Battle of Kunersdorf
The Battle of Kunersdorf was fought on 12 August 1759. It was part of the Third Silesian War and the wider Seven Years’ War. An Allied army commanded by Pyotr Saltykov and Ernst Gideon von Laudon defeated Frederick the Great’s army of 50,900 Prussians.
About Battle of Kunersdorf in brief
The Battle of Kunersdorf was fought on 12 August 1759. It was part of the Third Silesian War and the wider Seven Years’ War. An Allied army commanded by Pyotr Saltykov and Ernst Gideon von Laudon that included 41,000 Russians and 18,500 Austrians defeated Frederick the Great’s army of 50,900 Prussians. This was the only time in the Seven years’ War that the Prussian Army, under Frederick’s direct command, disintegrated into an undisciplined mass. With this loss, Berlin, only 80 kilometers away, lay open to assault by the Russians and Austrians. This represented the penultimate success of the Russian Empire under Elizabeth of Russia and was arguably Frederick’s worst defeat. The battle involved over 100,000 men and was won by the Allies by a margin of over 50,000. The outcome of the battle was a turning point in the course of the war. By the end of 1757, Prussia had achieved spectacular victories at Rossbach and Leuthen and reconquered parts of Silesia that had fallen to Austria. In April 1758 Prussia and Britain concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention in which the British committed an annual subsidy of £670,000 to Prussia. The treaty drew in not only the British king’s territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his and Frederick’s relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel.
This series of political maneuvers became known as the Diplomatic Revolution. By 1758, Frederick was increasingly concerned by the Russian advance from the east and marched with it to counter it. Just before the battle, he was forced to withdraw across the Rhine to avoid an entirely nightmarish scenario: Russia, Sweden, Russia and Austria, all of which wanted to carve out a piece of Prussia for themselves, could lose Silesias to Austria, Pomerania to Sweden, and Magdebania to Russia. The Prussian general general, Ferdinand of Brunswick, evicted the French from Hanover and Westphalia and re-captured the port of Emden in March 1758; he crossed theRhine with his own forces, causing France’s victory over the French in Emden to cause alarm in France. In 1759, Britain also dispatched 7,000–9,000 troops to reinforce the army of Frederick’s brother-in-law, Duke Ferdinand of. Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Ferdinand kept the French occupied, and his successful maneuvering of Düseldorf, required him to contend with the larger French forces across the River Rhine. The French occupied the French and occupied the German city of Dusseldorf, forcing Ferdinand to withdraw. In March 1760, the French won the Battle of Dessau and occupied East Prussia, forcing him to withdraw from the French side of the river.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Kunersdorf published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
