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Updated: June 1, 2025
That defeat was the most disgraceful that ever befell the arms of a military nation. The panic was complete, and no body of terrified militia ever fled more rapidly than did the veteran troops of Germany and France on that eventful day. Napoleon, half a century later, said that Rossbach produced a permanent effect on the French military, and on France, and was one of the causes of the Revolution.
This has won for him the sympathy of all Europe, and the love and admiration of even the subjects of his great and powerful foes. In France that France, whose warriors suffered so shameful a defeat at Rossbach, and whose government is filled with rage and thirsty for revenge against this heroic king even in France is Frederick admired and worshipped.
One of his most brilliant triumphs was won over the united French and Imperial armies at Rossbach. The French anticipated an easy victory in 1757, for the army of the allies was vastly superior to that which Frederick William had encamped at Rossbach, a village in Prussian Saxony.
As nothing that tends to elevate the soul is out of place in this volume, we may be permitted to insert one or two of these anecdotes. In 1806, Napoleon was at Potsdam. The Prussians were humbled to the dust, and the outrage of Rossbach had been fearfully avenged.
The Russians occupied East Prussia and penetrated into Brandenburg; in 1759 they captured Berlin. The French, after suffering defeat at Rossbach, directed their energies against Hanover but encountered unexpected resistance at the hands of an army collected by Pitt's gold and commanded by a Prussian general, the prince of Brunswick. Brunswick defeated them and gradually drove them out of Germany.
In this war he was sometimes beaten, as at Kolin; but he gained three memorable victories, one over the French, at Rossbach; the second, over the Austrians, at Luthen; and the third, over the Russians, at Zorndorf, the most bloody of all his battles.
Three years before his death, Bach, who had a son in the service of the King of Prussia, yielded to the urgent invitation of that monarch to go to Berlin. Frederick II., the conqueror of Rossbach, and one of the greatest of modern soldiers, was a passionate lover of literature and art, and it was his pride to collect at his court all the leading lights of European culture.
The king took up his quarters at a large house in Rossbach; and from its roof, at eight o'clock on the morning of the 5th, he saw that the enemy were getting into motion and moving away towards their left. The movement had begun much earlier. Half an hour later they had passed through the village of Grost, and were apparently making their way to Freiburg, where they had some magazines.
Friedrich's arena lies eastward of that, occasionally playing into it a little, and played into by it, and always in lively sympathy and consultation with it: but, except the French subsidizings, diplomatizings. and great diligenae against him in foreign Courts, Friedrich is, in practical respects, free of the French; and ever after Rossbach, Ferdinand and the English keep them in full work, growing yearly too full.
Wagons laden with poultry, complete kitchens on wheels, wine casks, etc., had followed this luxurious army. The scene presented by the battlefield of Jena widely contrasted with that of Rossbach, whose monument was sent by Napoleon to Paris as the most glorious part of the booty gained by his present easy victory.
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