322 FREDERICK AND WAR
Frederick as the inventor of ring forts), but he remained a military
romantic, and in matters of practical detail he could not always
impose his will on people who were better at drawing and mathema-
tics than he was. We have lived with Frederick long enough to know
how offensive it must have been to him to abdicate any control to
others, let alone to men who claimed some acquaintance with the
sciences. In August 1778 he sent an officer of his suite to determine the
range for the artillery to the hills above Hohenelbe. This clever fellow
returned unexpectedly early, having measured out a base line and
reckoned the distance by triangulation. There ensued the following
conversation:
Frederick: Have you actually been on the hills?
Officer: No, Your Majesty, but...
Frederick: And you want me to believe that you know the range?
Officer: With your Majesty's permission, may I explain that through
a simple geometrical calculation...
Frederick: To hell with your calculations! Away with you!
(Schmettau, 1789, 159)
The perfect captain, according to Frederick, was an assemblage of
'contradictory virtues' ('Principes G6n6raux', 1748, Oeuvres, XXVIII,
39) - a man of honesty and a consummate deceiver, sparing his
soldiers at one moment, and expending their blood at the next, and
somebody who could establish the relationship between great affairs
and the tiny details of which they were composed.
The fundamental military prerequisite of courage was of more
than one kind. An instinctive bravery was appropriate to the soldier,
but something more reflective ought to inspire the officer. Great
leaders like Caesar, Conde and Charles XII were spurred on by an
obsessive love of glory. 'Such are the different instincts which lead
men into danger. There is nothing inherently attractive or pleasant
about that state, but you hardly think of the risk once you are in
action' (to Voltaire, 28 April 1759, Oeuvres, XXIII, 40).
In battle Frederick himself was a stranger to the icy detachment
of the archetypal nineteenth-century commander, smoking his cigar
on the Feldherrnhugel, as Augstein has pointed out. The king was
highly receptive to the impressions of the moment (a characteristic
he probably inherited from his mother), and often his eye was caught
by the incidental details of combat - the moments of tragedy, and the
episodes of dearly-bought comedy. A succession of untoward events
would arouse him to a pitch of excitement in which the impulse to
rush forward, colour in hand, was at one with the urge to betake
himself to the rear in despair. One of his aides commented: