300 FREDERICK AND WARby the Abbe de Saint-Pierre (1713) could obtain only in an unreal
world, where 'mine' and 'yours' did not exist, and mankind was
devoid of passions (Oeuvres, IX, 129). He was one who was eminently
qualified to pronounce on the subject. His own motives for going to
war may be summarised as:
(a) the need to anticipate potential invasions of the Prussian
monarchy, with its open, indefensible borders;
(b) the ambition for territorial aggrandisement;
(c) that desire to astonish and excel which transformed Frederick
the artist and scholar into Frederick the soldier.
In Frederick's view, the study of the conduct of war was an
exercise that was essential and intellectually valid: 'The art of war
owns certain elements and fixed principles. We must acquire that
theory, and lodge it in our heads - otherwise we will never get very
far' (Catt, 1884, 214).
In part such principles were to be deduced from a continuous
evaluation of one's own experiences, and the officer who failed to
make this effort would end his days like the pack mule who followed
Prince Eugene on his campaigns, and remained just as ignorant as
when he set out. The other fund of information was military history.
Voltaire once wrote to Frederick that war must indeed be something
frightful, since the enumeration of all the details was so boring.
Frederick replied that his friend should not confuse the mere enum-
eration of facts with true military history, which established the
relations between cause and effect and identified fundamental prin-
ciples (22 February 1747, Oeuvres, XXII, 164).
Frederick was himself a historian of some stature. His first
accounts of the Silesian Wars were written very soon after the event,
in 1742 and 1746, and ultimately re-worked in 1775 as part of the
Histoire de mon Temps. The Seven Years War was still in progress
when Frederick began to assemble the documentary material for
another narrative, and he made the writing of a full-scale history one
of his first priorities after the peace. A disaster of some kind appears to
have overtaken the first draft - it was set on fire by a spark from a
chandelier, according to one account, or dragged into the fireplace by
the royal dogs - but Frederick is said to have re-written it all again
from memory. The preface set out the motivation for the work in
some detail. Frederick wished in the first place to show that he had
been forced into the war by his enemies. Next, he hoped that his
successors would be able to consult his history for useful lessons if war
ever broke out on the same theatre again: 'On occasions like this it is
possible that some use can be made of the camps in Saxony and
Bohemia (which I have discussed in detail), which will shorten the