The War of the Bavarian Succession, 1778-1779: Prussian Military Power in Decline? From our From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 is now available!
The War of the Bavarian Succession was Frederick the Great's last war, but is overshadowed by his great battlefield victories of the 1740s and 1750s. When Prussia and Austria went to war again, 15 years after the end of the Seven Years War, the resulting conflict was characterised as a 'Kartoffelkrieg' - Potato War - in which troops had to worry more about going hungry than about the threat of the enemy. In turn, the lack of a decisive battle has caused historians to see this conflict as an early step in Prussian military decline that would lead inexorably to the destruction of the Frederician war machine at the hands of Napoleon in 1806. In fact, as Alexander Querengässer's new study describes, this conflict was very much war as a continuation of politics by other means, with military manoeuvrers and political negotiations going hand-in-hand so that Frederick did not need to gamble all in a single day of battle. Yet nor was it a war without fighting: outpost skirmishing and small-scale actions continued throughout, with the Prussian army and its Saxon allies able at last to meet the vaunted Austrian light forces on something like equal terms. In all, then, a far more interesting conflict than its reputation suggests - and not a potato in sight!
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