📅 On This Day in Military History
1 event across history
Just 27 days after Rossbach, Frederick marched his army 170 miles in winter to face an Austrian force of 65,000 entrenched near the village of Leuthen in Silesia. Using a feint against the Austrian right, Frederick concentrated his 36,000 men against the Austrian left in the oblique order — a formation he had drilled his army to execute at speed. The Austrians, unable to redeploy in time, were overwhelmed flank by flank. It was his masterpiece.
Considered by Napoleon, Wellington, and military historians to be one of the greatest tactical victories in the history of warfare. Frederick defeated an army nearly twice his size using maneuver so precise it seemed impossible. The battle preserved Prussian control of Silesia and demonstrated that Frederick's army was something categorically different from any other force in Europe. After Leuthen, his troops spontaneously began singing a Lutheran hymn as they marched through the dusk — the 'Leuthen Chorale.'
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