preparing for the battle.—the surprise.—the snow-encumbered plain.—horror of the scene.—flight of frederick.—his shame and despair.—unexpected victory of the prussians.—letters of frederick.—adventures of maupertuis.
monday morning the storm ceased. there was a perfect calm. for leagues the spotless snow, nearly two feet deep, covered all the extended plains. the anxiety of frederick had been so great that for two nights he had not been able to get any sleep. he had plunged into this war with the full assurance that he was to gain victory and glory. it now seemed inevitable that he was to encounter but defeat and shame.
at the earliest dawn the whole army was in motion. ranked in four columns, they cautiously advanced toward ohlau, ready to deploy instantly into line of battle should the enemy appear. scouts were sent out in all directions. but, toiling painfully through the drifts, they could obtain no reliable information. the spy-glass revealed nothing but the winding-sheet of crisp and sparkling snow, with scarcely a shrub or a tree to break the dreary view. there were no fences to be seen—nothing but a smooth, white plain, spreading for miles around. the hamlet of mollwitz, where general neipperg had established his head-quarters, was about seven miles north from pogerell, from which point frederick was marching. at the distance of a few miles from each other there were several wretched little255 hamlets, consisting of a few low, thatched, clay farm-houses clustered together.
general neipperg was not attempting to move in the deep snow. he, however, sent out a reconnoitring party of mounted hussars under general rothenburg. about two miles from mollwitz this party encountered the advance-guard of the prussians. the hussars, after a momentary conflict, in which several fell, retreated and gave the alarm. general neipperg was just sitting down to dinner. the prussian advance waited for the rear columns to come up, and then deployed into line. as the austrian hussars dashed into the village of mollwitz with the announcement that the prussians were on the march, had attacked them, and killed forty of their number, general neipperg dropped knife and fork, sprang from the table, and dispatched couriers in all directions, galloping for life, to concentrate his troops. his force was mainly distributed about in three villages, two or three miles apart. the clangor of trumpets and drums resounded; and by the greatest exertions the austrian troops were collected from their scattered encampments, and formed in two parallel lines, about two miles in length, facing the prussians, who were slowly advancing in the same order, wading through the snow. each army was formed with the infantry in the centre and the cavalry on the wings. frederick was then but an inexperienced soldier. he subsequently condemned the want of military ability which he displayed upon this occasion.
“we approached,” he writes, “marshal neipperg’s army without being discovered by any one man living. his troops were then cantoned in three villages. but at that time i had not sufficient experience to know how to avail myself of such an opportunity. i ought immediately to have ordered two of my columns to surround the village of mollwitz, and then to have attacked it. i ought at the same instant to have detached my dragoons with orders to have attacked the other two villages, which contained the austrian cavalry. the infantry, which should have followed, would have prevented them from mounting. if i had proceeded in this way i am convinced that i should have totally destroyed the austrian army.”52
256 it was now about noon. the sun shone brightly on the glistening snow. there was no wind. twenty thousand peasants, armed and drilled as soldiers, were facing each other upon either side, to engage in mutual slaughter, with no animosity between them—no cause of quarrel. it is one of the unrevealed mysteries of providence that any one man should thus have it in his power to create such wide-spread death and misery. the austrians had a splendid body of cavalry, eight thousand six hundred in number. frederick had but about half as many horsemen. the prussians had sixty pieces of artillery, the austrians but eighteen.
the battle soon began, with its tumult, its thunder-roar of artillery and musketry, its gushing blood, its cries of agony, its death convulsions. both parties fought with the reckless courage, the desperation with which trained soldiers, of whatever nationality, almost always fight.
the prussians advanced in their long double line, trampling the deep snow beneath their feet. all their banners were waving. all their bands of music were pealing forth their most martial airs. their sixty pieces of artillery, well in front, opened a rapid and deadly fire. the thoroughly-drilled prussian artillerymen discharged their guns with unerring aim, breaking gaps in the austrian ranks, and with such wonderful rapidity that the unintermitted roar of the cannons drowned the sound of drums and trumpets.
the austrian cavalry made an impetuous charge upon the weaker prussian cavalry on the right of the prussian line. frederick commanded here in person. the prussian right wing was speedily routed, and driven in wild retreat over the plain. the king lost his presence of mind and fled ingloriously with the fugitives. general schulenberg endeavored, in vain, to rally the disordered masses. he received a sabre slash across his face. drenched in blood, he still struggled, unavailingly, to arrest the torrent, when a bullet struck him dead. the battle was now raging fiercely all along the lines.
general r?mer, in command of the austrian cavalry, had crushed the right wing of the prussians. resolutely he followed up his victory, hotly chasing the fugitives in the wildest disorder far away to the rear, capturing nine of their guns. who257 can imagine the scene? there were three or four thousand horsemen put to utter rout, clattering over the plain, impetuously pursued by six or seven thousand of the finest cavalry in the world, discharging pistol-shots into their flying ranks, and raining down upon them sabre-blows.
the young king, all unaccustomed to those horrors of war which he had evoked, was swept along with the inundation. the danger of his falling in the midst of the general carnage, or of his capture, which was, perhaps, still more to be dreaded, was imminent. his friends entreated him to escape for his life. even marshal schwerin, the veteran soldier, assured him that the battle was lost, and that he probably could escape capture only by a precipitate flight.
flight of frederick.
frederick, thus urged, leaving the main body of his army, as258 he supposed, in utter rout, with a small escort, put spurs to his steed in the attempt to escape. the king was well mounted on a very splendid bay horse. a rapid ride of fifteen miles in a southerly direction brought him to the river neisse, which he crossed by a bridge at the little town of lowen. immediately after his departure prince leopold dispatched a squadron of dragoons to accompany the king as his body-guard. but frederick fled so rapidly that they could not overtake him, and in the darkness, for night soon approached, they lost his track. even several of the few who accompanied him, not so well mounted as the king, dropped off by the way, their horses not being able to keep up with his swift pace.
it was frederick’s aim to reach oppeln, a small town upon the river oder, about thirty miles from the field of battle. he supposed that one of his regiments still held that place. but this regiment had hurriedly vacated the post, and had repaired, with all its baggage, to pampitz, in the vicinity of mollwitz. upon the retirement of this garrison a wandering party of sixty austrian hussars had taken possession of the town.
frederick, unaware that oppeln was in the hands of the enemy, arrived, with the few of his suite who had been able to keep up with him, about midnight before the closed gates of the town. “who are you?” the austrian sentinels inquired. “we are prussians,” was the reply, “accompanying a courier from the king.” the austrians, unconscious of the prize within their grasp, and not knowing how numerous the prussian party might be, instantly opened a musketry fire upon them through the iron gratings of the gate. had they but thrown open the gate and thus let the king enter the trap, the whole history of europe might have been changed. upon apparently such trivial chances the destinies of empires and of the world depend. fortunately, in the darkness and the confusion, none were struck by the bullets.
at oppeln there was a bridge across the oder by which the king hoped to escape with his regiment to the free country beyond. there he intended to summon to his aid the army of thirty-six thousand men which he had sent to g?tten under the “old dessauer.” the discharge of the musketry of the austrians blasted even this dismal hope. it seemed as though frederick259 were doomed to drain the cup of misery to its dregs; and his anguish must have been intensified by the consciousness that he deserved it all. but a few leagues behind him, the bleak, snow-clad plains, swept by the night-winds, were strewed with the bodies of eight or nine thousand men, the dying and the dead, innocent peasant-boys torn from their homes, whose butchery had been caused by his own selfish ambition.
the king, in utter exhaustion from hunger, sleeplessness, anxiety, and misery, for a moment lost all self-control. as with his little band of fugitives he vanished into the gloom of the night, not knowing where to go, he exclaimed, in the bitterness of his despair, “o my god, my god, this is too much!”
retracing his steps in the darkness some fifteen miles, he returned to lowen, where, by a bridge, a few hours before, he had crossed the neisse. taught caution by the misadventure at oppeln, he reined up his horse, before the morning dawned, at the mill of hilbersdorf, about a mile and a half from the town. the king, upon his high-blooded charger, had outridden nearly all his escort; but one or two were now with him. one of these attendants he sent into the town to ascertain if it were still held by the prussians. almost alone, he waited under the shelter of the mill the return of his courier. it was still night, dark and cold. the wind, sweeping over the snow-clad plains, caused the exhausted, half-famished monarch to shiver in his saddle.
there is a gloom of the soul far deeper than any gloom with which nature can ever be shrouded. it is not easy to conceive of a mortal placed in circumstances of greater mental suffering than was the proud, ambitious young monarch during the hour in which he waited, in terror and disgrace, by the side of the mill, for the return of his courier. at length the clatter of hoofs was heard, and the messenger came back, accompanied by an adjutant, to announce to the king that the prussians still held lowen, and that the prussian army had gained a signal victory at mollwitz.
who can imagine the conflicting emotions of joy and wretchedness, of triumph and shame, of relief and chagrin, with which the heart of frederick must have been rent! the army of prussia had triumphed, under the leadership of his generals, while he, its young and ambitious sovereign, who had unjustly provoked260 war that he might obtain military glory, a fugitive from the field, was scampering like a coward over the plains at midnight, seeking his own safety. never, perhaps, was there a more signal instance of a retributive providence. frederick knew full well that the derision of europe would be excited by caricatures and lampoons of the chivalric fugitive. nor was he deceived in his anticipations. there was no end to the ridicule which was heaped upon frederick, galloping, for dear life, from the battle-field in one direction, while his solid columns were advancing to victory in the other. his sarcastic foes were ungenerous and unjust. but when do foes, wielding the weapons of ridicule, ever pretend even to be just and generous?
frederick at the mill.
the king, upon receiving these strange and unexpected tidings, immediately rode into lowen. it was an early hour in the261 morning. he entered the place, not as a king and a conqueror, but as a starving fugitive, exhausted with fatigue, anxiety, and sleeplessness. it is said that his hunger was so great that he stopped at a little shop on the corner of the market-place, where “widow panzern” served him with a cup of coffee and a cold roast fowl. thus slightly refreshed, the intensely humiliated young king galloped back to his victorious army at mollwitz, having been absent from it, in his terror-stricken flight, for sixteen hours.
the chagrin of frederick in view of this adventure may be inferred from the fact that, during the whole remainder of his life, he was never known to make any allusion to it whatever.
after the king, swept away in the wreck of his right wing of cavalry, had left the field, and was spurring his horse in his impetuous flight, his generals in the centre and on the left, in command of infantry so highly disciplined that every man would stand at his post until he died, resolutely maintained the battle. frederick william had drilled these men for twenty years as men were never drilled before or since, converting them into mere machines. they were wielded by their officers as they themselves handled their muskets. five successive cavalry charges these cast-iron men resisted. they stood like rocks dashing aside the torrent. the assailing columns melted before their terrible fire—they discharging five shots to the austrians’ two.
battle of
mollwitz,
april 10, 1741.
a. advance of prussians.
b. where rothenburg met the hussars.
c. prussian infantry.
dd. prussian cavalry.
e. austrian infantry.
fff. austrian cavalry.
gg. retreat of austrians.
after the fifth charge, the austrians, dispirited, and leaving the snow plain crimsoned with the blood and covered with the bodies of their slain, withdrew out of ball range. torn and exhausted, they could not be driven by their officers forward to another assault. the battle had now lasted for five hours.262 night was at hand, for the sun had already set. the repulsed austrians were collected in scattered and confused bands. the experienced eye of general schwerin saw that the hour for decisive action had come. he closed up his ranks, ordered every band to play its most spirited air, and gave the order “forward.” an austrian officer, writing the next week, describes the scene.
“i can well say,” he writes, “that i never in my life saw any thing more beautiful. they marched with the greatest steadiness, arrow straight and their front like a line, as if they had been upon parade. the glitter of their clear arms shone strangely in the setting sun, and the fire from them went on no otherwise than a continued peal of thunder. the spirits of our army sank altogether, the foot plainly giving way, the horse refusing to come forward—all things wavering toward dissolution.”
the austrians had already lost, in killed, wounded, and missing, four thousand four hundred and ten men. and though the prussians had lost four thousand six hundred and thirteen, still their infantry lines had never for a moment wavered; and now, with floating banners and peals of music, they were advancing with the strides of conquerors.
thus circumstanced, general neipperg gave the order to retreat. at the double quick, the austrians retired back through the street of mollwitz, hurried across the river laugwitz by a bridge, and, turning short to the south, continued their retreat toward grottkau. they left behind them nine of their own guns, and eight of those which they had captured from the prussians. the prussians, exhausted by the long battle, their cavalry mostly dispersed and darkness already enveloping them, did not attempt any vigorous pursuit. they bivouacked on the grounds, or quartered themselves in the villages from which the austrians had fled.
on wednesday, april 12, two days after the battle, frederick wrote to his sister wilhelmina from ohlau as follows:
“my dearest sister,—i have the satisfaction to inform you that we have yesterday53 totally beaten the austrians. they263 have lost more than five thousand men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. we have lost prince frederick, brother of margraf karl; general schulenberg, wartensleben of the carabineers, and many other officers. our troops did miracles, and the result shows as much. it was one of the rudest battles fought within the memory of man.
“i am sure you will take part in this happiness, and that you will not doubt the tenderness with which i am, dearest sister, yours wholly,
frederick.”
the king’s intimate friend, jordan, had accompanied him as far as breslau. there he remained, anxiously awaiting the issue of the conflict. on the 11th, the day succeeding the battle, he wrote from breslau to the king as follows:
“sire,—yesterday i was in terrible alarms. the sound of the cannon heard, the smoke of powder visible from the steeple-tops here, all led us to suspect that there was a battle going on. glorious confirmation of it this morning. nothing but rejoicing among all the protestant inhabitants, who had begun to be in apprehension from the rumors which the other party took pleasure in spreading. persons who were in the battle can not enough celebrate the coolness and bravery of your majesty. for myself, i am at the overflowing point. i have run about all day announcing this glorious news to the berliners who are here. in my life i have never felt a more perfect satisfaction. one finds at the corner of every street an orator of the people celebrating the warlike feats of your majesty’s troops. i have often, in my idleness, assisted at these discourses; not artistic eloquence, it must be owned, but gushing full from the heart.”
frederick immediately sent an announcement of the victory to his friend voltaire. it does not appear that he alluded to his own adventures. voltaire received the note when in the theatre at lisle, while listening to the first performance of his tragedy of mahomet. he read the account to the audience between the acts. it was received with great applause. “you will see,” said voltaire, “that this piece of mollwitz will secure the success of mine.” vous verrez que cette piece de mollwitz fera réussir la miene.
the distinguished philosopher maupertuis accompanied frederick264 on this campaign. following the king to the vicinity of the field of battle, he took a post of observation at a safe distance, that he might witness the spectacle. carlyle, in his peculiar style of word-painting, describes the issue as follows:
“the sage maupertuis, for example, had climbed some tree, or place of impregnability, hoping to see the battle there. and he did see it much too clearly at last! in such a tide of charging and chasing on that right wing, and round all the field in the prussian rear; in such wide bickering and boiling of horse-currents, which fling out round all the prussian rear-quarters such a spray of austrian hussars for one element, maupertuis, i have no doubt, wishes much he were at home doing his sines and tangents. an austrian hussar party gets sight of him on his tree or other stand-point (voltaire says elsewhere he was mounted on an ass, the malicious spirit!)—too certain the austrian hussars got sight of him; his purse, gold watch, all he has of movable, is given frankly; all will not do. there are frills about the man, fine laces, cloth; a goodish yellow wig on him for one thing. their slavonic dialect, too fatally intelligible by the pantomime accompanying it, forces sage maupertuis from his tree or stand-point; the big red face flurried into scarlet, i can fancy, or scarlet and ashy-white mixed; and—let us draw a veil over it. he is next seen shirtless, the once very haughty, blustery, and now much humiliated man; still conscious of supreme acumen, insight, and pure science; and, though an austrian prisoner and a monster of rags, struggling to believe that he is a genius, and the trismegistus of mankind. what a pickle!”
while in this deplorable condition, maupertuis was found by the prince of lichtenstein, an austrian officer who had met him in paris. the prince rescued him from his brutal captors and supplied him with clothing. he was, however, taken to vienna as a prisoner of war, where he was placed on parole. voltaire, whose unamiable nature was pervaded by a very marked vein of malignity, made himself very merry over the misfortunes of the philosopher. as maupertuis glided about the streets of vienna for a time in obscurity, the newspapers began to speak of his scientific celebrity. he was thus brought into notice. the queen treated him with distinction. the grand-duke francis drew his own watch from his pocket, and presented it to maupertuis265 in recompense for the one he had lost. eventually he was released, and, loaded with many presents, was sent to brittany.
in the account which frederick gave, some years after, of this campaign, in his histoire de mons temps, he wrote:
“the contest between general neipperg and myself seemed to be which should commit the most faults. mollwitz was the school of the king and his troops. that prince reflected profoundly upon all the faults and errors he had fallen into, and tried to correct them for the future.”
