On 29 June 1866, in the Austro-Prussian War, two divisions of the Prussian First Army defeated the Austrian I Corps of Count Clam-Gallas and the Saxon army corps at Gitschin (Jičín) in Bohemia. Ordered to avoid battle with superior forces, the allies withdrew, and the next day Benedek ordered his army to retreat toward Königgrätz.
Battle of Gitschin
29 June 1866 · 160 years ago
A crossroads in Bohemia
In late June 1866 two Prussian armies were entering Bohemia by separate routes, the First Army of Prince Frederick Charles and the Second Army of the Crown Prince, which came from Silesia, and they had to unite there. Facing the First Army stood the Austrian I Corps under General of Cavalry Count Eduard Clam-Gallas and the Saxon army corps, the whole allied force under the command of Crown Prince Albert of Saxony. Driven from the line of the Iser, Clam-Gallas fell back toward Gitschin to join the Austrian main army.1
According to the Austrian official history, Clam-Gallas and the Saxon crown prince, who knew nothing of the results of the fighting elsewhere, still believed on the evening of 28 June that the main army would arrive near Jičín on the 29th and 30th, and they meant to hold the town as the pivot of its deployment.2
The Prussians were in a hurry too. According to their official history, a telegram from Berlin said that the King expected a speedy advance of the First Army to relieve the Second, which was "still momentarily in a precarious situation". Frederick Charles's orders, signed at Münchengrätz at 1 a.m. on 29 June, included the sentence: "Gitschin must be occupied to-day without fail".3
Two fights behind one ridge
Lieutenant-General von Tümpling's 5th Division left Rovensko at about half past one in the afternoon according to both official histories, at two according to Hozier, and General von Werder's 3rd Division, which had the longer march, left Zehrow at noon. The wooded heights of Privysin separated the roads from Turnau and Sobotka, so that, in the words of the Prussian official history, "two perfectly isolated actions were fought, in which no mutual assistance was possible; indeed, each of the two Prussian Divisions thought itself to be the only one engaged on this day".4
Tümpling's division came into contact with the enemy shortly after 3 p.m.; the Austrian account has its leading troops appearing at about a quarter to four. Austrian batteries on the heights around Brada and west of Diletz commanded the approaches, and Tümpling decided to attack the Austrian right wing. His order on the spot began: "The church steeple of Gitschin will be taken as general point de vue and ultimate rendezvous of all the troops".5
Prussian infantry of the 8th and 48th Regiments went for the village of Diletz (Dilec). Saxon battalions drove the first Prussian skirmishers out of it and occupied it, but the Prussians took the village back; the Prussian history has it in their hands at half past seven, after a long and fierce hand-to-hand fight inside the village.6
On the Sobotka road Werder's division came under fire near Lochow from the Austrian brigade of General Ringelsheim, at five according to the Austrian account and at half past five according to the Prussian one. H. M. Hozier, whose book grew out of his letters to The Times, describes Austrian marksmen firing from behind the fir trees, each with two soldiers behind him to load, to make up for the inferiority of their rifle to the Prussian needle gun.7
An order at half past seven
At half past seven in the evening Major Count Sternberg arrived from Benedek's headquarters with fresh orders. The Prussian official history gives his instructions as "to avoid any encounter with superior forces of the enemy, and to effect a junction with the main army by Horsitz and Miletin". First the Saxons and then the Austrian brigades began to pull back. Oscar Criste, writing Clam-Gallas's life for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie in 1903, held that the battle would not have been fought at all had Clam-Gallas not received the order to avoid any fight with superior forces too late.8
Tümpling then led two tired battalions of the 12th Grenadiers against the last Austrian position at Brada and was wounded. In Bernhard von Poten's account in the same dictionary, he had dismounted to lead two companies of the 12th Grenadiers forward when a bullet hit him in the thigh, and he had to be carried back to Görlitz. General Kamiensky took over the division.9
Midnight in the market square
Werder's advance guard reached the western edge of Gitschin late in the evening and found it unoccupied, but a Saxon battalion arriving at the same moment drove it out of the market square. According to the Austrian official history, Clam-Gallas's headquarters was writing out the orders for the next morning's retreat when officers brought the news, at first thought quite unbelievable, that Prussians were in the town; only when Clam-Gallas was warned that staying longer meant capture did his staff leave.10
The Saxons held the town until after midnight and then marched off, and the Prussians occupied it. Both official histories agree that the night entry upset the sending of orders, so that many Austrian units received them late or not at all.11
The Prussians were exhausted as well. "How great the exertions of this day were is shown by the fact that two Prussian officers fell dead from sheer exhaustion during the action," their official history records.12
The cost
The Prussian official history puts Prussian losses at 71 officers and 1,482 men; the Austrian official history gives 71 officers and 1,485 men. The Austrian history lists the losses of the I Corps and its attached light cavalry division as 184 officers and 4,714 men killed, wounded, missing or captured, and Saxon losses as 26 officers and 566 men.13
The Prussian history gives the Saxon losses as 27 officers and 566 men, counts 60 officers and 3,296 men taken prisoner by the two Prussian divisions, and estimates the total losses of the Austrians and Saxons at about 7,000. Hozier, writing the next year, put the prisoners alone at about 7,000 and the Austrian killed and wounded at about 3,000.14
The sources also differ on strength. The Prussian history reckons the Austrian brigades, the cavalry division and the Saxons at 66,000 men at full strength, of whom probably about 42,000 were actually engaged, against two Prussian divisions of 26,000 at full strength. Hozier, describing Tümpling's fight, gives the Prussians 16,000 men in the field against an allied first line estimated at 30,000.15
Retreat toward Königgrätz
Early on 30 June Archduke Ernst, commanding the Austrian III Corps at Miletin, telegraphed to army headquarters, according to the Austrian official history: "Units of the 1st Corps already arriving; the corps unfit for battle; ammunition park empty; corps without rations" (our translation). That afternoon Benedek, at his headquarters in Dubenec, ordered the army to march off the next day, and at half past five he telegraphed the Emperor's adjutant general: "The débâcle of the I and Saxon army corps forces me to begin the retreat in the direction of Königgrätz. Headquarters near there tomorrow" (our translation).16
Hozier also ties the retreat to Gitschin: the loss of the town exposed the left flank of Benedek's intended position, and no course remained open to him except to retire. Four days after Gitschin, on 3 July, the armies met at Königgrätz; that battle is told on our page for 3 July.17
For Criste, Clam-Gallas's defeat was decisive for the further course of the campaign. According to Criste, Clam-Gallas asked to be tried by a court-martial, which acquitted him, and the Emperor wrote that its verdict had kept unblemished the name of a brave general. He left active service in the autumn of 1866 and resigned in 1868.18
Battle of Mersa Matruh, 1942: Rommel's last victory over the Eighth Army
29 June 1942 · 84 years ago
After defeat at Gazala, the British Eighth Army was pursued into Egypt by Rommel's German and Italian army and struck at Mersa Matruh in the Western Desert Campaign. The fortress port fell with large stocks of supplies, yet the trapped British corps broke out.
Read the full story of Battle of Mersa Matruh, 1942: Rommel's last victory over the Eighth Army ›Also on this day
1866: on the same day the Prussian Second Army fought its way to the Elbe. The advance guard of the 1st Guard Division stormed the town of Königinhof, defended by the Austrian Coronini Regiment, and seized the bridge over the river.19
1866: Steinmetz's V Corps drove Festetics's Austrian IV Corps from its position at Schweinschädel. In Hozier's account three brigades of that corps were present, and they retreated under the guns of the fortress of Josephstadt.20
