At 5:00 am the Hanoverian artillery opened fire. The French guns did not reply because they were awaiting Chevert's signal. At about 9:00 am Chevert's signal gun boomed, and that brave officer moved forward with the brigades of Picardy, la Marine, Navarre and d'Eu, while the numerically superior and better served French guns opened a furious cannonade that quickly disabled many Hanoverian guns, entrenchments notwithstanding.

According to Jomini's account of the struggle, Chevert's first line advanced in three brigade columns, each with a frontage of one battalion and a depth of six. The heads of the columns were covered by grenadiers detached from the battalions. None of the written accounts I have read mention the formation the grenadiers were in. I wonder if they were deployed as skirmishers? Brigade d'Eu was in support. A strong battery of at least thirteen light guns advanced with the infantry.

Chevert's right brigade encountered an easy climb and no resistance until it arrived on the summit of the Obensburg, where the Jagers were posted behind a stone wall. These light troops opened fire and briefly staggered the advance. A fire-fight ensued as the French spearhead awaited the arrival of the rest of Chevert's brigades, which were having a tougher time forging up the mountain.

Meanwhile, Colonel Schulenburg, commanding at Voremberg, noted Chevert's attack with consternation. He quickly sent one of his grenadier battalions up the south face of the Obensburg to help the Jagers. The grenadiers engaged in a close range musketry duel with the French troops on the crest, who soon realized their numerical advantage, attacked the Germans with the bayonet, and routed both grenadiers and Jagers.

Cumberland was by now aware that affairs were going badly on his left. The intensity of fire coming from the Obensburg signaled miscalculation! My God, he must have thought, the enemy is in possession of the ostensibly impregnable key to my position! The Duke reacted with the promptness consternation can bring forth. The troops in the Afferde defile were ordered to counter-attack to retake the Obensburg. Unfortunately, it would be some time before these men could come into action

Therefore, five grenadier battalions, three of them taken from the supports of battery B, were ordered up the Obensburg to stop Francois Chevert. Before these grenadiers could arrive on the scene, however, the French had a consolidated grip on the Obensburg. The French had laboriously dragged thirteen guns up the mountain. -These had now come into action on the crest and were enfilading the entire Hanoverian left. Manfully, the German grenadier battalions engaged the more numerous French, bringing them to a standstill. A prolonged musketry duel ensued, Chevert gradually pushing the grenadiers back down the slope.

Meanwhile, Down on the Plain

Down on the plain, Hanoverian affairs were not in good order.

D'Armentieres had attacked on time and was in Voremberg. The guns in Battery C, and their supporting infantry defeated French efforts to advance north out of the town and up the mountain. Several French attacks had already been repulsed. Still, attacked in front by at least twenty battalions, and with many more and numerous guns threatening in rear, Schulenburg was in trouble.

Battery B, now almost denuded of supports, was likewise under heavy attack. Contades had taken the Schmiede Brinck and advanced guns onto the hill in order to blast Battery B at point blank range. Nevertheless, French infantry attacks on this position had thus far been repulsed.

Of the French commanders, Broglie was having the worst time of it as he attempted to move through Hastenbeck. Initially Broglie advanced against the town in text-book lines of battle. However, as he advanced, these line became progressively more constricted as his force pressed forward into the defile formed by the Haste Stream and the hills to the east of the town. Furthermore, the Hanoverians contested his advance tenaciously. Several times the French infantry were repulsed by the solid ranks of enemy musketeers, supported as they were by the frontal fire of battery A and the flanking fire of battery B.

Finally, according to Jomini, the French general formed all his infantry into four deep columns pursuant to an all out attack. The two columns on the left each consisted of eighteen battalions. According to Jomini's account, these columns were one battalion in line wide, and eighteen battalions in line deep! The right two columns were similarly formed, but consisted of a more comprehensible eight battalions each. The combined frontage of these adjacent masses measured about six-hundred yards, exactly the width of the defile.

By comparison, Broglie's formation dwarfs the celebrated Napoleonic column created by Marshal McDonald at the battle of Wagram, which consisted of but twenty-three understrength battalions, as opposed to Broglie's fifty-two. Perhaps Jomini overstates the magnitude of the left hand columns, but even if only half as many battalions composed these columns, we are still confronted with a formation which traditional wisdom suggests was not appropriate to the Seven Years' War battlefield.

In any event, heartened by the sight of massed French artillery pummeling Battery B from the Schmiede Brinck, and perhaps by

Broglie's juggernaut as well, The Marquis d'Armentieres renewed his assault on Battery C with his four brigades. The French drove up the hill north of Voremberg in a relentless assault that finally overr an the battery. Then, apparently consumed by the battle fury that occasionally fires French blood, these troops veered to the left, in order to support an attack on Battery B by the brigades of Reding and Champagne.

Now supported by only one Grenadier battalion, this battery too was soon overrun. Relieved of the enfilading fire of Battery B, Broglie's men were now able to force there way through Hastenbeck, then engage Cumberland's center on the plain north of the town.

Now an event took place which is hard to understand, but clearly suggests that the French army was far from the efficient war machine the battle thus far suggests. As the French around Battery B gloried in their conquest, they were set upon by two battalians of the Brunswick contingent, which had been thus far unengaged. The Brunswickers were led by their twenty-two year old "Erbprinz", Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand

Remarkably, the onset of the Brunswickers threw the numerous captors of Battery B into confusion and routed them. Unfortunately for the Erbprinz, most of the Brunswick battalions had declined to advance with him, so the French quickly rallied, counterattacked, and compelled the Brunswickers to retire from the battery. Thus began with a flash of Germanic martial glory the career of soldier who would, in 1806, fall to French fire while commanding the Prussian army on the field of Auerstadt.

The Anticlimax

It was now near 1:00 pm and the Duke of Cumberland had decided to retire from the field. His left flank appeared irretrievably lost. Though the five grenadier battalions on the Obensburg continued to hold back Chevert, the French flag still flew from the crest of the mountain, and the F=6 battery emplaced there still hammered targets of opportunity below. The defensive bulwarks of batteries B and C had been lost, and Cumberland had no means to retake them. Casualties had been heavy. In the center, Broglie's sea of men was crashing against-the Hanoverian line.

Only on the right, where the Haste Stream provided the strongest natural defenses, were the Duke's affairs in order. But if the French continued to press back the center, this line would be turned and driven into the marshes. Yet, by all appearances it was time to go. The army was therefore put in motion to the rear, and was well along the road to Hameln when the amazing last act of this strange battle played out.

Remember Colonel Dashenhausen's force which had been posted in the Afferde Gap protecting the extreme left rear of the army? Recall that at the beginning of the battle, when Cumberland realized what Chevert was up to, he had ordered this force to counterattack the Obensburg. At about 2:00 pm, as the balance of the army withdrew, they finally made a dramatic appearance in rear of the French force holding the Obensburg.

The infantry element, three Hanoverian battalions under Colonel Breidenbach, struggled up the north slope of the Obensburg and burst onto the flank and rear of the Brigade d'Eu, which was in support of Chevert's battery. Though taken aback by this untoward intrusion, d'Eu's men held their own until another French unit came to Breidenbach's aid by firing into their own countrymen.

Panic overwhelmed d'Eu, which now fled south down the south and east face of the Obensburg. Chevert's entire battery fell to the Hanoverians. The Obensburg had been miraculously recaptured!

D'Eu's men swarmed down the mountain and into a brigade of Swiss marching north from Voremberg . The already disoriented French were confused by the red coats of the Swiss and mistook them for enemies. They poured in a volley which put the Swiss to flight. Colonel Dashenhausen, at the head of six squadrons, the cavalry element of the late Hanoverian arrivals, waded into the FrancoSwiss mob, killing many and chasing the panic-stricken survivors south across the plain and "spreading alarm and despondency around Voremberg," as Savory puts it.

Nor was that alarm and despondency limited to the common soldier. Having sensed victory, Marshal D'Estrees had just settled himself in at new headquarters on a little eminence somewhat southwest of Voremberg when the successful Hanoverian counterattack recaptured the Obensburg. He had received nothing but good news all day and had become convinced the day was his. Hence, D'Estrees had moved his command post forward in order to preside in person over the final stages of his triumph.

The sight of his right wing stampeding to the rear did not compute with previous tidings from the front. The marshal seems to have panicked. He issued a flurry of orders instructing the army to break off the engagement and withdraw.

Fortunately for his reputation, soon after issuing these orders D'Estrees received information from his victorious center and left that the Hanoverian army was in retreat. Refreshed by this information, D'Estrees regained his composure and quickly countermanded the retreat orders, thus gaining him credit for a victory in the annals of history.

Dachenhausen and Breidenbach seem to have hung around the battlefield reforming their men and wondering what to do next. Meanwhile, most of the French cavalry formed in their front. At some point it became apparent that no support was coming, so the perplexed Germans marched off at the head of their victorious commands to rejoin the rest of the retreating army.

The Battle of Hastenbeck July 26, 1757

The Military Situation in Western Germany, 1757
Movements to Battle
Prelude to Battle
Battle of Hastenbeck Begins
Aftermath
Wargaming Hastenbeck