113 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63sluggish Serbelloni with 27,000 well to the east around Koniggratz.
Nobody has established with conviction whether or not
Frederick hoped from the outset to bring the whole war to an end by
some Armageddon in northern Bohemia, or whether he merely in-
tended to snatch a rapid advantage at the expense of the Austrians
and then turn back and confront the French. No less an authority
than the retired Generaloberst Count Schlieffen pronounced on the
subject shortly before the Great War. He concluded that for really
decisive results against the Austrians, Frederick should have em-
ployed no less than 150,000 men, which he could have assembled by
stripping East Prussia, Pomerania and the Prussian Rhineland.
Schlieffen conjectured that Frederick shrank from committing him-
self too fully in Bohemia because he desired to conserve his resources
for the battle against the French, whose military qualities he over-
estimated (Boehm-Tettelbach, 1934, 23-4, 27).
While his troops were in the process of gathering, Frederick
maintained a security as strict as that before the invasion of Saxony
in 1756, and initiated only ten other people into the great secret (PC
8834). He ordered Bevern and Moritz to carry out limited raids along
the borders, so as to confuse the Austrians and throw them onto the
local defensive, and on 18 April 1757 and the following days the
Prussians descended from the hills in full force. Surprise was com-
plete, and the enemy were thrown into consternation. (See Map 7,
p. 347.)
The royal army passed the Mittel-Gebirge without opposition,
and on 25 April it reached the plain of Lobositz, which was still
reeking from the dead of the action of the year before. On this day
Frederick completed the union with the corps of Prince Moritz, giving
him a combined army of nearly 60,000 men. Well beyond the Elbe,
Bevlrn evicted the Austrian corps at Reichenberg from its positions
on 21 April, and four days later he was in contact with Schwerin's
army on the Iser.
Casting aside the original scheme of waiting for all the Prussian
forces to unite around Leitmeritz, Frederick pressed south against the
river line of the Eger, where Browne and the hastily reassembling
Austrian army were expected to make a stand. The Prussians
marched all through the night of 26 April, and between four and eight
the next morning they passed the little river Eger by two bridges of
boats at Koschtitz. They encountered no opposition, for Moritz had
chosen a site well upstream of the Austrian camp at Budin.
The army hastened across the meadows on the far side of the
Eger, and climbed the long, tree-covered Budin ridge which should
have offered the Austrians an excellent blocking position. The
ground descended beyond the ridge then rose again to the bare