THE END OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR (1760–1763)
Between the spring of 1760, when the weary Frederick braced himself
to grapple anew with a task which four campaigns seemed only to
have increased, and the moment when a sudden stroke of fortune was
to give him rest, there intervenes a gap of time as great as that
which separates his first plunge into the war from his overthrow at
Kunersdorf. If we are compelled to be content with a swift review of
these final phases of the struggle, we must by no means lose from sight
the tenacity and adroitness of the hero upon whom every campaign laid
a heavier burden than the last, and to whom every year seemed endless.
After Kunersdorf and Maxen, we, who know that Frederick and Prussia did
not perish, may be impatient to have done with their long agony. But
Frederick himself enjoyed no such comfortable prescience. Hopes he had
indeed in plenty. Denmark might join him, the Tartars might rise, the
Turks, he was constantly assured, were on the very verge of attacking
Austria. Now the French, now the Russians, he believed, were about to
desert the coalition against him. The event testified to his courage
rather than to his insight. Time brought only fresh disappointments and
prospects ever more black, but the King neither flinched nor paused.
Under the bludgeonings of chance his head was bloody but unbowed. “It
was not the army,” said Napoleon, “that defended Prussia, seven years
through, against the three greatest Powers of Europe, it was Frederick
the Great.”
Till near its close the campaign of 1760 seemed to be merely the
natural sequel to that of 1759. In spite of all the chances of high
politics, the same combatants took the field on either side. France,
beaten by land and sea, had tempted England with the offer of a
separate peace. But Pitt displayed anew the loyalty to his ally which
was the consolation of Frederick’s darkest hours. The English minister
recognised that his country’s triumphs over France off Lagos, in
the bay of Quiberon, and before the walls of Quebec in the glorious
campaign of 1759, had been due to the Prussian alliance almost as
directly as the victory of Minden. He braved the taunt that he was more
Prussian than the King of Prussia and inflexibly refused to desert him
in his hour of misfortune. The Russians, on the other hand, consented
to serve Maria Theresa anew, but at a high price. Ost-Preussen, which
they had conquered, was to be theirs for ever. Thus the Hapsburg,
though guardian and head of Germany, was compelled to promise that if
Prussia were crushed the Muscovite should advance to the Vistula.
The labours of the diplomatists, from which Frederick looked for great
gains, had done nothing to change the military situation in his favour.
The campaign of 1760 saw once more Ferdinand confronting the French in
the West, the Swedes paralysed by their own incompetence in Pomerania,
Daun striving to reconquer Saxony, Laudon striving to reconquer
Silesia, and the Russians, as usual, advancing towards the Oder. But,
whereas in 1759 Frederick’s own presence had more than once caused
disaster to his armies, in 1760 he became again the hero of the strife.
He was always most formidable when the odds against him were heavy, and
in 1760 none could doubt that the Prussians were at an overwhelming
disadvantage. Even the King regarded the campaign as a gambler’s last
throw. Failing extraordinary good fortune, he predicted the collapse of
Prussia before the autumn.
For the first time in the war the enemy began a campaign on Prussian
soil. Laudon invaded Silesia, and the King’s friend, Fouqué, believing
himself too weak to hold Landshut, fell back on Breslau. The Silesians
protested that they were being abandoned to the mercy of the enemy and
Frederick complained that his generals did more mischief to him than
to the enemy. Under-estimating Laudon’s talent for war, he ordered
Fouqué to recover Landshut at once, and promised to come to the rescue
in person as soon as he had beaten the enemy in Saxony. Fouqué obeyed,
but in Laudon he had an opponent far more active than Daun. His force
of less than 11,000 men was soon in as hopeless a plight as that of
Finck at Maxen. He, too, avenged the insults of the King by following
his orders to the letter, for the more considerate counter-orders
which Frederick despatched never reached him. On June 23, 1760, near
Landshut, the Prussians maintained a hopeless struggle for seven hours.
It is believed that the killed and wounded numbered more than 5000
men. It is certain that only some 1500 cavalry, perhaps one-seventh of
Fouqué’s whole force, succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy.
At Landshut the Prussian regiments regained by their valour the repute
which they had lost at Maxen, where they laid down their arms without
a blow. But the fruits of Laudon’s victory were great. Silesia now lay
defenceless before the Austrians, and only Prince Henry’s weak force
screened it from the advancing Russians. Frederick, though balked of
a battle, was compelled to leave his work in Saxony undone and to
transfer the bulk of the Prussian army to the eastern theatre of war.
His going was a proof of weakness, but the manner of it paid a signal
tribute to his fame. None dared to stand in his way. The Austrians
under Lacy were so determined to be on the safe side that they left
Dresden bare, and Frederick was tempted by the opportunity of a
brilliant triumph to turn aside.
He hoped to take the Saxon capital in two or three days, but the
defenders were stout-hearted beyond his calculation. After he had
wasted more than a fortnight before the walls, the news that Glatz
had fallen and that Breslau was in danger compelled him to resume
the dreary tramp towards Silesia. His prestige and his position had
suffered alike, and his mood was more dejected than ever. Philosophy,
he professed, was his only consolation. Since nothing worse could
happen to him than what he looked for, he could have no occasion for
disappointment. He was determined to hold fast to duty during the brief
space that might still separate him from the abyss. It was no great
matter, he told Finckenstein, whether they were crushed a month sooner
or a month later. The death of his old servant, Podewils, affected him
little, for it seemed but a small item in the general ruin of the State.
Thus began the month of August, 1760, in which Frederick and his army
dispelled by their own valiant deeds some of the darkest clouds that
hung over Prussia. They were escorted into Silesia, where Soltykoff’s
Russians and Laudon’s Austrians awaited them, by the armies of Daun and
Lacy, which marched, said the King, like the vanguard and rear-guard
of their own force. Thanks to the stout-heartedness of the Prussian
general Tauentzien, Laudon had summoned Breslau in vain. Now, however,
he effected a junction with Daun, and the united Austrian forces
outnumbered Frederick by three to one.
At no moment of his long career, not even when he galloped from the
field of Mollwitz nor when he gathered round him the wreckage after
Kunersdorf, had the King’s plight seemed so desperate as now. He
himself upon whom all depended was in the depths of dejection. He had
with him only some 30,000 men, and Kay, Kunersdorf, Maxen, Landshut,
Dresden formed an unbroken series of disasters. Against him were some
90,000 Austrians, commanded by Daun, to whom his royal mistress had
sent the most unequivocal instructions to fight, and by Laudon, to
whom military instinct no less clearly dictated battle. They barred
Frederick’s path both to Breslau and to Schweidnitz, and brought his
force to the verge of starvation. Across the Oder the Russians were
masters of the land, waiting only for the tidings of victory to pour
a new host over bridges which they had already built. To retreat was
to abandon Silesia, to stand still was to be starved or crushed,
to attack was beyond the imagination even of a Frederick. Prussian
officers talked of a new and greater Maxen, and the British ambassador,
Mitchell, burned his papers.
[Illustration: PLAN OF LIEGNITZ, AUGUST 15, 1760.]
At last Frederick moved. Having learned from a drunken deserter that
Daun was planning a surprise, he resolved to march towards the Oder,
preferring the neighbourhood of the Russians on the right bank to a
situation which had plainly become untenable. On the evening of August
14, 1760, the Prussians stole away from their camp and occupied a
strong position to the north-east of Liegnitz. On the western side,
where Daun’s attack might be looked for, the ground was admirable for
defence. Behind the stream of the Schwarzwasser rises a steep and
sudden bank, shaped like a natural bastion. This was manned by the
right wing, encamped on a champaign so level that it forms the Liegnitz
drill-ground to this day. Further north-east a gentle slope descended
from the lines of the Prussian left to the little village of Panten and
so to the river Katzbach. There through the moonlit night the men
lay under arms, forbidden to cheer themselves with song, but filled
with an expectancy that banished sleep. The King, who shared all their
privations, wrapped himself in his cloak and snatched a brief rest by a
watch-fire after satisfying himself that all was ordered aright.
Till dawn the stillness was unbroken. Then in a moment blazed up one of
the shortest and most brilliant fights of the whole war. A breathless
messenger cried that the enemy—Laudon—was attacking in force on the
extreme left. Frederick hurried off to oppose him. Had the attack been
made fifteen minutes earlier, he declared, the issue would have been
far different. But the Prussians profited much by their stealthy change
of camp. Laudon’s march was a part of Daun’s concerted attack upon
the position that they had quitted seven hours before. The result of
their movement was that Daun hardly reached them, while Laudon, who
expected to surprise their baggage, was himself surprised. Marching
without a vanguard, he found himself committed to an uphill fight
without support from Daun. None the less he attacked with such swing
and dash that the Prussian left was well-nigh cut in two, It was saved
by the infantry, who first valiantly held Panten and then set it on
fire. This checked the Austrian advance and enabled the Prussians to
make good use of their position. About an hour and a half after the
first onset Laudon retired across the Katzbach unpursued. The Prussians
claimed to have killed or wounded 6000 men and captured 4000—a total
loss thrice as great as their own. They had thus annihilated nearly
one-third of Laudon’s force, and—what was even more important—they had
rent the net that was closing round them. Daun had appeared in sight
of the Prussians only to learn of Laudon’s disaster and to retire.
Henceforward it was beyond the power of the Empress to induce her
favoured field-marshal to attack.
The moral gain was perhaps the greatest of all the advantages that
Frederick derived from Liegnitz. “A second edition of Rossbach,” as
he called the battle, was the best proof that Prussian valour and
leadership and luck had none of them vanished from the earth. The King,
who had his coat torn by one ball and his horse wounded by another,
ascribed the victory to the favour of fortune and the bravery of his
men. No other judge, whether Prussian, Austrian, or Russian, could fail
to ascribe a great share in it to the King. The value of this renewal
of prestige was apparent almost every day that the war had yet to
run. However huge the masses of Austrians and Russians might be, they
were usually content to watch Frederick at a respectful distance. The
initiative was thus often abandoned to the weaker side and the value of
Frederick’s army enhanced threefold.
Yet nothing could demonstrate more clearly than their movements after
Liegnitz how weak the Prussians were. Frederick’s departure from the
field of victory was in truth a flight, but a flight which covered the
fugitives with glory. Young Lieutenant Archenholtz, who was among the
victors, tells the astounding tale of how
“this army, spent with bloody toil and girt by mighty hosts,
must press on without rest and without delay, and yet must
bear with it every gun and man that had been taken and all the
wounded as well. These last were packed into meal-wagons and
bread-wagons, into carriages and carts, no matter whose they
might be. Even the King gave up his. King and generals gave up
their led horses to carry the wounded who could ride. The empty
meal-wagons were broken up and their horses harnessed to the
captured guns. Every horseman and driver must take with him one
of the enemy’s muskets. Nothing was left behind, not a single
wounded man, Prussian or Austrian, and at nine o’clock, four
hours after the end of the battle, the army with its enormous
load was in full march.”
Twelve good miles were covered that day under the August sun. Frederick
was still between two armies, each larger than his own. Neither
Russians nor Austrians, however, dared attack him and he joined Prince
Henry at Breslau without another stroke of sword.
Of his brother Henry, Frederick said at a later date, “There is but
one of us that never made a mistake in war.” But the King continually
rejected his counsel, though the event proved it to have been wise,
and his relations with the Prince often became strained. A brilliant
strategist, Henry wished to husband Prussian powder and Prussian blood
by manœuvring more and fighting less. The victor of Leuthen, on the
other hand, was ready to take great risks if he believed that his
success would be fatal to the chief army either of the Russians or of
the Austrians. “If you engage in small affairs only,” he maintained,
“you will always remain mediocre, but if you engage in ten great
undertakings and are lucky in no more than two you make your name
immortal.”
Frederick’s habitual inclination to throw for high stakes was increased
by the events of September and October, 1760. His task was to guard
the Silesian fortresses against Daun, but while he—like the court of
Vienna—yearned for a decisive action Berlin fell into the hands of
40,000 Russians and Austrians. The raiders occupied the city for four
days and exacted a contribution of two million thalers, but the rumour
of the King’s approach sufficed to drive them off. Winter was drawing
nigh and the Russians vanished as was their wont. There was thus less
need to fear for Silesia, but the enemy still held Saxony, and Saxony
was to Frederick a recruiting-ground, a treasure-house, and a home.
With added reasons for a battle, but with little assurance of success,
he therefore transferred thither the seat of war.
“The close of my days is poisoned,” he wrote, “and the evening
of my life as hideous as its morning. Never will I endure the
moment that must force me to make a dishonourable peace. No
persuasion, no eloquence can bring me to sign my shame. Either
I will bury myself under the ruins of my fatherland, or if this
consolation seem too sweet to the Misfortune that pursues me, I
will myself put an end to my woes.... After having sacrificed
my youth to my Father, and my ripe years to my fatherland, I
think I have acquired the right to dispose of my old age as
I please.... And so I will finish this campaign, resolved to
hazard all and to try the most desperate measures, to conquer
or to find a glorious end.”
We who have seen Frederick resign his crown after Kunersdorf are free
to believe that he would have taken his life after a new Kolin. His
words are in any event highly significant of the view which he took
of the limits of his duty to the State, whose course he had steered
according to his own will for twenty years. Five days after they were
written, on November 3, 1760, he did in truth hazard all, and try the
most desperate measures. Daun, who had followed him into Saxony, was
encamped near Torgau in a position reputed impregnable. He had 50,000
men with an enormous park of artillery, and whatever his shortcomings
in attack, none could impugn his talent for defence. Yet Frederick,
with 44,000 men, determined to attack, and to attack by one of the most
difficult operations in war, a simultaneous onslaught on opposite sides
of the enemy’s position. The King himself proposed to lead half the
army through the forest, right round the Austrian camp, so as to assail
it from the north. The other half was to attack from the south under
Zieten, the bravest of hussars but the youngest of generals, who had
commanded a wing at Liegnitz, but had never handled an army, and who
did not know the ground.
It is hardly surprising, with such a plan as this, that Torgau, like
many battles, was fought not as was designed but as best it might
be. The history of the day proved beyond dispute that Frederick had
ventured much. The weather, their own errors, and the enemy’s guns
ruined the Prussian simultaneous attack. The King’s contingent fought
a desperate battle. Few of his attendants escaped without a wound. His
own life was saved as if by miracle. Three horses were killed under
him. A spent ball struck him senseless, but his pelisse saved him from
serious hurt. He rallied both himself and his men, but when evening
came the Austrians had the advantage. Daun felt that he might safely
leave the field to dress a wound and send news of victory to Vienna.
Then, in the last hour of the fight, something like a simultaneous
attack was carried out and it succeeded. After long indecision, Zieten
stormed the southern heights with desperate courage and the confused
struggle was taken up a third time by the King’s forces on the north.
By eight o’clock, thirteen hours after the Prussians had left camp,
the Austrian resistance was at an end. Ere midnight Daun was fleeing
across the Elbe, while Frederick, seated on the altar-step of a village
church, scribbled a note to Finckenstein, promising to send details of
the victory next day.
[Illustration: PLAN OF TORGAU, NOVEMBER 3, 1760.]
Before dawn, he was once more among his troops riding through the
lines and embracing Zieten. At Torgau he had frustrated the Austrian
reconquest of Saxony and reduced their forces by some 16,000 men.
But when his own loss came to be counted he strictly forbade his
adjutants to reveal the sum. Torgau was the bloodiest battle of the
war and the Prussians had suffered most. Their casualties exceeded by
nearly one thousand those of the beaten side.
In spite of Liegnitz and Torgau the campaign of 1760 seemed to have
changed Frederick’s situation but little. Dresden was still beyond
his reach, but he was able to spend a pleasant winter at Leipzig,
surrounded by books and men of letters. Diplomacy, as before, promised
much and performed little, but drilling and recruiting went on without
pause. Although the quality of the Prussian army could not but
deteriorate, the numbers were astonishingly maintained. Commissions
were given to mere lads, freebooters were welcomed, and the lands of
the lesser German princes were scoured for men, till in the spring
of 1761 a hundred thousand soldiers were ready to take the field. To
furnish the necessary funds no new taxes were laid upon the Prussians,
but Frederick issued great quantities of base coin and Saxony, where
the Austrians might otherwise have found support, was harried to the
verge of devastation.
It was believed at Vienna that Frederick would resort to his plan of
the preceding year by pitting himself against the army which covered
Dresden. The Empress therefore implored Daun once more to take command.
He consented, but only on the astounding condition that he should not
be expected to make conquests. Then the King of Prussia transferred
himself to Silesia, which became the principal scene of the events of
1761, perhaps the dreariest of all campaigns.
For the third year in succession it was beyond the power of the
Prussians to prevent the armies of the Empress and Czarina from
joining hands in Silesia. The King would have risked a battle against
either, but battle was not vouchsafed him. Yet in face of an enemy
who outnumbered his 55,000 men by more than two to one he had still
a weapon at his disposal and it proved effectual. The bold offensive
of his earlier campaigns had perforce given place to defensive action
only. Although Ferdinand still gloriously held his own against
the French, Frederick knew that he himself was too weak to meet
the combined Austrian and Russian army in the field. He therefore
entrenched himself and defied the allies either to destroy him where he
stood or to make lasting conquests while his army remained undestroyed.
For five weeks, till near the end of September, he thus inhabited the
famous camp of Bunzelwitz, resting upon Schweidnitz, the key of Lower
Silesia. Then, deeming the danger past, he moved southward to seek
fresh supplies. His absence woke the foe to life and the campaign
closed with disaster. On October 1, 1761, Laudon astonished Europe by
storming Schweidnitz. A second reverse followed. Before the year was
out the Russians were masters of Colberg, the Baltic gate of Prussian
Pomerania. For the first time, therefore, the armies of the enemy could
winter on Prussian soil. A huge crescent of foes, French, Imperialists,
Austrians, Russians, Swedes, was at last enfolding Prussia. When
spring came would they not surely stifle her?
Frederick, moping through the winter at Breslau, declared once more
that Fortune alone could save him. He likened himself to a fiddler from
whose instrument men tore away the strings one by one till all were
gone and still demanded music. Once more he declared that philosophy
alone could console him in his “pilgrimage through this hell called the
world.” “I save myself,” he wrote, “by viewing the world as though from
a distant planet. Then everything seems infinitely small, and I pity
my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about such a trifle.”
Yet he never ceased to recruit, to drill, and to make plans for the
glorious offensive campaign that he hoped to engage in with the aid of
the Tartars and the Turks.
In December, 1761, he professed indifference to the course of events in
England, though two months earlier his champion Pitt had given place
to men who preferred the Austrian alliance to the Prussian, and who
desired that separate peace with France which Pitt had rejected in
1758. The treaty then made between England and Prussia forbade either
to make peace without the other till April 11th of the following year.
In 1759, 1760, and 1761 this compact had been renewed. Now, however,
Newcastle and Bute began to clamour for what Pitt had ventured only
to suggest—that Frederick should purchase peace by some concession
conformable to the course of the Continental war. The Prussian envoys
in London dared to advise their sovereign to comply. He answered that
they were in nowise permitted to give him such foolish and impertinent
counsel. “Your father,” he wrote to one of them, though the charge was
baseless, “took bribes from France and England; has he bequeathed the
habit to you?”
Frederick’s inflexible resolve to make no concession was by no means
the same as a resolve to make no bargain. He often played with the
fancy that Saxony or a part of it might be left in his hands at the
peace. For this he would gladly surrender any or all of his outlying
provinces. But he would rather forfeit the English subsidy and
jeopardise the very existence of the Prussian State than sue for the
peace which Kaunitz was more than willing to conclude on terms of
moderate profit for the allies. Two weighty reasons of policy increased
his determination. The labours of the winter once again filled the
ranks and the war-chest of Prussia. And Fortune, of whom the King said
that she alone could extricate him, now gave with one hand more than
she took away with the other. At the moment when England left him,
Russia ranged herself at his side.
The cause of this marvellous revolution was the accident that the
Czarina died early in January, 1762, and that her nephew and successor,
Peter III., was a worshipper of the King of Prussia. Elizabeth had
lived in debauchery and left upwards of 15,000 dresses to bear witness
to her luxurious tastes. It is possible that her chief motive in
attacking Frederick was a desire to chastise the man who had spoken
ill of her. But there can be no doubt that her policy was suited to the
interests of the State. It was argued at a later date that her alliance
with the Queen had cost Russia countless lives and sixty millions of
money. But in 1762 it had already procured Ost-Preussen and part of
Pomerania, and there seemed to be good hope that Prussia, the only
Power which could prevent a vast extension of Russian influence in
Poland, would be permanently crippled. If the allies dared not attack
the King of Prussia, they were at least in a fair way to exhaust his
strength.
In a moment, however, the rash young Holsteiner who now wielded the
sceptre of his great namesake, Peter, flung away all that his troops
had purchased with their blood in five campaigns—at Gross-Jägersdorf,
Zorndorf, Kay, Kunersdorf, and Colberg. In the first hours of his
reign he ordered his army to take no step in advance. Before January
was over, Frederick knew that peace with Russia was assured. The
Czar’s one desire seemed to be to gratify his brother of Prussia. He
craved investiture with the order of the Black Eagle, and declared
that he would stand by while Turks and Tartars attacked the Austrian
dominions. He resigned the Russian conquests without indemnity,
undertook to promote peace with Sweden, and even offered Frederick his
alliance. Influenced by his withdrawal, the Swedes came to terms of
their own accord and concluded the Peace of Hamburg (May 22, 1762),
which re-established the conditions of 1720. Frederick could therefore
face the remnants of the coalition without anxiety for his rear. From
Ost-Preussen he now drew 15,000 men. By undertaking to assist Peter in
his schemes for winning back the lands which the House of Holstein had
lost to Denmark forty years before, he secured the immediate help of
20,000 Russians.
The situation was so completely transformed since the days when
Frederick lay motionless at Bunzelwitz that in 1762 he determined
once more to take the aggressive. His first aim must be the recovery
of Schweidnitz. This could only be accomplished by inducing Daun to
give battle, for his army, which had encamped near the fortress, was
now playing the part that had fallen to the Prussians in the previous
year. While the manœuvres were pursuing their tedious course the news
arrived that Peter III. had been deposed. His wife, the German princess
Catherine II., who was thus placed in power, at once recalled the
20,000 Russians from Silesia. Frederick, however, calculating on the
influence which their presence would exercise upon the mind of Daun,
persuaded their commander to conceal the order and to remain a few days
longer as a spectator of the war. Then on July 21, 1762, the Prussians
surprised Daun’s right wing and gained a clever victory at Burkersdorf.
At a sacrifice of some 1600 men they reduced the enemy’s force by
nearly 10,000, and the retreat of the Austrians enabled them to begin
the siege of Schweidnitz.
Thenceforward it was plain that the dragging war would lead to no
decisive issue. Frederick was so sure of his cause that he had
already sent a commissioner to examine the civil needs of Pomerania.
But he could only undertake formidable aggressive movements if the
Turks and Tartars rose, and once again they disappointed his hopes.
Instead of new combatants joining in the fray the old ones were
quitting it. Bute was eager to take the step which Pitt had scorned to
take in 1760. Before the year was out France and England signed the
preliminaries which were embodied in the Peace of Paris in February,
1763. Immediately after Burkersdorf, the Russians withdrew and it was
not to be expected that the Austrians and Imperialists could accomplish
by themselves a task which had baffled the unbroken coalition. Daun,
indeed, attempted to avenge Burkersdorf by a counter-surprise. He
failed and in October, 1762, Schweidnitz fell. Before the month was
over Prince Henry, who was conducting the campaign in Saxony, gained
a great victory over the Imperialist army at Freiberg. The campaign
closed with an armistice between Frederick and the Austrians and a
series of Prussian forays against the hostile princes of the Empire.
At last the Queen realised that she had failed. She promptly determined
not to prolong a struggle which could only add to the misery of
mankind. So vast a legacy of hate had, however, been left by the war
that it was difficult to find a single Power whose good offices both
sides could accept with a view to peace. The Queen therefore brought
herself to approach “the wicked man” direct and sent an envoy to
the King of Prussia. For nearly seven weeks negotiations went on at
Hubertusburg, a castle of the unfortunate Saxon monarch. Frederick
showed himself pliant in matters of etiquette and unbending where any
practical advantage was at stake. He was willing to gratify Hapsburg
pride by sending his envoy more than half-way to meet the envoy of the
Queen, by allowing her name to precede his in the documents, and by
promising to further the election of her son Joseph as Emperor. But
he insisted on the restoration of Glatz by the Austrians, and on the
payment by the Saxons of his grinding taxes up to the very eve of peace.
On February 15, 1763, the Peace of Hubertusburg was signed. After seven
campaigns and an incalculable loss of blood and treasure, Austria and
Prussia agreed to return to their situation before the outbreak of the
war.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]