How have the theories of Carl Von Clausewitz and/or Henri Jomini influenced the birth of combined arms warfare? In your conclusion, suggest the significance to today’s military professional.

Luvaas, Jay. “Frederick the Great: The Education of a Great Captain.” In The John Biggs Cincinnati Lectures in Military Leadership and Command 1986. Edited by Henry S. Bausum, 23–37. Lexington, VA: The VMI Foundation, 1986. Reprinted with permission of the Society for Military History. CGSC Copyright Registration #18-0238 E

Frederick the Great: The Education of a Great Captain

by Jay Luvaas

In mid-December 1740, King Frederick II of Prussia crossed the frontier into the Austrian province of Silesia at the head of nearly thirty thousand troops, “with colours flying, and drums beating.” “My troops are in good spirits,” he wrote that same day,

the officers full of ambition, and the generals thirsting for fame; I will perish or gain glory from this enterprise. . . . I shall not return to Berlin without having shown myself worthy of the race . . . and of the brave soldiers whom I lead.1

Frederick was then twenty-eight years of age; he had been king a scant six months; never before had he commanded troops in war, and—except for the contingent of ten thousand men sent to the Imperial Army commanded by Prince Eugene in the lackluster campaign of 1735–36—it had been a quarter of a century since Prussian soldiers had marched into battle.

Five years later Frederick emerged from the Silesian Wars with a string of stunning military victories to his credit and all of his war aims achieved. Henceforth he was to be known as Frederick the Great.

How did this young and relatively inexperienced king outmarch, outfight, outmaneuver, and outwit veteran generals? Aside from any inherent moral qualities essential to success in war—and Clausewitz specifies boldness, perseverance, physical and moral courage, and determination2—what military education and limited experience in his formative years prepared Frederick to command successfully in the field?

Frederick was born to be a soldier. At least he was born a prince, and family tradition, Prussian state interests, and the lifestyle of the king would permit no other course. “For God’s sake . . . keep up the army . . . and make it more formidable,” Frederick William I had warned the young prince when he was but nine years old, and from the first Frederick’s education was basically a military one. Old Frederick William specified that his son should be taught to be an officer and a general: mathematics thus became the study of fortifications, rhetoric was the ability to express himself clearly before his army; he was to live simply and frugally. The king believed that Frederick’s mind could be maneuvered like a regiment, and he chose as tutors for the crown prince men who had distinguished themselves as soldiers.

We need not recount in any detail the measures taken to prepare young Fritz for his destined role. The story of his unhappy youth is a familiar one and is featured in every biography—how his coarse, ill-tempered father needlessly tormented, disciplined, and humiliated him, denying him even the enjoyment of music and books, and especially of anything that smacked of French culture; how Frederick

at age eighteen attempted to flee his country (and his responsibilities) only to be apprehended, imprisoned, and forced one terrible day to witness the beheading of his closest friend for his part in the desperate venture; and finally, how Frederick eventually submitted—outwardly at least—to his father’s will and seriously attempted to become a good administrator and soldier, if not a good Christian in the Calvinist sense of the term. We are concerned here with the military education of the prince as well as the psychological effects on his youth as they relate to his fitness for command. For as Frederick himself has stated, “impressions which one receives in childhood cannot be erased from the soul.”3

When he was six years of age, Frederick was given a company of cadets—all six-year-olds—and a seventeen-year-old drill master to learn military exercises. In two years young Frederick had progressed to the point where he himself could put the other boys through their paces. When King George I of England paid a royal visit to Berlin in 1723, he was treated to the spectacle of Frederick, dressed in a miniature Prussian uniform, drilling his cadet company with “clear voice, military sharpness, and the precision of clock work.”4 For his ninth birthday, the king gave his son a little arsenal, where under the supervision of still another veteran soldier be could bang away with some small brass guns. Young Frederick was also dragged along on his father’s hunting expeditions and the annual military reviews, and he spent each day following a strict military routine. His tutors were all veteran soldiers who had distinguished themselves during the War of the Spanish Succession: obviously their purpose was to serve as role models, seeing to it that the young prince would develop an acceptable degree of manliness and, to quote from their instructions, “a true love for the soldier business.”5

The formal side of Frederick’s education was entrusted to still another soldier, the son of a French refugee who had caught the king’s eye for bravery under fire at the siege of Stralsund. “It is rare that one takes a tutor from a trench,” Frederick once commented; it was rarer still that one would have found a man of Duhan’s enlightened outlook and accomplishments in the Prussian officer corps of that day, for Duhan, not content to force his pupil to learn by rote certain works as a means of training his memory, undertook to cultivate Frederick’s ability to reason.

At the age of fourteen Frederick became a captain and soon afterwards a major in the Potsdam Grenadier Guards, known to history as the famous “Regiment of Giants.” No longer was he drilling little boys; now when he led his battalion to the muster he commanded the tallest and most magnificent soldiers that his father could recruit or kidnap anywhere in Europe. But by this time Frederick was in revolt: he much preferred the company of “men who knew something” in the field of music and philosophy to the coarse officers he was forced to associate with at Potsdam. He also had set aside his miniature military drum for the flute. As the Austrian ambassador reported to his government in 1725, the desire of the king to induce Frederick “to prefer military science to all other knowledge, to learn frugality and self-denial” was “contrary to the inclinations of the crown prince” and would in time “have precisely a contrary effect.”6

The king’s solution was about what one would expect of a drill sergeant. He fired Duhan, Frederick’s favorite tutor, and replaced him with a one-legged veteran of Marlborough’s campaigns who could be depended upon to pay stricter attention to the prince’s military education, and he appointed four other officers to keep constant tab on Frederick and report any excess or irregularity. The king never hesitated to beat his son, by this time a colonel, in front of other officers, and in desperation Frederick attempted to escape in 1730 by fleeing to England. He was caught, court martialed for desertion, and imprisoned at the fortress of Custrin for three months. For a while it even appeared that Frederick’s life hung in the balance.

It was a different Frederick who emerged from prison, after taking an oath to obey his father’s orders. For the next fifteen months he was confined to the town of Custrin where, as an auditor in the Chamber of War and Administration, he became familiar with the administrative details of Prussian finance and commerce. Once the king was convinced that Frederick’s conversion was genuine, he allowed him to

wear his uniform once again. Eventually he restored Frederick’s rank and gave him command of an infantry regiment.

Frederick worked diligently at his new duties. “I have just drilled, I drill, I shall drill,” he conjugated in one letter, adding however that “I would rather drill here from dawn to dusk than live as a rich man at Berlin.” (What he may have been saying is that he preferred the drill ground to living with the unattractive wife he had married to please his father!) Frederick mastered the drill regulations, introduced the latest improvements from the parade ground at Potsdam, and when the king reviewed the regiment he found it in first-rate shape. He rewarded Frederick in 1734 by promoting him to the rank of major general. Clearly Frederick had mastered the details of military drill, discipline, and administration. This did not, however, complete his military education, for as Frederick observed years later, peace was an exercise whereas “war must be a study.” Mere routine causes many soldiers to be preoccupied “with trifling matters and rusted by gross ignorance.”

Instead of soaring audaciously among the clouds, such men know only how to crawl methodically in the mire. They are never perplexed and will never know the causes of their triumphs or defeats.7

Frederick’s first chance to soar came in 1734, when he accompanied the Prussian troops sent to reinforce the Imperial Army, under Prince Eugene of Savoy, during the War of the Polish Succession. It was not much of a war and Frederick saw no fighting, but he did become acquainted with the details of siege warfare and he learned a great deal about the practical problems of maintaining an army in the field. He saw troops building fascines, throwing up redoubts, and guarding outposts. He conversed daily with the commander of the Prussian contingent and was privy to all of his decisions and problems. He probably gained some appreciation for the unforeseen difficulties in logistics and, with an eye on the future, he doubtless made mental notes of the deficiencies of the Austrian army. In this sense, at least, the Rhineland campaign was indeed “a school where profit may be reaped.”8

But mostly he learned from his frequent conversations with Prince Eugene, a veteran of thirty-one campaigns and the most celebrated commander of his day. Frederick was delighted to have this opportunity to learn about the business of war while he was still young enough “to become a military student.” He was twenty-one; at thirty, he feared,

one no longer has the disposition for learning, and such a business as that of war deserves something better than the application of old age. The soldier must be reared and nourished, and practical experience, premature rather than late, should be his teacher.9

Although old and somewhat feeble, and aware always of the advantage in cultivating a prince who stood near to the throne, Prince Eugene shared his political and military views with the eager young apprentice. He urged Frederick to study the history of earlier campaigns and to try always to place himself in his opponent’s shoes. Later, when advising his own officers to study Prince Eugene’s campaigns, Frederick told them:

Whoever reads the campaigns of Prince Eugene must not limit himself to memorizing his military exploits. He must work hard mainly to examine thoroughly his overall views and particularly to learn how to think in the same way.10

Frederick returned from the Rhine campaign determined to increase his army once he became king.11

Probably the most important part of Frederick’s military education before 1740 came from books. While works on military history and the art of war did not occupy a prominent position either on his

library shelves or in his reading habits, Frederick did become acquainted with many of the basic treaties in the field during his years of apprenticeship. His military library was not extensive—of 3,775 volumes that he owned in 1730, only 60 titles belonged to the military section—but it contained the basic sources which were more than enough to familiarize him with the duties of the military profession. He owned several works on the administrative and tactical duties of a commander, including Captain de la Mont, Les functions de tous les officers de l’infanterie depuis celle du Sergent jusques à celle du Colonel (Paris, 1669). Quite possibly the views Frederick expressed in later years on the need for better military education were influenced by de la Mont, who had been among the first to show interest in determining the principles of war and who recommended examinations for young military cadets and the establishment of tactical schools for officers.12

Frederick’s knowledge of fortification and siegecraft, which in the eighteenth century dominated the conduct of military operations, came principally from the works of de Coehorn and Vauban, and the Prince of Anhalt wrote, especially for the instruction of the future king, an account of the siege of Stralsund which provided “a detailed description of the manner in which a town should be besieged.”13 Frederick possessed and presumably read Blondel’s L’art de jeter les bombes (Amsterdam, 1699), and he obviously read his copy of the Marquis de Quincy, Histoire militaire du regne de Louis le Grand (Paris, 1726), since the wars of Louis XIV contained the most instructive examples of the military art. He later translated relevant portions of this work into German and distributed them among his officers. In his introduction to the extracts from de Quincy, Frederick made an effective case for military education.

Every art has its rules and maxims. One must study them: theory facilitates practice. The lifetime of one man is not long enough to enable him to acquire perfect knowledge and experience. Theory helps to supplement it, it provides a youth with premature experience and makes him skillful also through the mistakes of others. In the profession of war the rules of the art never are violated without drawing punishment from the enemy. . . . An officer can spare himself many mistakes by improving himself.14

Frederick also made a careful study of the military operations of Luxembourg and Turenne. He had a high opinion of Deschamps’s Mémoires de deux dernières campagnes de . . . Turennne en Allemagne (Paris, 1678) and the Marquis de Santa Cruz’s Réflexions militaires et politiques, which was translated from Spanish into French in 1735, although whether he had in fact read these particular works before becoming king is not known. The latter especially was intended for the budding general rather than the young officer, and, according to Frederick, its value was not so much that the campaigns described served as models but because they were treated in sufficient detail to enable the reader to detect the reasons for success and failure. Well over a century before Bismarck insisted that while fools learn by experience, he preferred to learn from the experience of others, Frederick was pointing out that “the mistakes of others enable us to acquire experience at their expense.”15

One work in particular influenced Frederick’s military thought as he was about to end his apprenticeship. In 1731 a new edition of the Marquis de Feuquières’s Mémoires sur la Guerre was published. The son of a distinguished French general during the Thirty Years’ War, Feuquières had served under Turenne, Catinat and his kinsman Luxembourg, during the course of an eventful military career that ended in 1687. When the War of the Spanish Succession broke out he had fallen from favor because of his criticisms of another French marshal, and he busied himself for the rest of his life preparing his memoirs, ostensibly for the instruction of his son but in reality to expose his opponents to scathing criticism.16 Given Frederick’s conviction that history could teach much “through the mistakes of others” and Feuquières’s delight in exposing errors of former comrades in arms, it is scarcely surprising that this work would have had “a marked and permanent effect upon Frederick.” When he became king he ordered that selections from Feuquières’s Mémoires be read to military cadets at mealtime, and during the

first Silesian war he bought up as many copies as he could find to distribute among the regiments with instructions to read the book “with diligence and meditation.”17

That harsh critic, the judicious Feuquières, has related minutely all the mistakes that generals committed in his day. He has . . . developed the anatomy of campaigns that he witnessed by showing the causes of success and the reasons for failure. He has indicated the road that must be followed if one desires to instruct himself, and by which researches the first truths, which are the basis of the art, are discovered.18

Even a casual reading of Feuquières’s Mémoires suggests why Frederick considered him “the preceptor of generals”: it must have been even more fruitful than conversations with Prince Eugene. Feuquières explored the secrets of generalship and the guiding military maxims of the day. He offered detailed commentary on military organization and the composition of armies, on the functions of command and the duties of every officer in the chain of command, on problems involved in formulating war plans, assembling and feeding of armies, and arranging for the different marches, encampments, and convoys. In brief, an officer like Frederick, who had never commanded a unit larger than a battalion and had scarcely been exposed to war, could learn from Feuquières much that he needed to know in order to prepare his army intelligently to take the field.

Many books contained this kind of information; what made Feuquières especially valuable was the wealth of experience that he brought to his discussion of war plans, offensive and defensive warfare, battles and encounters (it was considered a “battle” only when armies fought facing each other in regular array). Feuquières reflected on the need for secrecy and the kinds of knowledge that a general must have of the theater of war. He believed in the offensive as the strongest form of war and the easiest to be sustained. On the other hand, he impressed upon the reader the need to avoid any offensive war which, for lack of any decisive maneuver or battle, would lead to a war between equal powers and thus drag on inconclusively. The king, therefore, should neglect no opportunity to press for a favorable peace once his army had made initial conquests, and the field commander should never hesitate to bring on battle “if the enemy by some movement to put his forces together, places himself within range of risking an issue.” “A battle at the beginning of the war . . . nearly always decides its success.”19

Feuquières, however, did not necessarily believe that battles decide everything. Quite the contrary: “It is very dangerous to precipitate an action,” he warned, “when a little patience would create a reasonable hope of changing the form of war to advantage,”20 One can appreciate the impact that Feuquières’s treatment of the campaigns and battles from 1672 to 1709 must have had upon Frederick, convinced as he was that the best way to master the art of war was to study the mistakes of others. Feuquières had considered Turenne’s encounters at Mulhausen and Colmar as “great examples” to be studied and emulated. The military reader

will discover . . . every circumstance which a great captain can possibly conceive . . . when he has reflected on the present and future state of the war confided to his conduct; he will observe every skilful particular which can be concerted by the finest imagination to conceal an important design from the enemy; together with each expedient that can result from judgment and activity for the completion of a plan.

Always, Feuquières insisted, fight the battle of your own choosing; never permit the enemy to force battle upon you. He explained in detail the thought process of a general before, during, and after battle, pointed to the practical alternatives to battle, and the precautions that must be observed if the commander wishes to deviate from normal practice “with safety.” In the final analysis, he maintained, “tis the lively Eye of an able General which frequently decides a particular operation of war by the advantages he obtains from the enemy.”21 Obviously a serious and intelligent reader such as Frederick could learn much about the

essential characteristics of modern war by a thoughtful reading of Feuquières, whose calm reflections embraced every aspect of generalship from A (armées) to V (vivres).

We know too that Frederick was on intimate terms with many of the Classics, which had inspired Machiavelli, the author of the first modern treatise on war, and most military writers in Frederick’s day as well. Marshal de Puysegur, author of the most recent significant military treatise published before Frederick launched his invasion of Silesia, claimed that Thucydides’s exposition of Periclean strategy was “so well and clearly detailed” that the modern general could learn from it how to frame his own plan of campaign. Indeed, Puysegur could detect no fundamental changes in the science or conduct of war between the days of Caesar and Turenne, holding that a military man must read the memoirs of both if he is to be really well versed in the science of war. Even in the realm of tactics, where the introduction of firearms might be expected to force revolutionary change, the practice of the Romans was still emulated. The debate in Frederick’s day over the relative merits of the line and the column was triggered by two works by the Chavalier de Folard, both of them written while Frederick was serving his apprenticeship. Whether or not Frederick had digested Folard before 1740 is beside the point; the fact is that virtually every military writer including Frederick believed that the Classics contained lessons that were still applicable. After the Silesian Wars Frederick prepared a volume of extracts from Folard containing, as he put it, “the diamonds buried in a dunghill,”22 and in his later campaigns he had among his military retinue at headquarters a Captain Guichard, author of a well-known book on the warfare of the ancients.

Although a master of detail and familiar with the best in military literature, Frederick was still a novice when his army invaded Silesia. “It is difficult to say,” he confessed in his memoirs, who committed “the most faults”—himself, or his opponents.23 Unopposed by an enemy field army in the initial stages, Frederick plucked a number of fortified cities before the Austrians could send a comparable force to their relief, but he deserved to lose his first battle. At Mollwitz (April 10, 1741) Frederick came to appreciate that a lesson learned from history, once removed from its historical context, was really not a lesson at all. Aware that his cavalry was inferior to the Austrian horse, Frederick placed two grenadier battalions between the squadrons of each wing. “This was the disposition made by Gustavus Adolphus at the battle of Lutzen,” he explained in his Mémoires. But the Austrian cavalry was far superior to that which Gustavus had faced and his own was inferior to the Swedish horse in relative quality, and after the Prussian cavalry was swept from the field in the first stages of the battle Frederick vowed that this tactic “will never more be practiced.”24 He was beginning to discover that the value of history was to expose the reader to the thought processes of earlier commanders, not to provide prepackaged solutions.

Mollwitz offered other lessons. Although things were going well on the Prussian left, there was a crisis on the right of the line, where the infantry had been engaged for five hours and the soldiers were running low in ammunition. There was nothing left to do but rob the cartridge boxes of the dead. So great was the crisis, Frederick wrote,

that the oldest officers thought there was no resource, and foresaw the approaching moment when this corps, deprived of ammunition, would be obliged to yield to the enemy. So however did it not happen, and this ought to teach young commanders [among whom was Frederick] not to despair too soon; for the infantry not only maintained its ground, but gained upon the enemy.25

Marshal Schwerin, an experienced and resolute commander, then threw the Prussian left against the right flank of the Austrians, which brought about the enemy’s defeat. Frederick, however, was not present to witness this unexpected turn of events. When the Prussian cavalry had been swept aside earlier in the battle, Schwerin had urged the young king to leave the field to avoid being captured and Frederick had galloped over twenty miles before a tired courier caught up with him to announce that his army had won a great victory.

Mollwitz was a learning experience for Frederick. As he reflected on his conduct of the battle, he found fault with many of his decisions. His intelligence before the battle had been good, but instead of dividing his troops “he ought immediately to have assembled his whole army, and to have placed it in close cantonments.” He had allowed one subordinate to be cut off “and put himself to the necessity of fighting in a situation from which, had misfortune come, he could not retreat; and in which he risked the loss of his army, and being himself taken.” In front of Mollwitz, where the Austrians were cantoned, he had wasted precious time forming his troops instead of immediately moving forward, when he might have caught the Austrian infantry in the village “in much the same manner as twenty-four French battalions were taken at Blenheim.” Frederick, however,

possessed only marshal Schwerin, in his whole army; who was a man of genius, and an experienced general. His troops had all possible good will, but they were acquainted only with the inferior parts of war; and having never been in action, they durst only creep, fearful of being decisive. The real salvation of the Prussians was their bravery and their discipline. Mollwitz was the school of the king, and of his soldiers: he made profound reflections on all the faults he had committed, and endeavoured to correct himself in future.

In this way Frederick learned. In his next battle, Chotusitz, fought a year later, his revamped cavalry and his own leadership came into their own, and although Frederick gained the victory and with it the peace, he continued to examine the conduct of the leaders of both armies to identify faults to avoid in the future.26

Twenty months, a handful of second-class fortresses, two pitched battles—and Frederick had won his first war. He trained his army well in the interval between the first and second Silesian wars, and in August 1744 he reentered the war by invading Bohemia in three separate columns, the kind of operation which later shocked Napoleon because it violated the principle of concentration.27 But after capturing Prague, Frederick really had no strategic objective in mind, and his next moves were all dictated by expediency and ultimately by his skillful Austrian opponent.

Frederick recorded his mistakes in his Mémoires with disarming candor in order that his successor might learn from them. He had lost control of the supply situation; he could never force his wily opponent to fight except on his own terms; and when his own army staggered out of Bohemia through the mountain passes into Silesia three months later, he had lost half of his men.

Unlike his previous campaigns, this one had been decisive without fighting a major battle; sickness, famine, swarms of enemy light infantry, and desertion had defeated him. Frederick thus learned to distinguish between strategy and a walking tour that happened to end in a few bloody acres at places like Mollwitz and Chotusitz. Marshal Traun, his evasive opponent, reminded Frederick of Sertorius, the Roman general who had kept two opponents at bay in Spain in 80–78 B.C. by “appearing almost at the same moment in a number of different places . . . cutting off their supplies” laying the country waste, and ultimately forcing them to retreat to other provinces for lack of provisions. Frederick compared himself to Pompey, the victim of these guerrilla tactics. Traun’s campaign impressed him as “a perfect model, which every general who delights in his profession ought to study, and, if he has the abilities, to imitate.” As for his own generalship, Frederick conceded that no one had committed more faults than he during this campaign. He always regarded the 1744 campaign “as his school in the art of war, and Traun as his preceptor.” “Good fortune,” Frederick reflected in his Mémoires, “is often more fatal to princes than adversity: during the former they are intoxicated with presumption, the second renders them circumspect and modest.”28

If the Bohemian campaign of 1744 was Frederick’s school of war, he passes his final exam with flying colors at the battles of Hohenfriedberg and Soor the next season. There is no need to refight these battles here; in both we see Frederick outnumbered, awaiting attack, and at the final moment maneuvering according to circumstances to win convincing victory. The superior mobility, discipline, and firepower of the Prussian soldiers enabled him to improvise and throw the weight of his force against a portion— usually a wing—of the enemy line of battle. The lesson of these battles is the value of an oblique attack. In the period of linear warfare, when armies faced each other in battlelines three, four, and five miles long, with active cavalry on the flanks, there was not much that a general could do to maneuver battalions or brigades. There were no subordinate tactical units, no divisions or corps. Wing commanders were not independent commanders, but merely the next link in the chain of command. They could see that the commander’s orders were carried out, but they had practically no discretionary power and no reserves at their disposal.

But Frederick at Hohenfriedberg, and out of necessity, it should be added, did not attack the entire Austrian line simultaneously. Instead he threw his weight against the left wing, since this consisted of inferior Saxon units and posed the most immediate threat. Once he had driven away the Saxons he was free to bring his troops into battle on the left flank of the Austrian (or right) wing. Clearly the idea of advancing with one wing and holding back the other is evident at Hohenfriedberg. Whether this was an accident born of necessity or a preconceived notion we cannot say for certain, but in Frederick’s next battle, at Soor, he fought the same way, bringing his army in a sort of oblique position against the Austrian line. Here is the beginning of his famous échelon formation which he would later perfect and work into his tactical system.

At the heart of Frederick’s military writings (his famous Instructions to his Generals was written in 1747 and revised eight years later) is the concept of attacking an enemy line of battle either in an oblique direction, bringing an unbroken line against the enemy flank at an angle, or by advancing en échelon to attack with one wing while retaining the other as reserve to reinforce success or to minimize the effects of failure. At both Hohenfriedberg and Soor, Frederick managed to overwhelm the enemy line with only a portion of his own, concentrating his fire power against the weak point in the enemy position. This is what he later tried to duplicate in nearly every battle.

No general has been more pragmatic than Frederick. He read military history in order to get at the thought process of successful commanders and to determine reasons for success or failure on the battlefield. He reformed his army to make it a more supple and devastating tactical weapon. He learned from his own mistakes and those of his opponents, and when circumstances dictated a new approach he was quick to appreciate the possibilities of the oblique attack. He recorded these lessons in writings intended for his successor, his subordinate generals, and frequently to help clarify his own thinking. To Frederick, war was an endless learning process: all one has to do is to compare Mollwitz and Soor.

Frederick also emerged from the Silesian Wars a resourceful strategist. As king he determined policy; as the commander in the field he made sure that strategy was an extension of this policy, which gave a unity and purpose to his military operations despite his initial inexperience. Above all, Frederick never lost sight of his primary objective, the retention of Silesia. He won every battle he fought in his first two wars, often because, as Napoleon later pointed out, Frederick possessed great moral courage.

What distinguishes Frederick the most is not the skill of his maneuvers but his boldness. He carried what I have never dared to attempt. He abandoned his line of operation and often acted as if he had no knowledge of military art. Always outnumbering his enemies at the opening of the campaign, he is regularly inferior on the battlefield . . . [but] he knew well . . . how to keep his army in hand during the battle.

Frederick was especially great “at the most critical moments”—which was the highest praise that Napoleon could bestow.29 But now we speak of military character, which is more difficult to trace and to explain than the evolution of an idea or technique.

Notes

1. Leopold Ranke, Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia, during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, translated from the German by Sir Alexander and Lady Duff Gordon, 3 vols., reprint ed. (New York, 1968), 2: 139–40.

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J., 1976), pp. 101, 190–93.

3. Nathan Ausubel, Superman: The Life of Frederick the Great (London, 1932), p. 1. 4. Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia called Frederick the Great, 6 vols. (London, 1886), 1: 342. 5. For details in the military education of Prince Frederick see Ernest Lavisse, The Youth of Frederick the Great,

translated from the French by Mary Bushnell Coleman (Chicago, 1892), pp. 20–33; and Robert Ergang. The Potsdam Fuhrer: Frederick William I, Father of Prussian Militarism (New York, 1941), pp. 216–18.

6. Ibid., p. 223. 7. Jay Luvaas, editor and translator, Frederick the Great on the Art of War (New York, 1966), p. 47. 8. Carlyle, Frederick the Great, p. 50. 9. Ausubel, Superman, p. 308. 10. Luvaas, Frederick the Great, p. 50. 11. Ausubel, Superman, p. 315. 12. Ernst Bratuscheck, Die Erziehung Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin, 1885), p. 120. 13. Carlyle, Frederick the Great, 2: 250; Ranke, House of Brandenburg, 2: 5. 14. Luvaas, Frederick the Great, p. 54–55. 15. Ibid., p. 52. 16. Max Jähns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften vornehmlich in Deutchland. II 17 und 18 Jahrhundert bis

zum Auftreten Friedrichs des Grossen 1740, reprint ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 1467–68. 17. Ibid., p. 1470. 18. Luvaas, Frederick the Great, p. 52. 19. Marquis de Feuquières, Memoirs Historical and Military: Containing a Distinct View of All the Considerable

States of Europe . . . together with remarks on the Conduct and Abilities of their Ministers, Generals . . . and other Officers, in the Plans and Execution of the several Operations of War wherein they were employed, 2 vols., reprint ed. (New York, 1968), 1: 97–98, 114, 152, 158, 162–63, 192–93. A subsequent edition contains the most concise argument for waging offensive war. See Mémoires de M. le Marquis de Feiqioère . . . Contenant ses Maximes sur la Guerre, et l’application des Exemples aux Maximes (n.p., 1740), pp. 64–68.

20. Feuquières, Memoirs, 2: 132–33. 21. Ibid., p. 27, 123, 249–50. 22. Luvaas, Frederick the Great, p. 51. 23. Frederick, The History of My Own Times, translated from the French by Thomas Holcroft, 2 vols. (London,

1789), 1: 127. 24. Ibid., pp. 121–22. 25. Ibid., p. 126. 26. Ibid., p. 129. 27. Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Picard, Precepts et jugements de Napoleon (Paris, 1913), p. 406. 28. Frederick, History of my Own Times, 2: 130. 29. Picard, Preceptes et jugements de Napoleon, pp. 405–6.