228 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63
No less reprehensible, to the moralists' way of thinking, was the
debasement of the currency which Frederick undertook in associ-
ation with the merchant concerns of David Itzig, Moses Isaac, and
Ephraim & Sons. Soldiers, public servants and foreign creditors were
forced to accept the debased Ephraimiten at full face value, which
occasioned the rhyme:The outside is silver, the inside a sham,
Outside Frederick, inside - Ephraim.
Likewise, economy in the strategic dimension helped to redress
the imbalance which in purely numerical terms pitted a population
of 4,500,000 souls against the 90,000,000 or so of Austria, the Reich,
Russia, France and Sweden. On the central theatre Frederick's
strategy of interior lines successfully postponed the union of the main
Austrian and Russian armies until the late summer of 1761, while
Hiilsen, Henry or other detached commanders held the Reichsarmee
in check in Saxony. The French never got to grips with Frederick at
all, except briefly and disastrously in November 1757; for the rest of
the war they were kept at arm's length by the Protestant German and
British army of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a force which con-
tained only a small proportion of Prussians. Ferdinand never let the
enemy get within striking distance of his master, even during the
supreme effort by 160,000 French in 1761.
The Swedish campaigns in northern Pomerania were farcical,
except in the contest for the navigation of the Oder estuary, which
the Prussians desired to keep open for British merchantmen. On the
water the Swedes owned a superiority in speed, manoeuvrability and
firepower, and on 10 September 1759, at Neuwarp in the Stettiner
Haff, they destroyed most of the Prussian flotilla of converted fishing
boats and timber carriers. By 1761, however, the Prussians had rebuilt
their naval forces, and on land their moral ascendancy was not
seriously in dispute. The Swedes rarely put more than 15,000 men into
the field, and they were held at bay by the hussar officer Wilhelm
Sebastian von Belling and his little force of light cavalry and Pomera-
nian provincial militia. In 1762 Frederick was amused to see the
Swedish envoys approach him with a view to ending hostilities.
' "Have I really been at war with the Swedes?" In all seriousness the
envoys replied in the affirmative. "Oh yes, I remember now,"
answered Frederick, "my Colonel Belling had some dealings with
them" ' (Hildebrandt, 1829-35, III, 140).
At the same time no brilliant calculations, no sarcastic wit,
could stay the losses that Frederick was suffering in his contest with
his two genuinely formidable enemies, the Austrians and the Rus-
sians. He estimated afterwards that the Prussians had run through