135 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63homeland from the west. His sole friends in Europe, a force of
Hanoverian and other Protestant German auxiliaries, were defeated
by a French army in north-west Germany at Hastenbeck on 26 July,
and driven against the lower Elbe. Frederick himself was the target of
a second French army which Marshal Soubise was leading from
Strasbourg. In central Germany Soubise was going to act in co-
operation with a third hostile force, the Reichsexecutionsarmee,
which had been raised from a large number of the states of Germany
to visit the 'execution' of the Empire on the Prussians.
Since the Austrians had declined to allow themselves to be
brought to battle on favourable terms in Upper Lusatia, Frederick
made the dangerous decision to divide his forces for the second time in
two months. He left the Duke of Bevern on the spot with 41,000 men
to cover Silesia and Brandenburg against the Austrians. The king
himself resumed command of the troops from Leitmeritz, who had
been waiting south of Dresden, and he set off against the French and
the forces of the Empire in person.
With the advantage of hindsight we can see that Frederick was
paying the French and the Germans too handsome a compliment.
The French forces, so effective in the Netherlands campaigns of
1745-8, had become undisciplined and comfort-loving. The 30,500
troops of the Reichsarmee had been assembled in virtue of ancient
constitutions of the loose German Empire, and they comprised con-
tingents from no less than 231 of its component bodies politic. The
nominal commander, the able Austrian field-marshal Prince Joseph
Friedrich von Sachsen-Hildburghausen, discovered that his authority
was compromised by an assortment of senior generals who had been
appointed by individual princes of the Empire, and who were given to
turning up at headquarters unannounced. The men as a whole were
decent, sleepy and peaceable. It was unfortunate that some of the
best-trained troops, like those from Wiirttemberg, were Protestants
whose inclinations turned them towards Frederick rather than Maria
Theresa. 'Seydlitz, who was subsequently engaged in many opera-
tions against this army... said that it was inadvisable to force those
troops to fight, because they would certainly do so. However, since
their hearts were not fully engaged in the outcome of the war, it was
better to make such manoeuvres as would force them to retreat
without compromising their honour' (Warnery, 1788, 332).
This Seydlitz had taken over the direction of Krosigk's charge
at Kolin, and Frederick now selected him for the principal com-
mand of the cavalry in the coming campaign in the west. Friedrich
Wilhelm von Seydlitz was born in the duchy of Cleves in 1721. At the
age of fourteen he was appointed page in the suite of the 'Mad' Mar-
grave Friedrich of Brandenburg-Schwedt, under whose influence he