But it is by no means enough to have good troops, and the King is now going to speak of generalship. To establish the body of an army one begins by the stomach. Always put the main magazine in the rear of your army—if possible in a fortified town. During the wars in Silesia and Bohemia the King had his largest magazine in Breslau because the provisions could come down the Oder. The best places for magazines in Brandenburg are Magdeburg and Spandau. It is essential to have honest commissaries. There are two ways of filling the magazines with corn. One can order noblemen and farmers to provide it, paying them the rate fixed by the chambre des finances or taking it off their taxes, or, if the country is not rich in grain, one can get it from middlemen; but they are seldom honest and one should never use them except in dire necessity. If there is a navigable river it must be used—this is the best way of keeping an army properly provided. But in Bohemia and Moravia one must use wagons and they must be drawn by horses—oxen are no good. The general himself must see that the horses are properly looked after. [There is a whole chapter on the care and feeding of horses.] As well as provisions the army must transport iron ovens and bread must be baked at every stop. Biscuits are useful but the men will not eat them except in soup. In cases where the peasants have fled, leaving their houses empty, one has no duty towards them; the soldiers’ wives can bring in anything they find in the way of vegetables and livestock.
A profound knowledge of the country in which one is going to fight is most necessary. Something can be learnt beforehand from maps—the towns, the rivers, the roads. Always go to the nearest height, map in hand, and study the view. Never neglect an opportunity of talking to old inhabitants, especially shepherds and gamekeepers. You must know where there are fords, and which rivers or marshes dry up in summer. Villars was beaten at Malplaquet because what he thought was a marsh on his flank was a dry field. [The opposite of this was to happen to Frederick himself at the Battle of Prague.] Find out how many columns of troops the road can take. All this is fairly easy in the plain and much more complicated in the mountains where one must know the gorges and defiles. Never camp away from water. One can send officers to find out these things but it is far better to do it oneself. Full use should be made of the lie of the land: cemeteries and sunken roads can be excellent defensive positions.
Forces must never be divided. Eugene lost Denain because Lord Albemarle was cut off from the main army; Frederick himself ought to have lost Soor for the same reason, but was saved by the brilliance of his generals and the courage of his troops. He describes various ways of making the enemy think that one is going to attack in a certain place and then doing so elsewhere; also of forcing the enemy to make detachments, as Luxembourg did when he beat the English at Neerwinden in 1693. Frederick urges his officers to study Turenne’s last two campaigns.
There are several sorts of spies: one, amateurs who get caught up in this trade; two, double agents; three, spies in high places; four, those whom one forces into this horrible profession. The ordinary people, peasants, priests and so on, who go into the enemy camp are useful only for finding out where it is. Their reports are generally so hazy that they only add to one’s uncertainties. The statements of deserters are no better. One uses double agents to give false information to the enemy. For many years Eugene paid the Head Postmaster at Versailles and got the orders before the French generals themselves.* Luxembourg did the same with one of the King of England’s secretaries. The King found out and made the traitor send all sorts of false information to Luxembourg so that, if the French had not fought like tigers, they would have lost Steinkirk.
In enemy territory, if you are driven to it you can do a hard and cruel thing. Get hold of a rich bourgeois with much property, a wife and children; by threatening to burn his houses and chop up his family you can force him to take one of your soldiers disguised as a servant with him into the enemy camp. Frederick was once obliged to do this and it was successful. He would add that one must be generous, even extravagant, in paying spies. The poor brutes risk their lives and deserve their reward.
The country in which one makes war can be one’s own, or neutral, or the enemy’s. If the King only wanted glory, he would always fight at home where every peasant is a spy and a guerrilla. After Hohenfriedberg the Silesian mountain people brought in quantities of Austrian prisoners. In a neutral country things are fairly even, each side trying to win over the population. In a Protestant country like Saxony one is the protector of that religion and one must try and inspire poor, simple folk, who are easily taken in, with fanaticism. If the country is Catholic one preaches moderation and tolerance, blaming the priests for the sad rift among Christians. In enemy countries like Bohemia and Moravia one must play for safety. Most of the troops will be needed to guard the convoys. One will never win the affection of the people except for a few Hussites. The nobles and priests are all traitors and though they may seem well-intentioned their interest attaches them to the House of Austria.
The King should not fight with his troops except in an emergency but he must always be prepared to do so. He must have an eye to every detail, even an overloaded horse.
The big guns are decisive. Turenne had seventy—what would he say to the two hundred we have got?
Frederick had the gift of never forgetting a face. He knew hundreds of his men by sight and knew all about their behaviour both during and between battles. ‘Why is that excellent soldier in irons?’ ‘He was found committing bestiality with his horse.’ ‘Fool—don’t put him in irons, put him in the infantry.’ To the soldier: ‘I’m very sorry you will lose your horse.’ But he dreaded any sort of relationship with the men; he forced himself to regard the army as a huge impersonal machine, the slave of the State as he was himself. He once said to the Old Dessauer: ‘Don’t you think it’s amazing that you and I should be quite safe among 60,000 men who all loathe us, all larger and stronger than we are, and armed? Yet they tremble before us!’ After a battle he said to one of the men, ‘You fought very well today.’ ‘And why should we not? We are fighting for our land, our faith and for you.’ Frederick burst into tears. He despised sentimentality and avoided such scenes. As for the men they probably loved as much as they hated him; they were certainly proud to fight under the greatest commander of the age. At the end of his life his old soldiers looked back nostalgically to their youthful campaigns with him and worshipped him.
The spectacle of Frederick’s battles was terrible. Sir Andrew Mitchell, who hardly left his side during the Seven Years’ War, used to write home saying he knew not if he would be able to go on enduring ‘the horrour’. The imagination boggles at the idea of the cavalrymen at full gallop, lashing out at their foes with razor-sharp sabres, slashing off their limbs and crippling their horses; of the artillery ‘cutting a path’ with shells through the enemy’s infantry, and of the infantry struggling up to the guns, hacking and bashing the gunners and putting their horses out of action. It was perhaps a mercy that the notorious ‘fog of war’ soon blotted out the appalling sights. Owing to the powder which was used the battlefield was covered with thick black smoke after the first volleys were fired. It then became very difficult to see what was going on; many unexpected turns of fortune were due to this fact.
*No doubt this was the spy whom Mme de Maintenon speaks of in her letters; he was never caught.
13. Sans Souci
Having finished the war, disposed of his wife and organized his time to suit himself, Frederick built a new house at Potsdam in which to lead his new life. He and Knobelsdorff together designed a little pink and white palace situated on the top of a slope and called it ‘Sans Souci’. Its originality lies in its position: the falling ground is terraced and the terraces are glassed over, so that the house seems to stand above a cascade. Frederick was tired of trying to grow the Mediterranean flowers and fruit he loved so much in north Germany and he hoped to cheat nature with his greenhouses. The glass which he used, set in tiny panes, is as different from modern glass as stone is from concrete; th
e whole effect is extremely pretty. But the palace does not stand high enough above the terraces, and seen from below it seems cut in half. This was Frederick’s fault. Knobelsdorff wanted to put it up on steps but Frederick insisted on being able to walk straight out of his window into the garden. He had his way.
He moved into Sans Souci in May 1747, and thereafter it was his chief residence. Frederick also busied himself with Potsdam, which became one of the most elegant and charming small towns in the Empire and which still, happily, exists today. He went to Berlin less and less, though he was always there for the Christmas celebrations, when he held a court and attended parties given by members of his family. His only suit of plain clothes came out at this time; it was seldom renewed; the rest of the year he wore his uniform. The efforts he had made to be elegant when young were short lived—he always looked shabby and rather dirty; the only jewels he liked were snuff-boxes, of which he had about fifteen hundred; his pockets were lined with chamois leather so that the boxes should not be scratched.
The King’s time-table when he was at home did not vary from now on; many people have described it and their accounts tally. He was woken at 4 a.m.; he hated getting up early but forced himself to do it until the day he died. He scolded his servants if they let him go to sleep again, but he was sometimes so pathetic that they could not help it; so he made a rule that, under pain of being put in the army, they must throw a cloth soaked in cold water on his face. He was much loved by his servants, whom he always addressed as Mein Kind—he never punished them, even if they stole from him, or, as once happened, brought him poisoned chocolate. The man who did that looked so ghastly that Frederick asked what was the matter, whereupon he confessed. He was sent to a regiment in a remote part of Prussia.
Once out of bed, Frederick dressed fully, in boots and hat. He did not possess slippers, and even when he was ill or had gout he always wore boots. He would not allow them to be blacked, so they turned a curious reddish colour and differed from those of other men in having no spurs. While his hair was being curled he composed on a spinet the music he would play that evening on his flute. He practised the flute at least four times a day and said that many political ideas came to him while doing so. Then his post arrived, baskets full of letters. With his vast knowledge of coats of arms, he examined the seals; letters from people who bored him went into the fire unopened. Letters from friends and especially from Voltaire were his greatest joy, and he answered them himself. The rest he arranged in three baskets: granted, refused, and those about which he would consult some minister. While he had his breakfast a secretary came for the letters, and reduced each to one sentence, whereupon Frederick, in one sentence, gave the gist of the answer. If the writer was a woman he would add, ‘Please answer civilly’. Three secretaries had to write all these letters in their own hand and have them ready for signing at 4 p.m.
The secretary having gone, Frederick’s first A.D.C., a general officer, arrived and took away orders. He left with enough work to keep him hard at it all day. At 10 a.m. the King either went out and directed military exercises or wrote letters to his friends. In fine weather he would walk in his garden with a book, followed by two or three Italian greyhounds. These dogs were his constant companions and his favourite, who slept in his bed, was called his ‘Mme de Pompadour’. If they took against somebody he would assume that the person was ill disposed towards him. It was a great sin to tread on their toes accidentally. He always had his favourite with him out riding, carrying her under his coat. Once, during the wars, when he was reconnoitring alone (a habit which his generals detested but could never break) he hid under a bridge while a company of Austrians rode over it; he was terrified that his horse would neigh or that his dog would bark and give him away; the two creatures hardly breathed. They are both buried on the terrace at Sans Souci.
At noon he dined in the company of writers, wits and soldiers; his Brunswick brothers-in-law were generally there. The food was excellent and at this time of day he was in good spirits, chatting away sometimes until 3 p.m., although, if the weather was fine, he would bolt his food in order to go out. He was susceptible to weather and passionately loved the sun. After the pudding the chef came with a block of paper and Frederick ordered the next day’s dinner. The meat in Prussia was poor but he was fond of cheeses and pâtés and of a sort of caviar that Algarotti used to send him—all his food was highly spiced. He drank an immense amount of coffee, and champagne, into which he put water. His twelve cooks were of all nationalities including English; the two chefs, Joyard and Noël, came from Lyons and Périgord. He paid them so much for each dish thus saving himself the trouble of house books. Wood for the cooking, butter and game were free but the chefs paid for the wine and coffee. He was so fond of fruit, hitherto unknown in Brandenburg, that speculators built glasshouses in order to supply him with it at enormous prices. It laid the foundation of a new industry; but finally he grew his own at Sans Souci.
In the afternoon he did administrative work or sometimes went for a walk for his health. People were not fond of going with him as he amused himself at their expense. General von Schwerin, for instance, well over seventy, who had always ridden and never walked in his life, could hardly keep up with him and became extremely crusty; Frederick only laughed. One day when they had been further than usual, and the General was fit to drop, they were met by a sedan-chair. Frederick put Schwerin into it but then flew round it asking questions through first one window and then the other so that Schwerin was even more exhausted than if he had been on foot. He lost his temper, and for a while was no longer invited for the walks. He was very peppery. Frederick loved him because he was not only an invaluable officer but also an intellectual and a man of the world, knowing perfect French and Italian as well as Latin; since early childhood Schwerin had made him laugh more than anybody; he allowed him every licence but never could resist teasing him.
Supper was at 10 p.m. and afterwards there was a concert held in the round room—two violins, a viola, a ’cello and one of Silbermann’s pianos. The King and Quantz played flutes; the other instruments accompanied them. Frederick seems to have been a good flautist, rather erratic in timing, so that it was not easy to accompany him; Karl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who had been in his service as cembalist since Rheinsberg days, was said to have been littéralement torturé by him. Dr Burney went to one of these evening concerts and says:
he played the solo flute parts with great precision, his embouchure was clear and even, his finger [sic] brilliant and his taste pure and simple. I was much pleased and surprised with the neatness of his execution in the allegros as well as by his expression and feeling in the adagios; in short his performance surpassed in many particulars anything I had ever heard among the dilettanti or even professors. His cadenzas were good, but long and studied. Quantz beat time with his hand and cried out ‘Bravo!’ to his royal pupil now and then at the end of solo passages.
But Quantz also used to cough if Frederick played a wrong note—on one occasion he coughed so much that the King said crossly, ‘What are we to do about Quantz’s cold?’ Highly strung, nervous in everything, Frederick would often tremble violently when about to perform. He composed a great deal of music, some of which is played to this day. After the Battle of Hohenfriedberg he composed the well-known march of that name.
One evening, soon after he had moved into Sans Souci, he was playing the flute when d’Argens handed him the list of passengers who had been set down from the daily coach. Frederick read it: ‘Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived!’ It was Johann Sebastian, whom the King had never met. A carriage was sent for the old man and he was told to come at once without changing into his cantor’s robe. The King made much of him; the concert was abandoned and the two men went to try out Frederick’s new Silbermann pianofortes, Bach extemporizing on them to the King’s admiration. He asked the King to give him a subject. Frederick sat down and played one and asked for a fugue in six parts. His theme, very modern with its descending chromatics, presented
Bach with a difficult problem. He worked out several little canons, of a sad and haunting beauty, rather in the spirit of Beethoven’s last quartets, and sent the fugue to Frederick as a Musikalisches Opfer dedicated to ‘a sovereign admired in music as in all other sciences of war and peace’. Frederick ordained, at this time, that the children in the schools should have singing lessons three days a week.
The Marquis d’Argens was engaged in one of those interminable eighteenth-century lawsuits. It took him to Paris. Frederick told him to get actors, wits and artists to amuse them all at Potsdam. He wanted one or two good painters, an actor for such parts as Sganarelle, some actresses who must be pretty, and at least one agreeable man of letters. The mission was not easy. Among the artists, Frederick’s first choice, Van Loo, refused to go to Berlin—d’Argens said they might be able to get Natoire or Pierre, the pupil of LeMoyne but nobody of any parts would move, so great the inclination of French people for Paris. ‘Everybody is mad about intellect and wit—business men as well as dukes like it to be known that they entertain scholars.’ Another difficulty: good writers are so often impossible in company; some have despicable natures and have even been in prison. As for actors, d’Argens had to go as far as Marseilles before finding some reasonably good ones. Here he also found a dancer whom, if H.M. did not care for her, d’Argens would keep to see him through the winter. However, soon after his return to Berlin, he married Mlle Cochois, an actress of whom he said that she was a learned man of letters, an enlightened artiste and a kindly wife, and of whom Frederick said, ‘She is a delicious woman, witty, learned and talented’. They were very happy.
Frederick the Great Page 14