306 FREDERICK AND WAR
seemed to be happening (PC 12345, 13332; Stille, 1764, 191; Mitchell,
1850, I, 359).
The greater part of Frederick's instructions to his generals were
concerned not with battles or the higher reaches of strategy, but with
the routine of feeding, moving and encamping the army.
Whereas the historian can cover the campaigns in superficial
narrative sweeps, Frederick had to ensure that the army could be fed
from one day to the next. The question of fodder had an important
strategic dimension, as we have seen. As for feeding the men, the king
never allowed himself to be bound by a rigid system of magazines and
convoys. To save time he sometimes took the risk of dispatching the
bakery, the supply train and the pontoons ahead of the army to the
intended destination. Likewise, when he was executing his rapid
marches across the northern plain, he sent word to the commandants
of the Elbe or Oder fortresses to have flour, transport and other
commodities ready for his use as he hurried by.
The normal marching formation of the army comprised an ad-
vance guard, the four columns of the main force, and a rearguard. The
advance guard was a corps of picked troops, mostly hussars and
grenadiers, and Major-General Yorke explains that this formation
had a special place in Old Fritz's scheme of things. In most localities
the people were against him, and furnished him with no news of the
whereabouts of the enemy:
He has no remedy for this but to push large corps of troops
forward as near the enemy as possible in order to see with his
own eyes their positions. For this purpose, in the beginning of
the campaign, he names a certain number of battalions and
squadrons... which form the vanguard of the army, and with
whom he marches in person. This force is sufficient to enable
him to maintain a post till his army can join him, and in the
meantime he makes himself master of the advantages and
disadvantages of the country round about him. (Yorke, 1913,
III, 224)During his marches Frederick sought as much as possible to avoid
woodland, to minimise the dangers of desertion and being shot up by
the Croats, but the cross-country mobility of his army was a remark-
able one, as will be noticed by anybody who has tried to follow his
tracks for any distance on the ground today. Tempelhoff remarks: 'I
took part... in all the campaigns of the Seven Years War, and yet I
never saw the Prussians deterred by the badness of the roads' (Tem-
pelhoff, 1783-1801, I, 135-6). If all the roads were poor, then any one
route was as good as any other. River crossings occasioned little