130 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63afternoon of 19 June he reached his old headquarters at Klein-Michele
outside Prague. He was visited by his brother Henry and a small party
of officers, who found him prostrate on a bale of straw. He left it to
Henry to draw up the necessary orders for the retreat of the army,
'telling him that he was incapable of doing anything, and that he
needed to rest' (Henckel von Donnersmarck, 1858, I, Part 2, 236).The physical damage to the Prussian army has been assessed at about
13,000 men, nearly all of whom were lost by the infantry, who were
reduced by some 65 per cent of their effectives. The shock and
demoralisation were of a nature that could be experienced only by an
army which had previously been victorious eight times over, 'and
indeed, one must be more than human, to be absolutely free from
presumption after such a series of successes' (Mitchell, 29 June, PRO
SP 90/69). For the king, the experience was all the more painful when
he called to mind what might have been achieved through a victory:
'If I had succeeded as I ought to have done, I would have knocked the
Austrians out of the reckoning, and proceeded with my plan of
marching on the Rhine, attacking the French and pushing into
France. But fate was against me and decreed otherwise' (Catt, 1884,
237).
No single episode of Frederick's military career has occasioned
more surmise and debate. Kolin was, for the Prussian army, what the
charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava represented for the British in
the nineteenth century. For the first time it was possible to entertain
serious doubts about Frederick's generalship, and about the wisdom
of the war and the nature of its outcome.
Veterans, commentators and historians have ventured a number
of explanations of what had gone wrong:
(a) Immediately after the battle of Prague the king had neglected
the opportunity of dispersing the Austrian fugitives and driving
Daun into Moravia (Mitchell, 1850, I, 353-4; Henckel von
Donnersmarck, 1858, I, Part 2, 216).
(b) Frederick should have given battle, if at all, much closer to
Prague, where he could have drawn on the siege corps, as
Napoleon and Clausewitz have suggested.
(c) Frederick was arrogant and impatient, and underestimated the
numbers and quality of the Austrians.
(d) The intended flank attack was converted into an extremely
costly frontal assault, in which the Austrian superiority in
numbers and position told to the fullest effect. In his letters and
histories Frederick put the blame on the over-enthusiasm of the
troops, and the mistakes of some of the generals, especially