Frederick never made the point explicit, may well have been his justification for
the devastating, and career-destroying, critiques that accompanied the exercises.
To a degree, they replicated the unpredictable, high-risk conditions of command
in an eighteenth-century battle. 7
The Seven Years War tested Frederick’s approach to its limits. Instead of ending
quickly, decisively, and positively, the conflict dragged on into unpredictability. In
less than a year, the painstakingly prepared Prussian army suffered heavy and
irreplaceable casualties at Lobositz, Kolin, and outside Prague. Russian troops
invaded East Prussia while a massive French army supplemented by contingents
from the Holy Roman Empire advanced from the west. Frederick’s only ally was a
Britain unwilling to commit more than minimal financial and military resources
to the continent.
The king rallied, kept his army in the field and his people paying taxes, shifted
troops from sector to sector of his threatened kingdom, masterminded dazzling
triumphs, and recovered from catastrophic defeats. But there was no room to
develop a concept of operational art. 8 Rossbach, Leuthen, Zorndorf, Hochkirch,
Kunersdorf, Torgau—each is commemorated in its own monographs. But their
usual objective was to expel invading armies. They were victories won in vacuums
and arguably sterile. Prussia, by the end of the Seven Years War, was on the point
of conquering itself to death. The kingdom was shaken to its physical and moral
foundations. As many as 180,000 Prussians had died in uniform, to say nothing of
civilian losses from disease and privation. Provinces were devastated, populations
scattered, currency debased. The social contract of the Prussian state, service and
loyalty in return for stability and protection, was shaken to its foundations. 9
Frederick addressed the consequences of a tactical focus in policy terms by
developing and projecting the post-war Prussian army as a deterrent force, and by
successfully establishing himself as the defender of Central Europe’s status quo
against a disruptive Austrian. 10 His successors during the French Revolutionary
Wars, however, fell back into a tactical, opportunist mode at all levels. The failure of
this approach was demonstrated in 1806. Prussia went to war for a policy reason, in
order to avoid relegation to client-state status. It took the field in a tactical context.
Just enough time remained in the normal campaigning season for one major battle.
Even then the Prussian army had to do no more than bloody Napoleon’s nose as a
gesture of good faith to an embryonic Fourth Coalition, buying time for British
guineas and Russian bayonets to bring to bear their respective influences. 11
This was not an optimal situation, but neither did it seem obviously beyond
the army’s capacities—until Jena and Auerstedt. As Martin van Creveld’s contri-
bution to this volume demonstrates, the only operational art practised on that
brief campaign was on the other side. Prussia’s response was to retool its army to
fight in the context of a coalition. Its basic organization was the medium-sized
combined-arms brigade. Its tactics stressed wearing down an enemy by extended
firefights, then using small flexible columns to determine weak spots, and, finally,
developing opportunities through small-scale attacks. It was not a doctrine
encouraging the striking of decisive, independent blows in the operational con-
texts Napoleon was introducing.
Prussian–German Operational Art, 1740–1943 37