132 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
In these idyllic surroundings Frederick spent some of the most
unhappy days of his life. With the experiences of Kolin all too fresh in
his mind, he dictated to the engineer lieutenant Johann Anton
Freund some speculations as to how he might order things differently
in his battles. Perhaps he might commit his worst troops to the costly
initial attacks, instead of sacrificing his best. Perhaps also he might be
able to winkle the enemy out of their positions by employing the
high-trajectoiy shell fire of howitzers (Instruction, so des Konigs
Majestat Friedrich II., uns alien, die wir Quartiermeister-Dienste
gethan haben, selbsten gegeben haben, summed up as Aphorismen
des Konigs iiber die Befestigungs-, Lager- und Gefechtkunst,
Oeuvres, XXX).
Now that the first blow against Austria had failed, it was evident
that 'all Europe was on the march against him' (Henckel von Don-
nersmarck, 1858, I, Part 2, 238). The French had two armies ready to
advance across Germany. Twenty thousand Swedes were at hand on
the Baltic coast on the borders of Prussian Pomerania, and the
Russian army was poised to invade isolated East Prussia. This crisis
evoked in Frederick that extraordinary response of self-pity, iron
resolution and philosophical detachment that we shall encounter so
often in him during the Seven Years War.
Frederick complained to his sister Wilhelmine that he could see
no reason why states like France, Russia or Sweden should have been
so wicked as to pick a quarrel with him (PC 9198). However, where
lesser souls might have sought refuge in a timorous defensive, 'my
inclination is to seek somehow or other to bring on a decision by
battle. If we fail to come to grips before the end of the campaign, we
are lost' (to August Wilhelm, 13 July, PC 9197).
Equally characteristic of Frederick was the resort to the pen,
which he probably never employed with such intensity as in the
summer and autumn of 1757, explaining that misfortune had revived
his taste for poetry.
No philosophy could armour Frederick against a further blow
which struck him, as secretary Eichel wrote, 'absolutely point blank'
(PC 9151). Eichel had learnt from the foreign minister that
Frederick's mother, Queen Sophia Dorothea, had died on 28 June.
Eichel wished to break the news gently and in person, but in spite of
everything a message slipped through directly to Frederick. The king's
grief was terrible. He wrote to Wilhelmine:
Our mother is no more. This loss is the culmination of my
sorrows, and yet I am forced to act, and I do not have time to
give full course to my tears ... All the other losses in this world
may be redressed, but those occasioned by death are beyond
remedy. (PC 9163)