Schöning maneuver

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The Schöning maneuver , also known as the Schönsen maneuver, is a term deriving from the military jargon of the Prussian officer corps for an early troop withdrawal in a promising strategic situation, which goes back to Hans Adam von Schöning , who on February 12, 1679, was in pursuit without orders of the Swedish troops stopped shortly before Riga and thus ended the hunt across the Curonian Lagoon . Although Schöning justified this withdrawal with the expected high losses due to illness and insufficient supply and the bad weather conditions, his actions in the Prussian military were regarded as an expression of unsoldatic cowardice before the enemy. Since the repulsion of the Swedes had no decisive influence on the balance of power between Prussia and Sweden, Schöning was not demoted .

literature

  • Curt Jany : History of the Prussian Army - From the 15th Century to 1914. Vol. 1, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1967, p. 268ff.
  • Paul Douglas Lockhart: Sweden in the seventeenth century. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke et al. a. 2004 ISBN 0-333-73157-3 .
  • Maren Lorenz : The wheel of violence. Military and civilian population in Northern Germany after the Thirty Years War (1650–1700). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-11606-4 .