Prussia had neither anything to conquer nor to defend in Alsace. In the year 1792 it had undertaken the march through Lorraine into Champagne in a sort of chivalrous spirit. But as that enterprise ended in nothing, through the unfavourable course of circumstances, it continued the war with a feeling of very little interest. If the Prussian troops had been in the Netherlands, they would have been in direct communication with Holland, which they might look upon almost as their own country, having conquered it in the year 1787; they would then have covered the Lower Rhine, and consequently that part of the Prussian monarchy which lay next to the theatre of war. Prussia on account of subsidies would also have had a closer alliance with England, which, under these circumstances, would not so easily have degenerated into the crooked policy of which the Prussian cabinet was guilty at that time.
A much better result, therefore, might have been expected if the Austrians had appeared with their principal force on the Upper Rhine, the Prussians with their whole force in the Netherlands, and the Austrians had left there only a corps of proportionate strength.
If, instead of the enterprising Blücher, General Barclay had been placed at the head of the Silesian army in 1814, and Blücher and Schwartzenberg had been kept with the grand army, the campaign would perhaps have turned out a complete failure.
If the enterprising Laudon, instead of having his theatre of war at the strongest point of the Prussian dominions, namely, in Silesia, had been in the position of the German States’ army, perhaps the whole Seven Years’ War would have had quite a different turn. In order to examine this subject more narrowly, we must look at the cases according to their chief distinctions.