What happened at the Battle of Hochkirch?
On 14 October 1758, during the Seven Years' War, the Austrian army of Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun crept up on Frederick the Great's camp at Hochkirch in Saxony during the night and attacked at dawn. The Prussians were caught by surprise, lost about 100 guns and some 9,000 to 10,000 men, and Field Marshal James Keith was killed. Daun did not pursue, and Frederick's army escaped to fight on.1
In the autumn of 1758 Frederick the Great was back in Saxony after his bloody battle with the Russians at Zorndorf. Kronoskaf's Project Seven Years War counts about 80,000 Prussians facing about the same number of Austrians there, while another 30,000 Austrians besieged Neisse and Kosel in Silesia. Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun, the Austrian commander, avoided a pitched battle.2
A camp too close to the enemy
According to Kronoskaf, on 10 October Frederick, on his way to relieve Neisse, pitched camp around the village of Hochkirch, east of Bautzen, close to Daun's army and against the advice of his generals. He meant to march round Daun's flank, but waited four days for a supply convoy from Dresden. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar.org writes that Frederick let his forces spread too thin, partly because he thought Daun too cautious to attack.3
Hochkirch stood on a hill with a large church and a walled churchyard. Field Marshal James Keith, a Scottish Jacobite exile in Prussian service, held the right wing there with a great battery of heavy guns on the Birkenbusch. According to Kronoskaf, the troops in the Hochkirch lines numbered about 28,000 to 29,500, out of some 40,000 in the whole army, with a detached corps under Retzow at Weissenberg.4
The night march
According to Kronoskaf, the plan was Lacy's: a night approach and a dawn attack, with Daun's and Lacy's columns converging on Hochkirch while Loudon and O'Donell struck from the rear and flank. On the evening of 13 October the columns moved through the woods in silence. The wheels of the guns were wrapped in straw, and trees were felled to cover the noise of the march. The Prussian cavalry pickets had been pulled back at dusk, a thick fog lay over the meadows, and reports from deserters about Austrian movements were largely ignored.5
Five o'clock
At 5 a.m. the church bell struck and the Austrians attacked. EBSCO describes them encircling the Prussians in the night and attacking at dawn. They overran the outposts, and the Prussian gunners, sheltering in the houses, lost the great battery. Austrian howitzers set Hochkirch on fire. Around 6.30 Keith retook the battery at the head of an infantry regiment, but Austrian grenadiers struck both his flanks, the guns were lost again, and Keith was shot through the heart as his men fell back. Prince Francis of Brunswick was killed by a cannonball, and Prince Moritz of Anhalt-Dessau was wounded and later captured.6
In the churchyard, Kronoskaf relates, Major von Langen and a battalion of the Margraf Carl regiment held the walls for about two hours. He refused to surrender and led a last bayonet charge out of the northern gate; he fell with eleven wounds and died a prisoner in Bautzen a week later. By 7.30 the Austrians held Hochkirch and had brought heavy guns onto the height.7
The escape
Rickard writes that at one point Daun's superior numbers threatened to destroy the Prussian army entirely, and that the cavalry general Hans Joachim von Zieten opened an escape route. Kronoskaf describes Prussian cavalry charges near the burning village, Zieten holding the heights of Kumschütz and Canitz, and a rearguard of fresh battalions under Saldern. By about 9 a.m. Frederick had decided to retreat toward Bautzen, and the army withdrew in good order, unmolested, to a camp about 6.5 kilometers away. The fighting had lasted about five hours.8
The losses
The figures differ by source. Rickard gives 9,500 Prussian dead and 8,000 Austrian casualties. EBSCO gives 10,000 Prussian casualties and 100 guns lost. Kronoskaf counts 246 officers and 8,851 men lost on the Prussian side, about a third of the force engaged, with 101 guns, 28 colors and 2 standards, and 325 officers and 7,262 men on the Austrian side. The size of the armies is disputed too: EBSCO gives 78,000 Austrians against 30,000 Prussians, and Undiscovered Scotland, in its biography of Keith, 80,000 against 31,000.9
Keith and Peterhead
Keith was born at Inverugie Castle near Peterhead in 1696, went into exile after the Jacobite risings, served Spain and Russia, and in 1747 became a Prussian field marshal. He was buried in Berlin. His home town has a statue of him, a copy of the one in Berlin and a gift from King William I of Prussia: the plinth is dated 23 August 1868, and the University of Aberdeen records it as unveiled by the Earl of Kintore on 16 August 1869.10
Why Hochkirch did not decide the war
Daun did not follow up his victory. Rickard writes that this earned him back his name for caution. Kronoskaf blames the slow pursuit by Arenberg for letting the Prussians get away almost intact. EBSCO concludes that Frederick kept Silesia and Saxony, and that the battle closed the campaign of 1758 and gave him time to rebuild. The day's other battles, Hastings in 1066 and Jena and Auerstedt in 1806, are on 14 October in history.11 › Battle of Domstadtl, 1758
