On 22 November 1757 the Austrian army of Prince Charles of Lorraine attacked the Prussian army of the Duke of Bevern in its entrenched camp outside Breslau, today Wrocław, and drove it across the Oder that night. Bevern was captured and Breslau surrendered, until Frederick the Great won Silesia back at Leuthen on 5 December.
Battle of Breslau
22 November 1757 · 268 years ago
Silesia slipping away
While Frederick fought the French and the armies of the Holy Roman Empire in Saxony in the autumn of 1757, he left Bevern to hold Silesia, the province over which Prussia and Austria had been fighting since 1740. Bevern entrenched his army on the south side of Breslau, with the marshy Lohe stream in front and the Oder behind. In mid-November the great fortress of Schweidnitz surrendered to the Austrians under Nádasdy, whose troops then joined the main Austrian army before Breslau.1
Across the Lohe
On 22 November the Austrians attacked Bevern's camp; Frederick's own history and the key to a French plan of the battle now in the Royal Collection both put the start of the action at about nine in the morning. The Austrians forced their way across the Lohe and took the Prussian redoubts in front of the center and right, while on the Prussian left Hans Joachim von Ziethen threw them back across the stream.2
That night Bevern led his army through Breslau to the far bank of the Oder, leaving 80 guns behind; his losses in men are given as 5,000 killed and wounded by Carlyle and nearly 8,000 by Frederick. Soon afterward Bevern rode out to reconnoiter almost alone, ran into Austrian light troops and was taken prisoner, and the next senior general marched the army away toward Glogau. Breslau's commandant, General Lestwitz, surrendered the city without a fight, and much of his garrison deserted on the way out.3
The road to Leuthen
Frederick, hurrying east from his victory at Rossbach, reached Parchwitz on 28 November, and the remains of Bevern's army joined him there on 2 December. On 5 December, at Leuthen west of Breslau, he attacked the Austrian army and routed it, and on the 7th he laid siege to Breslau, which surrendered later that month. The defeat of 22 November had lasted barely two weeks.4
Also on this day
Battle of Hiep Hoa
22 November 1963 · 62 years ago
About 500 Viet Cong fighters attacked the South Vietnamese and US Special Forces camp at Hiep Hoa in the Vietnam War. The defenders were overrun once North Vietnamese mortars arrived, and Isaac Camacho, one of four missing Americans, later escaped from Viet Cong captivity.
