Wilhelm von Freytag

Field Marshal Heinrich Wilhelm von Freytag (17 March 17202 January 1798) was a Hanoverian Army officer. Born in Estorf, he served in the Seven Years' War and French Revolutionary Wars.

Career

Freytag rose to prominence during the Seven Years' War, organising and commanding a corps of light infantry called . At the Battle of Bergen on 17 April 1759 he commanded nine companies of and two squadrons of Prussian Hussars. Promoted to field marshal in 1792, he was appointed to raise and command the 3,873-man Hanoverian electoral contingent to the Holy Roman Empire. This force was absorbed into the general army mobilization at the end of 1792.

Freytag commanded the Hanoverian troops and the 13,000–15,000-man Austro-Hanoverian corps under Duke of York in the Flanders Campaign in 1793, seeing action at Raismes (St. Amand) on 8 May, Famars on 23 May, the Siege of Valenciennes from 13 June to 28 July, and Cæsar's Camp 7–8 August.

In the Siege of Dunkirk he commanded the left-wing covering column. On 6 September he was driven back by Houchard at the Battle of Hondschoote, where he was wounded and captured, but rescued the following day by Wallmoden's counterattack. He resigned soon after, due to poor relations with the Duke of York and was replaced by Wallmoden. Freytag died on 2 January 1798 in Hanover.

Assessment He knew the Duke of York from when the prince studied in Hanover in the 1780s. Relations between the two were seriously strained right from the beginning of the campaign. At St. Amand on 1 May, York tried to locate him and Bussche to bring their troops forward,

Fortescue claims that his front in advance of Hondschoote was badly chosen, stamped him as a believer in the cordon system, and that a shorter front around the village would have been better. But Burne persuasively challenges this by citing five reasons for the weakness of Hondschoote:

The Duke of York criticised his actions in the battle thus: