Seven Years' War

Seven Years' War
The Battle of Kunersdorf, by Alexander Kotzebue, 1848.
Date 1756–1763 Location Europe, Africa, India, North America, the Philippines Result Treaty of Paris Treaty of Hubertusburg Territorial changes Britain and Spain gain most of France's colonies in North America. Prussian control over most of Silesia did not change.
Belligerents
Prussia Great Britain and its colonies Hanover Iroquois Confederacy Portugal Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel Hesse-Kassel	Holy Roman Empire [1] France and its colonies  Russian Empire  Sweden  Spain and its colonies Saxony Naples Sardinia
Commanders
Frederick II Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz John Manners Edward Boscawen Baron Clive James Wolfe  † Baron Amherst Edward Braddock  † Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick	Count von Daun Franz Moritz von Lacy Charles Alexander of Lorraine Ernst von Laudon Louis XV Louis-Joseph de Montcalm  † Elizabeth Pyotr Saltykov Frederick Augustus II

The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) involved all of the major European powers of the period, causing 900,000 to 1,400,000 deaths. The British entered two years after the start of the war, later calling it the "Seven Year's War", although it was really nine years. Prussia, Electorate Brunswick-Lüneburg, and United Kingdom of Great Britain (including British colonies in North America, the British East India Company, and Ireland) were pitted against Austria, France (including the North American colony of New France and the French East India Company), the Russian Empire, Sweden, and Saxony. Portugal (on the side of Great Britain) and Spain (on the side of France) were later drawn into the conflict, and a force from the neutral Netherlands was attacked in India.

The war ended France's position as a major colonial power in the Americas (where it lost most of its possessions on the mainland of North America, in addition to some West Indian islands) and its position as the leading power in Europe,^[2] until the time of the French Revolution. Great Britain, meanwhile, emerged as the dominant colonial power in the world. The French Navy was crippled, which meant that only an ambitious rebuilding program in combination with the Spanish fleet would see it again threaten the Royal Navy's command of the sea.^[3] On the other side of the world, British East India Company acquired the strongest position within India, which was to become the "jewel in the imperial crown". The war was described by Winston Churchill as the first "world war",^[4] as it was the first conflict in human history to be fought around the globe, although most of the combatants were either European nations or their overseas colonies. As a partially Anglo-French conflict involving developing empires, the war was one of the most significant phases of the 18th century Second Hundred Years' War.^[5] The war began with Frederick the Great of Prussia's invasion of Saxony.

Other Names

In Canada, France and the United Kingdom, the Seven Years' War is used to describe the North American conflict as well as the European and Asian conflicts. This conflict, though called the "Seven Years' War," lasted 10 years. In the United States, however, the North American portion of the war is known as the French and Indian War. The conflict in India is termed the Third Carnatic War while the fighting between Prussia and Austria is called the Third Silesian War.

Causes

This war is often said to be a continuation of the War of the Austrian Succession, in which King Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, had gained the rich province of Silesia. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) only in order to gain time to rebuild her military forces and to forge new alliances, which she did with remarkable success. The political map of Europe had been redrawn in a few years. During the so-called Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, century-old enemies France, Austria and Russia formed a single alliance against Prussia.

Prussia had the protection only of Great Britain, whose ruling dynasty saw its ancestral Hanoverian possession as being threatened by France. In Great Britain's alliance with Prussia the two powers complemented each other. The British already had the most formidable navy in Europe, while Prussia had the most formidable land force on continental Europe, allowing Great Britain to focus its soldiers towards its colonies.

The Austrian army had undergone an overhaul according to the Prussian system. Maria Theresa, whose knowledge of military affairs shamed many of her generals, had pressed relentlessly for reform. Her interest in the welfare of the soldiers had gained her their undivided respect.

The second cause for war arose from the heated colonial struggle between the British Empire and French Empire which, as they expanded, met and clashed with one another on two continents.

War begins

The formal opening of hostilities in Europe was preceded by fighting in North America, where the westward expansion of the British colonies located along the eastern seaboard began to run afoul of French claims to the Mississippi valley in the late 1740s and early 1750s. In order to forestall the expansion of Virginia and Pennsylvania, in particular, the French built a line of forts in what is now western Pennsylvania in the mid-1750s, and British efforts to dislodge them led to conflicts generally considered to be part of the French and Indian War, as the Seven Years' War is known in the United States.

Having received reports of the clashes in North America, and having secured the support of Great Britain, Frederick crossed the border of Saxony, one of the smaller German states in league with Austria. The Saxon and Austrian armies were unprepared, and at the Battle of Lobositz, Frederick prevented the isolated Saxon army from being reinforced by an Austrian army under General count Browne. However, the Saxons successfully delayed the Prussian campaign. In the Mediterranean, the French opened the campaign against the British by an attack on Minorca; a British attempt at relief was foiled at the Battle of Minorca and the island was captured (for which Admiral Byng was court-martialed and executed).

In the spring of 1757, Frederick again took the initiative by marching on Prague. After the bloody Battle of Prague, the Prussians laid siege the city, but had to lift the siege after Frederick's first defeat at the Battle of Kolin. That summer, the Russians invaded East Prussia and defeated a smaller Prussian force in the fiercely contested Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf.

Things were looking very grim for Prussia at this time, with the Austrians mobilizing to attack Prussian-controlled soil and a French army under Soubise approaching from the west. In what Napoleon would call "a masterpiece in maneuver and resolution", Frederick thoroughly crushed both the French at the Battle of Rossbach and the Austrians at the Battle of Leuthen in the space of a month. With these great victories, Frederick once again established himself as Europe's finest general and his men as Europe's finest soldiers.

British amphibious "descents"

Great Britain planned a "descent" (an amphibious demonstration or raid) on Rochefort, a joint operation to overrun the town and burn the shipping in the Charente. The expedition set out on 8 September 1757, Sir John Mordaunt commanding the troops and Sir Edward Hawke the fleet. On 23 September, the Isle d'Aix was taken, but due to dithering by the military staff such time was lost that Rochefort became unassailable,^[6] and the expedition abandoned the Isle d'Aix and returned to Great Britain on 1 October.

Despite the operational failure and debated strategic success of the descent on Rochefort, Pitt — who saw purpose in this type of asymmetric enterprise — prepared to continue such operations.^[6] An army was assembled under the command of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough; he was aided by Lord George Sackville. The naval escorts for the expedition were commanded by Anson, Hawke, and Howe. The army landed on 5 June 1758 at Cancalle Bay, proceeded to St. Malo, and burned the shipping in the harbor; the arrival of French relief forces caused the British to avoid a siege, and the troops re-embarked. An attack on Havre de Grace was called off, and the fleet sailed on to Cherbourg; but the weather being bad and provisions low, that too was abandoned, and the expedition returned, having damaged French privateering and provided a further strategic demonstration against the French coast.

Pitt now prepared to send troops into Germany; and both Marlborough and Sackville, disgusted by what they perceived as the futility of the "descents", obtained commissions in that army. The elderly General Bligh was appointed to command a new "descent", escorted by Howe. The campaign began propitiously: with the support of the navy to bombard Cherbourg and cover their landing, the army drove off the French force detailed to oppose their landing, captured Cherbourg, and destroyed its fortifications, docks, and shipping. The troops were re-embarked and the fleet moved them to the Bay of St. Lunaire in Brittany where, on 3 September, they were landed to again operate against St. Malo; however, this action proved impractical. Worsening weather forced the two armies to separate: the ships sailed for the safer anchorage of St. Cast, while the army proceeded overland. The tardiness of Bligh in moving his forces allowed a French force of 10,000 men from Brest to catch up with him and open fire on the re-embarkation troops. A rear-guard of 1,400 under General Dury held off the French while the rest of the army embarked; they could not be saved, 750, including Dury, were killed and the rest captured.

Continental warfare

Frederick invaded Austria in the spring of 1758 but failed to score an important victory. In the west, the French were beaten in the Battle of Reichenberg and the Battle of Krefeld by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.

Operations of Russian army from Polish territory during Seven Years' War 1756-1762. The green arrows are Russian movements, and green circles are Russian bases

In the east, at the Battle of Zorndorf in Prussia, a Prussian army of 35,000 men under Frederick fought to a standstill with a Russian army of 43,000 commanded by Count Fermor. The Russians withdrew from the field. In the undecided Battle of Tornow on 25 September, a Swedish army repulsed six assaults by a Prussian army. On 14 October, Marshal Daun's Austrians surprised the main Prussian army at the Battle of Hochkirch. Frederick lost much of his artillery but retreated in good order, helped by the densely wooded landscape.

The year 1759 saw some severe Prussian defeats. At the Battle of Kay, or Paltzig, the Russian Count Saltykov with 47,000 Russians defeated 26,000 Prussian troops commanded by General von Wedel. Though the Hanoverians defeated an army of 60,000 French at Minden, Austrian general Daun forced the surrender of an entire Prussian corps of 13,000 men in the Battle of Maxen. Frederick himself lost half his army in the Battle of Kunersdorf, the worst defeat in his military career, and one that drove him to the brink of abdication and suicide. The disaster resulted partly from his misjudgment of the Russians, who had already demonstrated their strength at Zorndorf and at Gross-Jägersdorf.

The French planned to invade the British Isles during 1759 by accumulating troops near the mouth of the Loire and concentrating their Brest and Toulon fleets. However, two sea defeats prevented this. In August, the Mediterranean fleet under Jean-François de La Clue-Sabran was scattered by a larger British fleet under Edward Boscawen at the Battle of Lagos. In the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November, the British admiral Edward Hawke with 23 ships of the line caught the French Brest fleet with 21 ships of the line under Marshal de Conflans and sank, captured or forced aground many of them, putting an end to the French plans.

1760 brought even less disaster to the Rrussians. The Prussian general Fouqué was defeated in the Battle of Landshut. The French captured Marburg, and the Swedes part of Pomerania. The Hanoverians were victorious over the French at the Battle of Warburg, but the Austrians, under the command of General Loudon captured Glatz in Silesia. In the Battle of Liegnitz Frederick scored a victory despite being outnumbered three to one. The Russians under General Saltykov and Austrians under General Lacy briefly occupied his capital, Berlin, in October. The end of that year saw Frederick once more victorious, defeating the able Daun in the Battle of Torgau, but he suffered heavy casualties and the Austrians retreated in good order.

1761 brought a new country into the war. Spain declared war on Great Britain on 4 January. In the Battle of Villinghausen Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a 92,000-man French army. The Russians under Zakhar Chernyshev and Pyotr Rumyantsev stormed Kolberg in Pomerania, while the Austrians captured Schweidnitz.

Great Britain now threatened to withdraw her subsidies, and, as the Prussian armies had dwindled to 60,000 men, Frederick's survival was severely threatened. Then on 5 January 1762 the Russian Empress Elizabeth died. Her Prussophile successor, Peter III, at once recalled Russian armies from Berlin (see: the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1762)) and mediated Frederick's truce with Sweden. In the aftermath, Frederick was able to drive the Austrians from Silesia in the Battle of Freiberg (29 October 1762), while his Brunswick allies captured the key town of Göttingen.

War in the colonies

For North American events, see French and Indian War.

Battles occurred in India, North America, Europe, the Caribbean isles, the Philippines and coastal Africa. During the 1750s up to 1763, Great Britain gained enormous areas of land and influence at the expense of the French. Robert Clive expelled the French from India, and General Wolfe defeated the French forces of General Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, a victory which led to the surrender of Quebec to the British.

Great Britain lost Minorca in the Mediterranean to the French in 1756 but captured the French colonies in Senegal on the African continent in 1758. The British Royal Navy captured the French sugar colonies of Guadeloupe in 1759 and Martinique in 1762, as well as the Spanish cities of Havana in Cuba, and Manila in the Philippines, both prominent Spanish colonial cities.

In 1757, following three years of warfare in the Ohio Valley, the British mounted an attack on New France by land as well as sea. French forces defeated British attacks in the Hudson Valley and French naval deployments successfully defended the key fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, as well as the approaches to Quebec. However, a renewed British offensive in 1758 succeeded in taking Louisbourg. Then on 13 September 1759, following a three-month siege of Québec, General James Wolfe defeated the French forces at the Plains of Abraham outside the city. The French staged a counteroffensive in the spring of 1760 with some success, but failed to retake Québec due to a lack of naval support. French forces retreated to Montréal, where on 8 September they surrendered in the face of overwhelming British numerical superiority.

In 1762, toward the end of the war, French forces attacked St. John's, Newfoundland. If successful, the expedition would have strengthened France's hand at the negotiating table. Though they took St. John's and raided nearby settlements, the French forces were eventually defeated by British troops at the Battle of Signal Hill. This was the final battle of the war in North America, and it forced the French to surrender to the British under Lieutenant Colonel William Amherst. The victorious British now controlled all of eastern North America.

The history of the Seven Years' War, particularly the siege of Québec and the death of Wolfe, generated a vast number of ballads, broadsides, images (see The Death of General Wolfe), maps and other printed materials, which testify to how this event continued to capture the imagination of the British public long after Wolfe's death in 1759.^[7]

Peace

The British-French hostilities were ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which involved a complex series of land exchanges, the most important being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. France was given the choice of keeping either New France or its Caribbean island colony Guadeloupe, and chose the latter to retain one of its sources of sugar,^[8] writing off New France as an unproductive, costly territory. France also returned Minorca to the British. Spain lost control of Florida to Great Britain, but received New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River from the French. The exchanges suited the British as well, as their own Caribbean islands already supplied ample sugar, and with the acquisition of New France and Florida, they now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi, with the exception of New Orleans.

However, the British now faced the delicate task of pacifying their new French-Canadian subjects, as well as the many American Indian tribes in the western lands who had supported the French. George III's Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, was intended to appease the latter, but led to considerable outrage in the Thirteen Colonies whose inhabitants were eager to acquire native lands. The Quebec Act of 1774, similarly intended to win over the loyalty of French Canadians, also spurred resentment among American colonists. Victorious in 1763, Great Britain would soon face another military threat in North America - this time from its longtime subjects.

European boundaries were returned to their status quo ante bellum by the Treaty of Hubertusburg (February 1763). Prussia thus maintained its possession of Silesia, having survived the combined assault of three neighbours, each larger than itself. According to some historians, Prussia gained enormously in influence at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire. This increase in Prussian influence, it is argued, marks the beginning of the modern German state, an event at least as influential as the colonial empire Great Britain had gained. Others, including Fred Anderson, author of Crucible of War, believe the war was needless and overly costly.^[9]

It should be noted, however, that while Frederick the Great's earlier acts of aggression can be blamed for the circumstances that led to the Seven Years' War, it was waged against him by a coalition of larger European powers intent on reversing Prussia's fortunes. Maintaining the defense of Prussia "against the greatest superiority of power and the utmost spite of fortune" in the words of Lord Macaulay^[10], while retaining Prussia's earlier territorial gains, can be seen as an accomplishment in itself. The nations and empires allied against Prussia during the war comprised over half of Continental Europe, and Frederick's forces were opposed from four different directions. The Austrian army also performed well and sometimes successfully against a Prussian army led by a man later acknowledged by Napoleon Bonaparte as a greater military leader than himself, and thanks to Maria Theresa's leadership the war was not such a great loss for Austria that Austrian prestige or internal stability were seriously harmed. However, the same cannot be said of France.

The Seven Years' War was the last major military conflict on the European continent before the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792. From a military point of view, the battles are considered less interesting than the numerous marches and countermarches in which Frederick excelled. This warfare of mobility would later be studied by Napoleon Bonaparte. The English won the war.

Numerous towns and other places in the Thirteen Colonies were named after Frederick the Great to commemorate the victorious conclusion of the war, including Frederick, Maryland and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Cultural references

• The novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray is set against the backdrop of the Seven Years' War. Stanley Kubrick's movie Barry Lyndon (1975) is based on this novel.
• The board games Friedrich and, more recently, Prussia's Defiant Stand are based on the events of the Seven Years' War.
• The novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper is set in the Northern American Theatre of the Seven Years' War.
• The Partisan in War (1789), a treatise on light infantry tactics written by Colonel Andreas Emmerich, is based on his experiences in the Seven Years' War.
• The Seven Years War is the central theme of G.E. Lessing's play Minna von Barnhelm.

See also

• Rule of 1756
• List of wars
• French India

Footnotes

References

• Fowler, William H. Empires at War: The Seven Years' War and the Struggle for North America. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005. ISBN 1553650964.
• Marston, Daniel. The Seven Years' War. Essential Histories. Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2001. ISBN 1841761915.
• McLynn, Frank. 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. ISBN 022406245X.

External links

• The Seven Years' War from The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Ioannis' SYW Project & Uniform Plates
• Clash of Empires and The Battle of the Plains of Abraham - Canadian War Museum
• Seven Years War Reference World History Database
• The French Army 1600-1900
• Events and the participants in the Seven Years War
• Seven Years' War timeline
• The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition's entry on the Seven Years' War
• Another Seven Years' War timeline
• Memorial University of New Foundland's page about the war
• Seven Years' War Knowledge Base
• Great Britain Seven Years War Chronology
• 1759: From the Warpath to the plains of Abraham. Virtual Exhibition.
• National Battlefields Commission. Plains of Abraham. National Historic Park. Quebec, Canada.
• The Seven Years' War in Canada
• Virtual Vault, an online exhibition of Canadian historical art at Library and Archives Canada.
• Seven Years' War exhibition at Fort Ligonier