Imagine for a second that you survive a grueling,
I mean just a completely brutal, month -long
military siege. Right, the kind where you are
literally starving. Exactly. You are completely
surrounded, cut off from the entire world. The
stone walls of your fortress are literally crumbling
around you under relentless heavy bombardment.
Sounds terrifying. Oh, it gets worse. Because
you survive all that crossfire. You survive the
starvation. And then you survive years languishing
in an enemy prisoner of war camp just, you know,
waiting for the geopolitical winds to shift so
you can finally go home. Which takes years, usually.
Right. But when the war finally ends and you
make that long agonizing journey back to your
own country, your ultimate doom doesn't come
from the enemy. It comes from your own boss.
It is the ultimate betrayal, really. It completely
breaks the social contract between a commander
and their sovereign. You survive the absolute
worst the enemy military machine has to offer,
only to be executed by the very leader you spent
all those years fighting for. Welcome to today's
Deep Dive. Our mission today is to unpack a single,
incredibly dense Wikipedia article detailing
a military clash from 1760. We're talking about
the Siege of Glatz. It's such a fascinating case
study. It really is. We are going to look at
the actual mechanics of how this siege operated,
some frankly shocking casualty numbers, and the
really dark psychology of military leadership
during this era. Yeah. To really get why this
happened, we have to set the stage for you. Right.
So we are stepping into the Third Silesian War.
Which, for context, was a major theater of the
much broader global conflict that we know as
the Seven Years War. The big one. And the two
belligerents locked in this specific struggle
are the Kingdom of Prussia and the Austrian Empire.
And the focal point for all of this is Glatz.
It's a massive fortress city in Prussian Silesia,
which the source notes is modern -day Kowiczko
in Poland. Okay, let's unpack this. We are starting
in the early summer of 1760. June 6th, to be
specific. The timeline is super critical here,
because on June 6th the Austrian forces arrive
at Glatz. They are under the command of General
von Lauten. General von Lauten, right? Yeah,
and they successfully execute this massive encirclement.
I mean, they completely surround the fortress.
Locking it down. Exactly. Cutting off all the
supply lines, cutting off communication. Nobody
gets in, nobody gets out. And trapped inside
that fortress are 3 ,200 Prussian troops. A sizable
garrison. Yeah. And they are commanded by Colonel
Bartholomew Elsie Doe. He's the guy we mentioned
at the very beginning of the deep dive. The one
who really bears the brunt of this incredibly
tragic historical arc. Right. So General Auden
has trapped his enemy. The board is set. The
siege is on. Except, and this is wild, he doesn't
actually fire a single shot. No, he just sits
there. He just sits there. because he has to
wait for his heavy artillery to be hauled all
the way from Olomouc, which is miles and miles
away in neighboring Moravia. Which takes forever.
I mean, I have to call this out as a massive
Austrian blunder. You don't show up to a major
siege operation without your cannons. It seems
crazy, right? It's an inexcusable failure of
planning. It's like, um... It's like hiring a
state -of -the -art demolition crew to take down
a high -rise building. They show up, they put
up the fencing, they block off the streets. And
then they realize they forgot something. Right.
The foreman looks around and realizes they left
the actual wrecking ball in another state. I
mean, does this suggest a massive blunder in
Austrian planning? Or was this just the sluggish
reality of 18th century warfare? What's fascinating
here is how this delay perfectly illustrates
the constraints of historical military logistics.
It absolutely looks like a massive blunder to
modern eyes. Oh, totally. But to really understand
this, we have to strip away our modern expectations
of warfare. We have to look at the sheer physical
constraints of logistics in the 1700s. Right.
No Giesel trust. Exactly. It wasn't a failure
of planning. It was a literal battle against
physics. You essentially have two entirely different
elements of an army, and they are moving at two
completely completely different speeds. OK, break
that down for me. So your infantry and your cavalry,
the men on foot and the men on horseback, they
could move remarkably fast. They could march,
say, 20 miles in a day. Wow, that is fast. Yeah.
So they can secure perimeters and establish that
massive encirclement before the Prussian garrison
had any chance to react or, you know, retreat.
So they are the net. You throw the net quickly
to trap the fish. That is a great way to put
it. You throw the net. But the technology required
to actually break a fortified stone in earth...
Star Fortress. The heavy stuff. Right? The heavy
siege guns, the massive mortars, the thousands
of iron cannonballs, the literal tons of black
powder. That machinery moved at an absolutely
glacial pace. Because they're super heavy. Incredibly
heavy. And the 18th century was not exactly an
era of paved asphalt highways. Yeah, no interstates
back then. You are talking about dragging thousands
of pounds of cast iron and bronze over unpaved,
deeply redded dirt roads, roads that turned into
impassable the second it rained. Ugh, just mud
everywhere. Exactly. You had to use these massive
teams of oxen or draft horses. And if one axle
broke on one wagon, the entire column stopped.
So it's physically impossible for the wrecking
ball to arrive at the same time as the demolition
crew. Unless, I guess, you want the demolition
crew to walk it a mile a day and give the enemy
a month's warning that you're coming. Right,
and you definitely don't want to do that. The
synchronization simply didn't exist back then.
General Laundon had to secure the location with
his fast -moving troops first, and then, well,
simply endure the wait for the slow -moving heavy
hitters to catch up. And that wait stretched
for weeks. I mean, the source says they arrived
on June 6th, and the heavy guns wouldn't arrive
for over a month. It is a massive test of patience.
Over a month of just staring at a stone wall.
But General Laundon doesn't just sit in his tent
reading poetry while he waits. Right. Absolutely
not. While he is stuck in this holding pattern,
His scouts bring him some pretty critical intelligence.
A smaller pressure force, commanded by someone
named Fouquet, is actually marching into the
broader region. And this creates a really fascinating
tactical dilemma for Laden. How so? Well, he
is committed to a static siege. He's stuck there
waiting. But suddenly, there is a highly mobile
threat approaching his theater of operations.
And Laden's response to this borders on tactical
suicide. at least from my perspective. It's definitely
a bold move. Because he takes the bulk of his
army, turns his back on the 3 ,200 armed Prussians
trapped inside the fortress, and marches out
to intercept this new approaching force. He does.
This feels like an insane gamble. Isn't it incredibly
dangerous to abandon a siege you've already set
up just to chase down, like, a side quest? What
stops Colonel Dio from opening the gates of Glatz,
marching his 3 ,200 troops out, and devastating
the Austrian camps while Laudon is miles away?
You are identifying the exact vulnerability that
makes siege warfare so incredibly perilous. It
just seems so exposed. It is. But Laudon isn't
just gambling blindly here. The historical record
emphasizes a really crucial detail. Laudon possessed
a much larger force, a vastly superior force
in terms of sheer numbers. Okay, so he had guys
to spare. Exactly. He had enough manpower to
effectively bifurcate his army. He doesn't abandon
the siege entirely. He leaves behind a screening
force at Glatz. Okay, let's break down that term,
because to me, a screening force sounds like,
you know, a few guys left behind with binoculars
just to keep watch. It is far more sophisticated
than that, I promise. A screening force is a
highly calculated tactical deployment. Really?
Oh, yeah. It is not just about observing the
enemy. It is about psychological manipulation.
It's area denial. The troops left behind are
tasked with maintaining the illusion of a full
encirclement. So they're putting on a show. A
very elaborate show. They keep the campfires
burning. They run constant patrols back and forth.
They take occasional pot shots at the walls.
Oh, wow. Their entire job is to keep those 3
,200 Prussians inside the fortress utterly paranoid,
convinced that if they step outside the gates,
they will be annihilated by a massive army that
actually is no longer even there. A lethal illusion.
They are projecting strength to cover the fact
that the main muscle has left the building. Exactly.
And that main muscle marches directly toward
the approaching Prussian relief force. This all
culminates in the Battle of Landeshut on June
23rd. So about two and a half weeks after they
first got to Glatz. Right. And General Loudon
uses his superior numbers and his momentum to
absolutely crush this new threat. He forces the
Prussian commander Fouquet to surrender his entire
force. Wow. It's an incredible display of dynamic
command. You have this completely static, frustrating
reality of the siege where he is literally just
waiting for iron tubes to arrive on carts. Yeah,
twiddling their thumbs. Right. But the moment
of fluid opportunity presents itself. Laden capitalizes
on it. He cleans up the perimeter, eliminates
a mobile threat and secures the broader region.
He essentially ensures that when his artillery
finally does arrive, he can conduct the bombardment
in peace. He doesn't have to constantly look
over his shoulder for oppression rescue. Army.
And that main event finally kicks into gear in
July. Following his decisive victory at Landeshut,
Laudan marches his army back to Glatz. And by
July 20th, the agonizing wait is finally over.
The guns arrive. The heavy artillery from Moravia
rolls into camp. The wrecking ball is finally
on site. And at this point, the nature of the
engagement shifts entirely. The siege, as they
say, properly begins. And the mechanics of this
are just brutal because you can't just park a
cannon in an open field and start shooting at
a fortress. No, because the fortress has its
own cannons firing back at you from an elevated
position. Right. They have the high ground. So
the Austrians have to dig. They start carving
these extensive trench networks into the earth,
literally using the dirt itself as cover. It's
incredibly labor intensive. And they systematically
zigzag comes closer and closer to the fortress
walls just to bring their heavy guns into effective
range. The physical and psychological reality
for the Prussians trapped inside must have been
suffocating. Try to conceptualize that transition
for those 3 ,200 trapped men. I mean, for nearly
six weeks they experienced this terrifying, quiet
tension. Just waiting. Right. They knew they
were surrounded. They knew the enemy was out
there. But there was no major combat. And then
suddenly the horizon just erupts. The heavy siege
guns are unlimbered and the systematic deafening
bombardment begins. Massive iron projectiles
start shattering the masonry, destroying the
defensive parapets and literally collapsing the
very walls these guys are standing on. It's the
beginning of the end. And once the walls are
sufficiently pulverized by this continuous artillery
fire, Loudon prepares for the final blow. But,
and this is interesting, he avoids throwing his
entire army into a massive chaotic charge against
the breeches. Which is usually a meat grinder.
Exactly. Instead, he organizes a specialized
group of volunteers to storm the city first.
These volunteers actually managed to slip through
the newly created gaps in the rubble, navigate
whatever defensive obstacles remain, and they
actually managed to open the main fortress gates
from the inside. It's pretty amazing. It allows
the overwhelming bulk of the Austrian army to
just flood right in. It is a textbook execution
of an 18th century assault. It reminds me of
how modern special operations work, honestly.
It's less like a brute force door kick and more
like a heist movie or a surgical bypass. Right,
the sneaky way in. Yeah. The artillery acts as
the anesthesia, completely numbing and suppressing
the fortress's central nervous system. It's cannons
and defenders. Oh, that's a good analogy. And
that suppression allows this small scalpel of
volunteers to slip in quietly, the few slipping
through the cracks, and sever the main lock from
the inside, opening the vault for the rest of
the crew to follow. The surgical metaphor is
highly appropriate here because the results of
this operation were remarkably clean for the
attacking force. Here's where it gets really
interesting because the casualty statistics are
what really stop you in your tracks. They are
unbelievable. When the smoke clears and the fortress
officially falls on July 26th, the math is just
staggering. The defending Prussians, the forces
who had the walls on the high ground, they suffered
700 dead or wounded, which is a huge hit. And
furthermore, An incredible 2 ,500 Prussian soldiers
were taken as prisoners of war. If you do the
math on that, 700 casualties plus 2 ,500 prisoners
accounts for the entire 3 ,200 -man garrison.
Completely wiped out. Colonel Dio's command was
entirely wiped off the board. A total eradication.
But the attacking Austrians, the army that had
to actually run toward the guns and storm a fortified
position, they suffered only 214 casualties.
It's an incredibly low number. I really need
to emphasize to you how rare that is. In siege
warfare, the attacker almost always bleeds more
than the defender. How does an attacking force
lose only 214 men while entirely capturing a
fortress of 3 ,200? The answer lies in the timeline
we established earlier. The delay. Yes, that
grueling month and a half wait for the heavy
artillery from Moravia is the direct cause of
the minimal Austrian casualties. Because they
refused to rush the timeline. They didn't just
rush in. Exactly. Patience in warfare translates
directly to preserved manpower. If General Laden
had allowed his commanders to grow impatient
back in June -like, if he had ordered his infantry
to try and scale the walls with ladders before
the artillery arrived, it would have been an
unmitigated bloodbath. The infantry would have
been marching right into a meat grinder. Absolutely.
The Prussians would have maintained clear fields
of fire, secure cover, the high ground. They
would have picked them off. But... By waiting,
Laden let the guns do the bloody work. The heavy
artillery systematically dismantled the physical
defenses of Glatz, but Maybe more importantly,
it broke the psychological will and the defensive
cohesion of the Prussian garrison. They were
just worn down. Right. By the time those volunteers
moved in to secure the gates, the combat effectiveness
of the fortress had been fundamentally shattered
by iron and gunpowder. The incredibly low casualty
rate for the Austrians is a testament to the
brutal mathematical efficiency of properly applied
siege warfare. When you see that level of tactical
precision losing only 214 men to completely capture
a heavily fortified city and eliminate an entire
enemy garrison, you'd assume this victory cracked
the whole war wide open. We really would. But
when you zoom out to look at the macro picture
of the conflict, the story takes a turn that
is genuinely mind blowing on a geopolitical level.
The contrast here between the tactical victor
and the strategic reality is honestly arguably
the most profound insight we can pull from the
historical record of this campaign. Let's look
at the map of 1760. Throughout that entire year,
the Seven Years War was raging globally. There
were massive, extensive army maneuvers across
the continent. Huge troop movements. Yeah. And
several heavy, bloody battles fought between
the Prussian and Austrian forces, including that
battle of Landesschit we discussed earlier. Thousands
of men fighting, bleeding, and dying. But despite
all of that movement, despite all that expenditure
of human life and national treasury, the capture
of the Glass Fortress was the only piece of territory
taken by the Austrians and their allies that
entire year. You really have to let that sink
in. A full calendar year of global industrialized
imperial warfare and the geopolitical borders
remained almost completely frozen. It's wild.
The map of Europe in December of 1760 looked
virtually identical to the map in December of
1759, with the singular exception of this one
fortress in Silesia. It's just an overwhelming
realization. Thousands of men marching through
mud, the month -long psychological terror of
the siege, the 700 dead Prussians, the 214 dead
Austrians, the 2 ,500 men marched off to POW
camps. And for what? The grand strategic picture
just ground into a massive feudal stalemate.
It reveals a defining characteristic of mid 18th
century warfare. The defensive technologies,
like these massive star fortresses in the entrenched
positions, they were often so robust and the
logistical chains were so incredibly fragile
that maneuvering massive armies resulted in these
grinding wars of attrition. Just a total slog.
Exactly. You could win a brilliant tactical victory
like Glatz, but entirely lack the logistical
capability to exploit that victory and push any
deeper into enemy territory. It was a remarkably
bloody way to essentially maintain the status
quo. A devastating expensive stalemate on the
grand stage. But we need to contrast that macro
futility with the hyper personal fate of the
Prussian commander we introduced earlier. Oh,
Colonel Dio. Right. Let's talk about Colonel
Bartholomew's do, the man tasked with defending
Glatz. His narrative really serves as the grim
epilogue to everything we've discussed about
the brutality of this era. So the fortress falls.
Colonel Dio is captured. He becomes a prisoner
of war. And miraculously, He actually survives.
Against all odds. He survives the weeks of artillery
bombardment. He survives the physical and psychological
toll of captivity in an Austrian camp. And he
manages to wait out the remainder of the Seven
Years' War. Which is an achievement in itself.
Totally. When the treaties are finally signed
and the war ends, he is released. He makes the
journey home to Prussia, expecting perhaps a
quiet retirement after enduring horrors most
of us can't even imagine. You think he earned
it. Right. Instead, the moment he returns, he
is arrested, put on trial by his own military,
and Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia,
orders him to be executed. The official crime.
Losing the fortress of Glatz. It is a profoundly
chilling conclusion to a military career. So
what does this all mean? This is where I really
need your perspective, because this feels beyond
brutal. It feels entirely irrational. I can see
why you'd say that. Executing your own commander
for losing a battle where he was hopelessly outnumbered
by a mobile army, trapped in a static box, and
pounded to dust by heavy artillery makes zero
strategic sense. Why would Frederick the Great
execute a man for failing to win a mathematically
impossible battle? If we connect this to the
bigger picture to understand that execution,
you really have to understand the existential
terror of the Prussian state during the Seven
Years War. Frederick the Great wasn't punishing
a simple tactical mistake. He was enforcing a
doctrine of absolute institutional survival.
So he's enforcing discipline through terror.
Exactly. Prussia was a relatively small kingdom,
and it was surrounded by massive, incredibly
wealthy empires. Austria, Russia, France. Frederick
was fighting a war where the math was never in
his favor. Always the underdog. Always. He was
constantly outnumbered and out -resourced. The
only way the Prussian state could avoid being
entirely wiped off the map was through maintaining
an army with iron, unbreakable discipline. He's
fighting gravity, so he has to outlaw falling.
That is the perfect way to contextualize it.
In Frederick's military machine, there was no
room for nuance. There was no room for calculating
the odds. A fortress commander was expected to
hold their ground to the last man, regardless
of how hopeless the situation appeared. even
if it meant total annihilation. Surrendering,
even to save the lives of 2 ,500 men in the face
of overwhelming Austrian artillery, was not viewed
as a pragmatic military decision. It was viewed
as a fundamental moral failure. It was a betrayal
of the kingdom's precarious survival. So the
reality of the Austrian superior numbers, the
delay of the siege guns, the surgical breach.
None of the actual mechanics we just spent time
unpacking mattered to Frederick. The only data
point he cared about was that the Prussian flag
was no longer flying over glass. The execution
of Colonel Duo was a theatrical display of zero
tolerance policy. It was designed to send a terrifying,
unmistakable message to every other officer serving
in the Prussian army. Surrender is a crime punishable
by death, and your only option is victory or
death on the battlefield. It was the grim glue
required to hold a heavily outmatched military
force together under dream duress. Just think
about times you faced impossible odds at work,
right? A project that's doomed from the start.
Yeah, we've all been there. Now imagine the penalty
for that project failing wasn't just a bad performance
review, but a literal firing squad. The psychological
burden of that is almost incomprehensible. You
are placed in command of a fortress. You know
that if you fight against the Austrian heavy
guns, you will almost certainly die in the rubble.
Right. But you also know that if you surrender
to save your men, you will eventually face a
firing squad organized by your own king. It is
a completely unwinnable fatal paradox. He made
the pragmatic choice to surrender and it cost
him his life years later when he finally thought
he was safe. It really forces us to look beyond
the dry statistics of military history. We see
the 214 Austrian casualties, the 700 Prussian
casualties, the singular fortress changing hands.
But hidden beneath those numbers are the absolute
destruction of individual human lives, reputations,
and the terrifying pressures placed on the people
forced to navigate those impossible circumstances.
It is a wild, heavy journey we've taken today
through this single source document. We started
with an Austrian army completely stalled out
in the mud, unable to move forward without their
heavy guns. Waiting for the wrecking ball. Waiting
for the wrecking ball. We explore the psychological
warfare of a screening force and the dynamic
pivot to crush a relief army at Landeshut. We
broke down the surgical, terrifying mechanics
of how a fortress is systematically dismantled
by artillery and then breached by volunteers.
The heist. The 18th century heist. And it all
culminated in a tragic, brutal execution of a
surviving commander by a king desperate to keep
his fra - Empire intact. And all of that complex
human drama, suffering, and tactical brilliance
was expended for a single fortress in a year
where absolutely nothing else of consequence
changed on the geopolitical map. Which brings
us to a final lingering thought for you to mull
over as we wrap up. We look back at the campaign
of 1760. We see that thousands of lives were
permanently altered or extinguished. Hundreds
of men were killed in the dirt trenches outside
Glatz. A garrison of 2 ,500 men was marched into
the despair of captivity. And a commanding officer
survived the entire horrific ordeal, only to
be executed by the very sovereign he was sworn
to protect. All of this violence, all this suffering,
all this tactical genius over a single fortress
that was literally only a piece of land to change
hands between these vast global empires and an
entire year of non -stop warfare. So when the
smoke finally clears and the dust settles, does
the colossal machinery of war actually achieve
tangible progress? Or is it just a devastatingly
expensive, tragic way to keep the map exactly
the same? A heavy question. It's a heavy question.
But examining those questions is the entire point
of what we do here. Thank you for joining us
on this deep dive. You are now officially well
informed on this obscure but deeply revealing
slice of history. We will catch you next time.