War in 100 Events by Martin van Creveld

Author:Martin van Creveld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

The War of the Austrian Succession began when Frederick II of Prussia tried to grab Silesia from Austria. It quickly developed into a pan-European free for all focusing around the greatest powers of the time: Austria and France. Other theatres where it was fought included the southern Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, northern Italy, North America, and India. Naval actions took place as far afield as the West Indies, the Mediterranean, Northern Waters, and the Indian Ocean

By this time the military of all the major belligerents had been fully professionalised. Officers were aristocrats and gentlemen; one subject taught in every one of the newly established military academies was dancing. The troops were low-class commoners drawn mostly from the countryside – ‘The scum of the earth, enlisted for drink,’ as the British commander Wellington later put it. Pikes had disappeared, making Clausewitz take 1740 as the beginning of ‘modern’ war. Sieges and murderous battles – the latter fought at close range between long lines of musket-carrying infantry that was flanked and supported by cavalry and artillery – punctuated endless complicated manoeuvres. Designed to lever the opponent out of his position with the objective of either preparing for a decisive battle or achieving victory without having to fight one, those manoeuvres seldom succeeded in doing either. More or less massive naval battles were fought by British, French, and Spanish warships sailing in line ahead and cannonading each other, sometimes thousands of miles from home.

Perhaps the most important battle of the war was that of Fontenoy in May 1745. The French commander, Maurice Marshal de France, with 52,000 men, defeated an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army of similar size, leading to the capture of much of the southern Netherlands. The battle was followed, a month later, by that of Hohenfriedberg in Silesia. On this occasion Prussian troops, though outnumbered, decisively defeated the Austrians and Saxons, earning Frederick the epithet ‘the Great’. When peace came in 1748, Prussia gained Silesia, whereas the British and French exchanged some territories in both North America and India.

The war marked the beginning of Prussia’s rise to Great Power status. It also saw important developments in the law of war, such as in treating prisoners, the wounded, etc. Codified by the great lawyer Emmerich Vattel, these developments became the basis of ‘civilised’ warfare as practised, more or less, until 1939.

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