COLONEL BRACKENBURY'S "FREDERICK THE G RE AT."*
COLONEL BRACKENBURY'S Life of Frederick the Great is the first of a series of volumes "illustrative of the operations and the art of war, by writers of distinction in the profession of arms whose competence to weigh the military qualities and deeds of the Chiefs can be accepted." Now, speaking from a purely literary point of view, we should describe this " Life " as an admirable abridgment of Carlyle's celebrated work. In that aspect it is entirely praiseworthy ; but as the author can speak with authority, we venture to think that from a military point of view it is a little defective. It would be absurd, indeed, for us as civilians to attempt to lecture Colonel Brackenbury ; and it will be seen that the strictures which we propose to make upon his book are not our own, but those of a writer of very great distinction indeed in the profession of arms. We must perforce confine ourselves to very few examples of what we con- ceive to be Colonel Brackenbary's deficienlies, and shall begin with his account of Frederick's famous defeat at Kolin. It is unnecessary to premise that neither here nor elsewhere is the Colonel otherwise than perfectly accurate as regards his facts. And if he is not, it is certain that we are perfectly unable to correct him. But neither here nor elsewhere is the accuracy of this, that, or the other detail in Frederick's battles (and to these we shall confine ourselves) of very great importance. The great point is,—What was the precise fault which the King com- mitted in the battles which he lost, and what is the lesson to be learned from them P At Kolin, then, he marched his army along the front of Daun's to attack the latter's right wing. It does not in the least matter, here and now, how or why it was that he came to grief. What we have to point out is that Colonel • Frederick the Great. By Colonel C. B. Brackenbury, R.A. London : 'Chap- man and flail. 1884.
Brackenbury calls the King's manceuvre an " attack " "in -oblique order," and says—the italics are his own—that failing, as the manceuvre did, from want of perfect accuracy in its execution, it did not obey "the master law of all tactics, the rule to bring superior forces of your own army against inferior forces of the enemy at the right time and place." Surely this is rather vague ; and if Frederick was violating a most important rule of war on this occasion, Colonel Brackenbury must forgive us for thinking that he ought to have pointed out very clearly, for the use of those students for whom this "series of Critical Biographies" must be mainly intended, the nature and reason of that rule. It is a rule that Frederick violated again at Zorndorff, with results that might have proved fatal, and did prove most disastrous. Yet here, too, Colonel Brackenbury makes no sign. And the rule is,—"Ne faites pas de marches de flanc devant une armee qui est en position !" The words, of course, are Napoleon's, and the application which he makes of them to Kolin is made with verve and even humour :—" Les partisans de l'ordre oblique admirent la mancenvre du Roi a la Bataille de Kollin, quoiqu'elle nit en les suites les plus ffichenses us n'en persistent moms dans leur engonement ; rien ne pent leur dessiller les yens. Les uns disent qu'il s'est vu arracher la victoire par la fante d'un chef de bataillon." But what " les uns "say can be read at length in Colonel Brackenbury and Carlyle. " D'antres plus raisonnables, qui sont frappes des inconvenients attaches is une marche de flanc devant une armee en position, mais qui n'en sont point moms attaches is l'ordre oblique, disent que la manceuvre du Roi a da etre faite de unit; clue par-la il eat evite le fen de i'armee antrichienne qui ne l'aurait pas apercu ; qu'an jour il aurait etonne, surpris, battu, rompu, et mis en deroute son adversaire. Sans donte, gee c'est une forte belle chose que de sarprendre son ennemi ; mais pourquoi s'arroter is tourner tine aile ? il vaut mieux prendre Farm& is dos, se saisir de sea pares, de sea canons, sur leurs avant-trains, de leers munitions, des faisceaux de fasils du camp ! " And yet it was by a flank march in front of the enemy's " armee en position" that Frederick gained his great victory of Lenthen, the object of Napoleon's own warmest encomiums. It was ; but then the enemy were unable to see what the King was doing, and his success—not a whit the less admirable, of course, on that account—was due to the fact that he " surprised " them. We now come to Rossbach, and remembering that it is our business to deal with Colonel Brackenbury's reflections rather than with Napoleon's, must let the former speak for himself :—" The battle of Rossbach is fall of instruction. It shows how helpless is an army, imper- fectly trained and commanded, against a skilful General with a force inferior in number but well in hand. It serves to teach us how vain it is to rely on numbers alone, no matter how brave the men may be; for the French were certainly no cowards. It points, in short, a moral which all Englishmen should lay to heart, when they think in serious moments of possible battles foight in their own country, and with the mixed troops at present available." Now, as Colonel Brackenbury has else- where warned his countrymen more than once of what might occur and of what should be done in the event of a prolonged campaign fought against foreigners on English soil, we venture to suggest to him that until the English Navy is a thing of the past, the invasion of England lies almost out- side the limits of a sane enemy's consideration. But to -return to Rossbach :—" The essence of Frederick's manceuvre," says Colonel Brackenbury, "was, as usual, the attack in oblique order; for the front of the long allied column may be considered as its right flank ; and the King's parallel, but swifter, march alongside of his opponents was in principle like the march round the front at Prague or Kolin to gain the flank." Napoleon saw the matter differently,—" A. la bataille de Rossbach, le Prince de Soubise imagina de vouloir singer l'ordre oblique. Ii fit une marche de flanc devant la position du Roi." Napoleon, in fact, will not bear of the "oblique order" of battle as anything more than a confusing phrase, and contends that Frederick, in all his battles, did nothing either ill or well that had not been done "par les genera= anciens et modernes dans tons les siecles." It is not for us, of course, to say that such a man is right, but we confess that we can understand his meaning very clearly ; and if Frederick's battles can be described without having recourse to a phrase which no one would use in describing those of other commanders, we must respectfully submit to Colonel Brackenbury whether the frequent recurrence of that phrase in his book is altogether desirable. But the phrase, it will be said, was Frederick's own; nay, more, like some retired
conjuror, he would, in his old age, graciously show to admiring military onlookers at his reviews, how the trick or " manceuvre " was accomplished. We must once more quote Napoleon :—" Le vieux Frederic riait sous cape, aux parades de Potzdam, de l'engouement des jeunes officiers francais, anglais, autrichiens, pour la manceuvre de l'ordre oblique, qui n'etait propre qu'a faire la reputation de quelques adjutants-majors. Un examen approfondi de la Guerre de Sept-Ans aurait da eclairer ces officiers, et ce qui devait achever de faire evaporer lears illusions, c'est que Frederic n'a jamais mancouvre que par des lignes et par le flanc, jamais par des deploiements."
Colonel Brackenbury is no blind admirer of Frederick's Generalship, and thinks that there is little in his strategy to commend itself to students of war. Bat "his tactics on the field of battle were for the most part superb." We should prefer to say that, according to the mood in which he found himself, Frederick's tactics in battle were "superb," or quite the reverse. There is little to commend in any of his fights after Leuthen. The way in which he withdrew his sur- prised and beaten troops at Hochkirch was masterly indeed. But he owed more to fortune than skill at Lieguitz. His attacks at Torgau were worse than any delivered by Grant in the Wilderness, and without Grant's excuse that he could afford to lose three men to the enemy's one. At Kunersdorf the Prussian Army could not have been more obstinately sacrificed if they had been led by his pig-headed father, Frederick William him- self. At Zorndorff he made the same "flagrant mistake" that Marmont made at Salamanca, and was within an ace of paying as dearly for it. We have already mentioned Kau. On the whole, then, we believe that of all the great captains that the world has seen, Frederick was the one who made the most mis- takes in war. Yet he is by common consent one of the greatest of these Captains, and it was Colonel Brackenbury's task, we submit, to reconcile the contradiction here indicated. He has, if we are not mistaken, eluded rather than grappled with the question, for he talks rather vaguely of Frederick's "attacking boldly and skilfully, thus seizing for himself the mighty power of the initiative ;" and says of the General who lost such a battle as Kunersdorf, that when "he appeared and fought resistance collapsed before him." We trust, then, that we are justified in saying that as a "critical biography," Colonel Brackenbury's book is not quite satisfactory. All the more it behoves us to say that it is far and away the best Life of Frederick the Great in our language. The writer's debt to Carlyle is, of course, immense; but those who have studied Carlyle most unweariedly will best appreciate the skilful way in which Colonel Bracken- bury has utilised the labours of his great predecessor.
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