"Seven Years' War" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being raised to the peerage as Lord Heathfield. General Elliott was already well known as a gallant officer. He had served in the war of Austrian succession, holding a colonel's commission at Dettingen, where the English defeated the French in 1743. In the Seven Years' War he had raised and disciplined a splendid corps of cavalry, known as the ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but there is one I've not forgot," said I. "One day, about the time you were getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... could find nothing wrong in Trenck's cell except the false window-frame. The cut chains, though examined, somehow escaped detection, from which we gather either that the officials were very careless, or the carpenter very stupid. Perhaps both may have been the case, for as the Seven Years' War (against Austria) was at this time raging, sentinels and officers were frequently changed, and prison discipline insensibly relaxed. Had this not been so, Trenck could never have been able to labor unseen, but as it was, he was ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of Frederic II. His character Becomes King Seizure of a part of Liege Seizure of Silesia Maria Theresa Visit of Voltaire Friendship between Voltaire and Frederic Coalition against Frederic Seven Years' War Carlyle's History of Frederic Empress Elizabeth of Russia Decisive battles of Rossbach, Luthen, and Zorndorf Heroism and fortitude of Frederic Results of the Seven Years' War Partition of Poland Development ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... that time a young Virginian officer of only twenty-two, fired the first shot in what presently became the world-wide Seven Years' War. The immediate result was disastrous to the British arms; and Washington had to give up the command of the Ohio by surrendering Fort Necessity to the French on—of all dates—the 4th of July! In 1755 came Braddock's defeat. In 1756 Montcalm arrived in Canada ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... opposed to seasoned professional troops, drilled and trained according to the methods in use everywhere since the Seven Years' War, one could not ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... him in England, and he was not in the least missed by his British subjects. He went again in '35 and '36; and between the years 1740 and 1755 was no less than eight times on the Continent, which amusement he was obliged to give up at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. Here every day's amusement was the same. "Our life is as uniform as that of a monastery," writes a courtier whom Vehse quotes. "Every morning at eleven, and every evening at six, we drive in the heat ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the ruinous eccentricities for which he is remembered. In 1759 he ably seconded the egregious Louis XV. in upsetting the policy which de Choiseul was carrying on by the King's orders. De Choiseul's duty was to make the Empress mediate for peace in the Seven Years' War. The duty of d'Eon was to secure the failure of de Choiseul, without the knowledge of the French ambassador, the Marquis de l'Hospital, of whom he was the secretary. Possessed of this pretty secret, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... officer doing staff duty though belonging in the line, and the conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published under the title of the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... I; "just at the moment I want a presentable lad behind me when I'm paying my respects to the Earl of Westport, you must go diving into the refuse heap of a house that doesn't belong to you, and spoiling the clothes that does. Paddy, if you were in a seven years' war, you would be the first man wounded and the last man killed, with all the trouble for nothing in between. Is ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... a capital in the shape of buildings, mills, fixtures, and implements, which had been accumulating during a century. Under Toussaint there were 290,000 free laborers, many of them just from the army or the mountains, working on plantations that had undergone the devastation of insurrection and a seven years' war." ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... been published. He was for many years an intimate friend of Lord Shelbourne, who sent him to Paris in 1782, and again in 1783, to negotiate with Franklin, with whom he had been for some time acquainted. During the Seven Years' War he acted as commissary-general to the allied armies under the Duke of Brunswick, who said of him in the official despatches, that "England had sent him commissaries fit to be generals, and generals not fit ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... were to fail them with a fresh assortment of his enthralling tales of adventure, for, as the London Academy has said, in this kind of story telling, "he stands in the very first rank." "With Frederick the Great" is a tale of the Seven Years' War, and has twelve full-page illustrations by Wal. Paget; "A March on London" details some stirring scenes of the times when Wat Tyler's motley crew took possession of that city, and the illustrations are drawn by W. A. Margetson, while Wal. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... naval interest for our purposes here. The peace of 1748, however, leaving things exactly as they were when the war began, settled none of the existing grudge between Great Britain and France. Eight years later, hostilities began again in the Seven Years' War, 1756-1763, in which Great Britain entered on the side of Prussia against a great coalition of Continental powers headed ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... part of the multiplied disasters which befell English arms at the opening of the Seven Years' War. At the close of the year 1756, with Hanover threatened and Minorca taken, with the Bourbon arms victorious in India and the Bourbon fleet unchecked upon the sea, with a million and a half of colonists ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... entered into a secret alliance against Prussia. Frederick found it out, and in 1756, began the famous Seven Years' War. The same year, 83,000 Russians under Apraxine crossed the frontier and seized East Prussia. A battle was fought; the Russians were the victors, but Apraxine fell back across the Niemen. France and Austria suspected treachery; Apraxine was arrested ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... its University, the question was opened, at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763, in a work by Totze, whose character appears in its title, "Permanent and Universal Peace in Europe, according to the Plan of Henry IV." [Footnote: Der ewige und allgemeine Friede in Europa, nach dem Entwurf ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... or lose by such a struggle. We shall be beset by the greatest perils, and we can only emerge victoriously from this struggle against a world of hostile elements, and successfully carry through a Seven Years' War for our position as a World Power, if we gain a start on our probable enemy as soldiers; if the army which will fight our battles is supported by all the material and spiritual forces of the nation; if the resolve to conquer lives not only in ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... the Acadian peninsula were made by the French, in the fertile diked lands at the head of the Bay of Fundy. To the number of six thousand these Acadians were driven out on the eve of the Seven Years' War, a tragedy told of in Longfellow's Evangeline. In after years many of them crept back to different parts of their beloved province, and little settlements here and there, from Pubnico in the south to Cheticamp in the north-west, still speak the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... him back to this lake and Champlain, around which so much of American story is wrapped. The mighty drama known as the Seven Years' War, that involved nearly all the civilized world, found many of its springs and also much of its culmination here. The efforts made by the young British colonies, and by the mother country, England, were colossal, and the battles were great for the time. To the colonies, and to those ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... arm might not have had its wonted strength, yet my spirit was unbroken, and my devotion to her unimpaired. I thought in the field, where there could be but few who had any military experience, what I had learned in the most active scenes of a seven years' war, might be useful. I fondly hoped that in my age, as well as in my youth, I might render services that should deserve the gratitude of my country—that if I fell by the sword of her enemies, my grave would be moistened with the tears of my countrymen; that my descendants would be proud of my name ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... empress. A woman who could plunge, into the wildest excesses of licentiousness, still had sensibility enough to resent the taunts of the royal philosopher. In 1753, Elizabeth and Maria Theresa entered into an agreement to resist all further augmentation of the Prussian power. In the bloody Seven Years' War between Frederic and Maria Theresa, the heart of Elizabeth was always with the Austrian queen, and for five of those years their armies fought side by side. In the year 1759, Elizabeth sent an army of one hundred thousand men into Prussia. They ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... goods. Banking houses sprang up apace, and large fortunes were made by speculative investments in stocks and shares; and loans for foreign governments, large and small, were readily negotiated. This state of things reached its height during the Seven Years' War, but with the settlement which followed the peace of 1763 disaster came. On July 25 the chief financial house in Amsterdam, that of De Neufville, failed to meet its liabilities and brought down in its crash a very large number of other firms, not merely in Holland, but also ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... evils preceded and produced the schism; and that evils were produced by it and have pursued it down to our own day. We know it if only in the one example, that the schism begat the Thirty Years' War, and the Thirty Years' War begat the Seven Years' War, and the Seven Years' War begat the Great War, which has passed like a pestilence through our own homes. After the schism Prussia could relapse into heathenry and erect an ethical system external to the whole culture of Christendom. But it can still ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... who had ridiculed the drilling and powdering, had paid for their folly in many a bloody field, but had profited by the lesson, and could now move as accurately and fire as quickly as their neighbors. The first combat of the great Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, already proved this to the conviction of all parties. The Prussians purchased a slight advantage by a great loss of blood; and on the very battle-field the general remark was, "These ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... McGill University was but part of a more comprehensive plan to improve educational conditions in Canada in the beginning of the 19th century. After the peace treaty of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War and gave Canada to the British, immigration to the colony was comparatively small, and little effort was made by the Home Government to provide educational opportunities for the children of those who sought happiness or fortune in the new land beyond the ocean. Indeed, in that ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... essay. Some practical experience of actual battlefields was to be gained by the future statesman before his appearance in the parliamentary arena. Just before the time when, between nineteen and twenty years of age, he was leaving Oxford, the Seven Years' War broke out, and finding "home detestable, no prospect of a decent allowance to go abroad [he had a trifling six hundred pounds a year from his father, though], neither happiness nor quiet," he joined the army and went on foreign service. Here he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... America was now rapidly approaching its final phase in the struggle which we know as the Seven Years' War. During forty years, commissioners of the two nations had been trying to reach some agreement as to boundaries. Each side, however, made impossible demands. France claimed all the lands drained by the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes and by the Mississippi ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... and sometimes goes about his duties at the risk of his life. Besides this, a portion of the land traversed by Washington formed a part of that debatable land, the disputed right to which was the original moving cause of the 'Seven Years' War.' The French were already in motion, both from Canada and Louisiana, to preoccupy the banks of the Ohio, and the savages in their interest roamed the intervening country up ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... midst of this state of things, this world of despondency, mediocrity, selfishness, and chicanery, and at the precise crisis when the disasters which attended the opening campaigns of the Seven Years' War—and particularly the loss of Minorca—seemed to confirm the gloomiest prognostications of the most hopeless pessimists, came William Pitt; and in eighteen months changed the face of the world, not for his generation only, but for ours. Indifferent as an administrator, mediocre ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Frederick, the biography of a hero reduced more than once to such extremities that apparently nothing but some miraculous intervention could save him, and who did not yield, but struggled on and finally emerged victorious. When we consider Frederick's position during the last part of the Seven Years' War, we must admit that no man was ever in such desperate circumstances or showed such uncrushable determination. It was as if the Destinies, in order to teach us what human nature can do, had ordained that he who had the most fortitude should also encounter the severest trial of ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... old soldier named Mittelstedt, who died in Prussia in 1792, aged one hundred and twelve. He was born at Fissalm in June, 1681. He entered the army, served under three Kings, Frederick I, Frederick William I, and Frederick II, and did active service in the Seven Years' War, in which his horse was shot under him and he was taken prisoner by the Russians. In his sixty-eight years of army service he participated in 17 general engagements, braved numerous dangers, and was wounded many times. After his turbulent life ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the operations which resulted in this conquest of Minorca by the French that the British fleet, under the command of Admiral Byng, met with the check for which the admiral paid the penalty of his life a few months later. At the close of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, the island was restored to Great Britain, in whose hands it remained until 1782, when it was again retaken by the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... entered the field as a soldier in 1741, and was victorious again and again in the two Silesian wars. The Seven Years' War, begun in 1756, gained for him a position of great influence among the rulers of Europe. He was prudent, like his father; his government was wise, well ordered, and liberal, and he left to his successor a full treasury, a great and famous army, enlarged ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... were old and worn out, body and mind. They all looked morose and sorrowful. The great news of the approaching war with Austria had spread through the military. The old laurel-crowned generals of the Seven Years' War were unwilling to go forth to earn new laurels, for which they had lost all ambition. Not one dared betray his secret thoughts to another, or utter a word of disapproval. The king's spies were everywhere, and none could trust himself to converse with ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... French or Spanish, have I been able to discover a claim to the invention of any device in sailing tactics that had permanent value. Even the famous tactical school which was established in France at the close of the Seven Years' War, and by which the French service so brilliantly profited in the War of American Independence, was worked on the old lines of Hoste's treatise. Morogues' Tactique Navale was its text-book, and his own teaching was but a scientific ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... take a position in the line of battle, was of a different minimum size at different periods. The tendency towards increase of size existed a century ago as well as to-day. 'Fourth-rates,' of 50 and 60 guns, dropped out of the line at the beginning of the Seven Years' War. In 1812 the 74-gun three-decker was the smallest man-of-war regularly used in the line of battle.] This 'progress' had been made in 1801. But in 1812, when Jefferson's disciple, Madison, formally declared war, not a single keel had been laid. Meanwhile, another idea of ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... enemy was beyond her power. But she could still use the lower form, and by seizing Belgium she could herself force so exhausting a task on France that success was well within her strength. It was exactly so we endeavoured to begin the Seven Years' War; and it was exactly so the Japanese successfully conducted their war with Russia; and what is more striking, it was on similar lines that in 1859 Moltke in similar circumstances drew up his first war plan against France. His idea at that time was on the lines ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... a country lying on the borders of the Ohio River, and belonging to French Canada, made an attack upon some hundred merchant-ships, which were navigating the Ohio, under the protection of the ships-of-war, and took them as prizes. [Footnote: "Characteristics of the Important Events of the Seven Years' War," ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... now engaged in what was known as the Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, and had been going on for three years, the ships of England fighting those of France whenever they could find them, and generally giving them a drubbing. Our ship, which carried, as I have said, the flag of Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, had, with ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... social conventions; there are, it was said, names and facts "of which it is not permissible to be ignorant"; but the things of which ignorance was not permitted varied greatly, from the names of the Merovingian kings and the battles of the Seven Years' War to the Salic Law and the work ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... by nephews, or protected by a bustling woman, he, after taking a long sip of hollands and water, told me that I must not expect too much from omnipotence; for example, that as it would be unreasonable to expect that One above could annihilate the past—for instance, the Seven Years' War, or the French Revolution—though any one who believed in Him would acknowledge Him to be omnipotent, so would it be unreasonable for the faithful to expect that the Pope could always guard himself from poison. Then, after looking at me for a moment steadfastly, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... time? Will it be as after the Seven Years' War, after the War of Liberation, after 1870? Will it be again all in vain? As soon as the Fatherland is secure, will every German once again cease to be a German in order to become some kind of -crat or -ist or -er? This time it will be more difficult, for from this war he will ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... the change of Russian politics in the year 1762. Here also we may find a clue to the contradictory orders, artifices, positions, retreats and disappointments of the Russian army, in the seven years' war, beginning in 1756. The countess, who was obliged to act with greater caution, foresaw the consequence of the various intrigues in which her husband was engaged: her love for me naturally drew her from her former party; she confided every secret to me, and ever remained till her fall, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... this Silesian argument was the Seven Years' War. Maria Theresa made friends with the mistress of Louis XV, and so secured a French alliance. Frederick offended the Empress of Russia by his witty tongue, and she also joined in the "ladies' war" against him. Saxony, the nearest state ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... a time of despondency when England seemed to be annexed to Hanover, following her fortunes, and sharing her misfortunes in the "seven years' war" over the Austrian succession, as if the Great Kingdom were a mere dependency to the little Electorate; and all to please the stubborn King. Desiring peace above all things England was no sooner freed from one entanglement, than she was plunged ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... The six thousand or more that came from Halifax were the Boston "veterans." These had been joined by regiments from the West Indies; and among the reinforcements from Britain were troops that had garrisoned Gibraltar and posts in Ireland and England, with men from Scotland who had won a name in the Seven Years' War.[100] Howe's generals were men who showed their fitness to command by their subsequent conduct during the war. Next to the commander-in-chief ranked Lieutenant-Generals Clinton, Percy, and Cornwallis; Major-Generals Mathews, Robertson, Pigot, Grant, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... revenue from them. But, in its progress, it eventually involved us in a foreign war of great magnitude, and thus became the one subject of supreme interest to every statesman in Europe. England had not borne her share in the seven years' war without a considerable augmentation of the national debt, and a corresponding increase in the amount of yearly revenue which it had become necessary to raise;[33] and Mr. Grenville, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to devise the means of meeting the demand. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... differs from the article used during the Seven Years' War only in its more careful construction and some modifications of detail. The most important of these relates to the more rapid explosion of the charge. In 1840 the old flint-locks were generally replaced by the percussion-lock, which is simpler, is less exposed to the effects ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... a much greater scale, to the western coast of France, against the high-road south of Bordeaux, it can scarcely be doubted that he would have met a severe disappointment, such as attended similar actions upon the Channel in the Seven Years' War. On the Riviera, in 1795, this means might have been decisive; in 1796, in the face of Bonaparte's fortified coast, it could scarcely have been more than an annoyance. At all events, the advocacy of it testifies to the acuteness and energy with which ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Constitution of the Empire under the Treaty of Westphalia,—the good temper and good-nature of the princes of the House of Saxony, had formerly removed from the people all apprehension with regard to their religion, and kept them perfectly quiet, obedient, and even affectionate. The Seven Years' War made some change in the minds of the Saxons. They did not, I believe, regret the loss of what might be considered almost as the succession to the crown of Poland, the possession of which, by annexing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... struggle with the like temper as the French; yet with such enormous advantages as they possessed, if they could not conquer a satisfactory peace in course of time, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. So no composition could be arranged; the Seven Years' War began, and to open it with becoming eclat Braddock debarked, a gorgeous spectacle in red and gold. Yet still there had as yet been in Europe no declaration of hostilities between England and France; on the contrary, the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... North Briton especially No. 45, have high interest as political and literary curiosities. Comparing even now the King's speech on April 19th, 1763, at the close of the Seven Years' War, with the passage in No. 45 which contained the sting of the whole, one feels that Walpole hardly exaggerated when he said that Wilkes had given "a flat lie to the King himself." Perhaps so; but are royal speeches ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... Friesland had already been absorbed the year before on the death of the last Duke without issue. In spite of the exhaustion of men and money in the two Silesian wars, Friedrich found himself ready with both men and money eleven years later, in 1756, to embark upon what is known as the Seven Years' War. Though without acquiring fresh territory by this war, the gain in prestige was so great that the Prussian monarchy virtually assumed the hegemony of North Germany, becoming the rival of Austria for the domination of Central ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax |
