312 FREDERICK AND WAR
allied armies' (Arkhiv Knyazya Vorontsova, 1870-95, IV, 394).
Matters such as these were a subject of debate in the Viennese
cabinet, as Frederick knew from his informants (PC 10701, 10838,
10906). The Emperor Francis Stephen, who was not renowned for his
military perception, grasped the essentials of the Oblique Order when
he told his brother Charles, before the opening of the campaign of
1757, that Old Fritz liked to attack with one wing only, and that his
style of warfare demanded a great deal of his troops, who were not
always of the most reliable material. All of this, he suggested, might
be turned to good account (Arneth, 1863-79, V, 171-2). Finally a
direct insight into Frederick's thinking was obtained from docu-
mentation like the copy of the General Principia, which was captured
with Major-General Czettritz at Cossdorf in 1760.
On the practical side, the Austrians learnt to make effective use
of their hilltop positions, their swarming Croats, their roving detach-
ments, their French siege experts, their new staff system (which
made possible the elaborate attacks at Hochkirch and Maxen), and
their powerful artillery (and especially their medium 12-pounder
cannon, which, when it fired canister, became the defensive equiva-
lent of the machine gun of the Great War). The Russians too became
enthusiastic diggers, and like the Austrians they acquired the tech-
niques of moving their reserves about the battlefield. The necessary
procedures were regulated by Fermor's General Disposition of 1758,
and the points that Buturlin added in 1761, which together made
provision for a third line or reserve, the fortification of the flanks of
the army, and the dispatch of designated brigades to threatened parts
of the position.
By the middle of the war, therefore, Frederick was beginning to
encounter an informed and expert opposition. The consequence was
the indecisive slaughter at Zorndorf, the disaster at Kunersdorf, and
the negative and appallingly costly victoiy at Torgau. A number of
inherent defects had now became evident in the Oblique Order.
First of all, the lengthy flank marches made heavy demands on
the troops before they so much as came to grips with the enemy. 'In all
the battles of this war, when the Prussians were on the attack, they
invariably reached the enemy out of breath' (Warnery, 1788, 310). If
Torgau was fought on a cold, wet and murky November day, all the
other encounters were staged at the height of those exceptionally hot
summers of the Seven Years War.
The strain of the flanking movements told most heavily of all on
the train of heavy artillery, whose efforts were so vital for the success
of the other arms. Again and again the absence of artillery support
contributed to the defeat of the attacking infantry, as witness the
destruction of Schwerin's first line after the passage of the swampy