27 THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5and sounding music to the town square, where they deposited their
arms.
Unaccountably, Colonel Wilhelm von Roth, although one of the
few Lutherans in the Austrian employ, refused to surrender the size-
able fortress-town of Neisse nearby. This was an embarrassment, for
Neisse stood close to the passes with Moravia, and it might offer the
Austrians a strategic bridgehead for an eventual counter-offensive
into Silesia. Formal siege was unthinkable at this wintry season, and
'a bombardment is the only thing worth attempting - the place is a
nest of Papists, and there are not many troops inside' (Gr. Gstb.,
1890-3, I, 268). Cold shot, red-hot shot (heated in the local brick-
works) and mortar bombs rained down on the town until 22 January,
when the enterprise was abandoned as useless. This was to be far from
the last time that an Austrian stronghold put a term to a run of
Prussian successes in the open field, and it revealed an important
shortcoming in the proficiency of Frederick's army.
It was high time to think of giving the troops some shelter and
rest. In his Principes GenSraux de la Guerre (1748) Frederick con-
demned winter campaigns 'as being the most pernicious of all opera-
tions of war'. They spread sickness among the troops, and they
deprived the monarch of the opportunity of recruiting and re-
equipping the army for the next campaign. However, Frederick
always considered his Silesian operation of 1740-1 as fully justified,
for if he had waited for the spring 'it would then have taken me
perhaps three or four hard-fought campaigns to acquire what I could
now obtain simply by marching into Silesia' ('Principes G6n6raux',
Oeuvres, XXVIII, 93).
Frederick left blockading forces around the Austrian garrisons at
Glogau, Neisse and the upper Oder fortress of Brieg. He entrusted
Schwerin with the command in Silesia, and commissioned him to
sweep the tiny remnant of the Austrian field forces out of Troppau
and into the Moravian border hills. The rest of the Prussian troops
were quartered in the Silesian towns and villages, and Frederick set
out for Berlin on 25 January.
There has been an inclination among some historians to ask
whether Frederick's theft of Silesia was particularly noteworthy or
reprehensible. Gerhard Ritter claims that the moral indignation on
this head was 'conditioned by Europe's much later experiences of the
military energy of the Prussian state' (Ritter, 1954, I, 31). Likewise
Hans Bleckwenn, in correspondence with the present author, has
suggested that we should place the episode alongside the colonial
aggressions of the British that were going ahead in the same period.
No doubt there is little to choose in the matter of moral probity
between Frederick and the other high-minded gentry who were bent