FREDERICK THE GREAT.
Frederick II. of Prussia, known as the Great, was born in 1712. The
associations of his boyhood and early youth were ill fitted to bring
out the qualities of a nature which, with many defects, was essentially
that of a soldier and statesman. His father, Frederick William, had
some parts which entitle him to a place among able rulers; but, even
as a king, he was a harsh tyrant, and in his private life and social
relations he was scarcely better than a coarse-minded savage. History
has fully dwelt on his strange acts and habits; how, with ministers
mere submissive satellites, he governed his kingdom with a rod of iron;
how he sate, in what was called his Tobacco Parliament, directing the
affairs of a growing state according to his despotic fancies; how he
reduced his household to the level of lackeys, caned nobles, ladies,
and domestics alike, and was wont to storm against them with oaths and
curses; how, in order to enlarge an overgrown army, he turned Prussia
into an immense barrack; and how he exaggerated in his treatment of
his wife and family the barbarities he inflicted on his terrified
subjects. That a lad, gifted with fine intelligence, who had a strong
will and a genuine sympathy with Letters, Art, and the pursuits of
Science, should, as he grew up, regard with disgust this system of
cruel and grotesque oppression, and should fiercely resent the inhuman
discipline to which he was himself subjected, was only natural and to
be expected; and Frederick and his father seem to have hated each other
during several years with a cordial hate. It is unnecessary to dwell
on this dreary episode in the life of the great future sovereign; the
Crown Prince was beaten, half starved, and drilled into obedience, with
a severity that became a byeword; he was forbidden books and liberal
studies; and having sought refuge in flight from these unnatural
wrongs, he was thrown into prison, condemned to death, and perhaps only
escaped a malefactor’s fate through the intercession of the Imperial
Head of Germany.
In the revulsion of feeling caused by this tyranny, Frederick drew
more and more away from the King, his methods of ruling, his ways,
and his habits; and when the advent of manhood set him partly free,
he surrounded himself with youthful friends of a somewhat wild and
licentious turn, indulged freely in the pleasures of his age, and led
a life which was a tacit protest against the meanness, the rudeness
and the barbarism of the Court. His leisure hours, however, were not
wasted; he read a great deal, and to real profit; he attracted several
French men of letters to the country house where he passed his time,
and, amongst others, made the acquaintance of Voltaire; and though he
dabbled in a poetaster’s calling, he wrote books which give proof of a
keen intellect, not original, but receptive and powerful. He was looked
upon, in those days, as a wit and a philosopher of the Parisian type;
but this was a superficial judgment, due to the accident of his life
of restraints, and the genuine character of the man was completely
different. Frederick had far more in common with his half brutish
father than, probably, he was himself aware. His instincts were for
despotic power; he had, at bottom, the Prussian military taste; and he
sympathized with the display of authority in all departments of the
State and of Government, and even in the relations of private life,
though not exactly after the paternal fashion. As years advanced,
too, and his mind developed, he became alive to the real merits,
marred as they were by extravagant faults, of the old King’s system of
administration and rule. Prussia, a weak state in the midst of great
monarchies, required a large defensive force, and the Prussian army had
been made the best in Europe; Prussia needed an increase of national
strength, and during the reign of Frederick William her population had
multiplied and she had grown fast in wealth. The Crown Prince and his
father became reconciled; and though, to outward seeming, they were
perfect contrasts, they drew towards each other in feeling and thought,
and were practically agreed on the national policy. Frederick went to
the wars to please his father, and served with some distinction in the
last campaign of Eugene, in 1734. Soon after this the King committed
a charge to his heir which was, in after years, to become a cause of
great events in Europe. The House of Hohenzollern conceived that it had
an old claim on the rich lands of Silesia, for centuries a province of
the Austrian Monarchy; and Frederick William had often insisted that he
had been cheated out of his legitimate rights. Almost in his last days
he entreated his son and coming successor to vindicate those rights, in
language of passionate wrath and earnestness.
The old King passed away in 1740; and the first act of the Prince, like
our Henry V., was to get rid of the Falstaffs and Poinses who had been
the former companions of his youth, though he retained his literary
friends and tastes, and, indeed, held to them during an eventful life.
His second act was to raise the Prussian army, which, in the days of
the Great Elector, had never exceeded 40,000 men--and which had seemed
of portentous numbers when made 80,000 strong by his late father--to
fully 100,000 effective troops, a military force out of all proportion
to what was only a third-rate kingdom. Within a few months, he had
taken advantage of the bereavement and weakness of Maria Theresa; had
laid claim to the whole of Silesia, and had overrun the province with
thousands of soldiers before the young Archduchess could even attempt
resistance. It was a rapacious and an ignoble act; but, to do him
justice, Frederick was no hypocrite; he did not pretend that he was
carrying out the injunctions of a revered parent, and he has cynically
avowed that his ruling motives were greedy ambition and the desire of
fame. It is idle, too, as Macaulay has done, to lay to his charge the
whole guilt of the terrible and world-wide contest that followed; the
simple truth is that all the Powers of Europe, tired of a long peace
and restored in strength, were eager for acquisitions and conquests.
France especially sought to regain her influence in Germany, and to
weaken her old foe, Austria; and Frederick was not much worse than his
crowned fellows.
I must glance at the condition of the military art when Frederick made
his first essays in it. There had been little wars and rumours of
wars since the great settlement of the Peace of Utrecht, and Austria
had overcome the hosts of Islam, but Europe had generally enjoyed
repose during the long period of twenty-five years, and there had been
nothing resembling the mighty conflicts which had marked the protracted
reign of Louis XIV. No occasion, therefore, had presented itself for
an exhibition of strategy like that of Turenne, or of tactics like
those of Blenheim and Ramillies; and the chiefs of the last great war
had died--Marlborough, unlamented, in his rest at Blenheim; Eugene,
Villars, and Berwick, covered with honours, and followed to the grave
by national mourning. The armies, too, of the great military Powers
had been out of joint, and had lost experience and efficiency during
prolonged inaction; that of Austria, despite the warnings of Eugene,
had been neglected and allowed to decline; the British army had almost
gone to pieces, and that of France, though formidable in numbers and
renown, too faithfully represented the feebleness of the State, and the
vices of the Regency and of Louis XV. Yet if the art of war seemed thus
in eclipse, the theory of war, as usually happens in periods of rest,
had had careful students; the elements of military power had grown in
Europe, and the facilities to make war on a large scale had been to
a certain extent augmented. Saxe, about this time, had done a good
deal in simplifying and quickening manœuvres in reviews; Montalembert,
struck by the immense advantage secured to the attack by Vauban’s
methods, had begun to think of transforming fortresses, and experience
of the bayonet had caused the numbers of the infantry in every army
to be considerably increased, and had made infantry formations more
light and flexible. The general growth of population, too, had made the
available resources of war greater; the progress of husbandry and the
development of roads had enlarged the possible scope of strategy; and
the spirit of the age, more humane and civilized, was opposed to the
devastation and waste practised in the wars of the seventeenth century,
and even to such expedients as great defensive lines, which necessarily
injured whole tracts of country. The art, therefore, though it had
recently had no grand illustration, was in a state in which progress
was at least possible; and a European struggle, there was reason to
believe, might bring into the field armies more numerous and more
easily moved than ever had been the case formerly. The most striking
military fact of the time remains, however, to be yet noticed. While
all other armies had relatively declined, that of Prussia had, I have
said, grown to dimensions amazing for so small a State, and her army of
100,000 men was, even in mere numbers, in 1741, considerably greater
than that of Austria, and only less, by a third, than that of France.
Nor were mere numbers anything like a test of the real military power
of the Prussian army. Frederick William’s mania for big Grenadiers and
for giant Guards may appear ridiculous; but the King had doubled the
strength of the force which he deemed necessary to protect the State;
and his army had become, in his hands, the hardest and best fashioned
instrument of war which, hitherto, had been formed in Europe. The
subject of his incessant care, it had been drilled, disciplined, and
trained in manœuvres by officers of experience and skill, brought up
in the great school of Marlborough and Eugene; and its infantry, in
particular, had acquired a precision and celerity of movement, and an
efficacy of fire--this last partly due to the iron ramrod, then used by
the Prussian soldier alone--which no army in Europe could even nearly
equal. An Achilles only was required to prove this mighty weapon of
unrivalled temper.
This is not the place to examine the policy of Frederick, in the war of
the Succession of Austria. He wrested Silesia from the Empress-Queen,
and by alternately taking the side of France and of Austria, and
throwing his weighty sword into the scales of Power, the young ruler of
a petty monarchy became the arbiter of two-thirds of the Continent. It
is indisputable that he had no scruples, and that he often broke faith
in this game of ambition; but he gave proof of no common statecraft,
of precocious dexterity, and of great strength of purpose; and he has
some right to plead at the Bar of History that, with the exception of
Maria Theresa, he dealt with Kings and Ministers as false as himself.
His kinsman, George II., was not unwilling to see Prussia effaced
from the map of Europe, and he was treated by Louis XV. as a mere
pawn of France, to be used and sacrificed to promote her objects. Nor
shall I dwell at length on the first attempts of Frederick to conduct
campaigns and to direct armies. He had not great original genius in
war, or in any department of human activity, but his intellect was
vivid, penetrating, strong; he was observant, and quick in seizing
ideas, and he devoted himself with such steadfast patience to every
pursuit undertaken by him that he ultimately became a proficient in
it. These faculties made him the first soldier of an age deficient in
great commanders; but his progress as a warrior was slow and uncertain;
and, indeed, his triumphs, even to the last, were rather due, I think,
to the force of his character, and the superiority of his disciplined
army, than to pre-eminent excellence in the military art.
The first campaigns of Frederick scarcely require the careful attention
of the student of war. He occasionally showed a happy conception,
and, as was always his wont, he was prompt and vigorous in taking the
initiative and in striking his foe. But he was out-generalled in more
than one instance; and in the campaign of 1744 he narrowly escaped
ruin at the hands of Traun, though it is but fair to observe that
this was largely caused by the incapacity and tardiness of his French
allies. The battles of Frederick during these years--and this is true,
indeed, as to his whole career--deserve more notice than his general
movements; and they have this special interest, that they attest the
advance he made by degrees in tactics, and the admirable qualities of
the army he led. His attack at Mollwitz cannot be justified, for the
Austrians held his line of retreat, and defeat, which was probable,
would have been destruction. As has often been pointed out, he made
no attempt to turn to account the manœuvring power of his troops; but
though he was driven from the field with his horsemen, the terrible
fire and the unflinching constancy of his infantry gave him victory
at last. At Chotusitz we, perhaps, see the first example of that
insight on the ground which became one of his distinctive merits,
inferior as he always remained, I think, in this important respect to
Marlborough. He charged with his right wing at a critical moment, and
the movement possibly assured his success, though the result of the
battle was mainly due, beyond question, to his tenacious soldiery.
In the operations that led to Hohenfriedberg he displayed no little
resource and skill; he lured the Austrians on to make an attack in
which the chances were in his favour; and though he committed a mistake
in disposing his troops, which the victor of Ramillies would have,
perhaps, made fatal--he left a wide gap in an ill-arranged line--still
the Austrians did not seize the occasion, and their incoherent and
partial efforts were easily defeated by his well-directed movements. It
was at Sohr, however, that we see the first instance of the favourite
manœuvre employed by Frederick, which, taking advantage as it did of
the peculiar excellences of his formidable and highly-trained army,
became the means of giving him many a victory, though occasionally
he abused it, with disastrous results. By this time it had become
evident that his troops infinitely surpassed the sluggish Austrians in
rapidity and precision of movement; and like all soldiers, he was, of
course, aware that could he attain and turn an enemy’s flank without
endangering his own position, he would necessarily gain an immense
advantage. At Sohr, accordingly, availing himself of the “mobility”
and marching power of his army, Frederick turned the Austrian flank
with one of his wings, throwing the other back, and only bringing it
up when the turning movement had proved successful; and the battle was
won by these agile tactics. This manœuvre, repeated on many fields,
was the celebrated “attack in oblique order,” ever associated with the
name of the King, and the theme of a great deal of foolish writing;
it has proved successful or unsuccessful as it has been rightly or
wrongly adopted; and the first condition of its success, it will be
perceived, is the possession of an army more active than its foe,
better disciplined, and more exact in its movements.
Prussia was at peace during the ten years that followed the first great
defeat of Maria Theresa. Frederick had reached the prime of vigorous
manhood, and a word must be said on the character of his rule, and
on the tenor and pursuits of his life. His system of government bore
a strong resemblance to that of his eccentric father, but with this
difference--that mere arbitrary power was tempered by clear-sighted
intelligence, and often had enlightened, if ambitious, objects. He
was a severe, a meddling, and a pitiless despot; but he checked the
abuses of feudal nobles, protected the rights of the middle classes
and the poor, enforced toleration in a still bigoted age, as a rule
respected justice and law, and, on the whole, had regard to the
national interests. The worst features of his _régime_ were that
he carried the rigid methods of the camp into the free relations of
social life, and that he tried to regulate commerce and agriculture
according to crude ideas of his own; but if he checked the natural
expansion of the State, and if his monopolies and laws of trade did
great mischief, and were often failures, still his absolutism was,
in the main, beneficent. Prussia was better governed under his stern
discipline than any one of the Great Powers of the Continent; the
nation made astonishing progress, and the conquest of Silesia proved
a blessing to a people which always detested the Hapsburgs. As for
Frederick himself, he was the most industrious and hard-working Head
of a State ever seen, and yet he found time for music and art, and for
the society of the best men of letters; and though his quarrel with
Voltaire and the jokes and sarcasms he indulged in at the expense of
his guests showed that he could be a tyrant even in his hours of ease,
he was far the most accomplished Sovereign of his time. As may be
supposed, however, the King devoted his chief attention to the care of
his army, and everything, in fact, was subordinated to it. He does not
appear to have loved war, but he knew that enemies hemmed him round;
he resolved to hold a high place among the leading Powers, and he left
nothing undone to bring to perfection the great military instrument he
had already proved. The army, growing with the growth of the people,
and recruited from the lately-annexed province, was increased from
100,000 to 160,000 men, and it increased in efficiency even more than
in numbers. The Prussian cavalry had not been equal to that of Austria
in the Silesian war; it was fashioned into a most admirable arm; and
it is probable, indeed, that no cavalry has surpassed the squadrons
of the renowned Seidlitz. As for artillery, the beginning of horse
artillery--a revolution in the arm--may be traced to this time; and
while the drill and discipline of the famous Prussian infantry were
continued and even largely improved, every effort was made to render
its fire more formidable than it had been before, and to cause its
evolutions to be more exact and rapid. Frederick’s army, in fact,
trained to march, to change front, to wheel into line, to gather to a
flank, to throw masses of horsemen on a selected point, and, besides,
to turn its weapons to the best account, and all this with amazing
precision and quickness, was, compared to other continental armies,
like a practised athlete to a thick-winded clown; and though it was
organized still in battalions and squadrons--for corps and divisions
came afterwards--its power, “its mobility,” its capacity for war, would
be deemed wonderful even in our day.
In 1755–6 the occasion came to test again the value of this mighty
force. The Empress-Queen had never forgotten Silesia; she thirsted for
revenge on one she deemed a robber; and she had succeeded at last in
combining a League of the Great Powers against the Prussian upstart,
who had exasperated the harlot who reigned at Versailles, and the
adulteress supreme in the Muscovite Empire, by his poignant jests on
their notorious vices. France, Austria, and Russia agreed to divide
the spoils of conquered Prussia among themselves; Sweden and the
small German States sought a share of the prey; and it was believed
throughout Europe that the Prussian Monarchy, before a year had closed,
would be a thing of the past. Frederick saw clearly the extent of his
peril, but he saw, too, that he had one chance; the armies of the
League were comparatively weak, and, what was more important, were
wholly unprepared; he could move his great army at a moment’s notice,
and he seized the occasion with characteristic energy. Taking the
initiative fearlessly, he struck at once, and in the spring of 1756 his
trained legions had entered the plains of Saxony, and were pouring
through the gaps in the Bohemian hills.
[Illustration: Theatre of the
SEVEN YEARS WAR]
The great War of the Seven Years had begun; and, as regards the
military operations of the King, it presents three distinct and well
marked phases. France and Russia sent no forces into the field against
Prussia in 1756, and Frederick had to cope with Saxony and Austria
only, whose united armies were no match for his own. He seized Dresden
with an overwhelming force; shut the Saxons up in the entrenched camp
of Pirna; and invaded Bohemia in two great masses, the first, under his
own command, moving up the Elbe, the second led by Schwerin, a most
distinguished veteran, advancing from Silesia, at a great distance,
and with the mountains between, by the Pass of Nachod. The Austrian
army, inferior in force, on the theatre, probably 60,000 to 90,000
men, was also divided into two parts; Piccolomini, a descendant of a
well-known chief of the Thirty Years’ War, held Schwerin in check with
a comparatively small detachment of troops; Browne, with the principal
army, confronted Frederick; and an indecisive battle was fought at
Lobositz, on the banks of the Elbe, in which the contending armies seem
to have been not far from equal in numbers. The campaign terminated
to the advantage of Prussia; Browne failed to disengage the Saxons
at Pirna; their army, surrounded, laid down its arms; and Frederick
incorporated the men with his own troops, for Germans were usually
ready to enter his service. The success was unexpected, and even great;
yet, as Napoleon has justly remarked, Frederick might certainly have
done more. Schwerin was paralysed by an insignificant force; the King
at Lobositz was not stronger than Browne; and in these operations, as
often happened, his bold strategy was very far from perfect.
The campaign of 1757, the most memorable of Frederick’s career, falls
naturally into two parts; and it deserves the close attention of the
student of war, for it strikingly illustrates the merits and the
defects of this renowned, yet sometimes unsafe, commander. France and
Russia, still unprepared, did simply nothing, until the early summer
of the year; and Austria, now without Saxon aid, was left isolated for
months to sustain the contest. Frederick was again certainly superior
in force; he had 100,000 men at least, the best troops in Europe,
against 90,000 Austrians, to a great extent of indifferent quality;
and assuming the offensive he once more invaded Bohemia, by the valley
of the Elbe, Schwerin, as in the preceding year, moving from Silesia,
again separated from the main army, but at a less distance than in
1756. By the 1st of May the King had sate down before Prague, having
advanced by the western bank of the Moldau; and Schwerin was still
several marches off, with the Elbe and the Moldau between himself and
Frederick. By this time Charles of Lorraine had taken a position along
a series of heights not far from Prague, and his purpose was not to
offer battle until he had been joined by Daun, moving from Moravia with
about 25,000 men. Frederick, eager to prevent the intended junction,
bridged the Moldau under the eye of the enemy, leaving a detachment
upon the western bank; meanwhile Schwerin had passed the Elbe, pressing
forward to Prague by forced marches; and the two Prussian armies
had come into line by nightfall upon the 5th of May, the Austrians
remaining wholly inactive. The King resolved to attack before Daun
could come up, and by the morning of the 6th his troops were in motion,
longing and prepared for a decisive struggle. The Austrian army, about
60,000 strong, held a defensive position along a range of hills sinking
towards the east into lowlands and marshes divided by rivers and small
lakes; the left resting on Prague and the Moldau, the centre and right
extending to the hamlet of Kyge, near where the hills fall into the
half-flooded plain. Frederick was probably equal to his foe in numbers,
and judging that the Austrian centre and left could not be forced, he
decided on turning his adversary’s right, though the movement was one
of extreme hazard, for it placed his army with its rear towards Daun,
known to be advancing to assist his colleague. The Prussian army,
separated by difficult ground from its enemy, marched in oblique order,
with extraordinary speed and precision; and it had soon fastened on
the Austrian right, making fierce efforts to outflank and destroy it.
Lorraine, however, had thrown back this wing; it presented a new front
to the advancing foes, and the attack of the Prussians was greatly
impeded by the swamps and ponds covering the Austrian line, which made
it difficult in the extreme to pierce. The battle raged for some hours
with uncertain fortunes; but the Austrian left and centre continued
motionless, and did not even attempt a counter attack, although the
occasion was most promising. A gap was formed in the angle where the
right of Lorraine had been thrown back from the main body; Frederick
kept pouring troops against the enemy’s flank, and after prodigious
efforts, in which the aged Schwerin, a pupil of Marlborough, met a
soldier’s death, the Austrian right was at last broken, and the whole
Austrian army lost the position, 12,000 men having been cut off from
Prague and compelled to seek refuge in the camp of Daun.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF PRAG
6^{TH} MAY 1787.
_a.a.a. First position of Austrian Army._
_b.b.b. Second position to meet the Prussian Attack._
_c.c. Prussians under Kieth._
_d.d. First position of Prussian Army._
_e.e. Second position of Prussian Army._
_f. Schwerin’s Prussians._
_g. Prussian Horse._
_h. Mannstein’s Attack._
_i. Place of Schwerin’s Monument._]
[Illustration: BATTLE OF ZORNDORF
25^{TH} AUGUST, 1788.
_a.a. Prussian Army about to cross the Mützel._
_b.b.b. Prussian Army ranked for Battle._
_c. Russian Baggage._
_d.d. Prussian Infantry._
_e.e. Prussian Cavalry._
_f. Prussian Baggage._]
Frederick had shown great tactical skill in this battle, and constancy
of a high order; he had detected the vulnerable point in his enemy’s
line, and he never relaxed his efforts until he had gained the day.
In this instance, too, his favourite movement was justifiable in many
respects; the Prussians gathered on the Austrian flank, protected by
difficult ground between, and a counter attack would have been no
easy matter. Nevertheless, his success was largely due to the immense
superiority of the army he led. Compared to the sluggish Austrians,
as has been said, it was “a panther darting upon an ox.” Had Charles
of Lorraine been a great chief, he would have paralyzed the attack
by a movement from his left; and had this succeeded, Frederick, not
improbably, would have been hemmed in between the Prince and Daun.
In this part of the campaign, as in many cases, the strategy of the
King was essentially faulty; and had he had to deal with a general
like Turenne, he would have been baffled, out-manœuvred, and forced
to retreat without having a chance of fighting a decisive battle.
The invasion of Bohemia on a double line by the Elbe and Silesia, at
far distances, seems to have been justified by recent events--any
other operation is, besides, difficult in the case of an attack from
Prussia--but the principles of the art do not vary; and, as Napoleon
has said, this strategy gave the Austrian chiefs an immense advantage.
Charles of Lorraine, firmly established in Prague, and holding a
central position between the King and Schwerin, ought to have prevented
their junction with ease; and had he been anything like a master of
war he would have marched against each, and beaten both in detail. The
King, too, committed great mistakes--in bridging the Moldau within
reach of his enemy; in leaving a detachment on the western bank, when
he had made up his mind to fight a great battle; and, above all, in
venturing to place his army exposed on its rear to the army of Daun.
Had Charles of Lorraine had the gifts of Condé, the Prussian army,
superior as it was, would have bitterly rued these false movements.
The King, after his victory, besieged Prague; but his sieges were
scarcely ever successful. He drew no lines round the beleaguered
fortress, but contented himself with a mere blockade; and it was well
for him that Charles of Lorraine remained motionless, and made scarcely
a sally, for, as Napoleon has pointed out, an active enemy would have
made Frederick pay dear for his rash conduct, a remark which proves
what would have been the judgment of the Emperor on Bazaine at Metz.
After six weeks of delay round Prague, the King was obliged to move
a large part of his army to encounter an approaching army of relief.
Daun had fallen back after the defeat of his colleague, having rallied
the 12,000 fugitives of Prague; but ere long he was reinforced, and
by the second week of June he had reached the Elbe, and was drawing
near Prague with 50,000 men. Frederick marched to oppose him with an
army not less probably than 40,000 strong; and on the 18th--a great
day in war--Daun was discovered holding a strong position, extending
from near the Elbe at Kolin, along eminences, with an open country in
front, to the hamlet of Hradschin. The King, elated perhaps by his
recent victory, resolved to repeat the successful manœuvre of Prague;
neglecting the Austrian centre and left, he decided on falling on
Daun’s right, and the Prussians once more marched, in their usual
fashion, to storm a village and heights that overlook Kolin. Frederick,
however, seems not to have reconnoitred the ground, and to have held
his adversary in complete contempt; his left, as it gathered on the
Austrian flank, had exposed itself to a counter-attack, for the field
allowed this offensive movement; and, besides, the oblique order was
not properly kept, for his right wing and centre were scarcely thrown
back, and simply followed the advancing left. The movement, in fact,
was a flank march, within reach of an enemy able to strike home; and
the result, as usually happens, was a great disaster. The Prussian left
was checked by a body of cavalry; Daun crushed the centre and right by
well-placed batteries; and though he did not cause his army boldly to
engage, he moved it forward so that his enemy was ravaged by a storm
of destructive missiles, and ran the gauntlet of deadly musketry. The
Prussian left, isolated, was at last routed, though it fought with
courage worthy of all praise; and the whole army was driven from the
field with a loss of fully a third of its numbers.
Pedants, who have deemed the attack in oblique order a talisman which
assures victory under all conditions of place and position, have tried
to explain away this crushing defeat; but Napoleon’s judgment is
evidently correct. Frederick made a flank march in open ground, under
the beard of Daun, within striking distance, and the result was like
what occurred at Austerlitz. Kolin forced the King to raise the siege
of Prague, to abandon Bohemia, and to fall back on Silesia; and had
his antagonists been great generals, he might have been overwhelmed
before he had passed the ranges which overlook the Silesian lowlands.
But Lorraine did not even break up from Prague till July, many days
after the battle; Daun, a stout soldier of the school of Wallenstein,
fond of entrenched camps and defensive lines, but in no sense of the
word a strategist, lost a week in chanting Te Deums in his camp, to
use Napoleon’s sarcastic phrase; and Frederick effected his escape
with little further loss, and held positions between Zittau and
Bautzen. Nearly two months passed in petty operations, the Austrians
plainly shunning a contest, and taking no advantage of their splendid
success, when the apparition of new and formidable enemies on the scene
compelled the King to retreat towards the Lower Elbe.
We have now reached the second phase of the war, and the second part of
the campaign of 1757. Up to this time Frederick had had to cope almost
wholly with the Austrians only, and had been superior in force on the
theatre of war; the balance was now heavily inclined against him,
and it was the conviction of Europe, as it had been from the first,
that he would be annihilated by the League of the Continent. France
had by this time two armies in Germany; the one 80,000 strong, under
the command of D’Estrées, the second not less than 50,000 men, partly
composed of contingents of the small German States, led by Soubise,
one of the Pompadour’s favourites; and Turenne and Villars had overrun
Germany, and threatened Vienna with less forces. Meanwhile, Sweden
had assailed the Pomeranian seaboard; a Russian army of 60,000 men
had crossed the Niemen and attained the Pregel; and though the forces
of the Allies were far apart, and D’Estrées was held in check for the
time in Hanover by the Duke of Cumberland--the warrior of Fontenoy
and Culloden--it seemed impossible that Prussia could withstand the
enormous masses arrayed against her. Frederick, always great in the
hour of danger, saw what was before him, and made up his mind; though
still suffering from the effects of Kolin, he resolved to advance at
once against his nearest enemy, Soubise, who had approached the Saale,
in the hope of striking a decisive blow; and leaving about 40,000 men
to keep the Austrians back, he marched with about 25,000--he had lately
been reinforced--to make head against the French commander. Soubise, a
degenerate scion of the great House of Rohan, and one of the poorest
creatures who ever led an army, though nearly double in numbers, fell
back before the King; and several weeks were lost in petty manœuvres,
Soubise always seeking to avoid fighting, conduct fatal beyond all
others to French soldiers. The news of the success of the Allies
elsewhere on the theatre at last, however, compelled the French chief
to abandon his timid attitude, and towards the close of October the
army of Soubise returned to the Saale, and crossed the river, though
it recrossed at the approach of its enemy. On the 5th of November,
the Prussian army, which had made a short retrograde movement, was
encamped, perhaps 22,000 strong, in a position near the Saale, with its
left at Rossbach; and Soubise, who had fully 45,000 men, thought
that he had caught Frederick, and could cut off his retreat. Full of
the theory of the oblique order, but utterly ignorant how to apply it,
he defiled in loose and irregular masses, without even an advanced
guard, under the eye of his adversary, and well within his reach, in
order to fall on his rear, and to turn his right; and the result of
this insensate flank march was ruinous and most disgraceful defeat.
Frederick, watching like a bird of prey its quarry, allowed Soubise
to march to his fate; then changing his front, moving on the chord of
an arc, and screening his operations with great skill, he smote the
heads of the allied columns, unprotected and surprised, with the fire
of well-placed batteries and the charges of the renowned horsemen of
Seidlitz; and the whole army of Soubise was literally scattered and
half-destroyed by the efforts of a force of only 6,000 or 7,000 men.
[Illustration: SEIDLITZ AT ROSSBACH.]
Rossbach was one of Frederick’s most brilliant victories; Soubise
was effaced for the rest of the campaign, and his shattered forces
recrossed the Rhine. The result of the battle was evidently due to the
stupid false movement of the allied chiefs; but the King turned this
to the best account, and his tactics were in all respects admirable.
This triumph greatly strengthened the Prussian cause, and sent a thrill
of exultation through German hearts; for Rossbach was the first great
fight in which Germans, led by a German, had defeated Frenchmen; and
the traditions of the day kept hope alive in the breasts of many a
German soldier during the sad years that followed the rout of Jena.
The arms of the King, however, had been unsuccessful on other parts of
the theatre of war; and, as the close of 1757 approached, his position
was one of increasing danger. A contingent of Swedes had, indeed, been
driven from Pomerania and forced into Stralsund; but the Russians had
gained a great victory at Jägersdorf, near the banks of the Pregel;
and though they had recrossed the Niemen as winter came on, the army
opposed to them had been severely treated. The chief peril, however,
which threatened Frederick came from Austria and Maria Theresa, his
implacable and untiring enemy. Lorraine and Daun had been largely
reinforced after Kolin, and ordered to press forward; and at the head
of probably 90,000 men, they gradually bore back and drove towards the
Oder the detachment, not perhaps half in numbers, which the King had
given to his lieutenant, Bevern. The Austrian generals seem to have
thought that their mission was to reconquer Silesia; they besieged and
captured Schweidnitz and Breslau; Austrian horsemen were let loose on
the province; and Bevern was defeated under the walls of Breslau with
terrible loss, and was ere long a prisoner.
The intelligence reached the King some three weeks after Rossbach; his
decision was formed with his wonted promptness, and he hastened to the
Oder by forced marches, from the Saale across the lowlands of Saxony.
On the 3rd of December he had joined hands with Ziethen, one of his
best officers, who had succeeded to the command of Bevern; but the
united armies were not more than 35,000 or 36,000 men, for death and
desertion had carried off thousands. The Austrians were still probably
75,000 strong--they were certainly in immensely superior numbers--and
it seems astonishing that Lorraine and Daun did not try to trample
the enemy in the dust who was moving against them from Glogau upon
the Oder, and could not have had even half their force. The memory of
Rossbach, however, was, perhaps, too recent; and, leaving Breslau,
they took a position, defensive as usual, along eminences that look
down on the village of Leuthen. The left, under Lorraine, approached
the Schweidnitz, a feeder of the Oder, but with a broad space between;
the centre held a long line behind Leuthen, with hills and ravines
before its front; and the right, with Daun in command, stretched down
to a forest and hamlet known by the name of Ny-pern. Frederick, having
carefully reconnoitred the ground, put his army in motion early on
the 5th of December; an advanced guard was easily driven in; and he
pushed forward his right as quickly as possible, to turn and outflank
the enemy’s left. This time, however, the attack in oblique order was
a most skilful and well-planned movement; the Prussian centre and left
were thrown back until the effort of the right had told; what was
more important, the army marched, screened by the valleys and hills,
before the Austrian front; a thick mist, too, hung over the plain, and
concealed the advance of the Prussian line; and this, therefore,
was not a flank march within easy reach of a well-placed enemy. The
Prussian right had soon turned and beaten the troops of Lorraine, which
happened to be about the worst in the Austrian army; and though the
Prince endeavoured to throw back his left, and to form a new front,
as he had done at Prague, his efforts proved fruitless, and his whole
wing was routed. The centre and left of the King now bore down in
irresistible force on the shaken army; and though the Austrian chiefs
did all that brave men could do to restore the fortunes of the day, and
Daun especially made a bold attempt to advance the Austrian right for a
great counter attack, their exertions ultimately were of no avail, and
they were driven, utterly defeated, beyond the Schweidnitz. The losses
of the victors were not more than 2,000 or 3,000 men; those of the
vanquished were fully 15,000, with, it is said, 150 guns; and Breslau,
with a very large garrison and all the wounded and sick of the Austrian
army, was in a few days in the hands of Frederick. Lorraine and Daun
fled from Silesia as best they could, and the situation of affairs,
from the Elbe to the Oder, had been completely transformed by a single
battle.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF ROSSBACH.
5^{TH} NOVEMBER, 1737.
_a. a. First position of Combined Army._
_b. b. First position of Prussian Camp._
_c. c. Advance of Prussian Army._
_d. d. Second position of Combined Army._
_e. e. Prussians retire to Rossbach._
_f. French Cavalry, under S^t. Germain._
_g. g. March of Combin^d. Army, to attack Prussian rear._
_h. Prussian attack led by Seidlitz._
_i. Position of Prussian Guns._]
[Illustration: BATTLE OF LEUTHEN
5^{TH} DECEMBER, 1757.
_a. a. Austrian Army._
_b. b. Position of Saxon Forepost, under Nostitz._
_c. c. Advance of Prussian Army._
_d. Lucchesi’s Cavalry, reinforced, by Daun._
_e. Left wing, under Nadasti._
_f. Friedrich’s hill of observation._
_g. g. Prussian Army about to attack._
_h. Ziethen’s Cavalry._
_i. i. i. Retreat of Austrians._]
“Leuthen,” says Napoleon, “is Frederick’s masterpiece”; an army,
“wholly inferior in force and partly composed of beaten troops,”
defeated and routed an army twofold in numbers, and that too with
insignificant loss. The victory is the glory of the attack in oblique
order, for the Austrian left was turned and destroyed without
endangering the assailing army; the Prussian centre and right were
engaged at the fitting time; and though a counter attack was tried,
it failed, partly owing to the difficulties of the ground, which with
the mist had screened the King’s offensive movement. But, as Napoleon
has rightly observed, the attack in this instance had nothing in
common “with a flank march in the face of your enemy”; and it was “in
conformity with true principles.” The League against Frederick remained
unbroken, notwithstanding the reverses of 1757; and in 1758 he had
still to confront France, Austria, Russia, and the lesser States of
Germany. The odds against him were still enormous; but the armies of
the Coalition were widely scattered--Maria Theresa alone had her heart
in the contest--and Frederick had gained one great ally which has often
turned the scale in wars on the Continent. By this time the first Pitt
was supreme in England; he was engaged in a death struggle with the
French for empire in India, and in the Far West; and he turned his
eye of genius on the heroic warrior who had conquered at Rossbach, at
Prague, and at Leuthen. The minister supported Frederick with a small
contingent of troops, and lavished on him immense subsidies, which the
King turned to excellent account; and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a
very able man, replaced the Duke of Cumberland, and opposed the forces
of France on the Weser, the Rhine, and the Main, with an army made up
of German auxiliaries. I cannot dwell on these operations, disgraceful
in the very highest degree to the fribbles and fops who now led the
armies of France at the Pompadour’s bidding; suffice it to say that the
Prince of Clermont and poor Soubise were completely beaten, and the
French were driven again beyond the Rhine.
I turn to the theatre of war on the Elbe and the Oder, where Frederick
directed the forces of Prussia. At the beginning of the campaign of
1758, he had one army on foot in Silesia, threatening Daun, who had
replaced Lorraine, and had fallen behind the Bohemian hills; a second
army, under Prince Henry of Prussia, confronted the forces of the
small German states in Saxony and along the Elbe; a third observed the
Russians upon the Oder, and the King had perhaps 140,000 men to oppose
to 250,000, not reckoning the French and Prince Ferdinand’s army. The
disparity of numbers was, therefore, immense; but Frederick had all
the shorter lines on the theatre; the Russians could do nothing for
months; and the occasion was one from which Turenne would have probably
drawn no little advantage. Strategy, however, was the weak point
of Frederick; and his first operations in this campaign show small
comprehension of the art of war. Instead of attacking Daun, inferior in
force and isolated, he had recourse to the methods of the second-rate
chiefs of the seventeenth century, now long exploded; he invaded
Moravia, and laid siege to Olmütz, as if the capture of the fortress,
important as it is, could have been attended with great results. The
siege, too, was conducted without regard to military rules, and the
science of the engineer; lines were not drawn to invest the place; the
besieging army was left exposed in widely divided camps that invited an
attack; and, above all, the supplies required for the siege were drawn
from Neisse, at a great distance, and through the difficult passes
of the Silesian range. It was fortunate that, at this juncture, the
recollections of Leuthen paralysed Daun. Had he fallen on the besieging
army, he might have destroyed it; but though he loitered for weeks, and
remained inactive, he did not wholly throw away the occasion. With the
assistance of Loudon, the most brilliant chief of Austria in the Seven
Years’ War, he contrived to intercept and destroy a convoy directed
from Neisse, with munitions for the siege; and the King recoiled from
Olmütz deservedly baffled. Frederick was now in a situation of grave
peril; he was almost surrounded by Daun and Loudon; his army was
in want and distress; and had Daun been a great commander he would
either have forced it against the Bohemian hills, or made it run the
gauntlet of ever-harassing foes, defeat in either instance involving
ruin. The King, however, was always great in such crises of fortune;
out-manœuvring and gaining on his slow adversary, who never knew what
promptness can effect in war, he advanced from Olmütz into Bohemia, and
then, hastening along the verge of the hills, he emerged successfully
into Silesia, making his way through the passes without loss. The march
was one of the most brilliant and daring of the war.
These operations lasted from the opening of the campaign until the end
of July 1758. Frederick had suffered no defeat like that of Kolin; but
he had missed an opportunity to strike Daun, and he had only escaped a
disaster at Olmütz by his admirable presence of mind and energy. The
Russians meanwhile had crossed the Niemen and the Vistula, and had
attained the Oder; and, about the middle of July, they had attacked
Cüstrin, and drawn near the detachment advanced to hold them in check.
The King marched from Silesia against this fresh enemy; the Russian
chief, Fermor, when informed of his approach raised the siege, and
on the 25th of August had taken a position in a marshy plain in the
angle between the Oder and Warta, and overlooking the little hamlet
of Zorndorf. His army, about 55,000 strong, was separated from its
baggage, left in its camps, and it was drawn up in a huge rectangle,
a kind of formation which had proved most formidable to the Turkish
hordes, but ill fitted to resist a European army. Frederick, with
perhaps 35,000 men, and evidently treating his enemy with contempt,
marched right round the vast immovable mass, and attacked it with his
left in his wonted manner. His guns wrought frightful havoc in the
densely-packed square; but he had once more risked a flank march in
open ground, and Fermor flung a ponderous force on the advancing wing,
which was nearly crushed by the Muscovite onset. The battle raged for
some hours with the most savage fury; the Russians displayed the dogged
courage of their race, but Seidlitz and his splendid horsemen turned
the scale at last, and Fermor sullenly retired from the field, the
victors, however, being unable to seize his baggage or to turn their
success to the least advantage.
Having thus disposed of this tenacious foe, Frederick was compelled
to retrace his steps towards the Elbe, for his presence in this
region had again become necessary. Daun, after his partial success
in Moravia, had not advanced, as he ought to have done, and joining
the army of the lesser German States, had not overwhelmed Prince
Henry of Prussia, an operation which was within his power; but he
had not been altogether inactive. He had detached Loudon to fall on
the King; he had laid siege to Neisse in Silesia, and he had made a
movement which threatened Dresden, timid half measures showing the very
poorest strategy. Frederick had reached Dresden by the second week of
September, confounding the projects of his hesitating foe; and he set
off ere long to relieve Neisse, at the head of about 40,000 men, Daun
menacing his flank in his camp at Stolpen. A pause in the operations
followed, due probably to the formidable attitude of Daun; but, by the
close of September, the King had attained Bautzen in full march for the
beleaguered fortress. By this time Daun had been rejoined by Loudon;
their united forces must have been from 75,000 to 90,000 strong, and
the Austrian chief had taken a position at Hochkirch, amidst woods and
hills, barring an advance on Neisse. Frederick was close to Hochkirch
by the 11th of October; he did simply nothing for two days, for he
was waiting the arrival of supplies from Bautzen; and, confident
that Daun would not venture to attack, he felt assured that when his
preparations were made, he could easily turn the position of his foe.
He paid dearly for his imprudent scorn of an adversary who, though not
a great chief, was by no means a contemptible soldier, and who was
seconded, besides, by a very able lieutenant. Daun had had ample time
to satisfy himself of the numerical weakness of the hostile army; his
arrangements were made on the night of the 13th, and on the morning
of the 14th, he attacked in full force, and all but hemmed in the
astounded Prussians, who, caught and surprised, were completely routed.
The King extricated himself with extreme difficulty, and at a loss
of fully 10,000 men; but, as usual, Daun made no use of success, and
Frederick plucked safety and glory from imminent danger. Always rising
superior to adverse fortune, he fell back a short distance only, and
perceiving that Daun continued motionless, he actually stole a march
on his inactive enemy as soon as his army was fit to march, and made
for Neisse with extreme celerity. This was a stroke of extraordinary
boldness and skill; and Frederick gained his object, with a defeated
army, in the face of a victorious and immensely superior enemy. The
siege of Neisse was raised on the 5th of November; Daun, instead
of closing on Frederick’s rear, having idly turned aside to menace
Dresden, a demonstration that altogether failed.
The campaign of 1758, like that of 1757, shows the true qualities
of Frederick in war; they were those of an inferior strategist, of
a tactician of a very high order, but who sometimes made surprising
mistakes, and was specially prone to underrate his enemy, and of
a chief who, possessing a noble army, occasionally gave proof of
extraordinary resource, and, in particular, was able to subdue dangers
which would have overwhelmed a less determined captain. The King ought
to have defeated Daun in the first months of the contest, when the
Austrian commander stood almost alone; he should not have attempted the
siege of Olmütz; he should not have risked a flank march at Zorndorf,
incapable of manœuvring as the Russians were; above all, he should not
have pitched his camp at Hochkirch, and given Daun a grand opportunity
to strike, simply because he thought him a dull commander. On the other
hand, Zorndorf was a real victory, no doubt due in a great degree
to Seidlitz, but partly also to the energy of the King. Frederick
completely baffled his foes at Dresden, and his conduct after Hochkirch
in bearding the victors, in eluding them, and in raising the siege of
Neisse, was that of a soldier of wonderful powers, though he owed his
success mainly to the inactivity of Daun.
There is a sameness in the course of the Seven Years’ War, which in
some measure detracts from its interest. The contending armies held
nearly the same positions in 1759, when the campaign opened, as had
been the case in 1758, and their relative strength was nearly in the
same proportions. The French, under Contades and De Broglie, invaded
Hanover from the Rhine and the Main; they were opposed as before
by Prince Ferdinand, and though De Broglie gained some success at
Bergen--the first and last smile of fortune in this war on France--they
were ultimately defeated with heavy loss at Minden--a day memorable for
the bravery of the British contingent, and for the incapacity of Lord
George Sackville--and they fell back discomfited behind the Rhine. In
Central Germany, Frederick was again in Silesia and Prince Henry once
more in Saxony; Daun was outside Bohemia and the Silesian frontier,
and the forces of the small German States on the Saxon plains; and the
Russians who, after Zorndorf, had returned to their steppes, were still
hundreds of miles distant, and had not even drawn near the Vistula.
Apart from the French and Prince Ferdinand’s armies, Frederick had
still perhaps 120,000 men to oppose to 200,000 or 220,000; but as
had happened in the two preceding campaigns, he was not inferior in
force, where he was in supreme command, for the Russians were, for some
months, outside the immediate sphere of action. In these circumstances
he might once more have attempted to strike a weighty blow at Daun,
and Napoleon condemns him for missing the chance; but the Prussian
army had suffered immense losses, and was now crowded with ill-trained
levies; and he deserves less censure for this inaction than in the
campaign of 1758. Several weeks were spent in small operations, which
show that the strength of the King had begun to decline; he attempted
nothing resembling a decisive movement, and the war languished on the
space between the Elbe and the Oder. Meanwhile his enemies had, for the
first time, formed something of a real combination against him. The
Empress Elizabeth was savage at the defeat of Zorndorf; Maria Theresa
had not changed, and a Russian army, fully 70,000 strong, led by
Soltykoff, a true Muscovite, was directed to join hands with the main
Austrian army, and to try to crush Frederick with overwhelming numbers.
Soltykoff having crossed the Vistula about the middle of May, was upon
the Oder in the first days of August, having routed a Prussian body
of troops on his march; Daun, meanwhile, had despatched Loudon from
Silesia to aid the Russian chief, and their united armies, about 80,000
strong, had soon effected their junction near Frankfort. Frederick had
advanced, to parry the blow, to the Oder, with perhaps 40,000 or 45,000
men, and the hostile forces encountered each other at Kunersdorf, close
to Frankfort, upon the 12th of August. The battle is chiefly remarkable
for the characteristic stubbornness and tenacity of the Muscovite
infantry. Frederick’s manœuvres gained some success at first; indeed,
Soltykoff was nearly forced into the Oder, but his men rallied behind a
line of entrenchments, and the Prussians recoiled, hopelessly beaten,
from the bloodstained defences. The King lost a third of his army, and
nearly all his guns, and was with difficulty able to get across the
Oder.
The situation of Frederick after Kunersdorf was critical in the
extreme, and might have been made desperate. Daun, obeying Maria
Theresa’s orders, had advanced from Silesia towards the lower Oder;
and, when informed of the results of the battle, he moved slowly to
Triebel on the Neisse, about six marches distant from the victorious
army. Had Soltykoff and Daun now combined their movements, and
cordially acted in real concert, they could have opposed fully 120,000
men, in a central position, to Prince Henry and to Frederick and his
beaten army; and as the Prussian forces were widely divided, and could
not have been 80,000 strong, not to speak of the demoralization of
defeat, Daun and Soltykoff ought to have crushed their enemy. The
discords and jealousies of a Coalition, as has often happened, perhaps,
saved the King and his fortunes at this perilous juncture. The Austrian
and Russian generals disliked each other; the policy of their Courts
had already begun to diverge on the question of the Turkish Empire; and
Soltykoff was indignant that he had been joined only by the detachment
sent forward by Daun under Loudon. The Russians and Austrians did not
unite, as was quite possible, about the 25th of August, and Frederick
turned this brief respite to the best advantage. His shattered army
was reinforced by levies from the north; the artillery he had lost was
replaced from Berlin; and he was soon at the head of 40,000 men, while
Prince Henry had thrown himself, with no ordinary daring, between the
two hostile armies. Daun fell back towards Saxony in the first days
of September, completely giving up the object of the campaign; before
long Soltykoff was in full retreat, and had recrossed the Vistula by
the approach of winter; and thus Kunersdorf proved an all but barren
victory; Frederick had once more escaped from the toils, and the two
Empresses saw their projects frustrated.
The campaign, nevertheless, was a losing one to the King, and it
terminated in a very great disaster. During the time when he had been
compelled to move to the Oder, in order to face the Russians, the army
of the small German states, with some aid from Daun, had taken the
offensive upon the Elbe; and, after capturing Torgau and Wittenberg,
it had laid siege to Dresden towards the end of August, the city, it
will be recollected, having been in the hands of the Prussians since
1756, and being their main depôt and place of arms. The attack had been
unsuccessful until the news of Kunersdorf reached the commandant, with
a letter from the King, empowering him to treat and to withdraw the
garrison; the capitulation was signed in the first days of September,
and the portal of Bohemia and the main strategic point of Saxony were
thus permanently lost to Frederick, who stormed in vain against his
ill-used subordinate. The fall of Dresden was a great reverse, but it
was followed by a still greater misfortune. The King, after the failure
of the allied armies to join hands, had remained in observation for a
time on the Oder; but towards the close of October he fell ill, and
for some weeks he was unable to do anything. Prince Henry, meanwhile,
had followed the movements of Daun, and had marched into Saxony; and a
series of petty operations followed, which are not worthy of special
notice. By November, Frederick, himself again, had marched into Saxony
and approached Dresden; and, with a want of perception difficult to
understand, he committed a mistake, in Napoleon’s judgment the most
inexcusable of his chequered career. Daun was at the head of his army
in Saxony; a large Austrian garrison was in Dresden; and there was
no reason to imagine that this resolute soldier was contemplating a
retrograde movement. The King, however, took it into his head that
his adversary was about to retreat into Bohemia; and always despising
Daun, spite of Kolin and Hochkirch, he sent off 12,000 men from the
main army to intercept the supposed movement. The officer in command
protested in vain; Daun closed on his foe in irresistible force; and
the whole Prussian detachment, hemmed in and powerless, was compelled
ignominiously to lay down its arms. Napoleon’s remarks on the surrender
of Maxen possess lasting and peculiar interest for the generation that
has witnessed Metz and Sedan.
The third phase of the struggle had now come; Frederick, superior in
force until the summer of 1757, was henceforward wholly over-matched by
his enemies. The symptoms of decline which had become apparent in the
strength of Prussia in 1759 had been greatly aggravated by late events;
the losses at Kunersdorf and Maxen had been immense; Frederick had been
deprived of some of his best lieutenants, and the magnificent army with
which he had begun the war had been reduced to a mere skeleton. On the
other hand, his obstinate resistance had exasperated his foes; even
the listless and worthless Louis XV., notwithstanding the terrible
reverses of France in Canada, in Hindustan, and upon every sea, began
to be ashamed of defeats on the Rhine and the Weser; and Maria Theresa
and Elizabeth continued united in their thirst for vengeance. The
Coalition made gigantic efforts to bring the unequal contest to a
close; France placed 140,000 men on the Main and the Rhine; in Silesia
Loudon had 50,000; Daun was at the head of 80,000 troops of the
Empress-Queen and the lesser German States, encamped round Dresden and
in the Saxon plains; and Soltykoff commanded 70,000 Russians directed
from the Vistula to attain the Oder. To resist these immense masses,
the most numerous that had ever been seen in arms in Europe, Frederick
could only oppose Prince Ferdinand and 70,000 men to the French army,
twofold in numbers; and though he was still subsidised by the gold
of Pitt, and he had a central position between his foes, he had not
more than 100,000 men, composed largely of mere recruits, to contend
with the great Russian and Austro-German armies. The eagles seemed
to be gathering on their intended prey, but Frederick had resources
in himself and in the patriotic nation he ruled which the Coalition
had not taken into account. His fierce, determined, and heroic nature
exhibited itself in its grandest aspect; extreme as his peril was, he
had no thought of yielding; his centralized and severe government still
drew men and supplies from his half-ruined kingdom, and his people,
proud of their renowned Sovereign, strained every nerve to fight to the
last.
The opening of the campaign of 1760 seemed to portend the speedy
ruin of the King; Loudon forced a Prussian detachment 10,000 strong
to surrender at Landshut, in Silesia, a repetition of the disaster
at Maxen; and Frederick vainly attempted to lay siege to Dresden, an
operation as unwise as the siege of Olmütz, which Daun frustrated
without difficulty, but which, had he been a great general, he ought to
have rendered all but fatal. By this time Loudon had captured Glatz,
and was overrunning the Silesian plains; the King, anxious about the
annexed province, which Maria Theresa burned to reconquer, set off
from Saxony by forced marches; but Daun followed on a parallel line,
and in the second week of August, he had nearly joined Loudon, and
closed round Frederick and his much weaker army. At daybreak on the
15th, Loudon attacked Frederick at Liegnitz, near the stream of the
Katzbach, the army of Daun being almost in sight; but the double
movement was ill-combined, and the King extricated himself, and even
gained a victory. His position, however, was still most critical,
and had Soltykoff, who had approached the Oder, co-operated with the
Austrian chiefs, the King, humanly speaking, must have succumbed.
Prince Henry, however, again interposed--a mere demonstration proved
sufficient; the jealousies of the Allies did the rest; and Soltykoff,
instead of striking down Frederick, merely marched northwards and
plundered Berlin, a diversion that proved of no importance. The King,
saved from destruction, returned into Saxony; the armies of Loudon and
Daun diverged; and while Loudon remained in Silesia, Daun followed his
adversary with the main army, and took a position at Torgau, on the
Elbe. Frederick attacked Daun on the 3rd of November, assailing him at
once in flank and front. The attack he conducted in person completely
failed; but Ziethen retrieved the fortunes of the day, and the Austrian
army was at last defeated. The “hind doomed to death” was not yet to
die, and, after many vicissitudes and a marvellous escape, Frederick
still held his own between the Elbe and the Oder. Meanwhile, as usual,
the great French army had invaded Germany, and had accomplished
nothing; Prince Ferdinand, as heretofore, had held it in check.
I shall pass rapidly over the last scenes of the internecine and
protracted contest. The situation of Frederick in 1761 was much the
same as in the year before, save that the process of exhaustion had
told more on his resources than on those of his enemies. The French
Court made really great efforts to repair the humiliation of four years
of reverses; it put on foot a magnificent army of not less than 160,000
men, a force, Napoleon has remarked, sufficient to have conquered
Germany if properly led; but its chief was the worthless Soubise; and
baffled and out-manœuvred by Prince Ferdinand, it returned to its
winter quarters without winning a battle. On the true theatre of war
in Germany the King was again immensely inferior in force; he had
probably less than 100,000 men against 220,000 or 250,000; but these
last, as always, were widely divided. The two Empresses recurred to
the project which had all but succeeded in 1759. Daun, who had been
severely wounded at Torgau, was left in Saxony to confront Prince
Henry, and Loudon, now the real chief of the Austrian armies, advanced
from Silesia, to unite with Boutourline, a new commander of the Russian
forces. The King, utterly outnumbered, had recourse to the antiquated
and barbarous method of wasting whole tracts to keep back Loudon;
but the Austrian general made his way to the Oder; and, having left
a detachment to besiege Schweidnitz, he effected his juncture with
Boutourline’s army at Jauer, near Liegnitz, at the close of August.
Frederick entrenched himself within defensive lines, after the fashion
of the preceding century; he had lost the initiative, and waited on
his foes, and he was ere long surrounded in his camps at Bunzelwitz by
enemies nearly fourfold in numbers. Loudon, a real general, was eager
to storm the lines, and, Napoleon thinks, must have destroyed the
King had Boutourline concurred in the attack; but Muscovite jealousy
interfered once more, and the Russian commander stiffly refused to
support his colleague, and marched northwards. Frederick escaped, as
had often happened, by a kind of marvel; meanwhile, Daun had remained
inactive in Saxony, and the only results of a campaign which should
have overwhelmed Prussia were that the Russians established themselves
on the Baltic, ready for speedier operations in the following year, and
that Loudon captured the great place of Schweidnitz, the key, as it has
been called, of Silesia.
1762 was the last year of the war, and as it opened the prospects of
the King had never seemed to be so gloomy and hopeless. The circle of
his enemies was narrowing round him; Daun and a powerful army held
possession of Saxony and the line of the Elbe; Loudon occupied Silesia
in great force; the Russians were preparing to march from Kolberg; and
the French had 100,000 men in the heart of Germany. Frederick thought
that the end had at last come; yet, unshaken by the approach of the
tempest, he confronted it with heroic constancy, and like a lion who
marks the advance of the hunters, he moved hither and thither with the
wrecks of his armies, watching an opportunity to strike with effect,
and determined to challenge fortune to the last. As had always happened
in the Seven Years’ War, the French operations completely failed, and
Frederick contrived to recruit his forces with 20,000 Germans in the
Austrian service, unwisely disbanded at this supreme moment. Yet these
gleams of success appeared extinguished by an event that portended
complete ruin; the fall of Pitt in detaching England from Prussia, and
depriving her of her only ally, made the cause of the King apparently
hopeless. Nevertheless, his grand strength of character was justly
recompensed, and at the eleventh hour a series of strange incidents
changed the whole state of affairs in Europe. The Empress Elizabeth
suddenly died; her successor, Peter, became an ally of the King; and
though Catherine, his murderess, who seized his crown, did not adopt
the policy of her late husband, Russia withdrew finally from the
Coalition. This became the signal of the dissolution of the League;
France, disgraced and defeated all over the globe, made an ignominious
peace with England and Prussia; and Maria Theresa, left isolated, and
threatened by the Turk, the old foe of Austria, was compelled sullenly
to give up the contest. The last event of the war was the recapture of
Schweidnitz by the Prussian army; Frederick had successfully withstood
the Great Powers of the Continent, and all that Austria, that Russia,
that France had done had not even wrested Silesia from his hands.
A few weeks after the Peace of Hubertsburg, the King and his army
entered Berlin in triumph. The pageant was very different from that
witnessed in 1866 and in 1871, when Prussia had driven Austria from
her high place in Germany, and had annihilated the military power of
France. The magnificence of war was not to be seen; splendid troops
did not line the squares and the streets; there was no procession of
superb trophies attesting a series of amazing victories. The army which
had begun the contest had well-nigh perished; its ranks were filled by
men not of the stock of Brandenburg; its standards in rags, and its
war-worn aspect attested the vicissitudes and defeats of a long and
uncertain struggle. Yet the spectacle was one of enduring interest,
big with great results in a far distant future. That army, made up
of many elements from different parts of the great German race, like
Wallenstein’s army of a century before, embodied, however feebly,
the as yet vague idea that Germany was a nation of one blood and
language; and it was the precursor of the patriotic league which rose
and fought for Germany in 1813–14, and of the gigantic hosts which, in
our day, conquered the unity of Germany at Sadowa and Sedan. Frederick
had no sympathy with what, in his time, was merely a dream of a few
enthusiasts; in taste and thought he was through life a Frenchman,
and he never really looked beyond Prussian interests, yet he was the
second Arminius of the Teutonic race, and the Seven Years’ War was
a new era for Germany. For many years, however, his own energy, and
those of his people, were engrossed in efforts to repair the appalling
ruin which had befallen his kingdom. Prussia was a land of desolation
when he sheathed his sword; her population had diminished a tenth; her
youth, equal to war, had been reduced one sixth; savage hordes from the
East had overrun her provinces; every town was darkened with tokens of
mourning; Silesia had more than one silent and deserted village. The
Government, too, had become more despotic in the course of the war than
it had ever been; the pressure of arbitrary taxation was frightful; a
prying Inquisition had entered the homes of all, and, as has been said,
“everything that was not military violence was anarchy.”
Yet the King was never before so revered by his subjects, and he
remained the object of their love and esteem in an age when, in the
decay of loyalty, every throne of the Continent was being undermined.
This profound national sentiment was partly due to the real merits of
the King as a ruler, but mainly, no doubt, to the patriotic pride of
the martial and ambitious people of Prussia, which has never ceased to
boast that, under its Great Frederick, it defeated the armed strength
of three-fourths of Europe. This legend, indeed, is to a great extent
a fable; the “miraculous,” as Napoleon has said, disappears upon an
impartial survey of Frederick’s exploits in the Seven Years’ War.
For many months he was superior in force on the theatre; Austria,
all through, was his only determined enemy; Russia was too distant
to act with effect, and had a real interest not to weaken Prussia;
and France either did not put forth her force, or--the Bellona of
Europe--committed the weapons of Condé and Turenne to Soubise and
Clermont, in their hands the darts of an impotent Priam. Even as it
was, too, on more than one occasion the King must have been overwhelmed
and ruined but for the dissensions of the Coalition; and it was his
peculiar good fortune that, if we except Loudon--and this able and
brilliant chief held high command for a few months only--he had to
cope with generals of the third order. Yet admitting all this, and
recollecting besides the many military shortcomings of the King--and
his errors were sometimes of the gravest kind--still his achievements
are justly held by Prussia as a glorious possession above price; they
remain, and will for ever remain, a grand monument of what constancy,
decision, and energy can accomplish against odds which appeared
impossible to resist.
After the termination of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick never fought
a battle again. He was threatened, indeed, in 1775, by an Austrian
invasion to regain Silesia; and in 1778 the Emperor Joseph arrayed
a great army against Prussia, to assert his claims to a part of
Bavaria. These hostilities, however, came to nothing, and the King
was allowed, during a long space of time, to carry out the policy
he had laid down for himself. It was a policy of craft and ambition
abroad; and Frederick, in his fixed purpose of enlarging Prussia,
was a chief author of the partition of Poland, a crime shared by
Catherine, and even by Maria Theresa--the conscience of the last
was, however, stung--and the cause of unnumbered woes to Europe. His
domestic policy remained one of enlightened despotism, of equal laws
and of strong government, of arbitrary, but tolerably just, rule; and
his kingdom recovered within a short time from most of the effects of
the Seven Years’ War, and made rapid strides in wealth and prosperity.
The King was justly deemed the first sovereign of his age; but the
three accomplices in the destruction of Poland suffered cruelly for
a great national wrong; but for this, Revolution would have been
quelled in France in 1792 and 1793; but for this, Austria would not
have bled at Austerlitz, and Prussia and Russia mourned for Jena and
Friedland. Though the centralized government of Frederick, too, seemed
a masterpiece of wisdom and power, it proved unable to stand the strain
of ill fortune, and it perished with the renowned Prussian army in the
agony of 1806–7. Frederick died peacefully in 1786, having survived
nearly all the sovereigns of his time. One of his last acts was to
form a league against the pretensions of Imperial Austria; but he was
utterly unconscious that a tempest was at hand which was to destroy the
monarchies of the eighteenth century, and to create a new Prussia out
of the wrecks of the old.
I turn to my immediate subject. What is the place of the King among
great commanders? Frederick had not supreme original genius; he
was deficient in imagination, and often in judgment; but he had a
powerful mind, intensely quick perception, activity and perseverance
beyond praise; and he was endowed, besides, with a force of character
and a steadfastness seldom bestowed on man. These qualities made
him the greatest captain of an age wanting in masters of the art;
and he accomplished wonders, spite of his many faults, with an army
infinitely the best in Europe. As a strategist, he stands low in the
second order; his ideas were occasionally sound and brilliant, but the
plans of his campaigns were, for the most part, bad; and he had not
the faculty of those great combinations which disclose real strategic
genius. Holding, as he usually did, a central position between enemies
widely apart, he would repeatedly have defeated them in detail had
he possessed the science and the gifts of Turenne; and had he had to
cope, not with the Lorraines and the Dauns, but with the general of
Castiglione and Rivoli, he would have been struck down over and over
again, as the result of his false and ill-directed movements. His
place as a tactician is much higher. Frederick had real insight and
skill on the field; he possessed a great deal of Marlborough’s power
of detecting the vulnerable points of an enemy, and of striking at
them until success was attained, and his favourite manœuvre, when
properly understood, is an illustration of the great principle that
you should always so place your troops on the ground as to turn it to
the best advantage, and to make the most of their powers upon it. Yet
the King had not Marlborough’s unerring skill; even as a tactician he
made great mistakes. He was deservedly beaten at Kolin and Hochkirch;
he had the great fault of sometimes losing his temper. There is a bad
mannerism in his conduct of battles, and more than once he completely
ignored the conditions under which, and under which alone, the attack
in oblique order could be risked or justified. The title of Frederick
to rank among the first of warriors depends less, in fact, upon his
intellectual faculties than upon his grand and extraordinary moral
qualities, tenacity, and marvellous strength of character; no general
has surpassed him in the rare gift of overcoming difficulties, and
escaping from peril; no general, not even Arthur Wellesley, has
confronted a huge superiority of force with more calmness and firmness
of purpose; no general, not even his countryman Blücher, a subaltern in
the Seven Years’ War, has excelled him in rising above defeat, and in
mastering an enemy who had seemed secure in victory. If Napoleon says
truly--and who can doubt it?--that a strong nature is the greatest gift
of a chief, Frederick is eminent among the masters of war.