Deep penetration into Austrian territory, either in order to
take the enemy’s capital or to force battle on the enemy by threatening his
capital, was hardly possible. Frederick had to overcome the Bohemian mountains
first and was then stopped by fortresses such as Brünn or Olmütz. He could
bypass a fortress, but this carried the risk of the garrison cutting off his
supplies as Frederick discovered in 1742. In order to prevent the garrison from
sallying forth, he could leave an observation corps behind. This option,
however, would have caused an intolerable degree of strategic consumption on
the invading army, rendering it too weak to continue the advance on the
capital. Furthermore, a defeat of the observation corps would have severed the
invading army’s line of communications. If Frederick, therefore, chose not to
bypass a fortress but to take it before continuing his advance, as he suggested
in his military writings, he encountered other problems. When the Prussian army
settled down for the siege, the depletion of local forage as well as the need
to bring siege material, guns and ammunition forward increased the dependence
on the lines of communications. The Austrians, due to their superiority in
light troops, could take advantage of this increased dependence on
communications by disrupting them. The severance of communications then forced the
Prussian army to abandon the siege and retreat. In this way, the blocking power
of fortresses combined with the disruptive power of light troops frustrated
Prussian attempts to advance on Vienna in 1758. Even if the way was not barred
by a fortress, the need to leave garrisons behind to guard the line of
communications would have substantially weakened the already small Prussian
invasion army.
The cause for the Prussian armies’ vulnerability to
strategic consumption was their small size, which was the result of a
multiple-front war. Prussia’s 200,000 men had to be distributed among several
armies and garrisons in order to cover all major invasion routes. Frederick
also preferred to keep his armies small and easy to control. Even small armies
were unwieldy because they manoeuvred in one block. Advancing with a unitary
army severely reduced prospects to outmanoeuvre and corner an enemy. An army
advancing with train and baggage along a single road was slow. Low speed
prevented surprise and rendered superior manoeuvring difficult. Advance along
one road also permitted only a limited range of options, again, reducing
prospects for surprising and outmanoeuvring the enemy. Since the reconnaissance
by the vanguard was conducted on a narrow front, precise intelligence on the
enemy’s whereabouts, necessary for outmanoeuvring him, was lacking. Poor
reconnaissance, combined with the activity of enemy light troops, rendered
security insufficient as Frederick experienced when he was surprisingly
attacked at Soor and Hochkirch. The natural reaction to this lack of security
was to keep the army concentrated. Here, a vicious circle closed:
reconnaissance was poor due to the advance with a unitary army; the army, in
turn, had to advance in one block due to the poverty of reconnaissance.
An additional disadvantage suffered by the Prussian army was
its inferiority in light troops in the contest with Austrian hussars and
Croats, and Russian Cossacks, though the efficiency of Prussian hussars
improved in the course of the three Silesian Wars. The consequence of this
inferiority was the relatively low quality of Prussian reconnaissance, whereas
Austrians and Russians had a clearer picture of Prussian positions and
intentions. This state of affairs, again, rendered surprise difficult to
achieve.
Prussian inability to surprise and outmanoeuvre the enemy,
largely due to advancing with a unitary army, provided the enemy with the
opportunity to avoid battle. The Austrians and Russians took advantage of this
opportunity since they knew the Prussian army to be better trained and more
efficient in open battle than their own. If the enemy decided to give battle,
it was on his terms, either when he wished to attack with superior numbers
himself, or when he was waiting for the Prussians to attack him in strong
positions. In neither case could Frederick hope to win a decisive victory.
Even when the enemy could be brought at bay and beaten,
pursuit, necessary to turn an ordinary victory into a decisive one, was hardly
possible since Frederick had to hasten to meet the next enemy army. Even when
pursuit could be carried out, the small size of the armies committed to battle
meant that even a victorious battle followed by pursuit would neutralize only a
fraction of the enemy’s armed forces. Those losses inflicted on the enemy,
furthermore, could be replaced in winter quarters. Since Frederick was fighting
a coalition, the combined resources of his enemies made it particularly
difficult to inflict a truly crippling defeat.
The nature of supply arrangements also played its part in
frustrating Frederick’s designs. Flour waggons shuttled between magazines and
field bakeries; bread waggons shuttled between field bakeries and army. The
dependence of Frederician armies on these supply arrangements hampered
strategic mobility in several ways. Rear supply reduced strategic mobility
since fortresses could not be bypassed if they blocked an indispensable road or
waterway. Even where this was not the case, fortresses could not simply be
ignored. Likewise, an enemy army in strong tactical positions could not be
outflanked because the outflanking army risked having its own communications
severed, following the old adage that he who outflanks is being outflanked
himself.
Dependence on rear supply also slowed the army down because
the army had to march sufficiently slowly to permit the bread waggons to keep
up. The very size of these columns explains what made them veritable
millstones: one of the four columns invading Bohemia in 1757 had 2,000 supply
vehicles following in its wake. From time to time, the army even had to stop
completely in order to establish new field bakeries. Consequences of the army’s
slow advance were, once more, reduced prospects for surprising and
outmanoeuvring the enemy. Rapid marches such as the march from Zorndorf to
Saxony were only possible because the Prussian army passed through friendly
territory, where troops could be fed in passing from magazines and by the local
Prussian administration, rather than having to wait for supply trains. The
baggage train containing officers’ baggage and tents was also responsible for
the low speed of movement. Supply trains not only reduced the rate of advance
but also impaired flexibility in manoeuvre since it took time to change their
marching schedules. Re-routing vast columns of vehicles, sometimes several
thousand, at short notice would have created chaos and reduced the troops to
starvation.
When an enemy army was beaten, dependence on rear supply
rendered prompt as well as prolonged pursuit difficult. Prompt pursuit with the
whole army was frustrated by the slowness of the supply train. Prolonged
pursuit was prevented by the limited range within which the supply train could
feed the army from the closest magazine. The victory of Hohenfriedberg was not
followed by pursuit for this reason. When the beaten enemy sought shelter
behind a fortress, the dependence on rear supply prevented the bypassing of the
obstacle. Frederick summarized his frustration with limitations imposed by
dependence on rear supply, when he complained that not he but flour and forage
were the masters of the army. The campaigns which foundered in Bohemia and
Moravia due to supply problems in 1742, 1744 and 1758 confirmed this
observation.
Frederick made conscious efforts to overcome limitations
imposed by advance with a unitary army and dependence on rear supply. In 1757,
for instance, he invaded Bohemia in four columns which were planned to converge
after having crossed the mountains. The advance in several columns rather than
in one army made it difficult for the enemy to fathom Frederick’s designs.
Furthermore, the multiple column advance was faster because the individual
marching columns were shorter. Since Frederick did not wish to waste the
momentum of the surprise invasion, he ordered the army to subsist on Austrian
depots to be captured in the Bohemian plain rather than wait for supply trains
to catch up.
Since Frederick could not always rely on being lucky enough
to capture enemy depots, he also tried to increase his army’s degree of
self-sufficiency. The limits of self-sufficiency, however, were quickly
reached. Low population density and lack of high- yielding crops such as
potatoes and turnips rarely permitted an army to rely entirely on local
resources, though detachments could live off the land by purchase or
requisition. Furthermore, due to the advance in a unitary army on a narrow
front, resources of only a narrow swathe of country could be consumed. As a
stopgap measure, Frederick ordered iron hand-mills to be distributed to the
troops so that grain could be taken from the fields and ground to flour, if the
flour columns were delayed. The flour, however, had then still to be turned
into bread in field bakeries. Another improvement in supply matters was the use
of iron ovens which could be set up in one day rather than the more common
brick ovens which took several days. To expedite the baking of bread even
further, Frederick pressed civilian bakers into service when a town was close
to the army.
Apart from supply problems and advance in a unitary army,
strategic conditions reduced prospects for inflicting serious damage on the
hostile coalition. Since Prussia was fighting a multi-front war, Frederick had
to entrust theatres of war to other commanders such as the Duke of Brunswick or
Prince Henry. Not every commander, however, was as capable as these two
deputies. The consequence was that battles won by Frederick could be offset by
battles lost by one of his generals. The victory of Rossbach, for instance, was
counterbalanced by the loss of Breslau which, in turn, had to be rectified by
the victory of Leuthen. Many generals were out of their depth in independent
command since the training of general officers was restricted to the experience
of regimental service and the reading of the odd book of military history. Many
Prussian generals of the `Old Dessauer’ school were even barely literate. The
lack of training and experience in independent command, combined with the fear
of Prussian generals of their sovereign, induced them to follow to the letter
their orders rather than acting on their discretion-with sometimes fatal
results. Frederick addressed this problem. He wrote instructions for his
generals meant to give them advice in their independent commands. A more
broad-based effort to educate the officer corps was the establishment of
regimental libraries.
One reason for the failure of independently operating
generals was the lack of a sophisticated staff system. The
general-quartermaster staff (Generalquartiermeisterstab) had only 25 personnel.
Attached to the staff were guides (Feld-jägercorps), responsible for carrying
dispatches and directing marching columns, and Brigademajors, officers
dispatched to the brigades in order to help in administrative matters. The
commissary, heading a small separate organization, was responsible for matters
of supply. The main task of the staff was the selection and fortification of
camp sites as well as march planning. The staff merely assisted in planning and
organization. It was not an advisory body, nor did it devise campaign or
contingency plans on its own initiative. The staff s role was further
diminished by the royal aide-de-camps (Generaladjutanten).
Generaladjutanten enjoyed Frederick’s particular trust and
were assigned a variety of missions. Winterfeldt’s assignments, for instance,
included economic planning, training of hussars, diplomatic missions, military
administration and planning, command of detachments and the organization of
espionage. The Generaladjutant also played the role which was later reserved
for the chief of the general staff: Winterfeldt devised mobilization, campaign
and contingency plans and discussed them with the king. Winterfeldt fulfilled a
further function: he was dispatched to assist and advise generals holding
independent command. These generals were expected to heed Winterfeldt’s opinion.
This arrangement of a competent staff officer becoming the commander’s one-
man-think tank was to become a Prussian tradition. For himself, Frederick did
not need a staff officer with advisory function attached to his headquarters.
He was capable of directing his small armies himself with merely some
organizational assistance from the general-quartermaster staff.
The minor role and haphazard organization of the staff is
further highlighted by the fact that Frederick’s draft orders were written,
expounded and dispatched by a civilian, the royal councillor (Geheimer
Kriegsrat) Eichel. Frederick went so far in his habit to ignore the
general-quartermaster staff that he did not even let it participate in the
planning for the 1756 campaign. Instead, Eichel and Winterfeldt had to draft
all mobilization and campaign plans including the marching tables on their own.
Yet, for all this apparent contempt for the staff, Frederick took care to
improve their capacities. He demanded that staff officers should hold their
positions in permanence in order to gain experience, and he personally
instructed the 12 best graduates of the military academy (Académie des Nobles)
in order to raise a stock of competent officers for staff or command functions.
