335 FREDERICK AND WARThe following words were penned by the dark, tyrannical Old
Fritz of the period after the Seven Years War:
As for the soldiers, all you can do is to imbue them with esprit
de corps, in other words the conviction that their regiment is
better than all the other regiments in the universe. It sometimes
happens that the officers must lead them into considerable
danger, and since ambition can exert no influence on the men,
they must be made to fear their officers more than the perils to
which they are exposed, otherwise nobody would be able to
make them attack into a storm of missiles thundering from
three hundred cannon. Good will can never motivate common
men in dangers of this order - we must resort to force.
(Testament Politique', 1768, Frederick, 1920, 147)The well-known brutalities were, however, just one element
among many in Frederick's relations with his soldiers. Frederick
knew that the life of his men was one of ill-rewarded danger and
privation, and he was ready to take issue with Quintus Icilius,
Voltaire, Guibert or anybody else who made light of their endurance
and courage.
In his last illness, Frederick told Dr Zimmermann:
In the course of my campaigns all my orders relating to the care
of the sick and wounded soldiers have been veiy badly observed.
Nothing in my life has occasioned me more chagrin than when I
have seen that those brave men, who offered up their health
and life so bravely for the fatherland, had their diseases and
wounds so wretchedly attended to. They have often been
treated barbarously, and many a poor soldier has died from lack
of proper care. (Zimmermann, 1788, 124-5; see also PC 9839)There is no reason why we should not take Frederick at his word. In
1788 Warnery occasioned great offence when he asserted that
Frederick had deliberately allowed many wounded soldiers to die of
infection when their lives might have been saved by amputations.
The king was thereby supposed to have spared the state of maintain-
ing cripples after the war (Warnery, 1788, 430). This suggestion was
indignantly refuted by the first royal Chirurgus Theden, who pointed
out that Frederick valued conservative treatments for their own sake.
He described how after the battle of Chotusitz the king had seen a
number of company Feldscherer clustered around an interesting
amputation that was in progress. He was repelled by their ghoulish-
ness, and exclaimed: 'Oh you utter shits!' (Nicolai, 1788-92, III, 337).
Unfortunately, this same squeamishness, together with
Frederick's inability to work cordially with experts of any kind, held