The öniggräPrussian army was the first that ever took the field armed entirely with breech-loading firearms. In the War of Secession a portion of the Federal troops were, towards the end of the struggle, armed with breech-loading rifles; but now the entire Prussian army marched forth with breech-loaders, to battle against an army which still retained the muzzle-loading rifle. Great as was the superiority of the needle gun over the Austrian musket, it would seem but a sorry weapon at the present day. The breech mechanism was clumsy, the cartridge case was made of paper, the accuracy of the rifle did not extend beyond 300 yards, and its extreme range was scarcely more than twice that distance. Yet this rifle was the best infantry weapon of the time, and it contributed greatly to the success of the Prussians. The Prussian artillery was armed mainly with steel breech-loading rifled guns. These guns were classed as 6-pounders and 4-pounders, though the larger piece fired a shell weighing 15 lbs., and the smaller one used a similar projectile weighing 9 lbs.[1] Shell fire seems to have been exclusively used, and the shells to have been uniformly provided with percussion fuses.
In the Austrian army the artillery was provided with bronze muzzle-loading rifled guns, classified as 8-pdrs. and 4-pdrs. The infantry was armed with the muzzle-loading Lorenz rifle.
The German allies of Austria could place about 150,000 men in the field; Italy, about 200,000.
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.
