What happened at the Battle of Landeshut in 1760?
On 23 June 1760 an Austrian army of some 28,000 to 34,000 men under Ernst Gideon von Loudon stormed the chain of hilltop redoubts around the Silesian town of Landeshut, today Kamienna Góra in Poland, held by about 11,000 Prussians under General Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué. Attacking before dawn, the Austrians took the forts one after another and surrounded the defenders. Fouqué, wounded three times, was captured, and only about 1,500 of his men escaped.1
At a quarter to two in the morning of 23 June 1760, four howitzer shells burst over the wooded hills south of Landeshut. It was the signal for one of the most complete defeats the Prussian army suffered in the Seven Years' War. By the middle of the morning a whole Prussian corps, the force that guarded Silesia, had ceased to exist, and its general lay wounded in Austrian hands.2
Background: Silesia in danger
By 1760, the fifth year of the Seven Years' War, Frederick the Great was fighting Austria and Russia with forces spread thin on every front. The allies chose Silesia as the main theater of the year's campaign. Frederick himself watched the Austrian field marshal Daun in Saxony, his brother Prince Henry faced the Russians, and the Silesian border was left to General Heinrich August de la Motte Fouqué with about 13,000 men.3
Against him stood the Austrian general Ernst Gideon von Loudon. At the end of May Loudon broke into Silesia well to the east of Fouqué. Fearing for Schweidnitz and even Breslau, Fouqué hurried down into the plain to meet him, and the Austrians used his absence to occupy Landeshut. Loudon's real target soon became clear: the fortress of Glatz.4
Frederick would not accept the loss. On 11 June he ordered Fouqué to retake Landeshut, and Fouqué obeyed: by 17 June he had driven the Austrians out and was back in the fortified camp on the hills around the town. Thomas Carlyle, Frederick's Victorian biographer, believed Fouqué would have done better left to his own methods, and called the order unwise.5 › Battle of Maxen, 1759
Armies and commanders
Loudon was one of the most successful Habsburg commanders of the war, in Britannica's judgment, and he had brought a large army for the task. Carlyle, following the Austrian court report, gives him 31,000 men; Kronoskaf, the Seven Years' War research project, about 27,000 foot and 7,000 horse, some 34,000 in all; National Geographic Polska about 28,000. His columns were led by generals such as Müffling, Campitelli, Ellrichshausen and Wolfersdorff.6
Fouqué had far fewer men than the position needed. By the time of the battle detachments had reduced his corps to 10,680 men, the figure both Carlyle and Kronoskaf give; Kronoskaf counts about 11,500 for the whole front, and National Geographic Polska about 12,000.7
The camp itself was strong but far too large. The hills around Landeshut had been fortified by the Prussians, and Kronoskaf describes a line of some six kilometers, with redoubts and entrenchments on the Buchberg, the Mummelberg and the Thiemenberg north of the town and on the Kirchberg and the Galgenberg south of it. In Carlyle's words, the hill works would have needed three times the number of men Fouqué had.8
The battle in phases
The signal, 1.45 a.m. At about a quarter to two Loudon gave the signal, four howitzer shells fired into the gray summer sky, and his columns burst upon the Prussian positions from the front, on both flanks and in the end from the rear. They outnumbered the defenders about three to one.9
The northern hills. The Prussian left went first. The defenders of the Mummelberg, spread thin along a long front, were surrounded; Ellrichshausen's column stormed the Buchberg; and as one redoubt after another fell, the survivors fell back through the town. Before dawn the Austrians were in Landeshut itself.10
The southern hills. On the Prussian right the fight lasted longer. Wolfersdorff's column attacked the heights by Blasdorf and met stubborn resistance, and the Prussians defended their hills with what Carlyle calls an energy and steady skill that Loudon himself admired. But hour by hour they lost one hill and then another, and Fouqué gathered what was left of his corps on the Kirchberg and the Galgenberg.11
The cavalry breaks out. As Austrian troops moved round to block his retreat, Fouqué sent his cavalry across the Bober to secure the passages. Part of it cut its way out through the Austrian horsemen, losing heavily, and got away. Carlyle puts Fouqué's cavalry at about 1,500, of whom some 500 were lost in the break-out; Kronoskaf has Major von Owstien rallying about 900 horsemen beyond the river.12
Turning point: the last square
With the Austrians closing in from every side, Fouqué formed the remains of his infantry into a square and tried to fight his way out. The Prussians crossed the Bober, only to find Austrian cavalry waiting among the knolls near Leppersdorf and holding every passage. They beat off the first charges, but when most of them had run out of ammunition and Austrian infantry and guns came up, the cavalry broke into the square.13
The sources disagree on which regiment it was. Kronoskaf credits Colonel Baron Voit and the Jung-Löwenstein chevaulegers; Carlyle, following the eighteenth-century accounts, names the Lichnowsky dragoons. They agree on what happened next. A bullet killed Fouqué's horse and brought him down, wounded three times, and his servant Trautschke defended him in the melee until an Austrian colonel stepped in and took his surrender.14
Many of the Prussian infantry were cut down without quarter by the furious cavalry. Carlyle puts the end of the fighting at about eight o'clock, Kronoskaf the final break-out attempt at around nine. Only about 1,500 men, most of them horsemen, escaped.15
Aftermath
Kronoskaf puts the Prussian losses at 27 officers and 1,900 men killed and 8,315 taken prisoner, among them three generals, with 67 guns and 34 colors lost. Carlyle sums it up more simply: Frederick had lost some 10,000 of his best soldiers and a general he could ill spare. Kronoskaf gives the Austrian losses as about 2,900, of whom 19 officers and 755 men were killed. Austria's national encyclopedia remembers the day as the battle in which Loudon beat a Prussian army and took its general prisoner.16
Both Carlyle and Kronoskaf use the same image for the result: the gate of Silesia now stood open. Loudon pressed on to Glatz, which fell on 26 July. Frederick could not let Silesia go, and the rest of the summer turned on the province.17
It was a hard summer for the king. His attempt on Dresden in July failed, and he marched for Silesia with the armies of Daun and Lacy shadowing him all the way. On 15 August, near Liegnitz, Loudon attacked the Prussian columns in the hope of stopping their escape from encirclement, and was thrown back with heavy losses. Carlyle, who devotes a chapter to the battle, counts Liegnitz, with Torgau in November, among the victories that made 1760 a better year for Frederick than he had feared.18
Legacy and memory
For Loudon, Landeshut was one of the victories that made his name. He went on to be crushed by Frederick at Liegnitz that summer but took the fortress of Schweidnitz by surprise in 1761, in Britannica's words the last Austrian success of the war.19
For Fouqué and for Prussia, the battle became a lesson in the cost of obedience. Carlyle's verdict is that Fouqué obeyed his king not wisely but too well: left to himself, with the fortresses and garrisons around him, he could probably have held Silesia until help came, and instead he lost the king a whole corps in a single morning. Kronoskaf's account ends with the corps destroyed and Silesia laid open.20 › Battle of Hochkirch, 1758
The town of Landeshut, also spelled Landshut, is now Kamienna Góra in Lower Silesia, Poland, and the Polish press still recalls the great battle fought near it on 23 June 1760.21
