Читать книгу The Campaign of Königgrätz - Arthur Lockwood Wagner - Страница 4

The geographical situation was unfavorable to Prussia. The map of Germany, as it existed before the Austro-Prussian war, shows Rhineland and Westphalia completely separated from the other provinces of Prussia by the hostile territory of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, which, extending from the north, joined the South German States which were in arms against the northern kingdom. The Austrian province of Bohemia, with the adjacent kingdom of Saxony, formed a salient, pushing forward, as it were, into the Prussian dominions, and furnishing a base from which either Silesia or Lusatia might be invaded. In the language of the Prussian Staff History of the Campaign of 1866: “In one direction stood the Saxon army as a powerful advanced guard only six or seven marches distant from the Prussian capital, which is protected from the south by no considerable vantage ground; in the other Breslau could the more easily be reached in five marches, because, trusting to a former federal compact with Austria, Schweidnitz had been given up as a fortress.” The forces of Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, numbering 25,000 men, could operate against the communications of the Prussian armies, or withdraw to the south and unite with the Austrians or Bavarians. The South German armies might form a junction in Saxony or Bohemia with the Austro-Saxon army.