Nevertheless, financial considerations could not be ignored. Cold, hard, but absolutely reliable statistists. Although some, like Lacy, postulated that “everyone in the army from Field Marshall down to common soldier would be willing to go on half pay,” there is no record of “volunteers” in large numbers actually willing to do so.27 Little wonder to us, for most of those who served required restitution to maintain themselves in the world. The contemporary record is also silent on those individuals willing to provide horses, supplies, arms, and various and sundry items to the army gratis. Fodder for horses, food stuffs, cannonballs, etc. Money, money, money. All things considered, the war, in the end, would prove unbearably expensive. The total cost of the war was estimated to have been 260 million gulden in 1763; “some 167 million [gulden which] had to be raised through loans.”28 But Austrian financiers would simply not resort to the same kinds of debasing/manipulating currency and such that Frederick, in his turn, had not hesitated to employ. It must be remembered, Frederick’s measures had been carried out with the possible extinction of his country at stake.
As for the chief command of the Austrians, in 1762, at least, there would no controversy. With Laudon’s erstwhile friends from the east now firmly in the enemy’s camp, or at least no longer in his, was Laudon to be the designated field leader for what all knew would be the last campaign of the war in Silesia? Initially, Laudon, indeed, was given the nod for the Silesian army by Maria Theresa (March 21), but that commander later bowed out, citing the “problem of getting cooperation from his fellow generals in the previous campaign.”29 Laudon was of the opinion that the Empress should try to obtain favorable peace terms, most especially if Czar Peter brought the Russian “wolf to the door” of the Habsburg Empire, so to speak.
Nevertheless, Laudon ventured to Waldenburg (April 5) to assume temporary command from d’Argentau, who had become too ill to command. There were serious problems confronting the Austrian leadership about then. Many of the army’s officers were confined to their beds. The Austrian army also had thousands of others on sick call. This disturbing situation alone would have precluded the Austrians taking up the offensive mantle anytime soon, which Laudon was not inclined here to do anyway. Indeed, he would have liked nothing better at this stage than the end of the whole “adventure.” And most especially now as a clearly decisive conclusion to the conflict was no longer possible.
In fact, the prolonging of the war would have few benefits for most of the various combatants at this time. If the Russians stayed neutral, on the other hand, then the Austrian army should attempt all it could to at least try to keep the Glatz fortress and the surrounding vicinity, although Silesia as a whole seemed as good as lost at that point. The part of caution should still be played, for Lacy (among others) himself advised against seizing the initiative, which move might actually serve to bring the hesitating Russians into the Prussian fold. And that assumes they were not already there.
Laudon also did not hesitate to state that the supreme Austrian command should be set squarely upon Daun’s shoulders. Laudon pointed out, not without some basis in reality, that Daun alone among the senior Austrian generals commanded the respect of the army and possessed the necessary leadership skills. Rather ironically, Daun had been put in supreme command of the army in 1761 even after “a new position was found for him in the newly created Council of State.”30 This was a rôle that Daun kept even with his field command, and when the old Minister of War (and head of the Hofkriegsrath), Count Johann Philipp von Harrach, finally gave up the ghost (in late 1761, at which point Harrach was too feeble to even journey to the headquarters, and thus had no choice but to quit), Daun was given the nod to assume this duty as well by Maria Theresa on January 30, 1762.31 In short, Daun, although he wore many hats, was no fool. The marshal had to be aware that in his field command he was operating under a whole new set of “rules,” with the wholesale desertion of the Russians. One thing was certain, Daun would be forced to play it close to the vest now.
Who knows, Daun himself may not even have minded this event (considering his generally low opinion of their army), but he did adamantly oppose the whitecoats taking the offensive at all in the coming campaign, in any capacity. Granted, Daun had always been a defensive-minded commander, that was true enough, but in 1762, he did not think the situation right to take on a war of conquest. At least, under the prevailing circumstances that he had to work with. On the other hand, Daun stood ready to take advantage of any opportunities offered to him by enemy weakness in Silesia and thereabouts. As it worked out, Marshal Daun was to lead the Austrian army one last time in war, and would be in personal field command of the whitecoats in Silesia in 1762.
The Austrian forces deployed in Silesia in 1762 were roughly 80,000.32 This consisted of 106 battalions and 149 squadrons of cavalry.33 The winter of 1761–1762 had not been kind to the army in its cantonments. More than 3,500 men had succumbed to sickness and disease over the harsh winter, and thousands more were still too weak to rejoin the ranks at this point.34 Platen had, in addition, been engaged in a bit of his usual maneuvering against the Imperialists and Austrians of Campitelli during this time, round about Nossen and Ober-Eule (January 21), rolling through Zeitz, and inflicting Austrian losses of four killed, 14 wounded, and eight captured.35 The fired up Campitelli struck back, on January 23, in six columns through and about Altenburg. The intruders numbered about 6,000 men, and a small number of clashes, such as at Pegau (January 29) brought much discomfiture; a chief effort was unbuckled against Platen’s flank position at Pegau specifically. The latter commander sought to hold on to his post thereabouts, although the Allies were proving to be tough opponents. Platen was destined not to remain undisturbed for long under any circumstances.
Indeed, following a short interlude to rest and refit, Prince Lobkowitz (leading a force of six infantry battalions and three regiments of cavalry) attacked Platen hard about Pegau about 1100 hours on February 9. The bluecoats were finally turned out of their position after an involved tussle, losing 104 men captured and 35 others killed, or wounded/captured. The Imperialists took position like Falkenhayn’s men over by Wittenberg, with Colonel Török taking up post along the Meuschütz-Borna-Colditz line. Other forces leaned over by Freiburg and Unstrut, close by the French. On March 12, another Allied task force struck the bluecoat lines about Merseburg, destroying the bridge across the Elbe thereabouts in the process.
Meanwhile, over in the Prussian camp, Frederick displayed his innate ability to adapt to changing circumstances. With the Russians backing him up, the Prussian king resolved to do all he could to increase the misery of the enemy as much as possible. In this particular case, an expedition into the Austrian Empire should do the trick. Anything that could divert some of Marshal Daun’s attention away from what was going on in Silesia would be a good thing under the circumstances. If the bluecoats could wrestle Schweidnitz from Daun’s clutches, good. If the fortress and surrounding area could once be taken, the Austrians would have neither the strength nor the determination to try to regain it in their present state. Silesia would, in effect, finally be secured for Prussia.
The Austrian camp had a different set of considerations, to be sure. Not the least of the Austrian considerations in early 1762 involved the disposition of the small Russian body of men under Cherneyshev, which was then wintering in the region hard about Glatz. Cherneyshev had earlier taken his winter hibernation as a close ally to the Austrians. When word arrived that Elizabeth was out of the picture and new orders would undoubtedly be on the way sooner rather than later, the Austrian High Command subsequently did their best to brace for what was to come. Austrian troopers were told off to look more closely at the maneuverings of their Russian counterparts. Sure enough, in mid–March, the Russians showed signs of preparing to depart for home. March 22, Cherneyshev’s men filed out of camp and departed for Poland, leaving behind a sobbing Cherneyshev’s regrets that the state of the former alliance with Austria was now dissolved. Cherneyshev’s “
grief” may have been more than contrived, but there were limits in any event. Austrian patrols kept their distance, warily, but three days after, the last of the greencoats crossed the Warta Pass.
The whitecoats thereabouts, under the local command of Field Marshal d’Argenteau, were not sad to see them go, but it was also clear the prosecution of the war would fundamentally shift from here onwards. Barely more than six weeks after, and without getting anywhere near home, Cherneyshev’s detachment would be back on the march, this time coming to the aid of the bluecoats no less. This time around, with the aim of helping against these same Austrians, who were by then put in desperate straits. Moreover, the Austrian cantonments in Silesia over the winter were similar to those in Saxony. As we have observed, thousands of men were ill in the Austrian camp over the winter in Silesia, as well as in Saxony.
Meanwhile, Marshal Daun had left behind his comfortable quarters at Vienna on April 27, stopping off to look over the refurbished works at Glatz (May 7), before proceeding towards the front. Early the following morning, the marshal, in journeying over near the still snow covered mountain passes, made it to Silberberg (May 8). Here intelligence reached Daun that the enemy were unquestionably aware of his approach. The interlude was precious. Daun hardly had time to go look over the state of the defenses of Schweidnitz and its approaches on May 9, no doubt with a view to see where he would stand once the main campaign opened, before he was back on the road again.
In the event, Daun was in Waldenburg on May 10, taking over the command from Laudon, and preparing to move to defend the Austrian hold upon Schweidnitz.36 Four days previous to this, a peace treaty had been signed between Russia and Prussia. But this event had been anticipated, so it came as no great shock. On May 15, the marshal left Waldenburg and, moving across the way to Dittmannsdorf, marched directly to the vicinity of the fortress. From the outer accesses of Schweidnitz eastwards on Seiferba and Zobtenburg (where Daun set up his headquarters), the foe could be readily distinguished. Daun’s army was firmly planted in the Kratckau plain, with his left over at Stephanhain, and his right leaning over to Kaltenbrunn. The Austrian army was deployed in a semi-circular formation; its purpose to shield the fort and the vicinity from the suddenly reenergized Prussian king and his army was abundantly clear.
On his side, Frederick was determined to wrestle Schweidnitz away from the foe if at all possible. But in order to accomplish this, he would have to get Daun rooted out of the way first. If the marshal and his men were allowed to remain where they stood, no full-scale siege of Schweidnitz would be possible. The latter commander had two distinct advantages over the Prussians: (1) A superior position; and (2) Numerical superiority (although this was discounting the imminent presence of the Russians). As for the latter, May 20 the anxious king received intelligence that Cherneyshev was scheduled to join him for the campaign. Thus the dynamics for the campaign were altered in one single day.
Four days after, appeared the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern, who since peace with Sweden was no longer required at Stettin, with some reinforcements at Eichlau. A number of seasons had elapsed since Bevern had been in the king’s field army, now he assumed a position of some importance. This was only natural. The reason was obvious. The attrition of the Prussian officer corps in the intervening years had bordered on the atrocious. For instance, as of late 1761, Frederick, during the long Seven Years’ War, “had lost 120 generals.”37 Bevern’s “disgrace” from the campaign of 1757 was now conveniently forgotten by a monarch who had few capable commanders at this late stage of the war. Another welcome addition was General Werner; just back from his former captivity with the Russians.
As it worked out, Werner was to be employed immediately. He was to lead a raid by a select task force into the heart of the Austrian monarchy, through Poland hard about Klatschau and surmounting the Carpathian Mountains hard about the point of Spiš/Szepes, to join up with a force of some 6,000 Tartars simultaneously issuing forth from the Crimea to plunder Habsburg territory round about. Werner and his men departed on April 13, moving quickly. In late May, Prussian troopers felt out enemy defense posts in and about the Jablunka Pass, through which Werner most expeditiously passed his riders as hastily as he could (June 2). While the impetus of Werner’s men was to feel out the Austrians about Pressburg, and trying all that the Prussians could do to extract heavy contributions from the locals, the Tartars coming from Asia were to make their way to the very gates of Vienna, spreading confusion, and plundering/robbing the locals of all they could steal and pack with them.
Frederick imagined that the Tartar threat itself should be sufficient to shake up Maria Theresa & Company. Even better, if the Turks joined in the crescendo, the damage to the Austrian Empire could be even more psychological and, probably, physical as well. The harm inflicted by the combined efforts of the Prussians and the Tartars had immense potential. But hitching the Prussian ‘star’ to the wagon of the Tartars also had a few built-in risks. Prince Henry, for one, expressed no optimism that the “allies” from Asia would appear. He even made a comment to that effect to Frederick’s crony, Major von Anhalt, which, in a rhetorical form, stated the obvious, “What shall we do if the Turks [and Tartars] do nothing?”38 By way of reply, the major had no ready answer, although the king himself apparently believed that the Tartars and Turks would appear for the Prussians, eventually. He just could not precisely determine when that time would be. Moreover, the plan to have the Asiatics ransack Austrian territory dated back to 1761, and Major von Anhalt had a hand in the formulation of the scheme. Originally factored in with Russia as an opponent, the plan had been modified to limit the raids into Austrian territory after Russia bailed out of the Allied ranks.
At the same time, the Austrian force which could potentially be opposed to both of these expeditions had been dangerously reduced, most particularly in the light troops which had been sacrificed due to the budget problems. General Pálffy blamed the lack of troops with which to defend the Hungarian passes completely on the budget crisis.39
The concern was genuine, and there was not even the usual factor of local resistance to the Prussians, as most of the population in the affected areas were merely lukewarm at best to the bluecoats. Under this cloud, Pálffy and his cohorts accordingly, but without haste, assembled a small force of not more than 750 men, to keep the region under guard from the possibly dangerous encroachments of General Werner and his body of men. Over in the border region of Transylvania, meanwhile, our old friend General Buccow, who had only recently recovered from near fatal wounds suffered at Torgau in 1760, had raised a militia force of some 12,000 men to provide security to that region as well. The Habsburgs even went to the expedient of attempting all they could to strengthen border posts, as well as those other posts up and down the potential invasion routes. But the Tartar threat simply petered out in the end, assuming it was ever legitimate, and the threat was eliminated altogether when General Werner himself was abruptly recalled on June 17 as an Allied force under General Beck had discovered his trail. As for the rest, not a single Tartar ever made it from the Crimea to encroach upon the Austrians, as foreseen by Prince Henry. Under the circumstances, Werner was exposed and could have encountered disaster. As Prince Henry so deliciously put the matter, “it was not how an invading force would get into Moravia that worried him, but how it would ever get out.”40
Meanwhile, the Austrian army encamped before Schweidnitz totaled about 80,000 men, over and besides another 12,000 or so whitecoats deployed within the fortress as garrison. But a large part of this force was bound to be tied down elsewhere or sick, while the king, with the might of the Russian Empire standing behind him—for the moment—was not far inferior with 70,000 men. Daun’s men “were falling ill at a rate of two hundred a day.”41 A wastage of this scale would have proven debilitating, in short order, without immediate efforts to counteract the situation. The message had been heard loud and clear in Vienna. The shackles were promptly put aside and, one last time, the army and the “nation�
�42 geared up to make a supreme effort to win the war.
Crash efforts were already underway to get the Austrian army back up to full strength, quickly forsaking the budget constraints; unfortunately, this could not be accomplished overnight. Moreover, the Austrian assembly depots were now understaffed, the whole infrastructure had been shaken to the core by the previously enacted “budget cuts.” Now came a total about face. The whole economizing policy, as it turned out, was conveniently forgotten as the Habsburgs geared up to take one last crack at recovering Silesia. It is noteworthy how quickly the former policy was scrapped when it was shown to be counterproductive. There were other incentives. Not to mention the most capable military commander of that generation was just a short distance from Daun and his cohorts, suddenly strengthened, like a heavyweight fighter, for the last round of a long, drawn-out match. The advantage had certainly shifted to the Prussian side and but good. Frederick’s lines were some ten miles long, between the Schweidnitz Wasser near Würben, where the bluecoat right rested, on across the Lohe on to Ohlau, where his left was positioned. The bluecoat lines were well prepared here. These were the Prussian winter quarters, so that when Marshal Daun appeared in Silesia, Frederick merely pushed out scouting parties to probe the maneuvers of the Austrians and keep him informed about the progress of the enemy’s movements. Frederick’s precaution was to keep his own army in condition where he could reassemble it should Daun suddenly come on. The king remained at Breslau for about a month longer, being in no particular haste until the arrival of Cherneyshev; the latter had marched from Thorn on June 2 with 20,000 men under implicit orders from Czar Peter to join up with Frederick.
Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War Page 101
