On 29 October one war neared its end and another began. In 1762 Prince Henry of Prussia stormed the wooded heights outside Freiberg in Saxony and in about three hours broke the Austrian and Imperial army facing him, in what Thomas Carlyle called the last battle of the Seven Years' War. In 1956 Israeli paratroopers dropped near the Mitla Pass in Sinai. It was the opening move of a war that Israel, Britain and France had planned in secret at Sèvres to reverse Egypt's nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, and within weeks pressure from Washington, Moscow and the United Nations forced all three to back down.
Freiberg, 1762: Prince Henry strikes back
By the autumn of 1762 Saxony was one of the last active fronts of the Seven Years' War. Prince Henry of Prussia, Frederick the Great's brother, had held the country around Freiberg until mid-October, when the Austrians and the army of the Holy Roman Empire, the Reichsarmee, pressed forward in overwhelming force and pushed him out. Frederick was sending him reinforcements from Silesia, but the enemy was expecting reinforcements of its own, and Henry resolved to strike first. The allied army was commanded by Prince Stolberg. Prussian scouting, in Kronoskaf's account, showed that its left wing was not anchored on any strong position.1
Three hours in the Spittelwald
Henry marched in the night of 28 to 29 October and attacked at daybreak. In his own words, he made "two true attacks, and two false". The defenders held entrenchments and barricades of felled trees west and southwest of the town, with a wood, the Spittelwald, in the middle of their line. While the Prussian right swung around the allied left toward the height of St. Michael, other columns attacked the wood head-on.2
The Spittelwald saw the hardest fighting of the day. Kronoskaf's reconstruction has the Prussians storming the barricades, being thrown back to the edge of the wood and holding on only when two more battalions came up and artillery was brought closer. On the right, Lieutenant-General von Seydlitz led the grenadiers against the knoll of Drei Kreuzen; Henry wrote that "in a place where the Cavalry could not act, he put himself at the head of the Infantry". According to Kronoskaf, a charge by Belling's hussars then broke two Hungarian infantry regiments, Esterházy and Gyulay, and the allied line came apart. The key to a map engraved around 1789 says the battle began at first light and ended around midday, and Henry counted "three hours in fire".3
"Twenty years younger": the news reaches the king
That day Henry wrote to his brother: "It is a happiness for me to send you the agreeable news, That your Army has this day gained a considerable advantage over the combined Austrian and Reichs Army." He thought he had taken "above 4,000" prisoners, put his own losses at 2,000 to 3,000 and added that "not one battalion yielded ground", and that Generals Belling and Kleist "did their very best". Frederick replied from Löwenberg on 2 November that the letter had made him twenty years younger: "yesterday I was sixty, to-day hardly eighteen." To Henry alone, he wrote, would belong "the honor of having given the final stroke to Austrian Obstinacy". Both letters are quoted in Thomas Carlyle's 19th-century translation.4
The cost at Freiberg, and the peace
Kronoskaf puts the armies at about 23,000 Prussians against about 31,000 allies, while Carlyle, working from Henry's correspondence, gave Henry "well under 30,000" against about 40,000. Kronoskaf gives allied losses as about 3,000 killed or wounded and 4,500 taken prisoner, against about 1,500 Prussians, and Prussian trophies of 28 guns and 9 colors; Henry's own first estimate of his losses, quoted above, was higher.5
On 15 February 1763 Prussia, Austria and Saxony signed the Peace of Hubertusburg, which ended the war. The historian Johannes Burkhardt notes that Austria never won back Silesia, the province Frederick had conquered.6
Suez, 1956: a war agreed at Sèvres
On 26 July 1956 Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, a British and French enterprise. In late October Israeli, French and British representatives met in secret at Sèvres, near Paris, and on 24 October David Ben-Gurion, the French foreign minister Christian Pineau and the British official Patrick Dean signed a record of what they had agreed.7
The plan was simple. Israel would invade Sinai on 29 October. Britain and France would then demand that both sides withdraw ten miles from the canal and, if Egypt refused, open military operations early on 31 October. Israel would also take the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and the islands of Tiran and Sanafir, and its own orders named the occupation of the Straits of Tiran as a goal. Britain's foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, later denied any collusion and called the document a mere record of discussion. Israel's defense archive is blunter about the Anglo-French aim: "to take control of the Canal Zone and to void its nationalization by Egypt".8
Mitla, 29 October: the opening jump
Israel's final orders of 28 October set three goals: threaten the canal by seizing objectives near it, occupy the Straits of Tiran and destroy the Egyptian military presence in northern Sinai. The war opened that evening, 29 October, when Battalion 890 under Raphael Eitan parachuted onto the eastern approaches of the Mitla Pass. According to Time's review of Dayan's campaign diary, Dayan dropped 395 paratroopers from 16 Dakotas, 45 miles from Suez.9
Armored columns drove into Sinai behind them, along three axes: in the north from the Gaza Strip toward El Qantara, in the center through Abu Ageila toward Ismailia, and in the south through Mitla. Another force advanced south toward Sharm el-Sheikh, and there was sharp fighting at Thamad, Abu Ageila and Sharm el-Sheikh. By 5 November, Lance Janda writes, the Israelis were near the canal. In Dayan's account the first 100 hours decided the war.10
Ultimatum, bombs and paratroopers
Britain and France issued their ultimatum as planned. Nasser rejected it, and on 31 October British and French aircraft began bombing Egyptian airfields; within two days, the bpb notes, the Egyptian air force had been almost wiped out. Egypt began sinking ships to block the canal, as air reconnaissance showed the allied commander, General Sir Charles Keightley, in the first days of November.11
At 08:20 GMT on 5 November, Keightley's despatch records, about 600 men of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, and their brigade headquarters jumped onto Gamil airfield west of Port Said, and 500 French paratroopers dropped south of the town; the French also took Port Fuad. The seaborne assault began early the next morning (at 4.30 a.m., according to the National Army Museum; Keightley puts the first commandos ashore at 04:50 GMT), and Royal Marine commandos were flown ashore by helicopter, the first time such a tactic had been used. The ceasefire took effect at midnight on 6 to 7 November, by which time the leading troops had reached El Cap, 23 miles south of Port Said.12
Washington, Moscow and the first UN peacekeepers
The United States voted for UN resolutions condemning the invasion and pressed Britain and France to accept a ceasefire. On 2 November the UN General Assembly, meeting in emergency session, called for an end to the fighting. According to the bpb, on 5 November the Soviet government threatened force. Moscow was then crushing the Hungarian revolution, with a full attack launched on 4 November, as told in our article on the Hungarian Revolution.13
On 4 November Canada's foreign minister, Lester Pearson, put a draft resolution for a UN emergency force to the General Assembly, and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld made the idea work. It became the first peacekeeping force in UN history, and its first Colombian, Danish and Norwegian units flew to Egypt on 15 and 16 November. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for it in 1957.14
The cost of Suez, and the reckoning
The casualty counts differ. For Israel, Dayan gave 172 dead, Janda gives 189 killed and 899 wounded, and a table compiled by the Jewish Virtual Library, partly from Israeli government sources, gives 231. Janda estimates about 1,030 Egyptians killed and 4,000 wounded, while the same table lists about 3,000 Egyptian losses. Keightley's despatch gives 16 British killed and 96 wounded and 10 French killed and 33 wounded; the editors of the Naval-History.net edition believe these figures run only to the ceasefire, and the Jewish Virtual Library lists 22 British dead. Keightley admitted that Egyptian losses in Port Said were hard to count, because soldiers who had shed their uniforms could not be told from civilians.15
The United Nations dates the end of the Anglo-French withdrawal to 22 December 1956, while the bpb and CASCON give 23 December. Israel left the Gaza Strip on 6 and 7 March 1957 and the Sharm el-Sheikh area from 8 to 12 March. Egypt took over the running of the canal, which, the National Army Museum notes, reopened to shipping in April 1957, and the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, resigned in January 1957 and was succeeded by Harold Macmillan.16
Also on 29 October
In 1914 the Ottoman fleet, with the German-crewed Goeben and Breslau at its core, raided Russia's Black Sea coast. John Rickard dates the Goeben's attack on Sevastopol to 29 October; the American ambassador in Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, reported raids on Odessa, Sevastopol and Theodosia and blamed the German officers who ran the fleet. Rickard dates Russia's declaration of war to 1 November. The Allied attempt to knock the Ottomans out of the war is told in our article on Gallipoli.17
Also on this day
- 1762: Battle of Freiberg. Near Freiberg in Saxony, Prince Henry of Prussia attacked the entrenched Reichsarmee and its Austrian allies in the last great battle of the Seven Years' War.
- 1956: Suez Crisis. Israel invaded Egypt, and Britain and France soon joined in, seeking to regain the Suez Canal, which President Nasser had nationalized, and to remove him from power.
