Battle of Königgrätz

Two armies in front, one on the flank

Near Sadowa and Königgrätz in Bohemia on 3 July 1866, Prussia's First Army and Army of the Elbe attacked Ludwig von Benedek's Austrian and Saxon army frontally, while the Prussian Second Army approached the Austrian right flank.

Helmuth von Moltke had ordered that concentration the previous evening, after patrols located what appeared to be Benedek's main army and he concluded that First Army could not defeat it alone.

The Austrian State Archives put more than 400,000 soldiers on a field roughly 10 km wide and 5 km deep.

The Swiepwald, and a staggered arrival

Around midday the Prussian troops in the Swiepwald were close to defeat, but elements of the Second Army intervened, and its flanking advance eventually broke the Austrian position.

The needle gun mattered. Crediting the victory to that weapon alone, though, obscures the convergence of separate Prussian armies on the Austrian flank — and a professional campaign study describes Austrian artillery fire as generally superior.

The beaten army got away

Benedek withdrew southeast. Austrian artillery and cavalry — not Prussian — covered the retreat across the Elbe, and the Prussians then lost contact with the withdrawing army for three days.

The Deutsches Historisches Museum gives rounded losses of about 2,000 Prussian dead and about 7,000 wounded or captured, against roughly 43,000 Austrian casualties including nearly 6,000 dead, and about 1,500 Saxon.

The result was decisive, but the war did not end on the battlefield: the preliminary peace followed on 26 July.