Battle of Kesselsdorf, 1745: the Old Dessauer's last victory

Frederick the Great won most of his early battles himself. The one that ended his second war over Silesia was won by someone else: Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, the veteran field marshal known as the Old Dessauer, then 69 years old. Days before the battle the king had been sending him reproaches for his slowness. On the evening of 15 December 1745 the old man sent back the news that he had stormed Kesselsdorf and routed the Saxon army.²

A war that would not end

Frederick had seized Silesia from Austria in his first war and kept it by the Treaty of Breslau in 1742. When the fighting resumed in 1744 he won the battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor in 1745, and expected a quiet winter. Instead he learned that Austria and Saxony planned an invasion of Brandenburg itself. He took the field in Silesia and Lusatia against the main Austrian army under Prince Charles of Lorraine, and gave Leopold the campaign against Saxony and its capital, Dresden.³

Leopold gathered his corps at Halle. On 27 November he received orders to march into Saxony, and on 29 November he drove the Saxons from an entrenched camp near Leipzig and took the city the next day. He then took Torgau and moved on Meissen. Frederick wanted him faster, and Leopold had to read many angry letters. By 14 December he had joined hands with the king's troops and been reinforced, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie says, to 34,000 men, with orders to attack the enemy in front of him without delay.⁴

The position at Kesselsdorf

The Saxon army of Count Rutowsky stood west of Dresden along the Zschoner stream, a small tributary of the Elbe, with an Austrian contingent under General Grünne further toward the river. Prince Charles's main Austrian army was marching north to join it but was not there in time. Rutowsky's left rested on the village of Kesselsdorf, which he had fortified and filled with infantry and guns.⁵

The figures for the armies differ. BritishBattles.com gives the Prussians 21,000 infantry, 9,000 cavalry and 33 guns, and the allies 24,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry and 42 guns. The biography of Leopold in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie puts 34,000 Prussians against 35,000 Saxons and Austrians in a very strong camp.⁶

Storming the village

Leopold marched early in the morning of 15 December in four columns by way of Wilsdruff. His army was not deployed until about 2 p.m., and with the short winter day he attacked at once. He saw that Kesselsdorf was the key to the position. Where Frederick might have looked for a flank, BritishBattles.com observes, the old veteran chose a frontal assault on the strongest point of the line. His own Anhalt regiment was among the battalions that went in.⁷

The first attack failed. The fire of the many guns in the village cut the Prussians down in rows, and they fell back in confusion; a second attack was also thrown back. Then the Saxons made the mistake that lost the battle. Seeing the Prussians retreat, the defenders left their works to chase them, masking their own guns, and ran into the Prussian dragoons waiting in the open. Leopold sent in his cavalry at once and followed with the infantry of his right; they broke into Kesselsdorf from all sides and took all its guns.⁸

On the other wing, Prince Moritz of Anhalt-Dessau, Leopold's son, pushed his infantry across the marshy stream against the Saxon center and right. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie says his men overcame every obstacle and drove off the Saxon right after a hard cavalry fight; BritishBattles.com says they made little headway until the fall of the village forced the Saxons back. By nightfall the whole Saxon army was in retreat, the Austrians with it. Leopold's coat, his biographer records, had three bullet holes in it.⁹

The peace of Dresden

BritishBattles.com puts the Prussian loss at 5,000 and the Saxon and Austrian loss at 6,630. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie gives the enemy 10,000 killed, wounded and captured, with 48 guns lost, and the Prussian loss at over 5,000. Frederick met Leopold soon after, embraced him, heaped praise on him and gave him a large sum of money; the reproaches stopped. Dresden, the Royal Collection's catalogue of a plan of the battle notes, became the venue for the peace talks. The treaty signed there on 25 December left Silesia and the County of Glatz to Prussia. The Royal Collection dates the treaty to 18 December.¹⁰ › Battle of Mollwitz, 1741

Kesselsdorf was the end of Leopold's career in the field. He kept his offices but lived mostly at Dessau, and he died on 9 April 1747, aged 70. The peace, BritishBattles.com notes, was only a long truce: the real test over Silesia came with the Seven Years' War in 1756.¹¹