To study the military strategies of Frederick II of Prussia, known to history as Frederick the Great, is to witness a master composer conducting a symphony of movement, pressure, and decisive violence. Inheriting a formidable army from his drill-sergeant father, Frederick William I, Frederick did not merely wield this instrument; he transformed its very score. His battlefields of the mid-18th century, particularly during the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), became laboratories for a new kind of warfare. Facing seemingly insurmountable coalitions, Frederick developed a strategic and tactical doctrine that was both brutally pragmatic and breathtakingly audacious. It was a system designed for a small state with limited resources to punch far above its weight, and its principles would echo for centuries.
This was not a monolithic doctrine, but an evolving art form, adapting to the crushing pressures of survival. To understand it, we must dissect its core components: the strategic offensive, the operational oblique order, and the relentless drive for decisive battle.
The Strategic Foundation: Prussia as the Weaker Power
Frederick’s entire strategic outlook was shaped by a single, grim reality: Prussia was vulnerable. A scattered collection of territories with no natural borders, it was surrounded by larger, more populous, and richer powers—Austria, France, Russia, and Sweden. Frederick famously described his state as a mollusk without a shell. This geopolitical weakness dictated a military philosophy of pre-emption, speed, and annihilation. A long war of attrition would be a death sentence; therefore, war had to be short, sharp, and conclusive.
His guiding principle, drawn from his own writings and the influence of thinkers like Machiavelli, was that war was an extension of policy by other means. For Frederick, the army was the ultimate tool of statecraft, and its use had to be calculated with cold, rational precision. There was no room for romantic notions of chivalry. The goal was not to win a gentleman’s duel, but to shatter the enemy’s will and capacity to fight, thereby achieving a political objective—most often, the retention of the rich province of Silesia, which he had seized from Austria in 1740.
The Pre-Emptive Strike: The Strategy of the “First Blow”
Frederick’s most consistent strategic gambit was the pre-emptive offensive. He understood that waiting for his enemies to combine their forces would lead to encirclement and certain defeat. His solution was to strike first, with overwhelming force, against one member of the opposing coalition before it could fully mobilize.
The invasion of Saxony in 1756, which opened the Seven Years’ War, is the quintessential example. Knowing that a coalition of Austria, France, and Russia was preparing to move against him, Frederick did not wait passively. He launched a sudden invasion of neutral Saxony, both to secure a strategic buffer zone and to plunder its treasury and conscript its soldiers. This aggressive opening set the tone for the entire war. It was a high-risk move that branded him an aggressor, but in his calculus, the risk of inaction was far greater. By seizing the initiative, he aimed to dictate the time, place, and tempo of the conflict, forcing his enemies to react to his moves rather than execute their own.
The Masterpiece of Tactics: The Oblique Order (Schräge Schlachtordnung)
If pre-emption was his strategic mantra, the Oblique Order was his tactical masterpiece. This was not his invention, but his perfection of an ancient Theban concept. In the 18th century, armies typically faced each other in parallel lines, engaging in a brutal, head-on contest of attrition. Frederick found this wasteful, especially for his smaller army, which he could not afford to bleed white in a straight-up firefight.
The Oblique Order was a brilliant solution. Its execution was a delicate ballet of marching and timing:
- Refusing One Wing: Frederick would advance his army toward the enemy but would deliberately “refuse” or hold back one of his wings (usually the left), protecting it with cavalry and terrain.
- Reinforcing the Attack Wing: He would massively reinforce his other wing (the right), creating a local superiority of force—a hammer against the enemy’s anvil.
- The Oblique Advance: The entire line would then advance not straight forward, but obliquely, echeloned from the refused wing to the attack wing. This meant the reinforced right wing would contact the enemy’s left flank long before the rest of the lines met.
- The Decisive Blow: This overwhelming force would then roll up the enemy’s line from the flank, creating panic, confusion, and a cascading collapse before the enemy’s stronger wing could even engage in the battle.
The Battle of Leuthen (1757) is the most celebrated example of the Oblique Order in its purest form. Outnumbered almost two-to-one by a larger Austrian army, Frederick used the terrain and a feint to mask his intentions. He then marched his army across the entire Austrian front and unleashed his reinforced right wing against the enemy’s left flank. The Austrians, unable to redeploy in time, were shattered. Leuthen was not just a victory; it was a work of art, a battle of annihilation that demonstrated how superior maneuvering could defeat superior numbers.
The Instruments of Execution: The Army and Its Components
Frederick’s strategies were only possible because of the instrument he commanded. The Prussian army was a marvel of 18th-century discipline and professionalism.
- The Infantry: The backbone of Frederick’s army was the line infantry, trained to fire faster than any other in Europe. Through the relentless drill instituted by his father, Prussian soldiers could fire up to five rounds per minute, a rate of fire that could unleash devastating volleys. Their ability to maneuver in tight formations under fire was the essential enabler of complex tactics like the Oblique Order.
- The Cavalry Reborn: At the start of his reign, Frederick viewed his cavalry with disdain. After being routed by Austrian horsemen, he undertook a radical reform. He transformed them from pistol-firing mounted troops into a shock force. Under commanders like Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, the Prussian cavalry was trained to charge home at a full gallop with the saber, their discipline and impact becoming legendary. At the Battle of Rossbach (1757), a combined force of cavalry and mobile artillery annihilated a Franco-German army twice its size, showcasing the new cavalry’s decisive potential.
- The Artillery: Frederick was a pioneer in the operational mobility of artillery. He created horse artillery—light, fast-moving guns that could keep pace with cavalry and be rapidly deployed to critical points on the battlefield. This increased firepower at the decisive moment of contact, further enabling his shock tactics.
The Evolution Under Fire: The Test of the Seven Years’ War
Frederick’s strategies were not static. The immense pressure of the Seven Years’ War, where he faced a “ring of fire” of enemies on multiple fronts, forced him to adapt. The war evolved from his preferred short, decisive conflict into a grueling war of attrition.
- The Erosion of the Oblique Order: As his veteran officers and soldiers fell, the army’s quality declined. The complex maneuvers of the Oblique Order required a level of training and discipline that his new, green recruits often lacked. His enemies also learned, refusing to present static fronts and becoming more adept at protecting their flanks.
- The Shift to the Strategic Defensive: After near-catastrophic defeats like Kunersdorf (1759), where his aggressive attacks broke against prepared Russian positions, Frederick was forced to adopt a more defensive posture. He became a master of positional warfare, using fortifications and interior lines to parry the thrusts of his enemies, buying time and hoping for a political miracle—the “Miracle of the House of Brandenburg,” which ultimately came with the death of the Russian Empress and the subsequent withdrawal of Russia from the war.
This period revealed a key truth: Frederick was a master of the operational art, but his strategic vision was often hampered by his own aggression. He was brilliant at winning battles but sometimes struggled to convert those victories into a lasting, conclusive peace against a determined coalition.
The Legacy: The Philosopher of War
Frederick the Great’s legacy is immense. He left behind a voluminous corpus of writings on war, from Instructions for His Generals to his Political Testaments, which became required reading for military men for generations.
- Influence on Napoleon: Napoleon Bonaparte was a devoted student of Frederick, referring to him as a “great man” and his campaigns as “a new source of inspiration.” He absorbed Frederick’s emphasis on decisive battle, the offensive, and the annihilation of the enemy army. The operational artistry of Napoleon’s campaigns has its intellectual roots in the fields of Rossbach and Leuthen.
- The Birth of Operational Art: Frederick’s ability to seamlessly weave strategy, operations, and tactics marked a significant step toward the modern concept of the “operational level” of war—the crucial link between national policy and battlefield confrontation.
- A Doctrine for the Outnumbered: Frederick’s greatest contribution was proving that intellectual superiority could compensate for material and numerical inferiority. He demonstrated that a well-trained, rapidly moving army, commanded by a general who understood the principles of concentration, economy of force, and surprise, could defeat larger but less agile opponents.
Conclusion: The Flawed Genius
Frederick the Great was not an infallible god of war. He made grave miscalculations, and his aggressive strategies sometimes brought his state to the brink of destruction. Yet, his genius lies in his systematic approach to the problems of war. He took the blunt instrument bequeathed to him and refined it into a precision tool. He composed a symphony of war where movement was the melody, local superiority was the chorus, and decisive victory was the crescendo.
His strategies were a product of necessity, a brilliant, if often desperate, response to the existential threats facing his vulnerable kingdom. In the end, Frederick the Great did not just defend Prussia; he forged, through fire and intellect, a military doctrine that would influence the art of war for a century to come, establishing a legacy that marks him as one of history’s most formidable and fascinating soldier-kings.