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The Battle of Zorndorf was a major battle of the Seven Years' War that was fought in 1758 between the armies of Prussia and Russia in Pomerania.

In 1758, the Russian Empire invaded East Prussia, forcing King Frederick the Great to move to prevent the Russians from joining forces with Leopold Joseph von Daun's Austrians. The Russian general William Fermor lifted his siege of Kustrin to confront Frederick's army, and Frederick met the Russians east of the Oder River at Zorndorf (Sarbinowo). A Prussian cavalry attack on the young conscripts of Russia's "Observation Corps" routed them, and the retreating Russian cavalrymen suffered heavy losses from friendly fire as the confused Russian infantry mistook their own men for Prussian cavalry.

However, Frederick's attacks on the Russian left wing failed due to a swamp blocking a Russian retreat, and the Russian right utilized favorable terrain to hold off Prussian assaults. The two armies engaged in a bloody line battle in which both sides lost a third of their men, and both sides closed in for hand-to-hand fighting after running out of gunpowder. Bodies of Russians covered the field row by row, but their resistance was so stiff that Frederick commented, "It's easier to kill the Russians than to win over them." Neither side was driven from the battlefield, but the Russian losses and their devastation of the Prussian countryside forced them to withdraw, and Fermor was relieved.

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