299 FREDERICK AND WARof friction between the British and French in Canada which more
than anything else set in train the process of the Diplomatic Revolu-
tion. Writing of East Prussia, Count Lehndorff observed:
This poor land became a chance victim of the quarrel between
the great powers. It certainly offers a wide field for
philosophical rumination when you consider that a war which
began in America about Nova Scotia should have led...
through a strange concatenation of circumstances, to the
devastation of a kingdom in the far north of Europe. (Lehndorff,
1910-13,1, 137)
Frederick kept himself informed of the course of the consequent
struggle in the Channel, North America and India, as far as his maps
allowed, but he never relaxed in his determination to distance
himself as far as he could from 'those wretched wars about dried fish'
(PC 8352,8416,12287). At least twice he was seized by the vision of an
uncontrollable, apocalyptic conflagration that anticipated by two
centuries the 'helter skelter' conceived by the evil lunatic Charles
Manson (PC 13395; Catt, 1884, 110).
In 1778-9 Frederick was only too delighted when he succeeded in
divorcing his new quarrel with Austria from the War of American
Independence. He wished to know nothing of what the British had to
say about North America, and he sent word to the rebel emissary
William Lee that it would be a useless gesture for him to enter into
any kind of treaty of commerce or recognition with the United States,
since he had no navy with which to protect the American trade (PC
26195, 26300). Frederick wrote to his old correspondent, Maria Anto-
nia of Saxony: 'In olden times our good-hearted Germans used to
believe that they had to take up arms in Europe, when the war
trumpet sounded in Mexico or Canada. I now believe we have totally
disabused ourselves of this delusion' (23 September 1779, Oeuvres,
XXIV, 326-7).It is time to focus more narrowly on Frederick's views about the
nature and conduct of war. Frederick, as the somewhat tarnished
philosopher, was willing to pretend to Voltaire, Maria Antonia and
others that war was a 'scourge', a recurring 'onset of fever', waged by
'bandit chiefs' and 'privileged murderers' who sent men from their
homes to cut the throats of strangers in another country.
We should not expect to find too close a correspondence between
these admirable sentiments and the practice of Frederick's wars. As a
soldier and statesman, he distrusted any declaration of pacific intent
that was not inspired by financial exhaustion or the fear of destruc-
tion. Frederick believed that a perpetual peace of the kind proposed