THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR (_continued_)
LEUTHEN TO MAXEN (DECEMBER, 1757, TO DECEMBER, 1759.)
What profit would Leuthen bring to Prussia? was Frederick’s first
thought after the glorious fifth of December, and may well be ours. He
himself was worn and ill. In the excitement of victory he had closed
the long day of Leuthen with a jest. Pressing on to the castle of
Lissa, he found it full of Austrian officers. “Bonjour, Messieurs,”
cried the King, suddenly appearing out of the darkness, “can you find
room for me?” But reaction and depression followed the strain of 1757.
“If the year upon which I am entering,” he wrote on his birthday
(January 24, 1758), “is to be as cruel as that which is at an end, I
hope it will be my last.”
Every kind of anxiety, public and private alike, pressed at the same
time upon the hero of Rossbach and Leuthen. His brother, Augustus
William, for whom a chance bullet might at any moment clear the throne,
had not yet succumbed under the burden of disgrace, and wearied
Frederick with complaints and acid congratulations. His brother-in-law,
Ferdinand of Brunswick, was stricken with fever, and the King’s mind
was full of vague fears which he confessed but could not account for.
Upon his sister, Wilhelmina, who had more need of it, he lavished
sympathy and encouragement in a flood of tender messages.
“I am delighted that you are having some music and a little
dissipation,” he writes, early in the new year; “believe me,
dear Sister, there is nothing in life that can console us but a
little philosophy and the fine arts.... I swear to give thanks
to Heaven on the day when I can descend from the tight-rope on
which I am forced to dance.”
If we must choose a simile from the circus to describe Frederick
during this war, he might be likened to an acrobat juggling with five
bomb-shells at once. Of three, the Swedes, the Russians, and the
Imperialists, he had not yet felt the full weight, and with a supreme
effort he had flung the French and the Austrians high into the air.
What would be his task in 1758?
While he harvested the fruits of Leuthen without pause Frederick
permitted himself to hope that his victory would bring peace. After the
fall of Breslau on December 19, 1757, he estimated the Austrian losses
and found them overwhelming. He even gave out that at a sacrifice of
less than 4000 Prussians killed and wounded, he had reduced the enemy’s
force by 47,707 men. He was still gathering in prisoners and deserters
every day. Before the year was out he could assure Prince Henry that,
according to sound opinion, Prince Charles’s army consisted of no more
than 13,000 foot and 9000 horse. “If this does not lead to peace,”
writes Frederick on December 21st, “no success in war will ever pave
the way thither.” A week later he is still hopeful, “but even if one
were sure of it, we must none the less labour to make our position
formidable, since force is the only argument that one can use with
these dogs of Kings and Emperors.” Leuthen indeed gave Maria Theresa
another opportunity to prove her constancy and courage. Frederick
made overtures to her for peace, but she refused to engage in any
negotiation apart from her allies. Early in January, 1758, the King
became aware that Austria whatever it might cost her, was determined on
another campaign.
Gradually the prospect grew clearer. Almost beyond the hopes of the
Queen her alliance with France survived the double shock of Rossbach
and Leuthen. At the beginning of February Louis promised to send 24,000
men into Bohemia. Since his encounter with Soubise, Frederick regarded
the French as brigands rather than warriors, but their onset compelled
him to place a sturdy watch-dog in the West. This part was played
by Ferdinand of Brunswick, who drove them across the Rhine before
March was over. Another foe, the Swedes, were even less considerable.
Frederick jeered at them as “cautious people who run away eighty miles
so as not to be taken,” and assured his sister, the Queen of Sweden, of
his willingness to grant them peace. So long as France was willing to
pay subsidies, however, the Swedes were willing to provide 30,000 men.
They still occupied their “bastion,” Pomerania, in force, and therefore
Lehwaldt must still act as the Ferdinand of the North. The King himself
proposed to astonish Europe by his dealings with the Austrians and
Imperialists. From his ally he might look for the same assistance as in
the previous year. He laboured in vain to persuade the Sea Powers that
the Protestant cause and their own interests demanded that they should
attack France with their own troops. But in April Pitt undertook to
furnish an annual subsidy of £670,000, and for four years the money was
punctually paid.
[Illustration: Map for the SILESIAN AND SEVEN YEARS WARS
_G. P. Putnam’s Sons, London & New York._]
With Silesia at his back, the French and Swedes held in check, and
England in close alliance, Frederick’s prospects for the campaign
of 1758 might seem almost brilliant. He had some 206,000 men under
arms. Ready money was not plentiful, but Frederick procured it in
a thoroughly Prussian fashion—unscrupulous but practical. His own
subjects he spared so far as possible. At times indeed he treated even
them in the manner of his father. In January, 1758, the merchants
of Breslau answered “Impossible” to a royal demand that they should
advance 300,000 thalers to the Jews who had charge of the coinage.
Frederick’s minister reported the fact, adding that the Jews enjoyed
no credit in the mercantile world. The King’s annotation, scrawled in
German on the back of the report, is still treasured in the archives
pf the General Staff at Berlin, It runs as follows: “I will cook
something for the President if he don’t get the money out of those
merchants at once without arguing.”
In general, however, with the exception of a few loans, no new demands
were made upon the ill-lined purses of the Prussians. Indirectly,
of course, they felt the burden of the war. The coin with which the
State supplied them was debased and therefore purchased less goods.
The pensions of those who had served the King in the past, but could
serve him no longer, were left unpaid or paid only in paper. But
the chief granary of the Prussian army was, whenever possible, the
territory of the enemy. The second great source of supplies consisted
in those countries which the fortune of war had placed in their hands.
“Mark well the contributions of Mecklenburg,” was Frederick’s order
to General Dohna. “Take hostages, and threaten the Duke’s bailiffs
with fire and plundering to make them pay promptly.” But by far the
heaviest burden fell upon the Saxons. Besides systematically draining
them of cash, Frederick resorted to what he termed “reprisals” at their
expense whenever “the allies of the King of Poland” pillaged any of
his dominions. Men who were thus made scapegoats for the sins of half
Europe betrayed with seasonable treachery the allegiance which the King
of Prussia had compelled them to swear against their will.
In 1758, however, Frederick allowed the notorious disaffection of the
Saxons to fetter him no more than the armies of France and Sweden. He
had a great plan of campaign, and he began to execute it with a speed
and secrecy which no one in the world could equal. On March 15th he
left Breslau. Within five weeks he had captured Schweidnitz, the sole
fortress in Silesia which remained Austrian, and was making for Moravia
in order to besiege Olmütz. The Austrians, he argued, must relieve it
and might be vanquished in a battle in which he would have choice of
ground. Olmütz could then be taken and Vienna threatened. This would
compel the enemy to concentrate in defence of the capital. Prince Henry
would thus be free to swoop down from Dresden upon Bohemia and to erase
the traces of Kolin.
Frederick’s idea was brilliant, and for a time success waited upon
his arms. Daun, who, to the great profit of the Austrians, had
replaced Prince Charles in the chief command, continued to fortify
Bohemia against the attack which he expected from the East. On May 3rd
Frederick reached Olmütz. Consternation reigned at Vienna, but for
eight weeks the cautious Daun did not venture to disturb the siege.
Till the last day of June all went well. Then came what the King
frankly terms a terrible _contretemps_. At Domstädtl a convoy of some
4000 waggons from Neisse was destroyed by General Laudon, who made
himself a great name by a victory which cost Zieten’s command at least
2400 men. The Prussians were thus deprived of the supplies which were
indispensable to their success.
Frederick recognised at once that the siege must be abandoned, and with
it his whole enterprise. He admitted that he had lost the superiority
over the Austrians which he had gained in 1757. Threatening to
imprison and cashier officers who should make faces or say that all
was lost, he slipped cleverly past Daun’s left into Bohemia, and for a
month remained there at his ease. Then he sped swiftly northward. On
August 22, 1758, he was at Cüstrin dictating a fresh testament on the
eve of the encounter with a new and gigantic foe.
In estimating Frederick’s prospects for the campaign of 1758, no
account has yet been taken of Russia. The action of the Muscovite
forces was proverbially uncertain and of necessity slow. It was
possible that they would not influence the main struggle at all, or
that Frederick’s plan of aggression in the South would be accomplished
before they had time to become formidable. Since the New Year, however,
storm-clouds had been massing to the north-eastward. It is fortunately
no part of our task to peer behind them into the dark secrets of the
Russian court. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth still lived, and
that so long as she remained on the throne peace with Prussia was
impossible. Her armies might be ill-found and her ministers corrupt,
but it would be strange if the mistress of Russia proved too weak to
wound Frederick in his ill-guarded flank beyond the Oder.
Fermor received the chief command of an army 34,000 strong. In January,
1758, he overran Ost-Preussen and forced the inhabitants to swear
fealty to the Czarina. In February Königsberg was illuminated in honour
of Russian royalty. Frederick avenged the first offence by reprisals
upon the Saxons, the second by withdrawing his favour for ever from
the polluted province. His power of self-restraint is attested by
the fact that he attempted nothing by way of rescue. He calculated
dispassionately that Fermor’s advance would at best be slow, that a
broad expanse of barren Polish territory separated the invader from
the rest of the Prussian dominions, and that offensive action in the
South was more likely to be profitable than defensive in the North.
Königsberg had been a Russian city for more than three months when
Frederick dashed into Moravia.
The danger, however, grew greater throughout the summer months. The
Muscovite tide rolled slowly across Poland into Frederick’s dominions
east of the Oder. Europe now had an opportunity of learning something
of the nature of the society which Peter the Great had brought within
her pale. In the Russian army, as in the nation, the highest classes
were men of honour when not too sorely tried, but the lowest were
filthy savages, who made the country a desert and tortured and burned
men and women alike. What the rank and file might be, Frederick had yet
to learn. But that his trusted field-marshal, Keith, gave him timely
warning, he might well have been pardoned for his belief that Fermor’s
unseasoned horde would not face the heroes of Leuthen led by himself,
the foremost captain in the world.
As the King sped towards his old prison, Cüstrin, the trembling
peasants came in crowds to kiss the hem of his coat. He found the
fortress unharmed, but the defenceless town reduced to ashes by
Fermor’s bombs. The Russians, more than 40,000 strong, lay on the
eastern side of the Oder, having an open road to Poland, but all others
barred by swamps and rivers. Before Frederick’s arrival, Dohna, with
perhaps a third of their numbers, the waters of the Oder, and the walls
of Cüstrin had been the only defences of Berlin. Now, however, the
Prussians were some 36,000 strong and as much superior to their foes in
mobility as were Drake and Hawkins to the Spanish Armada. Fermor was
short of supplies. He could not go forward and had hundreds of miles of
desert at his rear. Was the time at the King’s disposal so scanty that
he could not starve, harry, and crush the enemy without the sacrifice
of more than a few hundred Prussian lives?
Frederick was, however, in no mood for a war of strategy. He had
published his fixed resolve to conquer or die. He was impatient to
return to Silesia, where he had left 40,000 men under Charles of
Brandenburg-Schwedt. He was still more impatient to annihilate the
bloody vagabonds, who, he wrote, were burning villages every day and
committing horrors which made Nature groan. In the spirit of Leuthen,
though perhaps without like need, he resolved to attack Fermor without
an hour’s delay. Knowing every inch of the dismal country-side, he
swiftly planned a massacre that should avenge the past and safeguard
the future. The Russians had abandoned the siege of Cüstrin and taken
up a position so sheltered by the Oder and its tributary, the Mietzel,
that Fermor believed it to be unassailable. Frederick crossed the Oder
some miles below Cüstrin, marched right round their camp, and prepared
to hurl them into the waters in which they trusted for defence.
The plan seems a sound one only on the supposition that Keith’s opinion
was ill-founded and that the Russians would not show fight. They had
much in their favour. They were a national army, roused to enthusiasm
by the benedictions of a mob of orthodox popes. They outnumbered the
enemy and were far better furnished with cannon. In cavalry, it is
true, Frederick had a great advantage, but this was discounted by the
Russian formation in dense masses, which cavalry could hardly hope
to pierce. Above all, the King provided his opponents with the best
possible argument against running away when he left them no road by
which to run. With no alternative save drowning or suffocation, the
Russians chose to die where they stood, but to sell their lives dear.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ZORNDORF, AUGUST 25, 1758.]
These conditions made the battle fought near Zorndorf on August
25, 1758, one of the bloodiest of the whole war. It was in great
part a desperate hand-to-hand struggle, kept up with mutual fury
until the Russians were cut to pieces. According to the Prussian
histories, Seydlitz, the matchless dragoon, refused point-blank to
obey Frederick’s order to advance on the Russian guns. When and where
needed, he replied, he would be at hand with his men. “After the
battle,” came the King’s message, “you will answer for it with your
head.” “After the battle,” answered the imperturbable general,
“my head will be at the service of the King.” He justified his
insubordination by twice charging at the enemy on his own initiative.
He thereby saved the day, and, instead of being cashiered, was embraced
by his delighted master. But when the issue had once been decided by
sheer rage maintained for ten hours, some of the Prussian infantry
showed themselves equally insubordinate and less successful. It seems
not the least strange feature of this chaotic death-grapple that in an
attack upon an army strongly posted the cavalry should have formed the
chief factor in Frederick’s success.
Success, though much qualified, Frederick might indeed fairly claim.
Fermor, it is true, bivouacked on the field, fought again, though
languidly, next day, sent off bulletins of victory, and retired
unmolested a week later. His troops had endured the Prussian whirlwind
with a steadfastness beyond all praise. But of the 30,000 killed and
wounded nearly two-thirds were his, and Frederick had achieved, though
at a great cost, his prime object of securing his dominions on the
eastern side.
Against a new foe the King had displayed once more those qualities
which readers of his history have by this time learned to regard as
characteristic of him. He had been brave, secret, and masterful, swift
to plan and to carry out, tireless in body and teeming in brain. He
had at the same time proved himself exacting, overbearing, and rash,
adroit at supplying the need of the moment rather than far-sighted and
sagacious in providing for the future. Though he accepted victory and
defeat like a philosopher, there was too much of the despot, both in
what he exacted from his troops and in what he expected from his foes.
In this, though in this alone, it seemed as though the common infirmity
of the overpowerful had at last assailed a Hohenzollern, and that
Frederick had lost something of his power of seeing facts as they are.
All the torrents of Prussian blood wasted at Prague, at Kolin, and at
Zorndorf had not swept away his belief that Prussians led by himself
could carry out any order that he chose to give.
It is chiefly these virtues and foibles of the King that shape the
story of the remaining months of the campaign. While he was on the
banks of the Oder the Austrians and Imperialists had begun the
reconquest of Saxony and Silesia. Frederick by speed and cleverness
saved both, but his conceit doomed nearly nine thousand of his army to
wounds, captivity, or death.
First, by wonderful marches, he snatched Dresden from the jaws of
Daun. The cautious general took up a strong position, which barred
Frederick’s road to Silesia, where the Austrians were besieging Neisse.
Having failed to tempt him to battle, Frederick next stole round his
army, but Daun retorted with a similar manœuvre and encamped near
Hochkirch with some 65,000 men. On October 10th, Frederick with less
than half the number actually insisted upon occupying an untenable
position hard by. His generals, among whom were the Young Dessauer,
Seydlitz, and Zieten, remonstrated with him in vain. Next day Keith
arrived and spoke his mind quite frankly: “If the Austrians leave us
quiet in a position like this, they deserve to be hanged.” “It is to
be hoped that they fear us more than the gallows,” rejoined the King,
and planned a flank attack on Daun, who, he believed, was about to
retreat into Bohemia. The result was that before daybreak, on October
14, 1758, the Prussian camp was surprised. Five generals, Keith among
them, perished. Frederick’s obstinate foolhardiness cost him more than
one-fourth of his army, with more than a hundred guns and much material
of war. Kolin, Domstädtl, and Hochkirch, three victories over the
King of Prussia within sixteen months, formed a splendid chaplet for
a general whose forte was caution. The Pope was said to have rewarded
Daun with a consecrated hat and sword.
“It may be safely reckoned,” so the King informed the Berlin public a
week later, “that our loss does not exceed 3000 men.... These disasters
are sometimes inevitable in the great game of chance which we call
war.” The hour of disaster had again proved Frederick superior to the
shrewdest blows of Fate. At the moment when the Austrians, creeping
through the darkness, began to butcher his men in their tents, he
proved himself once more a hero. Disdaining to order a retreat, he
extricated his army from its terrible position and formed a new line
only half a league to the rear. Daun, who had lost more than 6000 men,
entrenched himself on the field, and was soon plying his old trade of
circumspectly hanging upon the skirts of the foe. Within ten days of
the battle Frederick robbed him of the fruits of victory by marching
round him once more. He flung himself between Daun and the besiegers of
Neisse, and Silesia was saved.
Daun’s counterstroke was, as was almost inevitable, an invasion of
Saxony while Frederick’s back was turned. He alarmed Dresden, but was
once more frustrated by Prussian speed. Frederick hurried back in time
to save both Saxony and its capital. In mid-December he went into
winter quarters at Breslau, master of dominions as broad as when he had
quitted the city nine months before.
[Illustration: PLAN OF HOCHKIRCH, OCTOBER 14, 1758.]
In those months he had, however, lost much that cannot be marked upon
the map. Faithful officers by hundreds, trained soldiers by thousands,
hard-wrung thalers by millions had been sacrificed, and nothing but
glory and a respite had been gained. No lands outside Ost-Preussen
were as yet conquered by foreign kings, but many had been wasted by
foreign armies, and some, at the dictate of urgent need, by their
own defenders. These losses weighed upon Frederick, whose task it
was to gather men and money for next year. But as a man he had cause
for more poignant grief, for Death had knocked hard at the door of
his own household. The loss of his heir, Augustus William, once his
father’s favourite, now the victim of Frederick’s cruelty, probably
afflicted him only because Prince Henry avenged it by refusing to see
him except on business. But the death of Wilhelmina, who died on the
eve of Hochkirch, was the most crushing calamity of his life. “Great
God, my Sister of Baireuth!” scrawled the afflicted King as postscript
to a brief despatch in cipher to his brother Henry. The message is
more pregnant than much fine writing. “The death of Her Highness the
Margravine of Baireuth embarrasses me with regard to His Majesty the
King more than all war matters,” wrote the faithful Eichel from Dresden
on the day after Frederick received the news, “since I can judge how
highly afflicting and crushing it must be to him. Councillor Coeper
writes to me yesterday that although every care was taken to prepare
His Majesty gradually for sad tidings it has none the less made an
indescribably great impression upon him, and he does not believe that
deeper woe is possible.” “If my head had within it a lake of tears it
would not be enough for my grief,” sighed the King to another mourner,
Keith’s brother, when the hard fighting and marching came to an end.
After three campaigns the war had now, at the close of the year 1758,
reached what may be called a chronic state. Thrice had Frederick
lunged at the heart of his enemies and each time they had parried the
thrust. At Vienna alone could the coalition receive a mortal wound. St.
Petersburg, Stockholm, and Paris were equally out of reach, and the
States of the Empire might be squeezed and harried for ever without
terminating the war. If the Prussians failed to dictate peace at
Vienna, their one hope must be that they might defend themselves until
some of the hostile Powers should change their minds. Their opponents,
too, felt the strain of prolonged and unprofitable war. It was true
that they had not to strain themselves like the nation whose very
existence was at stake, but neither Russia nor Austria nor France knew
the secret of Prussian thrift. The time might come when even Elizabeth
and the Pompadour would confess that the game was no longer worth the
candle. The French, in particular, were not all blind to the fact that
they were losing their Empire to England in order to gratify the spite
of the King’s mistress against the King of Prussia. Would they hold to
the Austrian alliance even for another year?
The event falsified the hopes of Frederick. With some relaxation of
intimacy, the Austro-French league was renewed, and the King perceived
that he must henceforward hold Prussia like a huge beleaguered
fortress. Five Powers were still encamped upon his frontiers and
ready to break in upon him. Like all resolute garrisons, therefore,
the Prussians had recourse to sallies, and some of these met with
much success. By sudden forays Henry and Ferdinand destroyed the
magazines that were being formed by the Austrians and Imperialists and
so retarded the invasion of Prussia, which could not proceed without
them. Mere partisan inroads like these were, however, insufficient
to prevent Daun from taking up a strong position at Mark-Lissa, with
Bohemia at his back and Saxony and Silesia open on either hand. There
he menaced Frederick while the Russian host once more drew near to the
Oder, overthrowing as it came a Prussian force which had been sent into
Poland to destroy its magazines and pen it in the swamps of the Vistula.
The story of this Polish campaign throws much light on the strength
and weakness of the Prussian army. Rightly neglecting the lesser danger
in order to make adequate head against the greater, the King had sent
against the Russians the force which usually defended the North against
the Swedes. The rank and file were good, but without leadership they
could accomplish nothing. “Your Polish campaign deserves to be printed
as an eternal example of what every intelligent officer must avoid.
You have done every silly thing which can be done in war and nothing
whatever that an intelligent man can approve. I tremble to open my
letters.” Such were the concluding words of a long indictment which
Frederick addressed to their commander, General Wobersnow.
Nothing but the royal presence, it seemed, could save the situation.
The King himself was not yet free to leave Daun. He therefore invented
a deputy-king, and despatched General Wedell to Poland “with the powers
of a Dictator in Roman times.” Twelve curt instructions were drafted
for his guidance. He was “(4) to forbid lamentation and depreciatory
talk among the officers on pain of dismissal. (5) To disgrace also
those who cry out on every occasion that the enemy is too strong. (6)
First to check the enemy by occupying a good position. (7) Then to
attack in my own fashion.” From the King’s own lips Wedell received the
order to fight the Russians whenever he should find them, and officers
and men alike were commanded to obey him as though he were indeed the
King. But Frederick was never sanguine that these attempts to win a
Russian Leuthen by proxy would succeed. His instructions were followed
to the letter, and within four days he was condoling with the Dictator
upon the disaster of Kay (July 23, 1759), where the Prussians lost more
than 8000 men killed and wounded. Nothing could now hold back Soltykoff
and his Russians from the Oder, and across the Oder lay Frederick’s
helpless capital.
But worse was yet in store. The Russians, for all their numbers and
their greed, were ill-fed, irresolute, and slow. They dreaded the
victor of Zorndorf and they were determined not to be the catspaw
of their allies. If only they could be kept at a distance from the
Austrians they might starve before they could agree upon the next step
in advance. From Kay to Mark-Lissa is some ninety miles as the crow
flies, and the Oder and Frederick’s army lay between. To strengthen
the barrier the King was prepared even to leave Saxony almost without
defence. He summoned Henry to observe Daun while he himself made “cruel
and terrible marches” through the burning sand towards Wedell in the
North. So severe was the strain that he passed six of the torrid nights
without sleep. But he was racing a fleet adversary—Laudon, the hero of
Domstädtl and probably the best partisan soldier in the world. Knowing
that he had served ten years in the Russian army, Daun now detached him
with 36,000 men to allay Soltykoff’s suspicions of the Austrians and to
speed his coming. Frederick disturbed the march, but started too late
to stop it altogether. When Laudon found the Russians at Frankfurt he
was still master of nearly 20,000 men.
This reinforcement vastly increased the effectiveness of Soltykoff’s
army as a fighting force. The Russians were well furnished with guns,
and their infantry had proved its toughness at Zorndorf. But their
cavalry was bad and Laudon added to it some 6000 men, well-mounted and
well-trained. None the less he was received with extreme discourtesy.
The Russians abused him because he brought no supplies. They refused
to cross the Oder unless Daun’s whole army should appear. Until fresh
orders from St. Petersburg produced some change of tone, Laudon felt
certain that they were on the eve of retreat. Then came the news that
the King of Prussia was upon them and the voice of discord was hushed.
Frederick had set himself a harder task than the destruction of Fermor
on the banks of the Oder in 1758. Only overwhelming necessity made him
give battle. He suspected that an Austrian detachment was threatening
his capital. “I believe that Hadik means Berlin,” he wrote, “and I
am obliged to make haste here to parry his blow in time. A lost soul
in purgatory is not in a more wretched situation than I am.” In mere
numbers, it is true, the disparity between the combatants was not much
greater than at Zorndorf. Frederick had now nearly 50,000 men against
a composite force of about 68,000, but of the enemy nearly one-quarter
were light horse, who in the shock of battle counted for next to
nothing.
In quality and in position, however, his army was worse off than
before, while the enemy was much better. In the previous year he had
led seasoned troops whose ranks had been purged by incessant marches
under a scorching sun to join the army of Dohna, which was at least
unbeaten and unwearied. Their meeting had provoked one of Frederick’s
best-remembered sayings: “Your men have made themselves wonderfully
smart; mine look like grass-devils, but they can bite.” Now, however, a
great part of his command consisted of troops mishandled by Wobersnow
and decimated by the Russians at Kay. It was unlikely that they would
fight like the victors of Leuthen.
[Illustration: PLAN OF KUNERSDORF, AUGUST 12, 1759.]
Nor was Frederick favoured by the ground. The most casual glance at
the two fields is sufficient to show that Kunersdorf, the scene of the
bloody drama of August 12, 1759, presented difficulties such as the
assailant at Zorndorf never had to overcome. The allies were again
encamped on the right bank of the Oder, and were now separated by the
broad river from the town of Frankfurt. To march round their position
was far more arduous than at Zorndorf. Their left wing was shielded
by impassable morasses, and the right by forest. Behind them lay a
fortress commanding a well-bridged river, before them a tangled mass
of sand-hills, woods, and lakes which seemed to have been designed by
nature to impede an attacking force and which was now made still more
formidable by art. This position, even if the 16,000 irregulars be
ignored, was held by some 40,000 Russians, now veterans in western
warfare, aided by 13,000 of the flower of the Austrian army under a
captain worthy to cross swords with Frederick himself.
On the other hand, the King had still Seydlitz, but such men as
Wedell could ill supply the place of Schwerin, the Old Dessauer, and
Keith. Some of his troops were men who had fled before the Russians
every year, at Gross-Jägersdorf, at Zorndorf, and at Kay, and whom he
could not even trust. Owing to the difficulties of the ground and the
King’s impatience, most of the Prussians went into action suffering
under privations that would have well-nigh killed ordinary men. They
lacked food and drink. After two nights without sleep they must drag
themselves and their accoutrements through a manœuvre of nine hours’
duration, now tugging cannon through pine-woods, now clambering over
sand-hills under the broiling August sun. Then at noon they were
ordered to attack an enemy more numerous than themselves who was
resting quietly behind entrenchments in ground of his own choosing.
That they accomplished what they did proves that the Prussians were
heroes. Frederick’s design was, as at Zorndorf, to cross the Oder below
the Russian camp, to march round it, and then to strike. But the barren
waste east of Frankfurt was to him unfamiliar country. At Leuthen and
at Zorndorf he had profited greatly by his knowledge of the field. But
at Kunersdorf he knew neither the difficulties of the ground nor the
extent to which, in one most important particular, those difficulties
had been surmounted by the enemy. When he scanned their position from
the north-east before completing his plan of attack, he could discern
Laudon’s force encamped in a seemingly isolated peninsula in the
great marsh which protected the left. He was informed that Laudon and
Soltykoff could communicate only by a roundabout way. Not till the
issue of the day was dubious did he learn that a new causeway connected
the Austrians with the main body of the enemy, and the error proved
fatal. Twice in his life Frederick paid dear for imperfect information,
but the price of the blunder at Prague was a trifle by the side of the
price paid here.
The beginning of the fray was such as to make the end a doubly crushing
blow to the King. After long and toilsome preparations it seemed as
though victory was assured. When the Prussian van went into action
they advanced like fresh men and turned the Russians out of their
entrenchments at the point of the bayonet. A second onslaught, better
supported, took the enemy in flank and by two o’clock the Russian left
was beaten, with a loss of seventy guns. Frederick sent off a courier
to carry the tidings of victory to Berlin. The third attack, however,
made on difficult ground in the face of cannon at 800 yards and
musketeers at fifty, did not succeed until the Prussian infantry had
been decimated and its strength almost spent. At this point Frederick’s
generals cried “Enough”; but the King, as at Hochkirch, preferred his
own opinion. Once more the Prussians stormed forward and for the
fourth time they annihilated the Russian line. If one knoll more, the
Spitzberg, and the battery upon it were taken, the victory, it seemed,
would be complete.
But at this crisis Laudon intervened to save the battery and the day.
His grenadiers climbed the knoll when the Prussians were still 150
paces from the top, and drove them back with a volley of case-shot.
Frederick ordered up his artillery, but the heavy guns stuck fast in
the sand and light field-pieces were of no avail. In the agony of the
moment the King lost his head and ordered the cavalry to storm the
Spitzberg. As at Zorndorf, Seydlitz declined to sacrifice his troops
to a blunder, but this time Frederick was deaf to the voice of reason.
He repeated the order and was obeyed. Seydlitz was wounded and his
superb squadrons shattered, without the smallest gain. A crushing
countercharge headed by Laudon completed the ruin of the Prussian
horse, and thenceforward the allies were the attacking side.
Frederick, almost beside himself, continued to demand victory from his
men, and the infantry, though it could not go forward, held its ground
against the Russians. Laudon, however, contrived the _coup de grâce_.
At about five o’clock he suddenly hurled a fresh Austrian host upon
the heroes who had been fifteen hours under arms. The overthrow was
complete. Frederick, who sought death in vain, was borne from the field
by a party of his own hussars. Amid the chaos he wrote a terse note in
French to inform his capital that the game was up. “My coat is riddled
with balls; two horses were killed under me; it is my misfortune to be
still alive. Our loss is great; not 3000 men out of 48,000 are with
me. At this moment all are in flight and I am no longer master of my
troops.”
The King’s first thought was that he himself was crushed and that
therefore Prussia was ruined. There was indeed good reason for his
despair. Even if Soltykoff should allow him to recross the Oder and to
rally the remnants of his army he dared not hope to save Berlin. He had
fought at Kunersdorf in the belief that an Austrian force under Hadik
was advancing towards his capital from the south. If he now attacked
Hadik he must expose his rear to the victors of Kunersdorf; if he stood
firm against them, Hadik would take him in flank. “Only a miracle could
save us,” wrote the Secretary of State.
The downfall of his country seemed inevitable and Frederick was
resolved not to witness it. For years he had carried poison. Before
using it he spent two days in arranging his affairs. On the plea of
a severe illness, he entrusted the army to General Finck and gave
directions that it should swear allegiance to the son of Augustus
William. He advised the well-to-do citizens of Berlin to fly to
Hamburg, the Government to make Magdeburg their asylum, and Schmettau,
the commandant at Dresden, to surrender on good terms if he saw no
means of succour when attacked.
Frederick’s life-drama, it seemed, was played out, but the curtain did
not fall. The allies, who had bought victory dear, made no move, and
on the fourth day after the battle the King was himself again. “All my
troops have done wonders,” had been his words when he gave up hope. Now
he sent a new version to the same correspondent, Finckenstein. “The
victory was ours, when suddenly my wretched infantry lost courage.
The silly fear of being carried off to Siberia turned their head and
there was no stopping them.” His loss at Kunersdorf amounted to at
least 18,500 men, but he found himself master of an army 20,000 strong.
They were, he said, not to be compared with the worst troops of former
years, but he prepared to sacrifice them and himself for the defence of
the capital, and awaited Soltykoff on the river Spree.
A letter to Prince Henry written on August 16, 1759, shows the temper
of the Prussian Leonidas.
“The moment that I sent you word of our mishap everything
seemed desperate. Do not think that the danger is not still
very great, but be assured that until my eyes are closed I
will sustain the State, as is my duty. A case that I had in my
pocket was smashed by a shot, but saved my leg. We are all in
tatters; there is hardly anyone who has not had two or three
balls through his clothes or his hat. But we would cheerfully
sacrifice our wardrobe, if that were all.”
Despite these signs of reviving courage, Frederick felt with tenfold
intensity what he expressed years afterwards when he said that after
Kunersdorf the enemy had only to give him the finishing stroke. Yet
it is highly characteristic of him that already his thoughts ran upon
another battle. To carry on defensive warfare, he argued, the support
of a fortress was indispensable. But he had only Cüstrin and Spandau to
choose from, and to sit down near either would be to sacrifice Berlin.
Desperate evils, he held, needed desperate remedies, and he would court
Fortune sword in hand. Eight days after Kunersdorf he hoped soon to
have 33,000 men in his camp, but he protested that he feared them more
than the enemy. “I count on the firmness and honesty of Pitt, and it is
on him alone that we can at this juncture base some hope.”
Frederick expected day by day the catastrophe of Prussia. Yet the only
direct result of Kunersdorf was that for a time he lost a great part of
Saxony. Early in September Dresden was wrested from him by the motley
army of the Empire, which was accounted the most despicable member of
the coalition. Schmettau had acted too mechanically in following the
King’s counsels of despair. But the Swedes, though their opponents
had withdrawn, failed to strike south. The French, who had set out
in earnest to conquer Hanover, were routed at Minden by Ferdinand of
Brunswick on August 1, 1759. They were driven headlong through the
narrow gorge at the spot where the Weser cleaves the bulwark of hills
which guards the northern plain, and thus before the day of Kunersdorf
Frederick knew that he had nothing to fear on the western side. But
how, it may well be wondered, could Daun and Soltykoff, with 120,000
men at their disposal and only half the number against them, neglect
to follow up their victory? The sequel even suggests that Frederick’s
desperate measures beyond the Oder had been superfluous. Prussia was
far weaker than before, yet she did not fall. The King was crippled,
Austrians and Russians were now massed into one unbroken force, triumph
at Dresden followed triumph at Kunersdorf, yet they accomplished
nothing.
Their opponents, it is true, were tacticians of the first rank. Prince
Henry, by wonderful marches, evaded Daun, and Frederick, returning
to the Oder, frustrated all Soltykoff’s efforts to gain Silesia.
It was, moreover, beyond the power of Daun to furnish the Russians
with supplies, and if their ally did not supply them they refused
point-blank to proceed. But the chief cause of Prussia’s salvation
was that victory, though it united the armies of her enemies, could
not unite their interests. Russians and Austrians remained as before
separate armies with divergent interests to consult. At no time did
Frederick draw greater profit than after Kunersdorf from the fact that
Prussia was one and her opponents many.
Soon Berlin breathed freely and even Breslau felt safe. Before
October was at an end Soltykoff was marching home, while Daun was
struggling to save Dresden at least from Prince Henry’s reconquest of
Saxony. The _Te Deums_ ceased at Vienna and dejection reigned there.
Daun’s sluggishness in aggressive action extinguished the renown
due to his triumphs of defence. His wife dared not show herself in
public. At court the story ran that she opened a package addressed
to the Field-marshal, and discovered that some wag had mocked his
sluggishness by sending him a night-cap.
At this juncture, however, it would have been well for Prussia if her
King’s activity had been less superhuman. Flushed with the triumph
of his strategy and confident of the devotion of Pitt, he had the
audacity to demand that compensation for Prussia should be the basis
of negotiation for peace. During the greater part of October, 1759,
he was tormented by gout and fever. He spent his enforced leisure in
writing an essay on Charles XII., the Madman of the North, a warrior
who would have prized the bloody afternoon of Kunersdorf far more than
the strategy which drove Soltykoff empty-handed from Silesia. Then,
when the Russian peril had vanished, Frederick set out in a litter for
Saxony. “I am very weak, but although still a cripple, I will do all
that my feebleness allows me to attempt,” he wrote on November 4th. His
heart beat high with the hope of repeating the miracles of 1757, and of
regaining, by a new Leuthen, all that had been lost during the summer,
and peace.
“I make them carry me like the relics of a saint,” wrote the King after
the first day’s journey. Though sleepless and crippled, he concocted
daily bulletins to Prince Henry in the spirit of a schoolboy. Since it
had been noised abroad that Daun had received the papal benediction
he had more than ever been the butt of Frederick’s jests. Now, to
create “a favourable impression on the mind of the blessed creature and
his council,” he bids his brother announce his little escort as 4000
strong, and sends a list of the regiments of which it may be said to
consist. “Daun and his Austrians shall not perceive that I have the
gout,” he boasted.
Two days later, on November 14th, he took over the command. Pleased
that Daun paid him the compliment of retreating, he ordered Finck
to pursue. All the general’s objections were overruled, and he took
refuge in wooden obedience to the letter of the King’s orders. “In a
few days,” Frederick wrote on the 17th, “we shall reap the fruit of
this disposition.” In four the royal prophecy was fulfilled, but the
harvester was Daun. Finck’s command, some 15,000 strong, with seventy
guns, was entangled in the hills south of Dresden. Believing themselves
to be surrounded by thrice their number, the Prussians laid down their
arms at Maxen (November 21, 1759).
The blow was more crushing than Kunersdorf, for the whisper now sped
through the world that the Prussians were turning cowards. Eichel
confessed that his heart was so full of bitterness and chagrin that
it was quite out of his power that day to write anything in cipher.
The King, who had boasted to Voltaire that he would despatch his next
letter from Dresden, complained bitterly that ill-luck pursued him all
his days. He strove to atone for his over-confidence by exertion, and
for many weeks kept the field, defying the stern winter. He thereby
averted an Austrian reconquest of Saxony, but the gates of Dresden
never opened to him again. The Prussian cause and the Prussian King,
thought the world, were failing together. “If you saw me, you would
scarcely know me again,” Frederick wrote to Voltaire. “I am old,
broken, grayheaded, wrinkled. I am losing my teeth and my gaiety.”
Yet this dejected veteran alone kept together the Prussian army. That
army was the sole bulwark of the State. If Frederick had in truth lost
health, skill, and fortune, what hope was left to Prussia?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]