Seven Years' War. THE, was the third, and by far the longest (1756-63) and most terrible, of the contests for the possession of Silesia (q.v.). During the two former wars the Empress Maria Theresa had been too much engrossed in maintaining her claims to the Austrian dominions to offer any very effective resistance to the aggression of Frederick the Great of Prussia ; but after emerging triumphantly from that contest she began to concert measures for the recovery of her lost province. Frederick, however, with his usual astuteness, foresaw her purpose and resolved to anticipate her. Accordingly in August 1756 he made a sudden advance upon Dresden with 60,000 men ; and, when the elector refused either to side with him or to promise strict neutrality in the coming struggle, he shut up the Saxon army (17,000 strong) between Pirna and Königstein. An Austrian army, commanded by Marshal Browne, advanced to relieve the Saxons, but was met by Frederick at Lobositz (October 1), and driven back into Bohemia. The Saxons then surrendered (October 14), and were mostly incorporated with the Prussian army, whilst their country was treated by Frederick, in the absence of the elector, who fled to Poland, as a conquered province. This action on the part of Frederick thoroughly roused his enemies, and made them rapidly perfect their alliances ; so that, when the second campaign began in the following year, the Prussian king was opposed by 100,000 Russians, more than that number of French troops, and by armies raised by Sweden and the empire. His own armies, including 40,000 Hanoverians, English, and Hessians, numbered less than 200,000. In April Frederick, leaving a corps of 24,000 under Schwaldt to oppose the Swedes and Russians, invaded Bohemia and managed to shut up the Austrian army under Duke Charles of Lorraine in Prague ; but Marshal Daun headed another army for the Duke's release, and inflicted a crushing defeat upon Frederick at Kolín (June 18). Meanwhile a large French army under Marshal d'Estrees advanced into Hanover, defeated the incapable Duke of Cumberland at Hastenbeck (July 26), and intimidated him into disbanding, by the Convention of Closter-Seven, the whole of his army excepting the Hanoverians. Another French army under Soubise effected a junction with the Imperialists under the Prince of Hildburghausen in the direction of Saxony ; but Frederick turned and smote them at Rossbach, and after half an hour's fighting put them completely to rout. This diversion left the victorious Austrians unopposed, and they soon made themselves masters of Silesia and Breslau. Frederick, however, taught them what stuff he was made of by defeating an Austrian army three times as numerous as his own at Leuthen (December 5), and thereby recovered Silesia. These victories induced the Russians to vacate the province of East Prussia, which they had seized after defeating Lehwaldt at Grossjürgersdorf (August 30). The English government, rejecting Cumberland's engagements of Closter-Seven, raised another army for 1758 and put it under the leadership of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, who effectually held his own against the French, and even drove them out of Westphalia and beyond the Rhine, defeating them at Krefeld (June 23) and Minden near Frankfort (August 1, 1759). The king of Prussia had in the spring of 1758 pushed into Bohemia, but could make no headway before he was called back northwards to meet the Russians, who had invaded Brandenburg. He defeated them in a desperate battle at Zorndorf (August 25). At this time Frederick's brother, Prince Henry, was being hard pressed in Saxony by Daun with superior forces, and the king, the Russians being in rapid retreat for Poland, sped back to his help. Daun, however, contrived to take Frederick completely by surprise, and gave him a terrible beating at Hochkirch (October 14). Nevertheless, before the end of the year the Prussians were again in possession of Saxony.
The fourth campaign (1759) in the east of Prussia was altogether disastrous to the Prussians. The king was not able to carry out his desire of hindering the conjunction of his enemies, the Russians and Austrians, first through the defeat of his general Wedell near Züllichau (July 23), and then through his own terrible losses against the allied armies at Kunersdorf (August 12). Three months later Daun compelled a Prussian force under General von Finck to capitulate at Maxen in the south of Saxony, and thereafter established himself in that country. With greatly diminished strength, an exhausted treasury, a desolated territory incapable of affording either men or supplies, and gloomy forebodings of the final issue, though with unfaltering resolution never to yield, Frederick prepared for the fifth campaign (1760). His army in Prussia, now reduced to 90,000 men, mostly foreigners and raw recruits, was still further diminished by the capture of Fouqué with 8000 men in Silesia, followed by Marshal Loudon's conquest of that province, though by the brilliant victory of Liegnitz (August 15) Frederick successfully prevented the Austrians and Russians from uniting their forces. In spite of this his strength was now becoming ominously insufficient for the task he had set himself ; the Russians and Austrians captured and plundered Berlin (October 1), the Swedes came down from the north, and Loudon closed in upon the king from Silesia. But he fell with incredible fury upon Daun at Torgau in Silesia (November 3), slew 12,000 of his men and took 8000 more prisoners, and by the retreat of the Austrians was once more left in possession of Saxony. In the following year (1761) the French were again worsted by Duke Ferdinand at Villinghausen (July 15). In Silesia Frederick as usual attempted, but in vain, to prevent the Austrians from joining the Russians, and only found relief when scarcity of provisions compelled the Russians to retreat to Poland. Loudon, however, captured Schweidnitz, whilst farther north the Russians and Swedes drove the Prussians out of Pomerania. To add to Frederick's difficulties, all subsidies from Britain were stopped by the Earl of Bute after George II.'s death, and Prussia was utterly at the end of her resources of all kinds.
But suddenly the death of the czarina Elizabeth (January 5, 1762) freed him from one of the most powerful of his enemies. At the same time the new czar (Peter III.) induced Sweden to retire from the war. Thereupon Frederick took up the contest with renewed vigour ; on July 21 he stormed the
Austrian entrenchments at Burkersdorf, and, following up this success, routed Dann at Reichenbach (August 16) and took Schweidnitz (October 9), thus recovering Silesia. Contemporaneously with these events his brother, Prince Henry, by a series of fortunate manœuvres possessed himself of the passes of the Erzgebirge, and overthrew the imperial forces at Freiberg (October 29). In the west the Duke of Brunswick still held his ground gloriously against the French, routing them at Wilhelmsthal (June 24), capturing Cassel, and recovering the whole of Hesse. France now gave up a contest from which she had gathered nothing but military disgrace, and concluded treaties with Britain and Prussia; and towards the end of the year the minor German states also withdrew from the coalition. Maria Theresa was now left alone, and, Austria being exhausted as well as Prussia, was compelled, sorely against her will, to conclude the peace of Hubertsburg (February 15, 1763; England made peace with France by the treaty of Paris on the 10th), which finally acknowledged Frederick as the lord of Silesia.
This long and desperate struggle cost Europe a million lives, and prostrated the strength of almost all the powers who had engaged in it. It made no change in the territorial distribution of Europe, but it increased tenfold the moral power of Prussia, and gave its army a prestige which it retained till the battle of Jena. But outside of Europe, in North America and India, it brought about a new epoch. According to Parkman, it crippled the commerce of France and blighted her colonial power; it gave England the mastery of North America and India, and made her the first commercial nation.
See Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great; Frederick II., Histoire de la Guerre de Sept Ans; and histories by Auchenholtz (11th ed. 1879), the officers of the Prussian General Staff (8 vols. 1827-47), Maslowski (Russian account; Ger. trans. Berlin, 1888 et seq.), Longman (in 'Epochs of History' series), and H. Lloyd (2 vols. Lond. 1781-90); also the article FREDERICK II. And for America and India, see Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884); Seeley, The Expansion of England (1883); and the articles CANADA, CLIVE, COLONY, HAWKE, INDIA, WOLFE.