Frederick’s life-drama, it seemed, was played out, but the curtain did not fall. The allies, who had bought victory dear, made no move, and on the fourth day after the battle the King was himself again. “All my troops have done wonders,” had been his words when he gave up hope. Now he sent a new version to the same correspondent, Finckenstein. “The victory was ours, when suddenly my wretched infantry lost courage. The silly fear of being carried off to Siberia turned their head and there was no stopping them.” His loss at Kunersdorf amounted to at least 18,500 men, but he found himself master of an army 20,000 strong. They were, he said, not to be compared with the worst troops of former years, but he prepared to sacrifice them and himself for the defence of the capital, and awaited Soltykoff on the river Spree.
A letter to Prince Henry written on August 16, 1759, shows the temper of the Prussian Leonidas.
“The moment that I sent you word of our mishap everything seemed desperate. Do not think that the danger is not still very great, but be assured that until my eyes are closed I will sustain the State, as is my duty. A case that I had in my pocket was smashed by a shot, but saved my leg. We are all in tatters; there is hardly anyone who has not had two or three balls through his clothes or his hat. But we would cheerfully sacrifice our wardrobe, if that were all.”
Despite these signs of reviving courage, Frederick felt with tenfold intensity what he expressed years afterwards when he said that after Kunersdorf the enemy had only to give him the finishing stroke. Yet it is highly characteristic of him that already his thoughts ran upon another battle. To carry on defensive warfare, he argued, the support of a fortress was indispensable. But he had only Cüstrin and Spandau to choose from, and to sit down near either would be to sacrifice Berlin. Desperate evils, he held, needed desperate remedies, and he would court Fortune sword in hand. Eight days after Kunersdorf he hoped soon to have 33,000 men in his camp, but he protested that he feared them more than the enemy. “I count on the firmness and honesty of Pitt, and it is on him alone that we can at this juncture base some hope.”
Frederick expected day by day the catastrophe of Prussia. Yet the only direct result of Kunersdorf was that for a time he lost a great part of Saxony. Early in September Dresden was wrested from him by the motley army of the Empire, which was accounted the most despicable member of the coalition. Schmettau had acted too mechanically in following the King’s counsels of despair. But the Swedes, though their opponents had withdrawn, failed to strike south. The French, who had set out in earnest to conquer Hanover, were routed at Minden by Ferdinand of Brunswick on August 1, 1759. They were driven headlong through the narrow gorge at the spot where the Weser cleaves the bulwark of hills which guards the northern plain, and thus before the day of Kunersdorf Frederick knew that he had nothing to fear on the western side. But how, it may well be wondered, could Daun and Soltykoff, with 120,000 men at their disposal and only half the number against them, neglect to follow up their victory? The sequel even suggests that Frederick’s desperate measures beyond the Oder had been superfluous. Prussia was far weaker than before, yet she did not fall. The King was crippled, Austrians and Russians were now massed into one unbroken force, triumph at Dresden followed triumph at Kunersdorf, yet they accomplished nothing.
Their opponents, it is true, were tacticians of the first rank. Prince Henry, by wonderful marches, evaded Daun, and Frederick, returning to the Oder, frustrated all Soltykoff’s efforts to gain Silesia. It was, moreover, beyond the power of Daun to furnish the Russians with supplies, and if their ally did not supply them they refused point-blank to proceed. But the chief cause of Prussia’s salvation was that victory, though it united the armies of her enemies, could not unite their interests. Russians and Austrians remained as before separate armies with divergent interests to consult. At no time did Frederick draw greater profit than after Kunersdorf from the fact that Prussia was one and her opponents many.
Soon Berlin breathed freely and even Breslau felt safe. Before October was at an end Soltykoff was marching home, while Daun was struggling to save Dresden at least from Prince Henry’s reconquest of Saxony. The Te Deums ceased at Vienna and dejection reigned there. Daun’s sluggishness in aggressive action extinguished the renown due to his triumphs of defence. His wife dared not show herself in public. At court the story ran that she opened a package addressed to the Field-marshal, and discovered that some wag had mocked his sluggishness by sending him a night-cap.
At this juncture, however, it would have been well for Prussia if her King’s activity had been less superhuman. Flushed with the triumph of his strategy and confident of the devotion of Pitt, he had the audacity to demand that compensation for Prussia should be the basis of negotiation for peace. During the greater part of October, 1759, he was tormented by gout and fever. He spent his enforced leisure in writing an essay on Charles XII., the Madman of the North, a warrior who would have prized the bloody afternoon of Kunersdorf far more than the strategy which drove Soltykoff empty-handed from Silesia. Then, when the Russian peril had vanished, Frederick set out in a litter for Saxony. “I am very weak, but although still a cripple, I will do all that my feebleness allows me to attempt,” he wrote on November 4th. His heart beat high with the hope of repeating the miracles of 1757, and of regaining, by a new Leuthen, all that had been lost during the summer, and peace.
“I make them carry me like the relics of a saint,” wrote the King after the first day’s journey. Though sleepless and crippled, he concocted daily bulletins to Prince Henry in the spirit of a schoolboy. Since it had been noised abroad that Daun had received the papal benediction he had more than ever been the butt of Frederick’s jests. Now, to create “a favourable impression on the mind of the blessed creature and his council,” he bids his brother announce his little escort as 4000 strong, and sends a list of the regiments of which it may be said to consist. “Daun and his Austrians shall not perceive that I have the gout,” he boasted.
Two days later, on November 14th, he took over the command. Pleased that Daun paid him the compliment of retreating, he ordered Finck to pursue. All the general’s objections were overruled, and he took refuge in wooden obedience to the letter of the King’s orders. “In a few days,” Frederick wrote on the 17th, “we shall reap the fruit of this disposition.” In four the royal prophecy was fulfilled, but the harvester was Daun. Finck’s command, some 15,000 strong, with seventy guns, was entangled in the hills south of Dresden. Believing themselves to be surrounded by thrice their number, the Prussians laid down their arms at Maxen (November 21, 1759).