by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] On August 29, 1756, the Prussian King Frederick II, already known as the Great, attacked Saxony, an ally of Russia and Austria. Thus began the Seven Years' War, in which everyone fought against everyone else.
And the fighting wasn't limited to Europe. The Huron and Delaware Indian tribes fought on the shores of Ontario, Indian rajas in Bengal, and in South America, the black subjects of the Portuguese King Joseph I the Reformer fought the Creoles of Louis XV the Beloved. Only Turkey, Persia, and China remained outside the great power rivalry. The decisive word in the battle belonged to the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna.
This first large-scale conflict of the 18th century, with theaters of war stretching from the Baltic to the Philippines, is a contender for the title of "World War Zero." It was the Seven Years' War, not the First World War, that became the first trench warfare (never before had redoubts been built so extensively and so quickly in Europe), and it was at this time, long before the Krupp guns, that artillery came to the fore.
OLD FRITZ'S ITALIAN GREYHOUND
In the case of the great wars of the 20th century, it's easy to recall who fought on which side in the clash between the Entente and the Quadruple Alliance, or the Axis and the anti-Hitler coalition. But the global conflict of the 18th century was distinguished—in keeping with the spirit of the times—by the instability and confusion of coalitions.
Another difference. In the First and Second World Wars, Germany was the instigator of the conflict, and the rest of the world ultimately united against it (and its few allies). The Seven Years' War was precipitated by the confrontation between two German states. King Frederick of Prussia deprived Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria (whom the Great called "the sow of Europe") of her Silesian possessions. Vienna was plotting revenge against "Old Fritz."
This was compounded by another long-standing feud—between England and France, which resulted in proxy wars in North America waged by Native American tribes in the service of the British or French. But the conflict was also looming in Europe.
The then-reigning English King George II was a pure-blooded German from Hanover. He treasured the title of Elector of Hanover no less than the British crown. The French were seriously threatening George's Hanoverian possessions. Therefore, the British monarch decided to form an alliance with the most powerful of the German kings and his distant relative, Frederick of Prussia. Thus, the London-Berlin Axis was born.
The Austrian ruler Maria Theresa, seeing the emergence of an alliance aimed against her, hastened to draw closer to London's powerful enemy, Paris.
Louis XV didn't respond immediately (or rather, neither did his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, who was then shaping French policy). Paris didn't want to quarrel with Frederick, so Madame de Pompadour sent Voltaire himself to Berlin for negotiations— especially since the great intellect had previously corresponded with the Prussian king.
But this mission, in the spirit of the Gallant Age, failed due to Frederick's Prussian rudeness: the king declared he didn't understand why he should defer to some madam and sent Voltaire back to Paris. Soon, news reached Versailles that Frederick had named one of his greyhounds "Pompadour." France allied with Austria against the British-Prussian alliance.
FOR THE FIRST TIME BECAUSE OF POLAND
Our Empress Elizabeth Petrovna had to choose between allying with George II or Louis XV. The two great minds at her court were divided: Chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev leaned toward London, while Mikhail Vorontsov leaned toward Paris.
Elizabeth, Bestuzhev, and Vorontsov didn't care who controlled Canada or the trading posts in India, or who imported slaves to Brazil or exported spices from the Philippines. These Anglo-French tensions were too far removed from the actual European theater of war.
At the same time, Elizabeth did not want war with Frederick of Prussia either. The Empress made no secret of her dislike for her western neighbor. "The King of Prussia," she told the English envoy, " is truly a bad ruler... He's some kind of Persian Nadir Shah." But these harsh assessments did not at all imply a desire to dispatch regiments toward Königsberg. Frederick also had a low opinion of "Aunt Elsa," but he recognized the strength of our army.
However, Russia had its own interest—Poland. It became a stumbling block. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth still existed at the time (it was only partitioned under Catherine II ), but it was increasingly becoming dependent on the Russian Empire. The Sejm appointed the Saxon Elector Augustus as the elected Polish king. Therefore, Saxony was also a concern in St. Petersburg.
Bestuzhev convinced the empress that the Prussian King Frederick, with his "grabbing, restless, and outrageous" character, would sooner or later occupy the Saxon Elector's lands. But he wouldn't stop there—he would continue his aggression to the East, against Poland, and then Russia.
“The more the power of the King of Prussia increases, the greater the danger will be for us,” the Chancellor wrote to the Tsarina in 1744.
On August 27, 1756, the prophecy came true—Prussia captured Saxony. Russia entered the pan-European campaign on the side of Austria and France against Prussia and Great Britain. Frederick rudely remarked that he was now fighting "three women": Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, and Madame de Pompadour.
At the same time, on another front, the French, the English, and their Indian allies were fighting near the North American Great Lakes. These events were described almost a century later by James Fenimore Cooper in his novel "The Deerslayer," featuring the Mohican chieftain Chingachgook, the Great Snake. The Mohicans, led by the prototype of Chingachgook, sided with the British, while their sworn enemies, the Hurons, supported the French. It could be said that the Great Snake and the Russian generals were in opposing camps.
"THE RUSSIANS BEAT THE PRUSSIANS"
What did Frederick hope for when he unleashed the war? Not so much his military genius, but Elizabeth's poor health and a change in power. The Empress appointed her nephew, Grand Duke Peter Feodorovich, born Karl Peter Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and a fanatical admirer of Frederick the Great's genius, as heir to the throne.
“The Grand Duke was convinced that Frederick II loved him and spoke with great respect,” wrote Chancellor Bestuzhev.
Moreover, the Russian heir to the throne considered himself first and foremost the ruler of Holstein-Gottorp and was confident that the great Prussian king would help him defend his native duchy from the encroachments of neighboring Denmark.
This political gamble ultimately paid off, but before that, it was the Russian army that led Prussia to virtual collapse and dispelled the myth of its king's invincibility.
Friedrich believed that Russia would, for the time being, "pressure with force" and the size of its troops, but the Prussian king did not rate the quality of the Russian army's command highly. After all, the Russian Empire's most successful commander, Field Marshal Burchard Munnich, was in disgrace and had already spent 15 years in exile near the Arctic Circle.
And here he miscalculated. Vice-Chancellor Vorontsov also underestimated the strength of the Russian generals when he tried to dissuade Elizabeth from fighting Frederick. But on August 30, 1757, Stepan Apraksin routed the "invincible" Prussians on their own territory, at Gross-Jägersdorf. On August 12, 1759, the Russian and Austrian armies defeated Frederick at Kunersdorf—a victory achieved thanks to the courage of our soldiers and the sound strategy of Pyotr Saltykov.
In October 1760, the Russian army captured Berlin for the first time in our history – allied troops under the command of Count Zakhar Chernyshev entered the Prussian capital.
Berlin was forced to abandon, but in 1761, Russian troops, supported by the navy, captured the fortress-port of Kolberg (now Kołobrzeg in Poland), opening the way for a new offensive on the Prussian capital. By this point, Frederick had resigned himself to the loss of Königsberg and all of East Prussia—this territory was not only occupied by Elizabeth's army but also incorporated into the Russian Empire. Local Germans (including Immanuel Kant, a professor at the University of Königsberg ) swore allegiance to the new ruler.
PEACE WITH THE VILLAIN AND RETRIBUTION
The later campaigns of the "Catherine's eagles" against the Ottomans have attracted far more scholarly attention than the Seven Years' War. This is despite the fact that Pyotr Rumyantsev and Alexander Suvorov first distinguished themselves on the battlefields of East Prussia and Brandenburg. It was then that one of Suvorov's proverbial aphorisms, "The Russians always beat the Prussians," emerged. The Orlov and Chernyshev brothers demonstrated their military valor there.
The Seven Years' War remained "in the shadows" due to human error. On January 5, 1762, Elizabeth Petrovna died, and this event turned the tide of the war. Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp ascended the throne, taking the name Peter III.
The Russian army was ordered to cease hostilities against the new emperor's idol. Peter III "nullified" the victories in the war, transferred Russia to the Anglo-Prussian coalition, and began preparing the Russian army for war with Denmark over Holstein. Königsberg, captured at the cost of Russian blood, was returned to Frederick—a historical injustice rectified in 1945.
But then a 180-degree turn in Russian policy decided the outcome of the war. England, allied with Prussia, defeated France and Austria. The British king took Canada, Louisiana, and the Indian and West Indies possessions from the French king. Prussia grew stronger and began to emerge as the military hegemon of Central Europe. The Russian Empire lost "almost nothing"—except military glory and the territories it had captured.
Peter III, who had already conceived several rather sensible domestic political reforms (which his wife, Catherine II, would implement), signed his own death warrant with a reckless foreign policy move. The emperor, who ascended the throne in January 1762, was deposed by Catherine in July of that same year, with the unanimous support of the guard, army, and court.
The manifesto of the new empress emphasized: “The glory of Russia, by concluding a new peace with its very villain, is given over… into complete enslavement.”
The fate of the hapless emperor was decided by the hero of the Seven Years' War, Alexei Orlov, who was "looking after" Peter III at his estate in Ropsha. Orlov reported to the empress: "Our bastard has fallen very ill, and has been struck by a sudden colic. I fear he will die tonight, and I fear even more that he will come back to life."
It "didn't come to life," but the results of the already-concluded war couldn't be reversed. However, Prussian military theorists and practitioners remembered how they had been "beaten" by the Russian army—and this lesson lasted until 1914.