The Silesian Gambit

The Silesian Gambit: Frederick the Great and the War That Remade Europe

In October 1740, the death of a single emperor without a male heir threw the whole of Europe into war. When Charles VI's daughter Maria Theresa inherited an empty treasury and a broken army, the continent's great powers moved in like wolves scenting blood: Prussia seized Silesia in a lightning strike, France and Bavaria marched on Vienna itself, and a woman not yet twenty-four found herself fighting for her throne, her family, and her birthright. What followed was eight years of continental and global war fought from the plains of Silesia to the fortress towns of Flanders, from a popular uprising in the streets of Genoa to a disease-ravaged expedition against Cartagena, from a pivotal cavalry charge on the banks of an Indian river to decisive naval battles in the Atlantic. This is the sweeping story of Frederick the Great's audacious gamble, Maurice de Saxe's tactical genius, and Maria Theresa's transformation from vulnerable heiress into one of the most formidable rulers of her age. Drawing together every theatre of this genuinely global conflict, this is narrative history at its most ambitious: a war that reshaped the balance of European power and planted, in its uneasy peace, the seeds of the next.