by Will Durant
As soon as Frederick could find a place to rest he dispatched a message to Prince Henry: “Of an army of 48,000 men I have at this moment not more than 3,000, and I am no longer master of my forces.... It is a great calamity, and I will not survive it.” He notified his generals that he was bequeathing his command to Prince Henry. Then he dropped upon some straw and fell asleep.
The next morning he found that 23,000 fugitives from the battle had returned to their regiments, ashamed of their flight, and ready to serve him again if only because they longed to eat. Frederick forgot to kill himself; instead he reorganized these and other poor souls into a new force of 32,000 troops, and took a stand on the road from Kunersdorf to Berlin, expecting to make a last attempt to protect his capital. But Saltykov did not come. His men, too, had to eat; they were in enemy country and found foraging dangerous, and the line of communications with friendly Poland was long and hazardous. Saltykov thought it was time for the Austrians to take their turn against Frederick. He gave the order to retreat.
Daun agreed that the next move should be his. Now, he felt, was the time to take Dresden. Prince Henry had withdrawn a force from that city to go to Frederick’s help; he had left only 3,700 men to guard the citadel, but powerful defenses had been raised to stave off attack. The new commander in Dresden, Kurt von Schmettau, was a loyal servant of the King, but when he received word from Frederick himself, after Kunersdorf, that all seemed lost, he gave up hope of successful resistance. An Imperial army, fifteen thousand strong, was approaching Dresden from the west; Daun was actively cannonading the city from the east. On September 4 Schmettau surrendered; on September 5 a message reached him from Frederick that he should hold out, that help was on the way. Daun, with 72,000 men, now made Dresden his winter quarters. Frederick came up to nearby Freiberg and wintered there with half that number.
The winter of 1759-60 was exceptionally severe. For several weeks snow covered the ground to the knee. Only the officers found shelter in homes; Frederick’s common soldiers lived in makeshift cabins, hugged their fires, laboriously cut and brought wood to feed them, and themselves had scarcely any other food than bread. They slept close together for mutual warmth. Disease, in both camps, took almost as many lives as battle had done; in sixteen days Daun’s army lost in this way four thousand men.54 On November 19 Frederick wrote to Voltaire: “If this war continues much longer, Europe will return to the shades of ignorance, and our contemporaries will become like savage beasts.”55
France, though immeasurably richer than Prussia in money and men, was near bankruptcy. Choiseul nevertheless equipped a fleet to invade England, but it was destroyed by the English at Quiberon Bay (November 20, 1759). Taxes were multiplied with all the ingenuity of governments and financiers. On March 4, 1759, the Marquise de Pompadour had secured the appointment of Étienne de Silhouette as controller general of finance. He proposed curtailment of pensions, a tax on the estates of nobles, the conversion of their silver into money, and even a tax on the tax-collecting farmers general. The rich complained that they were being reduced to mere shadows of their former selves; thenceforth silhouette became the word for a figure reduced to its simplest form. On October 6 the French treasury suspended payment on its obligations. On November 5 Louis XV melted his silver to give good example; but when Silhouette suggested that the King should get along without the sums usually allotted him for his gambling and games, Louis agreed with such visible pain that Choiseul vetoed the idea. On November 21 Silhouette was dismissed;
Like almost every Frenchman, the King felt that he had had enough of war; he was ready to hear proposals of peace. Voltaire had sounded out Frederick on the matter in June; Frederick replied (July 2): “I love peace quite as much as you could wish, but I want it good, solid, and honorable”; and on September 22 he added, again to Voltaire: “For making peace there are two conditions from which I will never depart: first, to make it conjointly with my faithful allies; … second, to make it honorable and glorious.”56 Voltaire transmitted these proud replies (one dated after the debacle at Kunersdorf) to Choiseul, who found in them no handle for negotiation. And faithful ally Pitt, who was busy absorbing French colonies, how could he make peace before he had built the British Empire?
V. THE MAKING OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
The most important phase of the Seven Years’ War was not fought in Europe, for there it effected only minor changes in the map of power. It was fought on the Atlantic, in North America, and in India. In those areas the results of the war were immense and enduring.
The first step in the formation of the British Empire had been taken in the seventeenth century, by the passage of naval supremacy from the Dutch to the English. The second was marked by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which granted England the monopoly of supplying African slaves to the Spanish and English colonies in America. The slaves produced rice, tobacco, and sugar; part of the sugar was turned into rum; the trade in rum shared in enriching the merchants of England (old and New); the profits of trade financed the expansion of the British fleet. By 1758 England had 156 ships of the line; France had seventy-seven.57 Hence the third step in building the Empire was the reduction of French power on the seas. This process was interrupted by Richelieu’s success at Minorca, but it was resumed by the destruction of a French fleet off Lagos, Portugal (April 13, 1759), and of another in Quiberon Bay. Consequently the commerce of France with her colonies dropped from thirty million livres in 1755 to four million in 1760.
Supremacy on the Atlantic having been won, the way was open for the British conquest of French America. This included not only the basin of the St. Lawrence River and the region of the Great Lakes, but also the basin of the Mississippi from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico; even the Ohio River Valley was in French hands. French forts dominated Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh—whose change of name from Fort Duquesne symbolized the results of the war. The French possessions blocked the westward expansion of the English colonies in America; had England not won the Seven Years’ War, North America might have been divided into a New England in the East, a New France in the center, and a New Spain in the West; the divisions and conflicts of Europe would have been reproduced in America. The pacific Benjamin Franklin warned the English colonists that they could never be safe in their possessions, nor free in their growth, unless the French were checked in their American expansion; and George Washington came into history by attempting to take Fort Duquesne.
Canada and Louisiana were the two doors to French America; and the nearer to England and France was Canada. Through the St. Lawrence came supplies and troops for the habitants, and that door was guarded by the French fort of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island at the mouth of the great river. On June 2, 1758, Louisbourg was besieged by an English flotilla of forty-two vessels, bearing 18,000 soldiers, under Admiral Edward Boscawen. The fort was defended by ten ships and 6,200 men; reinforcements sent from France were intercepted by the British fleet. The garrison fought bravely, but soon its defenses were shattered by British guns. The surrender of the fort (July 26, 1758) began the British conquest of Canada.
The process was only slightly retarded by the strategy and heroism of the Marquis de Montcalm. Sent from France (1756) to command the French regulars in Canada, he advanced from one success to another until frustrated by corruption and discord in the French-Canadian administration, and by the inability of France to send him aid. In 1756 he captured an English fort at Oswego, giving the French control of Lake Ontario; in 1757 he besieged and took Fort William Henry, at the head of Lake George; in 1758, with 3,800 men, he defeated 15,000 British and colonial troops at Ticonderoga. But he met his match when, with 15,000 men, he defended Quebec against the English general James Wolfe, who had only 9,000 soldiers under his command. Wolfe himself led his troops in scaling the heights to the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm was mortally wounded in directing the defense; Wolfe was mortally wounded on the field of victory (September 12-13, 1759). On September 8, 1760, the French governor of Canada, Vaudreuil-Cav
agnal, surrendered, and the great province passed under British control.
Turning their ships south, the English attacked the French islands in the Caribbean. Guadeloupe was taken in 1759, Martinique in 1762; all the French possessions in the West Indies—St.-Domingue excepted—fell to Britain. To add to the profits of victory Pitt sent squadrons to Africa to capture the French slave-trading stations on the west coast; it was done; the French trade in slaves collapsed; Nantes, its chief port in France, decayed. The price of slaves in the West Indies rose, and British slave, merchants made new fortunes in supplying the demand.58 We should add that the English were not any more inhumane in this imperial process than the Spanish or the French; they were merely more efficient; and it was in England that the antislavery movement first took effective form.
Meanwhile British enterpris—naval, military, commercial—was busy absorbing India. The English East India Company had set up strongholds at Madras (1639), Bombay (1668), and Calcutta (1686). French merchants established domination at Pondicherry, south of Madras (1683), and at Chandernagore, north of Calcutta (1688). All these centers of power expanded as Mogul rule in India declined; each group used bribery and soldiery to extend its area of influence; already, in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), France and England had fought each other in India. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had merely interrupted the conflict; the Seven Years’ War renewed it. In March, 1757, an English fleet under Admiral Charles Watson, aided by troops of the East India Company under a Shropshire lad named Robert Clive, took Chandernagore from the French; on June 23, with only 3,200 men, Clive defeated 50,000 Hindus and French at Plassey (eighty miles north of Calcutta) in a battle that assured British mastery in northeast India. In August, 1758, an English fleet under Admiral George Pococke drove from Indian waters the French squadron that had been protecting French possessions along the coast; thereafter, with the British free, the French unable, to bring in men and supplies, the triumph of England was only a matter of months. In 1759 the French siege of Madras by the Comte de Lally was frustrated by the arrival of British provisions and reinforcements by sea. The French were decisively defeated at Wandiwash on January 22, 1760; Pondicherry surrendered to the British on January 16, 1761. This last French outpost was restored to France in 1763, but everyone understood that French possession continued only by British consent.
India and Canada remained, until our own time, two bastions, east and west, of an empire that was built with money, courage, cruelty, and brains, in full accord with the international morals of the eighteenth century. In tardy retrospect we now perceive that that empire was a natural product of human nature and material conditions, and that the alternative to it was not the independence of helpless peoples, but a similar empire established by France. In the long run, despite its Clives and Hastingses and Kiplings, the rule of half the world by the British navy—the comparatively humane and urbane maintenance of order amid ever-threatening chaos—was a blessing rather than a bane to mankind.
VI. EXHAUSTION: 1760-62
What was the hunted Prussian fox doing in that harsh winter of 1759-60? He was raising and debasing money, conscripting and training men, writing and publishing poetry. In January a pirate Parisian publisher issued Oeuvres du philosophe de Sans-Souci, joyfully printing those reckless poems which Voltaire had carried off with him from Potsdam in 1753, and for which Frederick had had him intercepted and detained at Frankfurt-am-Main. Those poems would amuse uncrowned heads, but would make royal wigs tremble with rage, including those of Frederick’s ally George II. Frederick protested that the pirated publication was corrupted by malignant interpolations; he bade his friend the Marquis d’Argens (director of fine arts at the Berlin Academy) to issue at once an “authentic edition” carefully purged. It was so done in March, and Frederick could turn back to war. On February 24 he wrote to Voltaire:
Steel and death have made terrible ravages among us, and the sad thing is that we are not yet at the end of the tragedy. You can easily imagine the result of such cruel shocks upon me. I wrap myself up in stoicism as well as I can. … I am old, broken, gray, wrinkled; I am losing my teeth and my gaiety.59
Vast masses of soldiery were being marshaled to determine which ruler should tax most men. Saltykov, in April, was returning from Russia with 100,000; Laudon had 50,000 Austrians in Silesia, against Prince Henry’s 34,-000; Daun at Dresden, with 100,000, hoped to break through Frederick’s 40,000, who were now encamped near Meissen; the French, with 125,000, were waiting to advance against Ferdinand’s 70,000; altogether 375,000 men were being aimed at Berlin. On March 21, 1760, Austria and Russia renewed their alliance, with a secret clause giving Prussia to Russia as soon as Silesia should be restored to Austria.60
Laudon drew first blood of the year 1760, overwhelming 13,000 Prussians at Landeshut (June 23). On July 10 Frederick began to besiege Dresden with heavy artillery, laying most of Germany’s then loveliest city in ruins. The bombardment availed him nothing; hearing that Laudon was approaching Breslau, he abandoned the siege, marched his men one hundred miles in five days, encountered Laudon’s army at Liegnitz (August 15, 1760), inflicted upon it a loss of 10,000 men, and entered Breslau. But on October 9 an army of Cossacks under Fermor captured Berlin, ransacked its military stores, and exacted a ransom of two million thalers—equal to half the British subsidy that Frederick was receiving annually. He marched to relieve his capital; the Russians fled on hearing of his approach, and Frederick turned back to Saxony. On the way he wrote to Voltaire (October 30): “You are fortunate in following Candide’s advice, and limiting yourself to the cultivation of your garden. ‘Tis not granted to everyone to do so. The ox must plow the furrow, the nightingale must sing, the dolphin must swim, and I must fight.”61
At Torgau on the Elbe (November 3) his 44,000 Prussians met 50,000 Austrians. Frederick sent half his army under Johann von Ziethen to detour and attack the enemy in the rear. The maneuver did not succeed, for Ziethen was delayed by an enemy detachment on the way. Frederick led his own divisions personally into the fury of the battle; here too three horses were shot under him; a shell struck him in the chest, but with spent force; he was knocked unconscious to the ground, but soon recovered; “It is nothing,” he said, and returned to the fray. He won a Pyrrhic victory; the Austrians gave way, with a loss of 11,260 men, but Frederick left 13,120 Prussians on that field. He retired to Breslau, now his main center of supplies. Daun still held Dresden, waiting patiently for Frederick to die. Winter again gave the survivors rest.
The year 1761 was one of diplomacy rather than war. In England the death of George II (October 25, 1760), who had cared deeply for Hanover, and the accession of George III, who cared for it much less, gave a royal sanction to popular resentment of a war that was weighing heavily upon English pounds. Choiseul put out feelers from France for a separate peace; Pitt refused, and kept full faith with Frederick; but the British contingent in Hanover was reduced, and Ferdinand had to yield Brunswick and Wolfen-büttel to the French. Choiseul turned to Spain, and in a “Pacte de Famille”—a family pact between Bourbon kings—persuaded her to join in the alliance against Prussia. Military developments concurred with these diplomatic reverses to bring Frederick again to the verge of debacle. Laudon with 72,000 men affected a junction with 50,000 Russians; they completely severed Frederick from Prussia, and laid plans to take and keep Berlin. On September 1, 1761, the Austrians again took Schweidnitz and its stores. On October 5 Pitt, overwhelmed by the popular demand for peace, resigned rather than betray Frederick. His successor, the Earl of Bute, thought Frederick’s cause hopeless, and saw, in the negotiation of peace, a means of strengthening George III against Parliament. He pleaded with Frederick to admit defeat at least to the extent of surrendering part of Silesia to Austria. Frederick demurred; Bute refused him any further subsidy. Nearly all Europe, including many Prussians, called upon Frederick to make concessions. His troops had lost any hope of victory; they warned their officers that they would not attack the enemy agai
n, and, if attacked, would surrender.62 As the year 1761 ended Frederick found himself alone against a dozen foes. He admitted that only a miracle could save him.
A miracle saved him. On January 5, 1762,63 Czarina Elizaveta, who hated Frederick, died, and was succeeded by Peter III, who admired him as the ideal conqueror and king. When Frederick heard the news he ordered all Russian prisoners to be clad, shod, fed, and freed. On February 2 3 Peter declared the war with Prussia at an end. On May 5 he signed a treaty of peace drawn up, at his request, by Frederick himself; on May 22 Sweden followed suit; on June 10 Peter re-entered the war, but as an ally of Prussia. He donned a Prussian uniform and volunteered for service “under the King my master.” It was one of the most remarkable overturns in history.
It warmed Frederick’s heart, and restored morale in his army, but he half agreed with his enemies that Peter was crazy. He was alarmed when he heard that Peter proposed to attack Denmark to recover Holstein; Frederick used every effort to dissuade him, but Peter insisted; finally, Frederick tells us, “I had to keep silent, and abandon this poor prince to the self-confidence that destroyed him.”64