Battle of Kesselsdorf, 1745: the Old Dessauer's last victory

Frederick the Great won most of his early battles himself. The one that ended his second war over Silesia was won by someone else: Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, the veteran field marshal known as the Old Dessauer, then nearly seventy. Days before the battle the king had been sending him reproaches for his slowness. On the evening of 15 December 1745 an officer rode in to tell Frederick that the old man had stormed Kesselsdorf and routed the Saxon army.²

Who won the Battle of Kesselsdorf and why?

Prussia won. The Old Dessauer's army stormed the fortified village of Kesselsdorf on the Saxon left and drove Count Rutowski's Saxons and their Austrian allies back to Dresden. A Saxon mistake decided it: after beating off two attacks, the defenders left their entrenchments to chase the Prussians, masking their own guns, and Prussian cavalry cut them down.³

Background: a war that would not end

Frederick had seized Silesia from Austria in his first war and kept it by the Treaty of Breslau in 1742. When the fighting resumed in 1744 he won the battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor in 1745, and expected a quiet winter. Instead he learned that Austria and Saxony planned a winter invasion of Brandenburg itself, the heart of his kingdom.⁴ › Battle of Mollwitz, 1741

Frederick struck first. He took the field against the main Austrian army under Prince Charles of Lorraine, won the action at Katholisch Hennersdorf in Lusatia and drove it back toward Bohemia, and gave Leopold the campaign against Saxony and its capital, Dresden.⁵

Leopold gathered his corps at Halle. On 27 November he received orders to march into Saxony, and on 29 November he drove the Saxons from an entrenched camp near Leipzig and took the city. He then took Torgau and moved on Meissen, whose bridge over the Elbe would let him join hands with the king. Frederick wanted him faster, and Leopold had to read many angry letters; the old man insisted on bread and order before speed.⁶

The king had reasons for his impatience. Prince Charles was marching back toward Dresden with the main Austrian army, and if he joined the Saxons first the war could drag on into another year, with Russia threatening to intervene for Saxony. Reddaway quotes one of the royal letters: "You go as slowly as though you were determined to deprive me of my advantage."⁷

Meissen fell in mid-December. General Lehwaldt, whom Frederick had sent ahead from Lusatia, had been waiting across the Elbe because he could not take the town without Leopold; once the old man arrived, the bridge was in Prussian hands and the two forces joined, by 14 December. Frederick himself was at Meissen with the rest of his army, a short march from Dresden, while Leopold pushed on toward the Saxon capital.⁸

Armies and commanders

Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau had fought under Prince Eugene in the War of the Spanish Succession, at Blenheim (Höchstädt) in 1704 and at the storming of the lines of Turin in 1706, and in 1715 he had led the army that took Stralsund and Rügen from Charles XII of Sweden. For decades he drilled the Prussian infantry into the most disciplined in Europe; he is credited with the iron ramrod and the equal marching step. At Kesselsdorf his son Prince Moritz commanded the left.⁹

Facing him was the Saxon army of Field Marshal Count Rutowski, with an Austrian corps under General Grünne further toward the Elbe. Prince Charles's main Austrian army had reached Dresden by then, but it stayed there and took no part.¹⁰

Frederick later blamed the Saxon government for that. In his history of the war he writes that the Austrians were quartered so widely around Dresden that they would have needed twenty-four hours to assemble; Carlyle, too, has them spread over villages too far apart. Frederick also saw in Rutowski's position a copy of the French one at Fontenoy earlier that year, built around the power of artillery.¹¹

The numbers differ by source. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie gives Leopold 34,000 men after he joined hands with the king's troops on 14 December, and Carlyle 32,000. Against them the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Carlyle and Reddaway put about 35,000 Saxons and Austrians in a very strong position.¹²

The battle in phases

The approach. On the morning of 15 December the Prussians marched in four columns by way of Wilsdruff over frozen ground flecked with snow. Rutowski stood behind the Zschoner brook, a deep little valley with a marshy bottom that grows steeper and rockier toward the Elbe and flattens out toward Kesselsdorf. His right, with Grünne's Austrians, rested on the cliffs near the river, which no one could attack; his left rested on the village of Kesselsdorf, which he had fortified and packed with grenadiers and guns. Frederick counts a battery of twenty-four heavy guns there, Carlyle more than thirty in three batteries.¹³

Two o'clock. Leopold was not deployed until about 2 p.m., and with the short winter day he attacked at once. He saw that Kesselsdorf was the key to the position and aimed his right wing at it. Before the attack the old man prayed, as was his habit, and his blunt prayer became one of the best-known stories of the old Prussian army. The words are reported in different forms; in all of them he asks God to help him, or at least not to help the scoundrels on the other side.¹⁴

The first assaults. The first attack, led by grenadier battalions and Leopold's own regiment, struck the village from the front while more troops worked around its flank. It failed. Fire from the guns in the village, loaded with canister in Frederick's account, cut the Prussians down in rows, and the battalions fell back in confusion. A second attack was also thrown back.¹⁵

Turning point: the sally from the village

Then the defenders made the mistake that lost the battle. Seeing the Prussians retreat, they left their works to chase them and so masked their own guns. Frederick names a Saxon regiment as the culprit; Carlyle says an Austrian grenadier battalion ran out first, shouting victory, and the Saxons followed. Either way, they ran into Prussian dragoons waiting in the open. Leopold sent in his horse at once and followed with the infantry of his right; they broke into Kesselsdorf from all sides and took its guns.¹⁶

On the other wing, Prince Moritz pushed his infantry across the marshy stream against the Saxon center and right. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Carlyle and Frederick say his men overcame every obstacle and drove the Saxons back after a hard fight. Frederick and Carlyle describe them clambering up slippery, snow-covered slopes and losing their formation on the way, and both note that the Saxon cavalry, which could have caught them scattered on the climb, fought only feebly.¹⁷

By nightfall the whole Saxon army was in retreat toward Dresden. Grünne's Austrians on the right hardly fired a shot, and Prince Charles, a few miles away, heard the cannon but did not come. Leopold sent the cavalry of his left wing, which the ravine had kept out of the fight, after the fugitives.¹⁸

Frederick himself was not on the field. At Meissen that afternoon he heard heavy cannon fire from the direction of Dresden and saw the sky glowing. That evening an officer from Leopold's army brought him the news of the victory.¹⁹

Looking back, the king found mistakes on both sides. Rutowski, he wrote, had thought only of his left and left his right in the air, and the Saxon infantry along the ravine stood well back from the crest instead of defending the climb. Leopold, for his part, might have turned the village more cheaply had he had time to reconnoiter. But the greatest Saxon fault, in Frederick's judgment, was leaving the village and silencing their own guns.²⁰

Counting the losses

The losses differ by source. For the Prussians, Reddaway gives some 4,600 and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie over 5,000; Frederick counts 41 officers and 1,621 men killed and about twice as many wounded. For the Saxons and Austrians, Carlyle and Reddaway 3,000 killed and wounded and about 6,000 prisoners; the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 10,000 killed, wounded and captured; and Frederick 3,000 dead on the field and 215 officers and 6,500 men taken. Frederick and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie agree on 48 guns captured.²¹

Leopold's coat had three bullet holes in it, but he was unhurt. He had not spared himself. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie repeats the talk that the king's reproaches had stung him so badly he went looking for death in the battle, and Reddaway writes that the royal insults goaded the old man into attempting the impossible and exposing himself recklessly.²²

Aftermath: the Peace of Dresden

Rutowski's army reached Dresden in flight and kept going. The Saxons and the Austrians fell back south toward the mountains and Bohemia, and Dresden, which could not be defended, opened its gates; the Prussians entered the city on 18 December.²³

Frederick met the old man the day after the battle, dismounted, embraced him and heaped praise on him, and Leopold showed him over the battlefield. The reproaches stopped. Dresden itself became the scene of the peace talks.²⁴

In the captured capital the king took care to look generous. He paid his respects to the Saxon queen and the young princes left behind in Dresden, set guards of honor on the royal palaces and, by Reddaway's account, behaved with great moderation, although he also laid a heavy contribution on the country.²⁵

The treaty signed at Dresden on 25 December 1745, ten days after the battle, left Silesia to Prussia: Austria renewed the peace it had made in 1742. Saxony agreed to pay one million in contributions, and Frederick promised to take his troops home.²⁶

Frederick asked for no more than he had held before the war, and he had good reasons to settle quickly. His treasury was nearly empty, Prince Charles's army was still intact, and Russia was threatening to intervene. In his own history Frederick reckons that the war had cost Prussia eight million crowns and left only fifteen thousand in reserve when the peace was signed.²⁷ › 15 December in military history

Legacy and memory

Kesselsdorf was the end of Leopold's career in the field and its crowning victory. A stroke struck him on 7 April 1747; Carlyle treats that as the day he died, while the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie says he died two days later.²⁸

His real monument was the army he had trained. The Neue Deutsche Biographie calls him the creator of the Prussian infantry that served Frederick so well, and Carlyle wrote that the drill sergeants of every army still repeated what came out of his rough head. Reddaway notes that by the next war even the Austrians had adopted his iron ramrod.²⁹

For Saxony, Carlyle wrote, it was the last battle its army fought as a nation of its own.³⁰ › Battle of Lobositz, 1756