Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  Thanks to Leopold, the Prussian infantry had also become virtually the only force in Europe employing the cadenced march, in which every soldier started off on his left foot then marched in step to an accompanying drumbeat. Using this cadenced march resulted in tighter formations that were able to maneuver much more quickly. This allowed the units to advance farther before having to stop and dress the lines, and also created more compact columns to employ a greater mass of firepower.16 Before this time all armies marched in route step, with no coordination at all. This meant that units gradually became more spread out while on the march, making it more difficult to form up and prepare for maneuver. The Prussian army stayed in step, so stayed in ranks. Deployment was therefore far more rapid and organized. Childs points out that “[o]nce the cadenced step had been universally adopted much of the hassle and uncertainty of taking troops from column into line disappeared, as the intervals between ranks, battalions and files could be maintained precisely on the approach march and translated direct into the correct spacing in the battle line by a simple wheel to the left or right. Frederick the Great drilled his infantry to the point where they could swing out of column of march into line of battle within a few minutes and advance straight into the attack.”17 Other European armies might take as much as two hours to perform the same action. Frederick wrote that “promptness contributes a great deal to success in marches and even more in battles. That is why our army is drilled in such a fashion that it acts faster than others. From drill comes these maneuvers which enable us to form in the twinkling of an eye.”18

  Upon assuming the throne in 1740 Frederick began expanding his army, primarily the infantry, with the intent of doubling its size from its existing one of 80,000. (That goal was not reached until the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756.) Between 1740 and 1743 fifteen infantry regiments (at 1,700 men each) were added, as well as twelve regiments designed primarily for garrison duty in Prussia’s forts. The Prussian infantry consisted of grenadiers, two companies per regiment, chosen for their reliability and aggressiveness. They needed both traits, as these units often took the greatest casualties. The rest of the infantry, fusiliers, were the standard troops, using muskets of less-than-stellar quality. Based on the Liege-manufactured musket of Frederick William’s day, Frederick’s proved to be “a clumsier and more eccentric version of the typical military flintlock of the day. … [T]he Prussian musket remained one of the worst in Europe. Firing was a decidedly uncomfortable experience, for the trigger was set too far forward in the guard, the comb of the butt rose so high as to make aiming almost impossible, and … the long barrel, the bayonet and the cylindrical ramrod combined to make the weapon muzzle-heavy by three pounds.”19 Still, it was a rugged weapon firing a .75 caliber ball. Since discipline demanded reloading and firing at speed, aiming was ignored; however, the shots were famous for falling far short of their target owing to the weapon’s imbalance.

  In the Seven Years’ War Frederick filled his ranks with militia and “free battalions,” or mercenaries. During the War of the Austrian Succession, he developed a small light infantry organization, used more as scouts and guides than skirmishers; they developed into that more typical role in the Seven Years’ War and afterward.

  For the most part Frederick’s army fought in the standard linear tactics of the day, with two lines roughly 200 yards apart, each made up of three ranks of musketeers (although he often used only two ranks when his manpower was short). Firing was done by platoons, the formation Leopold had learned in Marlborough’s service. The Prussians held two distinct advantages: a far more rapid deployment on the battlefield, and an increased rate of fire that resulted from the constant training and discipline. In training, the Prussian soldier could fire five shots per minute, almost twice that of his enemy; in combat, however, both rate of fire and regularity in volley fire diminished, as was true in all armies. Still, the Prussians always threw more lead than their opponents could. Had they had better muskets, the damage would have been that much greater. Childs notes another disadvantage: “The intention to break the opponent’s morale rather than his bones produced another limitation upon accurate musketry. The advantage went automatically to the side which loosed off more volleys in a given space of time, and this led Frederick the Great to put more emphasis upon speed of fire and rapid reloading than upon accuracy.”20 Still, battles of the time were not long exchanges of musket volleys, but more dependent (especially in the Prussian army) on the bayonet charge. Starting in 1741 Frederick ordered the bayonets to be permanently affixed when soldiers were on duty. He wrote in 1747, “It is not fire but bearing which defeats the enemy. And because the decision is gained more quickly by always marching against the enemy than by amusing yourself firing, the sooner a battle is decided, the fewer men are lost in it.”21 In retrospect, he should have focused more on improving his firepower. In biographer Christopher Duffy’s opinion, “For the best part of the first two decades of his reign Frederick was deluded into thinking that the awe-inspiring sight of advancing troops was a more effective weapon than the bullet. This miscalculation must be regarded as his greatest error in his capacity as military technician.”22 By the time of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick had become more appreciative of the benefits of firepower.

  Frederick’s most famous contribution to contemporary warfare was the oblique attack. This was a wise adaptation given that he was usually outnumbered in battle. “There can be no doubt that Frederick, who once wrote that he had read just about everything that had ever been written on military history, already had in mind the thought of the oblique battle order when he went into his first war,” writes Hans Delbruck.23 The concept goes back to Epaminondas of Thebes and his use of the refused flank at the Battle of Leuctra. In later times, the concept was discussed by the first Duke of Prussia (1500s), Raimondo Montecucculi (1600s), then the French soldier and theorist the Chevalier Folard, Jacques François de Chastenet of France, and the Austrian Ludwig Khevenhüller in the 1700s. Therefore what Frederick did was to update and fine-tune a theory that had been discussed for a long time.24 It began its evolution in peacetime experiments in 1747, but hints of it might be seen as early as the Battle of Chotusitz in 1742. The maneuver started with the concept of holding back one wing of the army as the rest partially wheeled into the enemy flank. According to Bevin Alexander, “A commander should strengthen one wing of his army and employ it to attack the enemy flank, while holding back another, smaller wing to threaten the enemy’s main force and keep it from changing position. Since the enemy army would already be deployed, it could not switch troops fast enough to the threatened flank before Frederick’s columns struck. Frederick said an army of 30,000 could beat an army of 100,000 using this method.”25

  Over the years it evolved into an attack in echelon, with the refused units coming into the attack successively against the enemy flank. Such an advance limited the enemy’s ability to redeploy and attack the Prussian flank, as it was refused. So unlike Epaminondas attacking with only one unit and holding the others back, Frederick would have the entire line advance, with fresh units coming into action along the line. This style of advance had two main advantages. Each unit could more easily maneuver itself over broken ground if it was not worried about maintaining an extended line. It also fooled the enemy, as Brent Nosworthy notes: “Looking at the Prussian infantry from a distance, the enemy was unable to discern the formation being employed, and, in fact, thought that the Prussian infantry was advancing in total chaos. The enemy was able to see that the infantry line was fragmented; but was not able to perceive any ordered relationship between each division of line.”26 Frederick used this movement to fulfill his primary battlefield goal, to put maximum force at the enemy’s weakest point. Thus, even an army outnumbered overall could attain localized superiority. Frederick believed unwaveringly in the strength of the oblique attack, insisting that other armies ought to be employing it: “All weak armies attacking stronger ones should use the oblique order, and it is the
best that can be employed in outpost engagements; for in setting yourself to defeat a wing and in taking a whole army in the flank, the battle is settled at the start. Cast your eyes on this plan.”27 In what could be equally advantageous, the oblique order could cover a withdrawal if the attack didn’t go well, as happened at Prague in 1757. R. R. Palmer describes how the maneuver accomplished either purpose: “Frederick’s purpose in favoring this type of battle was, in case of success, to gain a quick victory by rolling up the enemy’s line, and, in case of failure, to minimize losses, since the refused wing maneuvered to cover the withdrawal of the wing engaged. Frederick’s superior mobility and coordination gave a special effectiveness to these flanking movements.”28

  Although he inherited the best possible infantry, at the outset Frederick’s cavalry was the shame of his army. Haythornthwaite describes the cavalry as “[p]roficient only at ceremonial drill on foot, [and] Frederick claimed that they could not manage their horses and were commanded by officers totally ignorant of what was required of them in action. The cuirassiers he described as ‘giants on elephants,’ who could neither manoeuvre nor fight, and who fell off their horses even on parade; they were so bad, he claimed, that ‘it isn’t worth the devil’s while’ to use them.”29 This became dangerously clear to Frederick at his first battle as king, at Mollwitz in 1741. His cavalry fled from the Austrian cavalry, which would have won the battle had they not been turned back by the stalwart Prussian infantry. Frederick’s improvements in this arm, therefore, were both quick and effective. Frederick recruited cavalrymen not from the society as a whole (as with his infantry) nor from the landed gentry and nobility (as with his officers). Instead, he looked to the better-off peasants who had sons who were used to being in the saddle and (initially, at least) could provide their own mounts. The foreign-born recruits came from the same condition. This provided the Prussian military with young men who already were familiar with what a horse could do, and they proved more loyal, as Hawthornthwaite notes: “The cavalry contained the smallest proportion of desertion-prone impressed peasants and unreliable mercenaries; indeed, Frederick’s Instructions indicate that the presence of cavalry picquets were a principal discouragement to desertion, so the cavalry had to be reliable.”30 Although they were trained to operate in as disciplined a manner as were the infantry, they did not undergo the same harsh discipline. The new cavalry arm was first organized and led by Frederick Wilhelm von Seydlitz, “probably the most gifted leader of men in eighteenth-century Prussia. … Seydlitz believed that it was not enough for an officer simply to order a man to do something: he must be in a position to show him how it ought to be done, and to do it in an exemplary style.”31

  Frederick removed the giants from the cavalry, although he knew that size and power were necessary to his plan of reintroducing shock to cavalry tactics. The cuirassiers were the heavy cavalry, named for the heavy iron breastplate, or cuirass, that they wore. These were the descendants of the knights of medieval times, armed with a straight sword, two pistols, and a carbine. The dragoons had been developed in the Thirty Years War in order to provide mounted infantry; by Frederick William’s time they were full-fledged cavalry but lacked the armor. They carried a longer carbine with a bayonet and a straight sword. The hussars, or light cavalry, originated in Hungary and were used primarily for patrol work, raiding, and flank security. The hussar concept was slower to catch on in Prussia. “For a long time the Prussian hussars could be written off as just another of Frederick William’s bad military jokes—more gaudy, perhaps, than the Giant Grenadiers, though not nearly as expensive,” Duffy writes. “The king himself admitted that ‘a German lad does not make such a good hussar as an Hungarian or a Pole.’”32 That view changed by the time Frederick was king, for many a German lad found the most attractive aspect of the hussar’s role was his almost unique opportunity for plunder. It was the hussars who also had the role of pursuit in the wake of victory. That freedom of action out of sight of the high command, however, was one of the main fears of a king worried about desertions. The hussars had a more colorful uniform, somewhat Turkish in its aspect, as inherited from the Austrian light cavalry (Hungarians and Croats) who had inherited theirs in wars against the Ottoman Empire. They too carried a carbine but their sword was curved, again as a nod toward their Middle Eastern roots.

  Although the new cavalrymen usually arrived with a modicum of horsemanship, much more had to be taught. Two years was the minimum training, during which “each man was instructed in the skills of riding and horsemanship until he was complete master of both himself and his mount in all situations. Only after the completion of this basic initiation was he taught how to fire his pistols and carbine from horseback and to fight from the saddle with the sabre.”33 The cavalry were trained to operate as efficiently and in as orderly a fashion as were the infantry. Frederick’s most basic advances came in the area of training, where systematic methods were employed to instruct the trooper in a variety of required drills, exercises, and maneuvers. He was also responsible for the introduction of revolutionary new cavalry tactics: the charge at the gallop, the charge in echelon, the charge in column, and maneuvering while moving, as well as the use of light cavalry in close-order fighting on the battlefield.34 Although each style of cavalry had its assigned role, they all trained to do each other’s jobs. All three types of Prussian horsemen received the same basic instruction so that their functions were quickly and easily interchangeable, so a cuirassier could when needed be a scout or a hussar could charge into battle. This flexibility was unique to the Prussians.35

  Although the horsemen carried firearms, Frederick disallowed their use in almost all circumstances, and certainly during the charge. As time went by, Frederick became more wedded to the concept of speed equaling power, so the cavalry in their charge started their gallop at greater and greater ranges. According to Nosworthy, “In 1748, Frederick demanded that they charge 700 yards (trot: 300; gallop: 400). In 1750 this was increased to a total of 1200 yards (trot: 300; gallop: 400; and full speed: 500). This was increased to an incredible 1800 yards in 1755, with the last 600 yards at full speed.”36 All of this had to be done in formations almost as tight as those practiced by the infantry. Seydlitz, although somewhat lighter handed in disciplinary measures, still drove his men in daily practice and in peacetime army maneuvers. “The cavalryman’s equipment was made as light as possible to enhance speed and increase the fury of the charge,” writes Trevor Dupuy. “Close order and alignment were achieved by constant drill, and Prussian cavalry could move with the same precision and perfection as the infantry. Eight to ten thousand mounted men could charge for hundreds of yards in perfect order, then after a melee re-form for movement almost immediately.”37 Enemy infantry squares with bayonets (if they could be formed quickly) offered some defense, but they could maintain a line only against trotting horsemen. The galloping attack en muraille (as a wall) was key in most of Frederick’s victories.

  Frederick was much more interested in the cavalry than he was in artillery, despite the rising prominence of the latter; however, he also brought the concept of speed to his artillery.38 Even though smaller and lighter cannon had been on the battlefield for some time, the Prussians made them even more mobile. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor Dupuy point out how “Frederick carried one step farther the artillery tactical developments of Gustavus Adolphus. He created the concept of the horse artillery (as opposed to conventional horse-drawn artillery) in which every cannoneer and ammunition handler was mounted, so that the light guns could keep up with the fast-moving, hard-riding Prussian cavalry.”39 The Prussian artillery arm, as in all the European armies, was manned by civilian contractors, engineers who were looked down upon by all other arms. In the days of Frederick William, General Christian von Linger oversaw the artillery and reduced the guns to four sizes: 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24-pounders (determined by the weight of the cannon ball). The two smaller guns were assigned to the front lines with the infantry while the larger two were deployed farther to
the rear and massed to focus on a particular section of the enemy army. The gun barrels alone weighed in at 988 and 1,800 pounds respectively, so rapid movement was not possible. The smaller guns, however, were moved about rapidly by three-horse and four-horse teams.

  Improvements during Frederick’s reign came thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Ernst von Holzmann. He developed the caisson, a box carrying ammunition and powder added to the limber supporting the cannon’s trail. This allowed the gun and crew much more independence, able to operate further away from the battalion or regimental ammunition supply. Holzmann also introduced a better method for adjusting the gun’s elevation. The Austrians had developed a wedge placed under the rear of the cannon to be slid in and out to control elevation and depression. Holzmann added a screw mechanism to the wedge so it could be more finely adjusted. Most of the time all the guns fired solid round balls, which did damage to solid targets but also to individuals as the shot bounced through infantry lines “like a bowling ball gone berserk,”40 taking lives and removing body parts. For short-range work, however, Holzmann crafted the idea of employing canister rounds, cylinders of sheet metal or wood that enclosed scores of shot about the size of walnuts. The lightly built cylinder disintegrated as it left the muzzle, and the shot sprayed over a wide arc.41 Grapeshot was a variation on the canister, with larger shot. Frederick also came to appreciate the value of the howitzer, “a stubby, heavy-calibre chambered piece, specially designed to throw explosive shells without cracking the brittle cast iron of their casing.”42 The howitzer was traditionally a siege gun designed to lob cannonballs in a high arc over walls; Frederick began using the weapon on the battlefield to strike at hidden targets in dead ground behind the enemy. Most of these improvements, however, did not go into effect until the latter part of the Seven Years’ War.