Instructions for His Generals

Summary

Frederick wrote the treatise known in English as Instructions for His Generals in the winter of 1746–1747, after the first two Silesian Wars had won and held the rich Austrian province of Silesia. Its French title was Les Principes généraux de la guerre; a German version, Die General-Principia vom Kriege, was printed in 1748 in a small number of copies for Prussian generals, who were bound to keep it secret. It is neither a theory of war nor a memoir but a working manual: some thirty short articles in which the king tells his commanders what he has learned at Mollwitz, Chotusitz, Hohenfriedberg and Soor, often in the first person. Frederick begins with the Prussian army itself. Its discipline, drill and rapid musketry are its strengths; its weakness is that a large part of the rank and file are foreigners or unwilling conscripts who will desert at the first opportunity. Much of the book is therefore about preventing desertion: camp sites away from woods, patrols and pickets, marches by day, no foraging without officers, and a discipline in which soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy. A series of articles follows on supply: field bakeries and magazines, the provision of bread, the management of sutlers and the sale of beer and brandy, forage for horses, and the principle that an army's operations are tied to its magazines. Frederick then treats knowledge of the country and the coup d'oeil, the trained eye that reads terrain at a glance; the choice and fortification of camps; detachments, which he warns against multiplying; spies of several kinds; marches, river crossings and the defence of rivers; and stratagems for deceiving the enemy about one's intentions. Several articles address battle. Frederick prefers short, decisive wars because Prussia cannot afford long ones, recommends attack, and describes how to engage one wing of the enemy with a strengthened wing of one's own while refusing the other, the germ of the oblique order he later used at Leuthen in 1757. He discusses the risks of battle, the role of chance, the folly of councils of war that produce only caution, and the conduct of winter quarters and winter campaigns. The text closes with a sketch of the talents a general must have, combining the boldness to seize opportunity with the patience to husband an irreplaceable army. Read now, the Instructions show an absolutist state treating war as administration, its soldiers as instruments to be fed, watched and driven, and its king as a commander who openly admits his early mistakes.

Plot or Argument

• The Prussian soldier and the problem of desertion

  Frederick weighs the army's discipline and drill against the unreliability of its many foreign and pressed men, and sets out measures to keep them in the ranks: camp placement, patrols, controlled foraging and constant officer supervision.

• Bread, magazines, sutlers and forage

  Articles on subsistence explain the system of magazines and field bakeries, the distances an army can march from its bread, the regulation of sutlers selling beer and brandy, and the protection of foraging parties.

• Knowing the ground: the coup d'oeil

  A general must study maps and reconnoitre in person; Frederick describes the coup d'oeil as both a natural gift and a skill trained by practice in judging positions and the number of troops ground can hold.

• Camps, detachments and intelligence

  On choosing and securing camps, the dangers of dispersing forces in detachments, and the use of ordinary spies, double spies and deceived informants to learn the enemy's movements.

• Marches, rivers and stratagems

  Detailed guidance on columns, advance guards, crossing and defending rivers, surprising towns, and feints that conceal a real objective.

• Battle: attack, the refused wing and chance

  Frederick argues for short, lively wars and for attacking, explains how to strengthen one wing against an enemy flank while holding back the other, and warns that fortune plays a large part even in well-prepared engagements.

• Councils of war, winter quarters and the general's talents

  He rejects councils of war as engines of timidity, gives rules for cantonments and winter campaigns, and ends with the qualities a commander needs: secrecy, activity, self-command and attention to his men's subsistence.

Characters

• Frederick II, author and commander

  The king writing in his own voice, drawing lessons from battles he won and from his flight from the field at Mollwitz in 1741.

• The Prussian generals, intended readers

  Senior officers who received numbered copies of the 1748 printing under orders of secrecy.

• The common soldier, object of the instructions

  A drilled, often foreign or impressed infantryman whose desertion, hunger and fear the general must constantly manage.

• The Austrian enemy, principal opponent

  Maria Theresa's armies, especially their light troops (pandours and hussars), whose raids shape Frederick's advice on camps and marches.

Lessons

• Logistics decides what strategy can attempt

  Frederick ties every operation to bread, ovens, magazines and forage. The Instructions show that an army's reach is set by how far it can be fed, a lesson later commanders repeated in their own terms.

  • Why does Frederick devote so many articles to bread and sutlers before discussing battle?
  • How would the magazine system limit a Prussian campaign compared with an army living off the land?

• Discipline built on mistrust

  Because many soldiers would desert if they could, Frederick designs camps, marches and patrols around preventing escape. The book reveals how an absolutist army treated its own men as a population to be guarded.

  • What does the attention to desertion tell us about the social composition of the Prussian army?
  • Can fear of one's officers sustain an army in a long war?
  • How do Frederick's measures compare with modern ideas of unit cohesion?

• Concentrate rather than disperse

  Frederick repeatedly warns against detachments that weaken the main army in an effort to protect everything. The principle of concentration of force is stated here in practical terms decades before it became a doctrine.

  • When is it right to give up territory in order to keep the army together?
  • What kinds of pressure tempt commanders to divide their forces?

• A commander who learns from his own errors

  The king writes frankly about mistakes, including the confusion of his first battle. The Instructions model a leader who converts experience into rules for subordinates rather than into legend.

  • How does Frederick's candour about failure affect the authority of his rules?
  • Why might he have insisted that the book be kept secret?

Context

Prussia in the 1740s was a small, scattered state with a disproportionately large standing army, built by Frederick William I through the canton system of regional recruitment supplemented by foreign enlistment. Frederick's seizure of Silesia in 1740 began the War of the Austrian Succession; the Peace of Dresden (December 1745) confirmed his gains. Linear tactics, flintlock musketry and depot-based supply defined eighteenth-century warfare, and desertion was a chronic problem across European armies.

Composition

Written in French in 1746–1747 during the peace after the Second Silesian War and translated into German for a confidential printing in 1748. Frederick revised his military thinking in later works, including the Testament politique of 1752 and the Eléments de castramétrie et de tactique (1770). A copy of the General Principles was reportedly captured with a Prussian general during the Seven Years' War and published in French, after which it circulated widely. Brigadier General Thomas R. Phillips translated it in Roots of Strategy (1940) and as the separate volume Frederick the Great: Instructions for His Generals (1944).

Reception

Frederick's victories made Prussian drill and the oblique order objects of imitation across Europe; Guibert, Napoleon and Clausewitz all studied his campaigns. Napoleon visited Frederick's tomb at Potsdam in 1806 and is said to have praised him above all modern commanders. The Instructions became part of the military canon through Phillips's collections for American officer education, alongside Sun Tzu, Vegetius, de Saxe and Napoleon's maxims.

Comparisons

• napoleons-maxims-of-war

  Napoleon's maxims compress principles of concentration and speed that Frederick explains through Prussian particulars; Frederick's army was tethered to magazines, while Napoleon's corps lived largely off the countryside.

• the-art-of-war

  Sun Tzu also prizes deception, spies and knowledge of ground, but writes in aphorisms for a ruler, whereas Frederick writes as a reigning king giving concrete orders to subordinates about bread and pickets.

• on-war

  Clausewitz studied Frederick's campaigns closely and turned his remarks on chance and the general's eye into a theory of friction and military genius.

• the-art-of-war-machiavelli

  Machiavelli wanted citizen militias loyal by conviction; Frederick commands a professional army partly of foreigners and devotes pages to stopping them from running away.

• the-prince

  Frederick wrote an Anti-Machiavel (1740) condemning The Prince, then within a year invaded Silesia without warning; the Instructions show the practical statecraft he actually followed.

• the-conquest-of-gaul

  Caesar's commentaries give the same attention to corn supply, camps and the speed of marches, but present them as narrative self-justification rather than confidential instruction.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How early and how often Frederick turns to desertion. Notice that camp sites, marches and patrols are planned as much to keep his own soldiers from running away as to guard against the enemy.
• The articles on bread, field bakeries, magazines and sutlers, which come before the articles on battle. Ask why the king thinks a general must master supply first.
• The passage on the coup d'oeil, the trained eye for terrain, which Frederick treats as both a natural gift and a skill developed by practice.
• The warnings against multiplying detachments and against councils of war, which Frederick says produce only caution.
• His frank references to his own early campaigns, including the confusion of Mollwitz in 1741, as sources of the rules he gives.

Key terms and names

Silesian Wars

The wars of 1740-1742 and 1744-1745 in which Frederick seized and held the Austrian province of Silesia. The Instructions draw directly on their battles.

Magazine

A depot of grain and supplies. Frederick ties every operation to his magazines and field bakeries, which limits how far his army can march from its bread.

Sutler

A civilian merchant who followed the army selling food and drink. Frederick regulates them as part of keeping soldiers fed and controlled.

Coup d'oeil

The general's ability to read terrain at a glance and judge how many troops it can hold and how to use it. Frederick says it can be trained by constant practice.

Detachment

A part of the army sent away from the main body. Frederick warns that trying to protect everything with detachments weakens the army where it matters.

Refused wing

Holding back one wing of the army while strengthening the other to strike an enemy flank, the germ of the oblique order Frederick later used at Leuthen in 1757.

Mollwitz

Frederick's first battle, in 1741, which he left believing it lost while his infantry went on to win. He draws lessons from the confusion of that day.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What measures does Frederick prescribe for camps, marches and foraging in order to prevent desertion?
2. Comprehension How does Frederick describe the coup d'oeil, and how does he say a general can acquire it?
3. Comprehension Why does Frederick prefer short wars, and what does he say about the role of chance in battle?
4. Interpretation Frederick devotes many articles to bread and sutlers before he discusses battle. What does this order say about his idea of what a general's work really is?
5. Interpretation Frederick wants soldiers to fear their officers more than the enemy. What does this tell us about the Prussian army of the 1740s, and what are the limits of discipline built on fear?
6. Interpretation Why does Frederick distrust councils of war, and what kind of commander does his rejection of them assume?
7. Big Question Frederick treats war as a craft of supply, terrain and discipline, and says little about whether a given war is just. Can the skill of waging war be separated from the question of when war should be waged?

Faith Connections

• Luke 14:31-32 (Scripture)

  Jesus pictures a king who sits down first to consider whether he can meet an army twice his size before going to war. Frederick's preference for short wars and his close reckoning of bread and men is that calculation carried out in detail.

• Deuteronomy 20:8 (Scripture)

  Before battle Israel's officers send home anyone who is fearful and fainthearted, so that he will not weaken his brothers. Frederick, with many unwilling soldiers in his ranks, takes the opposite course and works to keep them from leaving.

• Augustine, Letter 189, to Boniface (Church Fathers)

  Augustine wrote to a Roman commander in Africa that war should be waged out of necessity and for the sake of peace, and that a soldier should keep faith even with an enemy. His letter asks of a general the question of purpose that Frederick's manual leaves aside.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Prussia is a small state with a large but partly unwilling army and cannot afford long wars. An army's reach is set by its supply and its strength by its discipline and concentration. Therefore a Prussian general must secure bread and magazines, prevent desertion through constant supervision, keep his forces together rather than scattering them in detachments, read the ground with a trained eye, and seek short, decisive campaigns by attacking at a chosen point.

Rhetorical device: exemplum from personal experience. Throughout the articles on battle Frederick grounds his rules in his own campaigns, from the confusion of Mollwitz to Hohenfriedberg and Soor, so that each precept carries the authority of a king who has learned it in the field.

Debate: Resolved: An army held together by fear of its officers is weaker than one held together by loyalty to its cause.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Frederick spends as much effort guarding his army against its own soldiers as against the enemy. Using the articles on desertion, supply and camps, argue what the Instructions reveal about the relation between the king and the men he commanded.

Comparison with The Art of War: Machiavelli wanted armies of citizens loyal by conviction; Frederick commands a professional army partly made up of foreigners and pressed men. Compare how each thinks an army is held together, and argue which view the history of the Silesian Wars supports.

Medical Lens

The Instructions are a document of the eighteenth-century military body: how much bread a soldier needs, how far he can march, how sutlers' beer and brandy should be regulated, how camps are sited, and how fear is managed by discipline. Desertion, which Frederick treats as a security problem, also reflects homesickness, exhaustion and dread, conditions later military medicine would name (nostalgia was already a recognised diagnosis among Swiss mercenaries from Johannes Hofer's 1688 dissertation). Frederick says little directly about field surgery or hospitals in this text; his later reforms of the Prussian military medical service belong to other documents. The absence is itself telling for a history-of-medicine reader: the wounded appear chiefly as losses of strength to be avoided by short wars.

• Opening articles on the Prussian troops

  Measures to prevent desertion, revealing the coercive conditions and low morale of many soldiers.

  Neurosis AnxietyAsylum Institution
• Articles on subsistence and sutlers

  Bread supply, field bakeries and the regulated sale of beer and brandy to troops.

  Starvation NutritionAlcohol
• Articles on camps

  Choice of camp sites for water, wood and defensibility, and arrangements that also bear on sanitation and the health of an army at rest.

  Public Health Sanitation
• Articles on battle and on winter campaigns

  Losses in attack, the case for short wars, and the strain of winter operations on men and horses.

  WAR WoundsStarvation Nutrition

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the night of a Prussian musketeer, recruited abroad, who is planning to desert from a camp laid out exactly according to Frederick's rules.

• Essay

  Compare Frederick's management of desertion with Johannes Hofer's diagnosis of 'nostalgia' among soldiers. When does a discipline problem become a medical one?

• Dialogue

  Imagine Frederick and Napoleon at Potsdam arguing over whether an army should depend on magazines or live off the land, each citing the campaigns that nearly ruined him.

• Classroom

  Give students a historical map of Silesia and ask them to site a camp and a magazine using only the principles Frederick sets out, then compare choices.

Further Reading

• Roots of Strategy, Thomas R. Phillips (ed.)

  Includes Frederick's instructions with Sun Tzu, Vegetius, de Saxe and Napoleon.

• The Military Life of Frederick the Great, Christopher Duffy

• Frederick the Great: King of Prussia, Tim Blanning

• Makers of Modern Strategy, Peter Paret (ed.)

  Contains an essay on Frederick and eighteenth-century warfare.