Simon Millar Bücher

Osprey's examination of the highly devastating battle of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). In May of 1757 Frederick the Great invaded Bohemia, smashed an Austrian army outside Prague and bottled it up in the city. The Empress Maria Theresa despatched Marshal Daun with 60,000 men to save the Empire's second city. Frederick had won a string of victories over the Austrians and was convinced his men would always triumph. Although outnumbered he attacked, but the Austrians were waiting. His army was defeated and forced to withdraw. As his veterans commented, 'they were not the same old Austrians at all'. Simon Millar shows how Frederick's overconfidence proved his undoing at Kolin.

Osprey's study of a battle that was part of a triple conflict: the Polish-Ottoman War (1683-1699), the Great Turkish War (1667-1698), and the Ottoman Hapsburg Wars (1526-1791). The capture of the Hapsburg city of Vienna was a major strategic aspiration for the Islamic Ottoman Empire, desperate for the control that the city exercised over the Danube and the overland trade routes between southern and northern Europe. In July 1683 Sultan Mehmet IV proclaimed a jihad and the Turkish grand vizier, Kara Mustafa Pasha, laid siege to the city with an army of 150,000 men. In September a relieving force arrived under Polish command and joined up with the defenders to drive the Turks away. The main focus of this book is the final 15-hour battle for Vienna, which climaxed with a massive charge by three divisions of Polish winged hussars. This hard-won victory marked the beginning of the decline of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which was never to threaten central Europe again.

V květnu 1757 vpadl pruský král Fridrich II. do Čech, porazil Rakušany u Prahy a město sevřel v obležení. Marie Terezie vyslala maršála Dauna v čele 60 000mužů, aby druhé nejdůležitější město její říše zachránil. Fridrich II. dosáhl nad Rakušany již řady vítězství a byl přesvědčen, že jeho vojsko bude vítězit i nadále. Zaútočil bez ohledu na početní převahu protivníka, avšak Rakušané byli připraveni. Byl poražen a donucen ustoupit. Jak řekl jeden z jeho veteránů: "To už vůbec nebyli ti staří Rakušané." Simon Millar velice názorně ukazuje, že to byla právě Fridrichova přílišná sebedůvěra, co u Kolína přivodilo pruskou porážku.