title: Christine Taylor

text: Christine Joan Taylor Stiller (born July 30, 1971) is an American actress. She is known for playing Marcia Brady in "The Brady Bunch Movie" and "A Very Brady Sequel", as well as roles in films like "The Craft", "The Wedding Singer", "Zoolander", "", and her television roles in "Hey Dude", "Arrested Development", and "Search Party".


title: Christine Taylor

text: Taylor was born on July 30, 1971 in Allentown, Pennsylvania to Joan, a homemaker, and Albert "Skip" Taylor III, who owns a security company. She grew up in neighboring Wescosville, Pennsylvania. She has one younger brother, Brian.


title: Christine Taylor

text: Taylor was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. Thomas More School and Allentown Central Catholic High School.


title: Christine Taylor

text: Taylor began her acting career in 1989 on the Nickelodeon children's television series "Hey Dude" where she played the lifeguard Melody Hanson. She continued in that role through 1991 while making various guest appearances on other programs. In 1995, Taylor was cast as Marcia Brady in "The Brady Bunch Movie" and later in "A Very Brady Sequel". Following "The Brady Bunch Movie", Taylor made several comedic guest appearances on the TV series "Ellen", landing the lead role in the television series "Party Girl", based on the 1995 film of the same name, and more guest appearances on "Seinfeld" and "Friends". She played the racist school bully Laura Lizzie in the 1996 horror film "The Craft", and also played Drew Barrymore's cousin, Holly Sullivan, in the 1998 comedy "The Wedding Singer". In 2001, she starred alongside her husband Ben Stiller in "Zoolander".


title: Christine Taylor

text: Later, she made television appearances as a guest star, in 2005, in two episodes of "Arrested Development" as "Sally Sitwell" and, in 2006, in an episode of NBC's "My Name Is Earl". In July 2006, Taylor's husband Ben Stiller announced plans to direct a CBS sitcom starring Taylor, but the series never aired. She has appeared with Mandy Moore in both "Dedication" and "License to Wed". In 2010, Taylor guest starred in "Hannah Montana Forever". In 2010, she also starred in the Hallmark Channel Christmas movie "Farewell Mr. Kringle". In 2013, Taylor reprised her role as Sally Sitwell in two episodes of the revived "Arrested Development". She also guest starred on "Elementary" in 2017, playing villainess Gail Lundquist.


title: Christine Taylor

text: Beginning in 2016, Taylor has had a recurring role as Gail on "Search Party". In 2021, Taylor joined the cast of "High Desert", an Apple TV+ series.


title: Christine Taylor

text: Taylor married actor Ben Stiller, who she first met in 1999 while they were both filming "Heat Vision and Jack". Taylor and Stiller appeared together in the films "Zoolander", "", "Tropic Thunder", "Zoolander 2" and in the TV series "Arrested Development" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm". They lived in Westchester County, New York and have a daughter and a son. Both adopted a vegetarian diet for health reasons. After 17 years of marriage, Taylor and Stiller separated in 2017. The couple later reconciled after living together during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Steven George Gerrard (born 30 May 1980) is an English professional football manager and former player, who most recently managed club Aston Villa. Described by pundits and fellow professionals as one of his generation's greatest players, Gerrard spent the majority of his playing career as a central midfielder for Liverpool and the England national team, captaining both.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Born in Merseyside, Gerrard played for Liverpool from 1998 to 2015, winning nine trophies, including the UEFA Champions League, two FA Cups, and three League Cups. He was Man of the Match in the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final, in which Liverpool overturned a 3–0 deficit to defeat AC Milan on penalties, and the 2006 FA Cup Final, which has been termed "The Gerrard Final" in homage to his performance. Despite success in cup competitions, he never won the Premier League. Gerrard won 114 England caps between 2000 and 2014, captaining the team 38 times and scoring 21 goals. He played at three UEFA European Championships, in 2000, 2004 and 2012 (where he was named in the Team of the Tournament) and three FIFA World Cups, in 2006, 2010 and 2014.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard began his managerial career managing the Liverpool Youth Academy's under-18 team, before starting his senior managerial career in 2018 with Scottish Premiership club Rangers. In his third full season in charge, Gerrard's side went unbeaten in the league to win Rangers' first league title in 10 years. In November 2021, he became the manager of Aston Villa, but after just 11 months in charge, he was dismissed due to a poor run of results.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: As a player, his individual awards include UEFA Club Footballer of the Year in 2005, PFA Players' Player of the Year in 2006, FWA Footballer of the Year in 2009, appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2007, and induction into the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2021. He was named in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year a record eight times. As a manager, he was named as Manager of the Year for 2021 by PFA Scotland and the SFWA.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Steven George Gerrard was born on 30 May 1980, in Whiston, Merseyside, England, and is the second son of Paul and Julie Ann Gerrard. He started out playing for his hometown team, Whiston Juniors, where he was noticed by Liverpool scouts; he joined the Liverpool Academy at age nine. His childhood footballing heroes were John Barnes and Ian Rush at Liverpool, and Paul Gascoigne for England. When Gerrard was young, a garden fork was imbedded in the big toe of his right foot. In his autobiography, "Gerrard: my autobiography", he credited Liverpool's academy director Steve Heighway and his father for preventing an operation to amputate his toe.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Although not a Catholic and living outside the catchment area, Gerrard attended Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School upon the recommendation of his primary school teacher, whose husband was a PE teacher at the school, due to its superior football reputation over other schools in the area. Gerrard had trials with various clubs at fourteen, but his success was not immediate; Gerrard never made it into the England schoolboys' team. His trials included one with Manchester United, which he said in his 2006 autobiography was "to pressure Liverpool into giving me a Youth Training Scheme contract." He signed his first professional contract with Liverpool on 5 November 1997.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard made his first-team debut for Liverpool on 29 November 1998 as a late substitute in a Premier League match against Blackburn Rovers. He made thirteen appearances in his debut season, replacing injured captain Jamie Redknapp in central midfield. He also occasionally played on the right wing, but scarcely contributed in the short match time he received, which he attributed to nerves. Gerrard recalled in a 2008 interview with "The Guardian", "I was out of position and out of my depth." Nonetheless, Liverpool's coaching staff remained convinced that he would improve. Gerrard saw himself as a defensive player primarily, looking to make key tackles rather than push the team forward.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Replacing Paul Ince, Gerrard regularly partnered Redknapp in midfield for the 1999–2000 season. After starting the Merseyside derby on the bench, he replaced Robbie Fowler in the second half, receiving his first career red card for a challenge to the upper leg of Everton's Kevin Campbell. Later that season, Gerrard scored his first senior goal in a 4–1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday. However, he began to suffer from persistent back problems, which sports consultant Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt later diagnosed as a result of accelerated growth, coupled with excessive playing, during his teenage years. He was then beset by groin injuries that required four separate operations.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In the 2000–01 season, Gerrard made fifty starts in all competitions, scoring ten goals. That season, he won his first major honours with Liverpool—the FA Cup, Football League Cup, and the UEFA Cup—scoring in the final of the last competition. He was named PFA Young Player of the Year by his peers. The following season, he won the FA Charity Shield and UEFA Super Cup. In March 2003, Gerrard scored the opening goal in the club's 2–0 win over Manchester United in the Football League Cup Final, held at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. After a year as vice-captain, Gerrard replaced Sami Hyypiä as Liverpool captain in October 2003. Manager Gérard Houllier said that he had recognised Gerrard's leadership qualities early on, but that he needed time to mature.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In June 2005, Gerrard extended his contract at the club, signing a four-year deal. Houllier resigned as Liverpool manager after a trophy-less 2003–04 campaign, and Gerrard was linked with a move to Chelsea during the off-season. Gerrard admitted that he was not "happy with the progress Liverpool has made", and that "for the first time in my career I've thought about the possibility of moving on." Ultimately, Gerrard turned down a £20 million offer from Chelsea, staying with Liverpool under new coach Rafael Benítez.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Liverpool had many injuries early in the 2004–05 season, and a broken toe suffered in a September league match against Manchester United sidelined Gerrard until late November. On 8 December, Gerrard scored a crucial 25-yard half volley in the 86th minute of Liverpool's final Champions League group stage match against Olympiacos to send the club through to the knockout round. A strike that saw Sky Sports co-commentator Andy Gray exclaim, "Oh, you beauty!! What a hit son! What a hit!", Gerrard claimed that this was his most important, if not his best, goal for Liverpool to date. However, Gerrard netted an own goal during the 2005 League Cup final on 27 February, which proved decisive in Liverpool's 3–2 loss to Chelsea after extra time at the Millennium Stadium.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: During a six-minute stretch in the second half of the 2005 Champions League final against AC Milan, Liverpool came back from a three-goal deficit to tie the match at 3–3 after extra time, with Gerrard scoring one of the goals, a header from a John Arne Riise cross. Liverpool's third goal was gained as a penalty from a foul awarded to Liverpool when Gennaro Gattuso was judged to have pulled down Gerrard in Milan's penalty area. Xabi Alonso's penalty was saved by Dida but the rebound was scored. Gerrard did not participate in the penalty shoot-out (he was the designated fifth penalty taker) which Liverpool won 3–2 as they claimed their first Champions League trophy in twenty years. Dubbed the "Miracle of Istanbul", the match is widely regarded as one of the greatest finals in the competition's history, and Gerrard was lauded as the catalyst for the second half comeback. Gerrard was named the Man of the Match, and later received the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year award.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In regards to his contract issues with Liverpool, Gerrard told the press after the final, "How can I leave after a night like this?" but negotiations soon stalled and on 5 July 2005, after Liverpool turned down another lucrative offer from Chelsea, Gerrard's agent Struan Marshall informed Liverpool chief executive Rick Parry that Gerrard was rejecting a club-record £100,000-a-week offer. Parry conceded the club had lost Gerrard, saying, "Now we have to move on. We have done our best, but he has made it clear he wants to go and I think it looks pretty final." The next day, Gerrard signed a new four-year deal as Parry blamed the earlier breakdown of talks on miscommunication between the two sides. Gerrard stated upon signing the contract that he would rather win one Premier League title with Liverpool than win multiple titles at Chelsea as it would mean more to him.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard scored 23 goals in 53 appearances in 2005–06, and in April became the first Liverpool player since John Barnes in 1988 to be voted the PFA Players' Player of the Year. He scored twice in the 2006 FA Cup Final against West Ham United, including an injury time 35-yard equalizer that sent the match into extra time, and Liverpool won their second consecutive major trophy on penalties. A match called "The Gerrard Final", the goals made him the only player to have scored in the FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Cup and Champions League finals. Liverpool eliminated Chelsea in the 2006–07 Champions League semi-finals on penalties, to return to their second final in three seasons, which they lost 2–1 to Milan in Athens.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard suffered a toe fracture in an August 2007 Champions League qualifier against Toulouse, but returned four days later to play the entirety of a 1–1 league draw against Chelsea. On 28 October 2007, Gerrard played his 400th game for Liverpool in a league match against Arsenal, in which he scored. He scored in all but one of Liverpool's domestic and European matches during the month of November, and after scoring the only goal in a Champions League away tie against Marseille on 11 December, he became the first Liverpool player since John Aldridge in 1989 to score in seven consecutive games in all competitions. In December 2007, Gerrard was voted sixth (after Kaká, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba and Ronaldinho) for the 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard made his 300th Premier League appearance on 13 April 2008 in a match against Blackburn Rovers, scoring the opening goal in a game which Liverpool won 3–1, and finished the season with twenty-one goals in all competitions, surpassing his total from the 2006–07 season. Gerrard was selected for the PFA Team of the Year and he was also one of the nominees or the PFA Players' Player of the Year, alongside teammate Fernando Torres.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard needed to undergo groin surgery at the beginning of the 2008–09 season, but the problem was not serious and he quickly returned to training. He scored what appeared to be his hundredth career Liverpool goal against Stoke City on 20 September, but it was disallowed after Dirk Kuyt was ruled offside. He achieved the milestone eleven days later in a 3–1 Champions League group stage win over PSV.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: He made his 100th appearance in European club competition for Liverpool on 10 March 2009 against Real Madrid and scored twice in a 4–0 win. Four days after the victory over Real, Gerrard would score at Old Trafford for the first time from the penalty spot, putting Liverpool ahead on their way to a 4–1 victory over Manchester United. Following these results, three-time FIFA World Player of the Year Zinedine Zidane hailed Gerrard as possibly the best player in the world. On 22 March 2009, Gerrard scored his first ever hat-trick in the Premier League, against Aston Villa, in a 5–0 victory.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 13 May 2009, Gerrard was named as the 2009 Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year, beating Ryan Giggs by just 10 votes and becoming the first Liverpool player to win the award in nineteen years. Gerrard was delighted and "a little bit surprised" to win the award. On 5 December 2009, Gerrard made his 500th appearance for Liverpool at Blackburn. He ended the 2009–10 season with 12 goals and nine assists from 46 matches.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Following the 2009–10 season, Rafael Benítez departed Liverpool after six years and was succeeded as manager by Roy Hodgson, who quickly assured fans that Gerrard would not be sold. To further eliminate any speculation surrounding his future at the club, Gerrard made a statement emphasizing his excitement at the coming season with Liverpool and praising the signing of Joe Cole. Gerrard soon played his first pre-season match of the 2010–11 season against Borussia Mönchengladbach on 1 August 2010 alongside new signing Joe Cole.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard scored his first goal of the 2010–11 season from the penalty spot in a Europa League qualifier against Macedonian side FK Rabotnički on 5 August 2010. His next two goals came on 19 September at Old Trafford in a 3–2 loss against Manchester United; he scored from a penalty kick in the 64th minute and a free-kick six minutes later to level the game at 2–2. He followed this up one week later with the second equaliser in a 2–2 home draw with Sunderland. Eleven days later, Gerrard came off the bench to score a second-half hat-trick in a 3–1 win over Napoli in the Europa League.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard missed the start of the 2011–12 season due to a groin injury, which had also kept him out of action for large parts of the previous season. Gerrard later went on to reveal he rejected the chance to join Bayern Munich in the summer to focus on getting Liverpool back in the Champions League, saying "... a traditional club like Liverpool still has a value, that's the reason why I have stuck around for so long ... it is more important to win a couple of trophies and achieve something that is a lot more difficult than go down the easy road and move to a club where it becomes easier."


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 29 October, Gerrard underwent treatment to clear an infection in his right ankle, which was placed in a protective plaster cast. He was forced to miss Liverpool's league match against West Bromwich Albion that day and was ruled out for at least the match against Swansea City the following week and England's friendly matches against Sweden and Spain the week after that. On 30 December, Gerrard came off the bench against Newcastle United and scored a fine goal.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard went on to help Liverpool to reach their first cup final in 6 years, and their first at Wembley Stadium in 18 years, as Liverpool beat Manchester City 3–2 on aggregate in the semi-finals. Gerrard scored a penalty in both legs to send Liverpool to the 2012 Football League Cup Final against Cardiff City on 26 February 2012, which Liverpool won on penalties. On his 400th Premier League appearance for Liverpool, Gerrard scored a hat-trick to give Liverpool a 3–0 victory over rivals Everton in the Merseyside derby on 13 March.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 18 August 2012, Gerrard played his 250th match as Liverpool captain. He scored his first Premier League goal of the season on 23 September, opening the scoring in a 2–1 defeat against Manchester United.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 15 July 2013, Gerrard signed a contract extension with Liverpool. On 3 August 2013, Liverpool played Olympiacos, against whom Gerrard scored arguably his most celebrated goal, at Anfield for Gerrard's charity fund-raising testimonial match. Liverpool won the match 2–0, in a game where past players such as Jamie Carragher and Robbie Fowler made appearances. Alder Hey Children's Charity, of which Gerrard is a founding partner, received £500,000 from the proceeds. On 5 October, Gerrard scored in a 3–1 win over Crystal Palace, becoming Liverpool's first ever player to score in 15 successive league campaigns, overtaking the record previously set by Billy Liddell in 1959. Also in October 2013, he became the longest-serving Liverpool captain, 10 years after his appointment by Gérard Houllier on 15 October 2013, breaking the previous record held by Alex Raisbeck, who captained Liverpool from 1899 to 1909.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 19 October 2013, Gerrard scored his 100th Premier League goal, a penalty against Newcastle United in a 2–2 draw. On 16 March 2014, Gerrard scored two penalties and missed another in Liverpool's 3–0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford. With nine career goals against arch rivals Manchester United he is Liverpool’s highest goalscorer in the fixture. On 6 April, he scored another two penalties as Liverpool beat West Ham United 2–1 to go top of the Premier League table with five matches to play. These goals took him above Kenny Dalglish as Liverpool's sixth-top goalscorer of all time.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 27 April, Gerrard was involved in what was later labelled as a defining moment of the 2013–14 Premier League season; where Liverpool would ultimately finish second. Liverpool originally topped the league when they faced Chelsea in their third last match of the season. Gerrard slipped while receiving a pass which allowed Demba Ba to score the opening goal for Chelsea; Chelsea went on to win 2–0, which meant that Liverpool's title hopes were no longer in their own hands. Gerrard finished the season with 13 goals and the League's most assists at 13. Gerrard was a nominee for the PFA Players' Player of the Year award that year, while he won the 2014 Liverpool Echo Sports Personality Award. Gerrard would later refer to this period as "the worst three months of my life".


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In October 2014, Gerrard ruled out retiring at the end of the 2014–15 season and said that he could join another club if he were not offered a new contract at Liverpool. On 1 January 2015, Gerrard announced that he would leave Liverpool at the end of the season. Gerrard said he would have signed a new contract had it been offered in the offseason, but said the club did not make an offer until November. By that time, Brendan Rodgers had spoken to him about managing his playing time and he had been left out of the starting line-up against Real Madrid in the Champions League, contributing to his decision to leave Liverpool. His goal against Basel in the final group stage game of the Champions League was Gerrard's 30th goal in the competition, a club record until it was surpassed by Mohamed Salah in 2021. On 5 January 2015, Gerrard scored two goals in his first game after announcing his departure in the FA Cup 3rd round tie in a 2–1 win at AFC Wimbledon. This followed another two-goal performance in the previous match against Leicester, the first time he scored two or more goals in consecutive games since July 2005. On 4 February 2015, he made his 700th appearance for Liverpool, in an FA Cup tie against Bolton.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 22 March, Gerrard was sent off 38 seconds after coming on as a half-time substitute in a match against Manchester United for stamping on Ander Herrera. Gerrard made his 500th league appearance for Liverpool in a goalless draw against West Brom on 25 April; he became only the third player ever to achieve 500 or more Premier League appearances for one club, after Ryan Giggs and former teammate Jamie Carragher. His final appearance for Liverpool at Anfield was on 16 May against Crystal Palace in a 3–1 loss. His final appearance for the club was eight days later in a 6–1 defeat at Stoke, with Gerrard scoring Liverpool's only goal of the game.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 7 January 2015, the LA Galaxy of Major League Soccer (MLS) announced the signing of Gerrard to an 18-month Designated Player contract, reportedly worth $9 million. He joined the team in July, following the end of the 2014–15 Premier League season. On 11 July, Gerrard made his debut for LA, coming on at half time for Ignacio Maganto in a 1–0 loss at Real Salt Lake in the U.S. Open Cup quarter-finals. He made his MLS debut on 17 July, scoring once, while assisting one goal of his former Liverpool teammate Robbie Keane's hat-trick, during a 5–2 defeat of fellow Californians the San Jose Earthquakes at the StubHub Center. That month, Gerrard was one of the 22 players to be named to the 2015 MLS All-Star Game roster. He made 13 appearances across the regular season, scoring one more goal, the team's last of a 3–2 home win over FC Dallas on 27 September.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: After the Galaxy were eliminated from the 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs by Seattle Sounders FC, Gerrard announced that he may retire in 2016, saying that he found unexpected difficulty in the long journeys to away matches in the United States, and the diverse altitude and weather across the country.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard played his final game for the Galaxy on 6 November 2016 in a MLS Cup Playoff penalty shoot-out loss to Colorado Rapids. Gerrard took and scored Los Angeles' first spot-kick but the club were eliminated after Giovani dos Santos and Ashley Cole failed to convert. Nine days later, he stated he would be leaving on the expiration of his contract. He announced his retirement from professional football on 24 November, at age 36.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard made his international debut against Ukraine on 31 May 2000. That summer, he was called up for UEFA Euro 2000, making only one appearance as a substitute in a 1–0 win over Germany before England were eliminated in the group stage. He scored his first international goal in the famous 5–1 victory over Germany in a 2002 World Cup qualifier in September 2001, and while England qualified, Gerrard was forced to pull out of the squad due to his ongoing groin problems after pulling up in Liverpool's final match of the season against Ipswich.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Before the Euros, Gerrard won the only trophy with the national team in his career – the friendly 2004 FA Summer Tournament.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard scored his second goal for the national team in the Euro 2004 qualifier against Macedonia on 16 October 2002 in a 2–2 draw, his third goal was the opener in a 2–1 win over Serbia and Montenegro on 3 June 2003. He was a regular starter in Euro 2004, scoring once to make it 3–0 in England's win over Switzerland in the second Group game of the tournament but England would be eliminated by the tournament hosts Portugal in the quarter-finals losing 6–5 on penalties in a match when Gerrard was substituted off in the 81st minute for Owen Hargreaves.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: He participated in his first World Cup in 2006 and scored two goals, both in the group stage, against Trinidad and Tobago and Sweden, although his spot-kick was one of three saved by goalkeeper Ricardo as England again bowed out to Portugal in the quarter-finals on penalties. He was England's top scorer in the tournament.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard was made vice-captain of the England team by coach Steve McClaren, and while he filled in for John Terry as captain, England suffered back-to-back losses to Russia and Croatia that ended their Euro 2008 qualifying hopes. After new coach Fabio Capello took over the team in early 2008, Gerrard was given a trial run as captain but Capello settled on Terry for the role. Gerrard was subsequently replaced as England vice-captain by Rio Ferdinand.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard helped England qualify for the 2010 World Cup, scoring two goals in England's 5–1 win over Croatia. John Terry was replaced by Rio Ferdinand as captain in 2010, following revelations about the former's private life, and Gerrard subsequently became vice-captain again. When the England team left for the 2010 World Cup, Gerrard was the most experienced player in the squad with 80 caps. During preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, however, Rio Ferdinand was injured, meaning that Gerrard was appointed by Capello as captain for the tournament.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: After the tournament Gerrard, part of a group of England players dubbed the "Golden Generation", confirmed that he would continue to be available for selection, despite suggestions from Capello that he would seek to rebuild the team.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In August 2010, Gerrard scored twice in a friendly match against Hungary and helped England to a 2–1 win. Due to Ferdinand's continued absence through injury, Gerrard retained the captaincy for the opening match of the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign against Bulgaria, which England won 4–0. He was later named permanent captain by new coach Roy Hodgson, in time for the tournament finals.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: This was the first time that he was named directly the captain of England and not in place of an injured or unavailable captain. He provided three assists and won two man of the match awards to help England finish top of their group. Despite their quarter-final exit on penalties to Italy, Gerrard was later the only England player to be named in the UEFA Team of the Tournament. On 14 November 2012, Gerrard won his 100th cap for England in a friendly match against Sweden.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: For the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Gerrard captained England to their first group stage elimination since 1958 and their first elimination after only two matches, after two straight 1–2 defeats against Italy and Uruguay. Gerrard had played a part in both goals conceded against Uruguay courtesy of his club-mate, Luis Suárez. For England's final game against Costa Rica, Gerrard was replaced as captain by Frank Lampard and used as a substitute.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 21 July 2014, Gerrard announced his retirement from international football. He represented England 114 times (currently the fourth most capped player), scoring 21 goals. Jordan Henderson described Gerrard as "probably the best player this country has ever seen – not only as a player, but also as a leader and a captain."


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Regarded by several pundits and footballing figures as one of the greatest players of his generation, in 2009, Zinedine Zidane and Pelé considered Gerrard to be possibly the best footballer in the world. Known for his versatility and wide range of skills, he was capable of playing in many positions. A hardworking box-to-box player with great endurance, Gerrard was usually deployed as a central midfielder, but he had also been used as a second striker, a holding midfielder, an attacking midfielder, a right-back, and a right winger.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard began his professional career as a wide midfielder on the right, although he did not excel in this position as he had a tendency to commit careless fouls in his youth. Nevertheless, Liverpool retained their faith in the youngster, and he was later shifted to a defensive midfield position as he matured, where he excelled as a ball-winner rather than as a playmaker.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: He continued to evolve tactically, coming into his own in a box-to-box central midfield role, which allowed him to be effective both offensively and defensively; indeed, at his peak, he was known for his ability to make late runs from behind into the penalty area. Under Benítez, he was also used in a supporting and creative role, as an attacking midfielder behind the strikers, or even as a deep-lying playmaker; he was increasingly deployed in the latter position in his later career, in order to compensate for his physical decline, and due to his ability to dictate play in midfield with his vision and passing range.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard, naturally right footed, was able to score goals from distance due to his ball striking ability—he scored many key goals from long range throughout his career, including in three Cup finals. As he entered his mid 30s and his physical capability to get forward and join the attack declined, the number of long range strikes at goal decreased, with most of his goals coming from free kicks and penalty kicks.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In particular, his tactical intelligence and ability to read the game allowed him to break down the opposition's attacking plays. In addition to his footballing attributes, Gerrard was highly regarded for his leadership, determination, and influence on the pitch throughout his career. Despite being vocal in his criticism of diving, Gerrard was accused of diving himself by certain pundits throughout his career.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In November 2016, days before retiring as a player, Gerrard had an interview for the vacant managerial post at League One club Milton Keynes Dons, but said that he was not ready for the job.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In January 2017, he was appointed youth coach at Liverpool, effective from February. On 11 April, it was reported that Gerrard would be taking charge of the Liverpool Under-18 side ahead of the 2017–18 season after impressing Jürgen Klopp and Alex Inglethorpe with his work ethic, knowledge and attitude towards academy coaching. However, before he took the next step on the path to receive his coaching credentials, Gerrard pulled on the Liverpool shirt one last time in a friendly against Australian club Sydney FC at the end of this Premier League campaign. On 7 September 2017, the club announced Gerrard would manage the Under-19 team in the 2017–18 UEFA Youth League.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In late April 2018, Gerrard entered talks to become the new manager of Scottish Premiership club Rangers. On 1 May, incumbent manager Graeme Murty was dismissed, with the club confirming three days later that Gerrard would succeed him from 1 June, ahead of the 2018–19 season, signing a four-year contract. He made his senior managerial debut on 12 July, when he led Rangers to a 2–0 UEFA Europa League win over Macedonian team Shkupi. Gerrard's first game in charge in the domestic league was a 1–1 draw against Aberdeen, away from home. Under Gerrard's management, Rangers went twelve matches unbeaten in all competitions from the start of the season before finally suffering defeat on 2 September, losing 1–0 to rivals Celtic in the Old Firm derby. On 29 December, in the reverse fixture, Gerrard guided Rangers to their first win over Celtic since 2012, in a game that ended with a 1–0 scoreline.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Ahead of the 2019–20 season, Gerrard was linked with a return to the Premier League, after the managerial position at Newcastle United became vacant. The move would have seen him replace his former Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez, who left the club at the end of his contract. Gerrard reportedly turned down the opportunity to take over as the club's manager, because he was comfortable at Rangers.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: During the 2020–21 season, Gerrard led Rangers through a record-breaking season, claiming back-to-back derby wins over rivals Celtic, and topping their Europa League group. On 7 March 2021, Rangers won the Scottish Premiership title without losing a single league match, Gerrard's first trophy as a manager.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 11 November 2021, Gerrard was appointed as head coach at Premier League club Aston Villa on a three-and-a-half-year contract, succeeding Dean Smith, who was dismissed four days earlier. Villa paid Rangers compensation of around £4 million to release him from his contract. He led the club to a 2–0 home win against Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League in his first game in charge. Results under Gerrard were generally mixed and the team finished the season in 14th place, three places lower than the previous campaign.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: After winning just two of their opening 12 league games of the 2022–23 season, Gerrard was dismissed by Villa on 20 October 2022.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard's cousin, Anthony Gerrard, became a professional centre-back. He came through at Everton, where he did not make the first team, and spent most of his career in the Football League. The two faced each other in a professional match for the first time in the 2012 Football League Cup Final, when Steven's Liverpool defeated Anthony's Cardiff City in a penalty shoot-out in which both Gerrards missed.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard and his wife, Alex Curran, married on 16 June 2007, the same day as the weddings of his England teammates: Gary Neville, and Michael Carrick. The ceremony took place at Cliveden House Hotel in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. They have four children together.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Councillors of Knowsley voted to make Gerrard a Freeman of the Borough on 13 December 2007, and two weeks later, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2007 New Year Honours for services to sport. He received an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University on 26 July 2008 as recognition for his contribution to sport.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In 2018, Amazon produced a documentary called "Make Us Dream" detailing the life of Gerrard from a young boy up until his post as Liverpool youth coach.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In September 2006, Gerrard published his first autobiography, "Gerrard: My Autobiography", ghost-written by journalist Henry Winter, which went on to win the Sports Book of the Year honour at the British Book Awards. Gerrard's second volume of autobiography, "My Story", written with Donald McRae, was published in September 2015. The autobiography ends with "I play for Jon-Paul." Gerrard's cousin, Jon-Paul Gilhooley, was killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, when Gerrard was eight. Jon-Paul, who was 10 when he died, was the youngest of the 97 victims of the tragedy. "It was difficult knowing one of your cousins had lost his life", Gerrard said. "Seeing his family's reaction drove me on to become the player I am today.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In his third and latest autobiography, 2015's "My Story", he opined the four best players to have played alongside him are former Liverpool teammates Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres and Luis Suárez and England teammate Wayne Rooney.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 1 October 2007, Gerrard was involved in a low-speed collision in Southport when the car he was driving hit a ten-year-old cyclist, who had shot into the street and inadvertently crossed Gerrard's path. He later visited the boy in the hospital and presented him with a pair of boots signed by Wayne Rooney, the boy's favourite player, after which he stayed to sign autographs for other young patients.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: On 29 December 2008, Gerrard was taken into custody outside the Lounge Inn in Southport on suspicion of a section 20 assault. He and two other men were later charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray, relating to an incident which left the bar's disc jockey with a broken tooth and cuts to his forehead. The three were given police to court bail and were required to appear at North Sefton Magistrates' Court on 23 January 2009, where they all pleaded not guilty. The case was adjourned until 20 March when the assault charge was dropped but Gerrard was required to attend Liverpool Crown Court to face trial for affray. On 3 April, Gerrard again pleaded not guilty.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: The case went to trial in Liverpool Crown Court. Gerrard's co-defendants pleaded guilty before the trial but Gerrard maintained his innocence. Gerrard admitted hitting Marcus McGee but claimed it was in self-defence and on 24 July, Gerrard was found not guilty by the jury. Following the verdict, Gerrard said he was looking forward to getting back to playing football and putting the experience behind him.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: In 2011, Gerrard appeared in the film "Will", about an orphaned young Liverpool fan who hitch-hikes to the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final. In August 2014, Gerrard participated in the ALS Association's Ice Bucket Challenge and went on to challenge Cardiff City winger, Craig Noone.


title: Steven Gerrard

text: Gerrard has had several different sponsorships in his career including current deals with Adidas, Jaguar Cars and Lucozade. In 2014, "Forbes" listed his combined income from salaries, bonuses and off-field earnings at $17.2 million for the previous 12 months. While Gerrard has worn several football boots during his career, he first wore a pair of Nike boots on his Liverpool debut, but soon signed a deal with Adidas in 1998 and has gone on to appear in many Adidas commercials with the likes of Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Lionel Messi and Kaká. Gerrard has worn ten versions of the Adidas Predator boot, with the Accelerator being the first, and throughout his career, he has been one of the brand's major boot endorsees. In 2013, Gerrard switched boot silos to the Nitrocharge 1.0 first wearing the boots in the League Cup clash against rivals Manchester United on 25 September 2013.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the Carnatic Wars and the Anglo-Spanish War (1762–1763). The opposing alliances were led by Great Britain and France respectively, both seeking to establish global pre-eminence at the expense of the other. Along with Spain, France fought Britain both in Europe and overseas with land-based armies and naval forces, while Britain's ally Prussia sought territorial expansion in Europe and consolidation of its power. Long-standing colonial rivalries pitting Britain against France and Spain in North America and the West Indies were fought on a grand scale with consequential results. Prussia sought greater influence in the German states, while Austria wanted to regain Silesia, captured by Prussia in the previous war, and to contain Prussian influence.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In a realignment of traditional alliances, known as the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, Prussia became part of a coalition led by Britain, which also included long-time Prussian competitor Hanover, at the time in personal union with Britain. At the same time, Austria ended centuries of conflict between the Bourbon and Habsburg families by allying with France, along with Saxony, Sweden and Russia. Spain aligned formally with France in 1761, joining France in the Third Family Compact between the two Bourbon monarchies. Smaller German states either joined the Seven Years' War or supplied mercenaries to the parties involved in the conflict.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Anglo-French conflicts broke out in their North American colonies in 1754, when British and French colonial militias and their respective Native American allies engaged in small skirmishes, and later full-scale colonial warfare. The colonial conflicts would become a theatre of the Seven Years' War when war was officially declared 2 years later, and it effectively ended France's presence as a land power on that continent. It was "the most important event to occur in eighteenth-century North America" prior to the American Revolution. Spain entered the war on the French side in 1762, unsuccessfully attempting to invade Britain's ally Portugal in what became known as the Fantastic War. The alliance with France was a disaster for Spain, with the loss to Britain of two major ports, Havana in the West Indies and Manila in the Philippines, returned in the 1763 Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain. In Europe, the large-scale conflict that drew in most of the European powers was centred on the desire of Austria (long the political centre of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation) to recover Silesia from Prussia. The Treaty of Hubertusburg ended the war between Saxony, Austria and Prussia, in 1763. Britain began its rise as the world's predominant colonial and naval power. France's supremacy in Europe was halted until after the French Revolution and the emergence of Napoleon Bonaparte. Prussia confirmed its status as a great power, challenging Austria for dominance within the German states, thus altering the European balance of power.


title: Seven Years' War

text: What came to be known as the Seven Years' War had roots in colonial America in conflicts between Great Britain and France in 1754, when the British sought to expand into territory claimed by the French in North America. The war came to be known as the French and Indian War, with both the British and the French and their respective Native American allies fighting for control of territory. Hostilities were heightened when a joint British and native Mingo force (led by a 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington and Chief Tanacharison) ambushed a small French force at the Battle of Jumonville Glen on 28 May 1754. The conflict exploded across the colonial boundaries and extended to Britain's seizure of hundreds of French merchant ships at sea.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Prussia, a rising power, struggled with Austria for dominance within and outside the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe. In 1756, the four greatest powers "switched partners" so that Great Britain and Prussia were allied against France and Austria. Realizing that war was imminent, Prussia pre-emptively struck Saxony and quickly overran it. The result caused uproar across Europe. Because of Austria's alliance with France to recapture Silesia, which had been lost in the War of the Austrian Succession, Prussia formed an alliance with Britain. Reluctantly, by following the Imperial diet of the Holy Roman Empire, which declared war on Prussia on 17 January 1757, most of the states of the empire joined Austria's cause. The Anglo-Prussian alliance was joined by a few smaller German states within the empire (most notably the Electorate of Hanover but also Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel). Sweden, seeking to regain Pomerania (most of which had been lost to Prussia in previous wars) joined the coalition, seeing its chance when all the major continental powers of Europe opposed Prussia. Spain, bound by the Pacte de Famille, intervened on behalf of France and together they launched an unsuccessful invasion of Portugal in 1762. The Russian Empire was originally aligned with Austria, fearing Prussia's ambition on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but switched sides upon the succession of Tsar Peter III in 1762.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Many middle and small powers in Europe, as in the previous wars, tried steering away from the escalating conflict, even though they had interests in the conflict or with the belligerents. Denmark–Norway, for instance, was close to being dragged into the war on France's side when Peter III became Russian emperor and switched sides; Dano-Norwegian and Russian armies were close to ending up in battle, but the Russian emperor was deposed before war formally broke out. The Dutch Republic, a long-time British ally, kept its neutrality intact, not seeing why it should fight a costly war for British interests, and even tried to prevent Britain's domination in India. The taxation needed for war caused the Russian people considerable hardship, being added to the taxation of salt and alcohol begun by Empress Elizabeth in 1759 to complete her addition to the Winter Palace. Like Sweden, Russia concluded a separate peace with Prussia.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The war ended with two separate treaties dealing with the two different theaters of war. The Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain ended the war in North America and for overseas territories taken in the conflict. The 1763 Treaty of Hubertusburg ended the war between Saxony, Austria and Prussia.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The war was successful for Great Britain, which gained the bulk of New France in North America, Spanish Florida, some individual Caribbean islands in the West Indies, the colony of Senegal on the West African coast, and superiority over the French trading outposts on the Indian subcontinent. The Native American tribes were excluded from the settlement; a subsequent conflict, known as Pontiac's War, which was a small scale war between the indigenous tribe known as the Odawas and the British, where the Odawas claimed seven of the ten forts created or taken by the British to show them that they need to distribute land equally amongst their allies, was also unsuccessful in returning them to their pre-war status. In Europe, the war began disastrously for Prussia, but with a combination of good luck and successful strategy, King Frederick the Great managed to retrieve the Prussian position and retain the "status quo ante bellum". Prussia solidified its position as a newer European great power. Although Austria failed to retrieve the territory of Silesia from Prussia (its original goal), its military prowess was also noted by the other powers. The involvement of Portugal and Sweden did not return them to their former status as great powers. France was deprived of many of its colonies and had saddled itself with heavy war debts that its inefficient financial system could barely handle. Spain lost Florida but gained French Louisiana and regained control of its colonies, e.g., Cuba and the Philippines, which had been captured by the British during the war.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Seven Years' War was perhaps the first global war, taking place almost 160 years before World War I, known as the Great War before the outbreak of World War II, and globally influenced many later major events. Winston Churchill described the conflict as the "first world war". The war restructured not only the European political order, but also affected events all around the world, paving the way for the beginning of later British world supremacy in the 19th century, the rise of Prussia in Germany (eventually replacing Austria as the leading German state), the beginning of tensions in British North America, as well as a clear sign of France's revolutionary turmoil. It was characterized in Europe by sieges and the arson of towns as well as open battles with heavy losses.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In the historiography of some countries, the war is named after combatants in its respective theatres. In the present-day United States—at the time, the southern English-speaking British colonies in North America—the conflict is known as the French and Indian War (1754–1763). In English-speaking Canada—the balance of Britain's former North American colonies—it is called the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). In French-speaking Canada, it is known as "La guerre de la Conquête" (the War of the Conquest). Swedish historiography uses the name "Pommerska kriget" (The Pomeranian War), as the Sweden–Prussia conflict between 1757 and 1762 was limited to Pomerania in northern central Germany. The Third Silesian War involved Prussia and Austria (1756–1763). On the Indian subcontinent, the conflict is called the Third Carnatic War (1757–1763).


title: Seven Years' War

text: The war was described by Winston Churchill as the first "world war", although this label was also given to various earlier conflicts like the Eighty Years' War, the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession, and to later conflicts like the Napoleonic Wars. Contemporaries sometimes informally refer to the war as "World War Zero". The term "Second Hundred Years' War" has been used in order to describe the almost continuous level of worldwide conflict between France and Great Britain during the entire 18th century, reminiscent of the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The boundary between British and French possessions in North America was largely undefined in the 1750s. France had long claimed the entire Mississippi River basin. This was disputed by Britain. In the early 1750s the French began constructing a chain of forts in the Ohio River Valley to assert their claim and shield the Native American population from increasing British influence.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The British settlers along the coast were upset that French troops would now be close to the western borders of their colonies. They felt the French would encourage their tribal allies among the North American natives to attack them. Also, the British settlers wanted access to the fertile land of the Ohio River Valley for the new settlers that were flooding into the British colonies seeking farm land.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The most important French fort planned was intended to occupy a position at "the Forks" where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River (present-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Peaceful British attempts to halt this fort construction were unsuccessful, and the French proceeded to build the fort they named Fort Duquesne. British colonial militia from Virginia accompanied by Chief Tanacharison and small number of Mingo warriors were then sent to drive them out. Led by George Washington, they ambushed a small French force at Jumonville Glen on 28 May 1754 killing ten, including commander Jumonville. The French retaliated by attacking Washington's army at Fort Necessity on 3 July 1754 and forced Washington to surrender. These were the first engagements of what would become the worldwide Seven Years' War.


title: Seven Years' War

text: News of this arrived in Europe, where Britain and France unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a solution. The two nations eventually dispatched regular troops to North America to enforce their claims. The first British action was the assault on Acadia on 16 June 1755 in the Battle of Fort Beauséjour, which was immediately followed by their expulsion of the Acadians. In July British Major General Edward Braddock led about 2,000 army troops and provincial militia on an expedition to retake Fort Duquesne, but the expedition ended in disastrous defeat. In further action, Admiral Edward Boscawen fired on the French ship "Alcide" on 8 June 1755, capturing it and two troop ships. In September 1755, British colonial and French troops met in the inconclusive Battle of Lake George.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The British also harassed French shipping beginning in August 1755, seizing hundreds of ships and capturing thousands of merchant seamen while the two nations were nominally at peace. Incensed, France prepared to attack Hanover, whose prince-elector was also the King of Great Britain and Menorca. Britain concluded a treaty whereby Prussia agreed to protect Hanover. In response France concluded an alliance with its long-time enemy Austria, an event known as the Diplomatic Revolution.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In the War of the Austrian Succession, which lasted from 1740 to 1748, King Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, seized the prosperous province of Silesia from Austria. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 in order to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The War of the Austrian Succession had seen the belligerents aligned on a time-honoured basis. France's traditional enemies, Great Britain and Austria, had coalesced just as they had done against Louis XIV. Prussia, the leading anti-Austrian state in Germany, had been supported by France. Neither group, however, found much reason to be satisfied with its partnership: British subsidies to Austria produced nothing of much help to the British, while the British military effort had not saved Silesia for Austria. Prussia, having secured Silesia, came to terms with Austria in disregard of French interests. Even so, France concluded a defensive alliance with Prussia in 1747, and the maintenance of the Anglo-Austrian alignment after 1748 was deemed essential by the Duke of Newcastle, British secretary of state in the ministry of his brother Henry Pelham. The collapse of that system and the aligning of France with Austria and of Great Britain with Prussia constituted what is known as the "diplomatic revolution" or the "reversal of alliances".


title: Seven Years' War

text: In 1756 Austria was making military preparations for war with Prussia and pursuing an alliance with Russia for this purpose. On 2 June 1756, Austria and Russia concluded a defensive alliance that covered their own territory and Poland against attack by Prussia or the Ottoman Empire. They also agreed to a secret clause that promised the restoration of Silesia and the countship of Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland) to Austria in the event of hostilities with Prussia. Their real desire, however, was to destroy Frederick's power altogether, reducing his sway to his electorate of Brandenburg and giving East Prussia to Poland, an exchange that would be accompanied by the cession of the Polish Duchy of Courland to Russia. Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, grand chancellor of Russia under Empress Elizabeth, was hostile to both France and Prussia, but he could not persuade Austrian statesman Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz to commit to offensive designs against Prussia so long as Prussia was able to rely on French support.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Hanoverian King George II of Great Britain was passionately devoted to his family's continental holdings, but his commitments in Germany were counterbalanced by the demands of the British colonies overseas. If war against France for colonial expansion was to be resumed, then Hanover had to be secured against Franco-Prussian attack. France was very much interested in colonial expansion and was willing to exploit the vulnerability of Hanover in war against Great Britain, but it had no desire to divert forces to Central Europe for Prussia's interest.


title: Seven Years' War

text: French policy was, moreover, complicated by the existence of the "Secret du Roi"—a system of private diplomacy conducted by King Louis XV. Unbeknownst to his foreign minister, Louis had established a network of agents throughout Europe with the goal of pursuing personal political objectives that were often at odds with France's publicly stated policies. Louis's goals for "le Secret du roi" included the Polish crown for his kinsman Louis François de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, and the maintenance of Poland, Sweden and Turkey as French allies in opposition to Russian and Austrian interests.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Frederick saw Saxony and Polish west Prussia as potential fields for expansion, but could not expect French support if he started an aggressive war for them. If he joined the French against the British in the hope of annexing Hanover, he might fall victim to an Austro-Russian attack. The hereditary elector of Saxony, Augustus III, was also elective King of Poland as Augustus III, but the two territories were physically separated by Brandenburg and Silesia. Neither state could pose as a great power. Saxony was merely a buffer between Prussia and Austrian Bohemia, whereas Poland, despite its union with the ancient lands of Lithuania, was prey to pro-French and pro-Russian factions. A Prussian scheme for compensating Frederick Augustus with Bohemia in exchange for Saxony obviously presupposed further spoliation of Austria.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In the attempt to satisfy Austria at the time, Britain gave their electoral vote in Hanover for the candidacy of Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II, as the Holy Roman Emperor, much to the dismay of Frederick and Prussia. Not only that, Britain would soon join the Austro-Russian alliance, but complications arose. Britain's basic framework for the alliance itself was to protect Hanover's interests against France. At the same time, Kaunitz kept approaching the French in the hope of establishing just such an alliance with Austria. Not only that, France had no intention to ally with Russia, who, years earlier, had meddled in France's affairs during Austria's succession war. France also saw the dismemberment of Prussia as threatening to the stability of Central Europe.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Years later, Kaunitz kept trying to establish France's alliance with Austria. He tried as hard as he could to avoid Austrian entanglement in Hanover's political affairs, and was even willing to trade Austrian Netherlands for France's aid in recapturing Silesia. Frustrated by this decision and by the Dutch Republic's insistence on neutrality, Britain soon turned to Russia. On 30 September 1755, Britain pledged financial aid to Russia in order to station 50,000 troops on the Livonian-Lithuanian border, so they could defend Britain's interests in Hanover immediately. Besthuzev, assuming the preparation was directed against Prussia, was more than happy to obey the request of the British. Unbeknownst to the other powers, King George II also made overtures to the Prussian king, Frederick, who, fearing the Austro-Russian intentions, was also desirous of a rapprochement with Britain. On 16 January 1756, the Convention of Westminster was signed, whereby Britain and Prussia promised to aid one another; the parties hoped to achieve lasting peace and stability in Europe.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The carefully coded word in the agreement proved no less catalytic for the other European powers. The results were absolute chaos. Empress Elizabeth of Russia was outraged at the duplicity of Britain's position. Not only that, but France was enraged and terrified, by the sudden betrayal of its only ally, Prussia. Austria, particularly Kaunitz, used this situation to their utmost advantage. Now-isolated France was forced to accede to the Austro-Russian alliance or face ruin. Thereafter, on 1 May 1756, the First Treaty of Versailles was signed, in which both nations pledged 24,000 troops to defend each other in the case of an attack. This diplomatic revolution proved to be an important cause of the war; although both treaties were ostensibly defensive in nature, the actions of both coalitions made the war virtually inevitable.


title: Seven Years' War

text: European warfare in the early modern period was characterised by the widespread adoption of firearms in combination with more traditional bladed weapons. Eighteenth-century European armies were built around units of massed infantry armed with smoothbore flintlock muskets and bayonets. Cavalrymen were equipped with sabres and pistols or carbines; light cavalry were used principally for reconnaissance, screening and tactical communications, while heavy cavalry were used as tactical reserves and deployed for shock attacks. Smoothbore artillery provided fire support and played the leading role in siege warfare. Strategic warfare in this period centred around control of key fortifications positioned so as to command the surrounding regions and roads, with lengthy sieges a common feature of armed conflict. Decisive field battles were relatively rare.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Seven Years' War, like most European wars of the eighteenth century, was fought as a so-called cabinet war in which disciplined regular armies were equipped and supplied by the state to conduct warfare on behalf of the sovereign's interests. Occupied enemy territories were regularly taxed and extorted for funds, but large-scale atrocities against civilian populations were rare compared with conflicts in the previous century. Military logistics was the decisive factor in many wars, as armies had grown too large to support themselves on prolonged campaigns by foraging and plunder alone. Military supplies were stored in centralised magazines and distributed by baggage trains that were highly vulnerable to enemy raids. Armies were generally unable to sustain combat operations during winter and normally established winter quarters in the cold season, resuming their campaigns with the return of spring.


title: Seven Years' War

text: For much of the eighteenth century, France approached its wars in the same way. It would let colonies defend themselves or would offer only minimal help (sending them limited numbers of troops or inexperienced soldiers), anticipating that fights for the colonies would most likely be lost anyway. This strategy was to a degree forced upon France: geography, coupled with the superiority of the British navy, made it difficult for the French navy to provide significant supplies and support to overseas colonies. Similarly, several long land borders made an effective domestic army imperative for any French ruler. Given these military necessities, the French government, unsurprisingly, based its strategy overwhelmingly on the army in Europe: it would keep most of its army on the continent, hoping for victories closer to home. The plan was to fight to the end of hostilities and then, in treaty negotiations, to trade territorial acquisitions in Europe to regain lost overseas possessions (as had happened in, "e.g.", the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1632) and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748)). This approach did not serve France well in the war, as the colonies were indeed lost, and although much of the European war went well, by its end France had few counterbalancing European successes.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The British—by inclination as well as for practical reasons—had tended to avoid large-scale commitments of troops on the continent. They sought to offset the disadvantage of this in Europe by allying themselves with one or more continental powers whose interests were antithetical to those of their enemies, particularly France. By subsidising the armies of continental allies, Britain could turn London's enormous financial power to military advantage. In the Seven Years' War, the British chose as their principal partner the most brilliant general of the day, Frederick the Great of Prussia, then the rising power in central Europe, and paid Frederick substantial subsidies for his campaigns. This was accomplished in the diplomatic revolution of 1756, in which Britain ended its long-standing alliance with Austria in favour of Prussia, leaving Austria to side with France. In marked contrast to France, Britain strove to prosecute the war actively overseas, taking full advantage of its naval power. The British pursued a dual strategy—naval blockade and bombardment of enemy ports, and rapid movement of troops by sea. They harassed enemy shipping and attacked enemy colonies, frequently using colonists from nearby British colonies in the effort.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Russians and the Austrians were determined to reduce the power of Prussia, the new threat on their doorstep, and Austria was anxious to regain Silesia, lost to Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession. Along with France, Russia and Austria agreed in 1756 to mutual defence and an attack by Austria and Russia on Prussia, subsidized by France.


title: Seven Years' War

text: William Pitt the Elder, who entered the cabinet in 1756, had a grand vision for the war that made it entirely different from previous wars with France. As prime minister, Pitt committed Britain to a grand strategy of seizing the entire French Empire, especially its possessions in North America and India. Britain's main weapon was the Royal Navy, which could control the seas and bring as many invasion troops as were needed. He also planned to use colonial forces from the thirteen American colonies, working under the command of British regulars, to invade New France. In order to tie the French army down he subsidized his European allies. Pitt was head of the government from 1756 to 1761, and even after that the British continued his strategy. It proved completely successful. Pitt had a clear appreciation of the enormous value of imperial possessions, and realized the vulnerability of the French Empire.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The British prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, was optimistic that the new series of alliances could prevent war from breaking out in Europe. However, a large French force was assembled at Toulon, and the French opened the campaign against the British with an attack on Menorca in the Mediterranean. A British attempt at relief was foiled at the Battle of Minorca, and the island was captured on 28 June (for which Admiral Byng was court-martialed and executed). Britain formally declared war on France on 17 May, nearly two years after fighting had broken out in the Ohio Country.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Frederick II of Prussia had received reports of the clashes in North America and had formed an alliance with Great Britain. On 29 August 1756, he led Prussian troops across the border of Saxony, one of the small German states in league with Austria. He intended this as a bold pre-emption of an anticipated Austro-French invasion of Silesia. He had three goals in his new war on Austria. First, he would seize Saxony and eliminate it as a threat to Prussia, then use the Saxon army and treasury to aid the Prussian war effort. His second goal was to advance into Bohemia, where he might set up winter quarters at Austria's expense. Thirdly, he wanted to invade Moravia from Silesia, seize the fortress at Olmütz, and advance on Vienna to force an end to the war.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Accordingly, leaving Field Marshal Count Kurt von Schwerin in Silesia with 25,000 soldiers to guard against incursions from Moravia and Hungary, and leaving Field Marshal Hans von Lehwaldt in East Prussia to guard against Russian invasion from the east, Frederick set off with his army for Saxony. The Prussian army marched in three columns. On the right was a column of about 15,000 men under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. On the left was a column of 18,000 men under the command of the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern. In the centre was Frederick II, himself with Field Marshal James Keith commanding a corps of 30,000 troops. Ferdinand of Brunswick was to close in on the town of Chemnitz. The Duke of Brunswick-Bevern was to traverse Lusatia to close in on Bautzen. Meanwhile, Frederick and Keith would make for Dresden.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The Saxon and Austrian armies were unprepared, and their forces were scattered. Frederick occupied Dresden with little or no opposition from the Saxons. At the Battle of Lobositz on 1 October 1756, Frederick stumbled into one of the embarrassments of his career. Severely underestimating a reformed Austrian army under General Maximilian Ulysses Browne, he found himself outmanoeuvred and outgunned, and at one point in the confusion even ordered his troops to fire on retreating Prussian cavalry. Frederick actually fled the field of battle, leaving Field Marshall Keith in command. Browne, however, also left the field, in a vain attempt to meet up with an isolated Saxon army holed up in the fortress at Pirna. As the Prussians technically remained in control of the field of battle, Frederick, in a masterful coverup, claimed Lobositz as a Prussian victory. The Prussians then occupied Saxony; after the Siege of Pirna, the Saxon army surrendered in October 1756, and was forcibly incorporated into the Prussian army. The attack on neutral Saxony caused outrage across Europe and led to the strengthening of the anti-Prussian coalition. The Austrians had succeeded in partially occupying Silesia and, more importantly, denying Frederick winter quarters in Bohemia. Frederick had proven to be overly confident to the point of arrogance and his errors were very costly for Prussia's smaller army. This led him to remark that he did not fight the same Austrians as he had during the previous war.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Britain had been surprised by the sudden Prussian offensive but now began shipping supplies and £670,000 (equivalent to £ million in 2021) to its new ally. A combined force of allied German states was organised by the British to protect Hanover from French invasion, under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. The British attempted to persuade the Dutch Republic to join the alliance, but the request was rejected, as the Dutch wished to remain fully neutral. Despite the huge disparity in numbers, the year had been successful for the Prussian-led forces on the continent, in contrast to the British campaigns in North America.


title: Seven Years' War

text: On 18 April 1757, Frederick II again took the initiative by marching into the Kingdom of Bohemia, hoping to inflict a decisive defeat on Austrian forces. After winning the bloody Battle of Prague on 6 May 1757, in which both forces suffered major casualties, the Prussians forced the Austrians back into the fortifications of Prague. The Prussian army then laid siege to the city. In response, Austrian commander Leopold von Daun collected a force of 30,000 men to come to the relief of Prague. Following the battle at Prague, Frederick took 5,000 troops from the siege at Prague and sent them to reinforce the 19,000-man army under the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern at Kolín in Bohemia. Von Daun arrived too late to participate in the battle of Prague, but picked up 16,000 men who had escaped from the battle. With this army he slowly moved to relieve Prague. The Prussian army was too weak to simultaneously besiege Prague and keep von Daun away, and Frederick was forced to attack prepared positions. The resulting Battle of Kolín was a sharp defeat for Frederick, his first. His losses further forced him to lift the siege and withdraw from Bohemia altogether.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Later that summer, the Russians under Field Marshal Stepan Fyodorovich Apraksin besieged Memel with 75,000 troops. Memel had one of the strongest fortresses in Prussia. However, after five days of artillery bombardment the Russian army was able to storm it. The Russians then used Memel as a base to invade East Prussia and defeated a smaller Prussian force in the fiercely contested Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf on 30 August 1757. In the words of the American historian Daniel Marston, Gross-Jägersdorf left the Prussians with "a newfound respect for the fighting capabilities of the Russians that was reinforced in the later battles of Zorndorf and Kunersdorf". However, the Russians were not yet able to take Königsberg after using up their supplies of cannonballs at Memel and Gross-Jägersdorf and retreated soon afterwards.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Logistics was a recurring problem for the Russians throughout the war. The Russians lacked a quartermaster's department capable of keeping armies operating in Central Europe properly supplied over the primitive mud roads of eastern Europe. The tendency of Russian armies to break off operations after fighting a major battle, even when they were not defeated, was less about their casualties and more about their supply lines; after expending much of their munitions in a battle, Russian generals did not wish to risk another battle knowing resupply would be a long time coming. This long-standing weakness was evident in the Russian-Ottoman War of 1735–1739, where Russian battle victories led to only modest war gains due to problems supplying their armies. The Russian quartermasters department had not improved, so the same problems reoccurred in Prussia. Still, the Imperial Russian Army was a new threat to Prussia. Not only was Frederick forced to break off his invasion of Bohemia, he was now forced to withdraw further into Prussian-controlled territory. His defeats on the battlefield brought still more opportunistic nations into the war. Sweden declared war on Prussia and invaded Pomerania with 17,000 men. Sweden felt this small army was all that was needed to occupy Pomerania and felt the Swedish army would not need to engage with the Prussians because the Prussians were occupied on so many other fronts.


title: Seven Years' War

text: This problem was compounded when the main Hanoverian army under Cumberland, which include Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick troops, was defeated at the Battle of Hastenbeck and forced to surrender entirely at the Convention of Klosterzeven following a French Invasion of Hanover. The convention removed Hanover from the war, leaving the western approach to Prussian territory extremely vulnerable. Frederick sent urgent requests to Britain for more substantial assistance, as he was now without any outside military support for his forces in Germany.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Things were looking grim for Prussia now, with the Austrians mobilising to attack Prussian-controlled soil and a combined French and "Reichsarmee" army under Prince Soubise approaching from the west. The "Reichsarmee" was a collection of armies from the smaller German states that had banded together to heed the appeal of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I of Austria against Frederick. However, in November and December 1757, the whole situation in Germany was reversed. First, Frederick devastated Soubise's forces at the Battle of Rossbach on 5 November 1757 and then routed a vastly superior Austrian force at the Battle of Leuthen on 5 December 1757. Rossbach was the only battle between the French and the Prussians during the entire war. At Rossbach, the Prussians lost about 548 men killed while the Franco-"Reichsarmee" force under Soubise lost about 10,000 killed. Frederick always called Leuthen his greatest victory, an assessment shared by many at the time as the Austrian Army was considered to be a highly professional force. With these victories, Frederick once again established himself as Europe's premier general and his men as Europe's most accomplished soldiers. However, Frederick missed an opportunity to completely destroy the Austrian army at Leuthen; although depleted, it escaped back into Bohemia. He hoped the two smashing victories would bring Maria Theresa to the peace table, but she was determined not to negotiate until she had re-taken Silesia. Maria Theresa also improved the Austrians' command after Leuthen by replacing her incompetent brother-in-law, Charles of Lorraine, with von Daun, who was now a field marshal.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Calculating that no further Russian advance was likely until 1758, Frederick moved the bulk of his eastern forces to Pomerania under the command of Marshal Lehwaldt, where they were to repel the Swedish invasion. In short order, the Prussian army drove the Swedes back, occupied most of Swedish Pomerania, and blockaded its capital Stralsund. George II of Great Britain, on the advice of his British ministers after the battle of Rossbach, revoked the Convention of Klosterzeven, and Hanover reentered the war. Over the winter the new commander of the Hanoverian forces, Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick (until immediately before a commander in the Prussian Army), regrouped his army and launched a series of offensives that drove the French back across the River Rhine. Ferdinand's forces kept Prussia's western flank secure for the rest of the war.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The British had suffered further defeats in North America, particularly at Fort William Henry. At home, however, stability had been established. Since 1756, successive governments led by Newcastle and Pitt had fallen. In August 1757, the two men agreed to a political partnership and formed a coalition government that gave new, firmer direction to the war effort. The new strategy emphasised both Newcastle's commitment to British involvement on the continent, particularly in defence of its German possessions, and Pitt's determination to use naval power to seize French colonies around the globe. This "dual strategy" would dominate British policy for the next five years.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Between 10 and 17 October 1757, a Hungarian general, Count András Hadik, serving in the Austrian army, executed what may be the most famous hussar action in history. When the Prussian king, Frederick, was marching south with his powerful armies, the Hungarian general unexpectedly swung his force of 5,000, mostly hussars, around the Prussians and occupied part of their capital, Berlin, for one night. The city was spared for a negotiated ransom of 200,000 thalers. When Frederick heard about this humiliating occupation, he immediately sent a larger force to free the city. Hadik, however, left the city with his hussars and safely reached the Austrian lines. Subsequently, Hadik was promoted to the rank of marshal in the Austrian Army.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In early 1758, Frederick launched an invasion of Moravia and laid siege to Olmütz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic). Following an Austrian victory at the Battle of Domstadtl that wiped out a supply convoy destined for Olmütz, Frederick broke off the siege and withdrew from Moravia. It marked the end of his final attempt to launch a major invasion of Austrian territory. In January 1758, the Russians invaded East Prussia, where the province, almost denuded of troops, put up little opposition. East Prussia had been occupied by Russian forces over the winter and would remain under their control until 1762, although it was far less strategically valuable to Prussia than Brandenburg or Silesia. In any case, Frederick did not see the Russians as an immediate threat and instead entertained hopes of first fighting a decisive battle against Austria that would knock them out of the war.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In April 1758, the British concluded the Anglo-Prussian Convention with Frederick in which they committed to pay him an annual subsidy of £670,000. Britain also dispatched 9,000 troops to reinforce Ferdinand's Hanoverian army, the first British troop commitment on the continent and a reversal in the policy of Pitt. Ferdinand's Hanoverian army, supplemented by some Prussian troops, had succeeded in driving the French from Hanover and Westphalia and re-captured the port of Emden in March 1758 before crossing the Rhine with his own forces, which caused alarm in France. Despite Ferdinand's victory over the French at the Battle of Krefeld and the brief occupation of Düsseldorf, he was compelled by the successful manoeuvering of larger French forces to withdraw across the Rhine.


title: Seven Years' War

text: By this point Frederick was increasingly concerned by the Russian advance from the east and marched to counter it. Just east of the Oder in Brandenburg-Neumark, at the Battle of Zorndorf (now Sarbinowo, Poland), a Prussian army of 35,000 men under Frederick on 25 August 1758, fought a Russian army of 43,000 commanded by Count William Fermor. Both sides suffered heavy casualties—the Prussians 12,800, the Russians 18,000—but the Russians withdrew, and Frederick claimed victory. The American historian Daniel Marston described Zorndorf as a "draw" as both sides were too exhausted and had taken such losses that neither wished to fight another battle with the other. In the undecided Battle of Tornow on 25 September, a Swedish army repulsed six assaults by a Prussian army but did not push on Berlin following the Battle of Fehrbellin.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The war was continuing indecisively when on 14 October Marshal Daun's Austrians surprised the main Prussian army at the Battle of Hochkirch in Saxony. Frederick lost much of his artillery but retreated in good order, helped by dense woods. The Austrians had ultimately made little progress in the campaign in Saxony despite Hochkirch and had failed to achieve a decisive breakthrough. After a thwarted attempt to take Dresden, Daun's troops were forced to withdraw to Austrian territory for the winter, so that Saxony remained under Prussian occupation. At the same time, the Russians failed in an attempt to take Kolberg in Pomerania (now Kołobrzeg, Poland) from the Prussians.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In France, 1758 had been disappointing, and in the wake of this a new chief minister, the Duc de Choiseul, was appointed. Choiseul planned to end the war in 1759 by making strong attacks on Britain and Hanover.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Prussia suffered several defeats in 1759. At the Battle of Kay, or Paltzig, the Russian Count Saltykov with 47,000 Russians defeated 26,000 Prussians commanded by General Carl Heinrich von Wedel. Though the Hanoverians defeated an army of 60,000 French at Minden, Austrian general Daun forced the surrender of an entire Prussian corps of 13,000 in the Battle of Maxen. Frederick himself lost half his army in the Battle of Kunersdorf (now Kunowice, Poland), the worst defeat in his military career and one that drove him to the brink of abdication and thoughts of suicide. The disaster resulted partly from his misjudgment of the Russians, who had already demonstrated their strength at Zorndorf and at Gross-Jägersdorf (now Motornoye, Russia), and partly from good cooperation between the Russian and Austrian forces. However, disagreements with the Austrians over logistics and supplies resulted in the Russians withdrawing east yet again after Kunersdorf, ultimately enabling Frederick to re-group his shattered forces.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The French planned to invade the British Isles during 1759 by accumulating troops near the mouth of the Loire and concentrating their Brest and Toulon fleets. However, two sea defeats prevented this. In August, the Mediterranean fleet under Jean-François de La Clue-Sabran was scattered by a larger British fleet under Edward Boscawen at the Battle of Lagos. In the Battle of Quiberon Bay on 20 November, the British admiral Edward Hawke with 23 ships of the line caught the French Brest fleet with 21 ships of the line under Marshal de Conflans and sank, captured, or forced many of them aground, putting an end to the French plans.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The year 1760 brought yet more Prussian disasters. The general Fouqué was defeated by the Austrians in the Battle of Landeshut. The French captured Marburg in Hesse and the Swedes part of Pomerania. The Hanoverians were victorious over the French at the Battle of Warburg, their continued success preventing France from sending troops to aid the Austrians against Prussia in the east.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Despite this, the Austrians, under the command of General Laudon, captured Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland) in Silesia. In the Battle of Liegnitz Frederick scored a strong victory despite being outnumbered three to one. The Russians under General Saltykov and Austrians under General Lacy briefly occupied his capital, Berlin, in October, but could not hold it for long. Still, the loss of Berlin to the Russians and Austrians was a great blow to Frederick's prestige as many pointed out that the Prussians had no hope of occupying temporarily or otherwise St. Petersburg or Vienna. In November 1760 Frederick was once more victorious, defeating the able Daun in the Battle of Torgau, but he suffered very heavy casualties, and the Austrians retreated in good order.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Meanwhile, after the battle of Kunersdorf, the Russian army was mostly inactive due mostly to their tenuous supply lines. Russian logistics were so poor that in October 1759, an agreement was signed under which the Austrians undertook to supply the Russians as the quartermaster's department of the Russian Army was badly strained by the demands of Russian armies operating so far from home. As it was, the requirement that the Austrian quartermaster's department supply both the Austrian and Russian armies proved beyond its capacity, and in practice, the Russians received little in the way of supplies from the Austrians. At Liegnitz (now Legnica, Poland), the Russians arrived too late to participate in the battle. They made two attempts to storm the fortress of Kolberg, but neither succeeded. The tenacious resistance of Kolberg allowed Frederick to focus on the Austrians instead of having to split his forces.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Prussia began the 1761 campaign with just 100,000 available troops, many of them new recruits, and its situation seemed desperate. However, the Austrian and Russian forces were also heavily depleted and could not launch a major offensive.


title: Seven Years' War

text: In February 1761 Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick surprised French troops at Langensalza and then advanced to besiege Cassel in March. He was forced to lift the siege and retreat after French forces regrouped and captured several thousand of his men at the Battle of Grünberg. At the Battle of Villinghausen, forces under Ferdinand defeated a 92,000-man French army.


title: Seven Years' War

text: On the eastern front, progress was very slow. The Russian army was heavily dependent upon its main magazines in Poland, and the Prussian army launched several successful raids against them. One of them, led by general Platen in September resulted in the loss of 2,000 Russians, mostly captured, and the destruction of 5,000 wagons. Deprived of men, the Prussians had to resort to this new sort of warfare, raiding, to delay the advance of their enemies. Frederick's army, though depleted, was left unmolested at its headquarters in Brunzelwitz, as both the Austrians and the Russians were hesitant to attack it. Nonetheless, at the end of 1761, Prussia suffered two critical setbacks. The Russians under Zakhar Chernyshev and Pyotr Rumyantsev stormed Kolberg in Pomerania, while the Austrians captured Schweidnitz. The loss of Kolberg cost Prussia its last port on the Baltic Sea. A major problem for the Russians throughout the war had always been their weak logistics, which prevented their generals from following up their victories, and now with the fall of Kolberg, the Russians could at long last supply their armies in Central Europe via the sea. The fact that the Russians could now supply their armies over the sea, which was considerably faster and safer (Prussian cavalry could not intercept Russian ships in the Baltic) than over the land threatened to swing the balance of power decisively against Prussia, as Frederick could not spare any troops to protect his capital. In Britain, it was speculated that a total Prussian collapse was now imminent.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Britain now threatened to withdraw its subsidies if Frederick did not consider offering concessions to secure peace. As the Prussian armies had dwindled to just 60,000 men and with Berlin itself about to come under siege, the survival of both Prussia and its king was severely threatened. Then on 5 January 1762 the Russian Empress Elizabeth died. Her Prussophile successor, Peter III, at once ended the Russian occupation of East Prussia and Pomerania (see: the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1762)) and mediated Frederick's truce with Sweden. He also placed a corps of his own troops under Frederick's command. Frederick was then able to muster a larger army, of 120,000 men, and concentrate it against Austria. He drove them from much of Silesia after recapturing Schweidnitz, while his brother Henry won a victory in Saxony in the Battle of Freiberg (29 October 1762). At the same time, his Brunswick allies captured the key town of Göttingen and compounded this by taking Cassel.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Two new countries entered the war in 1762. Britain declared war against Spain on 4 January 1762; Spain reacted by issuing its own declaration of war against Britain on 18 January. Portugal followed by joining the war on Britain's side. Spain, aided by the French, launched an invasion of Portugal and succeeded in capturing Almeida. The arrival of British reinforcements stalled a further Spanish advance, and in the Battle of Valencia de Alcántara British-Portuguese forces overran a major Spanish supply base. The invaders were stopped on the heights in front of Abrantes (called "the pass to Lisbon") where the Anglo-Portuguese were entrenched. Eventually the Anglo-Portuguese army, aided by guerrillas and practising a scorched earth strategy, chased the greatly reduced Franco-Spanish army back to Spain, recovering almost all the lost towns, among them the Spanish headquarters in Castelo Branco full of wounded and sick that had been left behind.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Meanwhile, the long British naval blockade of French ports had sapped the morale of the French populace. Morale declined further when news of defeat in the Battle of Signal Hill in Newfoundland reached Paris. After Russia's about-face, Sweden's withdrawal and Prussia's two victories against Austria, Louis XV became convinced that Austria would be unable to re-conquer Silesia (the condition for which France would receive the Austrian Netherlands) without financial and material subsidies, which Louis was no longer willing to provide. He therefore made peace with Frederick and evacuated Prussia's Rhineland territories, ending France's involvement in the war in Germany.


title: Seven Years' War

text: By 1763, the war in central Europe was essentially a stalemate between Prussia and Austria. Prussia had retaken nearly all of Silesia from the Austrians after Frederick's narrow victory over Daun at the Battle of Burkersdorf. After his brother Henry's 1762 victory at the Battle of Freiberg, Frederick held most of Saxony but not its capital, Dresden. His financial situation was not dire, but his kingdom was devastated and his army severely weakened. His manpower had dramatically decreased, and he had lost so many effective officers and generals that an offensive against Dresden seemed impossible. British subsidies had been stopped by the new prime minister, Lord Bute, and the Russian emperor had been overthrown by his wife, Catherine, who ended Russia's alliance with Prussia and withdrew from the war. Austria, however, like most participants, was facing a severe financial crisis and had to decrease the size of its army, which greatly affected its offensive power. Indeed, after having effectively sustained a long war, its administration was in disarray. By that time, it still held Dresden, the southeastern parts of Saxony, and the county of Glatz in southern Silesia, but the prospect of victory was dim without Russian support, and Maria Theresa had largely given up her hopes of re-conquering Silesia; her Chancellor, husband and eldest son were all urging her to make peace, while Daun was hesitant to attack Frederick. In 1763 a peace settlement was reached at the Treaty of Hubertusburg, in which Glatz was returned to Prussia in exchange for the Prussian evacuation of Saxony. This ended the war in central Europe.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The stalemate had really been reached by 1759–1760, and Prussia and Austria were nearly out of money. The materials of both sides had been largely consumed. Frederick was no longer receiving subsidies from Britain; the Golden Cavalry of St. George had produced nearly 13 million dollars (equivalent). He had melted and coined most of the church silver, had ransacked the palaces of his kingdom and coined that silver, and reduced his purchasing power by mixing it with copper. His banks' capital was exhausted, and he had pawned nearly everything of value from his own estate. While Frederick still had a significant amount of money left from the prior British subsidies, he hoped to use it to restore his kingdom's prosperity in peacetime; in any case, Prussia's population was so depleted that he could not sustain another long campaign. Similarly, Maria Theresa had reached the limit of her resources. She had pawned her jewels in 1758; in 1760, she approved a public subscription for support and urged her public to bring their silver to the mint. French subsidies were no longer provided. Although she had many young men still to draft, she could not conscript them and did not dare to resort to impressment, as Frederick had done. She had even dismissed some men because it was too expensive to feed them.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Great Britain planned a "descent" (an amphibious demonstration or raid) on Rochefort, a joint operation to overrun the town and burn shipping in the Charente. The expedition set out on 8 September 1757, Sir John Mordaunt commanding the troops and Sir Edward Hawke the fleet. On 23 September the Isle d'Aix was taken, but military staff dithered and lost so much time that Rochefort became unassailable. The expedition abandoned the Isle d'Aix, returning to Great Britain on 1 October.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Despite the debatable strategic success and the operational failure of the descent on Rochefort, William Pitt – who saw purpose in this type of asymmetric enterprise – prepared to continue such operations. An army was assembled under the command of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough; he was aided by Lord George Sackville. The naval squadron and transports for the expedition were commanded by Richard Howe. The army landed on 5 June 1758 at Cancalle Bay, proceeded to St. Malo, and, finding that it would take prolonged siege to capture it, instead attacked the nearby port of St. Servan. It burned shipping in the harbour, roughly 80 French privateers and merchantmen, as well as four warships which were under construction. The force then re-embarked under threat of the arrival of French relief forces. An attack on Havre de Grace was called off, and the fleet sailed on to Cherbourg; the weather being bad and provisions low, that too was abandoned, and the expedition returned having damaged French privateering and provided further strategic demonstration against the French coast.


title: Seven Years' War

text: Pitt now prepared to send troops into Germany; and both Marlborough and Sackville, disgusted by what they perceived as the futility of the "descents", obtained commissions in that army. The elderly General Bligh was appointed to command a new "descent", escorted by Howe. The campaign began propitiously with the Raid on Cherbourg. Covered by naval bombardment, the army drove off the French force detailed to oppose their landing, captured Cherbourg, and destroyed its fortifications, docks and shipping.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The troops were reembarked and moved to the Bay of St. Lunaire in Brittany where, on 3 September, they were landed to operate against St. Malo; however, this action proved impractical. Worsening weather forced the two armies to separate: the ships sailed for the safer anchorage of St. Cast, while the army proceeded overland. The tardiness of Bligh in moving his forces allowed a French force of 10,000 from Brest to catch up with him and open fire on the reembarkation troops. At the battle of Saint Cast a rear-guard of 1,400 under Dury held off the French while the rest of the army embarked. They could not be saved; 750, including Dury, were killed and the rest captured.


title: Seven Years' War

text: The colonial conflict mainly between France and Britain took place in India, North America, Europe, the West Indies, the Philippines, and coastal Africa. Over the course of the war, Great Britain gained enormous areas of land and influence at the expense of the French and the Spanish Empires.