Who won the Battle of Freiberg?
Prussia. On 29 October 1762 Prince Henry of Prussia, with about 23,000 men, attacked the entrenched Austro-Imperial army of about 31,000 near Freiberg in Saxony and drove it from the field by midday. The allies lost several thousand men as prisoners and 28 guns. The defeat helped push Vienna toward the peace of 1763.1
Freiberg is a town in Saxony, and in 1762 it lay in the middle of the fighting for that electorate. The battle fought outside it on 29 October is often called the last battle of the Seven Years' War, and it was won not by Frederick the Great but by his younger brother.2
Background: the 1762 campaign in Saxony
Prince Henry of Prussia commanded the Prussian army in Saxony. In May 1762 he defeated the Austrians at Döbeln and took over their old camp near Freiberg. In the autumn the Austrians and the army of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reichsarmee, went over to the attack; Count Andreas Hadik had replaced Serbelloni as the Austrian commander in Saxony in September. In the night of 15 to 16 October Henry gave up Freiberg and fell back to the north-west, and the allies dug in around the town.3
Henry would not leave it at that. On 22 October he took up a camp on the heights of Marbach and the Augustusberg, and the same day his plan to retake Freiberg was put to the king, who approved it. He was outnumbered: Kronoskaf puts his army at about 23,000 men against about 31,000 Austro-Imperial troops under Prince Christian Karl von Stolberg.4
29 October: four columns at dawn
The operations began in the night of 28 to 29 October, and the fighting started at first light, about five in the morning. Henry attacked in four columns. The strongest, under Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, was to swing round Stolberg's position. General Kleist made for the heights of St. Michaelis, and Seydlitz's grenadiers attacked the knoll known as the Drei Kreuzen, where the allies had anchored their left.5
In the Spittelwald, a wood between the allied center and left protected by felled trees, Prussian free battalions drove back three battalions and took 400 prisoners, but the next attack stalled at the edge of the wood. The decision came on the other flank. Prussian hussars and cuirassiers under Belling broke one Imperial infantry regiment after another, while Seydlitz and Kleist beat off the allied cavalry.6
Stolberg's flanks gave way. The Kulturstiftung, a German cultural foundation whose account draws on the older German studies, dates the start of the retreat to about eight in the morning; a French map of the battle engraved about 1789, now in the Royal Collection, notes that the battle began at daybreak and ended toward noon. Stolberg rallied his men on the Tüttendorf heights, crossed the river Mulde and fell back to Frauenstein, and the Prussians moved back into their old positions at Freiberg. The Prussian pursuit could not catch the retreating troops.7
Casualties: two counts
The two main accounts agree on the shape of the defeat but not on the details. Kronoskaf's Seven Years' War project gives Prussian losses of about 1,500 and allied losses of 3,000 killed or wounded and 4,500 captured, with 28 guns and 9 colors taken. The Kulturstiftung counts 1,400 Prussian dead and wounded, 2,800 allied soldiers left on the field and 4,340 men and 79 officers captured, with 28 guns and 11 flags. Either way, more of Stolberg's men were taken prisoner than were killed or wounded.8
Why Freiberg mattered
Militarily Freiberg did not destroy the allied armies; politically it counted for more. The Kulturstiftung argues that the defeat pushed the court in Vienna toward peace, and the war ended with the peace treaties of 1763.9
