110
THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63sources in recruits, fodder and cereals made an important and direct
contribution towards maintaining the Prussian army in the war,
vvhile the exactions in cash amounted to the huge sum of 48,000,000
thaler, which greatly exceeded the 27,500,000 thaler of Frederick's
subsidy from the British, and amounted to more than one-third of the
total cost of the war (Hubatsch, 1973, 120; Johnson, 1975, 170).
Frederick did not hesitate to take hostages and threaten military
executions against property, so as to extort the necessary sums from
Leipzig and other trading centres (PC 9789,10352,10546,10555,10572,
10617) Even the British envoy Mitchell, who was a friend of the king,
was taken aback when on 5 January 1761 the Prussians arrested
between fifty and sixty merchants in Leipzig and incarcerated them
in the town hall.
All of this could be justified in terms of military necessity. There
remained, however, an element of vandalism for which it is difficult
to find any explanation save personal vengeance on Frederick's part.
Many of the Prussian officers were disturbed by what they saw, and
two episodes in particular aroused much comment and debate. In
October 1757 Frederick was said to have allowed the Garde to plunder
the castle of Grochwitz, which belonged to Count Briihl, one of the
alleged authors of the enemy alliance. Still better authenticated was
the treatment meted out in 1761 to the hunting lodge of Hubertus-
burg, which Frederick knew to be dear to the heart of the king and
elector Augustus. The upright Saldern flatly refused Frederick's order
to ransack the castle (see p. 334), and 'the free battalion of Quintus
Icilius was given the commission instead. This business was com-
pleted within a few hours, and carried through with such zeal that
nothing was left but the naked walls' (Archenholtz, 1840, II, 99).In the autumn campaign of 1756 Frederick had removed the Saxon
army as a formed body from the potential enemy order of battle, and
won a most important strategic and material base for continuing the
war. Nevertheless, the veterans and commentators often asked them-
selves whether gains even of this magnitude were worth the expendi-
ture of considerable advantages which by the nature of things
Frederick could not recover, namely the unique peacetime war-
readiness of the Prussian army and the initiative in opening hostili-
ties.
The cavalryman Kalkreuth was among the first troops to enter
Bohemia, and he claims that the 'most expert of the Prussian officers
were of the opinion that we could have left the Saxons under some
kind of blockade, and marched directly on Prague and Vienna. The
Austrians were moving up so slowly that Frederick might have been
able to settle the issue of the war in the course of this campaign'