308 FREDERICK AND WAR
but towards the end of the Seven Years War this practice was
changed, for it betrayed the strength of our army to the enemy
from a distance. Frederick adopted a less decorative but more
suitable arrangement. The streets disappeared, and now the
armies encamped in three rows of tents, closely packed
together. This triple line could be changed, as the situation
demanded, into a double row or a single one. It was easy to
spread the army out, and in general devise all sorts of ways of
deceiving the enemy. (Archenholtz, 1974, 36-7)Quarters of cantonment offered an intermediate resting place
immediately before a campaign began, or just after it had ended,
when it was safe to scatter the troops in the shelter offered by villages
and little towns. Frederick was capable of prolonging campaigns deep
into the winter when the face of strategic affairs demanded it, as in
1740, 1744 and 1759, but as soon as at all possible he withdrew the
army into outright winter quarters, leaving the guard of the frontiers
to a Postirung of hussars.
In accordance with the medical notions of the time, Frederick
took advantage of the season of winter quarters in order to have the
troops purged and bled. More usefully, he sought to prevent the men
from sealing themselves up hermetically in overheated rooms. Now
at last the generals could incorporate the recruits and remounts, and
clean up and drill the veterans, 'so as to restore the smartness which
they have lost in the field' ('Ordres fiir die Generale von der Infanterie
und Cavallerie', 1744, Oeuvres, XXX, 122).Frederick's military life was a long one. As Crown Prince he heard
about the battle of Fehrbellin (1675) from men who had witnessed
the event. He saw his first campaign in 1734, guided by veterans who
were formed in the wars of Louis XIV. He directed his final operations
in 1779, and he died in 1786, less than three years before the French
Revolution. A study of the way Frederick shaped his battles must
therefore be an evolutionary one, taking some account of three
important processes that were at work over a period of years:
(a) the development of the famous Oblique Order,
(b) the very effective response of the enemy alliance in the Seven
Years War, and
(c) Frederick's long search for countermeasures.For the sake of convenience we shall accept the Oblique Order in
the wider sense of the term, as applied by Hans Delbruck and others to
the sum of the schemes which determined the character of the
Frederician battlefield until about the middle of the Seven Years War.