The greatest story in the world, period 3 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

It was a conspiracy which came to the knowledge of Frederick, the Prussian king.

For many years the interests of England and of France had been in conflict both West and East, in America and in India. The opposition was approaching the point at which war must result from it. Now, in the European position just indicated, England saw the opportunity of getting a strong helper against France. She allied herself with Frederick, who had carried the States of Brunswick and of Hesse-Cassel with him; and together they declared war upon nearly all Europe. France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony were against them.

It has the sound of a combination of overwhelming force as opposed to the English and the Prussian kings, even though the immense power of Russia was then only in its infancy. England was not likely to send very large armies to the Continent, and an English force of 50,000 retreated before the French and was disbanded very early in the war. But Frederick had a genius for the creation and organisation of armies, and had occupied it, during the eight years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in making the Prussian army the finest military machine which the modern world had seen.

The Seven Years' War

The war which ensued, known as the Seven Years' War from the time that it lasted, is most remarkable for its dramatic changes of fortune. Frederick began by a victory in Saxony, yet more than once he was so heavily defeated that he almost gave up the fight in despair. It is said that he thought of suicide. England, when the elder Pitt was Prime Minister, gave assistance in form of large subsidies of money rather than large forces of men or arms, and without these subsidies Frederick must have given in. A mixed force of English and Hanoverians did indeed fight under the Duke of Brunswick and drove back the French from their attacks on Hanover in 1758 and again in 1759, but except for this last success everything went heavily against Frederick in the fourth year of the war. In the year following, contingents of Russian and Austrian armies were actually occupying Berlin when he fell upon the main Austrian force at Torgau on the Elbe. The victory that he there gained, over heavy odds, turned the tide of the fighting in his favour when it was at its lowest ebb.

Still the struggle continued, with Frederick and his war-weary troops chiefly on the defensive, exhausted. And to that exhaustion and to his encircling foes he would in all likelihood have been compelled to own defeat, had it not been for the death at the beginning of 1762 of one of his chief enemies, the Tsarina of Russia, and the accession of a Tsar who was his friend. Russia, from a foe became an ally and carried Sweden with her. England, however, had become tired of the war and made alliance with France and Spain by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and in the same year the protagonists, or chief fighters, Prussia and Austria, themselves came to terms. Prussia retained Silesia. The final result of the seven years' fighting, with these singular alternations of victories and defeats, was to leave the map of Europe practically unchanged. From that point of view all the bloodshed had been for nothing.

From another, a larger and more just point of view, however, we are obliged to realise that perhaps no other one war in the whole of the story has made more difference to its future course. If we consider its effect on the Continent alone, we must realise that it laid the foundation on which the union of the German States into a compact nation was later to be built. It established Prussia in far greater strength than before, because, if she had not added to her possessions, she had at least held her own while her enemies vainly dashed themselves against her. Austria had perforce to acquiesce at length in the loss of Silesia and also in the recognition of this strong State of Northern Germany set up against her own strength in the south. Prussia was to prove the nucleus round and under which the unity of Germany should be built, and it was this war which set firm the foundations of that building.

And as to who was the master mason in that building we can have no doubt whatever.

We have come across many men in course of this Greatest Story to whom the title of Great has been given, but surely to none more rightly than to this great King of Prussia. His courage in the hour of defeat has been indicated by the above very brief sketch of the war. It was only by the most steadfast courage combined with rare military genius that he came out of that seven years' fighting unshattered. But his genius served his country in peaceful as well as warlike interests. He was an absolute despot, yet he used himself and his despotic power entirely for his country's good. He set the example, in his own court, of a rigid, a scraping economy. He did all in his power to develop the industries of the country, by road making, by improved means of transport, and by every possible expedient. He encouraged education and brought men of letters like Voltaire to the Prussian court. He was rough and passionate, but a very hard worker, and all his work was given to the strengthening and enlightening of his subjects.

Taken from this point of view, then, the Seven Years' War is seen to have had a very great effect on our story.