Formation In the Seven Years' War, all the major European powers of the time participated:
Prussia and Great Britain on the one hand, and the
Austrian Habsburg Monarchy, France, Russia, and the
Holy Roman Empire on the other. While Prussia, Austria, and Russia primarily fought for supremacy in Central Europe, Great Britain and France also had their colonies in North America and India at stake. Most of the smaller German Imperial Estates attempted to maintain their neutrality in this war. Even after the outbreak of the war, the government of the
Electorate of Hanover declared its loyalty to the Kaiser, with its monarch residing in London and at war with the Kaiser. The British
King George II, on the other hand, expected the
Privy Council of Hanover to subscribe to his policy.
French Invasion of Hanover (1757) Austria and France now treated the Electorate of Hanover as a belligerent, and the French army marched into Westphalia with 100,000 men in April 1757. The Army of Observation was forced to withdraw behind the
Weser line. On July 26, 1757, a decisive
battle took place near the village of Hastenbeck near
Hamelin, from which the French emerged victorious. Following this, the Army of Observation, pursued by the French, withdrew across the Weser toward the fortress of
Stade. Cornered, Cumberland contacted the commander-in-chief of the French army,
Marshal Duke Richelieu, with a request for an armistice. The text of the convention, known as the
Convention of Klosterzeven, dictated by Richelieu, along with Cumberland's proposed improvements summarized in separate articles, was signed by Richelieu on September 9 in
Bremervörde, and by the Marshal on September 8 and 10, 1757, at his headquarters in
Klosterzeven Abbey. This ceased hostilities within 24 hours. Some 4 to 6,000 Hanovarian soldiers were allowed to stay in the Stade fortress, while the rest was to cross the Elbe with the Duke into
Saxe-Lauenburg, and the contingents of the other German princes were to disband and return home. With Cumberland's declaration of neutrality, Hanover, Hesse, Brunswick, and Schaumburg-Lippe were occupied by the French. The British King and Hanoverian Elector, George II, did not accept the Convention of Klosterzeven, removed his son's command of the army, and waited for a favorable opportunity to resume the war effort, despite the desperate situation.
Reformation of the Army (1758-1763) After the Prussians defeated the French and the combined Imperial troops at the
Battle of Rossbach on November 5, 1757, George II and the Privy Council of Hanover agreed to tear up the Convention of Klosterzeven and appoint
Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was in Prussian service, as the commander of a new allied British-Hanoverian army. Duke Ferdinand succeeded in liberating Hanover and the other occupied territories and expelling the French in the spring of 1758. Until the end of the Seven Years' War, he fought several battles against the French and managed to prevent a new occupation of Hanover and even to drive the French back still further. ==References ==