309 FREDERICK AND WARIn its essence, the Oblique Order was the bringing together of a
powerful concentration of force against a chosen sector of the enemy
line. This tactic had been employed by Epaminondas when he de-
feated the Spartan army at Leuctra in 371 BC, and it fired the
imagination of military men anew when the early modern world
rediscovered the literature of anitquity. Montecuccoli, Folard and
others explored this idea in their writings, and very likely the Old
Dessauer conveyed the basics to Frederick when the Crown Prince
stood under his military tutelage.
The germs of the Frederician Oblique Order are already present in
two of the'Seelowitz Instructions'of March 1742 ('Instruction fur die
Cavallerie', 17 March, Oeuvres, XXX, 33;'Disposition fur die sammt-
lichen Regimenter Infanterie', 25 March, Oeuvres, XXX, 75), though
there remains some doubt as to when Frederick began to put the
notion into practice. The historians of the German General Staff
maintained that Frederick explored the Oblique Order in a serious
way only after the Second Silesian War, and that he did not give it full
effect until the battles of 1757. The limited definitions and time-scale
of the Staff Historians were, however, disputed by Otto Herrmann,
who claimed that the king had sought to employ the Oblique Order at
Mollwitz and Chotusitz. With perhaps more detail and conviction,
Rudolf Keibel made the same contention on behalf of Frederick at
Hohenfriedeberg (Gr. Gstb., 1890-3, I, Part 1, 163; Urkundliche Beit-
rage, XXVII, 278-84; Herrmann, 1892 and 1894, passim; Keibel, 1899
and 1901, passim).
The details of the thing certainly underwent some refinement. In
the innocent 1740s it was still possible for Frederick to believe that the
enemy could be dislodged simply by the moral effect of marching at
him with shouldered muskets. At that time the Austrians seldom
stood their ground. The advance with levelled bayonets appears to
have been introduced in 1753 - 'a heroic evolution which presents a
coup de thMtre unparalleled in the art of war' (Berenhorst, 1798-9,1,
246). However, the very heavy Prussian casualties at Prague in 1757
were directly attributed to the fact that the infantry had marched
into the teeth of the Austrian batteries without opening fire, and
thereafter firepower began to assume a much higher place in
Frederick's scheme of things.
What were the ingredients of the fully-fledged Oblique Order?
First came a lengthy march which was prosecuted overnight or from
the early hours of the morning, and which was designed to place the
army in an advantageous attacking position on the enemy flank or
rear. Napoleon deplored such movements across the front of the
hostile army, but here Frederick was using the strength of the oppos-
ing positions to his own advantage, for the more advantageously the