马克森战役

The Battle of Maxen (20 November 1759) was a battle at Maxen, in the Electorate of Saxony during the Third Silesian War (part of the Seven Years' War). It resulted in surrender of a Prussian corps.

The Prussian corps of 14,000 men, commanded by Friedrich August von Finck (one of Frederick the Great's generals), was sent to threaten lines of communication between the Austrian army at Dresden and Bohemia. Field Marshal Count Daun attacked and defeated Finck's isolated corps on 20 November 1759 with his army of 40,000 men. The next day (21 November) Finck decided to surrender.

Background

After the victories obtained in previous years, 1759 saw a succession of serious failures for the forces of the Kingdom of Prussia, engaged in a relentless struggle against a vast coalition of enemies including the Habsburg monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of France, the Russian Empire and Sweden. Due to the wear and tear of his forces, King Frederick II of Prussia had had to renounce the strategy, by now becoming habitual, of anticipating the movements of his opponents by launching offensives in the direction of the territories occupied by the enemy to instead take a more defensive conduct, aimed at in particular to prevent the gathering into a single mass of the Austrian and Russian armies; the monarch's action had not had a positive outcome: defeat of the Prussian army of General Carl Heinrich von Wedel in the Battle of Kay on 23 July 1759, the Russian forces of General Pyotr Saltykov had reunited with the Austrian units of Marshal Ernst Gideon von Laudon in Silesia and the following 12 August had inflicted a catastrophic defeat on Frederick II himself in the Battle of Kunersdorf.

Battle

On 19 November Finck's forces amounted to about 14,000 men, had reached the village of Maxen, located in a small valley of the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge); The forces of Daun, on the other hand, had reached, protected by the fog, the town of Dippoldiswalde south-west of Maxen, with other Austrian troops under General Anton Joseph von Brentano-Cimaroli attested further north between Wittgendorf and Tronitz and some departments of the Imperial Reichsarmee guarding Dohna to the northeast. While Daun had his troops, numbering about 32,000 men, camp for the night, Finck stood in a defensive position in the hills around Maxen.

On the morning of 20 November, the Austrians from Daun set off from Dippoldiswalde divided into four columns heading towards Maxen, while the forces of Brentano also moved south to converge on the town; the ground, frozen and covered by a first splash of snow, made it difficult for the cavalry and artillery to move around. Daun's vanguard encountered the first Prussian pickets near the village of Rheinhadrtsgrimma, who, at Finck's instructions, withdrew from the village; the Austrian grenadiers then climbed the hills behind the town, allowing their artillery to take up a position to beat the left side of the Prussian line.……

Consequences

Finck's entire Prussian force was lost in the battle, leaving 3,000 dead and wounded on the ground as well as 11,000 prisoners of war; the booty fallen into the hands of the Austrians also included 71 artillery pieces, 96 flags and 44 ammunition wagons. The success cost Daun's forces only 934 casualties including dead and wounded. The defeat at Maxen was another blow to the decimated ranks of the Prussian army, and infuriated Frederick to such an extent that General Finck was court-martialed and sentenced to two years in prison after the war. However, Daun decided not to exploit the success in the slightest to attempt offensive maneuvers and retired to his winter quarters near Dresden, marking the conclusion of the war operations for 1759.