109 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63harboured the ambition of incorporating the Saxons in his army, and
the hideous process of enrolling the troops extended into the 19th:
Frederick was present in person while they forced the soldiers to
swear allegiance to him. The auditors murmured the words of
this so-called oath of loyalty in front of the men, and those who
refused to repeat it were punished by the Prussian soldiers...
The king so far forgot himself as to use his own stick on a young
nobleman, an ensign in the regiment of Crousatz, and he told
him: 'You must be totally devoid of ambition and honour, not
to wish to enter the Prussian service!' (Lieutenant-General
Vitzthum, in Vitzthum, 1866, 251-2)
The Prussian army was used to dealing with involuntary recruits,
but Frederick unwisely rejected the usual expedient of dividing the
captives among existing Prussian units, and instead he formed the
18,500 surviving Saxons into ten complete regiments, commanded by
second-rate Prussian officers. The result was that by the spring of 1757
the Saxons were deserting in whole battalions and regiments. Many
of them were re-formed into auxiliary units in the Austrian army,
which gave them the opportunity to continue their long-enduring
blood feud against the Prussians.
In November 1756 the army was distributed in quarters in Sax-
ony, and soldiers and officers settled into the overheated tobacco-
laden fug that was the environment of the Prussian army in winter-
time. Frederick fixed himself for the season in the Dresden palace of
Count Briihl, the Saxon prime minister, and discovered that this
gentleman had left behind 304 pairs of breeches in his wardrobe. The
king played the flute in evening concerts, and he passed many
agreeable hours at the oratorios of Herr Hasse, or in listening to the
elaborate masses in the Catholic church. He frequently betook him-
self to the celebrated royal picture gallery and sat for minutes at a
time in front of Correggio's Notte.
Meanwhile Saxony lay at the Prussians' disposal. The British
envoy to Dresden had already reported on 12 September:
I think it is every day more evident that His Prussian Majesty's
design is to keep this country as a deposit during the war, and to
take upon himself the whole management of the affairs of
Saxony. All the royal chests, and, in short, the whole revenue,
is already seized, and all the officers in the several branches of
it, removed. (Lord Stormont, PRO SP 88/79)This unholy business was to be managed by a special department of
the military commissariat, acting under the immediate orders of
Frederick. Between the autumn of 1756 and February 1763 the Saxon