdorf

Background

By 1759 the Seven Years' War had put Prussia on the strategic defensive, with Austria, Russia, France, Sweden and most of the Holy Roman Empire ranged against it. Frederick II gathered his army in Lower Silesia, which pinned the main Austrian army in Bohemia, but the Russians moved west through Poland towards Brandenburg and Berlin itself. On 23 July a Russian army under Pyotr Saltykov beat Carl Heinrich von Wedel's Prussian corps at Kay (Paltzig). Saltykov pushed on, occupied Frankfurt an der Oder on 31 July and entrenched a camp on the low heights east of the river, by the village of Kunersdorf.

In early August an Austrian corps under Ernst Gideon von Laudon joined him. Saltykov had hoped for the whole Austrian army and got a wing of it. The two commanders mistrusted each other, disliked talking through interpreters and had different aims, but Laudon wanted a battle and set his men to digging alongside the Russians.

Frederick could not leave a Russian army on the Oder, about 80 km from his capital. He hurried from Saxony, took over Wedel's survivors at Müllrose and drew in reinforcements until he had some 49,000–50,000 men by 9 August. On the night of 10–11 August the Prussians bridged the Oder north of Frankfurt, near Reitwein and Göritz, and came south towards Kunersdorf. Frederick's reconnaissance on 11 August was hasty: he relied on a forester, an officer who had served in Frankfurt and a peasant, and sent out no cavalry patrols. He concluded that the allies faced north-west and that the Reppen Forest east of their camp would screen a march round their flank, much as the hills had screened his march at Leuthen.

The armies

Frederick had about 50,000 men: by Kronoskaf's count 63 battalions and 110 squadrons, some 36,000 infantry and 13,000 cavalry, with around 160 heavy guns, including a battery of horse artillery, besides the battalion pieces. Finck commanded the corps detached for the diversion, Wedel the left wing and Seydlitz the cavalry, with Platen, Prince Eugen of Württemberg and Puttkamer under him. It was no longer the army of Leuthen. Losses had diluted its drill and discipline, and its men came to the field after forced marches in summer heat, short of water and without a hot meal for days.

The allies had about 59,500 men, some 41,000 Russians (about 8,000 of them Cossacks and Kalmyks) and 18,500 Austrians; Kronoskaf, adding gunners, engineers and Austrian Grenzer light infantry, reaches about 76,000. They were much stronger in artillery: 248 guns by one count, more than 400 if regimental pieces are included. Saltykov held the ridge in depth. Prince Golitsyn's Observation Corps, with a heavy battery, held the Mühlberge at the north-eastern end; Rumyantsev's division stood behind the Kuhgrund; Fermor's held the Grosser Spitzberg, whose battery dominated the field; Laudon's seven Austrian infantry regiments waited in reserve on the Judenberg, with the cavalry behind the ridge. Redans, flèches and abatis covered the slopes, felled trees broke up the ground against cavalry, and the Russians had laid a causeway across ground Frederick's informants called impassable.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 76 (KUNERSDORF), from 11:30 to 17:30: the opening bombardment to roughly the start of the final collapse. All times are approximate, and the sources differ by up to an hour.

The approach (02:00–11:30). The Prussians left camp between 02:00 and 03:00. Finck's corps had the short route and by dawn stood on the heights by Trettin, north-east of the allied line, where it demonstrated in the fog against the Walkberge. The main army swung through the Reppen Forest to strike the allied eastern flank from the south-east. The march went badly: sandy, boggy tracks, bridges too narrow for the heavy guns, columns reshuffled in the woods. The fog lifted at about 08:00 and the Russians began to grasp that this was the main army. Ponds round Kunersdorf squeezed the Prussians into narrow columns, and Frederick found he would hit the end of the allied line, not its rear. By about 10:45 his batteries were going into position on the Walkberge, the Klosterberg and the Kleiner Spitzberg.

The Mühlberge (11:30–13:00). At about 11:30 some 60 Prussian guns opened on the Mühlberge, a knoll at the end of the ridge; the Russian guns there were at first laid the wrong way. After half an hour to an hour of bombardment about 4,300 grenadiers and musketeers of the advance guard went up from the Bäckergrund, closed to point-blank range and carried the hill in minutes, taking 70–100 guns and turning some on their former owners. The Observation Corps regiments were wrecked, and by 13:00 the Russian left had been driven back on Kunersdorf.

The Kuhgrund (13:00–16:30). Saltykov reacted quickly, pushing Russian and Austrian grenadiers and battalions from the Judenberg and the Spitzberg into the line beyond the Kuhgrund, a narrow hollow west of the Mühlberge. Finck and other generals urged Frederick to stop and hold what he had won; he refused. His infantry had to cross the hollow on a narrow front under fire from the Grosser Spitzberg. Seydlitz's cavalry tried the far crest and was driven back by musketry and canister. Finck's corps attacked from the north from about 14:00 and was thrown back. The Prussian left, picking its way through ponds and abatis south of Kunersdorf, reached the Jewish cemetery at the foot of the Judenberg; the 2nd Dragoons lost two-thirds of their strength there in minutes. At about 16:30 the defenders west of Kunersdorf wavered, but fresh Russian regiments held. Excavations suggest some Prussians got 500–700 m beyond the Kuhgrund. Frederick had two horses shot under him, and a bullet was stopped by a gold case in his pocket.

The Spitzberg and the cavalry (about 17:00–18:00). The Prussian infantry had been on its feet for some 16 hours. Repeated attacks towards the Spitzberg failed; the 37th Infantry lost 992 men and 16 officers. Seydlitz was wounded and Platen took over the cavalry. His Schorlemmer Dragoons were cut up by the Spitzberg batteries and Massow's cuirassiers broken by canister. Austrian dragoons and Russian horse, led by Laudon himself in most accounts, then charged the disordered Prussian squadrons and drove them back onto their own infantry.

Collapse (from about 18:00). Fresh troops from Laudon's reserve came on and the Prussian army dissolved. Fugitives jammed against their own guns in the Bäckergrund and at the mills on the Hühnerfliess, where a bridge broke under the artillery. Cossacks and Austrian cavalry rode down the fleeing infantry. Chuguev Cossacks nearly took Frederick; Captain Joachim Bernhard von Prittwitz and a squadron of Zieten Hussars cut him free. At Frankfurt, Wunsch's detachment had taken the town but gave it up again that night.

Aftermath

Prussian losses were about 18,600–21,000 killed, wounded and captured, nearly two-fifths of the army, with 172 guns and some 26 colours and 2 standards. Wedel was wounded so badly that he never fought again, Seydlitz and Prince Eugen were wounded and Puttkamer killed; the poet Ewald von Kleist died of his wounds ten days later. Allied losses were about 15,500–16,500, some 27 per cent.

That night, at Reitwein, Frederick wrote to his old tutor Count Finckenstein that of 48,000 men he had 3,000 left: "I believe that everything is lost. I will not survive the doom of my fatherland. Farewell forever!" He handed command to Finck, pleading illness. The army was less broken than he thought. About 26,000 scattered men drifted back, and within four days he had 32,000 men and 50 guns.

Saltykov, promoted field marshal, and Laudon did not march on Berlin. They were divided, short of supplies and anxious about their communications and about Prince Henry's intact army; by September they were withdrawing. Frederick called this reprieve "the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg", a name later also given to Russia's exit from the war in 1762. Most historians count Kunersdorf as Frederick's worst defeat and blame his contempt for the Russians, his thin reconnaissance and his decision to press on after the Mühlberge.

Wargaming it

Kunersdorf is an assault on a prepared position over ground that dictates almost everything. The ridge runs about 3 km, but no knoll is more than 30 m high; the fighting is about the hollows between them, the Bäckergrund and the Kuhgrund, and the ponds and marsh that funnel movement south of Kunersdorf. A table needs the Mühlberge, the Kuhgrund, the Grosser Spitzberg and the burnt village; the Reppen Forest and Finck's heights at Trettin can sit off-table. Earthworks, abatis and massed allied guns should make frontal attacks costly and cavalry nearly useless against the works.

With some 110,000 men in all, a grand-tactical scale with brigades or regiments as units suits the whole battle; the storm of the Mühlberge or the fight for the Kuhgrund makes a good battalion-level game. Fatigue deserves a rule: the Prussians marched for up to eight hours in heat before the first shot, which is why the attack ran out of breath.

Both sides have real decisions. Does Frederick stop after the Mühlberge, as his generals urged, and hold the captured hill? Can Finck's diversion be turned into a real attack earlier? How fast does Saltykov strip his right to feed the Kuhgrund, and when does Laudon commit his reserve and cavalry? What ifs: a proper cavalry reconnaissance on 11 August, the heavy guns through the forest on time, or the allies facing the way Frederick believed they did. The dispute over which way the allied front faced suits a hidden-deployment start.

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