293 FREDERICK AND WARFrom the pen of Frederick we know of the limiting effects
produced at this period by the cost of the great standing armies, and
the working of the balance of power (see p. 288). With specific
reference to the conduct of the Seven Years War the veteran Warneiy
adds:
The allies left Poland at Frederick's disposal, and this country
furnished him with an abundance of recruits, horses, cattle and
cereals. Every winter they allowed him the time to restore his
army, and the Austrians, instead of harassing him at that
season, concluded various conventions which all worked to his
advantage. Moreover, the enemy corps which penetrated to
Berlin and Potsdam only went through the motions of ruining
the factories that produced the weapons and other
commodities. (Warnery, 1788, 535)Nor should the narrow and shaky foundations of the coalition be
overlooked, or the lack of single-mindedness with which the com-
batants pursued their aims. Austria and France disliked the thought
of Russia intervening in Central Europe as a full belligerent power.
They were anxious lest the Russians should establish themselves
permanently in East Prussia, and with the support of the Saxon-Polish
authorities they dissuaded the Russians from taking the free city of
Danzig by force of arms - a venture that would have greatly allevi-
ated the supply problems of the Russian army (e.g. Briihl to Riesedel,
21 December 1760, in Briihl, 1854, 169).
Such political and grand-strategic limitations as these by no
means excluded a lively conduct of the actual campaigns. In this
respect the Seven Years War was different in kind from anything that
Europe had experienced before (Pauli, 1758-64, IV, 303-4). Lossow
drew attention to the forced marches, the winter campaigns, and to
the bloodiness of the battles even in Napoleonic perspective (Lossow,
1826, 10), and Christian Heinrich von Westphalen, secretary to
Ferdinand of Brunswick, believed he could detect the consequence of
the massing of the rival armies on the north German plain, as
compared with the more dispersed operations in earlier wars. 'But
this higher rate of activity is not simply the result of the working of
numbers and the constriction of space. It also derives from changes in
the conduct of war, which in turn may be ascribed to refinements in
the military art, and the particular genius of the commanders'
(Westphalen, 1859-72, I, 131-2).
No direct relationship exists between the degree of humanity
with which a war is waged and the totality of the conflict. Indeed,
some of the most 'limited' wars are the dirtiest of all. It is therefore a
matter of no great consequence that the celebrated 'politeness' and