The Seven Years War in Europe

1756-1763

Franz A.J. Szabo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138837508
• eBook ISBN: 9781317886969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In this pioneering new work, based on a thorough re-reading of primary sources and new research in the Austrian State Archives, Franz Szabo presents a fascinating reassessment of the continental war.

Professor Szabo challenges the well-established myth that the Seven Years War was won through the military skill and tenacity of the King of Prussia, often styled Frederick the Great. Instead he argues that Prussia did not win, but merely survived the Seven Years War and did so despite and not because of the actions and decisions of its king.

With balanced attention to all the major participants and to all conflict zones on the European continent, the book describes the strategies and tactics of the military leaders on all sides, analyzes the major battles of the war and illuminates the diplomatic, political and financial aspects of the conflict.

Chapter 1
Frederick's failed gamble

(August 1756–October 1757)

On 29 August 1756 a Prussian force of 70,000 men crossed the Saxon frontier in three columns. The main force under the personal command of the king followed a route along the Elbe River towards the Saxon capital of Dresden. In the west a second column struck out towards Leipzig under the command of Frederick's brother-in-law, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, while a third column under Duke August Wilhelm of Brunswick-Bevern advanced from Silesia through Lusatia. Frederick's military objective was to eliminate his most dangerous foe, Austria, in a quick and decisive campaign, which would then hopefully make further military action against Russia and France unnecessary. His operational plan calculated that such an annihilating blow could not be delivered until the campaign season of 1757, and that the chief goal in the interim was to 'set the pieces on the chess board' to ensure the success of the subsequent year's offensive.¹ In Frederick's view this favourable chessboard required at least two elements: the quick elimination of any strategic and military threat posed by Saxony, as well as the occupation and exploitation of the Electorate for the larger campaign against Austria, and the occupation of northern Bohemia, both to establish winter quarters in enemy territory and to serve as the springboard for the decisive campaign to follow.

The first part of the plan proceeded reasonably smoothly, though the Saxon army of some 19,000 men under General Friedrich August von Rutowski eluded immediate entrapment and managed to retreat to a strong fortified position at Pirna south-east of Dresden in a mountainous region known as the Switzerland of Saxony. The rest of the Electorate, however, was quickly occupied without resistance, with Frederick himself entering Dresden on 9 September.² Frederick’s manifesto proclaimed the invasion to be an act of self-defence, urged the Saxons to be cooperative and assured the Elector-King that he had no territorial design on Saxony itself.³ It was, of course, a bald-faced lie. While it may be true that he did not actually begin the war in order to acquire Saxony, once the war had been launched Frederick certainly regarded it as an opportunity to make the territorial gains outlined in his Political Testament of 1752.⁴ He himself had written only the year before, one did not launch wars unless one had good prospects of territorial conquests.⁵ As his most authoritative modern biographer has put it, that Frederick had the conquest of Saxony or West Prussia in mind when he initiated hostilities can hardly be doubted.⁶

Such prospects would naturally be enhanced if Saxony could be proved to be complicit in the great anti-Prussian plot Frederick imagined was being hatched in Vienna. With the help of a corrupt Saxon Chancellery clerk, Friedrich Wilhelm Menzel, the Prussian ambassador to Saxony had already been made aware of the principal features of the dealings the Saxon first minister, Heinrich Brühl, had had with Austria and Russia since 1753, and now Frederick was anxious to seize the original documents. On the very day of his arrival in Dresden the king ordered his officials to burst into the archive of the Saxon Privy Cabinet and find the incriminating material. An attempt by the queen to block access to the Cabinet was fruitless as she was manhandled without regard for her station – an act still considered scandalously shocking at the time. Once in Prussian hands the most damaging documents were published as ‘Detailed Memoir on the Conduct of the Courts of Vienna and Saxony,’ which again sought to establish that Prussia had been forced into war by the aggressive designs of her neighbours.⁷ The smoking gun that Frederick had hoped for, however, was absent. While Brühl had pursued an anti-Prussian foreign policy since 1744, and while to this end he had repeatedly done his best to bring about Austro–French reconciliation, Saxony was not an immediate party to either the reversal of alliances or the Austro–Russian plans for war in 1756.⁸ The documents Frederick seized proved that Saxony had been integrally involved in the anti-Prussian discussions of Vienna and St Petersburg, but evidence for the existence of an anti-Prussian offensive alliance that Frederick was convinced he would find could not be produced.

In any case, the degree of Saxon collusion with Prussia’s enemies was largely irrelevant to Frederick’s immediate plans. The proclamations and publications were mostly for public consumption. In reality it did not matter one iota whether Saxony was complicit in any imagined plot or not; once occupied the principality was earmarked for annexation and despoilment. Certainly the ruthless exploitation of Saxon resources was planned well in advance. General Directory Minister, Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Borcke, who was placed in charge of the operation, had received his instructions well before the invasion, and he and his subordinates were quick to set up a network of offices in the conquered territory. Whatever some Prussian bureaucrats or Frederick’s own brothers may have wished, Frederick was clear that Saxony was to be treated ‘as a conquered land,’ and to be squeezed to the utmost in the interest of the Prussian war effort.⁹ This meant not only that normal Saxon revenues were now to flow directly into the Prussian treasury, but that every other sort of resource in cash or in kind was to be extorted from the Saxon population and the Saxon economy, and that no means were to be spared to that end. In his General Principles of War of 1746 Frederick had posited the principle that it was perfectly legitimate to coerce collaboration from recalcitrant enemy civilians by threatening to kill their wives and children,¹⁰ and it could therefore not come as any surprise that Saxon civilians were faced with draconian demands enforced by a ruthless policy of intimidation and hostage-taking.

This merciless fiscal exploitation of Saxony, while ultimately ruinous to the Saxon economy, was nevertheless the key to the survival of Prussia. To the relative advantages in financing their war effort that the Prussians already enjoyed were now added the resources of the Electorate of Saxony. Of Saxony’s annual taxation revenue of some 6 million Taler, 5 million were diverted each year throughout the war to Prussian military expenditures. In addition to this, extraordinary taxes and diverse other extortions led to the extraction of a total of some 50 million Talers from the hapless Electorate in the course of the war. Thus Saxon ‘contributions’ covered roughly a third of the total cost of the Prussian war effort.¹¹ Beyond this general policy, moreover, Frederick seems to have taken particular pleasure in sequestering and plundering the estates of his Saxon nemesis, Count Brühl, even going so far as ordering the vandalising of one chateau by Prussian free corps, though with the explicit instruction that it was to be made to appear as if the king knew nothing of the deed.¹² This and the sacking of the chateau of Hubertusburg were actions that even Frederick’s admirer, the British envoy, had to confess demonstrated ‘a meanness that I am really ashamed to narrate.’¹³ But the most serendipitous fiscal byproduct of the occupation of Saxony was the discovery of the dies for casting Polish coins at the mint in Leipzig. Between 1756 and 1761 Polish coinage debased by as much as 75 per cent yielded a gross return estimated at over 25 million Taler for Prussia, which amounted to more than twice her annual peacetime revenue. With the devastating effects this was to have on the Polish economy, neutral Poland was thus a second hapless victim of the Prussian aggression.¹⁴

The humiliation of Saxony was to have one further dimension, however, and this involved the Saxon army bottled up in its positions at Pirna. While this small force posed no real threat to the Prussian army, Frederick was intent on its capitulation and to this end any hope of Austrian assistance had to be eliminated. This required the second part of the chessboard to be put into place: the invasion and occupation of northern Bohemia. Maria Theresia’s response to Frederick’s final ultimatum, declining any further elaboration on her previous ambiguous reply, had reached him on 11 September, and the last diplomatic nicety was thereby cleared away.¹⁵ On 13 September, as the Prussian corps of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick attacked the Bohemian outposts of Peterswald (Petrovice) and Nollendorf (Nakléřov) and another under the crusty old Field-Marshal Kurt Christoph von Schwerin penetrated northern Moravia, Frederick formally declared war on the Habsburg Monarchy. The invasion was again accompanied by a boisterous manifesto, drafted by the king himself, detailing ‘the reasons why His Majesty the King of Prussia found himself forced to prevent the schemes of the Court of Vienna.’¹⁶

Elements of the main Prussian army soon followed along the course of the Elbe under the overall command of the sixty-year old Field-Marshal James Keith, a talented Jacobite emigré who had initially made a career in the Russian army, but had fallen foul of Bestuzhev and switched to Prussian service in 1747. Keith captured the lightly defended towns of Tetschen (Dbaín) and Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), attempting from there to reconnoitre the whereabouts of any major Austrian force without much success. This seemed to confirm that the Austrians had been caught relatively unprepared, with Frederick, who assumed personal command on 28 September, himself estimating that the main elements of the Habsburg army in Bohemia were still substantially to the east of Prague.¹⁷ The conclusion was typical of the underestimation of Austrian capacity that marked Frederick’s thinking in the early phases of the war. It also showed a propensity to self-deception that was equally typical: on the one hand he imagined the Austrians at the heart of a conspiracy to wage an aggressive war against him, but on the other he did not think they had adequate forces to protect northern Bohemia. In fact, as signs became clear during June 1756 that Frederick was mobilising his forces, Vienna had immediately begun to take appropriate countermeasures. To coordinate these measures, a War Cabinet consisting of the leading ministers of the crown under the chairmanship of State Chancellor Kaunitz himself was set up early in July.¹⁸ The primary task of the War Cabinet was to initiate mobilisation in response to the Prussian military build-up, the objective being to be able to concentrate 90,000 men in three phases by the end of December.¹⁹ The build-up was by no means complete in September, but when the Prussians invaded, a Bohemian army under Field Marshall Maximilian Ulysses von Browne of over 30,000 men, and a Moravian army of over 20,000 men under General Octavius Piccolomini already faced them. Early in August Browne was placed in overall operational control of both armies, and, in accordance with Habsburg practice, given a free hand to undertake whatever military response he saw fit.²⁰

Browne’s first priority, of course, was to build up Habsburg forces in Bohemia as rapidly as possible, and in these early phases the War Cabinet was able to coordinate this reinforcement with relative cohesion and efficiency.²¹ The process was accelerated by an unexpected degree of public voluntarism. In response to an initial shortage of transport animals, Empress Maria Theresia made the steeds of her own stables available, and the royal example was followed with such eagerness by nobles and commoners alike that transport was effected with unexpected speed.²² The expectation that Frederick might be held up for some weeks investing the Saxon forces at Pirna, however, was disappointed as his two-pronged invasion of Habsburg territory came sooner than anticipated. Browne was thus faced with the task of denying the Prussians a foothold in Bohemia or Moravia while at the same time rescuing the besieged Saxons. He sought to accomplish this by drawing the main Prussian force to the west of the Elbe in Bohemia, engaging it in a holding action, and then dispatching a flying corps over the mountainous terrain on the east bank of the Elbe to disengage the Saxons from Pirna. Piccolomini’s Moravian army was to shadow the Prussian army of Silesia. In the meantime an Austrian manifesto refuting the arguments of Frederick’s manifesto was published with much fanfare.²³

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of maps
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Frederick's failed gamble (August 1756–October 1757)
• 2 The resurgence of Prussia (September 1757–June 1758)
• 3 The balance restored (June 1758–November 1758)
• 4 The predator cornered (December 1758–December 1759)
• 5 The elusive peace (July 1759–May 1761)
• 6 The defeat of Prussia (February 1761–January 1762)
• 7 Unexpected dénouement (January 1762–February 1763)
• Conclusion
• Chronology of major events
• Further reading in English
• Bibliography
• Index