LEUTHEN TO MAXEN (DECEMBER, 1757, TO DECEMBER, 1759.)
What profit would Leuthen bring to Prussia? was Frederick’s first thought after the glorious fifth of December, and may well be ours. He himself was worn and ill. In the excitement of victory he had closed the long day of Leuthen with a jest. Pressing on to the castle of Lissa, he found it full of Austrian officers. “Bonjour, Messieurs,” cried the King, suddenly appearing out of the darkness, “can you find room for me?” But reaction and depression followed the strain of 1757. “If the year upon which I am entering,” he wrote on his birthday (January 24, 1758), “is to be as cruel as that which is at an end, I hope it will be my last.”
Every kind of anxiety, public and private alike, pressed at the same time upon the hero of Rossbach and Leuthen. His brother, Augustus William, for whom a chance bullet might at any moment clear the throne, had not yet succumbed under the burden252 of disgrace, and wearied Frederick with complaints and acid congratulations. His brother-in-law, Ferdinand of Brunswick, was stricken with fever, and the King’s mind was full of vague fears which he confessed but could not account for. Upon his sister, Wilhelmina, who had more need of it, he lavished sympathy and encouragement in a flood of tender messages.
“I am delighted that you are having some music and a little dissipation,” he writes, early in the new year; “believe me, dear Sister, there is nothing in life that can console us but a little philosophy and the fine arts.... I swear to give thanks to Heaven on the day when I can descend from the tight-rope on which I am forced to dance.”
If we must choose a simile from the circus to describe Frederick during this war, he might be likened to an acrobat juggling with five bomb-shells at once. Of three, the Swedes, the Russians, and the Imperialists, he had not yet felt the full weight, and with a supreme effort he had flung the French and the Austrians high into the air. What would be his task in 1758?
While he harvested the fruits of Leuthen without pause Frederick permitted himself to hope that his victory would bring peace. After the fall of Breslau on December 19, 1757, he estimated the Austrian losses and found them overwhelming. He even gave out that at a sacrifice of less than 4000 Prussians killed and wounded, he had reduced the enemy’s force by 47,707 men. He was still gathering in prisoners253 and deserters every day. Before the year was out he could assure Prince Henry that, according to sound opinion, Prince Charles’s army consisted of no more than 13,000 foot and 9000 horse. “If this does not lead to peace,” writes Frederick on December 21st, “no success in war will ever pave the way thither.” A week later he is still hopeful, “but even if one were sure of it, we must none the less labour to make our position formidable, since force is the only argument that one can use with these dogs of Kings and Emperors.” Leuthen indeed gave Maria Theresa another opportunity to prove her constancy and courage. Frederick made overtures to her for peace, but she refused to engage in any negotiation apart from her allies. Early in January, 1758, the King became aware that Austria whatever it might cost her, was determined on another campaign.
Gradually the prospect grew clearer. Almost beyond the hopes of the Queen her alliance with France survived the double shock of Rossbach and Leuthen. At the beginning of February Louis promised to send 24,000 men into Bohemia. Since his encounter with Soubise, Frederick regarded the French as brigands rather than warriors, but their onset compelled him to place a sturdy watch-dog in the West. This part was played by Ferdinand of Brunswick, who drove them across the Rhine before March was over. Another foe, the Swedes, were even less considerable. Frederick jeered at them as “cautious people who run away eighty miles so as not to be taken,” and assured his sister, the Queen of Sweden, of his254 willingness to grant them peace. So long as France was willing to pay subsidies, however, the Swedes were willing to provide 30,000 men. They still occupied their “bastion,” Pomerania, in force, and therefore Lehwaldt must still act as the Ferdinand of the North. The King himself proposed to astonish Europe by his dealings with the Austrians and Imperialists. From his ally he might look for the same assistance as in the previous year. He laboured in vain to persuade the Sea Powers that the Protestant cause and their own interests demanded that they should attack France with their own troops. But in April Pitt undertook to furnish an annual subsidy of ￡670,000, and for four years the money was punctually paid.
Map for the SILESIAN AND SEVEN YEARS WARS
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, London & New York.
With Silesia at his back, the French and Swedes held in check, and England in close alliance, Frederick’s prospects for the campaign of 1758 might seem almost brilliant. He had some 206,000 men under arms. Ready money was not plentiful, but Frederick procured it in a thoroughly Prussian fashion—unscrupulous but practical. His own subjects he spared so far as possible. At times indeed he treated even them in the manner of his father. In January, 1758, the merchants of Breslau answered “Impossible” to a royal demand that they should advance 300,000 thalers to the Jews who had charge of the coinage. Frederick’s minister reported the fact, adding that the Jews enjoyed no credit in the mercantile world. The King’s annotation, scrawled in German on the back of the report, is still treasured in the archives pf the General Staff at Berlin, It runs as follows:255 “I will cook something for the President if he don’t get the money out of those merchants at once without arguing.”
In general, however, with the exception of a few loans, no new demands were made upon the ill-lined purses of the Prussians. Indirectly, of course, they felt the burden of the war. The coin with which the State supplied them was debased and therefore purchased less goods. The pensions of those who had served the King in the past, but could serve him no longer, were left unpaid or paid only in paper. But the chief granary of the Prussian army was, whenever possible, the territory of the enemy. The second great source of supplies consisted in those countries which the fortune of war had placed in their hands. “Mark well the contributions of Mecklenburg,” was Frederick’s order to General Dohna. “Take hostages, and threaten the Duke’s bailiffs with fire and plundering to make them pay promptly.” But by far the heaviest burden fell upon the Saxons. Besides systematically draining them of cash, Frederick resorted to what he termed “reprisals” at their expense whenever “the allies of the King of Poland” pillaged any of his dominions. Men who were thus made scapegoats for the sins of half Europe betrayed with seasonable treachery the allegiance which the King of Prussia had compelled them to swear against their will.
In 1758, however, Frederick allowed the notorious disaffection of the Saxons to fetter him no more than the armies of France and Sweden. He had a great plan of campaign, and he began to execute it256 with a speed and secrecy which no one in the world could equal. On March 15th he left Breslau. Within five weeks he had captured Schweidnitz, the sole fortress in Silesia which remained Austrian, and was making for Moravia in order to besiege Olmütz. The Austrians, he argued, must relieve it and might be vanquished in a battle in which he would have choice of ground. Olmütz could then be taken and Vienna threatened. This would compel the enemy to concentrate in defence of the capital. Prince Henry would thus be free to swoop down from Dresden upon Bohemia and to erase the traces of Kolin.
Frederick’s idea was brilliant, and for a time success waited upon his arms. Daun, who, to the great profit of the Austrians, had replaced Prince Charles in the chief command, continued to fortify Bohemia against the attack which he expected from the East. On May 3rd Frederick reached Olmütz. Consternation reigned at Vienna, but for eight weeks the cautious Daun did not venture to disturb the siege. Till the last day of June all went well. Then came what the King frankly terms a terrible contretemps. At Domst?dtl a convoy of some 4000 waggons from Neisse was destroyed by General Laudon, who made himself a great name by a victory which cost Zieten’s command at least 2400 men. The Prussians were thus deprived of the supplies which were indispensable to their success.
Frederick recognised at once that the siege must be abandoned, and with it his whole enterprise. He admitted that he had lost the superiority over the257 Austrians which he had gained in 1757. Threatening to imprison and cashier officers who should make faces or say that all was lost, he slipped cleverly past Daun’s left into Bohemia, and for a month remained there at his ease. Then he sped swiftly northward. On August 22, 1758, he was at Cüstrin dictating a fresh testament on the eve of the encounter with a new and gigantic foe.
In estimating Frederick’s prospects for the campaign of 1758, no account has yet been taken of Russia. The action of the Muscovite forces was proverbially uncertain and of necessity slow. It was possible that they would not influence the main struggle at all, or that Frederick’s plan of aggression in the South would be accomplished before they had time to become formidable. Since the New Year, however, storm-clouds had been massing to the north-eastward. It is fortunately no part of our task to peer behind them into the dark secrets of the Russian court. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth still lived, and that so long as she remained on the throne peace with Prussia was impossible. Her armies might be ill-found and her ministers corrupt, but it would be strange if the mistress of Russia proved too weak to wound Frederick in his ill-guarded flank beyond the Oder.
Fermor received the chief command of an army 34,000 strong. In January, 1758, he overran Ost-Preussen and forced the inhabitants to swear fealty to the Czarina. In February K?nigsberg was illuminated in honour of Russian royalty. Frederick avenged the first offence by reprisals upon the258 Saxons, the second by withdrawing his favour for ever from the polluted province. His power of self-restraint is attested by the fact that he attempted nothing by way of rescue. He calculated dispassionately that Fermor’s advance would at best be slow, that a broad expanse of barren Polish territory separated the invader from the rest of the Prussian dominions, and that offensive action in the South was more likely to be profitable than defensive in the North. K?nigsberg had been a Russian city for more than three months when Frederick dashed into Moravia.
The danger, however, grew greater throughout the summer months. The Muscovite tide rolled slowly across Poland into Frederick’s dominions east of the Oder. Europe now had an opportunity of learning something of the nature of the society which Peter the Great had brought within her pale. In the Russian army, as in the nation, the highest classes were men of honour when not too sorely tried, but the lowest were filthy savages, who made the country a desert and tortured and burned men and women alike. What the rank and file might be, Frederick had yet to learn. But that his trusted field-marshal, Keith, gave him timely warning, he might well have been pardoned for his belief that Fermor’s unseasoned horde would not face the heroes of Leuthen led by himself, the foremost captain in the world.
As the King sped towards his old prison, Cüstrin, the trembling peasants came in crowds to kiss the hem of his coat. He found the fortress unharmed,259 but the defenceless town reduced to ashes by Fermor’s bombs. The Russians, more than 40,000 strong, lay on the eastern side of the Oder, having an open road to Poland, but all others barred by swamps and rivers. Before Frederick’s arrival, Dohna, with perhaps a third of their numbers, the waters of the Oder, and the walls of Cüstrin had been the only defences of Berlin. Now, however, the Prussians were some 36,000 strong and as much superior to their foes in mobility as were Drake and Hawkins to the Spanish Armada. Fermor was short of supplies. He could not go forward and had hundreds of miles of desert at his rear. Was the time at the King’s disposal so scanty that he could not starve, harry, and crush the enemy without the sacrifice of more than a few hundred Prussian lives?
Frederick was, however, in no mood for a war of strategy. He had published his fixed resolve to conquer or die. He was impatient to return to Silesia, where he had left 40,000 men under Charles of Brandenburg-Schwedt. He was still more impatient to annihilate the bloody vagabonds, who, he wrote, were burning villages every day and committing horrors which made Nature groan. In the spirit of Leuthen, though perhaps without like need, he resolved to attack Fermor without an hour’s delay. Knowing every inch of the dismal country-side, he swiftly planned a massacre that should avenge the past and safeguard the future. The Russians had abandoned the siege of Cüstrin and taken up a position so sheltered by the Oder and its tributary, the Mietzel, that Fermor believed it to be unassailable.260 Frederick crossed the Oder some miles below Cüstrin, marched right round their camp, and prepared to hurl them into the waters in which they trusted for defence.
The plan seems a sound one only on the supposition that Keith’s opinion was ill-founded and that the Russians would not show fight. They had much in their favour. They were a national army, roused to enthusiasm by the benedictions of a mob of orthodox popes. They outnumbered the enemy and were far better furnished with cannon. In cavalry, it is true, Frederick had a great advantage, but this was discounted by the Russian formation in dense masses, which cavalry could hardly hope to pierce. Above all, the King provided his opponents with the best possible argument against running away when he left them no road by which to run. With no alternative save drowning or suffocation, the Russians chose to die where they stood, but to sell their lives dear.
PLAN OF ZORNDORF, AUGUST 25, 1758.
These conditions made the battle fought near Zorndorf on August 25, 1758, one of the bloodiest of the whole war. It was in great part a desperate hand-to-hand struggle, kept up with mutual fury until the Russians were cut to pieces. According to the Prussian histories, Seydlitz, the matchless dragoon, refused point-blank to obey Frederick’s order to advance on the Russian guns. When and where needed, he replied, he would be at hand with his men. “After the battle,” came the King’s message, “you will answer for it with your head.” “After the battle,” answered the imperturbable261 general, “my head will be at the service of the King.” He justified his insubordination by twice charging at the enemy on his own initiative. He thereby saved the day, and, instead of being cashiered, was embraced by his delighted master. But when the issue had once been decided by sheer rage maintained for ten hours, some of the Prussian infantry showed themselves equally insubordinate and less successful. It seems not the least strange feature of this chaotic death-grapple that in an attack upon an army strongly posted the cavalry should have formed the chief factor in Frederick’s success.
Success, though much qualified, Frederick might indeed fairly claim. Fermor, it is true, bivouacked on the field, fought again, though languidly, next day, sent off bulletins of victory, and retired unmolested a week later. His troops had endured the Prussian whirlwind with a steadfastness beyond all praise. But of the 30,000 killed and wounded nearly two-thirds were his, and Frederick had achieved, though at a great cost, his prime object of securing his dominions on the eastern side.
Against a new foe the King had displayed once more those qualities which readers of his history have by this time learned to regard as characteristic of him. He had been brave, secret, and masterful, swift to plan and to carry out, tireless in body and teeming in brain. He had at the same time proved himself exacting, overbearing, and rash, adroit at supplying the need of the moment rather than far-sighted and sagacious in providing for the future. Though he accepted victory and defeat like a philosopher, there262 was too much of the despot, both in what he exacted from his troops and in what he expected from his foes. In this, though in this alone, it seemed as though the common infirmity of the overpowerful had at last assailed a Hohenzollern, and that Frederick had lost something of his power of seeing facts as they are. All the torrents of Prussian blood wasted at Prague, at Kolin, and at Zorndorf had not swept away his belief that Prussians led by himself could carry out any order that he chose to give.
It is chiefly these virtues and foibles of the King that shape the story of the remaining months of the campaign. While he was on the banks of the Oder the Austrians and Imperialists had begun the reconquest of Saxony and Silesia. Frederick by speed and cleverness saved both, but his conceit doomed nearly nine thousand of his army to wounds, captivity, or death.
First, by wonderful marches, he snatched Dresden from the jaws of Daun. The cautious general took up a strong position, which barred Frederick’s road to Silesia, where the Austrians were besieging Neisse. Having failed to tempt him to battle, Frederick next stole round his army, but Daun retorted with a similar man?uvre and encamped near Hochkirch with some 65,000 men. On October 10th, Frederick with less than half the number actually insisted upon occupying an untenable position hard by. His generals, among whom were the Young Dessauer, Seydlitz, and Zieten, remonstrated with him in vain. Next day Keith arrived and spoke his mind quite frankly:263 “If the Austrians leave us quiet in a position like this, they deserve to be hanged.” “It is to be hoped that they fear us more than the gallows,” rejoined the King, and planned a flank attack on Daun, who, he believed, was about to retreat into Bohemia. The result was that before daybreak, on October 14, 1758, the Prussian camp was surprised. Five generals, Keith among them, perished. Frederick’s obstinate foolhardiness cost him more than one-fourth of his army, with more than a hundred guns and much material of war. Kolin, Domst?dtl, and Hochkirch, three victories over the King of Prussia within sixteen months, formed a splendid chaplet for a general whose forte was caution. The Pope was said to have rewarded Daun with a consecrated hat and sword.
“It may be safely reckoned,” so the King informed the Berlin public a week later, “that our loss does not exceed 3000 men.... These disasters are sometimes inevitable in the great game of chance which we call war.” The hour of disaster had again proved Frederick superior to the shrewdest blows of Fate. At the moment when the Austrians, creeping through the darkness, began to butcher his men in their tents, he proved himself once more a hero. Disdaining to order a retreat, he extricated his army from its terrible position and formed a new line only half a league to the rear. Daun, who had lost more than 6000 men, entrenched himself on the field, and was soon plying his old trade of circumspectly hanging upon the skirts of the foe. Within ten days of the battle Frederick robbed him264 of the fruits of victory by marching round him once more. He flung himself between Daun and the besiegers of Neisse, and Silesia was saved.
Daun’s counterstroke was, as was almost inevitable, an invasion of Saxony while Frederick’s back was turned. He alarmed Dresden, but was once more frustrated by Prussian speed. Frederick hurried back in time to save both Saxony and its capital. In mid-December he went into winter quarters at Breslau, master of dominions as broad as when he had quitted the city nine months before.
PLAN OF HOCHKIRCH, OCTOBER 14, 1758.
In those months he had, however, lost much that cannot be marked upon the map. Faithful officers by hundreds, trained soldiers by thousands, hard-wrung thalers by millions had been sacrificed, and nothing but glory and a respite had been gained. No lands outside Ost-Preussen were as yet conquered by foreign kings, but many had been wasted by foreign armies, and some, at the dictate of urgent need, by their own defenders. These losses weighed upon Frederick, whose task it was to gather men and money for next year. But as a man he had cause for more poignant grief, for Death had knocked hard at the door of his own household. The loss of his heir, Augustus William, once his father’s favourite, now the victim of Frederick’s cruelty, probably afflicted him only because Prince Henry avenged it by refusing to see him except on business. But the death of Wilhelmina, who died on the eve of Hochkirch, was the most crushing calamity of his life. “Great God, my Sister of Baireuth!” scrawled the afflicted King as postscript to a brief despatch in265 cipher to his brother Henry. The message is more pregnant than much fine writing. “The death of Her Highness the Margravine of Baireuth embarrasses me with regard to His Majesty the King more than all war matters,” wrote the faithful Eichel from Dresden on the day after Frederick received the news, “since I can judge how highly afflicting and crushing it must be to him. Councillor Coeper writes to me yesterday that although every care was taken to prepare His Majesty gradually for sad tidings it has none the less made an indescribably great impression upon him, and he does not believe that deeper woe is possible.” “If my head had within it a lake of tears it would not be enough for my grief,” sighed the King to another mourner, Keith’s brother, when the hard fighting and marching came to an end.
After three campaigns the war had now, at the close of the year 1758, reached what may be called a chronic state. Thrice had Frederick lunged at the heart of his enemies and each time they had parried the thrust. A............