254 IN SEARCH OF OLD FRITZ^254
coronation, on 18 January, but as soon as possible thereafter he stole
back to his winter palace, the Potsdam Schloss. Here he spent the
month of February, drawing up the schemes for the coming reviews.
His favourite room was a strategically placed chamber at the south-
east corner, which gave him prospects over the Havel bridge, the
Lustgarten and the tree under which his petitioners took their
station.
The military year opened in May, with the reviews of the
regiments of the Berlin, Potsdam and neighbouring garrisons, which
were usually held in the Berlin Thiergarten or on the plain outside
Charlottenburg. As in the previous reign, the narrowly focused
"special reviews' enabled the king to make an informed assessment of
the quality of his troops:
It is incredible with what accuracy and minute attention he did
examine them, the colonel of the regiment walking along with
him, to answer any question and hear his directions and
remarks. By this exactness he not only knows the condition of
the army in general, but the appearance, degree of discipline
and strength of each regiment. (Moore, 1779, II, 135)
The 'general reviews' were grander assemblies of mixed arms, and
culminated in a three-day exercise staged outside Berlin in the third
week of May.
Immediately the Berlin reviews were over, Frederick betook
himself to the similar gatherings in Pomerania and outside Magde-
burg. In the middle of June the king was back at Potsdam to fix the
state budget for the coming financial year. He counted the next two
months as a holiday to be spent at Sans Souci, and then in the middle
of August he departed for the extremely important manoeuvres in
Silesia. These were intended to educate the officers and generals, and
the scale of the forces and the element of contest brought these
exercises much closer to reality than did the spring reviews.
The Silesian manoeuvres rival the campaigns of the Seven Years
War as a source of anecdote. There were the blistering messages
addressed to individuals as august as old Tauentzien, the inspector of
the Silesian infantry. There were displays of physical violence, which
might lead to Frederick chasing an officer through the ranks with
raised stick. There were the brutal terminations of long military
careers.
On 20 September or thereabouts the regiments of the capital and
the residence assembled for the final event of the military career, the
Potsdam manoeuvres. Frederick made this gathering an occasion for
celebrations, and he summoned all the generals to table at the Neues
Palais. The ensuing evolutions, however, were secret and experi-