A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

396 Ch. 1 1 • Dynastic Rivalries and Politics

Aristocratic officers safely above the carnage at the Battle of Fontenoy, 1745.

conflict by its need to protect the dynastic territory of Hanover from Prus­

sia and France. Indeed, at Dettingen in 1743, King George II became the

last British monarch to fight in battle. His horse was spooked and rode off

with its frightened royal rider still astride. In North America, a British

force captured the French fort of Louisbourg, which guarded access to the

Saint Lawrence River. France’s army defeated the combined Dutch and

British forces in the Battle of Fontenoy in what is now Belgium in 1745,

the bloodiest battle of the century until the French Revolution. Fifteen

thousand soldiers were dead or wounded among the 95,000 soldiers who

fought at Fontenoy. In 1748, the inconclusive Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle

ended the War of the Austrian Succession (see Map 11.1). French forces

withdrew from the Austrian Netherlands in return for the English aban­

doning the captured fort of Louisbourg. The northern Italian city of Parma

passed to a branch of the Spanish Bourbons, and Piedmont-Sardinia

absorbed parts of the duchy of Milan.

The Seven Years War

The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) was remarkable for several reasons.

First, it was arguably the first truly global conflict. The commercial interests

of France and Britain clashed in North America (where the two powers

claimed large reaches of the American interior as far as the Mississippi River