Who won the Battle of Torgau?
Prussia won. On 3 November 1760 Frederick the Great's frontal attacks on Daun's Austrian army near Torgau in Saxony failed with terrible losses, but after dark General Zieten's corps stormed the Süptitz heights and the Austrians retreated across the Elbe in the night. Frederick kept most of Saxony, though Daun held Dresden.1
On 3 November 1760 Frederick the Great threw his army against the strongest position in Saxony: Field Marshal Daun's Austrian camp on the heights west of Torgau, on the Elbe. By nightfall his best grenadiers had been shot to pieces, both commanders had been wounded and Daun had sent news of a victory to Vienna. Then, in the dark, General Zieten's corps found a way onto the heights. Our 3 November page tells the day in brief; this is the full story.2
Why did Frederick attack Daun at Torgau?
By the autumn of 1760 the war was going badly for Prussia. Frederick had seized Saxony at the start of the war in 1756, and its money, grain and recruits fed his army. In 1760 he beat General Laudon at Liegnitz (Legnica) in Silesia on 15 August, but in October Russian and Austrian troops raided Berlin, and meanwhile the Austrians and the army of the Holy Roman Empire took back Leipzig, Torgau and Wittenberg. For the wider war, see the guides to the Seven Years' War and the Third Silesian War.3
If Daun wintered in Saxony, Frederick would lose the province that kept his war going. Carlyle quotes his reasoning: without Saxony there would be no recruits, no magazines and no resources for a new campaign. The Kronoskaf study makes the same point: the king could not let the Austrians sit on Saxony's food, money and recruits, so he looked for a decisive battle.4
His mood shows in a letter he wrote to his friend the Marquis d'Argens a few days before the battle. He would never sign a disgraceful peace, he wrote; he would either bury himself under the ruins of his country or end his misfortunes himself, and he was resolved to dare everything to win or to die a glorious death.5
Daun's camp on the Süptitz heights
Leopold Joseph von Daun was Austria's most successful general against Frederick. He had beaten him at Kolín in 1757, surprised him at Hochkirch in 1758 and trapped a whole Prussian corps at Maxen in 1759. Contemporaries accused him of too much caution, and Carlyle calls him a Fabius. In 1760 his task was to keep Saxony, and he believed he could do that standing on the defensive.6
He chose a camp he knew well. The heights west of Torgau, between the villages of Süptitz and Zinna, were the same position from which Frederick's brother, Prince Henry, had defied Daun himself the year before. The slopes were covered in vineyards; the marshy Rohrgraben brook and a chain of ponds guarded the south; the Dommitzsch forest, with an abatis of felled trees that Henry's men had built, covered the west. General Franz Moritz von Lacy held a separate corps near the great pond south of the town.7
Frederick had about 44,000 men. The Austrians had more: about 55,000 men besides the light troops in the order of battle compiled by the Kronoskaf project, and 64,000 to 65,000 by the reckoning of the Prussian staff officer Gaudi, the figure Carlyle repeats. Daun also had a great mass of artillery: about 275 guns in the Kronoskaf order of battle, while the Prussian General Staff tables count 240 heavy pieces besides the ordinary regimental guns.8
Frederick's plan: two attacks at once
A frontal attack from the south looked hopeless, so Frederick split his army. He himself would lead about half of it on a long march through the Dommitzsch forest, around the Austrian flank, to fall on the heights from the north. Zieten, with the other half, would advance by the road from Eilenburg and attack from the south at the same time. Caught between two fires, with the Elbe at its back, Daun's army could be destroyed, not merely beaten.9
Everything depended on timing. Frederick gave Zieten his orders privately and by word of mouth, so that nothing could leak to Daun. Zieten's route was much shorter than the king's long loop through the forest, and the two attacks were meant to strike together.10
The march goes wrong
At half past six on the morning of 3 November the army set out in four columns. It was a wet day, and the sandy forest tracks slowed the guns and the horses. In the woods the Prussians surprised an Austrian cavalry regiment, Saint-Ignon's, which found itself caught between two columns and was cut down or captured. But the cavalry column under the Prince of Holstein fell far behind and lost hours in the forest.11
Daun's outposts told him what was coming. He calmly turned his army to face north and moved his baggage across the Elbe so that nothing would block the bridges. Carlyle, no friend of the Austrians, calls his arrangements prompt and excellent.12
Zieten, meanwhile, did not take the road he was meant to take. Near the edge of the forest he ran into Croats and outposts of Lacy's corps, drove them back and then spent hours in a long-range artillery duel with Lacy. The wind carried the sound north, and the king took it to mean that Zieten was already heavily engaged.13
Into the guns: the grenadiers attack
About two in the afternoon Frederick came out of the forest between Elsnig and Neiden with only the head of his own column, ten battalions of grenadiers. The other columns had not arrived, his cavalry was still lost in the woods, and his own guns could hardly be dragged through the trees. Believing Zieten to be in action, he attacked at once.14
The Austrian artillery tore the attack apart before the grenadiers could even use their muskets. Archenholz, who according to Carlyle fought at Torgau as a young officer, says that 5,500 grenadiers fell within half an hour; Carlyle has them reduced to the tenth man. When Frederick heard that a young officer of the house of Anhalt, of whom he was very fond, had been killed, he turned to the dead man's brother and said that everything was going wrong that day and his friends were leaving him.15
Fresh battalions from Hülsen's column came up after three o'clock and attacked again. They broke into the Austrian line and took batteries on the heights, but Daun fed in fresh regiments and cavalry and drove them back into the wood. Late in the afternoon Holstein's cavalry finally arrived. The Spaen regiment under Dalwig and the Bayreuth dragoons broke several Austrian regiments and took hundreds of prisoners, but more Austrian cavalry rode them back. By about five o'clock every Prussian attack in the north had failed.16
Both commanders hit
In the middle of these attacks Frederick himself was struck in the chest by a spent shot. His heavy coat stopped it; he was knocked senseless for a moment and carried out of the fire, but he was left with only a bruise. Daun, too, was hit in the leg, and stayed in the saddle to direct the counterattacks.17
As darkness fell, the Austrians believed the day was theirs. Daun had himself taken into Torgau to have his wound dressed and handed command to General O'Donnell. Later that evening, while his wound was being dressed, he sent a courier to Vienna with news of a victory, which the city celebrated; by the Kronoskaf account he did so after Lacy had already reported the heights lost. On the Prussian side the king, thinking the battle would have to be renewed the next day, left General Hülsen to rally the battered infantry and rode back to the village of Elsnig.18
Zieten at dusk: who stormed the Süptitz heights?
South of the heights, Zieten's generals grew impatient. General Saldern and others, among them Lieutenant Colonel Möllendorf, urged him to do something, and at last he sent his infantry against the village of Süptitz, which caught fire as the Austrians were driven out of it.19
At about half past six, Lieutenant Colonel Wichard von Möllendorf learned that the Austrians had left unguarded a causeway between two ponds that led up onto the heights. Saldern's brigade crossed it and climbed toward the summit. The Austrians counterattacked again and again in the dark.20
North of the heights, Hülsen saw the flames and heard the firing. He gathered the battalions he had rallied and fresh troops and led them toward the fight, with the drums beating the Prussian march so that Zieten's men would not take them for the enemy. The old general's horses had been shot and his wounds kept him from walking, so he rode into the battle sitting on a cannon.21
Around nine o'clock the Süptitz heights were in Prussian hands, and the Austrian counterattacks had failed. The storming of the heights late in the evening, writes Zieten's biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, decided the battle in Prussia's favor. In the darkness Möllendorf himself was taken prisoner.22
Why Zieten spent most of the day in an artillery duel is still argued over. Carlyle could not say how far he was to blame, though he notes that the king thought it considerable; the Kronoskaf study calls it one of the most debated points of the battle and suggests that Zieten may simply have been told not to engage before the king.23
A night by the fires
Nobody on the field knew who had won. In the bitter cold, soldiers of both armies gathered around the same fires in the forest and waited for daylight to show which of them were the prisoners. The wounded lay on the wet ground, and many were stripped and robbed by marauders.24
Frederick spent the night in the village church at Elsnig, because every house was full of wounded men. He wrote his orders sitting on the steps of the altar. Later anecdote books had him meet Zieten in the woods at dawn with embraces; Carlyle dismissed that story as evidently mythical.25
In the night Daun's army withdrew through Torgau and crossed the Elbe on its bridges of boats, while Lacy marched away along the left bank. In the early hours Prussian battalions entered the abandoned town, and at dawn Frederick learned that the enemy had gone.26
How many died at Torgau? Casualties of the battle
The losses were heavy on both sides. The Prussian officer and historian Tempelhof put the Prussian loss at 13,000 to 14,000 men, 4,000 of them prisoners, and the staff officer Gaudi at 12,000 to 13,000, including 3,000 prisoners; Archenholz gives 10,000 killed and wounded and 4,000 prisoners. For the Austrians, Tempelhof counted over 20,000, including 8,000 prisoners, while Daun's own report admitted about 11,000.27
Later counts from the Prussian records put Frederick's loss higher still, at about 16,700 men, a figure given both by the Kronoskaf study, after the historian Curt Jany, and by the Berlin coin cabinet's catalogue. Some modern estimates go up to about 24,000 to 25,000. Austrian losses, prisoners included, came to just under 16,000. By these counts the winner lost more men than the army he beat.28
Both sides took trophies. The Prussians captured some 45 to 49 guns and around 30 flags. The Austrians, for their part, carried off almost 3,000 Prussian prisoners and dozens of Prussian flags.29
Who won the Battle of Torgau?
Prussia won: Frederick held the field, and the Austrians retreated across the Elbe. But the victory was smaller than the king had hoped. Daun's army was not destroyed; it fell back to its old camp at Plauen outside Dresden, and the Prussians could not take the city. Frederick held the rest of Saxony for the winter.30
Historians weigh the result differently. The Kronoskaf study concludes that the bloody success achieved more or less nothing strategically, and Louis P. Towles, writing for EBSCO, that Frederick took a daring gamble and failed to profit from it, though it secured his hold on most of Saxony. Archenholz saw it the other way: with Saxony in hand, Frederick could raise new forces and take the field more powerful than before.31
The Austrian view: a victory lost in the dark
For the Austrians, Torgau was a battle won by daylight and lost at night. Daun's biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie writes that until seven in the evening victory was on the Austrian side, and the Kronoskaf study agrees that the Austrians still held their hard-won position when the northern attacks ended. Daun's courier was soon on his way, and Vienna rejoiced at the news.32
The plan of the battle printed in Vienna by the court printer Trattner tells the Austrian side of the night. It says that the Imperial army stayed on the true field of battle through the night and crossed the Elbe between three and four in the morning in good order, taking with it 49 flags and standards, 14 guns and more than 3,000 prisoners. Kronoskaf, too, has the last troops crossing in the small hours, with 2,954 Prussian prisoners.33
Maria Theresa did not blame her general. When the wounded Daun travelled to Vienna, she drove out some miles to meet him and ask after his health. He kept the supreme command until the end of the war, and in 1762 became president of the Court War Council, the head of Austria's military administration.34
What happened after the Battle of Torgau?
Both armies went into winter quarters. The Russians, who had waited to see whether Daun could hold Saxony, retired into Poland for the winter. Carlyle calls Torgau the last battle of both Daun and Frederick; according to Daun's biographer in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, the two met only in minor actions in 1761 and 1762.35
What saved Prussia was not another battle but a death in St Petersburg. Empress Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762, and her successor, Peter III, made peace with Frederick. Austria fought on alone and then gave up: the Peace of Hubertusburg, signed on 15 February 1763, ended the war and left Silesia with Prussia.36
Torgau sits at the end of a run of great battles for Frederick: Leuthen in 1757, Zorndorf against the Russians in 1758, the disaster at Kunersdorf in 1759, and in 1760 the loss of Fouqué's corps at Landeshut and the victory at Liegnitz (Legnica).37
Where was the Battle of Torgau fought?
The battle was fought just west of Torgau, an old town on the Elbe in northern Saxony, Germany. The main fighting took place on the Süptitz heights, a broad ridge of vineyards between the villages of Süptitz and Zinna, and in the edge of the Dommitzsch forest to the north, with Elsnig and Neiden behind the Prussian attack.38
Torgau is better known abroad for a later meeting: on the Elbe near the town, in April 1945, American and Soviet troops met for the first time at the end of World War II, a story told on our 25 April page.39
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