49 THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5houses of Liechtenstein and Esterhazy. Frederick described the army
shut up in Prague in 1757 as 'that Austrian race of princes and rabble'
(PC 8983).
Conversely the Austrians derided the apparently mindless obedi-
ence of the Prussian officers, and their conscientious wearing of the
regulation uniforms, which smacked to them of servants' livery
(Mansel, 1982, 110). Chancellor Kaunitz deplored the inhumanity of
the Prussian system of forcible recruiting, and the theme was taken
up by a publicist who claimed:
The Prussian soldier is in every regard a wretched creature...
The officer exercises an unlimited despotic power over him...
In Berlin you have a certain General Lettow. I remember him as
a colonel in Frankenstein when I saw him smash in six of the
teeth of an old grenadier with his stick, simply because the man
could not hold his head as straight as Herr Obrist demanded.
(Anon. Zehn Briefe, 1784c, 60-2)The quarrel was given coherence and personification by the
natures of the rival sovereigns. By 1742 Frederick had come to appreci-
ate that he was no longer struggling with the corpse of Emperor
Charles VI but with the new leader of the House of Habsburg, the
queen and archduchess Maria Theresa. She was of the same genera-
tion and spirit as Frederick, but she resembled him in no other
particular. While Fritz conserved and expanded his domains as a base
of power, Maria Theresa regarded her inheritance as a sacred and
inalienable family trust. Where Frederick gave the appearance of
being trenchant and cool, Maria Theresa was intuitive, almost 'bio-
logical', and concerned to soften the asperities of Enlightenment
reform by ordinary human considerations. For the image of Frederick,
thelelf-proclaimed 'first master of the state', Maria Theresa substi-
tuted a concept of herself as the head of an extended family, the
'mother of her dominions'.
Frederick knew that Prussia could not stay out of the war for very
long. His ambitions were unfulfilled, his suspicions as lively as ever.
Meanwhile the Austrian counter-offensive against his former allies
was gathering further force. It cleared Bohemia, eliminated Bavaria
from the strategic map, and ultimately threatened the borders of
France.
Meanwhile the interlude of peace gave Frederick time to put his
army in order. At Mollwitz and Chotusitz the infantry had rescued
him from his own miscalculations, and more than compensated for
the failings of the other arms. No great change was required here. The
Infantry Regulations of 1 June 1743 therefore amounted to little more