66 THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5Frederick then had the trophies set up in his room while all the
kettle-drummers continued to thunder away.
The Prussians gained some idea of the magnitude of their victoiy
after all the prizes and wounded had been gathered up, the dead
buried, and the armies of prisoners counted. In most of Frederick's
battles the Prussians usually lost more men than the enemy, regard-
less of which side had won, but at Hohenfriedeberg the terrible lists
represented a balance in their favour of nearly three to one. The total
allied losses amounted to about 13,800 men, of whom 3,120 had been
killed, and the Prussians had bought their victoiy with 4,751 casual-
ties, including 905 dead (Keibel, 1899, 438).
We do not know whether all of this won any merit in the next
world; Hohenfriedeberg certainly earned the Prussians few friends in
the present one. The Austrians were determined to renew the fight at
a favourable opportunity, for 'it is characteristic of the court of
Vienna that it is puffed up by the slightest success, yet never deflated
by misfortunes' (Valori, 1820, I, 211). The Saxons bore their grudge
into the next war, when their ciy 'Dies ist fur Striegau!' recalled not
only the massacre at Hohenfriedeberg, but the ordeal of their survi-
vors in the following weeks, when they were starved and beaten until
they donned the uniforms of the Prussians. Trooper Nicolaus Stephan
of the regiment of Maffei was one of those who managed to escape. A
Saxon clerk duly entered the report: 'The said carabinier is willing to
do further duty. He declares he would more willingly serve the King of
Poland for twenty years than the King of Prussia for one' (Hoffmann,
1903, 45).Shortly after the battle the Austrians and Saxons fell back into
Bohemia unmolested. No single convincing reason has ever been put
forward to explain why Frederick did not launch an effective pursuit.
At various times he spoke or wrote about his inexperience in manag-
ing that kind of operation, or the difficulty of replenishing the army
in bread and ammunition with a transport train that had still hot
recovered from the ravages of 1744. The battle of Hohenfriedeberg
had saved Silesia. The enemy were beaten, but not destroyed. It was
not within the power of this victory to flatten the Bohemian hills,
over which we had to carry the provisions for the army' (Oeuvres, III,
120). More relevant, perhaps, is the possibility that Frederick failed to
appreciate the resilience of the Austrians, and the changes which had
taken place in the character of warfare since 1742, when the single
battle of Chotusitz had been enough to bring the enemy to terms.
In the weeks after Hohenfriedeberg Frederick confined himself
veiy narrowly to one militaiy objective: 'My intention in this cam-
paign was to live at the expense of the enemy, eating up and