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Part 7: Battle of Lobositz

The results were the same as the first charge, but on a larger scale. The Prussian squadrons were raked on their flanks by the hidden Austrian guns and infantry, and counterattacked by the now-reinforced Austrian cavalry. A few Prussian cuirassiers attempted to struggle across the muddy Morellenbach to get at the main Austrian guns but their horses were so blown that they couldn't climb the bank on the far side and were mowed down by the Austrian battalions (now standing up) at the top. In the end, all of Frederick's cavalry were spent and forced to retreat.

As in another of his first battles, Mollwitz, Frederick was convinced at this point that he had lost this one and abandoned the field. In that other battle, too, fifteen years before, it was his cavalry that had let him down. This time he withdrew to the village of Wchinitz behind his front line and left command of the battle to Bevern and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.

For his part, Bevern was not so discouraged. His original seven battalions on Lobositz had shot away all of their ammunition without dislodging the Croats from the vineyards. He grabbed more battalions from the Prussian center and threw them into the fight on the hill. When told by his men, unused to this kind of broken country fighting, that they had run out of ammunition, he was reported to have sneered, "What! Haven't you got bayonets? Skewer the dogs dead!" and led a charge across the slopes. The Austrians and Croats on Lobosch, too, had run out of ammunition themselves and had also been fighting all day. They started to slowly fall back into the town, defending the gates tenaciously. But the Prussian artillery commander, von Moller, ordered his howitzers to set fire to the town and drive the defenders out. Hundreds of Austrian wounded and even captured Prussian wounded in Lobositz were burned alive in the fire before they could all be gotten out.

 
Part 8: Battle of Lobositz

It was now about sunset (17:42 at this time of year at this latitude) and both sides, after having fought all day long, stopped firing. Browne brought all of his surviving right wing safely through Lobositz and over the Morellenbach. Both armies went into bivouac for the night. Browne had lost about 2,900 men during the battle. The Prussians, themselves having lost about the same number, had fully expected to have to resume fighting the next day, this time attacking across the formidable marsh of the Morellen. But during the night Browne, having accomplished his immediate objective of stopping Frederick's momentum, ordered his army to fall back to the prepared lines of Budin.

It wasn't until late that night that the rattled Frederick was convinced by Bevern and Brunswick that he hadn't lost this, his first battle of the war. And when, the next morning, he saw that Browne had pulled out during the night, he was greatly relieved. There was a saying going around the army, comparing these enemies to those they had so easily beaten during the previous war, "These are no longer the same old Austrians."

 
Part 9: Battle of Lobositz

Both sides lost about the same number of men each, about 2,900, which was more severe for the initially smaller Prussian army [9] Frederick, still shaken in the following days, decided his only political option was to proclaim Lobositz as a victory by 18th century rules of combat (since Browne had left the field of battle). However, Browne had done exactly what he had set out to do: stop Frederick at Lobositz and cover his own crossing of the Elbe further upstream to go and rescue the Saxon army at Pirna. Indeed, Frederick, though he sat on the "field of victory", never advanced beyond Lobositz and within two weeks had ordered a general retreat back into Saxony. So, strategically, with his army intact, Bohemia safe, and his way north to the Saxons unhindered, Browne could be thought of as having won a strategic victory at Lobositz.

In the aftermath, Browne did lead his rescue mission north, with a picked force of 8,000 men, down the right (eastern) bank of the Elbe. Though suffering from tuberculosis himself and coughing up blood, Browne drove himself and his men through rain and mountain passes to arrive at his rendezvous point, Königstein, at precisely the date he promised the Saxons, October 11. However, the Saxons had not lived up to their own promise to cross the Elbe at Königstein on that date, and procrastinated. The dissembling Count Bruhl was negotiating with the Prussians for a better deal and kept sending disingenuous pleas for patience to Browne. By the 14th, the Prussians, finally alerted to the presence of the Austrians waiting on the right bank opposite Königstein, had crossed with a blocking force themselves. By then Bruhl and the Saxon King Augustus III, as well as the senior Saxon general staff, surrendered the entire Saxon army to Frederick, and had negotiated some fairly lucrative compensation arrangements for themselves. The Saxon regiments were all incorporated whole into the Prussian army (as IRs 50-59). However, this political-military coup proved short-lived for most of the infantry regiments defected within a year. And the Saxon cavalry regiments took it upon themselves (including Count Bruhl's own chevauleger regiment) to escape and fight intact for the Austrians.

Browne brought his rescue party safely back to his base at Budin, having failed in his mission, but through no fault of his own. By the end of October, the entire Prussian army had retreated out of Bohemia and back across the Elbe to winter in Saxony. So the end of 1756, the first year of the Seven Years' War, ended in a stalemate, but with Austria in a good strategic position for 1757.

 
The Battle of Kursk was a Second World War engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk (450 kilometers or 280 miles south-west of Moscow) in the Soviet Union, during July and August 1943. The battle began with the launch of the German offensive Operation Citadel on 5 July, which had the objective of pinching off the Kursk salient with attacks on the base of the salient from north and south simultaneously. After the German offensive stalled on the northern side of the salient, on 12 July the Soviets commenced their Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation with the launch of Operation Kutuzov against the rear of the German forces on the same side. On the southern side, the Soviets also launched powerful counterattacks the same day, one of which led to a large armored clash, the Battle of Prokhorovka. On 3 August, the Soviets began the second phase of the Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation with the launch of Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev against the German forces on the southern side of the salient.

The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off and enveloping the forces that they anticipated would be in the Kursk salient. Hitler believed that a victory here would reassert German strength and improve his prestige with his allies, whom he thought were considering withdrawing from the war. It was also hoped that large numbers of Soviet prisoners would be captured to be used as slave labor in the German armaments industry. The Soviet government had foreknowledge of the German intentions, provided in part by British intelligence's Tunny intercepts. Aware months in advance that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient, the Soviets built a defense in depth designed to wear down the German armored spearhead. The Germans delayed the offensive while they tried to build up their forces and waited for new weapons, giving the Red Army time to construct a series of deep defensive belts and establish a large reserve force for counter-offensives.

The battle was the final strategic offensive that the Germans were able to launch on the Eastern Front. Because the Allied invasion of Sicily began during the battle, Adolf Hitler was forced to divert troops training in France to meet the Allied threat in the Mediterranean, rather than using them as a strategic reserve for the Eastern Front. Hitler canceled the offensive at Kursk after only a week, in part to divert forces to Italy. Germany's extensive losses of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Soviet Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. The Battle of Kursk was the first time in the Second World War that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defenses and penetrate to its strategic depths. Though the Red Army had succeeded in winter offensives previously, their counter-offensives after the German attack at Kursk were their first successful summer offensives of the war.

 
As the Battle of Stalingrad slowly ground to its conclusion, the Red Army moved to a general offensive in the south, in Operation Little Saturn. By January 1943, a 160 to 300 kilometer wide gap had opened between German Army Group B and Army Group Don, and the advancing Soviet armies threatened to cut off all German forces south of the Don River, including Army Group A operating in the Caucasus. Army Group Center came under significant pressure as well. Kursk was retaken by the Soviets on 8 February 1943, and Rostov on 14 February. The Soviet Bryansk, Western, and newly created Central Fronts prepared for an offensive which envisioned the encirclement of Army Group Centre between Bryansk and Smolensk. By February 1943 the southern sector of the German front was in strategic crisis.

Since December 1942 Field Marshal Erich von Manstein had been strongly requesting "unrestricted operational freedom" to allow him to use his forces in a fluid manner. On 6 February 1943, Manstein met with Hitler at the headquarters in Rastenburg to discuss the proposals he had previously sent. He received an approval from Hitler for a counteroffensive against the Soviet forces advancing in the Donbass region. On 12 February 1943, the remaining German forces were reorganized. To the south, Army Group Don was renamed Army Group South and placed under Manstein's command. Directly to the north, Army Group B was dissolved, with its forces and areas of responsibility divided between Army Group South and Army Group Centre. Manstein inherited responsibility for the massive breach in the German lines. On 18 February, Hitler arrived at Army Group South headquarters at Zaporizhia just hours before the Soviets liberated Kharkov, and had to be hastily evacuated on the 19th.

Once given freedom of action, Manstein intended to utilize his forces to make a series of counterstrokes into the flanks of the Soviet armored formations, with the goal of destroying them while retaking Kharkov and Kursk. The II SS Panzer Corps had arrived from France in January 1943, refitted and up to near full strength. Armored units from the 1st Panzer Army of Army Group A had pulled out of the Caucasus and further strengthened Manstein's forces.

The operation was hastily prepared and did not receive a name. Later known as Third Battle of Kharkov, it commenced on 21 February, as 4th Panzer Army under General Hoth launched a counter-attack. The German forces cut off the Soviet mobile spearheads and continued the drive north, retaking Kharkov on 15 March and Belgorod on 18 March. A Soviet offensive launched on 25 February by the Central Front against Army Group Centre had to be abandoned by 7 March to allow the attacking formations to disengage and redeploy to the south to counter the threat of the advancing German forces under Manstein. Exhaustion of both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army coupled with the loss of mobility due to the onset of the spring rasputitsa resulted in the cessation of operations for both sides by mid-March. The counteroffensive left a Soviet salient extending 250 kilometers from north to south and 160 kilometers from east to west into the German area of control, centered on the city of Kursk.

 
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