Qualla: Battle of Leuthen

Battle of Leuthen: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Napoleon, who was not generous with praise for the work of other commanders, called it "a masterpiece of marches, maneuvers, and resolution." He told his marshals it should be studied by every soldier who hoped to understand the art of war. He was talking about a winter day in Silesia, 5 December 1757, when an outnumbered Prussian king accomplished one of those rare battles that ends not with a hard-won decision but with the wholesale erasure of an enemy army from the field. Frederick II of Prussia had marched his troops 274 kilometers in twelve days through the December cold to reach Leuthen. He arrived to find an Austrian army nearly twice the size of his own waiting on a front of eight kilometers. Within seven hours, the Austrian army had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force.

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Image: Public domain

Battle of Leuthen: The Long Road from Rossbach

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Reinhard Saczewski, Public domain. Just one month earlier, on 5 November, Frederick had crushed a French and Imperial army at Rossbach in ninety minutes, with most of his infantry never having shouldered their muskets at all. The victory had bought him time but cost him territory: while he was beating the French i...

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Image: Reinhard Saczewski | Public domain

Battle of Leuthen: The Knolls and the Trick

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carl Röchling, Public domain. Leuthen was a small village on a rolling plain dotted with low hillocks, none higher than thirty meters. Frederick had hunted across this country in his youth and knew it the way you know the woods behind your house. The Austrians did not. At four in the morning, his army moved o...

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Image: Carl Röchling | Public domain

Battle of Leuthen: The Cavalry Finishes It

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. When the Austrian commander finally tried to move cavalry from the north to break Frederick's flank, the Prussian general Hans Joachim von Zieten was waiting with forty squadrons. Driesen brought thirty more. The Bayreuth Dragoons hit the Austrian flank; the Puttkamer Hussars hit...

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Image: Public domain

Battle of Leuthen: Now Thank We All Our God

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilhelm Camphausen, Public domain. The Prussians had won, but it was not cheap. Frederick lost 6,344 men: 1,141 dead, 5,118 wounded, 85 captured. Two of his generals fell. The Austrians lost roughly 22,000 killed, wounded, or captured, and entire regiments dissolved on the field. After the battle, the story passed...

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Image: Wilhelm Camphausen | Public domain

Battle of Leuthen: The Forgotten Field

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Olgierd Rudak, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lutynia today is a small village in southwestern Poland, the German name Leuthen mostly forgotten by everyone but military historians. The 1854 monument that marked the battle was dynamited at the end of the Second World War; only ruins of its pedestal survive, restored in 2011. ...

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Image: Olgierd Rudak | CC BY-SA 4.0