Chapter III: Frederick the Great (1)

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.

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.

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._]

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.

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.

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._]

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.