The combined advance of the three armies was executed with extraordinary precision; and in a series of hard-fought combats, extending from June 26th to the 29th, the Austrians were driven back upon their centre, and effective communication was established between the three invading bodies. On the 30th the King of Prussia, with General Moltke and Count Bismarck, left Berlin; on July 2d they were at headquarters at Gitschin. It had been Benedek's design to leave a small force to hold the Silesian army in check, and to throw the mass of his army westward upon Prince Frederick Charles and overwhelm him before he could receive help from his colleagues. This design had been baffled by the energy of the Crown Prince's attack, and by the superiority of the Prussians in generalship, in the discipline of their troops, and in the weapon they carried - for though the Austrians had witnessed in the Danish campaign the effects of the Prussian breechloading rifle (called the needle-gun), they had not thought it necessary to adopt a similar arm.
Benedek, though no great battle had yet been fought, saw that the campaign was lost, and wrote to the Emperor on July 1st recommending him to make peace, for otherwise a catastrophe was inevitable. He then concentrated his army on high ground a few miles west of Koeniggraetz, and prepared for a defensive battle on the grandest scale. In spite of the losses of the past week he could still bring about two hundred thousand men into action. The three Prussian armies were now near enough to one another to combine in their attack, and on the night of July 2d the King sent orders to the three commanders to move against Benedek before daybreak.
Prince Frederick Charles, advancing through the village of Sadowa, was the first in the field. For hours his divisions sustained an unequal struggle against the assembled strength of the Austrians. Midday passed; the defenders now pressed down upon their assailants; and preparations for a retreat had been begun, when the long-expected message arrived that the Crown Prince was close at hand. The onslaught of the army of Silesia on Benedek's right, which was accompanied by the arrival of Hewarth at the other end of the field of battle, at once decided the day. With difficulty the Austrian commander prevented the enemy from seizing the positions that would have cut off his retreat. He retired eastward across the Elbe with a loss of eighteen thousand killed or wounded and twenty-four thousand prisoners. His army was ruined; and ten days after the Prussians had crossed the frontier the war was practically at an end.
The disaster of Koeniggraetz was too great to be neutralized by the success of the Austrian forces in Italy. La Marmora, who had given up his place at the head of the Government in order to take command of the army, crossed the Mincio at the head of a hundred twenty thousand men, but was defeated by inferior numbers on the fatal ground of Custozza, and compelled to fall back on the Oglio. This gleam of success, which was followed by a naval victory at Lissa off the Istrian coast, made it easier for the Austrian Emperor to face the sacrifices that were now inevitable. Immediately after the Battle of Koeniggraetz he invoked the mediation of Napoleon III, and ceded Venetia to him in behalf of Italy. Napoleon at once tendered his good offices to the belligerents, and proposed an armistice. His mediation was accepted in principle by the King of Prussia, who expressed his willingness also to grant an armistice as soon as preliminaries of peace should be recognized by the Austrian Court.
“At the least whosoever has the spirit of Christ, shall find that spirit in him striving against that which is contrary, and by little and little gaining ground. Where there is no conflict, there is no spirit of Christ at all.”
–Richard Sibbes, Description of Christ