Battle of Rossbach

Background

Frederick II had taken Silesia from Austria in the 1740s, and the Diplomatic Revolution brought Austria and France together against him, with Britain backing Prussia. By the summer of 1757 he was in trouble. He beat the Austrians at Prague on 6 May but lost at Kolín in June, and his invasion of Bohemia collapsed. The Russians took Memel and won at Gross-Jägersdorf on 30 August, the Austrians beat Winterfeldt at Moys in September, and an Austrian light column under Hadik raided Berlin and extorted 225,000 thalers. In the west the French had beaten the Duke of Cumberland at Hastenbeck, and his Hanoverian army had been neutralised by the Convention of Kloster-Zeven.

A second French army under the Prince de Soubise, joined by the Reichsarmee under Prince Joseph of Saxe-Hildburghausen, now threatened Saxony. Frederick marched west to meet it, covering some 274 km in about 13 days and leaving his supply wagons behind. For days the allies manoeuvred and refused battle. On 31 October the Prussians stormed Weissenfels, where the bridge over the Saale burned; by 3 November they had crossed the river at Halle, Merseburg and Weissenfels, and on 4 November Frederick camped at Rossbach, facing an allied army about twice his size.

The allied commanders disagreed. Soubise inclined to caution; Hildburghausen would not run from an army half his size. With the strategist Pierre-Joseph Bourcet's encouragement, they settled on a march round the Prussian left for the next morning, to cut Frederick off from the Saale.

The armies

The allied army numbered about 41,000 to 45,000, in 62 battalions and 82–84 squadrons, with somewhere between 80 and 114 guns depending on the source. About three-quarters were French: Swiss regiments such as Planta and Diesbach, the old regiment of Piémont, and a strong cavalry including Broglie's reserve. The Reichsarmee was the weak link: poorly trained, disunited, and drawn from contingents of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them more hostile to France than to Prussia. The French had problems of their own, with low and irregular pay and many raw recruits, and the army dragged some 12,000 civilian camp followers. Two Austrian cuirassier regiments and Austrian light troops stiffened the Imperials. Command was divided, and on the day Soubise deferred to Hildburghausen.

Frederick had 22,000 men: 27 battalions and 43–45 squadrons. Keith was his second in command, Prince Henry led infantry on the left, and the 36-year-old Major-General Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz had been given the whole cavalry. Prussian horsemen were trained to form line from column at speed and to charge knee to knee. Colonel Karl Friedrich von Moller's battery of 16 heavy guns and two howitzers, later reinforced with heavy pieces from Leipzig, would play a decisive part.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 69 (ROSSBACH), from 15:30 to 17:00: Seydlitz's first charge to the rout. The allied approach began four hours earlier. Times are approximate.

The flank march (11:00–14:30). The ground was a wide, largely treeless plateau west of Merseburg, with sandy and marshy patches and two low rises, the Janus and Pölzen hills, between Rossbach and Reichardtswerben. The Prussian camp lay between Rossbach on its left and Bedra on its right. Leaving Saint-Germain's detachment on the heights to the west to watch the camp, the allied army left Mücheln after 11:00 and marched south towards Zeuchfeld in two main columns, with a reserve column and the reserve artillery alongside and the cavalry of the right wing in the lead. The plan was to swing east past Zeuchfeld, round Frederick's left, and deploy facing north between Reichardtswerben and Pettstädt. From about 14:00, south of Pettstädt, the columns turned east, Broglie's reserve cavalry and the Bourbon brigade ahead of them. The wheel came apart and the columns lost cohesion.

Frederick watched from the attic of the Rossbach manor house. Around noon he went to dinner, leaving Captain von Gaudi on watch; by 14:30 he had recognised that the allies meant to strike his flank and rear.

The Prussian reply (14:30–15:30). The Prussians broke camp and by 15:00 had formed up out of sight behind the Janus hill. The allies took it for a retreat and pressed on without reconnaissance. Seven squadrons stayed at Rossbach to contain Saint-Germain. Seydlitz led the other 38 squadrons east behind the heights and drew them up in two lines, 20 and 18 squadrons, behind the Pölzen hill. Prince Henry's infantry formed in echelon from the left, the stronger wing leading, facing south along the line from Nahlendorf towards Reichardtswerben. Moller's battery opened fire from the Janus hill at about 15:00–15:15.

Seydlitz's first charge (15:30–16:00). At 15:30, as the head of the allied cavalry reached open ground north of Reichardtswerben, Seydlitz crested the Pölzen hill, by tradition tossing his pipe into the air as the signal, and charged. Only two Austrian cuirassier regiments deployed in time. French reserve cavalry joined them, but the weaker German regiments broke and the Prussian second line, hitting the French at an angle, drove the rest off. The melee drifted south past the allied infantry. After about half an hour Seydlitz recalled his squadrons and regrouped them south-west of Tagewerben, by a copse between Reichardtswerben and Obschütz.

The infantry fight (from about 16:00). The allied infantry, still in column, tried to form and some battalions advanced with the bayonet. They met the volleys of Prince Henry's wing and Moller's guns, which fired into column fronts only about 300 yards wide. Piémont and its neighbours were beaten, notably by the platoon fire of the 5th and 9th regiments. This phase lasted no more than about 15 minutes; the few Prussian battalions engaged fired between five and fifteen rounds a man.

The rout (to about 17:00). Seydlitz charged again from near Tagewerben into the right flank and rear of the allied infantry. Three Franconian regiments broke and the French went with them, streaming west towards Pettstädt and leaving most of their guns. Only the Swiss regiments of Planta and Diesbach kept their order. Cuirassier regiments 10 and 13 pursued as far as Gröst and Obschütz until darkness stopped them.

Aftermath

The Prussians lost about 550 men; the allies about 8,000–10,000, more than half of them prisoners, among them eight French generals and 260 officers, with 72 guns and 21 standards. Soubise and Hildburghausen were both wounded. A loss ratio of about ten to one was unusual for an eighteenth-century battle. Frederick is reported to have said that he won with most of his infantry still shouldering their muskets.

The victory cleared Frederick's western front. He turned east and a month later beat the Austrians at Leuthen. Seydlitz was promoted Generalleutnant and given the Order of the Black Eagle. Hildburghausen resigned, though the Reichsarmee regrouped and fought on. In France the foreign minister, Bernis, argued for peace and lost his place at court; the French never again marched so far east in the war, and from 1759 they cut their contributions. In Britain George II repudiated Kloster-Zeven, and British subsidies to Prussia grew.

Rossbach became a German national symbol, a defeat that some Germans saw as retribution for French atrocities in the Rhineland and the Palatinate, and later a byword for Prussian superiority. Columns went up on the Janus hill in 1766, 1796 and 1814; Napoleon carried the 1796 column off to Paris in 1806. Lignite mining from 1865 to 1990 destroyed much of the battlefield, which is now farmland, vineyards and a flooded opencast pit. Historians credit Moller and Seydlitz; some see in the French mix of line and column a hint of the tactics that beat Prussia at Jena.

Wargaming it

Rossbach is an ambush, and the game is mostly about whether the allied player can get out of march column before the Prussians hit. A tabletop game naturally starts at about 15:00, with the allies strung out in five or six columns and the Prussians formed behind the hills; one published scenario starts with most allied columns in march formation and gives the Prussians the first move. Played straight, it is lopsided, so it suits teaching games, solo play, or a match where the stronger player takes the allies.

The terrain is simple but critical. The Janus and Pölzen hills screen Seydlitz and give Moller a gun platform; the marshy ground near the streams in the west slows the allies; Reichardtswerben and Tagewerben mark the cavalry's start lines. A brigade-level game with each base a regiment or a pair of battalions fits a single table and an afternoon, and lets the cavalry fight be more than a dice roll.

The decisions to model are the allied ones: how far to trust that the Prussians are retreating, when to deploy, and whether Saint-Germain's detachment and the Austrian light troops in the west join in. Ways to balance it include better allied command ratings, letting the rear columns move from the start, or rolling for how quickly the allies see the threat. A bigger 'what if' starts the game at 11:00 with hidden movement and lets the allied player choose a different plan, or none at all.

Maps and pictures