12 August — during the Seven Years’ War, near the village of Kunersdorf in Silesia (now Kunice in western Poland), a battle took place in which the Russian-Austrian troops under the command of General-in-Chief Pyotr Saltykov crushed the Prussian army of Frederick II.
The Russian army began the 1759 campaign in Poznań; on 19 May, General-in-Chief Pyotr Saltykov was appointed its commander-in-chief. On 7 July, the 40,000-strong Russian army marched west to the Oder River, toward the city of Crossen, intending to link up there with the Austrian forces.
The new commander-in-chief’s debut was successful: on 23 July, in the Battle of Paltzig (Kay), he utterly defeated the 28,000-strong corps of the Prussian General Karl von Wedel. On 3 August, the allies met in Frankfurt an der Oder, which had been occupied by Russian troops three days earlier.
At that time, the Prussian king, with an army of 48,000 men and 200 guns, was moving to meet the enemy from the south. On 10 August, he crossed to the right bank of the Oder and took up a position east of the village of Kunersdorf.
The allied forces were deployed on three commanding heights, separated from one another by ravines and a marshy lowland. Saltykov, who led the allied troops, intended to force the Prussian army to attack fortified positions, wear it down, and then launch a general offensive.
However, Frederick upset these plans—early on the morning of 12 August, his army threw bridges across the Oder and crossed to the other bank. Work on fortifying the Russian positions had not yet begun when it became clear that battle was inevitable.
After an artillery preparation, the Prussian troops captured the village along with the Russian batteries, pushing back the entire left flank of the allies. Five thousand soldiers were taken prisoner. Frederick decided that the battle had been won and even sent couriers to Berlin with the joyful news.
Confident in his military genius and in the superiority of his soldiers, the Prussian king decided not to leave the battlefield and to finish off the allies—by evening the fighting resumed. It flared up again at the Jewish cemetery over an abandoned Russian battery.
Exhausted by a day of fighting, the Prussian infantry still could not take the steep Spitzberg height, to which Saltykov had brought up reserves, and the best cavalry in Europe, the Prussian cavalry, could not deploy because of the terrain.
During the attack, several generals were wounded, and the king himself narrowly escaped death. Frederick committed his last reserve—the Leib cuirassiers—who were routed by the Chuguev Cossacks. The commander of the Leib cuirassiers was taken prisoner.
Realizing that the enemy’s reserves were spent, Saltykov gave the order for a general advance by all remaining allied units under his command. Frederick’s troops, overturned by the enemy, fled toward the river.
At the bridges a terrible crush formed, in which many Prussians were killed, and many drowned in the river. The approaching Russian and Austrian regiments completed the destruction of the Prussian army.
The rout was total—of Frederick’s 48,000-man army, only about 3,000 men remained in the ranks, with whom he hastily retreated toward his capital. In addition, the allies recovered all their artillery and freed all prisoners. After the battle, Saltykov was brought the Prussian king’s hat, which is now preserved as a relic in the Suvorov Museum in Saint Petersburg.
As a result of the victory, the road for an allied advance on Berlin was opened. Prussia found itself on the brink of catastrophe. Frederick sent a letter to Berlin describing the situation. Later, a myth arose about a phrase allegedly present in the letter: “All is lost—save the court and the archives!”
However, no pursuit was organized. This gave Frederick the opportunity to assemble a force and prepare for the defense of Berlin. The puzzling indecision of the allies—who after Kunersdorf could easily have ended the war in victory—became fixed in German historiography under the name “the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.”