The blow was more crushing than Kunersdorf, for the whisper now sped through the world that the Prussians were turning cowards. Eichel confessed that his heart was so full of bitterness and chagrin that it was quite out of his power that day to write anything in cipher. The King, who had boasted to Voltaire that he would despatch his next letter from Dresden, complained bitterly that ill-luck pursued him all his days. He strove to atone for his over-confidence by exertion, and for many weeks kept the field, defying the stern winter. He thereby averted an Austrian reconquest of Saxony, but the gates of Dresden never opened to him again. The Prussian cause and the Prussian King, thought the world, were failing together. “If you saw me, you would scarcely know me again,” Frederick wrote to Voltaire. “I am old, broken, grayheaded, wrinkled. I am losing my teeth and my gaiety.” Yet this dejected veteran alone kept together the Prussian army. That army was the sole bulwark of the State. If Frederick had in truth lost health, skill, and fortune, what hope was left to Prussia?
CHAPTER IX
THE END OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR (1760–1763)
Between the spring of 1760, when the weary Frederick braced himself to grapple anew with a task which four campaigns seemed only to have increased, and the moment when a sudden stroke of fortune was to give him rest, there intervenes a gap of time as great as that which separates his first plunge into the war from his overthrow at Kunersdorf. If we are compelled to be content with a swift review of these final phases of the struggle, we must by no means lose from sight the tenacity and adroitness of the hero upon whom every campaign laid a heavier burden than the last, and to whom every year seemed endless. After Kunersdorf and Maxen, we, who know that Frederick and Prussia did not perish, may be impatient to have done with their long agony. But Frederick himself enjoyed no such comfortable prescience. Hopes he had indeed in plenty. Denmark might join him, the Tartars might rise, the Turks, he was constantly assured, were on the very verge of attacking Austria. Now the French, now the Russians, he believed, were about to desert the coalition against him. The event testified to his courage rather than to his insight. Time brought only fresh disappointments and prospects ever more black, but the King neither flinched nor paused. Under the bludgeonings of chance his head was bloody but unbowed. “It was not the army,” said Napoleon, “that defended Prussia, seven years through, against the three greatest Powers of Europe, it was Frederick the Great.”
Till near its close the campaign of 1760 seemed to be merely the natural sequel to that of 1759. In spite of all the chances of high politics, the same combatants took the field on either side. France, beaten by land and sea, had tempted England with the offer of a separate peace. But Pitt displayed anew the loyalty to his ally which was the consolation of Frederick’s darkest hours. The English minister recognised that his country’s triumphs over France off Lagos, in the bay of Quiberon, and before the walls of Quebec in the glorious campaign of 1759, had been due to the Prussian alliance almost as directly as the victory of Minden. He braved the taunt that he was more Prussian than the King of Prussia and inflexibly refused to desert him in his hour of misfortune. The Russians, on the other hand, consented to serve Maria Theresa anew, but at a high price. Ost-Preussen, which they had conquered, was to be theirs for ever. Thus the Hapsburg, though guardian and head of Germany, was compelled to promise that if Prussia were crushed the Muscovite should advance to the Vistula.
The labours of the diplomatists, from which Frederick looked for great gains, had done nothing to change the military situation in his favour. The campaign of 1760 saw once more Ferdinand confronting the French in the West, the Swedes paralysed by their own incompetence in Pomerania, Daun striving to reconquer Saxony, Laudon striving to reconquer Silesia, and the Russians, as usual, advancing towards the Oder. But, whereas in 1759 Frederick’s own presence had more than once caused disaster to his armies, in 1760 he became again the hero of the strife. He was always most formidable when the odds against him were heavy, and in 1760 none could doubt that the Prussians were at an overwhelming disadvantage. Even the King regarded the campaign as a gambler’s last throw. Failing extraordinary good fortune, he predicted the collapse of Prussia before the autumn.
For the first time in the war the enemy began a campaign on Prussian soil. Laudon invaded Silesia, and the King’s friend, Fouqué, believing himself too weak to hold Landshut, fell back on Breslau. The Silesians protested that they were being abandoned to the mercy of the enemy and Frederick complained that his generals did more mischief to him than to the enemy. Under-estimating Laudon’s talent for war, he ordered Fouqué to recover Landshut at once, and promised to come to the rescue in person as soon as he had beaten the enemy in Saxony. Fouqué obeyed, but in Laudon he had an opponent far more active than Daun. His force of less than 11,000 men was soon in as hopeless a plight as that of Finck at Maxen. He, too, avenged the insults of the King by following his orders to the letter, for the more considerate counter-orders which Frederick despatched never reached him. On June 23, 1760, near Landshut, the Prussians maintained a hopeless struggle for seven hours. It is believed that the killed and wounded numbered more than 5000 men. It is certain that only some 1500 cavalry, perhaps one-seventh of Fouqué’s whole force, succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy.
At Landshut the Prussian regiments regained by their valour the repute which they had lost at Maxen, where they laid down their arms without a blow. But the fruits of Laudon’s victory were great. Silesia now lay defenceless before the Austrians, and only Prince Henry’s weak force screened it from the advancing Russians. Frederick, though balked of a battle, was compelled to leave his work in Saxony undone and to transfer the bulk of the Prussian army to the eastern theatre of war. His going was a proof of weakness, but the manner of it paid a signal tribute to his fame. None dared to stand in his way. The Austrians under Lacy were so determined to be on the safe side that they left Dresden bare, and Frederick was tempted by the opportunity of a brilliant triumph to turn aside.