Frederick the Great

November 5, 1757 · 10,000 total casualties

The most humiliating French military defeat in a generation. Rossbach shattered French military prestige across Europe, delighted the British (who subsidized Prussia to keep France busy), and made Frederick II a pan-European celebrity. Voltaire sent him a congratulatory poem. The defeat convinced many French officers that their army needed fundamental reform — a process that, ironically, produced the army that would fight the Revolution and Napoleon.

December 5, 1757 · 24,000 total casualties

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.'

August 25, 1758 · 36,000 total casualties

Zorndorf revealed the central problem of Prussia's strategic situation: Russian soldiers simply did not break the way French or Austrian troops did. Frederick remarked afterward that Russian soldiers could be killed but not defeated. The battle temporarily halted the Russian invasion, but at enormous Prussian cost — and Russia had the manpower to absorb losses that would have destroyed Prussia.

August 12, 1759 · 43,000 total casualties

The most catastrophic Prussian defeat of the war — and the moment that should have ended it. Only the mutual distrust between Russian General Saltykov and Austrian Field Marshal Daun prevented them from pursuing Frederick and finishing Prussia. They failed to advance on Berlin. Frederick called this delay a miracle and recovered within weeks, but Prussia's manpower reserve was nearly exhausted. The war could only continue because Russia's Empress Elizabeth fell mortally ill and the miracle of the House of Brandenburg awaited.

November 3, 1760 · 40,000 total casualties

Torgau demonstrated both Prussian resilience and the war's accelerating attrition. Frederick won the field but could not exploit the victory — his army was bleeding out. Prussia had entered the war with one of the finest armies in Europe; by 1760 it was being rebuilt with boys and older men conscripted from conquered Saxony. Frederick knew the war could not be sustained much longer. The salvation he needed came from St. Petersburg, not the battlefield.