The Anglo-Prussian Alliance was a military alliance created by the Westminster Convention between Great Britain and Prussia that lasted formally between 1756 and 1762, during the Seven Years' War. The alliance allowed Britain to concentrate most of its efforts against the colonial possessions of the French-led coalition while Prussia bore the brunt of the fighting in Europe. The alliance ended in the final months of the conflict, but strong ties remained between both kingdoms.
Since 1731, Britain had been tied to Prussia's major rival, Austria, by the Anglo-Austrian Alliance. Prussia had been allied to Britain's enemy, France. After the War of the Austrian Succession, Austria had lost the valuable province of Silesia, and Empress Maria Theresa tried to gain British support for a proposed military action to reclaim it. When the British government refused, she grew disenchanted with it and in 1756 made an alliance with France.
Suddenly without a major ally in Continental Europe, the British hastily concluded a similar pact with Frederick the Great of Prussia in the hope of forestalling a major European war by maintaining the European balance of power. Prussia had a number of leading British supporters, including William Pitt the Elder.
| Type | Bilateral treaty |
|---|---|
| Signed | 19 January 1756 |
| Location | Westminster, England, Great Britain |
| Original signatories | |
| Ratifiers |
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The Treaty of Westminster was a treaty of neutrality signed on 16 January 1756 between Frederick the Great of Prussia and King George II of Great Britain, Elector of Hanover. The development was caused by British fears of a French attack on Hanover. The terms stated that Prussia and Great Britain would seek to prevent any foreign power's forces from passing through the Holy Roman Empire and was part of the Diplomatic Revolution.
Although the British had hoped to avoid war, Frederick launched a pre-emptive strike against Austria in August 1756. He overran Saxony but was soon faced with an onslaught of enemies, including France, Austria, Sweden and Russia, and so was forced to retreat from Bohemia. By 1757, it appeared that without substantive British assistance, Prussia would soon collapse.
Frederick had established a large and well-disciplined army, but it was continually short of money. The British began to send large financial subsidies to support their ally.
On 11 April 1758, both states concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention, which formalised their alliance. Neither side would make peace without consulting the other. [1]
After the occupation of Emden, a British contingent was despatched to the continent to serve with the Duke of Brunswick, a Prussian ally. That served to shield Frederick's western flank and allowed him to focus elsewhere.
Under Prussian pressure, the British-backed Hanoverian government repudiated the Convention of Klosterzeven and re-entered the war on Prussia's side. In spite of British aid, the Prussian war effort still nearly collapsed in 1759, despite an Allied victory at the Battle of Minden.
However, until the end of the war, events turned largely in the favour of the Anglo-Prussian allies. Britain had enjoyed an annus mirabilis in 1759 by defeating France in Europe, North America and Asia and by repelling a planned French invasion. Britain won a number of key victories over Spain in 1762, and the Russian Empress died, which made Russia withdraw from the war against Prussia.
The alliance was eventually dissolved in 1762, when Britain withdrew financial and military support for Prussian war aims in Continental Europe. Britain won more favourable terms the next year at the Treaty of Paris by gaining a number of the colonial possessions that it had captured from France and Spain. Prussia retained Silesia but failed to achieve the acquisition of further large territories for which it had hoped during the outbreak of war.
Both powers made distinctly-separate peace agreements to end the war. In the years after the war, their relationship deteriorated, with Prussia rejecting approaches from Britain to form a similar alliance before and during the American War of Independence. Prussia concluded the Russo-Prussian Alliance in 1764 instead, and Britain remained diplomatically isolated.
After the American War of Independence, Britain and Prussia returned to closer ties. They co-operated during the Dutch Patriot Revolt in 1787 and formed part of a Triple Alliance with the Dutch Republic in 1788. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, both Britain and Prussia took part in the various coalitions that were formed against France.
The Kingdom of Prussia constituted the German state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918. It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1866 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Its capital was Berlin.
The Treaty of Hubertusburg was signed on 15 February 1763 at Hubertusburg Castle by Prussia, Austria and Saxony to end the Third Silesian War. Together with the Treaty of Paris, signed five days earlier, it marked the end of the Seven Years' War. The treaty ended the continental conflict with no significant changes in prewar borders. Austria and Saxony renounced all claims to the Silesian territories ceded to Prussia in the 1742 Treaty of Berlin and the 1745 Treaty of Dresden. Prussia clearly stood among the ranks of the European great powers, while the treaty enhanced the rivalry with Austria.
Count Alexey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin was a Russian diplomat and chancellor. He was one of the most influential and successful diplomats in 18th-century Europe. As the chancellor of the Russian Empire was chiefly responsible for Russian foreign policy during the reign of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.
The Silesian Wars were three wars fought in the mid-18th century between Prussia and Habsburg Austria for control of the Central European region of Silesia. The First (1740–1742) and Second (1744–1745) Silesian Wars formed parts of the wider War of the Austrian Succession, in which Prussia was a member of a coalition seeking territorial gain at Austria's expense. The Third Silesian War (1756–1763) was a theatre of the global Seven Years' War, in which Austria in turn led a coalition of powers aiming to seize Prussian territory.
The Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf was a victory for the Russian force under Field Marshal Stepan Fyodorovich Apraksin over a smaller Prussian force commanded by Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt, during the Seven Years' War. This was the first battle in which Russia engaged during the Seven Years' War.
The Battle of Breslau was fought on 22 November 1757 in Breslau during the Third Silesian War. A Prussian army of 28,000 men fought an Austrian army of 60,000 men. The Prussians held off the Austrian attack, losing 6,000 men to the Austrians' 5,000 men. But one day later the Prussians beat a retreat. Breslau's garrison surrendered on 25 November 1757.
The Battle of Zorndorf, during the Seven Years' War, was fought on 25 August 1758 between Russian troops commanded by Count William Fermor and a Prussian army commanded by King Frederick the Great. The battle was tactically inconclusive, with both armies holding their ground and claiming victory. The site of the battle was the Prussian village of Zorndorf. During the battle, Frederick famously took a regimental standard and led an attack himself, rallying his troops.
The Second Silesian War was a war between Prussia and Austria that lasted from 1744 to 1745 and confirmed Prussia's control of the region of Silesia. The war was fought mainly in Silesia, Bohemia, and Upper Saxony and formed one theatre of the wider War of the Austrian Succession. It was the second of three Silesian Wars fought between Frederick the Great's Prussia and Maria Theresa's Austria in the mid-18th century, all three of which ended in Prussian control of Silesia.
The 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, sometimes called the Treaty of Aachen, ended the War of the Austrian Succession, following a congress assembled on 24 April 1748 at the Free Imperial City of Aachen.
The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 was the reversal of longstanding alliances in Europe between the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. Austria went from an ally of Britain to an ally of France; the Dutch Republic, a long-standing British ally, became more anti-British and took a neutral stance while Prussia became an ally of Britain. The most influential diplomat involved was an Austrian statesman, Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz.
Austria and Prussia were the most powerful states in the Holy Roman Empire by the 18th and 19th centuries and had engaged in a struggle for supremacy among smaller German kingdoms. The rivalry was characterized by major territorial conflicts and economic, cultural, and political aspects. Therefore, the rivalry was an important element of the so-called German question in the 19th century.
The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of the European great powers, fought primarily in Europe and the Americas. The opposing alliances were led by Great Britain, primarily supported by Prussia, and France, backed by Spain, Saxony, Sweden, and Russia. Related conflicts include the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War, and 1762 to 1763 Anglo-Spanish War.
The Anglo-Austrian Alliance connected the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Habsburg monarchy during the first half of the 18th century. It was largely the work of the British Whig statesman Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, who considered an alliance with Austria crucial to prevent the further expansion of French power.
The Third Silesian War was a war between Prussia and Austria that lasted from 1756 to 1763 and confirmed Prussia's control of the region of Silesia. The war was fought mainly in Silesia, Bohemia and Upper Saxony and formed one theatre of the Seven Years' War. It was the last of three Silesian Wars fought between Frederick the Great's Prussia and Maria Theresa's Austria in the mid-18th century, all three of which ended in Prussian control of Silesia.
Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War, which in fact lasted nine years, between 1754 and 1763. British involvement in the conflict began in 1754 in what became known as the French and Indian War. However the warfare in the European theater involving countries other than Britain and France commenced in 1756. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power, having gained all of New France in North America, ending France's role as a colonial power there. Following Spain's entry in the war in alliance with France in the third Family Compact, Britain captured the major Spanish ports of Havana, Cuba and Manila, in the Philippines in 1762, and agreed to return them in exchange for Spanish Florida. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally ended the conflict and Britain established itself as the world's pre-eminent naval power.
The Franco-Austrian Alliance was a diplomatic and military alliance between France and Austria that was first established in 1756 after the First Treaty of Versailles. It lasted for much of the remainder of the century until it was abandoned during the French Revolution.
The Invasion of Hanover took place in 1757 during the Seven Years' War when a French army under Louis Charles César Le Tellier, duc d'Estrées advanced into the Electorate of Hanover and neighbouring German states, following the Battle of Hastenbeck. French forces overran most of Hanover. This action forced the Hanoverian Army of Observation, intended to defend the Electorate, to Stade on the North Sea coast. At the Convention of Klosterzeven the Duke of Cumberland agreed to disband his army and acknowledge the French occupation of the Electorate.
The Anglo-Prussian Convention was agreed on 11 April 1758 between Great Britain and the Kingdom of Prussia and formalised the alliance between them that had effectively existed since the Convention of Westminster in 1756.
Wenzel Anton, Prince of Kaunitz-Rietberg was an Austrian and Czech diplomat and statesman in the Habsburg monarchy. A proponent of enlightened absolutism, he held the office of State Chancellor for about four decades and was responsible for the foreign policies during the reigns of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II. In 1764, he was elevated to the noble rank of a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichfürst).
The siege of Geldern was one of the first military confrontations between France and Prussia during the Seven Years' War. Surrounded by an advancing French army, the Prussian garrison of Geldern surrendered after a four-month siege.
