330 FREDERICK AND WAR
intentionally, as at Torgau, or under force of circumstances as at
Chotusitz. At Mollwitz, Lobositz and Torgau the king absented
himself from the field before the action was over. At Kolin the
character of the battle changed fundamentally once the Prussian
army got engaged in the frontal attack: 'Then the combat became
general, and what was most annoying of all was that I was reduced to
the role of spectator, not having a single uncommitted battalion at
my disposal' (Oeuvres, IV, 129). The day of Prague was notable for
the fact that the high command on both sides was rendered literally
hors de combat. Browne and Schwerin were struck down by gunfire in
the early stages; Prince Charles of Lorraine was in the grips of a
psychosomatic seizure, and King Frederick, who was afflicted with
gastric trouble, exerted little discernible influence on the train of
terrible events.
Inevitably, when we turn to Frederick's relations with his officers, we
touch not only on the life of the Frederician army but the collapse of
the post-Frederician state in 1806-7. This happening was associated
with a divorce between the ruling circles and the rest of society, and
with a failure of military leadership. It is not too much to say that the
battles of the Silesian Wars and the first campaigns of the Seven Years
War were won by generals who had been trained up in the reign of
Frederick William I, and that Jena-Auerstedt was lost by the generals
of Frederick the Great.
We come first to the charge of social exclusivity. Frederick
certainly maintained that the officer corps was the preserve of the
nobility, and he largely banned the middle classes (between 5 and 10
per cent of the population) from the holding of commissioned rank.
Prince Henry, who moved in intellectual circles, told his brother as
early as 1753 that dangerous social divisions were resulting from the
practice of holding all but the military aristocracy at a distance from
the spiritual life of the state (Herrmann, 1922, 261).
The injustice of the thing was not so evident to Frederick or his
admirers. In Austria, the standing of the army suffered from the fact
that many of the higher aristocracy disdained to commit themselves
to a military career. In Prussia, on the other hand, not a little of the
prestige of the service derived from the connection that Frederick so
sedulously maintained between military obligation and the social
privileges of the nobility.
It was the cult of honour which, in Frederick's view, made the
aristocracy so valuable an asset for the army: 'In general terms, the
noble has no career open to him but to distinguish himself by the
sword. If he forfeits his honour, he is denied refuge even in his
paternal house ... A commoner, on the other hand, may indulge in