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 against282 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 frederick283 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 of284 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.
he hoped to take the saxon capital in two or three days, but the defenders were stout-hearted beyond his calculation. after he had wasted more than a fortnight before the walls, the news that glatz had fallen and that breslau was in danger compelled him to resume the dreary tramp towards silesia. his prestige and his position had suffered alike, and his285 mood was more dejected than ever. philosophy, he professed, was his only consolation. since nothing worse could happen to him than what he looked for, he could have no occasion for disappointment. he was determined to hold fast to duty during the brief space that might still separate him from the abyss. it was no great matter, he told finckenstein, whether they were crushed a month sooner or a month later. the death of his old servant, podewils, affected him little, for it seemed but a small item in the general ruin of the state.
thus began the month of august, 1760, in which frederick and his army dispelled by their own valiant deeds some of the darkest clouds that hung over prussia. they were escorted into silesia, where soltykoff’s russians and laudon’s austrians awaited them, by the armies of daun and lacy, which marched, said the king, like the vanguard and rear-guard of their own force. thanks to the stout-heartedness of the prussian general tauentzien, laudon had summoned breslau in vain. now, however, he effected a junction with daun, and the united austrian forces outnumbered frederick by three to one.
at no moment of his long career, not even when he galloped from the field of mollwitz nor when he gathered round him the wreckage after kunersdorf, had the king’s plight seemed so desperate as now. he himself upon whom all depended was in the depths of dejection. he had with him only some 30,000 men, and kay, kunersdorf, maxen, landshut, dresden formed an unbroken series of286 disasters. against him were some 90,000 austrians, commanded by daun, to whom his royal mistress had sent the most unequivocal instructions to fight, and by laudon, to whom military instinct no less clearly dictated battle. they barred frederick’s path both to breslau and to schweidnitz, and brought his force to the verge of starvation. across the oder the russians were masters of the land, waiting only for the tidings of victory to pour a new host over bridges which they had already built. to retreat was to abandon silesia, to stand still was to be starved or crushed, to attack was beyond the imagination even of a frederick. prussian officers talked of a new and greater maxen, and the british ambassador, mitchell, burned his papers.
plan of liegnitz, august 15, 1760.
at last frederick moved. having learned from a drunken deserter that daun was planning a surprise, he resolved to march towards the oder, preferring the neighbourhood of the russians on the right bank to a situation which had plainly become untenable. on the evening of august 14, 1760, the prussians stole away from their camp and occupied a strong position to the north-east of liegnitz. on the western side, where daun’s attack might be looked for, the ground was admirable for defence. behind the stream of the schwarzwasser rises a steep and sudden bank, shaped like a natural bastion. this was manned by the right wing, encamped on a champaign so level that it forms the liegnitz drill-ground to this day. further north-east a gentle slope descended from the lines of the prussian left to the little village of panten and so to the river287 katzbach. there through the moonlit night the men lay under arms, forbidden to cheer themselves with song, but filled with an expectancy that banished sleep. the king, who shared all their privations, wrapped himself in his cloak and snatched a brief rest by a watch-fire after satisfying himself that all was ordered aright.
till dawn the stillness was unbroken. then in a moment blazed up one of the shortest and most brilliant fights of the whole war. a breathless messenger cried that the enemy—laudon—was attacking in force on the extreme left. frederick hurried off to oppose him. had the attack been made fifteen minutes earlier, he declared, the issue would have been far different. but the prussians profited much by their stealthy change of camp. laudon’s march was a part of daun’s concerted attack upon the position that they had quitted seven hours before. the result of their movement was that daun hardly reached them, while laudon, who expected to surprise their baggage, was himself surprised. marching without a vanguard, he found himself committed to an uphill fight without support from daun. none the less he attacked with such swing and dash that the prussian left was well-nigh cut in two, it was saved by the infantry, who first valiantly held panten and then set it on fire. this checked the austrian advance and enabled the prussians to make good use of their position. about an hour and a half after the first onset laudon retired across the katzbach unpursued. the prussians claimed to have killed or wounded 6000 men288 and captured 4000—a total loss thrice as great as their own. they had thus annihilated nearly one-third of laudon’s force, and—what was even more important—they had rent the net that was closing round them. daun had appeared in sight of the prussians only to learn of laudon’s disaster and to retire. henceforward it was beyond the power of the empress to induce her favoured field-marshal to attack.
the moral gain was perhaps the greatest of all the advantages that frederick derived from liegnitz. “a second edition of rossbach,” as he called the battle, was the best proof that prussian valour and leadership and luck had none of them vanished from the earth. the king, who had his coat torn by one ball and his horse wounded by another, ascribed the victory to the favour of fortune and the bravery of his men. no other judge, whether prussian, austrian, or russian, could fail to ascribe a great share in it to the king. the value of this renewal of prestige was apparent almost every day that the war had yet to run. however huge the masses of austrians and russians might be, they were usually content to watch frederick at a respectful distance. the initiative was thus often abandoned to the weaker side and the value of frederick’s army enhanced threefold.
yet nothing could demonstrate more clearly than their movements after liegnitz how weak the prussians were. frederick’s departure from the field of victory was in truth a flight, but a flight which covered the fugitives with glory. young lieutenant289 archenholtz, who was among the victors, tells the astounding tale of how
“this army, spent with bloody toil and girt by mighty hosts, must press on without rest and without delay, and yet must bear with it every gun and man that had been taken and all the wounded as well. these last were packed into meal-wagons and bread-wagons, into carriages and carts, no matter whose they might be. even the king gave up his. king and generals gave up their led horses to carry the wounded who could ride. the empty meal-wagons were broken up and their horses harnessed to the captured guns. every horseman and driver must take with him one of the enemy’s muskets. nothing was left behind, not a single wounded man, prussian or austrian, and at nine o’clock, four hours after the end of the battle, the army with its enormous load was in full march.”
twelve good miles were covered that day under the august sun. frederick was still between two armies, each larger than his own. neither russians nor austrians, however, dared attack him and he joined prince henry at breslau without another stroke of sword.
of his brother henry, frederick said at a later date, “there is but one of us that never made a mistake in war.” but the king continually rejected his counsel, though the event proved it to have been wise, and his relations with the prince often became strained. a brilliant strategist, henry wished to husband prussian powder and prussian blood by man?uvring more and fighting less. the victor of leuthen, on the other hand, was ready to290 take great risks if he believed that his success would be fatal to the chief army either of the russians or of the austrians. “if you engage in small affairs only,” he maintained, “you will always remain mediocre, but if you engage in ten great undertakings and are lucky in no more than two you make your name immortal.”
frederick’s habitual inclination to throw for high stakes was increased by the events of september and october, 1760. his task was to guard the silesian fortresses against daun, but while he—like the court of vienna—yearned for a decisive action berlin fell into the hands of 40,000 russians and austrians. the raiders occupied the city for four days and exacted a contribution of two million thalers, but the rumour of the king’s approach sufficed to drive them off. winter was drawing nigh and the russians vanished as was their wont. there was thus less need to fear for silesia, but the enemy still held saxony, and saxony was to frederick a recruiting-ground, a treasure-house, and a home. with added reasons for a battle, but with little assurance of success, he therefore transferred thither the seat of war.
“the close of my days is poisoned,” he wrote, “and the evening of my life as hideous as its morning. never will i endure the moment that must force me to make a dishonourable peace. no persuasion, no eloquence can bring me to sign my shame. either i will bury myself under the ruins of my fatherland, or if this consolation seem too sweet to the misfortune that pursues me, i will myself put an end to my woes.... after having291 sacrificed my youth to my father, and my ripe years to my fatherland, i think i have acquired the right to dispose of my old age as i please.... and so i will finish this campaign, resolved to hazard all and to try the most desperate measures, to conquer or to find a glorious end.”
we who have seen frederick resign his crown after kunersdorf are free to believe that he would have taken his life after a new kolin. his words are in any event highly significant of the view which he took of the limits of his duty to the state, whose course he had steered according to his own will for twenty years. five days after they were written, on november 3, 1760, he did in truth hazard all, and try the most desperate measures. daun, who had followed him into saxony, was encamped near torgau in a position reputed impregnable. he had 50,000 men with an enormous park of artillery, and whatever his shortcomings in attack, none could impugn his talent for defence. yet frederick, with 44,000 men, determined to attack, and to attack by one of the most difficult operations in war, a simultaneous onslaught on opposite sides of the enemy’s position. the king himself proposed to lead half the army through the forest, right round the austrian camp, so as to assail it from the north. the other half was to attack from the south under zieten, the bravest of hussars but the youngest of generals, who had commanded a wing at liegnitz, but had never handled an army, and who did not know the ground.
it is hardly surprising, with such a plan as this,292 that torgau, like many battles, was fought not as was designed but as best it might be. the history of the day proved beyond dispute that frederick had ventured much. the weather, their own errors, and the enemy’s guns ruined the prussian simultaneous attack. the king’s contingent fought a desperate battle. few of his attendants escaped without a wound. his own life was saved as if by miracle. three horses were killed under him. a spent ball struck him senseless, but his pelisse saved him from serious hurt. he rallied both himself and his men, but when evening came the austrians had the advantage. daun felt that he might safely leave the field to dress a wound and send news of victory to vienna.
then, in the last hour of the fight, something like a simultaneous attack was carried out and it succeeded. after long indecision, zieten stormed the southern heights with desperate courage and the confused struggle was taken up a third time by the king’s forces on the north. by eight o’clock, thirteen hours after the prussians had left camp, the austrian resistance was at an end. ere midnight daun was fleeing across the elbe, while frederick, seated on the altar-step of a village church, scribbled a note to finckenstein, promising to send details of the victory next day.
plan of torgau, november 3, 1760.
before dawn, he was once more among his troops riding through the lines and embracing zieten. at torgau he had frustrated the austrian reconquest of saxony and reduced their forces by some 16,000 men. but when his own loss came to be counted293 he strictly forbade his adjutants to reveal the sum. torgau was the bloodiest battle of the war and the prussians had suffered most. their casualties exceeded by nearly one thousand those of the beaten side.
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 principal294 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,295 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 sovereign296 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 had297 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-j?gersdorf, 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 anxiety298 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 man?uvres 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.
thenceforward it was plain that the dragging war would lead to no decisive issue. frederick was so sure of his cause that he had already sent a commissioner to examine the civil needs of pomerania. but299 he could only undertake formidable aggressive movements if the turks and tartars rose, and once again they disappointed his hopes. instead of new combatants joining in the fray the old ones were quitting it. bute was eager to take the step which pitt had scorned to take in 1760. before the year was out france and england signed the preliminaries which were embodied in the peace of paris in february, 1763. immediately after burkersdorf, the russians withdrew and it was not to be expected that the austrians and imperialists could accomplish by themselves a task which had baffled the unbroken coalition. daun, indeed, attempted to avenge burkersdorf by a counter-surprise. he failed and in october, 1762, schweidnitz fell. before the month was over prince henry, who was conducting the campaign in saxony, gained a great victory over the imperialist army at freiberg. the campaign closed with an armistice between frederick and the austrians and a series of prussian forays against the hostile princes of the empire.
at last the queen realised that she had failed. she promptly determined not to prolong a struggle which could only add to the misery of mankind. so vast a legacy of hate had, however, been left by the war that it was difficult to find a single power whose good offices both sides could accept with a view to peace. the queen therefore brought herself to approach “the wicked man” direct and sent an envoy to the king of prussia. for nearly seven weeks negotiations went on at hubertusburg, a castle of the unfortunate saxon monarch. frederick300 showed himself pliant in matters of etiquette and unbending where any practical advantage was at stake. he was willing to gratify hapsburg pride by sending his envoy more than half-way to meet the envoy of the queen, by allowing her name to precede his in the documents, and by promising to further the election of her son joseph as emperor. but he insisted on the restoration of glatz by the austrians, and on the payment by the saxons of his grinding taxes up to the very eve of peace.
on february 15, 1763, the peace of hubertusburg was signed. after seven campaigns and an incalculable loss of blood and treasure, austria and prussia agreed to return to their situation before the outbreak of the war.
