155 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63The events of 1757 were remembered as 'that extraordinary cam-
paign, the most fertile in battles, reverses and great events, of any
presented in modern history' (Wraxall, 1806,1, 161). Frederick called
it 'a campaign that was like three in one' (PC 9636).
The campaign fell into two clearly distinguishable parts: (a) the
working-out of the last chapter of the Frederician-Winterfeldt plan of
aggression which terminated at Kolin, when the king expended the
final advantages he enjoyed from having seized the initiative in
opening hostilities in 1756; and (b) the opening of the long-drawn-out
struggle for survival on the northern plain, and the unexpected
reprieves which Frederick won for himself at Rossbach and Leuthen.
The French never appeared at his back door again, and the Austrians
were thrown back into Bohemia with scarcely one-quarter of the
90,000 men who had crossed the border in the summer.
Frederick was to experience crises more acute than those he
underwent in 1757, but never was he to know campaigning of such
intensity. F. A. von Retzow explains that the armies of 1757 had been
expertly schooled through the long years of peace, and that their
commanders were burning with ambition: 'Towering above the rest
was the heroic figure of Frederick, at the head of a force of robust
warriors, whose courage was as yet untouched by misfortune. So it
was that one battle was fought after another, and human blood was
poured mercilessly away' (Retzow, 1802, I, 443-4).
On 21 December Frederick established himself for the winter in
Breslau, and he remained there, apart from short excursions, for
nearly three months. He compared himself to a sailor home from the
high seas who was in need of a rest ashore, and he spent many days
alone in the silence of his room.
At the beginning of January 1758 Frederick was confident that
the Austrians, after their catastrophe in Silesia, would be inclined to
peace, but all too soon it became evident that both they and the
French were determined to continue the war. The Austrians and the
Reichsarmee by themselves owned 150,000 effectives, and the Rus-
sians and Swedes had 98,000 more. Frederick himself was able to
gather scarcely 135,000 troops, and many of these were enemy prison-
ers who had been forcibly recruited into the army.
Faced with odds of this magnitude, the king evolved a routine of
operations that he maintained for the next four years. On the far
western flank he learnt to rely on Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
who was already displaying that near-genius for independent com-
mand that was to keep the French penned up in western Germany for