"The Battle of Kolin, 18th June 1757." Topic

"Frederick the Great chastising his troops for running away at the battle of Kolin and the reply he received from one of his grenadiers.

In the summer of 1756 Austria and France had joined in an alliance against Frederick the Great of Prussia. The Prussian King writing to his sister stated, ‘I am in a position of a traveller who sees himself surrounded by a bunch of rouges, who are planning to murder him and divide the spoils among themselves….I am waiting for a reply from the Queen of Hungary which will decide whether there is to be peace or war.'1

Frederick realised that if he was not to be overwhelmed by the gathering masses set against him he must strike first. Therefore by attacking Saxony he would not only gain space and a central base of operations, but also knock out one of Austria's allies. On the 29th August 1756 Frederick invaded Saxony with an army of 62,000 men. The Saxon army of some 16,000 men and eighty cannon fell back inside the fortified camp at Pirna, abandoning Dresden, and were subsequently blockaded by the Prussians. However, the Saxon army did not have much in the way of supplies to sustain them for a prolonged period. Soon news began to arrive that the Austrian army under Field Marshal von Browne was in northern Bohemia and Frederick moved to join forces with Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick who commanded the right wing of his army there, leaving a containing force to watch the Saxons. On 1st October the battle of Lobositz was fought and although the Prussians held the field they had not managed to inflict any serious damage on the Austrian army, in fact, although the casualties on each side were about equal, 2,900 Austrian and 3,000 Prussian, the latter had suffered more men killed than the former and in the days following the battle the Prussians also lost many hundreds of men through desertion…"
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