At Leuthen (Polish Lutynia) on December 5 Frederick had no doubt that his kingdom was at stake. "Before long, we shall either have defeated the enemy or we shan't see each other again," he told his officers. A successful clash early in the morning enabled him to gain a small rise called the Schönberg, from where he could survey the Austrian lines, thinly stretched out over five-and-a-half miles to the east, and make his plans. While the Prussian vanguard launched a diversionary attack on the centre, the main part of the army made its way south, then southeast, hidden by what Thomas Carlyle, Frederick's biographer, calls the "slow heavings and sinkings" of the terrain.

This was a beautifully executed manoeuvre by an army whose foundations had been laid under Frederick William von Hohenzollern, the Great Elector, in the 17th century and had since been built up, first by Frederick William I, the "Soldier King", then by his son, into the best-drilled in Europe. Cavalry and infantry swung from four wings into two lines, then deployed in oblique order to attack the enemy's southern flank. Moller's cannon, moved rapidly across frozen ground, again wrought havoc. The Austrians turned southwards to defend the village of Leuthen, which was taken after fierce fighting across its churchyard. Emerging on the far side, the infantry were vulnerable to a flanking attack by the Austrian cavalry but they in turn were taken in the flank by their Prussian counterparts. The battle was all but over. Frederick, with around 35,000 men, had again broken the back of a force nearly twice as large. Their losses were around 20,000, his some 6,400. 

In his history of the war, Old Fritz wrote that only the fall of night prevented this from being one of the most decisive battles of the century. As it turned out, having retaken Breslau and Schweidnitz, he was to suffer reverse on reverse until the Battle of Liegnitz in 1760, after which the exhausted parties sued for peace and he was left in undisputed control of Silesia.

The central point of interest on the battlefield of Leuthen today is the church. The ornate gateway to the graveyard broken down by Captain (later Field Marshal) Wichard von Möllendorf and the third battalion of the Prussian Guard still stands. That scene is pictured on a noticeboard outside the churchyard wall. It also tells you about the neoclassical building on the far side of the road, opened as a museum in 1921 in the presence of 10,000 people and counting among its exhibits a model of the battlefield and Frederick's tobacco pouch. Today it is closed and forlorn. Also by the wall is a cross erected on the centenary of Leuthen in 1857. Under it lies a coffin containing the remains of soldiers, hailed as heroes on its base.