Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Seven Years' War | Animated History" video.

  1. Maria Theresia wanted to take back Silesia from Prussia. This province used to pay 25% of all the tax money that the Austria empire got, so it was a big loss to lose that place. And she was also very angry in the aggressive way that Prussia under Frederick the Great had taken it - he took it in a war he had started while Austria was mourning their dead King and Maria Theresia was a young new unexperienced ruler on the throne. Maria hated Frederick and wanted revenge. And also the ladies ruling Russia and France didn't like Prussia either. France had fought on Prussias side against Austria in the earlier war. But Frederick had made a secret peace deal with Austria as soon as the Austrians agreed to give away Silesia to him. And the French became very angry on how Prussia just abandoned their alliance partner and allowed the Austrians to hammer the French will their full might of their armies. So they had no desire to fight on Frederick the Greats side anymore, and they wanted revenge. And the French were also involved in the global rivalry against England for the dominance over North America, the west indies, and India. And Sweden did not have any strong feelings in this war like Austria or France that wanted revenge, but insted it just wanted a piece of the cake as Prussia was about to be carved up and destroyed by a gigantic military overmight. Sweden wanted to take back some land in Pommerania that it had lost to Prussia in the Great Northern war, and if Sweden was lucky it was hoped that Sweden perhaps could get a little more than that. But in all honesty could Sweden just as well have sided with England and Prussia side instead if they had not been so outnumbered and weak. In the earlier Silesian war did Sweden fight against Russia for example. And the Swedish King was also married to one of Frederick the Great's sisters. Frederick the Great saw that Austria and Russia had formed a military alliance and he thought they had begun making preparations for a war with Prussia so decided to act quickly before his enemies would be fully prepared. So he invaded Saxony to steal some money to pay for his war and to get the Saxon army into his side against his enemies. And as soon as Prussian troops crossed the Saxon border was the next big war in full swing.
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  2. They rather won a lot in the beginning, but not even some of the most impressive victories in military history was able to turn around the difficult situation for Frederick in 1757. His great victories did however prevent his Kingdom from falling into enemy hands and allowed him to continue the war. Then did he suffer a few setbacks and Britain abandoned the Westminister convention and left Frederick to his own fate. All sides in the war starting to feel war exhaustion, but the alliance of Maria Theresia felt optimistic about winning the war so they did not try to hurry to get an end of the war and made hastenly made bad mistakes, and instead did they deliebratly let things draw out upon time to exhaust Prussia's limited resources. But then suddenly everything changed in a single day when Russia got a new ruler. And Prussia's perhaps most dangerous enemy left the war. And Sweden which was in a bad shape when it joined the war and had accomplished nothing in it also felt it was time to leave, because all the hope it had in regaining Pommerania laid with the promises made by her ally France. And the Austrian army was unable to bring Prussia to her knees despite much more manpower and bigger economic resources. Frederick's political decision to start the Silesian war had been foolish and nearly brought his Kingdom and the Hohenzollern monarchy to its end. But as a military leader had Frederick shown brilliance and his troops had proven themselves to excellent. The Prussian army had trained its conscripts with such an intensity that they were able to fire 3-4 shots per minute while other armies only could do 2 or 3. And their ability to keep their formation intact when making complex manouvers outshined every other army in Europe, and if they tried to do they same would a caos be created and the troops would get caught in knots and the formation would be broken. But the Prussians had no such problem and they could therefore manouver with superior speed on the battlefield. The Seven years war won nothing for Prussia. But it prevented Austria from taking back one of her richest provinces.
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