Battle of Nachod

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Battle of Nachod
Part of: German War
Relief on the Berlin Victory Column, by Moritz Schulz
Relief on the Berlin Victory Column, by Moritz Schulz
date June 27, 1866
place Nachod , Bohemia
output Victory of the Prussians
Parties to the conflict

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Prussia

Austrian EmpireEmpire of Austria Austria

Commander

Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia Karl von Steinmetz

Austrian EmpireEmpire of Austria Wilhelm von Ramming

Troop strength
27,000 men unknown
losses

62 officers, 1,060 soldiers dead, wounded or missing

232 officers, 5,487 soldiers dead, wounded, missing or captured, including around 3,100 prisoners

Chronological sequence of military conflicts in the
German War and
3rd Italian War of Independence (both 1866)

The Battle of Nachod on June 27, 1866 was the first major battle in the German War between Prussia and Austria . It ended in a Prussian victory.

course

The advance of the Prussian 2nd Army on Austria took place from Silesia over the mountain passes of the Giant Mountains and through the county of Glatz . The V Army Corps ( 9th and 10th Divisions ) under the command of General of the Infantry Karl Friedrich von Steinmetz marched from Glatz via Reinerz , the Hummel Pass , Lewin and Gellenau to the state border in Schlaney . Here the vanguard of Major General von Löwenfeld crossed the border into Bohemia on June 26th at 5:00 p.m. The Běloves border crossing was guarded by only a few soldiers from the Austrian army, who withdrew after a small battle.

Memorial on Vysokov Hill to those who died in the Battle of Nachod

The Prussian avant-garde was able to take the town and castle of Nachod without major resistance and on June 27 at 6:00 a.m. occupied the strategically important chain of hills at the Branka Pass between Staré Město and Václavice , which runs parallel to the road from Neustadt ad Mettau to Vysokov pulls. At this time 28,400 men of General von Steinmetz were still about 12 km away in the area of ​​Glatzer.

The VI. Corps of the Austrian general Wilhelm von Ramming marched from Opotschno ( Opočno ) via Neustadt a. d. Mettau in the area between Bohemia Skalitz ( Česká Skalice ) and Vysokov. The corps consisted of four brigades, which were commanded by Colonel Georg von Waldstätten , Major General Moritz Hertweck , Major General Ferdinand von Rosenzweig and Colonel Johann Jonák . The brigades reached the area where the battle was to take place between 8.30 and 11.00 a.m.

Herweck, whose brigade formed the Austrian vanguard, led them into the Šonov and Václavice area to attack the enemy from the flank. He succeeded in taking the church and the cemetery of Václavice and repelling the fire attack by the Prussians. The Austrian hunter battalion then holed up in the church and at the cemetery, where it was able to hold out until the Jonák Brigade approached around 10.30 a.m. The Prussians fled into the nearby forest and attacked the enemy who had good cover behind the cemetery wall.

The attack by the Jonák Brigade was aimed primarily at the Prussian soldiers in the forest, from which the Austrians who followed were threatened. With the help of the Rosenzweig Brigade, which marched on from the direction of Provodov , it was possible to push the Prussians back to the Branka height. Just in this phase, in which more Prussian troops reached the battlefield, the attack by the Austrians subsided. Around this time the Waldstätten brigade marched from Böhmisch Skalitz via Kleny to Vysokov.

On the plain between Václavice and Vysokov around 11.00 a.m. there was a big and bloody clash between the Austrian artillery , which was supported by the cavalry of Field Marshal Lieutenant Solms , and the brigade of the Prussian Major General Karl Heinrich von Wnuck , which lasted about 35 minutes. Around 12.30 p.m. General Ramming was of the opinion that the battle had been won and sent a message to this effect to Feldzeugmeister Ludwig von Benedek in Josefstadt . The situation changed dramatically, however, after the Prussians were reinforced by newly arrived units and the Austrians' superiority diminished. They were pushed back to the Provodov – Šonov line. Around 2 p.m. Waldstätten ordered another attack on Vysokov. Ramming himself stopped the last attempt by the Rosenzweig Brigade to avert the defeat around 4:00 p.m. and informed Feldzeugmeister von Benedek about the defeat of that day.

In the late afternoon, Ramming withdrew to the west. General Steinmetz followed the next day and met the VIII Corps under Archduke Leopold at Skalitz .

memory

In Berlin-Wilmersdorf , on the northern edge of a residential area from 1870 , in which a number of other streets and squares were named after the events of the war against Austria, a Nachodstrasse was dedicated in 1889.

literature

  • Lydia Baštecká, Ivana Ebelová u. a .: Náchod. Nakl. Lidové noviny, Prague, 2004, ISBN 80-7106-674-5 .
  • Wilhelm Mader: Chronicle of the city Lewin. Lewin 1868.
  • Slavomir Ravik: Tam u Králového Hradce. Nakl. Regia, Knižní Klub, Prague 2001, ISBN 80-242-0584-X .
  • Heinz Helmert, Hans-Jürgen Usczeck: Prussian-German wars from 1864 to 1871. Military course. 6th revised edition. Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-327-00222-3 .
  • At the edge of the Nachoder wood . In: The Gazebo . Issue 30, 1866, pp. 468–471 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - illustrated).
  • The first to capture the standard. From a Prussian equestrian officer . In: The Gazebo . Volume 34, 1866, pp. 524-526 ( full text [ Wikisource ] - illustrated).

Web links

Commons : Battle of Náchod  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christopher Clark : Prussia: rise and fall. 1600-1947. Pantheon, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-55060-1 , p. 617.
  2. ↑ Nachodstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )