111 THE SEVEN YEARS WAR, 1756-63(Kalkreuth, 1840, II, 126). The historian Delbriick suggests that if
Frederick had not delayed he could have brought between seventy
and eighty thousand men into Bohemia by the middle of August,
followed by thirty or forty thousand more after Pirna had fallen
(Delbriick, 1890, 32-6; Delbruck, 1892, 10-11; Lehmann, 1894, 80-2).
Now the Austrians were in the war with their forces intact, and
they were able to exploit the Prussian breach of the peace by conclud-
ing their offensive alliances with the Russians and the French.
Frederick described the campaign of 1756 as 'setting out the pieces in a
game of chess' (PC 8255). It was more like the opening of a cage of
lions.
'To read the newspapers you might think that a pack of kings and
princes was bent on hunting me down like a stag, and that they were
inviting their friends to the chase.' So Frederick described the state of
affairs to Wilhelmine on 7 Februaiy 1757, by which time the allies
were concerting their plans for military operations against Prussia.
The king nevertheless added: 'As for myself I am absolutely deter-
mined not to oblige them in this respect. In fact, I am confident that I
am the one who will be doing the hunting' (PC 8580).
The design of Frederick's spoiling attack in Bohemia in the spring
of 1757 was to exert a particular fascination for German historians at
the end of the nineteenth century. Some of them perceived the spirit
of Napoleon and von Moltke the Elder in the way Frederick brought to-
gether converging forces to effect a powerful concentration of troops
deep in enemy land, and then (engaged the foe in a decisive battle (e.g.
Caemmerer, 1883, 4-6; Malachowski, 1892, 348-9; Gr. Gstb., 1901-14,
II, 150-4; Koser, 1904a, 248; Koser, 1904b, 7-A). The heroic simplici-
ties of this concept were, however, brought into some doubt by Hans
Delbriick and his school, who drew attention to Frederick's frequent
changes of mind, and the extent to which his strategy fell short of the
ideal of'overthrow' (Delbruck, 1892, 9-41; Delbruck, 1904a, 69).
It was probably not until the second half of March that Frederick
could be reasonably confident that the French were as yet unready to
take an immediate part in operations, and that he therefore had
several weeks at his command in which he could devote his almost
undivided attention to the Austrians. In the meantime he kept open a
number of options, ranging from proposals for a vigorous attack into
Bohemia, to various schemes for waiting for the enemy on the near
side of the border hills.
Frederick debated the practicability of the possible strategies
with Lieutenant-General Winterfeldt and the seventy-two-year-old
Field-Marshal Schwerin. On 19 March Winterfeldt focused
Frederick's attention on the central issue, which was the danger of