Battle of Mollwitz, 1741: Frederick the Great's first battle

Frederick the Great fought three wars over Silesia in 22 years, and his reputation rests on battles such as Rossbach and Leuthen. His first battle was very different. At Mollwitz he deployed slowly, saw his cavalry routed, and left the field believing the day lost. Only the next morning, near Löwen, far from the field, did he learn that his infantry had won it for him.²

A war over Silesia

Emperor Charles VI died on 20 October 1740, leaving the Habsburg lands to his daughter Maria Theresa. Two months later Frederick used the dispute over a female succession to demand Silesia, a rich province of the Habsburg crown, and on 16 December 1740 his regiments crossed into it. Breslau, the Silesian capital, submitted to him at the start of January 1741, and by March the Prussians held most of the province except fortresses such as Neisse.³

Maria Theresa, then 23 and new to power, refused to give up the province. In the HistoryNet account by Jon Guttman, she dismissed Frederick as "that evil man" and sent an army of about 20,000 under Field Marshal Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg to drive him out. Neipperg slipped past the dispersed Prussians to relieve Neisse, and when Frederick gathered his army and turned to meet him, he found the Austrians at Mollwitz, a village west of Brieg, placed across his line of supply and communication.⁴

A slow deployment in the snow

Snow lay deep on the ground: the Royal Collection describes the field as covered with two feet of it, and Carlyle writes of near two feet. Frederick, who had made his headquarters at the village of Pogarell, learned where the Austrians were, from captured soldiers according to Guttman and from a local peasant according to Carlyle, and on the morning of 10 April advanced in four columns, Carlyle writes, on the Austrians, who were not expecting him.⁵

Instead of attacking at once, the king spent about an hour and a half forming his roughly 22,000 men into two lines beyond the village of Pampitz. He misjudged the space available, so some units ended up behind a bend in the river on his right and took no part, and on the right wing, Carlyle writes, battalions of grenadiers were placed among the cavalry squadrons. The delay gave Neipperg, surprised at first, time to turn his army to face the Prussians. Guttman puts both sides ready by about 1 p.m.; Carlyle has the Prussian guns opening fire at two; the account on a French map of the period says the battle began at 2 p.m. and ended at 7 p.m.⁶

The cavalry breaks and the king leaves

The Austrians struck first. Lieutenant General Carl von Römer led six cavalry regiments, upward of 4,500 troopers according to Guttman, against the Prussian right. The Prussian horse, outnumbered more than two to one by Carlyle's count, was no match for them. Guttman describes it as strangely stationary when the charge came; Carlyle has Schulenburg's squadrons caught trotting sideways at the wrong moment. It was overthrown, and Frederick, riding among the fugitives, could not rally them.⁷

Field Marshal Kurt Christoph von Schwerin, the most experienced general present, told the king that the battle was lost and advised him to leave. Frederick rode off with a small escort. At the gate of Oppeln, which a party of Austrian hussars had seized, his group was fired on in the dark; Guttman writes that he was nearly caught and shot.⁸

The infantry holds

The Prussian foot did what the cavalry could not. It stood against the Austrian horse, and Römer was killed by a shot to the head. Guttman writes that both of Schwerin's infantry wing commanders were also dead, and when an officer asked which way to retreat, Schwerin is said to have answered that they would retreat over the bodies of the enemy. He restored order, beat off a second Austrian cavalry attack on his left and ordered a general advance.⁹

The drilled Prussian battalions moved forward in line and fired steadily. An Austrian officer, writing from Neisse the next week, said in Carlyle's translation that he had never in his life seen anything more beautiful: they marched "arrow-straight, and their front like a line". Neipperg's infantry gave way, the Austrians withdrew through Mollwitz and the Prussians held the field. Frederick, who had ridden as far as Oppeln, learned of his victory early the next morning near Löwen, where a Prussian adjutant had brought the news.¹⁰

The cost and the lessons

Figures differ. Carlyle, following earlier German historians, gives 4,613 Prussian and 4,410 Austrian killed, wounded and missing. The French map of the battle published by Georges-Louis Le Rouge from the memoirs of an officer in Austrian service, now in the Royal Collection, gives 3,000 Prussians and 4,000 Austrians killed or wounded.¹¹

The pursuit, Carlyle writes, lasted little more than two miles and was never hot. Frederick is said never quite to have forgiven Schwerin for sending him away, and, Guttman writes, he vowed never to leave his troops again. "Mollwitz was my school," he admitted later, according to Guttman, and his standing order became that the Prussian army always attacks. The same army would later win at Rossbach and Leuthen.¹² › Battle of Kesselsdorf, 1745