What happened at the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866?
On 3 July 1866 the Prussian army met the Austrian North Army and the Saxon corps west of the fortress of Königgrätz in Bohemia, around the village of Sadowa. For most of the day the Prussian First Army and Army of the Elbe fought the Austrians along the Bistritz stream. In the early afternoon the Prussian Second Army under the Crown Prince arrived on the Austrian right flank and took the key village of Chlum, and Ludwig von Benedek's army fell back across the Elbe. Austria and Saxony lost about 44,000 men, about half of them prisoners, Prussia about 9,000, and the defeat decided the war of 1866.5
Königgrätz is the German name of the Bohemian fortress town of Hradec Králové, and the battle is named after it in German and English, while the French, the Italians and Polish writers usually call it after the village of Sadowa. It was the largest clash of a war that lasted only weeks and settled who would lead Germany. The Austrian side of that war is told in our guide to the military history of Austria, and the Prussian side in the military history of Germany.6
Why Prussia and Austria went to war
In 1864 Austria and Prussia together took the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. Prussia administered Schleswig and Austria Holstein, and the two powers soon quarreled over the future of the duchies. A compromise signed at Gastein in 1865 only postponed the conflict, which was at bottom a struggle over who would lead the German states.7
In June 1866 Prussian troops marched into Holstein. When the Diet of the German Confederation sided with Austria and voted for federal action against Prussia, the Prussian envoy declared the Confederation dissolved. Most of the larger German states, among them Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover and Württemberg, stood with Austria, while Prussia had a military alliance with Italy, which forced Austria to fight on two fronts.8
The Prussian infantry carried the Dreyse needle gun, a breech-loading rifle that fired much faster than the Austrian muzzle-loading rifle. The Austrian artillery, by contrast, had rifled guns, while part of the Prussian artillery still used older pieces.9
Three Prussian armies in Bohemia
King Wilhelm I held the supreme command, and Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian general staff since 1857, directed the operations. Three armies entered Bohemia from different directions: the Army of the Elbe under General Herwarth von Bittenfeld and the First Army of Prince Frederick Charles from the northwest, by way of Saxony, and the Second Army of Crown Prince Frederick William, about 115,000 men, from Silesia.10
Benedek, the commander of the Austrian North Army, did not strike the separated Prussian columns in time. In the last days of June the Austrians and Saxons lost a series of engagements, at Podol, Náchod, Skalitz and Jičín. The fight at Trautenau (Trutnov) on 27 June is judged differently: the Austrian AEIOU lexicon counts it as a victory for Ludwig von Gablenz's corps, Treccani as an uncertain result, and EBSCO among the Austrian defeats.11
On 1 July, as he fell back on Königgrätz, Benedek telegraphed Emperor Franz Joseph and begged him to make peace at any price, because a catastrophe for the army was unavoidable. The emperor answered that peace was impossible, ordered an orderly retreat if it could not be avoided, and asked whether a battle had taken place.12
2 July: the night orders
Benedek did not cross the Elbe. He drew up his army on the hills west of Königgrätz, with the river and the fortress behind him. The Saxons held the left on the plateau of Problus, the center stood at Chlum facing the village of Sadowa on the Bistritz, and the right reached back toward the Elbe. Two corps and most of the cavalry stood behind the center as a reserve.13
Moltke believed that the Austrians had already gone behind the Elbe. Only on the evening of 2 July did Prince Frederick Charles learn that a large Austrian force stood on the Bistritz, and he decided on his own responsibility to attack it at daybreak with the First Army and the Army of the Elbe.14
His chief of staff rode to royal headquarters at Jičín (Gitschin), where the king approved the attack. Moltke then ordered the Second Army to march at once against the right flank of the Austrians, and the order went out at midnight. The success of the plan now depended on the Crown Prince arriving in time.15
Morning on the Bistritz
3 July, morning. The First Army made contact with the Austrian outposts on the Bistritz early in the morning. By the Prussian count, only the 123,918 men of the First Army and the Army of the Elbe were on the field at the start, while the Second Army, some 97,000 men, was still on the march.16
The First Army crossed the Bistritz around Sadowa and attacked the strongest part of the Austrian line. Its task was to hold the enemy and draw in his reserves while the two flank armies came up, and it suffered heavily under the fire of the Austrian guns on the heights.17
On the Prussian left the 7th Division of General Eduard von Fransecky fought all morning for the Swiepwald, a wood in front of the Austrian right. The Austrian corps on that wing turned away from the Elbe to throw battalion after battalion into the wood. The wood stayed contested, and the Austrian right was left facing west, away from the direction from which the Second Army was coming.18
On the other flank the Army of the Elbe crossed the Bistritz at Nechanitz and pressed the Saxons on the Problus plateau. The Saxons held for hours before they were outflanked and driven back.19
The Crown Prince arrives and Chlum falls
The Second Army had set out in the morning and was still far from the field when the battle began. In the early afternoon their attack fell on the Austrian right, which had been only partly turned back to face north.20
The 1st Guard Division climbed the slope toward Chlum, the village at the center of the Austrian position, and took it after a short, fierce fight. Both official histories put the fall of Chlum at about a quarter to three, and the Austrian one has nearby Rosberitz falling at the same time. Benedek saw too late that his flank had been turned, and Austrian counterattacks against Chlum and Rosberitz failed with heavy losses.21
The Austrian right wing gave way, and in the south the Army of the Elbe was turning the Saxon flank. With Prussian troops pressing in from the north, the west and the south, Benedek ordered the retreat.22
Retreat to the Elbe
Austrian cavalry and the guns of the army artillery reserve covered the retreat. Squadrons charged the Prussians near Langenhof and Stresetitz, and the batteries kept firing until they were overrun, so that the main body of the army could get away.23
The real disaster came behind the lines. The retreating columns crowded onto the banks of the Elbe in front of Königgrätz, and the gates of the fortress stayed shut until late in the evening (11 p.m., according to the Prussian history), so that much of the army had to find its way past the town. Hundreds of wagons and many guns were left stuck on the roads and in the flooded fields. The Austrian official history adds that the ground around the fortress had been flooded for its defense, and judges that this ground did the army more harm than the battle itself.24
The Prussians did not pursue in force. Their troops were exhausted and their units mixed up after the converging attack, and Moltke ordered a day of rest for 4 July.25
The cost of the day
The Austrian official history counts 42,812 Austrian losses, 1,313 officers and 41,499 men, of whom 22,170 were taken prisoner, wounded or unwounded, and 1,501 Saxon losses. It also records the loss of 187 guns. The Prussian official history gives 44,200 for the Austrians and Saxons together, 19,800 of them prisoners, and 161 guns taken as trophies.26
Prussian losses were far lower: 9,153 by the Prussian history (359 officers and 8,794 men), 9,172 in the figures quoted by the Austrian one. Treccani's Italian encyclopedia rounds the totals to about 25,000 Austrian killed and wounded with 20,000 prisoners, and about 10,000 Prussians.27
With some 220,000 Prussians against about 215,000 Austrians and Saxons, the battle was one of the largest and bloodiest of the 19th century.28
After Königgrätz
Benedek led his beaten army toward the fortified camp at Olmütz in Moravia, and the Prussians marched south toward the Danube and Vienna. An armistice followed, preliminary peace terms were signed at Nikolsburg on 26 July, and the Peace of Prague was concluded on 23 August 1866.29
Austria ceded Venetia to Italy, which had lost to the Austrians at Custoza on 24 June, and accepted the dissolution of the German Confederation and its own exclusion from German affairs. Prussia annexed Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Kassel and Frankfurt, among other lands, and formed the North German Confederation, the step that led to German unification in 1871.30
Benedek was relieved of his command and faced a court-martial inquiry, which Franz Joseph halted.31
Historians long read the battle as the model of Moltke's method: armies advancing separately and uniting only on the battlefield. Treccani's encyclopedia warns that this is partly hindsight, because at Königgrätz the Austrians themselves stood where the Prussian armies were converging. The method was used again four years later in the Franco-Prussian War, most famously at Sedan.32
