W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 4-2015 Frederick's Chessboard: Domestic Institutions and the Origins of the Seven Years' War Caitlin Hartnett College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Comparative Politics Commons, Diplomatic History Commons, European History Commons, International Relations Commons, Military History Commons, and the Political History Commons Recommended Citation Hartnett, Caitlin, "Frederick's Chessboard: Domestic Institutions and the Origins of the Seven Years' War" (2015). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 154. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/154 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. FREDERICK’S CHESSBOARD DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SEVEN YEARS’ WAR CAITLIN HARTNETT 2 On October 26, 1756, Frederick II, King of Prussia, wrote to one of his officers from a Saxony he had just conquered, “The enemy apparently made more mistakes than my officers, to the point where, this year, we have succeeded. However, this whole campaign is but the arrangement of the chessboard. This coming year, the game will begin and it is a difficult task that I have proposed to myself to be wise still.”1 The news of the invasion of Saxony two months prior by 70,000 trained Prussian soldiers with Frederick at their head had quickly reached and enraged the courts of Vienna, Moscow and Paris, swiftly turning what had become a race of diplomatic meetings and military mobilization into a war that would engulf the world.