What happened at the Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf?
On 30 August 1757, in East Prussia, the outnumbered Prussian army of Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt attacked the Russian army of Field Marshal Stepan Apraksin while it was setting out on the march near the village of Gross-Jägersdorf. The Russians were caught in a bad position, but a reserve brigade under Pyotr Rumyantsev pushed through a swampy wood and struck the Prussian flank and rear. Lehwaldt had to retreat. Apraksin then failed to pursue and pulled his army out of the province.1
An old Prussian field marshal, ordered by his king to attack at all hazards, threw some 25,000 men at an army twice that size as it set out on the march by the Pregel. For a time the Russians were in serious trouble. Then a Russian reserve brigade came at him through a marshy wood, and the day was lost. Yet the Russian victory was thrown away within weeks, and the province Russia had invaded was left empty again before the winter.2
Background: Russia enters the war
In 1757 Prussia faced enemies on every side. The 1911 Britannica lists a French army of 100,000 against Hanover, the army of the Holy Roman Empire, 16,000 Swedes landing in Pomerania and, in the north, 100,000 Russians under Apraksin slowly advancing into East Prussia. While Frederick the Great fought the Austrians, the defense of the province was left to Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt.3 › Battle of Kolín, 1757
The invading army was huge on paper: both Ostpreussen.net and the 1911 Britannica put it at 100,000 men. The Russians took the port of Memel in early July and made it their base and magazine, then pushed on into the province. Supply problems wore their army down as it marched, and the countryside suffered: Carlyle writes of ravaging and atrocities by Cossack and Kalmyk irregulars that reached Frederick in his camp, and Ostpreussen.net of villages plundered in the Russian advance.4
The Russian commander was in no hurry. Stepan Apraksin had made his career more at court than in the field; the Sytin Military Encyclopedia of 1911 calls his appointment an unlucky choice and blames the slow start on supply troubles, on the meddling of the war council in St Petersburg, and on politics: the empress was gravely ill and her heir, Grand Duke Peter, was known to admire Prussia. Carlyle repeats the same talk about the dying empress.5
Frederick's answer was peremptory. "Fight those monsters; go into them at all hazards!" he wrote to Lehwaldt, as Carlyle quotes it, and Poten's article on Lehwaldt in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie confirms that he attacked on the king's command.6
Armies and commanders
Lehwaldt, born in 1685, was a field marshal of seventy-two, entrusted by Frederick with the defense of East Prussia while the king himself fought in the west and south. Carlyle calls him simply "old Marshal Lehwald". Poten, his biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, records that the king had more than once been annoyed by his indecision in the Silesian wars.7
The strengths are given very differently. The two closest modern counts agree on the Prussians: Ostpreussen.net and Kronoskaf give Lehwaldt 24,700 men and 55 guns against 54,800 to 55,000 Russians with 263 guns, and the Russian Historical Encyclopedia puts the armies at 55,000 against 28,000. The older figures make the odds far worse: Carlyle has 25,000 against 80,000, and Poten 24,000 against 90,000. Before the campaign, Carlyle and the 1911 Britannica both credited Lehwaldt with about 30,000 men in the province.8
On the Russian side the army marched in three divisions under Fermor, Lopukhin and Browne, with a vanguard under Sibilsky; General Vasily Lopukhin's 2nd Division would take the brunt of the fighting. The Sytin encyclopedia counts about 55,000 Russians against 22 Prussian battalions, 50 squadrons and 64 guns, some 24,000 men. In reserve stood the brigade of a young major general, Pyotr Rumyantsev, born in Moscow in 1725. Beside its regular regiments the Russian army brought a mass of irregular horsemen, Cossacks and Kalmyks, some 11,500 of them in Kronoskaf's count; Carlyle describes the dread they spread among the villages of East Prussia.9
The battle, in phases
The approach. Apraksin tried to go around the Prussians to the south. He crossed to the left bank of the Pregel without scouting the ground or locating the enemy, the Russian Historical Encyclopedia notes. The Russians camped near Norkitten on 27 August and finished crossing the river the next day. Lehwaldt advanced to meet them and camped behind a wood between Puschdorf and Ranglacken, to bar the road to Königsberg.10
Dawn, 30 August. Early in the morning the Prussians came out of the woods in battle order just as the Russian army was setting out on its march, its columns and baggage strung out around the dense Norkitten wood. Taken by surprise, the Russians had to fight on very unfavorable ground.11
The Prussian attack. The Prussian infantry went in against the Russian line along the edge of the wood. Lopukhin's 2nd Division and the brigade of General Villebois took the brunt, fighting with their backs to the swampy wood while their own baggage blocked the roads behind them. The fire fight turned into bayonet fighting; in the 2nd Grenadier and Narva regiments about half the men fell, and the line began to give way into the trees. Lopukhin was mortally wounded and taken prisoner, General Zybin was killed and Villebois badly wounded.12
The cavalry. On the Prussian left, Schorlemmer's dragoons beat the Russian horse and rode through a gap in the Russian line, some of them as far as the baggage behind it, before infantry fire drove them off. Meanwhile the Russian vanguard under Sibilsky stood idle on the heights near Sittenfelde for a long time, though it threatened the Prussian flank.13
Turning point: Rumyantsev's march through the wood
The situation was saved by Rumyantsev. He led his reserve brigade of four regiments of the 1st Division through the marshy wood and struck the Prussian left flank and then its rear, in the words of the Russian Historical Encyclopedia. Kronoskaf and the Sytin encyclopedia have the brigade falling on the flank of the Prussian battalions that had pushed into the trees, which broke in confusion, and Sytin quotes Fermor's report that the Prussians, attacked in the flank, sought their safety in flight in the greatest disorder. Britannica credits him with helping to defeat the Prussians that day.14
Lehwaldt's attack could not survive it. Poten blames errors in his dispositions, the great superiority of the enemy and several unlucky accidents. Kronoskaf traces the errors to the day before, when a hurried reconnaissance mistook a camp of irregulars for the left wing of the Russian army, so that Lehwaldt planned his attack against a flank that was not where he thought it was; Carlyle writes that he fought well, though not without mistakes, and was beaten by cannon and numbers. The accounts of the retreat differ: Ostpreussen.net has the Prussian infantry and cavalry falling back in good order, while Kronoskaf has the right wing retreating in disorder and the left in good order. Even the length of the battle is disputed, ten hours in Ostpreussen.net and four in Kronoskaf.15
Aftermath and consequences
The two closest counts of the losses agree. The Russian Historical Encyclopedia gives Prussian losses of about 4,500 killed, wounded and captured, with 29 guns left on the field, and Russian losses of 5,700 killed and wounded, including 1,487 killed. Ostpreussen.net gives 4,520 Prussians, 123 of them officers, and 28 guns, against 5,711 Russians, including 278 officers. The Sytin encyclopedia's count of the Russian dead, 35 officers and 1,449 men, is close to Kronoskaf's 38 and 1,449. Carlyle, writing in the 1860s from the older German histories, has the Russians losing about 9,000 men, or 5,000 by their own account, and the Prussians about 3,000.16
Then the Russians did nothing. The Russian Historical Encyclopedia notes that the army did not exploit its strategic advantage, though the victory mattered for morale. Instead of pursuing, Apraksin turned back and withdrew out of the province. The Russian commanders decided to retreat across the Niemen into winter quarters in Courland because the army had run out of food and sickness was spreading, the Sytin encyclopedia explains; Ostpreussen.net also names supply problems as the likely reason. Carlyle reports both Apraksin's own excuse, that he could get no provisions, and the talk of the world: that he thought the empress was dying and that her pro-Prussian heir, Peter, would welcome a retreat.17
Carlyle has him plodding slowly home with Lehwaldt following at a distance until he was over the border, leaving the Russians nothing of the whole expedition but Memel.18
Empress Elizabeth, annoyed by his slowness, recalled Apraksin and gave the command to Fermor. Apraksin was arrested and investigated together with the chancellor, Bestuzhev, and died in August 1758 before any verdict was reached. Fermor crossed into East Prussia again in January 1758 and occupied it. Lehwaldt's army, freed by the retreat, was sent west to Pomerania against the Swedes.19 › Battle of Rossbach, 1757
Legacy and memory
For Prussia the Russian retreat came as a reprieve in a dreadful year. The news of Lehwaldt's defeat reached Frederick in early September, among a run of bad news from every front that Carlyle describes as six weeks of helpless waiting; only the victories of Rossbach and Leuthen at the end of the year restored his position.20 › Battle of Leuthen, 1757
For Russia the battle showed that its army could beat Frederick's troops in the field, and the Russian Historical Encyclopedia stresses its value for morale even though the strategic chance was wasted. Rumyantsev's march through the wood made his name: Britannica's short biography of him begins its account of his war service with Gross-Jägersdorf.21
Lehwaldt did not fight another great battle. He was sent against the Swedes in Pomerania and died at Königsberg in 1768.22
The battlefield today
The village of Gross-Jägersdorf itself has probably vanished, Ostpreussen.net notes. The battlefield lies in the Kaliningrad region of Russia, about 4 kilometers southwest of the village of Mezhdurechye, the former Norkitten.23
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