Who won the Battle of Freiberg?
Prussia. On 29 October 1762 Prince Henry of Prussia, with about 23,000 men, attacked the entrenched Austro-Imperial army of about 31,000 near Freiberg in Saxony and drove it from the field by midday. The allies lost several thousand men as prisoners and 28 guns. The defeat helped push Vienna toward the peace of 1763.1
Freiberg was the last pitched battle of the Seven Years' War, and it was won not by Frederick the Great but by his younger brother, a general better known for avoiding battles than for fighting them. In a single morning his columns broke an army larger than his own and settled the fight for Saxony.2
Background: the last campaign
By 1762 the war had turned in Prussia's favor. The Russian Empress Elizabeth, Frederick's bitter enemy, died at the start of the year; her successor Peter III made peace with Prussia, and although Catherine II soon overthrew him, Russia left the war. Frederick recovered the Silesian fortress of Schweidnitz in October, and with fighting in Silesia at an end, both sides turned to Saxony, the last theater where there was room for large operations.3 › Battle of Hochkirch, 1758
Prince Henry commanded the Prussian army in Saxony. In the autumn the Austrians, now under Count Andreas Hadik, and the army of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reichsarmee, went over to the attack around Freiberg, Henry's base. Hadik's aim, the Kulturstiftung writes, was to drive the Prussians out of their positions and win better winter quarters than in the year before.4
In the night of 15 to 16 October, unable to hold against superior numbers, Henry gave up Freiberg and fell back to the northwest. Carlyle calls it a slap that might have been worse had the allies followed it up. They did not, and the allies dug in around the town.5
Henry would not leave it at that. The king was sending him reinforcements, but the Austrians were expecting reinforcements of their own and were likely to get them first. Henry therefore resolved to strike before they arrived. On 22 October he moved to a new camp on the heights of Marbach and the Augustusberg, and his plan for an attack was put to the king, who approved it.6
Armies and commanders
Prince Henry, Frederick's younger brother, had spent most of the war in Saxony, usually on the defensive against larger armies. His biographers in the Neue and Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie describe a cautious commander, at his best in the defense, who made up for his weakness with fast, secret marches and strong positions the Austrians rarely dared to attack. The Kulturstiftung likewise calls him a general known for positional warfare rather than crushing blows. The 1911 Britannica follows him through those years: covering Dresden in 1758, racing some 90 miles in three days to join the king in 1760, holding his own against Daun in 1761.7
With him was Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, the most famous cavalry commander of the war. Since 1761, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie notes, Seydlitz had served under Henry in Saxony at the head of mixed forces of all arms rather than cavalry alone.8
Facing them was the Austro-Imperial army of Prince Christian Karl von Stolberg, a mix of Austrian regiments and the contingents of the German states. Kronoskaf puts it at about 31,000 men against about 23,000 Prussians. Carlyle, following the Prussian military historian Schöning, counts 29 battalions and 60 squadrons on the Prussian side against 49 battalions and 68 squadrons, and reckons the allies at about 40,000.9
The battle, in phases
The night march. Henry began the operation in the night of 28 to 29 October and approached in four columns. The strongest, on the right under Seydlitz, whom Henry himself accompanied, was to swing around Stolberg's left and take it in the rear. The center under General Stutterheim the younger was to pin the allies with an attack toward the Spittelwald, a wood in front of their position; the left under Stutterheim the elder was to push between the river Mulde and the heights and strike from the east; and a fourth column under Forcade stayed in reserve.10
A corps on the flank. On the way the Prussians discovered an Austrian force, about 6,000 men in Kronoskaf's count, on the heights near Brand, from where it could fall on the rear of the turning column. Henry detached troops to watch it and, though this weakened his main blow, kept to his plan.11
Daybreak: the heights. The fighting began at first light, about five in the morning according to the Kulturstiftung. Seydlitz's grenadiers stormed the heights on the allied left, including the knoll of the Drei Kreuzen. Where the ground was too broken for horses, Seydlitz put himself at the head of the infantry, as Henry reported to the king and as Seydlitz's biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie confirms, and then brought up his cavalry to exploit the success.12
The Spittelwald. In the center the allies held the wood behind barricades of felled trees. Carlyle writes that the main stress of the battle lay in those abatis, and Kronoskaf has the Prussian attack breaking in and then being pushed back to the edge of the wood.13
Turning point: the allied flanks give way
The decision came on the wings. On the left, Stutterheim the elder's column pushed through the villages on the allied right, and Kronoskaf describes the hussars of General Belling breaking one Austrian and Hungarian regiment after another; Henry's dispatch names Belling and Kleist among the generals who did their very best. On the right, Seydlitz turned from the heights against the allied center and left. Attacked from both ends, Stolberg's line gave way. Henry's dispatch adds that the weight of the fighting had fallen on the Austrians, while the Reichsarmee lost next to nothing, which matches Kronoskaf's list of the regiments that were broken.14
The times differ by source. The Kulturstiftung has the allied retreat beginning at about eight in the morning; Henry wrote that the enemy yielded everywhere after three hours under fire; and a French map of the battle engraved about 1789, now in the Royal Collection, notes that it began at daybreak and ended toward noon. Stolberg rallied his army, crossed the Mulde and fell back toward Frauenstein and Dresden. Henry sent troops after him that night, but they could not catch the retreating columns.15
Aftermath and consequences
The two main accounts agree on the shape of the defeat but not on the details. Kronoskaf gives Prussian losses of about 1,500 and allied losses of 3,000 killed or wounded and 4,500 captured, with 28 guns and 9 colors taken. The Kulturstiftung counts 1,400 Prussian dead and wounded, 2,800 allied soldiers left on the field and 4,340 men and 79 officers captured, with 28 guns and 11 flags. In his dispatch written the same day, which Carlyle prints, Henry reckoned his own losses at 2,000 to 3,000 and the prisoners at more than 4,000.16
Frederick was delighted. In the reply Carlyle prints, the king wrote that the news had made him feel eighteen instead of sixty, and that to Henry alone would belong the honor of the final stroke against Austrian obstinacy. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie notes that in his own historical writings Frederick praised his brother's achievement at Freiberg and called him a great soldier.17
Freiberg did not destroy the allied armies. Its political effect was greater. The Kulturstiftung writes that the defeat caused dismay in Vienna, ended Austrian hopes of wintering in Saxony and convinced the court that the time had come to give up its maximum demands and seek a settlement. An armistice followed, and on 15 February 1763 the Peace of Hubertusburg ended the war on the basis of the status quo, with Prussia keeping all its possessions.18 › Battle of Prague, 1757
Legacy and memory
For Henry, Freiberg was the crowning victory of his career. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie says it completed his fame as a commander and notes that his attack did not follow the standard pattern of the oblique order; the Neue Deutsche Biographie calls it the last decisive victory of the war. It was also, as Carlyle observes, his only great battle.19
The battle was soon mapped and pictured. The Royal Collection holds a hand-colored French map engraved about 1789 by the court engraver of Mainz after a drawing by the engineer officer Therbu, part of a series of plans of the battles of the Seven Years' War. The illustration at the top of this page comes from a Saxon history book of 1853.20 › Battle of Kolín, 1757
