328 FREDERICK AND WAR1748, Oeuvres, XXVIII, 43). In 1745 he lured the Austro-Saxon army
from the hills by a feigned retreat and drew it into the strategic
ambush of Hohenfriedeberg. In 1758 he matched his wits with Daun,
who was a man as wily as himself, and he got his army into Moravia,
and successfully out again, by giving deceptive signals as to his
designs. A great number of devices lay at Frederick's disposal for this
kind of work - double spies, planted messages, showy concentrations
of troops or transport, or simply the way he arranged his forces in
camp ('Castram6trie', 1770, Oeuvres, XXIX, 46).
All of this might encourage one to read into the eighteenth
century the degree of responsiveness that was made possible by the
technology and disciplines of the twentieth century. We must there-
fore return to the question of control, which we have already ex-
plored with respect to Frederick as the manager of the bureaucracy,
and Frederick the designer of battle tactics. How effective was it
possible for our hero to be in the present context, as strategist and
commander in the field?
Frederick liked to appear as a creature that was omnicompetent,
infallible and invulnerable. That was why the people who knew the
king best were hesitant to approach him when they saw that he was
in a condition that threatened his self-esteem. In the manoeuvres at
Neisse in 1769 Seydlitz happened to see Frederick's horse give a shake
and dump its royal master on the ground. The animal ran away but
Seydlitz told his regimental surgeon to take no notice. 'So it was that
the king stood on his own two feet for near a quarter of an hour,
gazing impassively through his telescope at the movements of the
troops. Seydlitz meanwhile looked to one side, as if he had observed
nothing of what had happened to Frederick' (Nicolai, 1788-92, IV, 57;
see also Zimmermann, 1788, 37).
Frederick came closest to the vision of the totalitarian master
when he functioned as grand strategist, the maker of war and peace.
Here he reaped the full reward of his stripped-down way of life. He
repulsed, in the most brutal terms, every opinion that his ministers
dared to venture on strategic affairs (PC 9, 26661). He was not
distracted, like Maria Theresa, by child-rearing, court ceremonies, or
baroque religious observances. He did not make the rounds of the
Seven Holy Tombs on Good Friday. Nor was he entangled by any sense
of obligation to deserving generals or statesmen. In the winter of
1760/1, when the courts of Vienna, St Petersburg and Paris were
engaged in anxious debate on the coming campaign, Frederick's
confidant d'Argens was amused to find the king sitting on the floor of
his quarters in Leipzig, dividing his dogs' evening meal with his stick,
with an air of apparently total unconcern (Nicolai, 1788-92, I, 46).
Once the campaigning seasons began, Frederick entered an en-