Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia

by William Fiddian Reddaway

In spite of Liegnitz and Torgau the campaign of 1760 seemed to have changed Frederick’s situation but little. Dresden was still beyond his reach, but he was able to spend a pleasant winter at Leipzig, surrounded by books and men of letters. Diplomacy, as before, promised much and performed little, but drilling and recruiting went on without pause. Although the quality of the Prussian army could not but deteriorate, the numbers were astonishingly maintained. Commissions were given to mere lads, freebooters were welcomed, and the lands of the lesser German princes were scoured for men, till in the spring of 1761 a hundred thousand soldiers were ready to take the field. To furnish the necessary funds no new taxes were laid upon the Prussians, but Frederick issued great quantities of base coin and Saxony, where the Austrians might otherwise have found support, was harried to the verge of devastation.

It was believed at Vienna that Frederick would resort to his plan of the preceding year by pitting himself against the army which covered Dresden. The Empress therefore implored Daun once more to take command. He consented, but only on the astounding condition that he should not be expected to make conquests. Then the King of Prussia transferred himself to Silesia, which became the principal scene of the events of 1761, perhaps the dreariest of all campaigns.

For the third year in succession it was beyond the power of the Prussians to prevent the armies of the Empress and Czarina from joining hands in Silesia. The King would have risked a battle against either, but battle was not vouchsafed him. Yet in face of an enemy who outnumbered his 55,000 men by more than two to one he had still a weapon at his disposal and it proved effectual. The bold offensive of his earlier campaigns had perforce given place to defensive action only. Although Ferdinand still gloriously held his own against the French, Frederick knew that he himself was too weak to meet the combined Austrian and Russian army in the field. He therefore entrenched himself and defied the allies either to destroy him where he stood or to make lasting conquests while his army remained undestroyed.

For five weeks, till near the end of September, he thus inhabited the famous camp of Bunzelwitz, resting upon Schweidnitz, the key of Lower Silesia. Then, deeming the danger past, he moved southward to seek fresh supplies. His absence woke the foe to life and the campaign closed with disaster. On October 1, 1761, Laudon astonished Europe by storming Schweidnitz. A second reverse followed. Before the year was out the Russians were masters of Colberg, the Baltic gate of Prussian Pomerania. For the first time, therefore, the armies of the enemy could winter on Prussian soil. A huge crescent of foes, French, Imperialists, Austrians, Russians, Swedes, was at last enfolding Prussia. When spring came would they not surely stifle her?

Frederick, moping through the winter at Breslau, declared once more that Fortune alone could save him. He likened himself to a fiddler from whose instrument men tore away the strings one by one till all were gone and still demanded music. Once more he declared that philosophy alone could console him in his “pilgrimage through this hell called the world.” “I save myself,” he wrote, “by viewing the world as though from a distant planet. Then everything seems infinitely small, and I pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about such a trifle.” Yet he never ceased to recruit, to drill, and to make plans for the glorious offensive campaign that he hoped to engage in with the aid of the Tartars and the Turks.

In December, 1761, he professed indifference to the course of events in England, though two months earlier his champion Pitt had given place to men who preferred the Austrian alliance to the Prussian, and who desired that separate peace with France which Pitt had rejected in 1758. The treaty then made between England and Prussia forbade either to make peace without the other till April 11th of the following year. In 1759, 1760, and 1761 this compact had been renewed. Now, however, Newcastle and Bute began to clamour for what Pitt had ventured only to suggest—that Frederick should purchase peace by some concession conformable to the course of the Continental war. The Prussian envoys in London dared to advise their sovereign to comply. He answered that they were in nowise permitted to give him such foolish and impertinent counsel. “Your father,” he wrote to one of them, though the charge was baseless, “took bribes from France and England; has he bequeathed the habit to you?”

Frederick’s inflexible resolve to make no concession was by no means the same as a resolve to make no bargain. He often played with the fancy that Saxony or a part of it might be left in his hands at the peace. For this he would gladly surrender any or all of his outlying provinces. But he would rather forfeit the English subsidy and jeopardise the very existence of the Prussian State than sue for the peace which Kaunitz was more than willing to conclude on terms of moderate profit for the allies. Two weighty reasons of policy increased his determination. The labours of the winter once again filled the ranks and the war-chest of Prussia. And Fortune, of whom the King said that she alone could extricate him, now gave with one hand more than she took away with the other. At the moment when England left him, Russia ranged herself at his side.

The cause of this marvellous revolution was the accident that the Czarina died early in January, 1762, and that her nephew and successor, Peter III., was a worshipper of the King of Prussia. Elizabeth had lived in debauchery and left upwards of 15,000 dresses to bear witness to her luxurious tastes. It is possible that her chief motive in attacking Frederick was a desire to chastise the man who had spoken ill of her. But there can be no doubt that her policy was suited to the interests of the State. It was argued at a later date that her alliance with the Queen had cost Russia countless lives and sixty millions of money. But in 1762 it had already procured Ost-Preussen and part of Pomerania, and there seemed to be good hope that Prussia, the only Power which could prevent a vast extension of Russian influence in Poland, would be permanently crippled. If the allies dared not attack the King of Prussia, they were at least in a fair way to exhaust his strength.

In a moment, however, the rash young Holsteiner who now wielded the sceptre of his great namesake, Peter, flung away all that his troops had purchased with their blood in five campaigns—at Gross-Jägersdorf, Zorndorf, Kay, Kunersdorf, and Colberg. In the first hours of his reign he ordered his army to take no step in advance. Before January was over, Frederick knew that peace with Russia was assured. The Czar’s one desire seemed to be to gratify his brother of Prussia. He craved investiture with the order of the Black Eagle, and declared that he would stand by while Turks and Tartars attacked the Austrian dominions. He resigned the Russian conquests without indemnity, undertook to promote peace with Sweden, and even offered Frederick his alliance. Influenced by his withdrawal, the Swedes came to terms of their own accord and concluded the Peace of Hamburg (May 22, 1762), which re-established the conditions of 1720. Frederick could therefore face the remnants of the coalition without anxiety for his rear. From Ost-Preussen he now drew 15,000 men. By undertaking to assist Peter in his schemes for winning back the lands which the House of Holstein had lost to Denmark forty years before, he secured the immediate help of 20,000 Russians.

The situation was so completely transformed since the days when Frederick lay motionless at Bunzelwitz that in 1762 he determined once more to take the aggressive. His first aim must be the recovery of Schweidnitz. This could only be accomplished by inducing Daun to give battle, for his army, which had encamped near the fortress, was now playing the part that had fallen to the Prussians in the previous year. While the manœuvres were pursuing their tedious course the news arrived that Peter III. had been deposed. His wife, the German princess Catherine II., who was thus placed in power, at once recalled the 20,000 Russians from Silesia. Frederick, however, calculating on the influence which their presence would exercise upon the mind of Daun, persuaded their commander to conceal the order and to remain a few days longer as a spectator of the war. Then on July 21, 1762, the Prussians surprised Daun’s right wing and gained a clever victory at Burkersdorf. At a sacrifice of some 1600 men they reduced the enemy’s force by nearly 10,000, and the retreat of the Austrians enabled them to begin the siege of Schweidnitz.