The Battle of Kunersdorf was a major battle of the Seven Years' War that was fought in 1759 between a Russo-Austrian army and the Prussian army of King Frederick the Great.
Following the Battle of Zorndorf in August 1758, the Russian army withdrew from East Prussia, but Frederick was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Hochkirch, nearly resulting in his final defeat. However, the Austrians failed to pursue him, and Frederick was able to build a new army over the winter as the Russians and Austrians surrounded Brandenburg. As Frederick prepared an invasion of Bohemia, Russian general Pyotr Saltykov occupied Prussia's second-largest city of Frankfurt an der Oder and entrenched at Kunersdorf, where he joined forces with Ernst Gideon von Laudon's Austrian army. Frederick rushed north from Saxony to confront this combined army, meeting them on marshy terrain at Kunersdorf. There, the Russo-Austrian army positioned itself between two small ponds to protect its flanks. While Frederick's assaults initially made headway, the allies utilized their numerical superiority to send in fresh Austrian troops to prevent the lines from breaking, and the Prussians suffered heavy losses in failed assaults. By evening, the Prussians were too tired to even retreat, and Frederick and his bodyguards were surrounded by Russian Kalmyks and Cossacks on a hilltop, only for Joachim Bernhard von Prittwitz to lead 100 hussars to cut their way through the Russian cavalry and rescue the Prussian king. That night, Frederick took shelter in a peasant hut and lamented to his old tutor, "I am no more master of my troops. Thinking of the safety of anybody in Berlin is a good activity...It is a cruel failure that I will not survive. The consequences of the battle will be worse than the battle itself. I do not have any more resources, and—frankly confessed—I believe that everything is lost. I will not survive the doom of my fatherland. Farewell forever!" Only 3,000 of Frederick's 50,000 soldiers remained with him after the battle, his greatest loss, but many more rejoined the army over the next few days, saving the suicidal Frederick from his doom.