What happened at the Battle of Hochkirch?
On 14 October 1758, during the Seven Years' War, the Austrian army of Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun crept up on Frederick the Great's camp at Hochkirch in Saxony during the night and attacked at 5 a.m., before daylight and in thick fog. The Prussians were caught by surprise, lost about 100 guns and some 8,000 to 10,000 men, and Field Marshal James Keith was killed. Daun did not pursue, and Frederick's army escaped to fight on.1
In the autumn of 1758 Frederick the Great was back in Saxony after his bloody battle with the Russians at Zorndorf. In Silesia, Austrian troops under Harsch were blockading Neisse. In Saxony Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun, the Austrian commander, could not be provoked into a battle, Carlyle writes.2
A camp too close to the enemy
On 10 October, according to Carlyle, Frederick, on his way to relieve Neisse, pitched camp on the heights around the village of Hochkirch, east of Bautzen, within a mile of Daun's much larger army; his adjutant Marwitz refused to mark out such a camp and was put under arrest. Archenholz, writing in 1793, says the camp was untenable once the Austrians held the neighboring heights, but that Frederick, who knew Daun's excessive caution, chose to stay. He meant to march around Daun's flank toward Silesia, but had to wait for a supply convoy from Dresden. EBSCO dates the encampment to 13 October.3
Hochkirch stood on a hill with a large church and a churchyard. Field Marshal James Keith, a Scottish Jacobite exile in Prussian service, held the right wing there, with a great battery of guns to the southeast of the village. A detached corps under Retzow stood at Weissenberg.4
The night march
Archenholz attributes the plan to Loudon; Carlyle says Loudon and Lacy, and at last Daun himself, all thought the Prussian camp should be attacked. After nightfall on 13 October Daun led some 30,000 picked men silently through the woods, by roads secretly cut in advance, to stand round the flank of Hochkirch by about four in the morning, while other columns were to fall on the Prussian front and rear. To cover the noise of the march, Archenholz writes, crowds of workers felled trees all night, singing and calling to one another. Prussian hussars did report the movements, but Frederick doubted them and expected anything but a full attack.5
Five o'clock
At 5 a.m. the church bell struck and the Austrians attacked. It was still dark, and a thick fog lay over the camp; EBSCO describes the Austrians encircling the Prussians in the night and attacking at dawn. They overran the outposts, took the great battery, and Hochkirch caught fire. Around 6 or 6:30, Carlyle reckons, Keith retook the battery at the head of an infantry battalion, but overwhelming numbers drove him back, and he was shot through the heart as his men fell back. Prince Francis of Brunswick was killed by a cannonball, and Prince Moritz of Anhalt-Dessau was badly wounded and later captured.6
In the church and churchyard, Carlyle relates, the battalion Margraf Karl under Major Lange held out until its cartridges were almost spent, then cut its way out with the bayonet; Lange was mortally wounded. Archenholz puts the defenders of the village at 600 Prussians, of whom only a small part got through.7
The escape
Prussian cavalry under the general Hans Joachim von Zieten charged the Austrians around the burning village, and Frederick sent Möllendorf to seize the heights of Drehsa while Zieten held those of Kumschütz and Canitz, Carlyle writes; Archenholz credits General Saldern with covering the retreat with a few veteran battalions. When Retzow's corps came up from Weissenberg around ten, Frederick ordered a retreat to the northwest, toward Bautzen, and the army withdrew in good order without the Austrians interfering. Archenholz calls it a five-hour fight.8
The losses
The figures differ by source. EBSCO gives 10,000 Prussian casualties and 100 guns lost. Archenholz gives 9,000 Prussians, 101 guns and 30 colors lost against 8,000 Austrians. Carlyle counts more than 8,000 Prussians and 101 guns lost, and, by the Austrians' own account, 325 officers and 5,614 men of theirs killed and wounded, besides 1,000 taken prisoner. The size of the armies is disputed too: EBSCO gives 78,000 Austrians against 30,000 Prussians, Undiscovered Scotland, in its biography of Keith, 80,000 against 31,000, and Carlyle puts Daun's whole army at 90,000, with some 30,000 in the main attack.9
Keith and Peterhead
Keith was born at Inverugie Castle near Peterhead in 1696, went into exile after the Jacobite risings, served Spain and Russia, and in 1747 became a Prussian field marshal. He was buried in Berlin. His home town has a statue of him, a copy of the one in Berlin and a gift from King William I of Prussia: the plinth is dated 23 August 1868, and the University of Aberdeen records it as unveiled by the Earl of Kintore on 16 August 1869.10
Why Hochkirch did not decide the war
Daun did not follow up his victory. Archenholz writes that the Austrian army was in too much disorder to disturb the retreat, and that Daun had already shown at Kolin his maxim of building a golden bridge for a fleeing enemy. EBSCO concludes that Frederick kept Silesia and Saxony, and that the battle closed the campaign of 1758 and gave him time to rebuild. The day's other battles, Hastings in 1066 and Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, are on 14 October in history.11 › Battle of Domstadtl, 1758
