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The Opening Moves.
Prussia’s Chief of Staff von Moltke, placed in command on June 2nd 1866, with only the Prussian king to answer to, was well aware of the Austrian lead in mobilization, but he made good use of Prussia’s railway system to mass his troops well forward in an arc extending from Silesia to Saxony, a distance of some 275 miles. When that concentration was complete, the three Prussian armies stood as follows: The Army of the Elbe under General Karl Eberhard Herwarth von Bittenbfeld, approximately 45,000 strong, around Halle and Zeitz on the Saxon border; the First army, 94,000 men commanded by Prince Friedrich Karl, at Torgau and Kottbus; the Second Army, including the Guard Corps, in all some 120,000 men commanded by the crown prince of Prussia, Freidrich Wilhelm, at Landshut and Reichenbach, Silesia.
The Italian war of 1859 had shown the Emperor Franz Josef that he was not the man to take charge of Austrian troops at the front. He therefore chose the popular Feldzeugmeister (Field Marshal) Ludwig August von Benedek, who was considered by many, after his exploits during the Battle of Solferino (1859), to be Austria’s best field commander since Josef Radetzky. The only person who did not share this view was Benedek himself. He knew his limitations and was quite out of his depth fighting a war in Bohemia, far from his old campaign grounds in Italy. Try though Benedek did to decline the post, the emperor was adamant. Benedek reluctantly accepted his fate. Not wishing to be seen as the aggressor in the eyes of Europe, Austria adopted a plan based on a defensive attitude in both diplomatic and military terms. The memorandum for war was therefore prepared by a former chief of the topographical bureau, Brigadier General Gideon Ritter von Krismanic, for no other reason other than he apparently had some knowledge of the geographic defensibility of Bohemia. That supposition not only proved to be quite unfounded but also became something of a joke, since all the maps of the region supplied to the Austrian General Staff were out of date. Kismanic’s plan was based on a defensive position that was centered around the fortified town of Olmutz in Moravia and was intended to protect Vienna. Unfortunately for Austria, the decision to go straight onto the defensive was tantamount to throwing away any initiative they had gained by their advanced mobilization. Even so, the position of the Austrian corps around Olmutz still could have proved favourable under stronger leadership. But Benedek showed he had no idea how to use his central position, unlike a certain Corsican-born general some 60 years before who used such situations so effectively. On June 15th, secondary forces under the Prussian General Vogel von Falckstein cut off the Hanoverian state’s army and isolated Bavaria, effectively knocking two of Austria’s allies out of the war. On the 16th, the Prussian General von Bittenfeld’s Army of the Elbe crossed into Saxony. Upon its approach, the Saxon crown prince, Albrecht, withdrew his army of some 25,000 men across the Iser River, there linking forces with the Austrian I corps under General Eduard Clam-Gallas. Benedek now placed Crown Prince Albrecht in command of the I corps as well his own Saxons, and ordered them to take up a defensive position in front of the town of Gitschin. The Austrian commander in chief would concentrate his forces at Josefstadt and march to their aid. By June 29th, however, no other Austrian troops had arrived, and the Saxon prince had to fight a very heavy engagement against Friedrich Karl, from which he managed to extricate himself with great skill but heavy losses.
Meanwhile, Benedek still believed that the Prussian Second Army was moving northward and was therefore not a problem. After the border battles at Nachod, Trautenau and Eypel, however, the chance to catch Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm’s army as it debouched through the mountain passes only emphasized earlier opportunities Benedek had let slip by. As the official Austrian account of the war says: “If, instead of waiting until the last moment, the IV and VII Corps had been sent off a day or two earlier, and the II Corps, which was nearest to Josefstadt, had led the march instead of bringing up the rear, the concentration round that town could have been effected far more rapidly. Even if a few brigades of infantry had been sent into Bohemia by rail with orders to observe and close the frontier defiles, they could have delayed, even had they been unable to check, the advance of the Prussian Second Army. In doing so, they would have made it possible for the principle Austrian forces to have fallen upon the army of Prince Friedrich Karl and crushed it with superior numbers”. Indeed, at Trautenau, Lieutenant Field Marshal Ludwig Freiherr von Gablenz’s Austrian X Corps attacked the Prussian I Corps with such spirit that it drove the Prussians back across the mountains. However, Gablenz alone could not repeat his success and was in turn defeated at Prausnitz by the Prussian Guard Corps. Only on June 30th did Benedek realize the full error of his dispositions and telegraph his emperor to sue for peace. Franz Josef had no such intention. He told Benedek that he had every confidence in his ability, and that he had sent one of his personal officers to the front to view the situation. The result was that Clam-Gallas was removed from his command for his failure at Gitschin, and Field Marshal Alfred Freiherr von Henikstein, Benedek’s chief of staff, was replaced by General Baumgarten. He did not arrive at army headquarters until the very day of the Battle of Königgräz, a delay confusing the situation still further by giving the Austrian’s two chief’s of staff on the field during the battle. Still, Benedek saw the possibility of a defensive battle being fought on the high ground between the Bistritz and the Elbe rivers. His confidence began to return as he regrouped his army for the decisive battle that was to come.
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