Diversion
Frederick marched directly toward the Austrian army with its center at Leuthen, its front stretching four miles, significantly larger than the average front of the time. Until the Napoleonic Wars the European armies were quite small for a number of reasons: disease, the quality of food and medicine and the levée en masse (mass conscription) had not yet been introduced. The Austrian army was stretched out to such an incredible length in order to prevent it from being out-flanked by Frederick, as was his favorite tactic. Frederick had his cavalry launch an assault on Borna as a feint and then face the Austrian right flank, appearing as though it would act as a spearhead for a right flank attack. Screening his army with his cavalry, Frederick moved his infantry toward the Austrian left in columns.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Leuthen
Famous quotes containing the word diversion:
“If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Without [diversion] we would be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)