An Odd Battlefield Walk: The Berlin Raids of 1757 and 1760

Dear Readers,

A battlefield walk, or prepared visit to any historic place, is one of the delights of the those who are alive to a sense of the past. Many organizations have their own term for this concept. Militaries call them, "staff rides," American Civil War reenactors have their own, less savory term.  After my work at the archive yesterday, I conducted a battlefield walk in Berlin. It is possible to do many of these walks in Berlin, but rather than focus on the Second World War, I examined the ground marked by Austrian and Russian raids on Berlin during the Seven Years' War.

Battlefield walks in urban environments are the most difficult and least rewarding type of staff ride. The ground has changed and the spaces are often crowded, noisy and distracting. But, if I wanted something easy, I shouldn't have chosen the mid-eighteenth century as a focus for my studies. If you are hazy regarding the Seven Years' War, you can pop over to this website for a quick refresher.  For the purposes of our discussion today, you only need to know that Berlin, the capital city of the Prussian state, was being threatened by the Austrian and Russian armies. Before embarking on the battlefield, let's discuss the city of Berlin in the eighteenth century for a moment. The map above is from 1789, while the map below is from just before the Seven Years' War in 1748.

You can see the outline of the city. The city center contained crumbling defenses that had not been repaired since 1740. A small wall, more for taxation than defense, surrounded the entirety of the city. The only real fortress in the area was outside the city itself, slightly northwest in Spandau. In times of crisis, the royal family would flee to Spandau, rather than stay in the city. The customs wall, as it was called, can be seen outlining the city on both maps. The southern side of the city contained extensive pastures and this open land was also enclosed by the customs wall. You can see that feature on the southern side of the city in both maps. Our story today primarily takes place in that open land, and around three gates on the southern side of the customs wall: the Halle Gate (Hallesches Tor), the Cotbuss Gate (Kotbusser Tor) and the Silesian Gate (Schlesisches Tor). It is possible to (roughly) retrace the line of the customs wall, by following the U1 or U3 Ubahn lines traveling to or from the Warschauer Straße Ubahnhof. While the line does not follow the course of the customs wall exactly, and while the stations are not exactly on the site of the gates, it is possible to quickly move to the approximate locations of these former gates. The map below shows the 1757 raid of the city.

Grosser Generalstab Map

In 1757, Austrian FML Andreas Hadik chose to approach the city from the southeastern side, in order to cover the relatively small size of his force.  Hadik had perhaps 7,000 men with which to confront the Berlin garrison of roughly 4,000. Moreover, many of Hadik's troops had been detached, and he knew that Prussian reinforcements were quickly approaching from various quarters. On 11am on the 16th of October, 1757, Hadik began offensive operations against the city.

Looking southeast towards the initial Austrian positions. 

The commander of the Berlin Garrison, Lt. General Rochow, upon recovering from his initial shock, quickly deployed troops to the southern city gates. Around 500 men of the Leon Fusiliers were in the vicinity of the Silesian Gate when Hadik began his attack. Major Tesmar and six companies of the 7th Garrison regiment were dispatched to the Silesian Gate shortly before Hadik began firing towards the defenses with three-pounders.[1] The Austrian gunner Georg Joseph Thun managed to lower the drawbridge across the Spree, by damaging one of the chains suspending it, which precipitated an attack by two companies of Austrian Grenadiers. The troops rushed from the southwest side of the Spree across the now passable bridge towards the Stralauer Tor on the far side, scattering the opposition.

The modern far side of the Spree, and bridge towards the Stralauer Tor. 

Hadik deployed more artillery, and his six-pounders smashed the Silesian Gate itself, which permitted around 1,400  Austrian troops to make their way inside the city.

Looking northwest towards Berlin. 

Although most of the formerly open land has been built up, there are a few parks which give a better sense of the space confronting Hadik and his troops. Hadik's troops moved inside the wall to the northwest, and began to notice Prussian reinforcements approaching. Major Tesmar and the six companies of Garrison Regiment 7 wheeled to anchor their right flank on the customs wall, and began to move towards the Austrians pouring through the Silesian gate.[2] The situation can be seen below.

A detail showing the combat at this point. 

A modern version of the view from the perspective of the Prussian reinforcements,
under Major von Tesmar

Hadik used the relative openness of the terrain to outflank and charge the Prussian troops. The six companies were charged from the front by 700 hundred cavalry, while attacked in the flank by an indeterminate number of Croats. The Prussians immediately opened a 'heavy fire' on these approaching forces, but numbers and combat experience took their toll, and the Austrians quickly routed the Prussian troops in the ensuing melee.

The view northeast between the Silesian and Cotbuss Gates 

Having failed to stop the Austrians, Lt. General Rochow retreated with the remainder of his forces towards Zitadelle Spandau. Hadik had too little time to effectively disable the Prussian capital and made some minor demands which were granted before he withdrew. The Austrians were on the road southwards by 10pm, having extracted 14 carriages of currency from Berlin. According to legend, Hadik also demanded 20 pairs of gloves for Maria Theresa. 

The interior of Charlottenburg Palace was badly damaged during the 1760 raid

The Prussian capital would come under attack again in 1760, when forces under Austrian FM Lacy and Russian General Chernyshev concentrated on the city in October of 1760. As opposed to the previous raid, major forces were involved, and by the 7th of October, perhaps 15,000 Prussians faced over 30,000 Austro-Russian allies around the city. Prussian General Johann von Hülsen defended the south approaches to the city against the Austrians, while Prinz Eugen von Württemberg guarded northeastern side against Russian troops. Seeing that the allies possessed almost double their numbers, the Prussian commanders decided to avoid a Maxen-like debacle and withdraw their forces. In essence, to Hülsen and Württemberg, the army was more important than the capital. 

Hülsen's view looking south from the Halle Gate
 towards Austrian positions near Tempelhof

Russian General Totleben had been in negotiations with the commandant of Berlin, the venerable Prussian Lt. General Rochow. Among the generals of the eighteenth century, Rochow possesses the infamous distinction of having lost his prince's capital twice. Rochow and Totleben concluded terms without consulting the Austrian commander Lacy, who was furious. Totleben was a man with a reputation for nepotism and kleptomania, and personally profited a great deal from his military career. 

The courtyard behind the Halle Gate, by which Lacy and the Austrians entered.

The Zeughaus, or armory, which now houses the German History Museum,
was heavily damaged.

Lacy, as a result, did little to stop his troops from looting the city, in violation of Totleben's agreement. The Russians targeted their fury on state-owned buildings, while the few Austrians who managed to get into the city before the agreement was ratified destroyed whatever property they could. Eventually, Russian troops ostensibly guarding the city (for their own, sanctioned, looting) fired on Austrian looters to force them to desist. By the 11th of October, word had reached the capital that the Prussian main army was on the move. The Austrian and Russian forces left a badly damaged Prussian capital and rejoined their main armies. 

Both raids on Berlin had the effect of badly slightly weakening the Prussian war economy, and causing Frederick to lose face before an international audience. However, despite the paintings lost and treasure stolen, losing Berlin did not prevent the Prussians from continuing the war effort. Indeed, the raids on Berlin were less strategically significant than losing a Silesian fortress such as Glatz or Schweidnitz. If you seek to walk the Berlin raids, print off a large period map, and bring both a readable secondary account of the action, as well as print-offs of the relevant articles on Kronoskaf. All three are invaluable in orienting you to the actions which occurred. 

If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for Reading,

Alex Burns 

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[1]Duffy, By Force of Arms, 69.
[2] Ibid, 70. Hadik claims that nearly all the Prussians were taken prisoner, and only six colors were captured. 

Seniority and Organisation in the French Infantry of the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Interpretive Staff portray French Troops in North America

Today, we have an excellent guest post by author and historian William Raffle.[1]
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Dear Reader,

In this post I want to bring your attention to the composition of a typical French Battalion and its intricacies and idiosyncrasies. Through translating a number of sources on this period, I have found it interesting to see how rank and seniority was embedded within almost all aspects of the French army even in attempts with attempts to make the army more efficient.

When tensions began to rise between Britain and France in North America precipitating the Seven Years’ War, major efforts to codify the French army of Louis XV were taking place. An ‘ordonnance’ was issued in 1754 which laid out new regulations for French and foreign infantry battalions to bring them into ‘exact conformity’.[3] At this time a French battalion consisted of twelve companies of fusiliers (A ‘fusil’ is the French name for a flintlock musket, ‘mousquet’ is the word for the old matchlocks) and one grenadier company. This might give the impression that a French battalion would be particularly sizeable, but a French company was fairly small - under fifty men at full strength.[3] Indeed, the new ordonnance gave instructions that a battalion’s smallest fighting unit was to be two companies together called a peloton or platoon. Platoons were a permanent fixture and its two companies would camp, march and fight together.[4]

The company then was almost irrelevant to the functioning of a battalion so what was the point of it? The answer to this conundrum reveals a characteristic particular to the French army; there were far more officers than other armies. As with most eighteenth-century armies, Captains commanded companies and were responsible for their costs. A Captain’s pay could not keep up with this expense and so the companies became smaller over the course of the eighteenth century. ‘Already in 1740 the French Army was becoming marked in this respect having one officer for every eleven soldiers, as against the Prussian ratio of one to twenty-nine.’[5]

Interpretive staff portray Compagnies Franches de la Marine at Niagara in 1759

The ordonnance of 1754 reflects the obsession with hierarchy and seniority within the army with minutiae verging on the ludicrous and is best illustrated by the arrangement of the flank companies. There were two flank companies per battalion – the grenadier and piquet company. The grenadiers, as most readers will be familiar, were recruited from the best soldiers of other companies. The captain of grenadiers would pay a fusilier captains for their experienced men who were chosen to be grenadiers. The piquet was not a permanent company but were drawn from good soldiers from the fusilier companies when a battalion assembled for the duration of its current operation. (Piquet or picket literally translates as ‘fence’ and should be thought of as meaning ‘guard’ company rather than light company although they did evolve this way.) Even within the ranks, fusiliers and grenadiers were lined up in order of each soldier’s seniority (length of service rather than age). The first rank was made up of the most senior soldiers, the rear rank the next most senior and the middle ranks were made up of the least experienced, presumably to strengthen their resolve by being surrounded by their comrades without easy means to break out of formation! The forty-eight fusiliers of the piquet were arranged so that they would mirror the order of the companies and platoons from which they came and then within order of seniority.[6]

The need to distinguish seniority continued to the position of the platoons when formed in line. It is a commonly written that British grenadiers were always placed on the right flank and indeed, in the French military the right flank was the highest position of honour in respect to the entire army.[7] If a battalion was deployed on the right side of the line, the grenadier company would be placed on the right side of the battalion and the piquet would take the left. However, if the battalion was on the left-hand side of the battle line, the whole arrangement would flip to a mirror image, the grenadiers would be deployed on the left and the piquet on the right. It wasn’t just the flank companies that were rearranged, all of the fusilier platoons in the centre would also be rearranged.[8]

Interpretive Staff portraying French Soldiers

These concerns were not just borne out in a drill manual. Military seniority clashed with social rank and had real ramifications on campaign. A Duke or a Count would not wish to be ordered around by a mere Baron, or, God forbid, a bourgeoisie! A letter from 1758 reveals the herculean task involved with drawing up an order of battle which satisfied quarrelsome officers,

‘M. de Randan wanted to return to the line… M. d’Armentiéres found that it was disagreeable for him to be in the infantry en second under M. de Contades, and desired to be moved to the cavalry. M. de Poyanne wanted to remain with the Carabiniers, that obliged me to move all the officers of the left and right wings and disrupted my plan to put the infantry officers with the infantry and the cavalry officers with the cavalry.’[9] 

The nobility believed that military command was their own preserve. In these circumstances, military professionalization would take a back seat to the preservation of the social order. There was much resistance to a new rank created by the war ministry, that of the aide-major (as the name suggests the role was as a second to the Major, to assist with the logistical running of the regiment). The reason it was not welcome was that it would provide more opportunities for officiers de fortune, or career soldiers from more humble backgrounds, as noblemen tended not to care too much for finding lodgings for their men or organizing bread rations.[10] As the historian Lee Kennet summarised, the French officer corps of this period had little understanding of modern warfare and were highly resistant to change until the humiliation of the Seven Years War forced a reckoning and self-reflection within the army.[11]

In a follow-up post to this I will explore the background of the French army which went to North America and how they relate to these notions of seniority and the way in which soldiers were used in this conflict.

If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for reading!



Will Raffle

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[1]Will Raffle graduated with an MA in Early Modern History in 2018 from the University of Sheffield. He published a translation of a French aide-major, comte Maures des Malartic’s North American journal in 2017, entitled Glories to Useless Heroism.
[2]Instruction sur l’Exercice du Infanterie, (Paris, 1754), p. 1. It was issued in the name of the King by D’Argenson, Louis XV’s minister of war.
[3] Ibid, 14.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years’ War, (North Carolina, 1967), p. 66.
[6] Instruction sur l’Exercice du Infanterie, (Paris, 1754) 18.
[7] Le Blonde, ‘Poste d’Honneur á la Guerre’, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc., eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. University of Chicago: ARTFL Encyclopédie Project (Autumn 2017 Edition), Robert Morrissey and Glenn Roe (eds), http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/. This place would be taken by the most senior regiment although there was an exception in the most senior regiment in France, the Gardes Française, by tradition deployed in the centre of the line.
[8] Instruction sur l’Exercice du Infanterie, (Paris, 1754) 15.
[9] Clermont to Belle-Isle, June 15, 1758, Correspondance militaire (A-1) Vol. 3503, 141. Archives de la Guerre, Vincennes.
[10] Kennett, The French Armies, 60.
[11] Ibid, 68-71.

Lt. Colonel George Stanhope describes the Battle of Culloden

British reenactors represent troops from the '45.

The following is an account of the Battle of Culloden from British Lt. Colonel George Stanhope, as written in a letter to his brother shortly following the battle. This comes from my research this week in Kent.

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Dear Brother                                                    Camp Near Inverness, April 21st, 1746

I return many thanks for the favour of yours of the 10th instant which I received last night, as well as of the 1st instant that I received at Aberdeen the 8th of this month, and should have answered sooner but have been upon the march ever since. At present writing my fingers are almost froze being as cold in camp as in winter. I shall not trouble you with our particular marches, but ours and the Rebel army about 9,000 strong, and they fired the first cannon shot at us about two in the afternoon, which we answered with great success.[1] The army was drawn up in two lines and a reserve, with horse and dragoons on the flanks. The small arms began about a quarter of an hour after the first cannon shot, and for the time it lasted it was the hottest I ever saw. The rebels after having flung away their fire attacked with sword in hand most furiously, and bent their chief effort after Barrel's [Regiment] that was on the left of the front line, who received them warmly and stood as well as men could do till overpowered and were obliged to give ground...[.] The Rebels pursuing them intermixed with sword in hand upon which our being Regiment next to Wolfe's on the left of the second line and both Regiments outflanking Barrel's of the front line had the finest opportunity imaginable which we did not let slip off.

[Our troops] giving the column of Rebels that was about twenty deep and not forty yards distant from our regiment's right the most infernal flanking fire and saved Barrel's by it, and contributed a great deal to the turn of the whole for the rebels were soon after put to flight. When we marched on to pursue them I never saw such dreadful slaughter we had made. [The Jacobites] lying thick as they had grounded their arms and our men gave no quarter to them. I reckon two thousand of them killed in the field [and by] besides in the pursuit by the horse and dragoons with a great many of their chiefs and upward of a thousand prisoners...

It was a glorious victory and I believe the cheapest that was ever gained our whole loss being under three hundred, chiefly Barrel's with upwards of a hundred killed or wounded, with Robert Kerr, a Captain killed, and their Lt. Colonel Rich much cut in the head, his left hand cut off with one stroke, and his other arm so cut that it is doubtful they can save it, some other [junior] officers killed or wounded. The whole army behaved with the utmost resolution, and our regiment with little loss as well as any.

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If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for Reading,



Alex Burns





[1] Modern estimates place the Jacobites closer to between 7,000 and 8,000 men, and indicate that the battle began around 12:30 to 12:45pm. It is possible that Stanhope's pocket watch was running behind.

Eighteenth-Century Items in Irish Museums

Detail from "The Dublin Volunteers on College Green", 1779

Dear Reader,

As many of you are aware, I am traveling for archival research this summer, in order to write my dissertation. Along the way, I've seen a few items which might interest you all. These are some of the interesting eighteenth-century military items in Dublin. The artwork is from the National Gallery of Ireland, while the material items come from the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks.

Detail from, "Mrs Congreve with her Children," 1782

Majority of "Captain William Congreve..." 1782

Detail from, "Captain William Congreve..." 1782

Detail from, "The Dublin Volunteers on College Green", 1779

Detail from, "A view of Dublin from Chapelizod," 1796
(Shows the still extant but badly dilapidated "Magazine Fort")

Detail from, "Captain William Congreve," 1782

Detail from, "A view of Dublin from Chapelizod," 1796

Officer's Coat, 101st Regiment of Foot, 1780s

Officer's Coat, 101st Regiment of Foot, 1780s

Coat of the Dublin Volunteers, 1770s

Officer's Coat of the Armagh Militia, 1798

Flag of the Dillon Regiment carried at Fontenoy, 1745

Flag of the Dillon Regiment carried at Fontenoy, 1745

French Ship's Boat lost in Ireland, 18th century

If you enjoyed this post, or any of our other posts, please consider liking us on facebook,  or following us on twitter. Finally, we are dedicated to keeping Kabinettskriege ad-free. In order to assist with this, please consider supporting us via the donate button in the upper right-hand corner of the page. As always:

Thanks for Reading,



Alex Burns