Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

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 it 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 Domstädtl 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 the 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 Königsberg was illuminated in honour of Russian royalty. Frederick avenged the first offence by reprisals upon the 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. Königsberg 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, 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. 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.