CHAPTER FOUR
The Theatre of War
Locked in the heart of Central Europe, the scene of Frederick's wars
warmed but slowly in the springtime sun. The snow continued to
accumulate in the highlands until it reached its greatest thickness in
February. It lingered for about two hundred days on ground above
4,200 feet (1,200 metres), and in some summers it was never entirely
banished from the highest crevices of the Riesen-Gebirge. Again and
again, promising thaws were interrupted by 'returns of winter',
which made it difficult for commanders to think of opening the
campaigning season before the last days of April.
The grass began to grow in the first half of May, which was a
consideration of vital importance for the maintenance of the horses.
Then, in most years, a sequence of sunny spells and cold rains finally
gave way to a high summer of clear skies and hot temperatures, which
extended into the autumn. The troops suffered severely, for this was
the season of the forced marches and the great battles (one young
officer gave all the money he had for a hatful of water after the battle
of Zorndorf). Finally the cold, the rains and the snows descended on
thefheatre of war with unpredictable abruptness. In 1761 they arrived
in Silesia at the beginning of October, and in north-east Bohemia in
1778 as early as August.
Physically, the setting of the campaigns extended over three
regions:
(a) The northern plains of Brandenburg, Saxony and Silesia
Two major rivers (the Elbe to the west and the Oder to the east)
transversed these lowlands from south-east to north-west. They
offered good navigation, as well as open and fertile land on one
or both of their banks, and they consequently became important
avenues of operations. A huge tract of heath and forest stretched
from the Brandenburg-Saxon borderlands into the Neumark and
north-western Silesia, however, rendering subsistence difficult
in the middle of this theatre.89