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 in 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. At Vienna alone could the coalition receive a mortal wound. St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Paris were equally out of reach, and the States of the Empire might be squeezed and harried for ever without terminating the war. If the Prussians failed to dictate peace at Vienna, their one hope must be that they might defend themselves until some of the hostile Powers should change their minds. Their opponents, too, felt the strain of prolonged and unprofitable war. It was true that they had not to strain themselves like the nation whose very existence was at stake, but neither Russia nor Austria nor France knew the secret of Prussian thrift. The time might come when even Elizabeth and the Pompadour would confess that the game was no longer worth the candle. The French, in particular, were not all blind to the fact that they were losing their Empire to England in order to gratify the spite of the King’s mistress against the King of Prussia. Would they hold to the Austrian alliance even for another year?
The event falsified the hopes of Frederick. With some relaxation of intimacy, the Austro-French league was renewed, and the King perceived that he must henceforward hold Prussia like a huge beleaguered fortress. Five Powers were still encamped upon his frontiers and ready to break in upon him. Like all resolute garrisons, therefore, the Prussians had recourse to sallies, and some of these met with much success. By sudden forays Henry and Ferdinand destroyed the magazines that were being formed by the Austrians and Imperialists and so retarded the invasion of Prussia, which could not proceed without them. Mere partisan inroads like these were, however, insufficient to prevent Daun from taking up a strong position at Mark-Lissa, with Bohemia at his back and Saxony and Silesia open on either hand. There he menaced Frederick while the Russian host once more drew near to the Oder, overthrowing as it came a Prussian force which had been sent into Poland to destroy its magazines and pen it in the swamps of the Vistula.
The story of this Polish campaign throws much light on the strength and weakness of the Prussian army. Rightly neglecting the lesser danger in order to make adequate head against the greater, the King had sent against the Russians the force which usually defended the North against the Swedes. The rank and file were good, but without leadership they could accomplish nothing. “Your Polish campaign deserves to be printed as an eternal example of what every intelligent officer must avoid. You have done every silly thing which can be done in war and nothing whatever that an intelligent man can approve. I tremble to open my letters.” Such were the concluding words of a long indictment which Frederick addressed to their commander, General Wobersnow.
Nothing but the royal presence, it seemed, could save the situation. The King himself was not yet free to leave Daun. He therefore invented a deputy-king, and despatched General Wedell to Poland “with the powers of a Dictator in Roman times.” Twelve curt instructions were drafted for his guidance. He was “(4) to forbid lamentation and depreciatory talk among the officers on pain of dismissal. (5) To disgrace also those who cry out on every occasion that the enemy is too strong. (6) First to check the enemy by occupying a good position. (7) Then to attack in my own fashion.” From the King’s own lips Wedell received the order to fight the Russians whenever he should find them, and officers and men alike were commanded to obey him as though he were indeed the King. But Frederick was never sanguine that these attempts to win a Russian Leuthen by proxy would succeed. His instructions were followed to the letter, and within four days he was condoling with the Dictator upon the disaster of Kay (July 23, 1759), where the Prussians lost more than 8000 men killed and wounded. Nothing could now hold back Soltykoff and his Russians from the Oder, and across the Oder lay Frederick’s helpless capital.
But worse was yet in store. The Russians, for all their numbers and their greed, were ill-fed, irresolute, and slow. They dreaded the victor of Zorndorf and they were determined not to be the catspaw of their allies. If only they could be kept at a distance from the Austrians they might starve before they could agree upon the next step in advance. From Kay to Mark-Lissa is some ninety miles as the crow flies, and the Oder and Frederick’s army lay between. To strengthen the barrier the King was prepared even to leave Saxony almost without defence. He summoned Henry to observe Daun while he himself made “cruel and terrible marches” through the burning sand towards Wedell in the North. So severe was the strain that he passed six of the torrid nights without sleep. But he was racing a fleet adversary—Laudon, the hero of Domstädtl and probably the best partisan soldier in the world. Knowing that he had served ten years in the Russian army, Daun now detached him with 36,000 men to allay Soltykoff’s suspicions of the Austrians and to speed his coming. Frederick disturbed the march, but started too late to stop it altogether. When Laudon found the Russians at Frankfurt he was still master of nearly 20,000 men.
This reinforcement vastly increased the effectiveness of Soltykoff’s army as a fighting force. The Russians were well furnished with guns, and their infantry had proved its toughness at Zorndorf. But their cavalry was bad and Laudon added to it some 6000 men, well-mounted and well-trained. None the less he was received with extreme discourtesy. The Russians abused him because he brought no supplies. They refused to cross the Oder unless Daun’s whole army should appear. Until fresh orders from St. Petersburg produced some change of tone, Laudon felt certain that they were on the eve of retreat. Then came the news that the King of Prussia was upon them and the voice of discord was hushed.
Frederick had set himself a harder task than the destruction of Fermor on the banks of the Oder in 1758. Only overwhelming necessity made him give battle. He suspected that an Austrian detachment was threatening his capital. “I believe that Hadik means Berlin,” he wrote, “and I am obliged to make haste here to parry his blow in time. A lost soul in purgatory is not in a more wretched situation than I am.” In mere numbers, it is true, the disparity between the combatants was not much greater than at Zorndorf. Frederick had now nearly 50,000 men against a composite force of about 68,000, but of the enemy nearly one-quarter were light horse, who in the shock of battle counted for next to nothing.
In quality and in position, however, his army was worse off than before, while the enemy was much better. In the previous year he had led seasoned troops whose ranks had been purged by incessant marches under a scorching sun to join the army of Dohna, which was at least unbeaten and unwearied. Their meeting had provoked one of Frederick’s best-remembered sayings: “Your men have made themselves wonderfully smart; mine look like grass-devils, but they can bite.” Now, however, a great part of his command consisted of troops mishandled by Wobersnow and decimated by the Russians at Kay. It was unlikely that they would fight like the victors of Leuthen.