Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

Such is the literal rendering of the French into which Podewils, who writes the bulk of his letter in a jargon of German, French, and Latin, forces his tortuous German thoughts.

Frederick, indeed, seems already to have passed the stage at which he could be influenced by argument. An agile rather than a deep thinker, he reached at times a point at which calculation became agony and the only remedy was action. Now, as in his earlier adventure, “pressed with many doubts, he wakes the drumming guns that have no doubts.” That a mere Prussian minister should combat his plans seemed to him little short of lèse-majesté. Nor could he be moved by those who were not so tightly bound to the car of Prussia. Mitchell followed Podewils with arguments, and Valori, the French ambassador, followed Mitchell with threats. Frederick’s answer was a series of blunt questions pressed home twice over at Vienna—Have you a treaty with Russia against me? Why are you arming? Will you solemnly declare that you do not intend to attack me this year or next? The final answer was received on August 25, 1756. Next day the Prussians invaded Saxony.

The Seven Years’ War had begun. Needless to say, every movement of the Prussians had been planned out long before. The army was under orders which enforced the most perfect mobility. A hundred supernumeraries had been added to every regiment. On the 13th to 15th August Frederick issued directions that the secret of their destination was to be strictly kept from the troops. They were to take with them provisions for nine days, every cavalryman carrying three days’ supply of hay, and every infantryman three days’ supply of bread, while bread for six days was placed in the single baggage-cart allowed to each company. None of this reserve of food was, however, to be broken into save in the utmost need, and no officer of any rank whatever might have table utensils of nobler metal than tin.

A word would set all in swift motion, but the machine had to be arrested until it should be known that the Prussian ultimatum was rejected. Klinggräffen, Frederick’s ambassador at Vienna, caused some delay by asking for instructions. On the 24th the King wrote to General Winterfeldt, the most impatient advocate of war: “The cursed courier is not yet here, so I have been compelled to stop the regiments till the 28th. Klinggräffen deserves to be made a porter by way of punishment. Such stupid tricks are unpardonable and the prolonged uncertainty is unbearable.” On the 26th, however, after hearing from Vienna, the King was able to set all in motion anew.

“The answer,” he wrote to his brother, the Prince of Prussia, “is impertinent, high, and contemptuous, and as for the assurances that I asked of them, not a word, so that the sword alone can cut this Gordian knot.... At present, we must think only of making war in such a fashion as to deprive our enemies of the desire to break the peace too soon.”

While one royal messenger was bearing this message from Potsdam to Berlin, others were on their way to Vienna, to Dresden, and to every division of the Prussian army. Klinggräffen was instructed to return a third time to the charge, with the final offer that if the Empress-Queen would declare definitely that she would not attack Frederick that year or the next, the troops now moving should be recalled. More profit was, however, expected from the message to the Saxon Court. King Augustus, or Count Brühl, was to be informed, “with every expression of my affection and of your respect that good breeding can supply,” that Frederick was compelled by the Court of Vienna to enter Saxony with his army in order to pass into Bohemia.

“The estates of the King of Saxony,” continued the royal missive, “will be spared as far as present circumstances allow. My troops will behave there with perfect order and discipline, but I am obliged to take precautions so as not to fall again into the position in which the Saxon Court placed me during the years 1744 and 1745.... I desire nothing more ardently than to behold the happy moment of peace, so that I may prove to this Prince the full extent of my friendship, and place him once more in the tranquil possession of all his estates, against which I have never had any hostile design.”

This declaration was addressed to a ruler who had made no engagements hostile to Frederick, and who now offered to observe perfect neutrality and to allow his troops to pass. A commentary upon it is supplied by a document which was probably drawn up several days earlier, and which was soon to be put in force. By this “instruction” for the administration of Saxony during the war, “in order that His Majesty may not leave a highly dangerous enemy in his rear,” the Prussian minister von Borcke is directed to suspend the native administration of the land and to substitute a Prussian Directory of War. The Saxon royal revenue, it is said, amounts to about six million thalers, but Frederick “will be contented with five million, so that the inhabitants may be solaced thereby.” In other respects the order and temperance which distinguished the Prussian Government were to be applied to the subjects of Augustus. Such was Frederick’s plan for the future of Saxony, a would-be neutral, during the war.

The problem which the King set himself was to cripple Austria before Russia or France could come to her assistance. Austria had assembled forces in Moravia and in Bohemia. If Frederick attacked the former the Bohemian army might cut off his retreat. He therefore directed Schwerin to guard Silesia while he himself converted Saxony into a base for the invasion of Bohemia. From the Saxons he expected little or no opposition. He therefore proposed to march in three columns upon Pirna, a fortress situated at the point at which the Elbe bursts through the mountain-wall of Bohemia to enter the fertile plains of Saxony. Then, with a granary and a highway behind him, he would follow the river into Bohemia as far as Melnik, less than twenty miles north of Prague, where it ceases to be navigable. He would thus at the very least have gained a commanding position on the further side of the mountains.

“As he does not think that the Austrians will soon be ready to attack him,” wrote Mitchell on August 27th, “he imagines they will throw in a strong garrison into Prague, that [sic] as the winter approaches, he can have good quarters in Bohemia, which will disorder the finances at Vienna and perhaps render that court more reasonable.”