ABSTRACT
Frederick passed the winter in Breslau, spending time on hisusual diversions of literature, music and sarcastic denunciation of his enemies. But the year had told on the king. His appearance changed substantially, and his health deteriorated. As the British envoy reported, at 46 he was now ‘an old man with graying hair, lacking half his teeth, without gaiety or spark, or imagination.’1 He suffered from gout and endured a severe flu for a good part of the winter. Nor did his sartorial habits help. He had always admitted that he was ‘a bit of a pig’2 but the king in his tattered and dirty uniform that he refused to change now seemed more slovenly than ever before. The appearance reflected his mood. In assessing the campaign that had passed, Frederick could take some satisfaction in having thwarted Austrian and Russian designs, but his own hopes for decisive victories that would knock either Austria or Russia – and preferably both – out of the war had also been frustrated. What is more, it had come at a high cost: many of his best generals and closest associates had been lost and the casualty rate among junior officers was appalling. Above all, losses among highly trained and motivated native Prussian conscripts were almost irreplaceable. As a consequence, in marked contrast to the previous winter Frederick was not optimistic about the campaign ahead. As he wrote to Ferdinand of Brunswick on Christmas Eve: ‘Do not expect big things. We are thoroughly dilapidated, and our defeats as well as our victories have robbed us of the flower of our infantry
which had previously made it so brilliant.’3 He was, in short, well aware that he had lost the capacity for the kind of bold initiatives he had taken in 1756, 1757 and 1758. ‘My enemies are increasing on all sides,’ he told Mitchell, ‘and they are nearer to me than they were last year.’4
