The story of this place
On 5 December 1757 near the Silesian village of Leuthen, Frederick the Great faced an Austrian army nearly twice his 36,000 men. Screening his true intent behind low hills, he swung his whole force against the Austrian left in the manoeuvre he had drilled to perfection — the schräge Schlachtordnung, or oblique order. The Austrian line rolled up and collapsed; by nightfall Frederick had inflicted over 22,000 casualties for a fraction of his own and reconquered Silesia. Napoleon later called Leuthen 'a masterpiece of movements, manoeuvres and resolution' alone enough to immortalise Frederick. The battlefield lies in modern Poland, its village now Lutynia, marked by a memorial to the clash.