320 FREDERICK AND WARwas still a man of the mid-eighteenth century. In 1761 he had
encountered a jaeger lurking in the Nonnen-Busch, just outside the
Bunzelwitz camp. The jaeger explained that he had been wounded in
the arm by an Austrian, and that he was waiting to exact his revenge:
Frederick was extremely angry and he replied: 'You ought to be
ashamed of yourself! Do you want to be a highwayman,
skulking in a ditch! Come out into the open and behave
properly, like a Brandenburger and a real soldier!' (Hildebrandt,
1829-35, IV, 61)
The fluid, swift-moving and aggressive action of well-trained
cavalry appealed mightily to Frederick's instincts. After the experi-
ences at Mollwitz he made it one of his first concerns to create a force
that had the will to carry through an attack upon every occasion
without the slightest hesitation. He remarked before the Seven Years
War: 'They were besotted with the idea of firing off their pistols. I
finally had to make some straw dummies, and I was able to show
them that all their pistol shots missed, whereas they cut down every
single figure with their swords' (D. de G., 1767, 28-9). Eventually
regiments like the Rochow Cuirassiers at Kolin were capable of
attacking at a long gallop over a distance of 1,500 paces. Against
infantry the Prussian horse advanced en muraille, in a solid wall. The
formations for cavalry combat were more flexible, and able comman-
ders (like Driesen at Leuthen, or Seydlitz at Zorndorf) sought to gain
the enemy flank.
What made Frederick's cavalry better than that of all the other
armies? In the first place he owed a great deal to some gifted comman-
ders, among whom we must number people like Wartenberg, Driesen,
'Green' Kleist, Platen, Belling and Werner as well as the famous
names of Zieten and Seydlitz. Individual regiments, like the Gens
d'armes and the Bayreuth Dragoons, became models of excellence,
and the headquarters of the Seydlitz (formerly Rochow) Cuirassiers
at Ohlau was revered as the spiritual home of the European cavalry.
Frederick's cavalry was brought together in large bodies in peace-
time much more frequently than the Austrian or Russian counter-
parts, and the sense of cohesion was further promoted by the cross-
posting of officers. These circumstances made it possible for the
salutary influence of the hussar service to be felt among the dragoons
(medium cavalry) and the cuirassiers (heavy, armoured cavalry).
These hussars were exceptionally versatile and dangerous folk, and
one of their veterans wrote: 'The Seydlitz Cuirassiers may serve as an
example to the cavalry of the rest of the world, and yet General
Seydlitz himself, who was a great man, and my friend, confessed to
me... that on a march of any duration he could not guarantee to