The Seven Years War

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Introduction
In the Seven Years’ War Prussia stood practically alone against the united strength of all Europe; and it was the success of her King, Frederick, in withstanding the assaults of the vast and determined coalition that won him from the unanimous voice of military critics the title of the “Great.” The tremendous conflict, the most gigantic in Europe, between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution, was the natural outcome of that earlier contest in which Frederick had seized Silesia. If this strong and able monarch was the type of the new spirit of doubt and endless questioning which had begun to permeate Europe, his chief antagonist, Maria Theresa, was no less emblematic of all that was noblest in the older, conservative Catholicism which Frederick defied. Maria Theresa never forgot her loss of Silesia. It was said of her that she could not see a Silesian without weeping, and with steady patience she set herself to draw all Europe into an alliance against Frederick.

Her rival’s caustic tongue helped her purpose. He gave personal offence not only to Elizabeth, the ruler of Russia, but to Madame Pompadour, the real sovereign of France under Louis XV. Both of these ladies urged their countries against the insulter. The three leading powers of continental Europe having thus leagued against Prussia, the lesser states soon joined them. Only England stood outside the coalition. Her war with France originating in the colonies and on the ocean, led her into an alliance with Prussia. But England was safe on her island, and few of her troops fought upon the Continent. She sent Frederick some money help; part of the time she kept the French troops from his frontier; that was all.

The succession of Frederick’s remarkable battles are too numerous to detail. In one campaign he crushed the French at Rossbach, and overthrew the Austrians at Leuthen. Then he defeated the Russians at Zorndorf. Torgau was his last great triumph, and therefore his own account of that contest is here presented in connection with the concise narrative of the entire war by the standard German historian, Menzel. Frederick was a vigorous writer as well as a great fighter, and it is only fair to caution the reader against accepting too fully the perhaps unconscious egotism of the monarch’s personal view. Some critics consider General Zieten the real winner of this battle.

The selections are by Wolfgang Menzel. and Frederick The Great. We begin with Wolfgang Menzel.

Time: 1756-1763

In the autumn of 1756, Frederick, unexpectedly and without previously declaring war, invaded Saxony, of which he speedily took possession, and shut up the little Saxon army, thus taken unawares on the Elbe at Pirna. A corps of Austrians, who were also equally unprepared to take the field, hastened, under the command of Browne, to their relief, but were, on October 1st, defeated at Lowositz, and the fourteen thousand Saxons under Rutowsky at Pirna were in consequence compelled to lay down their arms, the want to which they were reduced by the failure of their supplies having already driven them to the necessity of eating hair-powder mixed with gunpowder. Augustus III and Bruhl fled with such precipitation that the secret archives were found by Frederick at Dresden.

The Electress vainly strove to defend them by placing herself in front of the chest; she was forcibly removed by the Prussian grenadiers, and Frederick justified the suddenness of his attack upon Saxony by the publication of the plans of his enemies. He remained during the whole of the winter in Saxony, furnishing his troops from the resources of the country. It was here that his chamberlain, Glasow, attempted to take him off by poison, but, meeting by chance one of the piercing glances of the King, tremblingly let fall the cup and confessed his criminal design, the inducement for which has ever remained a mystery, to the astonished King.

The allies, surprised and enraged at the suddenness of the attack, took the field, in the spring of 1757, at the head of an enormous force. Half a million men were levied, Austria and France furnishing each about one hundred fifty thousand, Russia one hundred thousand, Sweden twenty thousand, the German empire sixty thousand. These masses were, however, not immediately assembled on the same spot, were, moreover, badly commanded and far inferior in discipline to the seventy thousand Prussians brought against them by Frederick. The war was also highly unpopular, and created great discontent among the Protestant party in the empire.

On the departure of Charles of Wuertemberg for the Imperial army, his soldiery mutinied, and, notwithstanding their reduction to obedience, the general feeling among the Imperial troops was so much opposed to the war that most of the troops deserted and a number of the Protestant soldiery went over to Frederick. The Prussian King was put out of the ban of the empire by the Diet, and the Prussian ambassador at Ratisbon kicked the bearer of the decree out of the door.

Frederick was again the first to make the attack, and invaded Bohemia (1757). The Austrian army under Charles of Lorraine lay before Prague. The King, resolved at all hazards to gain the day, led his troops across the marshy ground under a terrible and destructive fire from the enemy. His gallant general, Schwerin, remonstrated with him. “Are you afraid?” was the reply. Schwerin, who had already served under Charles XII in Turkey and had grown gray in the field, stung by this taunt, quitted his saddle, snatched the colors, and shouted, “All who are not cowards follow me!” He was at that moment struck by several cartridge-balls and fell to the ground enveloped in the colors. The Prussians rushed past him to the attack.

The Austrians were totally routed; Browne fell, but the city was defended with such obstinacy that Daun, one of Maria Theresa’s favorites, was meanwhile able to levy a fresh body of troops. Frederick consequently raised the siege of Prague and came upon Daun at Kolin, where he had taken up a strong position. Here again were the Prussians led into the thickest of the enemy’s fire, Frederick shouting to them, on their being a third time repulsed with fearful loss, “Would ye live forever?” Every effort failed, and Benkendorf’s charge at the head of four Saxon regiments, glowing with revenge and brandy, decided the fate of the day. The Prussians were completely routed. Frederick lost his splendid guard and the whole of his luggage. Seated on the verge of a fountain and tracing figures in the sand, he reflected upon the means of realluring fickle Fortune to his standard.

A fresh misfortune befell him not many weeks later. England had declared in his favor, but the incompetent English commander, nicknamed, on account of his immense size, the Duke of Cumberland, allowed himself to be beaten by the French at Hastenbeck and signed the shameful Treaty of Closter Seven, by which he agreed to disband his troops.* This treaty was confirmed by the British monarch. The Prussian general Lewald, who had merely twenty thousand men under his command, was, at the same time, defeated at Gross-Zagerndorf by an overwhelming Russian force under Apraxin. Four thousand men were all that Frederick was able to bring against the Swedes. They were, nevertheless, able to keep the field, owing to the disinclination to the war evinced by their opponents.

[* The Hanoverian nobility, who hoped thereby to protect their property, were implicated in this affair. They were shortly afterward well and deservedly punished, being laid under contribution by the French.]

Autumn fell, and Frederick’s fortune seemed fading with the leaves of summer. He had, however, merely sought to gain time in order to recruit his diminished army, and Daun having, with his usual tardiness, neglected to pursue him, he suddenly took the field against the Imperialists under the Duke of Saxe-Hildburghausen and the French under Soubise. The two armies met on November 5, 1757, on the broad plain around Leipsic, near the village of Rossbach, not far from the scene of the famous encounters of earlier times. The enemy, three times superior in number to the Prussians, lay in a half-circle with a view of surrounding the little Prussian camp, and, certain of victory, had encumbered themselves with a numerous train of women, wigmakers, barbers, and modistes from Paris. The French camp was one scene of confusion and gayety.

Continued,

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