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The First Silesian War
1740 October After the death of Emperor Charles on the 20th, Frederick quickly decided to take a preemptive strike; on November 8, he ordered the mobilization of the Prussian army, and on December 11 he issued an ultimatum to Maria Theresa, demanding the cession of Silesia.
In return, he offered to guarantee all other Habsburg possessions against any attack, pay a large cash indemnity, acknowledge pragmatic sanctions, and vote for Maria Theresa's husband, Duke Francis Stephen of Lorraine, as elector of Brandenburg, to replace the late Charles in the upcoming imperial elections.
Without waiting for a response or declaring war, he led the Prussian army across the weakly defended Silesian border on December 16 and began the first Silesian War.
By the end of January 1741, almost all of Silesia was under Prussian control, and the remaining Austrian fortresses of Glogau, Brig and Nice were under siege. An Austrian force raised the siege of Nice in late March, but the main Prussian force engaged and defeated it at the Battle of Morwitz on 10 April, thus ensuring Prussian control of the region.
Seeing the Austrian defeat at Morwitz, other powers became emboldened to attack the besieged Grand Duchy, expanding the conflict into what would become the War of Austrian Succession.
As Bavaria , Saxony , France, Naples and Spain attacked Austria on multiple fronts in the following months, with British urging and mediation, Frederick began secret peace negotiations with Maria Theresa;
On October 9, Austria and Prussia agreed to a secret armistice, known as the Pact of Klein-Schnellendorf, under which Austria promised to eventually cede Lower Silesia in exchange for peace.
As Austria concentrated its efforts against other enemies and made progress in the wider war, Frederick concluded that the Austrians had no intention of abiding by the convention and giving up their Silesian territories. In order to put further pressure on Austria, he refused to accept the armistice and launched his own offensive again.
In December 1741, the Prussian army advanced into Moravia, occupied the capital Olmuz, and besieged the Graz Fortress on the edge of Bohemia. In January 1742, Duke Charles Albert of Bavaria won the imperial election of 1742 and became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
2 In February, Frederick organized a joint march with the Saxons and the French through Moravia towards Vienna, but Prussia's allies were unwilling and uncooperative, and the campaign was abandoned in April, after which the Prussians retreated to Bohemia and Upper Silesia.
On May 17, Austria's counterattack into Bohemia engaged Frederick's Prussians and was narrowly defeated in the subsequent Battle of Chotusz. This failure prevented Austria from immediately driving the enemy out of Bohemia, so a new round of peace talks with Prussia began in Breslau .
Under British pressure, Austria agreed to cede most of Silesia and the Bohemian county of Graz to Prussia, while Austria would retain the two small southernmost parts of Silesia, including the Duchy of Taschen and parts of the Duchies of Grundorf, Trobo and Neisse.
Prussia also agreed to assume some of Austria's debts and remain neutral for the remainder of the war. This peace agreement was adopted together with the Treaty of Breslau, which ended the First Silesian War on June 11, 1742, and was later formalized in the Treaty of Berlin.
Second Silesian War
The peace with Prussia allowed the Austrians and their British-Hanoverian allies to reverse the victories achieved by the French and Bavarians in 1741. By mid-1743, Austria had regained Bohemia, pushed the French back across the Rhine, and occupied Bavaria.
In September 1743, Britain, Austria, and Savoyard-Sardinia concluded a new alliance under the Treaty of Worm, which led Frederick to suspect Maria Theresa intended to recapture Silesia as soon as the war elsewhere ended.
Therefore, on August 7, 1744, Prussia announced its intervention in the ongoing conflict on behalf of Emperor Charles Albert, and Frederick led his soldiers across the border into Bohemia on August 15, starting the Second Silesian War.
Prussian troops massed in Prague and captured the city on September 16. This new threat drove the Austrian troops back from France through Bavaria. France failed to harass and disrupt the Austrian redeployment, so the Austrian army was able to return to Bohemia quickly and at full strength.
Frederick massed his forces around Prague in an attempt to force a decisive battle, but Austrian commander Otto Ferdinand von Traun concentrated his efforts on harassing the invaders' supply lines, eventually forcing the Prussians to abandon Bohemia and retreat into Upper Silesia in November.
With the Treaty of Warsaw in January 1745, Austria established a new "Quadruple Alliance" between Austria, Great Britain, Saxony, and the Dutch Republic. Meanwhile, the death of Emperor Charles Albert on January 20 completely destroyed the theoretical foundations of Frederick's League.
Austria launched another attack on Bavaria in March 1745, decisively defeated the French-Bavarian army at the Battle of Pfaffenhofen on April 15, and made peace with Maximilian III of Bavaria through the Treaty of Fussen on April 22.
After defeating Bavaria, Austria began to invade Silesia. At the end of May, an Austrian-Saxon army crossed the mountains into Silesia, but was unexpectedly and completely defeated by Frederick at the Battle of Hohenfriedberg on June 4, thus eliminating any hope of Austria's recovery of Silesia.
The Prussians followed the retreating Austrian-Saxon armies into Bohemia, where they camped along the Elbe River while Frederick sought a peace agreement.
Over the next few months, Maria Theresa won over enough of the princely electors to see her husband crowned Holy Roman Emperor Franz I in Frankfurt on September 13, achieving one of her major goals in the war.
On September 29, the Austrians attacked Frederick's camp in Bohemia, and despite the surprise and superior numbers of the Austrians, the Prussians were victorious at the Battle of Sur.
Soon, insufficient supplies forced the Prussians to retreat to Upper Silesia for the winter. In November, Austria and Saxony prepared to launch a surprise attack on Brandenburg, hoping to capture Berlin and end the war completely. On November 23, Frederick surprised the Austrian invaders at the Battle of Hennersdorf, confusing and dispersing the larger Austrian force.
At the same time, another Prussian army led by Leopold I of Anhalt-Dessau advanced into western Saxony, attacking and destroying the main Saxon army at the Battle of Kesselsdorf on December 15, after which the Prussians occupied Dresden.
In Dresden, the warring parties quickly reached a peace agreement, with Maria Theresa recognizing Prussian control of Silesia and Graz, while Frederick recognized Francis I as Holy Roman Emperor and recommitted himself to neutrality for the remainder of the War of the Austrian Succession.
Saxony, as part of the Austrian Alliance, was forced to pay an indemnity of one million rikes to Prussia. The boundaries of the area were thus confirmed before the war, which was Prussia's main objective. [50] This Treaty of Dresden, signed on December 25, 1745, ended the Second Silesian War between Austria, Saxony, and Prussia.
After Prussia withdrew, the wider War of the Austrian Succession continued for another two years, ending with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
Despite her commitments under the Treaty of Dresden, Maria Theresa still refused to grant Holy Roman Empire recognition of Prussian sovereignty in Silesia, and Frederick still refused to recognize Maria Theresa's legitimacy as a sovereign landholder in Bohemia under pragmatic sanctions.
The underlying conflict in Silesia was not resolved, and both sides spent years of peace preparing for a new conflict.
Prussia built and expanded fortifications at strategic locations in Silesia, and the army began to re-equip its artillery units with heavier artillery . The Crown established Prussia's first central bank, and throughout peacetime the Treasury deposited its surpluses into a growing war fund.
Diplomatically, Frederick worked to maintain Prussia's alliance with France while alleviating British concerns about the safety of Hanover's electorate, where King George II also ruled in a personal alliance. By these means, and by avoiding any provocations against Russia, he hoped to manage the Austrian threat and maintain the balance of power.
After the Treaty of Dresden, Maria Theresa initiated a wave of so-called Austrian administrative and military reforms Theresa and ordered a review of her government's foreign policy.
Her minister Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz oversaw drastic reforms to Austria's tax system , providing funding for a massive expansion of the Austrian field army. Field Marshal Leopold Joseph von Daun drew on the Prussian model to standardize military equipment and professionalize training.
In 1746, Maria Theresa and the Russian Empress Elizabeth signed a defense treaty, and the two countries united against Prussia. Beginning in 1753, Austrian Foreign Minister Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz sought to improve relations with Austria's traditional rival, the Kingdom of France.
In 1756, these efforts led Austria to abandon its alliance with Britain in favor of a new Franco-Austrian alliance, while Prussia and Britain entered into a defensive alliance through the Conference of Westminster, completing the diplomatic reorganization of the European powers known as the Diplomatic Revolution.
