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Battle of Maxen, 1759: the Prussian corps that surrendered

Seven Years' War · 20 and 21 November 1759 · Austria and the Holy Roman Empire vs Prussia · ~9 min read · Updated October 2026

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Nineteenth-century plan of the hill country south of Dresden: villages, wooded valleys and streams, with blue Prussian, yellow Austrian and red Imperial troop lines around Maxen and a title panel on the left.

Plan des Gefechts bei Maxen den 20. Novemb. 1759, battle plan, 1847 (detail). Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, Leipzig, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0

At a glance

Habsburg Monarchy and the ReichsarmeeField Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun
vs
Kingdom of PrussiaLt. Gen. Friedrich August von Finck, with General Wunsch
Dates
20 November 1759 (battle) and 21 November (surrender)
Location
Maxen, in the hills south of Dresden, Saxony, Germany
War
Seven Years' War (Third Silesian War)
Strength
Prussians 14,000 (HistoryOfWar.org) or about 12,000 (Carlyle, the 1911 Britannica); Austrians and Reichsarmee about 42,000 in three columns (Carlyle, the 1911 Britannica)
Losses
Finck's whole corps captured with nine generals; the Austrians claimed 15,000 prisoners, Carlyle judged the Prussian loss at about 12,000; Austrian losses 934 killed and wounded (Kronoskaf)
Outcome
Decisive Austrian victory; Daun kept Dresden through the winter
Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Maxen?

In November 1759 Frederick the Great sent General Finck's corps around the Austrian army to Maxen, south of Dresden, to cut its communications with Bohemia. Instead of retreating, Field Marshal Daun surrounded Finck with three converging forces, stormed Maxen on 20 November, and on 21 November Finck surrendered with his whole corps and eight other generals.1

Prussian armies of the Seven Years' War were beaten many times, but they rarely gave up. At Maxen, on 21 November 1759, a whole Prussian corps laid down its arms. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org calls it a crushing victory for the Austrians. Thomas Carlyle, Frederick's Victorian biographer, saw in it the consequence of an order the king gave with his blood up.2

Background: the worst year of the war

For Prussia, 1759 was a year of disasters. On 12 August Frederick attacked the Russian and Austrian armies entrenched at Kunersdorf, east of Frankfurt on the Oder, and was completely beaten. The 1911 Britannica writes that, but for Prince Ferdinand's victory over the French at Minden, the year would have been one long catalogue of Prussian defeats. Finck had brought reinforcements to the king just before Kunersdorf, and after the battle, Kronoskaf notes, he was given the thankless task of rebuilding the broken army.3

Saxony was slipping away at the same time. From July the Austrians and the army of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reichsarmee, overran the electorate and took Dresden. Prince Henry of Prussia won most of the Saxon towns back in the autumn, but not the capital. On 21 September Finck himself beat an Austrian force at Korbitz, west of Meissen, and was given the Order of the Black Eagle for it.4

By early November Daun was slowly falling back toward Bohemia, with Henry pressing him from behind. Frederick arrived in his brother's camp on 13 November in high spirits and ordered a sharper pursuit; Henry, Carlyle writes, urged him to leave well alone, since Daun seemed ready to go home of his own accord and leave Dresden an easy prey.5 › Battle of Freiberg, 1762

Dark locator map with a gold star in a glowing circle marking the approximate site of the Battle of Maxen, the coasts, rivers and lakes of the region, and a small world map inset with the area boxed
Battle of Maxen: the star marks the approximate site, south of Dresden on the Elbe, and the inset shows the area on a world map. Drawn for this article from Natural Earth data, with no modern borders. Location map: © Echoes of Battle (data: Natural Earth, public domain)

The order at Krogis

On 14 November, at the village of Krogis, Frederick gave the order: General Finck was to march at once around the Austrians' western flank, by Freiberg and Dippoldiswalde, and plant himself at Maxen, south of Dresden among the rocky hills, astride Daun's communications with Bohemia. Frederick expected Daun to retreat once his supply lines were threatened. When Finck rode back that afternoon to raise objections, the king told him he could not bear difficulties and should get it done.6

The 1911 Britannica, no friend of the decision, says that Frederick's contempt for his adversary proved his undoing, and that the detachment ran contrary to all his own teaching. Carlyle is more forgiving: a king who had just risen from the wreck of Kunersdorf, he suggests, was thinking of the miracles of 1757 and hoping to repeat them.7 › Battle of Leuthen, 1757

Armies and commanders

Friedrich August von Finck was a soldier of fortune in the eighteenth-century manner. Born in Strelitz in Mecklenburg in 1718, he served first the Habsburgs and then Russia before entering the Prussian army in the 1740s. He commanded a grenadier battalion, rose to major general in 1757 and lieutenant general in February 1759, and enjoyed the trust of both the king and Prince Henry. His biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie writes that, but for Maxen, he might have earned a statue in Berlin beside the heroes of the early war.8

His opponent was a careful, methodical commander. Leopold Joseph von Daun had beaten Frederick for the first time in the king's career at Kolín in June 1757, and had surprised him at Hochkirch in October 1758. Maria Theresa founded a military order in honor of Kolín and made Daun its first grand cross. His caution earned him a nickname: an admiring biography published in his lifetime called him the German Fabius Cunctator, after the Roman general who wore Hannibal down by delay.9 › Battle of Hochkirch, 1758

Painted half-length portrait of a smiling man in a powdered wig, a white coat richly embroidered in gold and a red and white sash, his hand resting on a baton
Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun, the victor of Kolín, Hochkirch and Maxen, in an eighteenth-century portrait attributed to Martin van Meytens or his workshop. Public domain. Attributed to Martin van Meytens (circle or workshop), oil on canvas, 18th century, via Wikimedia Commons.

Finck marched on 15 November, drove Imperial troops out of Freiberg, and by 17 November had his whole corps at Maxen. HistoryOfWar.org puts it at 14,000 men; Carlyle and the 1911 Britannica at about 12,000. The country was a tangle of gullies, dells and winding brooks, and the November weather brought snow, sleet and frost. His horses, like the Austrians', were not shod for ice, and on that ground his strong cavalry would prove of little use.10

Daun did not retreat. He fell back to the Plauen gorge outside Dresden and decided to attack Finck instead. Carlyle and the 1911 Britannica both count about 42,000 men in three converging forces: Daun himself with 27,000 from the west, light troops under Sincere and the corps of Brentano from the north, and the Reichsarmee from the south and east. Frederick had ordered Finck to call in the four battalions he had left at Dippoldiswalde, and Finck, obeying too literally in Carlyle's view, drew in his outposts. His messages to the king were intercepted by Austrian light troops.11

The battle in phases

19 November: the ring closes. Hidden at first by a heavy fog, Daun marched his main body to the heights by Dippoldiswalde, some seven miles from Maxen, and camped there, while the Reichsarmee moved up toward Dohna on the Elbe side. A Prussian bread convoy still got through to Finck that day under distant cannon fire. Finck, watching from a hilltop, worked out where the three attacks would come from: from Dippoldiswalde in the southwest, from Tronitz in the north and from Dohna in the east. He placed General Wunsch at Dohna and himself at Maxen. Daun rode back to Dresden for the night to make sure Frederick was not stirring.12

The pass at Reinhardtsgrimma. Daun's attack began early on 20 November. His columns had to climb from Dippoldiswalde through a narrow pass at Reinhardtsgrimma, on roads glazed with sleet, where horses slid and artillery stuck; Carlyle believes that a few Prussian guns there could have stopped them, but Finck had none in it. Both Carlyle and Kronoskaf tell how an Austrian engineer major assured Daun that the defile was difficult but passable. The Prussian outposts at Hausdorf fell back to the main position.13

The cannonade and the storm of Maxen. The sources give different times. Carlyle has Daun's troops on the heights by about 11 a.m. and some thirty heavy guns opening on Maxen; Kronoskaf, following the German General Staff history, has the cannonade begin at 2 p.m. and the Austrian infantry go in at about half past three. Both describe the grenadiers advancing under cover of the ground, a hard fight at close range, and the Prussian line breaking. Howitzer shells set the thatched village alight, and Carlyle writes that by evening Maxen was on fire in every part.14

The cavalry on the ice. Finck fell back toward Schmorsdorf and sent his cavalry against Brentano's column to the north, hoping to clear a way out. But Brentano's guns raked the squadrons, they swerved off course, and on the frozen ground the horsemen achieved nothing. Brentano then pressed on and drove Finck out of Schmorsdorf village onto the hill behind it as night fell. Only General Wunsch, at Dohna, had held off the Reichsarmee all day.15

Turning point: the night at Falkenhain

That night the remnants of the corps gathered on the heights of Falkenhain and Ploschwitz, between Maxen and Dohna. Finck at first meant to cut his way out, but his scouts reported every crossing of the Müglitz blocked by Imperial light troops. The infantry were nearly out of cartridges, and so many men had been killed, wounded, captured or had deserted that a count found only 2,836 rank and file. Finck agreed that Wunsch should try to slip away with the cavalry in the dark, but the exhausted, unshod horses could barely be led through the passes.16

At daylight on 21 November, with Daun's guns opening again, Finck asked for terms. Daun demanded unconditional surrender, with the officers keeping their private baggage, and insisted that Wunsch and the cavalry come back and surrender too. Finck argued that Wunsch commanded a separate force; it did him no good, and Wunsch, who had not got clear of the Austrian lines, was ordered back. Finck and eight other generals went into captivity.17

A whole Prussian corps, with nine generals, laid down its arms in the snow south of Dresden.

Aftermath

The prisoners were marched to the Great Garden in Dresden. How many there were is disputed. The Austrians claimed 15,000; Carlyle doubted it and judged that Frederick lost about 12,000 men in all to death, wounds, capture and desertion. Kronoskaf, drawing on the Austrian returns, lists nine generals, more than 500 other officers and 14,922 non-commissioned officers and men taken, with 96 colors, 24 standards and 71 guns, against Austrian losses of 304 killed and 630 wounded.18

Painted portrait of an elderly king with gray hair, a dark blue coat with a red collar and the star of an order on his breast, in a painted oval
Frederick the Great, who gave the order for Maxen, painted by Anton Graff in old age, between 1781 and 1786. Public domain. Anton Graff, oil on canvas, between 1781 and 1786, via Wikimedia Commons (Google Arts & Culture).

Militarily, the blow was less than it might have been. HistoryOfWar.org notes that Daun failed to follow up his success, and the 1911 Britannica that the two armies simply stood facing each other far into the winter. Daun kept Dresden and the country around it, but he never drove Frederick out of Saxony.19

For Finck there was no forgiveness. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, at Innsbruck according to Kronoskaf. When he came home in 1763, the king had him tried by a court-martial under General Zieten. The sentences are reported differently: Carlyle and the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie speak of one year in a fortress, Spandau in Carlyle's account, along with his dismissal from the army; Kronoskaf has Finck, Rebentisch and Gersdorff sentenced to two years. Finck then entered the Danish service as a general of infantry, and he died in Copenhagen in February 1766, only 47.20

Legacy and memory

To contemporaries the surrender looked like the reverse of Pirna, where in 1756 Frederick had forced the whole Saxon army to lay down its arms. Carlyle quotes the gazettes of Europe making exactly that comparison, and the 1911 Britannica tells how the Saxons, starved out of their camp, were taken bodily into the Prussian service.21 › Battle of Lobositz, 1756

Maxen was the high point of Daun's later career. Carlyle calls it his last gleam upwards; the 1911 Britannica records that his next great battle, Torgau in 1760, ended in defeat and left him so badly wounded that he had to return to Vienna to recover, and it judges him, for all his wariness, a general who could not profit by a victory. He died in February 1766, a few weeks before Finck.22 › Battle of Kolín, 1757

Finck's own reputation never recovered in Prussia, though later writers were kinder than the king. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie calls his fate undeservedly harsh, and even Carlyle, an admirer of Frederick, concedes that the opposition at court grumbled that the sentence was far too severe. Kronoskaf, for its part, ends its account with a corps that resisted stubbornly before it gave up.23

Oval painted portrait of an older man with a powdered wig, a fur-collared coat and a star of an order on his breast
Prince Henry of Prussia, who had urged his brother to leave Daun alone in November 1759, in a portrait attributed to Anton Graff, painted between about 1777 and 1789. Public domain. Attributed to Anton Graff, oil on canvas, Royal Collection, RCIN 404054, via Wikimedia Commons.

The battle was mapped almost at once. The plan at the top of this page, drawn in 1847 and now in the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography in Leipzig, shows the hills, villages and brooks that decided the fight; Kronoskaf reproduces the eighteenth-century plans of the Saxon engineer Tielke and the map of the German General Staff history, which trace the same three lines of attack that Carlyle describes.24

Frequently asked questions

When was the Battle of Maxen?

Daun attacked on 20 November 1759 and General Finck surrendered on the morning of 21 November, at Maxen south of Dresden, during the Seven Years' War.

Why was Finck at Maxen?

Frederick the Great sent his corps behind the Austrian army to threaten its communications with Bohemia, expecting Daun to retreat. Daun attacked Finck instead.

How many Prussians were captured at Maxen?

The Austrians claimed 15,000 prisoners, and Kronoskaf lists 14,922 men and more than 500 officers. Thomas Carlyle doubted such figures and put Frederick's total loss at about 12,000 men; HistoryOfWar.org gives Finck 14,000 men.

Who won the Battle of Maxen?

The Austrians under Field Marshal Daun, with the Reichsarmee. It was one of the rare times a whole Prussian corps surrendered.

Why did the Prussian cavalry fail at Maxen?

The ground was frozen and icy, and the horses were not shod for it. Carlyle and Kronoskaf both describe the squadrons sliding on the slopes and achieving nothing against Brentano's column.

What happened to General Finck?

He surrendered with eight other generals and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. In 1763 a court-martial dismissed him and sentenced him to fortress arrest; he joined the Danish army and died in Copenhagen in 1766.

What happened to Daun after Maxen?

He held Dresden through the winter but did not follow up his victory. In 1760 he was defeated and badly wounded at Torgau, and he died in 1766.

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

  1. John Rickard, “Battle of Maxen, 20 November 1759”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  2. John Rickard, “Battle of Maxen, 20 November 1759”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”. ↩
  3. Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  4. Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”; Ernst Graf zur Lippe-Weißenfeld, “Finck, Friedrich August von”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”. ↩
  5. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  6. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; John Rickard, “Battle of Maxen, 20 November 1759”. ↩
  7. Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”. ↩
  8. Ernst Graf zur Lippe-Weißenfeld, “Finck, Friedrich August von”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  9. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Daun, Leopold Josef, Count von”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  10. John Rickard, “Battle of Maxen, 20 November 1759”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  11. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  12. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  13. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  14. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  15. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  16. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  17. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  18. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  19. John Rickard, “Battle of Maxen, 20 November 1759”; Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”. ↩
  20. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Ernst Graf zur Lippe-Weißenfeld, “Finck, Friedrich August von”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  21. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Frederic N. Maude, “Seven Years’ War”. ↩
  22. Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Daun, Leopold Josef, Count von”. ↩
  23. Ernst Graf zur Lippe-Weißenfeld, “Finck, Friedrich August von”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”; Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”. ↩
  24. Kronoskaf, “1759-11-20 - Battle of Maxen”; Thomas Carlyle, “History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 19”. ↩

Sources

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