Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War

by Herbert J. Redman

  As for the efforts of Laudon over in Silesia, he concluded his campaign with an unusual degree of quietness.12 Around October 23, with Breslau and Berlin still firmly in Prussian hands, Laudon’s men laid siege to the fortress of Kosel, manned by Lt.-Gen. Christoph Friedrich von Lattorf, of some 1,500 men. Frederick had already unleashed General Goltz with his command (October 19), as we have observed, from Lubben to move to the aid of the Prussian forces ensconced in Silesia. This fact had to be known by the sharp Austrian commander. Still, Laudon did not lose his head. The Austrians approached Kosel with due caution, but two separate attempts, carried out between October 23 and October 27, failed to either frighten Lattorf into submission or else carried the fortress. October 30, with the best of the campaign season clearly behind them now, Laudon abandoned his effort and moved into winter quarters. The Imperialist Army, at the close of the Battle of Torgau, fell back to Chemnitz to try to reform. Before the month was out, the Germans were taking winter quarters behind the Saale.

  Before we look at developing political changes in Great Britain, we will examine Ferdinand’s campaign of 1760 with the French. Pitt had reinforced the allied contingent with another body of 7,000 English troops, and Ferdinand could now boast of nearly 70,000 men. With this Prusso-allied force, he faced the French opposite under the charge of Broglie. Early in July, Ferdinand raced off to confront the latter, who had swept across the Ohm River and was heading for the Diemel River. July 10, the Prince of Brunswick, leading an allied command, faced down Broglie at Korbach, but the enemy reacted too quickly for any Allied hope of success. The Allies paused hard-by the place, and, by the following morning, the French were in great strength in a very secure post to the east of Korbach. Brunswick fell back, trying to find a weak spot in the French set-up. He discovered one near Emsdorf, where Broglie’s supply train was inadequately guarded. A quick lunge for Emsdorf and the French guard force was hacked up (July 16). Now a redoubled French effort at consolidation of the scattered forces took place after the Korbach engagement. Broglie, joined by Prince Xavier of Saxony, was targeting Kassel, but unwisely now decided to divide his force to allow him more freedom of action. This risky idea left him in a bad strategic situation; since the enemy were so strong in numbers, Ferdinand and the Prince of Brunswick might try to destroy the separated French bodies one at a time. Broglie left some 30,000 men under Chevalier du Muy to hold the rear area around the Diemel between the villages of Warburg on his right and Ossendorf to his left.

  The Prince of Brunswick, with Ferdinand coming to his support, resolved to attack du Muy before Broglie’s main body could relieve him. About 0800 hours, July 31, Brunswick drove against the French in Warburg, speedily ejecting them. His plan-of-battle was sound: he sought to fix du Muy’s attention on a full frontal attack, while really only planning to destroy the enemy’s flanks with du Muy thus deceived. A thick fog enshrouded his men, and allowed the blows to de delivered squarely. A raging battle developed, but Brunswick was unable to overcome du Muy, as French resistance stiffened. That is until Ferdinand, close at hand, dispatched the English cavalry of Lord Granby, a full 22 squadrons strong, to help. These men “had some five miles to cover” before they could make any impact.13 It was enough. The struggle ended as du Muy withdrew, leaving the allies to cling to the Diemel and denying Broglie an avenue into Hanover on that side. The French commander side-stepped Ferdinand, grabbing Göttingen (August 4) and trying to decoy him to retake the place, leaving Lippstädt and an easier route into that province wide open. Ferdinand, however, refused to take the bait.

  The advanced position of the French, however, appeared to uncover Wesel, so on September 22, Brunswick shoved off for the place to seize it before Broglie had time to react. This was not a serious effort to take the city, though, for Brunswick had no siege equipment, and he could not hope to assail the place successfully without such equipment. He sent for siege guns from Bielefeld and spent the interim capturing Cleve, threatening the Dusseldorf-Köln country, as well as alarming Broglie. General Wangenheim was forthwith detached with a force to try to side-step Broglie. He was repulsed with some loss at Löwenhagen (September 19). Broglie’s men stayed safe. On the other hand, Ferdinand had had enough. Shaken by the scope of the French energy, Ferdinand backed off. Before the end of September, he “was back in his original position.”14 The latter sent the Marquis de Castries with 35,000 men to go relieve Wesel and confront Brunswick. Castries arrived in mid–October, pushing some 7,000 reinforcements into the city’s garrison. Suddenly confronted by this new French threat, Brunswick resolved to attack the enemy before he were assailed. A night attack (October 15–16), known as the Battle of Kloster-Kampen, resulted. The allies crept through underbrush to fall upon Castries, although mistakes prematurely gave the attackers away, and the French subsequently put up a hard fight. Finally, after hard losses (allied losses totaled approximately 1,638), Brunswick was forced to beat a retreat. French losses in this “drawn” battle were about 2,036.

  Brunswick’s bridge over the Rhine, and thus his route of escape, had been damaged and he faced the unenviable task of remaining in front of Castries for two days while it was being fixed, bluffing all the while.15 Finally, again under the cover of darkness (October 18–19), he recrossed the Rhine and returned to Ferdinand’s headquarters. The latter, upon Brunswick’s return, descended upon Göttingen, but he could not turn the enemy out of it. So when the campaign ended, both sides settled down and faced each other cautiously. It had been, apart from the singular French success in taking Göttingen, an inconclusive campaign on the Western Front.

  At the Northern Front, there had been few operations again in the latter phases of this campaign. Except for Forcade’s efforts to clear Mecklenburg and Pomerania of the Russians and the occasional Swedes, there was very little to report. Werner, with the backdrop of the enemy move against Berlin, suddenly descended upon Pasewalk (October 2). General Ehrensvard, alerted by the Prussian capture of a Swedish post at Locknitz, was cognizant of the enemy’s move on Templin. The Swedes did not panic by any means, and the Prussian progress was abruptly brought up short when Ehrensvard ordered the suburbs of Pasewalk torched. As soon as Werner was apprized that other Prussian field forces were racing for Berlin to help rescue the Prussian capital, he pulled up stakes and fell back on Stettin, abandoning the move upon Pasewalk. The Prussian haul was limited to some 600 prisoners, and the Swedes were disturbed enough by the boldness of the enemy’s offensive, that Lantinghausen forthwith ordered a concentration of the available Swedish forces at Pasewalk.16 This was followed by a hitch almost immediately back upon Werbelow, with the bluecoats gradually closing up.17 The Swedes failed to strike south to join the Russians/Austrians with the effort upon Berlin, and Colonel Belling, plugging holes in the defense network with a handful of men, was able to contain them easily. One little-known event that would later have much significance was the capture, in a minor scuffle between Prussians and Swedes, of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher by the bluecoats (August 29). Although only 17 years old at the time, the determined young man soon became an officer under Belling and served against his former compatriots. This young man would later lead the very Prussian army that finally helped overcome Napoleon Bonaparte at the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The campaign concluded on the Northern Front when, on November 27, the Swedish forces crossed back over the Peene, and on into winter quarters.

  From Great Britain, meanwhile, there had certainly been dreadful news. October 25, 1760, old King George II breathed his last; gone was the man who had fully supported William Pitt with all of his endeavors, including the alliance with Prussia and the all-important subsidy. The new slow-witted 22-year-old king, George III, was not so interested in foreign policy and Pitt’s designs. Besides which, he was under the spell of John Stewart, the Earl of Bute. The latter entered the government and immediately became outspoken in his criticism of Pitt’s management of the war. The war was on the threshold of its sixth season for the British, and becoming ever
more expensive for the government to finance.

  Moreover, British objectives, such as the expulsion of the French from Canada and India, had been largely accomplished by this point and the continuation of the struggle offered few additional advantages for England. About the only additional advantage at this stage involved the total eclipse of France as a maritime rival, touched on by Pitt in 1763.18 Nonetheless, Pitt did manage to draw up a new subsidy treaty—the last for the Prussians—which enabled Frederick to equip a large portion of his army. To make up the shortfall, for the money which the king received from the normal taxation channels and the British subsidy were far from sufficient, the Prussian king again ordered devaluation of the currency. Also, he gave vent to the merciless stripping of territories still under his control for additional men and resources.

  Eugene of Württemberg, for instance, was ordered to comb 3,000 more recruits from Mecklenburg as well as additional stores of provisions. During the winter, a battle developed on the Western Front. Ferdinand was embarking upon one of his annual excursions to cause discomfort to the French. His new enterprise involved driving Broglie from Hesse-Cassel and Hanover by a stroke upon his local vitals. In early February, Ferdinand, with rudimentary cooperation from Frederick, burst out suddenly upon Broglie’s overextended line (Frankfurt to Marburg, Ziegenhayn, Kassel, and finally to Langensalza). Some of the French posts caved in, compelling Broglie to take to the field, assembling his army while Ferdinand laid siege to Kassel and Ziegenhayn.

  This fight, February 15, was the extent of the cooperation between Ferdinand and Frederick. Ferdinand might have done better still had not the winter turned abnormally warm, causing the fragile roadway network to break down. Worse yet, Broglie, without interference from the Prussian king, on March 14, suddenly attacked Ferdinand’s hard-won gains, driving the allies from Kassel, ending Ferdinand’s abortive stroke. The latter had to go back to his starting point.

  Frederick made a mid-winter dash of his own upon the Imperialists, in April, driving them back upon Bamberg for the rest of the off-season. Meanwhile, abortive attempts at peace negotiations had broken down and in the spring there was nothing for the contenders to do but take the field again. However, the Austrians faced the new campaign with a forced reduction of 20,000 men from the army because of the shrinking French subsidies.

  PART VII. 1761: THE SIXTH YEAR

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Campaign 1761 Opens with a Flourish

  Liegnitz and Torgau had helped partially erase the bad memories of Kunersdorf and Maxen, but, when the 1761 Campaign opened, the odds were still long for the discontented Prussians. Along with long years of war, Frederick was experiencing increasing isolation. Even the stolid British government was displaying indicators they were parting ways with the great Prussian king. The situation was one of uneasiness and uncertainty by the end of Campaign 1760. Rumblings were clear, for the severing of close ties with Great Britain would leave the northern German kingdom with no allies of consequence on the continent. Even the really solid defense of Hanover by some of the Prussian army’s best units, led by the king’s skillful brother Ferdinand, was no longer currying favor for Frederick back in merry old England as the thought of yet another year of battles was lurking with 1761, besides the escalating costs of the war.

  Great Britain had only so many resources to devote to the prosecution of the war. The English Ambassador Mitchell, heretofore a staunch advocate of Frederick’s, was “surprised to find that his Prussian Majesty had asked for the sum of five millions of crowns for the maintenance of a corps of thirty thousand men,” then added with more than a tinge of suspicion “the expense for forty thousand men is valued at only five million nine hundred forty-three thousand ninety-three crowns or rix-dollars.”1

  Money was a necessity. The English Subsidy was still around, one more time, at £ 670,000, but that money was perforce supplemented by further coin debasement and “by ruthless requisitions of men, money and material from territories still under his [Frederick’s] control.”2 The men to fill the ranks? “Most of the new recruits came from Saxony.”3 Some of the threats, veiled or otherwise, to fulfill Prussian “requests?” Several town leaders in Saxony were told, without a hint of shame, “coin or the town will be put to the torch.” Prominent merchants were clapped in irons and summarily placed in jails to lie upon straw, without creature comforts, treated like desperate felons. Archenholtz puts the number of those so treated at 120 at the beginning, later reduced to “only 17 who stayed four months in prison.”4 Their crime in this case? Refusal to pay what amounted to extortion, i.e., heavy, unjustified “taxes.”

  Prussian measures were often extreme. The debasement of the coin, accredited largely, through various and sundry means, to the “Jew Ephraim,” makes for depressing reading. The unscrupulous men involved (Archenholtz dares to, or sarcastically, calls them “princes”) made sure the means to distribute the coins were dishonest; they involved both Prussian and Saxon coin.5 Widespread inflation and financial chaos were the results. The king’s welcome apparently was wearing out now even on the chief English representative at his court, not to mention on the peoples subject to him as a result of the fortunes of war.

  That being the case, Prussia would be ostracized from the rest of Europe before too long. Worse, there were few potential allies just then available to select from as Frederick cast about. The monarch could not even find comfort among the likes of his literary circle, his usual “safety” valve in pressure situations.6 Visits by prominent contemporary German writers, among them Christian Gellert and Johann Christoph Gottsched, to his winter quarters in Leipzig, failed to lighten his sense of melancholy and foreboding.7 That the king did not enjoy communicating in his native German language could not have helped matters. Nevertheless, he continued to attend to the seemingly endless minutiae of detail, large and small, without which his armies would be unable to take the field for the new campaign. One thing was certain in all of this: Frederick’s sense of duty transcended nearly all other considerations. All of his adult life, especially as ruler, the king would consider his first duty to be to the State. This was especially true in the often dark days of the Seven Years’ War.

  One of the few bright spots was Turkey, which country the Prussians had been courting for years, although with indifferent results. A more secure tie with the Turks did not appear to be any closer as the campaign unfolded. Nevertheless, negotiations continued between Karl Adolf von Rexin, the seemingly tireless “Prussian” representative in Constantinople (a.k.a. the “Austrian renegade Gottfried Fabian Haude”),8 and the Turks.9 Then, in a surprising turn of events, Frederick’s representative with the Turks was finally able to make some “headway” in negotiations,10 and April 2, 1761, Prussia and the Ottoman Turks came to an “understanding” that could potentially bring the Turks at least to the brink of war with the Austrians and the Russians.11 But, “the implications … [of this treaty] were much overrated by both Frederick and Kaunitz.” Their impact on the campaign of 1761 was as yet to be seen.12 As it worked out, any hope of succor from that quarter would turn out to be a vain one. All the treaty did, in the end, was to set up normal diplomatic relations between the nations.13

  Moreover, while an alliance with the Ottoman Turks would not be entirely bereft of benefits (i.e., a distraction particularly for the Russians away from their fight with Prussia),14 such a link-up could never fill the void if England did beg off from its alliance with the bluecoats.

  A side effect of the rumors swirling round about Turkey’s involvement did attract quite a number of thrill seekers wishing to enlist in the “adventure.” In fact, “small groups of Muslim deserters arrived from the Russian army, attracted by [rumors the Sultan] would declare a jihad.”15 This gossip directly impacted Prussian recruiting. For example, the 9th Hussars, also known as the Bosniak Hussars, had been previous to this reduced to only five officers and 16 men by the rigors of war, but were enabled to “expand to 110 horses through recruitment, after a rumo
r of an alliance with Turkey had lured Turkish and Tartar turncoats.”16 This particular unit was commanded by Colonel Daniel Friedrich von Lossow, an outspoken officer oftentimes encountered in the histories of the war in relation to some military exploit or another.

  Meanwhile, the war aims of the various powers were being sifted through and through. Pragmatically speaking, Great Britain had already achieved most of its goals, and thus peace was looking like a more attractive proposition for the English all the time.17 Even though, when the English monarch died, “Pitt was at the zenith of his power.”18 Military success was also joined by new measures instituted by Pitt to stabilize as much as possible the state of British finances.19 This inevitably had long-term benefits; for the English. Any benefits this factor might provide for the worried Prussian king and his hard-pressed realm remained uncertain. Moreover, as the war continued to put a strain on the resources of the various warring powers, peace was looking to be increasingly likely. Not the least of the “considerations” had been the recent death of George II.20

  There were at the time no negotiations of any sort going on in early 1761, especially as regards potential new allies for Frederick’s Prussia. The only possible nation in the region not committed to either side at this stage was Denmark. Leaving aside for a moment the supposition that Denmark might want to get involved in the first place in a protracted, sanguinary struggle that had already by that point lasted five years with no lasting decision yet in sight, there were other lingering, very significant problems. For one thing, her military, although substantial, was unprepared for war. Land forces in particular would need time to prepare.