Did England fight France during the Seven Years' War?

Meanwhile, George III had given up on subduing America while Britain had a European war to fight. He did not welcome war with France, but he believed that Britain had made all necessary steps to avoid it and cited the British victories over France in the Seven Years' War as a reason to remain optimistic. Britain tried in vain to find a powerful ally to engage France, leaving it isolated, preventing Britain from focusing the majority of her efforts in one theater, and forcing a major diversion of military resources from America. Despite this, the King determined never to recognize American independence and to ravage the colonies indefinitely, or until they pleaded to return to the yoke of the Crown. Mahan argues that Britain's attempt to fight in multiple theaters simultaneously without major allies was fundamentally flawed, citing impossible mutual support, exposing the forces to defeat in detail.

American Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War (17751783), also known as the American War of Independence, was an 18th-century war between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies (allied with France) which declared independence as the United States of America.

After 1765, growing philosophical and political differences strained the relationship between Great Britain and its colonies. Patriot protests against taxation without representation followed the Stamp Act and escalated into boycotts, which culminated in 1773 with the Sons of Liberty destroying a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor. Britain responded by closing Boston Harbor and passing a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts Bay Colony. Massachusetts colonists responded with the Suffolk Resolves, and they established a shadow government which wrested control of the countryside from the Crown. Twelve colonies formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance, establishing committees and conventions that effectively seized power.

British attempts to disarm the Massachusetts militia in Concord led to open combat on April 19, 1775. Militia forces then besieged Boston, forcing a British evacuation in March 1776, and Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army. Concurrently, the Americans failed decisively in an attempt to invade Quebec and raise insurrection against the British. On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, issuing its declaration on July 4. Sir William Howe launched a British counter-offensive, capturing New York City and leaving American morale at a low ebb. However, victories at Trenton and Princeton restored American confidence. In 1777, the British launched an invasion from Quebec under John Burgoyne, intending to isolate the New England Colonies. Instead of assisting this effort, Howe took his army on a separate campaign against Philadelphia, and Burgoyne was decisively defeated at Saratoga in October 1777.

Burgoyne's defeat had drastic consequences. France formally allied with the Americans and entered the war in 1778, and Spain joined the war the following year as an ally of France but not as an ally of the United States. In 1780, the Kingdom of Mysore attacked the British in India, and tensions between Great Britain and the Netherlands erupted into open war. In North America, the British mounted a "Southern strategy" led by Charles Cornwallis which hinged upon a Loyalist uprising, but too few came forward. Cornwallis suffered reversals at King's Mountain and Cowpens. He retreated to Yorktown, Virginia, intending an evacuation, but a decisive French naval victory deprived him of an escape. A Franco-American army led by the Comte de Rochambeau and Washington then besieged Cornwallis' army and, with no sign of relief, he surrendered in October 1781.

Whigs in Britain had long opposed the pro-war Tories in Parliament, and the surrender gave them the upper hand. In early 1782, Parliament voted to end all offensive operations in North America, but the war continued in Europe, India and the Caribbean. In the latter the British scored a major victory over the French navy, and then later defeated Spanish and French attempts to seize Gibraltar. On September 3, 1783, the belligerent parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States and formally end the war. French involvement had proven decisive, but France made few gains and incurred crippling debts. Spain made some territorial gains but failed in its primary aim of recovering Gibraltar. The Dutch were defeated on all counts and were compelled to cede territory to Great Britain. In India, the war against Mysore and its allies concluded in 1784 without any territorial changes.

Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765. Colonists condemned the tax because their rights as Englishmen protected them from being taxed by a Parliament in which they had no elected representatives. Parliament argued that the colonies were "represented virtually", an idea that was criticized throughout the Empire. Parliament did repeal the act in 1766; however, it also affirmed its right to pass laws that were binding on the colonies. From 1767, Parliament began passing legislation to raise revenue for the salaries of civil officials, ensuring their loyalty while inadvertently increasing resentment among the colonists, and opposition soon became widespread.

Enforcing the acts proved difficult. The seizure of the sloop "Liberty" in 1768 on suspicions of smuggling triggered a riot. In response, British troops occupied Boston, and Parliament threatened to extradite colonists to face trial in England. Tensions rose after the murder of Christopher Seider by a customs official in 1770 and escalated into outrage after British troops fired on civilians in the Boston Massacre. In 1772, colonists in Rhode Island boarded and burned a customs schooner. Parliament then repealed all taxes except the one on tea, passing the Tea Act in 1773, attempting to force colonists to buy East India Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid, thus implicitly agreeing to Parliamentary supremacy. The landing of the tea was resisted in all colonies, but the governor of Massachusetts permitted British tea ships to remain in Boston Harbor. So, the Sons of Liberty destroyed the tea chests, an incident that later became known as the "Boston Tea Party".

Parliament then passed punitive legislation. It closed Boston Harbor until the tea was paid for and revoked the Massachusetts Charter, taking upon themselves the right to directly appoint the Massachusetts Governor's Council. Additionally, the royal governor was granted powers to undermine local democracy. Further measures allowed the extradition of officials for trial elsewhere in the Empire, if the governor felt that a fair trial could not be secured locally. The act's vague reimbursement policy for travel expenses left few with the ability to testify, and colonists argued that it would allow officials to harass them with impunity. Further laws allowed the governor to billet troops in private property without permission. The colonists referred to the measures as the "Intolerable Acts", and they argued that both their constitutional rights and their natural rights were being violated, viewing the acts as a threat to all of America. The acts were widely opposed, driving neutral parties into support of the Patriots and curtailing Loyalist sentiment.

The colonists responded by establishing the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, effectively removing Crown control of the colony outside Boston. Meanwhile, representatives from twelve colonies convened the First Continental Congress to respond to the crisis. The Congress narrowly rejected a proposal to create an American parliament to act in concert with the British Parliament; instead, they passed a compact declaring a trade boycott against Britain. The Congress also affirmed that Parliament had no authority over internal American matters, but they were willing to consent to trade regulations for the benefit of the empire, and they authorized committees and conventions to enforce the boycott. The boycott was effective, as imports from Britain dropped by 97% in 1775 compared to 1774.

Parliament refused to yield. In 1775, it declared Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion and enforced a blockade of the colony. It then passed legislation to limit colonial trade to the British West Indies and the British Isles. Colonial ships were barred from the Newfoundland cod fisheries, a measure which pleased Canadiens but damaged New England's economy. These increasing tensions led to a mutual scramble for ordnance and pushed the colonies toward open war. Thomas Gage was the British Commander-in-Chief and military governor of Massachusetts, and he received orders on April 14, 1775 to disarm the local militias.

On April 18, 1775, 700 troops were sent to confiscate militia ordnance stored at Concord. Fighting broke out, forcing the regulars to conduct a fighting withdrawal to Boston. Overnight, the local militia converged on and laid siege to Boston. On May 25, 4,500 British reinforcements arrived with generals William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. The British seized the Charlestown peninsula on June 17 after a costly frontal assault, leading Howe to replace Gage. Many senior officers were dismayed at the attack, which had gained them little, while Gage wrote to London stressing the need for a large army to suppress the revolt. On July 3, George Washington took command of the Continental Army besieging Boston. Howe made no effort to attack, much to Washington's surprise. A plan was rejected to assault the city, and the Americans instead fortified Dorchester Heights in early March 1776 with heavy artillery captured from a raid on Fort Ticonderoga. The British were permitted to withdraw unmolested on March 17, and they sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Washington then moved his army to New York.

Starting in August 1775, American Privateers began to raid villages in Nova Scotia, first at Saint John, then Charlottetown and Yarmouth. They continued in 1776 at Canso and then a land assault on Fort Cumberland.

Meanwhile, British officials in Quebec began lobbying Indian tribes to support them, while the Americans urged them to maintain their neutrality. In April 1775, Congress feared an Anglo-Indian attack from Canada and authorized an invasion of Quebec. Quebec had a largely Francophone population and had been under British rule for only 12 years, and the Americans expected that they would welcome being liberated from the British. The Americans attacked Quebec City on December 31 after an arduous march but were defeated. After a loose siege, the Americans withdrew on May 6. 1776. A failed counter-attack on June 8 ended American operations in Quebec. However, the British could not conduct an aggressive pursuit because of American ships on Lake Champlain. On October 11, the British defeated the American squadron, forcing them to withdraw to Ticonderoga and ending the campaign. The invasion cost the Patriots their support in British public opinion, while aggressive anti-Loyalist policies diluted Canadian support. The Patriots continued to view Quebec as a strategic aim, though no further attempts to invade were ever made.

In Virginia, Royal governor Lord Dunmore had attempted to disarm the militia as tensions increased, although no fighting broke out. He issued a proclamation on November 7, 1775 promising freedom for slaves who fled their Patriot masters to fight for the Crown. Dunmore's troops were overwhelmed by Patriots at Great Bridge, and Dunmore fled to naval ships anchored off Norfolk. Subsequent negotiations broke down, so Dunmore ordered the ships to destroy the town.

Fighting broke out on November 19 in South Carolina between Loyalist and Patriot militias, and the Loyalists were subsequently driven out of the colony. Loyalists were recruited in North Carolina to reassert colonial rule in the South, but they were decisively defeated and Loyalist sentiment was subdued. A troop of British regulars set out to reconquer South Carolina and launched an attack on Charleston on June 28, 1776, but it failed and effectively left the South in Patriot control until 1780.

The shortage of gunpowder had led Congress to authorize an expedition against the Bahamas colony in the British West Indies in order to secure ordnance there. On March 3, 1776, the Americans landed after a bloodless exchange of fire, and the local militia offered no resistance. They confiscated all the supplies that they could load and sailed away on March 17. The squadron reached New London, Connecticut on April 8, after a brief skirmish with the Royal Navy frigate "HMS Glasgow" on April 6.

After fighting began, Congress launched a final attempt to avert war, which Parliament rejected as insincere. King George then issued a Proclamation of Rebellion on August 23, 1775, which only served to embolden the colonists in their determination to become independent. After a speech by the King, Parliament rejected coercive measures on the colonies by 170 votes. British Tories refused to compromise, while Whigs argued that current policy would drive the colonists towards independence. Despite opposition, the King himself began micromanaging the war effort. The Irish Parliament pledged to send troops to America, and Irish Catholics were allowed to enlist in the army for the first time. Irish Protestants favored the Americans, while Catholics favored the King.

The initial hostilities provided a sobering military lesson for the British, causing them to rethink their views on colonial military capability. The weak British response gave the Patriots the advantage, and the British lost control over every colony. The army had been deliberately kept small in England since 1688 to prevent abuses of power by the King. Parliament secured treaties with small German states for additional troops and sent an army of 32,000 men to America after a year, the largest that it had ever sent outside Europe at the time.

In the colonies, the success of Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" had boosted public support for independence. On July 2, Congress voted in favor of independence with twelve affirmatives and one abstention, issuing its declaration on July 4. Washington read the declaration to his men and the citizens of New York on July 9, invigorating the crowd to tear down a lead statue of the King and melting it to make bullets. British Tories criticized the signatories for not extending the same standards of equality to slaves.

Patriots followed independence with the Test Laws, requiring residents to swear allegiance to the state in which they lived, intending to root out neutrals or opponents to independence. Failure to do so meant possible imprisonment, exile, or even death. American Tories were barred from public office, forbidden from practising medicine and law, forced to pay increased taxes, or even barred from executing wills or becoming guardians to orphans. Congress enabled states to confiscate Loyalist property to fund the war. Some Quakers who remained neutral had their property confiscated. States later prevented Loyalists from collecting any debts that they were owed.

After regrouping at Halifax, William Howe determined to take the fight to the Americans. He set sail in June 1776 and began landing troops on Staten Island near the entrance to New York Harbor on July 2. Due to poor military intelligence, Washington split his army to positions on Manhattan Island and across the East River in western Long Island, and an informal attempt to negotiate peace was rejected by the Americans. On August 27, Howe outflanked Washington and forced him back to Brooklyn Heights. Howe restrained his subordinates from pursuit, opting to besiege Washington instead.

Washington withdrew to Manhattan without any losses in men or ordnance. Following the withdrawal, the Staten Island Peace Conference failed to negotiate peace, as the British delegates did not possess the authority to recognize independence. Howe then seized control of New York City on September 15, and unsuccessfully engaged the Americans the following day. He attempted to encircle Washington, but the Americans successfully withdrew. On October 28, the British fought an indecisive action against Washington, in which Howe declined to attack Washington's army, instead concentrating his efforts upon a hill that was of no strategic value.

Washington's retreat left his forces isolated, and the British captured an American fortification on November 16, taking 3,000 prisoners and amounting to what one historian terms "the most disastrous defeat of the entire war". Washington's army fell back four days later. Henry Clinton then captured Newport, Rhode Island, an operation which he opposed, feeling that the 6,000 troops assigned to him could have been better employed in the pursuit of Washington. The American prisoners were then sent to the infamous prison ships in which more American soldiers and sailors died of disease and neglect than died in every battle of the war combined. Charles Cornwallis pursued Washington, but Howe ordered him to halt, and Washington marched away unmolested.

The outlook of the American cause was bleak; the army had dwindled to fewer than 5,000 men and would be reduced further when the enlistments expired at the end of the year. Popular support wavered, morale ebbed away, and Congress abandoned Philadelphia. Loyalist activity surged in the wake of the American defeat, especially in New York.

News of the campaign was well received in Britain. Festivities took place in London, public support reached a peak, and the King awarded the Order of the Bath to William Howe. The successes led to predictions that the British could win within a year. The American defeat revealed what one writer views as Washington's strategic deficiencies, such as dividing a numerically weaker army in the face of a stronger one, his inexperienced staff misreading the situation, and his troops fleeing in disorder when fighting began. In the meantime, the British entered winter quarters and were in a good place to resume campaigning.

On December 25, 1776, Washington stealthily crossed the Delaware River, and his army overwhelmed the Hessian garrison at Trenton, New Jersey the following morning, taking 900 prisoners. The decisive victory rescued the army's flagging morale and gave a new hope to the cause for independence. Cornwallis marched to retake Trenton, but his efforts were repulsed on January 2. Washington outmanoeuvred Cornwallis that night, and defeated his rearguard the following day. The victories proved instrumental in convincing the French and Spanish that the Americans were worthwhile allies, as well as recovering morale in the army. Washington entered winter quarters at Morristown, New Jersey on January 6, though a protracted guerrilla conflict continued. While encamped, Howe made no attempt to attack, much to Washington's amazement.

In December 1776, John Burgoyne returned to London to set strategy with Lord George Germain. Burgoyne's plan was to establish control of the Champlain-George-Hudson route from New York to Quebec, isolating New England. Efforts could then be concentrated on the southern colonies, where it was believed Loyalist support was in abundance.

Burgoyne's plan was to lead an army along Lake Champlain, while a strategic diversion advanced along the Mohawk River, and both would rendezvous at Albany. Burgoyne set out on June 14, 1777, quickly capturing Ticonderoga on July 5. Leaving 1,300 men behind as a garrison, Burgoyne continued the advance. Progress was slow; the Americans blocked roads, destroyed bridges, dammed streams and denuded the area of food. Meanwhile, Barry St. Ledger's diversionary column laid siege to Fort Stanwix. St. Ledger withdrew to Quebec on August 22 after his Indian support abandoned him. On August 16, a Hessian foraging expedition was soundly defeated at Bennington, and more than 700 troops were captured. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Burgoyne's Indian support abandoned him and Howe informed Burgoyne he would launch his campaign on Philadelphia as planned, and would be unable to render aid.

Burgoyne decided to continue the advance. On September 19, he attempted to flank the American position, and. The British won, but at the cost of 600 casualties. Burgoyne then dug in, but suffered a constant haemorrhage of deserters, and critical supplies were running low. On October 7, a British reconnaissance in force against the American lines was. Burgoyne then withdrew with the Americans in pursuit, and by October 13, he was surrounded. With no hope of relief and supplies exhausted, Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, and 6,222 soldiers became prisoners of the Americans. The decisive success spurred France to enter the war as an ally of the United States, securing the final elements needed for victory over Britain, that of foreign assistance.

Meanwhile, Howe launched his campaign against Washington, though his initial efforts to bring him to battle in June 1777 failed. Howe declined to attack Philadelphia overland via New Jersey, or by sea via the Delaware Bay, even though both options would have enabled him to assist Burgoyne if necessary. Instead, he took his army on a time-consuming route through the Chesapeake Bay, leaving him completely unable to assist Burgoyne. This decision was so difficult to understand, Howe's critics accused him of treason.

Howe outflanked and defeated Washington on September 11, though he failed to follow-up on the victory and destroy his army. A British victory at Willistown left Philadelphia defenceless, and Howe captured the city unopposed on September 26. Howe then moved 9,000 men to Germantown, north of Philadelphia. Washington launched a surprise attack on Howe's garrison on October 4, which was eventually repulsed. Again, Howe did not follow-up on his victory, leaving the American army intact and able to fight. Later, after several days of probing American defences at White Marsh, Howe inexplicably ordered a retreat to Philadelphia, astonishing both sides. Howe ignored the vulnerable American rear, where an attack could have deprived Washington of his baggage and supplies. On December 19, Washington's army entered winter quarters at Valley Forge. Poor conditions and supply problems resulted in the deaths of some 2,500 troops. Howe, only 20 miles (32 km) away, made no effort to attack, which critics observed could have ended the war.

The Continental Army was put through a new training program, supervised by Baron von Steuben, introducing the most modern Prussian methods of drilling. Meanwhile, Howe resigned and was replaced by Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778. Clinton received orders to abandon Philadelphia and fortify New York following France's entry into the war. On June 18, the British departed Philadelphia, with the reinvigorated Americans in pursuit. The two armies fought at Monmouth Court House on June 28, with the Americans holding the field, greatly boosting morale and confidence. By July, both armies were back in the same positions they had been two years prior.

The defeat at Saratoga caused considerable anxiety in Britain over foreign intervention. The North ministry sought reconciliation with the colonies by consenting to their original demands, although Lord North refused to grant independence. No positive reply was received from the Americans.

French foreign minister the Comte de Vergennes was strongly anti-British, and he sought a pretext for going to war with Britain following the conquest of Canada in 1763. The French had covertly supplied the Americans through neutral Dutch ports since the onset of the war, proving invaluable throughout the Saratoga campaign. The French public favored war, though Vergennes and King Louis XVI were hesitant, owing to the military and financial risk. The American victory at Saratoga convinced the French that supporting the Patriots was worthwhile, but doing so also brought major concerns. The King was concerned that Britain's concessions would be accepted, and that Britain would then reconcile with the Colonies to strike at French and Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. To prevent this, France formally recognized the United States on February 6, 1778 and followed with a military alliance. France aimed to expel Britain from the Newfoundland fishery, end restrictions on Dunkirk sovereignty, regain free trade in India, recover Senegal and Dominica, and restore the Treaty of Utrecht provisions pertaining to Anglo-French trade.

Spain was wary of provoking war with Britain before being ready and opted to covertly supply the Patriots via its colonies in New Spain. Congress hoped to persuade Spain into an open alliance, so the first American Commission met with the Count of Aranda in 1776. Spain was still reluctant to make an early commitment, owing to a lack of direct French involvement, the threat against their treasure fleets, and the possibility of war with Portugal, Spain's neighbor and a close ally of Britain. However, Spain affirmed its desire to support the Americans the following year, hoping to weaken Britain's empire. The Portuguese threat was neutralized in the Spanish–Portuguese War (1776–77). On 12 April 1779, Spain signed the Treaty of Aranjuez with France and went to war against Britain. Spain sought to recover Gibraltar and Menorca in Europe, as well as Mobile and Pensacola in Florida, and also to expel the British from Central America.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, Britain had appealed to her ally, the neutral Dutch Republic, to lend her the use of the Scots Brigade for service in America, but pro-American sentiment among the Dutch public forced them to deny the request. Consequently, the British attempted to invoke several treaties for outright Dutch military support, but the Republic still refused. Moreover, American troops were being supplied with ordnance by Dutch merchants via their West Indies colonies. French supplies bound for America had also passed through Dutch ports. The Republic maintained free trade with France following France's declaration of war on Britain, citing a prior concession by Britain on this issue. Britain responded by confiscating Dutch shipping, and even firing upon it. Consequently, the Republic joined the First League of Armed Neutrality to enforce their neutral status. The Republic had also given sanctuary to American privateers and had drafted a treaty of commerce with the Americans. Britain argued that these actions contravened the Republic's neutral stance and declared war in December 1780.

Soon after France declared war, French and British fleets fought an indecisive action off Ushant on 27 July 1778. Spain entered the war on 12 April 1779, with a primary goal of capturing Gibraltar, Spanish troops under the Duc de Crillon laid siege to the Rock on 24 June. The naval blockade, however, was relatively weak, and the British were able to resupply the garrison. Meanwhile, a plan was formulated for a combined Franco-Spanish invasion of the British mainland, but the expedition failed due to a combination of poor planning, disease, logistical issues, and high financial expenditures. However, a diversionary Franco-American squadron did meet with some success on 23 September under John Paul Jones. On 16 January 1780, the Royal Navy under George Rodney scored a major victory over the Spanish, weakening the naval blockade of Gibraltar.

A Franco-Spanish fleet commanded by Luis de Córdova intercepted and decisively defeated a large British convoy off the Azores led by John Moutray on 9 August which was bound for the West Indies. The defeat was catastrophic for Britain, which lost 52 merchant ships, 5 East Indiamen, 80,000 muskets, equipment for 40,000 troops, 294 guns, and 3,144 men, making it one of the most complete naval captures ever made. The loss was valued at some £1.5 million (£ in today's money), dealing a severe blow to British commerce.

The French blockaded the lucrative sugar islands of Barbados and Jamaica, intending to damage British trade. French troops led by the Marquis de Bouillé captured Dominica on September 7, 1778 in order to improve communication among French Caribbean islands and to strike a blow against privateering. The British defeated a French naval force on December 15 and captured St. Lucia on December 28. Both fleets received reinforcements through the first half of 1779, but the French under the Comte d'Estaing had superiority in the Caribbean and began capturing British territories, seizing St. Vincent on June 18 and Grenada on July 4. The British fleet under John Byron was tactically defeated on July 6, having pursued d'Estaing from Grenada, the worst loss that the Royal Navy had suffered since 1690. Naval skirmishes continued until April 17, 1780, when British and French fleets clashed indecisively off Martinique.

General Bernardo de Gálvez raised an army in New Orleans and drove the British out of the Gulf of Mexico. He captured five British forts in the Lower Mississippi Valley, and they repelled a British and Indian attack in St. Louis, Missouri and captured the British fort of St. Joseph in Niles, Michigan. He received reinforcements from Cuba, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, then captured Mobile and Pensacola, the capital of the British colony of West Florida. At Pensacola, Gálvez commanded a multinational army of more than 7,000 black and white soldiers born in Spain, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and other Spanish colonies such as Venezuela.

In Central America, the defense of Guatemala was a priority for Spain. The British intended to capture the key fortress of San Fernando de Omoa and drive the Spanish from the region. After inadequate first attempts, 1,200 British troops led by William Dalrymple arrived on October 16, and they captured the fort on October 20. However, the British suffered terribly due to disease and were forced to abandon the fort on November 29, and Spanish troops subsequently reoccupied it. In 1780, Jamaica's governor John Dalling planned an expedition to cut New Spain in two by capturing Granada, which would allow them full control of the San Juan River. A British expedition set out on February 3, 1780 led by John Polson and Horatio Nelson. They reached Fort San Juan on March 17 and laid siege, capturing it on April 29. The British were ravaged by disease and were running low on food due to poor logistics. They withdrew on November 8, the expedition having suffered a decisive defeat; some 2,500 troops had perished, making it the costliest British disaster of the war.

The British East India Company moved quickly to capture French possessions in India when they learned about the hostilities with France, and they took Pondicherry on 19 October 1778 after a two-week siege. The Company resolved to drive the French completely out of India, and they captured the Malabar port of Mahé in 1779 where French ordnance passed through.

Mahé was under the protection of Mysore's ruler Hyder Ali (the Tipu Sultan), and tensions were already inflamed because the British had supported Malabar rebels who had risen against him; so the fall of Mahé precipitated war. Hyder Ali invaded the Carnatic region in July 1780 and laid siege to Tellicherry and Arcot. A British relief force of 7,000 men under William Baille was intercepted and destroyed by the Tipu Sultan on 10 September, the worst defeat suffered by a European army in India at the time.

Ali then renewed the siege at Arcot instead of pressing on for a decisive victory against a second British army at Madras, capturing it on 3 November. The delay allowed British forces to regroup for campaigning the following year.

Henry Clinton withdrew from Philadelphia, consolidating his forces in New York following the British defeat at Saratoga and the entry of France into the war. French admiral the Comte d'Estaing had been dispatched to North America in April 1778 to assist Washington, and he arrived shortly after Clinton withdrew into New York. The Franco-American forces felt that New York's defenses were too formidable for the French fleet, and they opted to attack Newport. This effort was launched on August 29, but it failed when the French opted to withdraw, and this displeased the Americans. The war then ground down to a stalemate, with the majority of actions fought as large skirmishes, such as those at Chestnut Neck and Little Egg Harbor. In the summer of 1779, the Americans captured British posts at Stony Point and Paulus Hook.

In July, Clinton unsuccessfully attempted to coax Washington into a decisive engagement by making a major raid into Connecticut. That month, a large American naval operation attempted to retake Maine, but it resulted in the worst American naval defeat until Pearl Harbor in 1941. The high frequency of Iroquois raids on the locals compelled Washington to mount a punitive expedition which destroyed a large number of Iroquois settlements, but the effort ultimately failed to stop the raids. During the winter of 1779–80, the Continental Army suffered greater hardships than at Valley Forge. Morale was poor; public support was being eroded by the long war; the national currency was virtually worthless; the army was plagued with supply problems; desertion was common; and whole regiments mutinied over the conditions in early 1780.
In 1780, Clinton launched an attempt to retake New Jersey. On June 7, 6,000 men invaded under Hessian general Wilhelm von Knyphausen, but they met stiff resistance from the local militia. The British held the field, but Knyphausen feared a general engagement with Washington's main army and withdrew. Knyphausen and Clinton decided upon a second attempt two weeks later which was soundly defeated at Springfield, effectively ending British ambitions in New Jersey. Meanwhile, American general Benedict Arnold had defected to the British, and he conspired to betray the key American fortress of West Point by surrendering it to the enemy. The plot was foiled when British spy master John André was captured, so Arnold fled to British lines in New York. He attempted to justify his betrayal by appealing to Loyalist public opinion, but the Patriots strongly condemned him as a coward and turncoat.

The war to the west of the Appalachians was largely confined to skirmishing and raids. An expedition of militia was halted due to adverse weather in February 1778 which had set out to destroy British military supplies in settlements along the Cuyahoga River. Later in the year, a second campaign was undertaken to seize the Illinois Country from the British. The Americans captured Kaskaskia on July 4 and then secured Vincennes, although Vincennes was recaptured by Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit. In early 1779, the Americans counterattacked by undertaking a risky winter march, and they secured the surrender of the British at Vincennes, taking Hamilton prisoner.

On May 25, 1780, the British launched an expedition into Kentucky as part of a wider operation to clear resistance from Quebec to the Gulf coast. The expedition met with only limited success, though hundreds of settlers were killed or captured. The Americans responded with a major offensive along the Mad River in August which met with some success, but it did little to abate the Indian raids on the frontier. French militia attempted to capture Detroit, but it ended in disaster when Miami Indians ambushed and defeated the gathered troops on November 5. The war in the west had become a stalemate; the Americans did not have the manpower to simultaneously defeat the hostile Indian tribes and occupy their land.

The British turned their attention to conquering the South in 1778, after Loyalists in London assured them of a strong Loyalist base there. A southern campaign also had the advantage of keeping the Royal Navy closer to the Caribbean, where it would be needed to defend lucrative colonies against the Franco-Spanish fleets. On December 29, 1778, an expeditionary corps from New York captured Savannah, and British troops then moved inland to recruit Loyalist support. There was a promising initial turnout in early 1779, but then a large Loyalist militia was defeated at Kettle Creek on February 14 and they had to recognize their dependence upon the British. The British, however, defeated Patriot militia at Brier Creek on March 3, and then launched an abortive assault on Charleston, South Carolina. The operation became notorious for its high degree of looting by British troops, enraging both Loyalists and Patriot colonists.

In October, a combined Franco-American effort failed to recapture Savannah. In May 1780, Henry Clinton captured Charleston, taking over 5,000 prisoners and effectively destroying the Continental Army in the south. Organized American resistance in the region collapsed when Banastre Tarleton defeated the withdrawing Americans at Waxhaws on May 29.
Clinton returned to New York, leaving Charles Cornwallis in command in Charleston to oversee the southern war effort. Far fewer Loyalists than expected joined him. In the interim, the war was carried on by Patriot militias who effectively suppressed Loyalists by winning victories in Fairfield County, Lincolnton, Huck's Defeat, Stanly County, and Lancaster County.

Congress appointed Horatio Gates, victor at Saratoga, to lead the American effort in the south. He suffered a major defeat at Camden on August 16, 1780, setting the stage for Cornwallis to invade North Carolina. The British attempted to subjugate the countryside, and Patriot militia continued to fight against them, so Cornwallis dispatched troops to raise Loyalist forces to cover his left flank as he moved north. This wing of Cornwallis' army was virtually destroyed on October 7, irreversibly breaking Loyalist support in the Carolinas. Cornwallis subsequently aborted his advance and retreated back into South Carolina. In the interim, Washington replaced Gates with his trusted subordinate, Nathanael Greene.

Greene was unable to confront the British directly, so he dispatched a force under Daniel Morgan to recruit additional troops. Morgan then defeated the cream of the British army under Tarleton on January 17, 1781 at Cowpens. Cornwallis was criticized for having detached a substantial part of his army without adequate support, but he advanced into North Carolina despite the setbacks, gambling that he would receive substantial Loyalist support there. Greene evaded combat with Cornwallis, instead wearing his army down through a protracted war of attrition.

By March, Greene's army had increased in size enough that he felt confident in facing Cornwallis. The two armies engaged at Guilford Courthouse on March 15; Greene was beaten, but Cornwallis' army suffered irreplaceable casualties. Compounding this, far fewer Loyalists were joining than the British had previously expected. Cornwallis' casualties were such that he was compelled to retreat to Wilmington for reinforcement, leaving the Patriots in control of the interior of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Greene then proceeded to reclaim the South. The American troops suffered a reversal at Hobkirk's Hill on April 25; nonetheless, they continued to dislodge strategic British posts in the area, capturing Fort Watson and Fort Motte. Augusta was the last major British outpost in the South outside of Charleston and Savannah, but the Americans reclaimed possession of it on June 6. A British force clashed with American troops at Eutaw Springs on September 8 in a final effort to stop Greene, but the British casualties were so high that they withdrew to Charleston. Minor skirmishes continued in the Carolinas until the end of the war, and British troops were effectively confined to Charleston and Savannah for the remainder of the conflict.

Cornwallis had discovered that the majority of American supplies in the Carolinas were passing through Virginia, and he had written to both Lord Germain and Clinton detailing his intentions to invade. Cornwallis believed that a successful campaign there would cut supplies to Greene's army and precipitate a collapse of American resistance in the South. Clinton strongly opposed the plan, favoring a campaign farther north in the Chesapeake Bay region. Lord Germain wrote to Cornwallis to approve his plan and neglected to include Clinton in the decision-making, even though Clinton was Cornwallis' superior officer, and Cornwallis then decided to move into Virginia without informing Clinton. Clinton, however, had failed to construct a coherent strategy for British operations in 1781, owing to his difficult relationship with his naval counterpart Marriot Arbuthnot.

Following the calamitous operations at Newport and Savannah, French planners realized that closer cooperation with the Americans was required to achieve success. The French fleet led by the Comte de Grasse had received discretionary orders from Paris to assist joint efforts in the north if naval support was needed. Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau discussed their options. Washington pushed for an attack on New York, while Rochambeau preferred a strike in Virginia where the British were less well-established and thus easier to defeat. Franco-American movements around New York caused Clinton a great deal of anxiety, fearing an attack on the city. His instructions were vague to Cornwallis during this time, rarely forming explicit orders. However, Clinton did instruct Cornwallis to establish a fortified naval base and to transfer troops to the north to defend New York. Cornwallis dug in at Yorktown and awaited the Royal Navy.

Washington still favored an assault on New York, but he acquiesced to the French when they opted to send their fleet to their preferred target of Yorktown. In August, the combined Franco-American army moved south to coordinate with de Grasse in defeating Cornwallis. The British lacked sufficient naval resources to effectively counter the French, but they dispatched a fleet under Thomas Graves to assist Cornwallis and attempt to gain naval dominance. On September 5, the French fleet decisively defeated Graves, giving the French control of the seas around Yorktown and cutting off Cornwallis from reinforcements and relief. Despite the continued urging of his subordinates, Cornwallis made no attempt to break out and engage the Franco-American army before it had established siege works, expecting that reinforcements would arrive from New York, and the Franco-American army laid siege to Yorktown on September 28. Cornwallis continued to think that relief was imminent from Clinton, and he abandoned his outer defenses which were immediately occupied by American troops—serving to hasten his subsequent defeat. The British then failed in an attempt to break out of the siege across the river at Gloucester Point when a storm hit. Cornwallis and his subordinates were under increasing bombardment and facing dwindling supplies; they agreed that their situation was untenable and negotiated a surrender on October 17, 1781, and 7,685 soldiers became prisoners of the Americans. The same day as the surrender, 6,000 troops under Clinton had departed New York, sailing to relieve Yorktown.

On 25 November 1781, news arrived in London of the surrender at Yorktown. The Whig opposition gained traction in Parliament, and a motion was proposed on December 12 to end the war which was defeated by only one vote. On 27 February 1782, the House voted against further war in America by 19 votes.

Lord Germain was dismissed and a vote of no confidence was passed against North. The Rockingham Whigs came to power and opened negotiations for peace. Rockingham died and was succeeded by the Earl of Shelburne. Despite their defeat, the British still had 30,000 troops garrisoned in New York, Charleston, and Savannah. Henry Clinton was recalled and was replaced by Guy Carleton who was under orders to suspend offensive operations.

After hostilities with the Dutch began in late 1780, Britain had moved quickly, enforcing a blockade across the North Sea. Within weeks, the British had captured 200 Dutch merchantmen, and 300 more were holed up in foreign ports, though political turmoil within the Republic and peace negotiations by both sides helped keep conflict to a minimum. The majority of the Dutch public favored a military alliance with France against Britain; however, the Dutch Stadtholder impeded these efforts, hoping to secure an early peace. To restore diminishing trade a Dutch squadron under Johan Zoutman escorted a fleet of some 70 merchantmen from the Texel. Zoutman's ships were intercepted by Sir Hyde Parker, who engaged Zoutman at Dogger Bank on 5 August 1781. Though the contest was tactically inconclusive, the Dutch fleet did not leave harbor again during the war, and their merchant fleet remained crippled.

On 6 January 1781, a French attempt to capture Jersey to neutralize British privateering failed. Frustrated in their attempts to capture Gibraltar, a Franco-Spanish force of 14,000 men under the Duc de Mahon invaded Minorca on 19 August. After a long siege of St. Philip's, the British garrison under James Murray surrendered on 5 February 1782, securing a primary war goal for the Spanish. At Gibraltar, a major Franco-Spanish assault on 13 September 1782 was repulsed with heavy casualties. On 20 October 1782, following a successful resupply of Gibraltar, British ships under Richard Howe successfully refused battle to the Franco-Spanish fleet under Luis de Córdova, denying Córdova dominance at sea. On 7 February 1783, after 1,322 days of siege, the Franco-Spanish army withdrew, decisively defeated.

Sint Eustatius, a key supply port for the Patriots, was sacked by British forces under George Rodney on 3 February 1781, who plundered the island's wealth. Few operations were conducted against the Dutch, although several Dutch colonies were captured by the British in 1781.

After the fall of Mobile to Spanish troops under Bernardo de Gálvez, an attempt to capture Pensacola was thwarted due to a hurricane. Emboldened by the disaster, John Campbell, British commander at Pensacola, decided to recapture Mobile. Campbell's expeditionary force of around 700 men was defeated on 7 January 1781. After re-grouping at Havana, Gálvez set out for Pensacola on 13 February. Arriving on 9 March, siege operations did not begin until 24 March, owing to difficulties in bringing the ships into the bay. After a 45-day siege, Gálvez decisively defeated the garrison, securing the conquest of West Florida. In May, Spanish troops captured the Bahamas, although the British bloodlessly recaptured the islands the following year on 18 April.

In the West Indies, on 29–30 April 1781, a Royal Navy squadron under Samuel Hood was narrowly defeated by the French, led by the Comte de Grasse, who continued seizing British territories: Tobago fell on 2 June; Demerara and Essequibo on 22 January 1782; St. Kitts and Nevis on 12 February, despite a British naval victory on 25 January; and Montserrat on 22 February.
In 1782, the primary strategic goal of the French and Spanish was the capture of Jamaica, whose sugar exports were more valuable to the British than the Thirteen Colonies combined. On 7 April 1782, de Grasse departed Martinique to rendezvous with Franco-Spanish troops at Saint Domingue and invade Jamaica from the north. The British under Hood and George Rodney pursued and decisively defeated the French off Dominica between 9–12 April. The Franco-Spanish plan to conquer Jamaica was in ruins, and the balance of naval power in the Caribbean shifted to the Royal Navy.

In Guatemala, Matías de Gálvez led Spanish troops in an effort to dislocate British settlements along the Gulf of Honduras. Gálvez captured Roatán on 16 March 1782, and then quickly took Black River. Following the decisive naval victory at the Saintes, Archibald Campbell, the Royal governor of Jamaica, authorized Edward Despard to re-take Black River, which he did on 22 August. However, with peace talks opening, and Franco-Spanish resources committed to the siege of Gibraltar, no further offensive operations took place.

Following Dutch entry into the conflict, East India Company troops under Hector Munro captured the Dutch port of Negapatam after a three-week siege on 11 October 1781. Soon after, British Admiral Edward Hughes captured Trincomalee after a brief engagement on 11 January 1782.

In March 1781, French Admiral Bailli de Suffren was dispatched to India to assist colonial efforts. Suffren arrived off the Indian coast in February 1782, where he clashed with a British fleet under Hughes, winning a narrow tactical victory. After landing troops at Porto Novo to assist Mysore, Suffren's fleet clashed with Hughes again Providien on 12 April. There was no clear victor, though Hughes' fleet came off worse, and he withdrew to the British-held port of Trincomalee. Hyder Ali wished for the French to capture Negapatam to establish naval dominance over the British, and this task fell to Suffren. Suffren's fleet clashed with Hughes again off Negapatam on 6 July. Suffren withdrew to Cuddalore, strategically defeated, and the British remained in control of Negapatam. Intending to find a more suitable port than Cuddalore, Suffren captured Trincomalee on 1 September, and successfully engaged Hughes two days later.
Meanwhile, Ali's troops loosely blockaded Vellore as the East India Company regrouped. Company troops under Sir Eyre Coote led a counter-offensive, defeating Ali at Porto Novo on 1 July 1781, Pollilur on 27 August, and Sholinghur on 27 September, expelling the Mysorean troops from the Carnatic. On 18 February 1782, Tipu Sultan defeated John Braithwaite near Tanjore, taking his entire 1,800-strong force prisoner. The war had, by this point, reached an uneasy stalemate. On 7 December 1782, Hyder Ali died, and the rule of Mysore passed to his son, Tipu Sultan.

Sultan advanced along the west coast, laying siege to Mangalore on 20 May 1783. Meanwhile, on the east coast, an army under James Stuart besieged the French-held port of Cuddalore on 9 June 1783. On 20 June, key British naval support for the siege was neutralized when Suffren defeated Hughes' fleet off Cuddalore, and though narrow, the victory gave Suffren the opportunity to displace British holdings in India. On 25 June, the Franco-Mysorean defenders made repeated sorties against British lines, though all assaults failed. On 30 June, news arrived of a preliminary peace between the belligerent powers, and the siege was effectively over when the French abandoned the siege. Mangalore remained under siege, and capitulated to Sultan on 30 January 1784. Little fighting took place thereafter, and Mysore and Britain made peace on 11 March.

Following the surrender at Yorktown, the Whig party came to power in Britain and began opening negotiations for a cessation of hostilities. While peace negotiations were being undertaken, British troops in America were restricted from launching further offensives. Prime Minister the Earl of Shelburne was reluctant to accept American independence as a prerequisite for peace, as the British were aware that the French economy was nearly bankrupt, and reinforcements sent to the West Indies could potentially reverse the situation there. He preferred that the colonies accept Dominion status within the Empire, though a similar offer had been rejected by the Americans in 1778. Negotiations soon began in Paris.

The Americans initially demanded that Quebec be ceded to them as spoils of war, a proposal that was dropped when Shelburne accepted American demands for recognition of independence. On April 19, 1782, the Dutch formally recognized the United States as a sovereign power, enhancing American leverage at the negotiations. Spain initially impeded the negotiations, refusing to enter into peace talks until Gibraltar had been captured. The Comte de Vergennes proposed that American territory be confined to the east of the Appalachians; Britain would have sovereignty over the area north of the Ohio River, below which an Indian barrier state would be established under Spanish control. The United States fiercely opposed the proposal.

The Americans skirted their allies, recognizing that more favorable terms would be found in London. They negotiated directly with Shelburne, who hoped to make Britain a valuable trading partner of America at the expense of France. To this end, Shelburne offered to cede all the land east of the Mississippi River, north of Florida, and south of Quebec, while also allowing American fishermen access to the rich Newfoundland fishery. Shelburne was hoping to facilitate the growth of the American population, creating lucrative markets that Britain could exploit at no administrative cost to London. As Vergennes commented, "the English buy peace rather than make it".

Throughout the negotiations, Britain never consulted her American Indian allies, forcing them to reluctantly accept the treaty. However, the subsequent tension erupted into conflicts between the Indians and the young United States, the largest being the Northwest Indian War. Britain continued trying to create an Indian buffer state in the American Midwest as late as 1814 during the War of 1812.

Britain negotiated separate treaties with Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. Gibraltar proved to be a stumbling block in the peace talks; Spain offered to relinquish their conquests in West Florida, Menorca, and the Bahamas in exchange for Gibraltar, terms which Shelburne steadfastly refused. Shelburne instead offered to cede East Florida, West Florida, and Menorca if Spain would relinquish the claim on Gibraltar, terms which were reluctantly accepted. However, in the long-term, the new territorial gains were of little value to Spain. France's only net gains were the island of Tobago in the Caribbean and Senegal in Africa, after agreeing to return all other colonial conquests to British sovereignty. Britain returned Dutch Caribbean territories to Dutch sovereignty, in exchange for free trade rights in the Dutch East Indies and control of the Indian port of Negapatnam.

Preliminary peace articles were signed in Paris on 30 November 1782, while preliminaries between Britain, Spain, France, and the Netherlands continued until September 1783. The United States Congress of the Confederation ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784. Copies were sent back to Europe for ratification by the other parties involved, the first reaching France in March 1784. British ratification occurred on April 9, 1784, and the ratified versions were exchanged in Paris on May 12, 1784. The war formally concluded on September 3, 1783.

The last British troops departed New York City on November 25, 1783, marking the end of British rule in the new United States.

The total loss of life throughout the conflict is largely unknown. As was typical in wars of the era, diseases such as smallpox claimed more lives than battle. Between 1775 and 1782, a smallpox epidemic broke out throughout North America, killing 40 people in Boston alone. Historian Joseph Ellis suggests that Washington's decision to have his troops inoculated against the disease was one of his most important decisions.

Between 25,000 and 70,000 American Patriots died during active military service. Of these, approximately 6,800 were killed in battle, while at least 17,000 died from disease. The majority of the latter died while prisoners of war of the British, mostly in the prison ships in New York Harbor. If the upper limit of 70,000 is accepted as the total net loss for the Patriots, it would make the conflict proportionally deadlier than the American Civil War. Uncertainty arises due to the difficulties in accurately calculating the number of those who succumbed to disease, as it is estimated at least 10,000 died in 1776 alone. The number of Patriots seriously wounded or disabled by the war has been estimated from 8,500 to 25,000.

The French suffered approximately 7,000 total dead throughout the conflict; of those, 2,112 were killed in combat in the American theaters of war.

The Dutch suffered around 500 total killed, owing to the minor scale of their conflict with Britain.

British returns in 1783 listed 43,633 rank and file deaths across the British Armed Forces. A table from 1781 puts total British Army deaths at 9,372 soldiers killed in battle across the Americas; 6,046 in North America (1775–1779), and 3,326 in the West Indies (1778–1780). In 1784, a British lieutenant compiled a detailed list of 205 British officers killed in action during the war, encompassing Europe, the Caribbean and the East Indies. Extrapolations based upon this list puts British Army losses in the area of at least 4,000 killed or died of wounds. Approximately 7,774 Germans died in British service in addition to 4,888 deserters; of the former, it is estimated 1,800 were killed in combat.

Around 171,000 sailors served in the Royal Navy during the war; approximately a quarter of whom had been pressed into service. Around 1,240 were killed in battle, while an estimated 18,500 died from disease (1776–1780). The greatest killer at sea was scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. It was not until 1795 that scurvy was eradicated from the Royal Navy after the Admiralty declared lemon juice and sugar were to be issued among the standard daily rations of sailors. Around 42,000 sailors deserted during the war. The impact on merchant shipping was substantial; an estimated 3,386 merchant ships were seized by enemy forces during the war; of those, 2,283 were taken by American privateers alone.

At the start of the war, the economy of the colonies was flourishing, and the free white population enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world. The Royal Navy enforced a naval blockade during the war to financially cripple the colonies, however, this proved unsuccessful; 90% of the population worked in farming, not in coastal trade, and, as such, the American economy proved resilient enough to withstand the blockade.

Congress had immense difficulties throughout the conflict to efficiently finance the war effort. As the circulation of hard currency declined, the Americans had to rely on loans from American merchants and bankers, France, Spain and the Netherlands, saddling the young nation with crippling debts. Congress attempted to remedy this by printing vast amounts of paper money and bills of credit to raise revenue. The effect was disastrous; inflation skyrocketed, and the paper money became virtually worthless. The inflation spawned a popular phrase that anything of little value was "not worth a continental".

By 1791, the United States had accumulated a national debt of approximately $75.5 million. The United States finally solved its debt and currency problems in the 1790s, when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton secured legislation by which the national government assumed all of the state debts, and, in addition, created a national bank and a funding system based on tariffs and bond issues that paid off the foreign debts.

Britain spent around £80 million and ended with a national debt of £250 million, (£ in today's money), generating a yearly interest of £9.5 million annually. The debts piled upon that which it had already accumulated from the Seven Years' War. Due to wartime taxation upon the British populace, the tax for the average Briton amounted to approximately four shilling in every pound, or 20 percent.

The French spent approximately 1.3 billion livres on aiding the Americans, accumulating a national debt of 3.315.1 billion livres by 1783 on war costs. Unlike Britain, which had a very efficient taxation system, the French tax system was highly unstable, eventually leading to a financial crisis in 1786. The debts contributed to a worsening fiscal crisis that ultimately begat the French Revolution at the end of the century. The debt continued to spiral; on the eve of the French Revolution, the national debt had skyrocketed to 12 billion livres.

Spain had nearly doubled her military spending during the war, from 454 million reales in 1778 to over 700 million in 1779. Spain more easily disposed of her debts unlike her French ally, partially due to the massive increase in silver mining in her American colonies; production increased approximately 600% in Mexico, and by 250% in Peru and Bolivia.

The population of Great Britain and Ireland in 1780 was approximately 12.6 million, while the Thirteen Colonies held a population of some 2.8 million, including some 500,000 slaves. Theoretically, Britain had the advantage, however, many factors inhibited the procurement of a large army.

In 1775, the standing British Army, exclusive of militia, comprised 45,123 men worldwide, made up of 38,254 infantry and 6,869 cavalry. The Army had approximately eighteen regiments of foot, some 8,500 men, stationed in North America. Standing armies had played a key role in the purge of the Long Parliament in 1648, the maintenance of a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, and the overthrow of James II, and, as such, the Army had been deliberately kept small in peacetime to prevent abuses of power by the King. Despite this, eighteenth century armies were not easy guests, and were regarded with scorn and contempt by the press and public of the New and Old World alike, derided as enemies of liberty. An expression ran in the Navy; "A messmate before a shipmate, a shipmate before a stranger, a stranger before a dog, a dog before a soldier".

Parliament suffered chronic difficulties in obtaining sufficient manpower, and found it impossible to fill the quotas they had set. The Army was a deeply unpopular profession, one contentious issue being pay. A Private infantryman was paid a wage of just 8d. per day, the same pay as for a New Model Army infantryman, 130 years earlier. The rate of pay in the army was insufficient to meet the rising costs of living, turning off potential recruits, as service was nominally for life.

To entice people to enrol, Parliament offered a bounty of £1.10s for every recruit. As the war dragged on, Parliament became desperate for manpower; criminals were offered military service to escape legal penalties, and deserters were pardoned if they re-joined their units. After the defeat at Saratoga, Parliament doubled the bounty to £3, and increased it again the following year, to £3.3s, as well as expanding the age limit from 17–45 to 16–50 years of age.

Impressment, essentially conscription by the "press gang", was a favored recruiting method, though it was unpopular with the public, leading many to enlist in local militias to avoid regular service. Attempts were made to draft such levies, much to the chagrin of the militia commanders. Competition between naval and army press gangs, and even between rival ships or regiments, frequently resulted in brawls between the gangs in order to secure recruits for their unit. Men would maim themselves to avoid the press gangs, while many deserted at the first opportunity. Pressed men were militarily unreliable; regiments with large numbers of such men were deployed to garrisons such as Gibraltar or the West Indies, purely to increase the difficulty in successfully deserting.

By 1781, the Army numbered approximately 121,000 men globally, 48,000 of whom were stationed throughout the Americas. Of the 171,000 sailors who served in the Royal Navy throughout the conflict, around a quarter were pressed. This same proportion, approximately 42,000 men, deserted during the conflict. At its height, the Navy had 94 ships-of-the-line, 104 frigates and 37 sloops in service.

In 1775, Britain unsuccessfully attempted to secure 20,000 mercenaries from Russia, and the use of the Scots Brigade from the Dutch Republic, such was the shortage of manpower. Parliament managed to negotiate treaties with the princes of German states for large sums of money, in exchange for mercenary troops. In total, 29,875 troops were hired for British service from six German states; Brunswick (5,723), Hesse-Kassel (16,992), Hesse-Hannau (2,422), Ansbach-Bayreuth (2,353), Waldeck-Pyrmont (1,225) and Anhalt-Zerbst (1,160). King George III, who also ruled Hanover as a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, was approached by Parliament to lend the government Hanoverian soldiers for service in the war. Hanover supplied 2,365 men in five battalions, however, the lease agreement permitted them to only be used in Europe.

Without any major allies, the manpower shortage became critical when France and Spain entered the war, forcing a major diversion of military resources from the Americas. Recruiting adequate numbers of Loyalist militia in America proved difficult due to high Patriot activity. To bolster numbers, the British promised freedom and grants of land to slaves who fought for them. Approximately 25,000 Loyalists fought for the British throughout the war, and provided some of the best troops in the British service; the British Legion, a mixed regiment of 250 dragoons and 200 infantry commanded by Banastre Tarleton, gained a fearsome reputation in the colonies, especially in the South.

Britain had a difficult time appointing a determined senior military leadership in America. Thomas Gage, Commander-in-Chief of North America at the outbreak of the war, was criticized for being too lenient on the rebellious colonists. Jeffrey Amherst, who was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in 1778, refused a direct command in America, due to unwillingness to take sides in the war. Admiral Augustus Keppel similarly opposed a command, stating; "I cannot draw the sword in such a cause". The Earl of Effingham resigned his commission when his regiment was posted to America, while William Howe and John Burgoyne were opposed to military solutions to the crisis. Howe and Henry Clinton both stated they were unwilling participants, and were only following orders.

As was the case in many European armies, except the Prussian Army, officers in British service could purchase commissions to ascend the ranks. Despite repeated attempts by Parliament to suppress it, the practise was common in the Army. Values of commissions varied, but were usually in line with social and military prestige, for example, regiments such as the Guards commanded the highest prices. The lower ranks often regarded the treatment to high-ranking commissions by wealthier officers as "plums for [their] consumption". Wealthy individuals lacking any formal military education, or practical experience, often found their way into positions of high responsibility, diluting the effectiveness of a regiment. Though Royal authority had forbade the practise since 1711, it was still permitted for infants to hold commissions. Young boys, often orphans of deceased wealthy officers, were taken from their schooling and placed in positions of responsibility within regiments.

Logistical organization of eighteenth century armies was chaotic at best, and the British Army was no exception. No logistical corps existed in the modern sense; while on campaign in foreign territories such as America, horses, wagons, and drivers were frequently requisitioned from the locals, often by impressment or by hire. No centrally organized medical corps existed. It was common for surgeons to have no formal medical education, and no diploma or entry examination was required. Nurses sometimes were apprentices to surgeons, but many were drafted from the women who followed the army. Army surgeons and doctors were poorly paid and were regarded as social inferiors to other officers.

The heavy personal equipment and wool uniform of the regular infantrymen were wholly unsuitable for combat in America, and the outfit was especially ill-suited to comfort and agile movement. During the Battle of Monmouth in late June 1778, the temperature exceeded 100°F (37.8°C) and is said to have claimed more lives through heat stroke than through actual combat. The standard-issue firearm of the British Army was the Land Pattern Musket. Some officers preferred their troops to fire careful, measured shots (around two per minute), rather than rapid firing. A bayonet made firing difficult, as its cumbersome shape hampered ramming down the charge into the barrel. British troops had a tendency to fire impetuously, resulting in inaccurate fire, a trait for which John Burgoyne criticized them during the Saratoga campaign. Burgoyne instead encouraged bayonet charges to break up enemy formations, which was a preferred tactic in most European armies at the time.

Every battalion in America had organized its own rifle company by the end of the war, although rifles were not formally issued to the army until the Baker Rifle in 1801. Flintlocks were heavily dependent on the weather; high winds could blow the gunpowder from the flash pan, while heavy rain could soak the paper cartridge, ruining the powder and rendering the musket unable to fire. Furthermore, flints used in British muskets were of notoriously poor quality; they could only be fired around six times before requiring resharpening, while American flints could fire sixty. This led to a common expression among the British: "Yankee flint was as good as a glass of grog".

Provisioning troops and sailors proved to be an immense challenge, as the majority of food stores had to be shipped overseas from Britain. The need to maintain Loyalist support prevented the Army from living off the land. Other factors also impeded this option; the countryside was too sparsely populated and the inhabitants were largely hostile or indifferent, the network of roads and bridges was poorly developed, and the area which the British controlled was so limited that foraging parties were frequently in danger of being ambushed. After France entered the war, the threat of the French navy increased the difficulty of transporting supplies to America. Food supplies were frequently in bad condition. The climate was also against the British in the southern colonies and the Caribbean, where the intense summer heat caused food supplies to sour and spoil.

Life at sea was little better. Sailors and passengers were issued a daily food ration, largely consisting of hardtack and beer. The hardtack was often infested by weevils and was so tough that it earned the nicknames "molar breakers" and "worm castles", and it sometimes had to be broken up with cannon shot. Meat supplies often spoiled on long voyages. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables gave rise to scurvy, one of the biggest killers at sea.

Discipline was harsh in the armed forces, and the lash was used to punish even trivial offences—and not used sparingly. For instance, two redcoats received 1,000 lashes each for robbery during the Saratoga campaign, while another received 800 lashes for striking a superior officer. Flogging was a common punishment in the Royal Navy and came to be associated with the stereotypical hardiness of sailors.

Despite the harsh discipline, a distinct lack of self-discipline pervaded all ranks of the British forces. Soldiers had an intense passion for gambling, reaching such excesses that troops would often wager their own uniforms. Many drank heavily, and this was not exclusive to the lower ranks; William Howe was said to have seen many "crapulous mornings" while campaigning in New York. John Burgoyne drank heavily on a nightly basis towards the end of the Saratoga campaign. The two generals were also reported to have found solace with the wives of subordinate officers to ease the stressful burdens of command. During the Philadelphia campaign, British officers deeply offended local Quakers by entertaining their mistresses in the houses where they had been quartered. Some reports indicated that British troops were generally scrupulous in their treatment of non-combatants. This is in contrast to diaries of Hessian soldiers, who recorded their disapproval of British conduct towards the colonists, such as the destruction of property and the execution of prisoners.

The presence of Hessian soldiers caused considerable anxiety among the colonists, both Patriot and Loyalist, who viewed them as brutal mercenaries. British soldiers were often contemptuous in their treatment of Hessian troops, despite orders from General Howe that "the English should treat the Germans as brothers". The order only began to have any real effect when the Hessians learned to speak a minimal degree of English, which was seen as a prerequisite for the British troops to accord them any respect.

During peacetime, the Army's idleness led to it being riddled with corruption and inefficiency, resulting in many administrative difficulties once campaigning began.

The British leadership soon discovered it had overestimated the capabilities of its own troops, while underestimating those of the colonists, causing a sudden re-think in British planning. The ineffective initial response of British military and civil officials to the onset of the rebellion had allowed the advantage to shift to the colonists, as British authorities rapidly lost control over every colony. A microcosm of these shortcomings were evident at the Battle of Bunker Hill. It took ten hours for the British leadership to respond following the sighting of the Americans on the Charlestown Peninsula, giving the colonists ample time to reinforce their defenses. Rather than opt for a simple flanking attack that would have rapidly succeeded with minimal loss, the British decided on repeated frontal attacks. The results were telling; the British suffered 1,054 casualties of a force of around 3,000 after repeated frontal assaults. The British leadership had nevertheless remained excessively optimistic, believing that just two regiments could suppress the rebellion in Massachusetts.

Debate persists over whether a British defeat was a guaranteed outcome. Ferling argues that the odds were so long, the defeat of Britain was nothing short of a miracle. Ellis, however, considers that the odds always favored the Americans, and questions whether a British victory by any margin was realistic. Ellis argues that the British squandered their only opportunities for a decisive success in 1777, and that the strategic decisions undertaken by William Howe underestimated the challenges posed by the Americans. Ellis concludes that, once Howe failed, the opportunity for a British victory "would never come again". Conversely, the United States Army's official textbook argues that, had Britain been able to commit 10,000 fresh troops to the war in 1780, a British victory was within the realms of possibility.

Historians such as Ellis and Stewart have observed that, under William Howe's command, the British squandered several opportunities to achieve a decisive victory over the Americans. Throughout the New York and Philadelphia campaigns, Howe made several strategic errors, errors which cost the British opportunities for a complete victory. At Long Island, Howe failed to even attempt an encirclement of Washington, and actively restrained his subordinates from mounting an aggressive pursuit of the defeated American army. At White Plains, he refused to engage Washington's vulnerable army, and instead concentrated his efforts upon a hill which offered the British no strategic advantage. After securing control of New York, Howe dispatched Henry Clinton to capture Newport, a measure which Clinton was opposed to, on the grounds the troops assigned to his command could have been put to better use in pursuing Washington's retreating army. Despite the bleak outlook for the revolutionary cause and the surge of Loyalist activity in the wake of Washington's defeats, Howe made no attempt to mount an attack upon Washington while the Americans settled down into winter quarters, much to their surprise.

During planning for the Saratoga campaign, Howe was left with the choice of committing his army to support Burgoyne, or capture Philadelphia, the revolutionary capital. Howe decided upon the latter, determining that Washington was of a greater threat. When Howe launched his campaign, he took his army upon a time-consuming route through the Chesapeake Bay, rather than the more sensible choices of overland through New Jersey, or by sea through the Delaware Bay. The move left him unable to assist Burgoyne even if it was required of him. The decision so angered Parliament, that Howe was accused by Tories on both sides of the Atlantic of treason.

During the Philadelphia campaign, Howe failed to pursue and destroy the defeated Americans on two occasions; once after the Battle of Brandywine, and again after the Battle of Germantown. At the Battle of White Marsh, Howe failed to even attempt to exploit the vulnerable American rear, and then inexplicably ordered a retreat to Philadelphia after only minor skirmishes, astonishing both sides. While the Americans wintered only twenty miles away, Howe made no effort to attack their camp, which critics argue could have ended the war. Following the conclusion of the campaign, Howe resigned his commission, and was replaced by Henry Clinton on May 24, 1778.

Contrary to Howe's more hostile critics, however, there were strategic factors at play which impeded aggressive action. Howe may have been dissuaded from pursuing aggressive manoeuvres due to the memory of the grievous losses the British suffered at Bunker Hill. During the major campaigns in New York and Philadelphia, Howe often wrote of the scarcity of adequate provisions, which hampered his ability to mount effective campaigns. Howe's tardiness in launching the New York campaign, and his reluctance to allow Cornwallis to vigorously pursue Washington's beaten army, have both been attributed to the paucity of available food supplies.

During the winter of 1776–1777, Howe split his army into scattered cantonments. This decision dangerously exposed the individual forces to defeat in detail, as the distance between them was such that they could not mutually support each other. This strategic failure allowed the Americans to achieve victory at the Battle of Trenton, and the concurrent Battle of Princeton. While a major strategic error to divide an army in such a manner, the quantity of available food supplies in New York was so low that Howe had been compelled to take such a decision. The garrisons were widely spaced so their respective foraging parties would not interfere with each other's efforts. Howe's difficulties during the Philadelphia campaign were also greatly exacerbated by the poor quality and quantity of available provisions.

In 1780, the primary British strategy hinged upon a Loyalist uprising in the south, for which Charles Cornwallis was chiefly responsible. After an encouraging success at Camden, Cornwallis was poised to invade North Carolina. However, any significant Loyalist support had been effectively destroyed at the Battle of Kings Mountain, and the British Legion, the cream of his army, had been decisively defeated at the Battle of Cowpens. Following both defeats, Cornwallis was fiercely criticized for detaching a significant portion of his army without adequate mutual support. Despite the defeats, Cornwallis chose to proceed into North Carolina, gambling his success upon a large Loyalist uprising which never materialized. As a result, subsequent engagements cost Cornwallis valuable troops he could not replace, as at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and the Americans steadily wore his army down in an exhaustive war of attrition. Cornwallis had thus left the Carolinas ripe for reconquest. The Americans had largely achieved this aim by the end of 1781, effectively confining the British to the coast, and undoing all the progress they had made in the previous year.

In a last-ditch attempt to win the war in the South, Cornwallis resolved to invade Virginia, in order to cut off the American's supply base to the Carolinas. Henry Clinton, Cornwallis' superior, strongly opposed the plan, believing the decisive confrontations would take place between Washington in the North. London had approved Cornwallis plan, however they had failed to include Clinton in the decision-making, despite his seniority over Cornwallis, leading to a muddled strategic direction. Cornwallis then decided to invade Virginia without informing Clinton of his intentions. Clinton, however, had wholly failed to construct a coherent strategy for British campaigning that year, owing to his fractious relationship that he shared with Mariot Arbuthnot, his naval counterpart.

As the Franco-American army approached Cornwallis at Yorktown, he made no attempt to sally out and engage before siege lines could be erected, despite the repeated urging of his subordinate officers. Expecting relief to soon arrive from Clinton, Cornwallis prematurely abandoned all of his outer defences, which were then promptly occupied by the besiegers, serving to hasten the British defeat. These factors contributed to the eventual surrender of Cornwallis' entire army, and the end of major operations in North America.

Like Howe before him, Clinton's efforts to campaign suffered from chronic supply issues. In 1778, Clinton wrote to Germain complaining of the lack of supplies, even after the arrival of a convoy from Ireland. That winter, the supply issue had deteriorated so badly, that Clinton expressed considerable anxiety over how the troops were going to be properly fed. Clinton was largely inactive in the North throughout 1779, launching few major campaigns. This inactivity was partially due to the shortage of food. By 1780, the situation had not improved. Clinton wrote a frustrated correspondence to Germain, voicing concern that a "fatal consequence will ensue" if matters did not improve. By October that year, Clinton again wrote to Germain, angered that the troops in New York had not received "an ounce" of that year's allotted stores from Britain.

Suppressing a rebellion in America presented the British with major problems. The key issue was distance; it could take up to three months to cross the Atlantic, and orders from London were often outdated by the time that they arrived. The colonies had never been formally united prior to the conflict and there was no centralized area of ultimate strategic importance. Traditionally, the fall of a capital city often signalled the end of a conflict, yet the war continued unabated even after the fall of major settlements such as New York, Philadelphia (which was the Patriot capital), and Charleston. Britain's ability to project its power overseas lay chiefly in the power of the Royal Navy, allowing her to control major coastal settlements with relative ease and enforce a strong blockade of colonial ports. However, the overwhelming majority of the American population was agrarian, not urban. As a result, the American economy proved resilient enough to withstand the blockade's effects.

The need to maintain Loyalist support prevented the British from using the harsh methods of suppressing revolts that they had used in Scotland and Ireland. For example, British troops looted and pillaged the locals during an aborted attack on Charleston in 1779, enraging both Patriots and Loyalists. Neutral colonists were often driven into the ranks of the Patriots when brutal combat broke out between Tories and Whigs across the Carolinas in the later stages of the war. Conversely, Loyalists were often emboldened when Patriots resorted to intimidating suspected Tories, such as destroying property or tarring and feathering. The vastness of the American countryside and the limited manpower available meant that the British could never simultaneously defeat the Americans and occupy captured territory. One British statesman described the attempt as "like trying to conquer a map".

Wealthy Loyalists wielded great influence in London and were successful in convincing the British that the majority view in the colonies was sympathetic toward the Crown. Consequently, British planners pinned the success of their strategies on popular uprisings of Loyalists. Historians have estimated that Loyalists made up only 15–20% of the population (vs. 40–45% Patriots) and that they continued to deceive themselves on their level of support as late as 1780. The British discovered that any significant level of organized Loyalist activity would require the continued presence of British regulars, which presented them with a major dilemma. The manpower that the British had available was insufficient to both protect Loyalist territory and counter American advances. The vulnerability of Loyalist militias was repeatedly demonstrated in the South, where they suffered strings of defeats to their Patriot neighbors. The most crucial juncture of this was at Kings Mountain, and the victory of the Patriot partisans irreversibly crippled Loyalist military capability in the South.

Upon the entry of France and Spain into the conflict, the British were forced to severely limit the number of troops and warships that they sent to North America in order to defend other key territories and the British mainland. As a result, King George III abandoned any hope of subduing America militarily while he had a European war to contend with. The small size of Britain's army left them unable to concentrate their resources primarily in one theater as they had done in the Seven Years' War, leaving them at a critical disadvantage. The British were compelled to disperse troops from the Americas to Europe and the East Indies, and these forces were unable to assist one other as a result, precariously exposing them to defeat. In North America, the immediate strategic focus of the French, Spanish, and British shifted to Jamaica, whose sugar exports were more valuable to the British than the economy of the Thirteen Colonies combined.

Following the end of the war, Britain had lost some of her most populous colonies. However, the economic effects of the loss were negligible in the long-term, and she became a global superpower just 32 years after the end of the conflict.

The Americans began the war with significant disadvantages compared to the British. They had no national government, no national army or navy, no financial system, no banks, no established credit, and no functioning government departments, such as a treasury. The Congress tried to handle administrative affairs through legislative committees, which proved inefficient. The state governments were themselves brand new and officials had no administrative experience. In peacetime the colonies relied heavily on ocean travel and shipping, but that was now shut down by the British blockade and the Americans had to rely on slow overland travel.

However, the Americans had multiple advantages that in the long run outweighed the initial disadvantages they faced. The Americans had a large prosperous population that depended not on imports but on local production for food and most supplies, while the British were mostly shipped in from across the ocean. The British faced a vast territory far larger than Britain or France, located at a far distance from home ports. Most of the Americans lived on farms distant from the seaports—the British could capture any port but that did not give them control over the hinterland. They were on their home ground, had a smoothly functioning, well organized system of local and state governments, newspapers and printers, and internal lines of communications. They had a long-established system of local militia, previously used to combat the French and Native Americans, with companies and an officer corps that could form the basis of local militias, and provide a training ground for the national army created by Congress.

Motivation was a major asset. The Patriots wanted to win; over 200,000 fought in the war; 25,000 died. The British expected the Loyalists to do much of the fighting, but they did much less than expected. The British also hired German mercenaries to do much of their fighting.

At the onset of the war, the Americans had no major international allies. Battles such as the Battle of Bennington, the Battles of Saratoga and even defeats such as the Battle of Germantown proved decisive in gaining the attention and support of powerful European nations such as France and Spain, who moved from covertly supplying the Americans with weapons and supplies, to overtly supporting them militarily, moving the war to a global stage.

The new Continental Army suffered significantly from a lack of an effective training regime, and largely inexperienced officers and sergeants. The inexperience of its officers was compensated for in part by a few senior officers. The Americans solved their training dilemma during their stint in Winter Quarters at Valley Forge, where they were relentlessly drilled and trained by General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a veteran of the famed Prussian General Staff. He taught the Continental Army the essentials of military discipline, drills, tactics and strategy, and wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual. When the Army emerged from Valley Forge, it proved its ability to equally match the British troops in battle when they fought a successful strategic action at the Battle of Monmouth.

When the war began, the 13 colonies lacked a professional army or navy. Each colony sponsored local militia. Militiamen were lightly armed, had little training, and usually did not have uniforms. Their units served for only a few weeks or months at a time, were reluctant to travel far from home and thus were unavailable for extended operations, and lacked the training and discipline of soldiers with more experience. If properly used, however, their numbers could help the Continental armies overwhelm smaller British forces, as at the battles of Concord, Bennington and Saratoga, and the siege of Boston. Both sides used partisan warfare but the Americans effectively suppressed Loyalist activity when British regulars were not in the area.

Seeking to coordinate military efforts, the Continental Congress established a regular army on June 14, 1775, and appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief. The development of the Continental Army was always a work in progress, and Washington used both his regulars and state militia throughout the war.

Three current branches of the United States Military trace their institutional roots to the American Revolutionary War; the United States Army comes from the Continental Army, formed by a resolution of the Continental Congress on June 14, 1775. The United States Navy recognizes October 13, 1775 as the date of its official establishment, the passage of the resolution of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia that created the Continental Navy.
The United States Marine Corps links to the Continental Marines of the war, formed by a resolution of the Continental Congress on November 10, 1775. However, in 1783 both the Continental Navy and Continental Marines were disbanded.

At the beginning of 1776, Washington commanded 20,000 men, with two-thirds enlisted in the Continental Army and the other third in the various state militias. About 250,000 men served as regulars or as militiamen for the Revolutionary cause in the eight years of the war, but there were never more than 90,000 men under arms at one time.

About 55,000 sailors served aboard American privateers during the war. They used 1,700 ships, and they captured 2,283 enemy ships. John Paul Jones became the first great American naval hero, capturing HMS "Drake" on April 24, 1778, the first victory for any American military vessel in British waters.

Armies were small by European standards of the era, largely attributable, on the American side, to limitations such as lack of powder and other logistical capabilities; and, on the British side, to the difficulty of transporting troops across the Atlantic, as well as the dependence on local supplies, which the Patriots tried to cut off. The largest force Washington commanded was certainly under 17,000, and may have been no more than 13,000 troops, and even the combined American and French forces at the siege of Yorktown amounted to only about 19,000. By comparison, Duffy notes that in an era when European rulers were generally revising their forces downward, in favor of a size that could be most effectively controlled (the very different perspective of mass conscript armies came later, during the French Revolutionary and then the Napoleonic Wars), the largest army that Frederick the Great ever led into battle was 65,000 men (at Prague in 1757), and at other times he commanded between 23,000 and 50,000 men, considering the latter the most effective number.

General Washington assumed five main roles during the war.

First, he designed the overall strategy of the war, in cooperation with Congress. The goal was always independence. When France entered the war, he worked closely with the soldiers it sent – they were decisive in the great victory at Yorktown in 1781.

Second, he provided leadership of troops against the main British forces in 1775–77 and again in 1781. He lost many of his battles, but he never surrendered his army during the war, and he continued to fight the British relentlessly until the war's end. Washington worked hard to develop a successful espionage system to detect British locations and plans. In 1778, he formed the Culper Ring to spy on enemy movements in New York City. In 1780 it discovered Benedict Arnold was a traitor. The British put a low value on intelligence, and its operations were of poor quality until 1780, when it finally inserted some spies with Congress and with Washington's command. Even then, however, British commanders ignored or downplayed threats that were revealed. The most serious intelligence failure came in 1781 when top commanders were unaware that The American and French armies at both left the Northeast and marched down to Yorktown, where they outnumbered Cornwallis by more than 2 to 1.

Third, he was charged selecting and guiding the generals. In June 1776, Congress made its first attempt at running the war effort with the committee known as "Board of War and Ordnance", succeeded by the Board of War in July 1777, a committee which eventually included members of the military. The command structure of the armed forces was a hodgepodge of Congressional appointees (and Congress sometimes made those appointments without Washington's input) with state-appointments filling the lower ranks. The results of his general staff were mixed, as some of his favorites never mastered the art of command, such as John Sullivan. Eventually, he found capable officers such as Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, Henry Knox (chief of artillery), and Alexander Hamilton (chief of staff). The American officers never equaled their opponents in tactics and maneuver, and they lost most of the pitched battles. The great successes at Boston (1776), Saratoga (1777), and Yorktown (1781) came from trapping the British far from base with much larger numbers of troops.

Fourth he took charge of training the army and providing supplies, from food to gunpowder to tents. He recruited regulars and assigned Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a veteran of the Prussian general staff, to train them. He transformed Washington's army into a disciplined and effective force. The war effort and getting supplies to the troops were under the purview of Congress, but Washington pressured the Congress to provide the essentials. There was never nearly enough.

Washington's fifth and most important role in the war effort was the embodiment of armed resistance to the Crown, serving as the representative man of the Revolution. His long-term strategy was to maintain an army in the field at all times, and eventually this strategy worked. His enormous personal and political stature and his political skills kept Congress, the army, the French, the militias, and the states all pointed toward a common goal. Furthermore, he permanently established the principle of civilian supremacy in military affairs by voluntarily resigning his commission and disbanding his army when the war was won, rather than declaring himself monarch. He also helped to overcome the distrust of a standing army by his constant reiteration that well-disciplined professional soldiers counted for twice as much as poorly trained and led militias.

African Americans—slave and free—served on both sides during the war. The British recruited slaves belonging to Patriot masters and promised freedom to those who served by act of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation. Because of manpower shortages, George Washington lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January 1776. Small all-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts; many slaves were promised freedom for serving. Some of the men promised freedom were sent back to their masters, after the war was over, out of political convenience. Another all-black unit came from Saint-Domingue with French colonial forces. At least 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Revolutionary cause.

Tens of thousands of slaves escaped during the war and joined British lines; others simply moved off in the chaos. For instance, in South Carolina, nearly 25,000 slaves (30% of the enslaved population) fled, migrated or died during the disruption of the war. This greatly disrupted plantation production during and after the war. When they withdrew their forces from Savannah and Charleston, the British also evacuated 10,000 slaves belonging to Loyalists. Altogether, the British evacuated nearly 20,000 blacks at the end of the war. More than 3,000 of them were freedmen and most of these were resettled in Nova Scotia; other blacks were sold in the West Indies.

Most American Indians east of the Mississippi River were affected by the war, and many tribes were divided over the question of how to respond to the conflict. A few tribes were on friendly terms with the other Americans, but most Indians opposed the union of the Colonies as a potential threat to their territory. Approximately 13,000 Indians fought on the British side, with the largest group coming from the Iroquois tribes, who fielded around 1,500 men. The powerful Iroquois Confederacy was shattered as a result of the conflict, whatever side they took; the Seneca, Onondaga, and Cayuga nations sided with the British. Members of the Mohawk nation fought on both sides. Many Tuscarora and Oneida sided with the colonists. The Continental Army sent the Sullivan Expedition on raids throughout New York to cripple the Iroquois tribes that had sided with the British. Mohawk leaders Joseph Louis Cook and Joseph Brant sided with the Americans and the British respectively, and this further exacerbated the split.

Early in July 1776, a major action occurred in the fledgling conflict when the Cherokee allies of Britain attacked the western frontier areas of North Carolina. Their defeat resulted in a splintering of the Cherokee settlements and people, and was directly responsible for the rise of the Chickamauga Cherokee, bitter enemies of the Colonials who carried on a frontier war for decades following the end of hostilities with Britain.

Creek and Seminole allies of Britain fought against Americans in Georgia and South Carolina. In 1778, a force of 800 Creeks destroyed American settlements along the Broad River in Georgia. Creek warriors also joined Thomas Brown's raids into South Carolina and assisted Britain during the Siege of Savannah. Many Indians were involved in the fighting between Britain and Spain on the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River—mostly on the British side. Thousands of Creeks, Chickasaws, and Choctaws fought in major battles such as the Battle of Fort Charlotte, the Battle of Mobile, and the Siege of Pensacola.

Pybus (2005) estimates that about 20,000 slaves defected to or were captured by the British, of whom about 8,000 died from disease or wounds or were recaptured by the Patriots. The British took some 12,000 at the end of the war; of these 8000 remained in slavery. Including those who left during the war, a total of about 8000 to 10,000 slaves gained freedom. About 4000 freed slaves went to Nova Scotia and 1200 blacks remained slaves.

Baller (2006) examines family dynamics and mobilization for the Revolution in central Massachusetts. He reports that warfare and the farming culture were sometimes incompatible. Militiamen found that living and working on the family farm had not prepared them for wartime marches and the rigors of camp life. Rugged individualism conflicted with military discipline and regimentation. A man's birth order often influenced his military recruitment, as younger sons went to war and older sons took charge of the farm. A person's family responsibilities and the prevalent patriarchy could impede mobilization. Harvesting duties and family emergencies pulled men home regardless of the sergeant's orders. Some relatives might be Loyalists, creating internal strains. On the whole, historians conclude the Revolution's effect on patriarchy and inheritance patterns favored egalitarianism.

McDonnell (2006) shows a grave complication in Virginia's mobilization of troops was the conflicting interests of distinct social classes, which tended to undercut a unified commitment to the Patriot cause. The Assembly balanced the competing demands of elite slave-owning planters, the middling yeomen (some owning a few slaves), and landless indentured servants, among other groups. The Assembly used deferments, taxes, military service substitute, and conscription to resolve the tensions. Unresolved class conflict, however, made these laws less effective. There were violent protests, many cases of evasion, and large-scale desertion, so that Virginia's contributions came at embarrassingly low levels. With the British invasion of the state in 1781, Virginia was mired in class division as its native son, George Washington, made desperate appeals for troops.These are some of the standard works about the war in general that are not listed above; books about specific campaigns, battles, units, and individuals can be found in those articles.

The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain (including the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Portugal, the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and other small German states) on one side and the Kingdom of France (including the Austrian-led Holy Roman Empire), the Russian Empire (until 1762), the Kingdom of Spain, and the Swedish Empire on the other. Meanwhile, in India, some regional polities within the increasingly fragmented Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, tried to crush a British attempt to conquer Bengal. The war's extent has led some historians to describe it as "World War Zero", similar in scale to other world wars.

Seven Years' War

Although Anglo-French skirmishes over their American colonies had begun with what became the French and Indian War in 1754, the large-scale conflict that drew in most of the European powers was centered on Austria's desire to recover Silesia from the Prussians. Seeing the opportunity to curtail Britain's and Prussia's ever-growing might, France and Austria put aside their ancient rivalry to form a grand coalition of their own, bringing most of the other European powers to their side. Faced with this sudden turn of events, Britain aligned itself with Prussia, in a series of political manoeuvres known as the Diplomatic Revolution. However, French efforts ended in failure when the Anglo-Prussian coalition prevailed, and Britain's rise as among the world's predominant powers destroyed France's supremacy in Europe, thus altering the European balance of power.

Conflict between Great Britain and France broke out in 1754–1756 when the British attacked disputed French positions in North America, starting with a British ambush of a small French force at the Battle of Jumonville Glen on 28 May 1754, and extended across the colonial boundaries and the seizure of hundreds of French merchant ships at sea. Meanwhile, rising power Prussia was struggling with Austria for dominance within and outside the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe. In 1756, the major powers "switched partners".

Realising 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, 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 smaller German states (especially the Electorate of Hanover). Sweden, seeking to re-gain Pomerania (most of which had been lost to Prussia in previous wars) joined the coalition, seeing its chance when all the major powers of Europe opposed Prussia. Spain, bound by the Pacte de Famille, intervened on behalf of France and together they launched an utterly 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.
Many middle and small powers in Europe, as in the previous wars, tried to steer clear 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, fearing the odds against Britain and Prussia fighting the great powers of Europe, and even tried to prevent Britain's domination in India. Naples, Sicily, and Savoy, although sided with the Franco-Spanish alliance, declined to join the coalition under fear of British naval power. 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.
The war ended with the Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain and the Treaty of Hubertusburg between Saxony, Austria and Prussia, in 1763.
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 English, where the Odawas claimed seven of the ten forts created or taken by the English 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 emerged as a new 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, Spain 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. France and Spain avenged their defeat during the American Revolutionary War, with hopes of destroying Britain's dominance once and for all.

The Seven Years' War was perhaps the first true world war, having taken place almost 160 years before World War I and influenced many major events later around the globe. 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 eventual turmoil. It was characterised in Europe by sieges and the arson of towns as well as open battles with heavy losses.

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" (Pomeranian War), as the Sweden–Prussian involvement in 1757–1762 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).

The war has been described 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. 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.

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.

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."

In 1756 Austria was making military preparations for war with Prussia and pursuing an alliance with Russia for this purpose. On 2 June 1746, 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.

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.

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 de Conti, and the maintenance of Poland, Sweden, and Turkey as French client states in opposition to Russian and Austrian interests.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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 self-defensive in nature, the actions of both coalitions made the war virtually inevitable.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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)). 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.

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 in the colonies, 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.

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, Russian and Austria agreed in 1756 to mutual defence and an attack by Austria and Russia on Prussia, subsidized by France.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 prevented the isolated Saxon army from being reinforced by an Austrian army under General Browne. 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 only significant Austrian success was the partial occupation of Silesia. Far from being easy, Frederick's early successes proved indecisive and 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.

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.

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 Kolin 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 Kolin was a sharp defeat for Frederick, his first. His losses further forced him to lift the siege and withdraw from Bohemia altogether.

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.

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.

Things were looking grim for Prussia now, with the Austrians mobilising to attack Prussian-controlled soil and a combined French and "Reichsarmee" (German states) army under Prince Soubise approaching from the west. The "Reichsarmee" was a collection of armies from the smaller German states that banded together to heed the appeal of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I 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-German 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.

This problem was compounded when the main Hanoverian army under Cumberland 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.

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, 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.
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 Germany, 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The year 1760 brought yet more Prussian disasters. The general Fouqué was defeated by the Austrians in the Battle of Landshut. The French captured Marburg, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 her 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, 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.

In 1762 two new countries entered the war. 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 practicing 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.

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.

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.

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, Marie 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.

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.

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 harbor, 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.

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.

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.

The colonial conflict mainly between France and Britain took place in India, North America, Europe, the Caribbean isles, 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.

Great Britain lost Menorca in the Mediterranean to the French in 1756 but captured the French colonies in Senegal in 1758. The British Royal Navy took the French sugar colonies of Guadeloupe in 1759 and Martinique in 1762 as well as the Spanish cities of Havana in Cuba, and Manila in the Philippines, both prominent Spanish colonial cities. However, expansion into the hinterlands of both cities met with stiff resistance. In the Philippines, the British were confined to Manila until their agreed upon withdrawal at the war's end.

During the war, the Seven Nations of The Iroquois Confederacy were allied with the French. These were Native Americans of the Laurentian valley—the Algonquin, the Abenaki, the Huron, and others. Although the Algonquin tribes and the Seven Nations were not directly concerned with the fate of the Ohio River Valley, they had been victims of the Iroquois Confederation which included the Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Tuscarora tribes. The Iroquois had encroached on Algonquin territory and pushed the Algonquins west beyond Lake Michigan. Therefore, the Algonquin and the Seven Nations were interested in fighting against the Iroquois. Throughout New England, New York, and the North-west Native American tribes formed differing alliances with the major belligerents. The Iroquois, dominant in what is now Upstate New York, sided with the British but did not play a large role in the war.

In 1756 and 1757 the French captured forts Oswego and William Henry from the British. The latter victory was marred when France's native allies broke the terms of capitulation and attacked the retreating British column, which was under French guard, slaughtering and scalping soldiers and taking captive many men, women and children while the French refused to protect their captives. French naval deployments in 1757 also successfully defended the key Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island called Ile du Roi by the French, securing the seaward approaches to Quebec.

British Prime Minister William Pitt's focus on the colonies for the 1758 campaign paid off with the taking of Louisbourg after French reinforcements were blocked by British naval victory in the Battle of Cartagena and in the successful capture of Fort Duquesne and Fort Frontenac. The British also continued the process of deporting the Acadian population with a wave of major operations against Île Saint-Jean (present-day Prince Edward Island), the St. John River valley, and the Petitcodiac River valley. The celebration of these successes was dampened by their embarrassing defeat in the Battle of Carillon (Ticonderoga), in which 4,000 French troops repulsed 16,000 British. When the British led by generals James Abercrombie and George Howe attacked, they believed that the French led by general Marquis de Montcalm were defended only by a small abatis which could be taken easily given the British force's significant numerical advantage. The British offensive which was supposed to advance in tight columns and overwhelm the French defenders fell into confusion and scattered, leaving large spaces in their ranks. When the French Chevalier de Levis sent 1,000 soldiers to reinforce Montcalm's struggling troops, the British were pinned down in the brush by intense French musket fire and they were forced to retreat.

All of Britain's campaigns against New France succeeded in 1759, part of what became known as an "Annus Mirabilis". Fort Niagara and Fort Carillon on 8 July 1758 fell to sizable British forces, cutting off French frontier forts further west. Starting in June 1759, the British under James Wolfe and James Murray set up camp on the Ile d'Orleans across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec, enabling them to commence the 3-month siege that ensued. The French under the Marquis de Montcalm anticipated a British assault to the east of Quebec so he ordered his soldiers to fortify the region of Beauport. On July 31 the British attacked with 4,000 soldiers but the French positioned high up on the cliffs overlooking the Montmorency Falls forced the British forces to withdraw to the Ile D'Orleans. While Wolfe and Murray planned a second offensive, British rangers raided French settlements along the St. Lawrence, destroying food supplies, ammunition and other goods in an attempt to vanquish the French through starvation.

On 13 September 1759, General James Wolfe led 5,000 troops up a goat path to the Plains of Abraham, 1 mile west of Quebec City.
He had positioned his army between Montcalm's forces an hour's march to the east and Bougainville's regiments to the west, which could be mobilised within 3 hours. Instead of waiting for a coordinated attack with Bougainville, Montcalm attacked immediately. When his 3,500 troops advanced, their lines became scattered in a disorderly formation. Many French soldiers fired before they were within range of striking the British. Wolfe organised his troops in two lines stretching 1 mile across the Plains of Abraham. They were ordered to load their Brown Bess muskets with two bullets to obtain maximum power and hold their fire until the French soldiers came within 40 paces of the British ranks. When Montcalm's army was within range of the British, their volley was powerful and nearly all bullets hit their targets, devastating the French ranks. The French fled the Plains of Abraham in a state of utter confusion while they were pursued by members of the Scottish Fraser regiment and other British forces. Despite being cut down by musket fire from the Canadiens and their indigenous allies, the British vastly outnumbered these opponents and won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. General Wolfe was mortally wounded in the chest early in the battle so the command fell to James Murray, who would become the lieutenant governor of Quebec after the war. The Marquis de Montcalm was also severely wounded later in the battle and died the following day. The French Canadians led by the Chevalier de Levis staged a counteroffensive on the Plains of Abraham in the spring of 1760, with initial success at the Battle of Sainte-Foy, but they were unable to retake Quebec, due to British naval superiority following the Battle of Neuville. The French forces retreated to Montreal, where on 8 September they surrendered to overwhelming British numerical superiority.

Seeing French and Indian defeat, in 1760 the Seven Nations of The Iroquois Confederacy resigned from the war and negotiated the Treaty of Kahnawake with the British. Among its conditions was their unrestricted travel between Canada and New York, as the nations had extensive trade between Montreal and Albany as well as populations living throughout the area.

In 1762, towards the end of the war, French forces attacked St. John's, Newfoundland. If successful, the expedition would have strengthened France's hand at the negotiating table. Although they took St. John's and raided nearby settlements, the French forces were eventually defeated by British troops at the Battle of Signal Hill. This was the final battle of the war in North America, and it forced the French to surrender to Lieutenant Colonel William Amherst. The victorious British now controlled all of eastern North America.

The history of the Seven Years' War in North America, particularly the expulsion of the Acadians, the siege of Quebec, the death of Wolfe, and the Battle of Fort William Henry generated a vast number of ballads, broadsides, images, and novels (see Longfellow's "Evangeline", Benjamin West's "The Death of General Wolfe", James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans"), maps and other printed materials, which testify to how this event held the imagination of the British and North American public long after Wolfe's death in 1759.

In South America (1763), the Portuguese conquered from Spain most of the Rio Negro valley, and repelled a Spanish attack on Mato Grosso (in the Guaporé River).

Between September 1762 and April 1763, Spanish forces led by don Pedro Antonio de Cevallos, Governor of Buenos Aires (and later first Viceroy of the Rio de la Plata) undertook a campaign against the Portuguese in Uruguay and South Brazil. The Spaniards conquered the Portuguese territories of Colonia do Sacramento and Rio Grande de São Pedro and forced the Portuguese to surrender and retreat.

Under the Treaty of Paris (1763), Spain had to return to Portugal the colony of Sacramento, while the vast and rich territory of the so-called "Continent of S. Peter" (the present day Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul) would be retaken from the Spanish army during the undeclared Hispano-Portuguese war of 1763–1777.

As consequence of the war the Valdivian Fort System, a Spanish defensive complex in southern Chile, was updated and reinforced from 1764 onwards. Other vulnerable localities of colonial Chile such as Chiloé Archipelago, Concepción, Juan Fernández Islands and Valparaíso were also made ready for an eventual English attack.

In India, the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in Europe renewed the long running conflict between the French and the British trading companies for influence on the subcontinent. The French allied themselves with the Mughal Empire to resist British expansion. The war began in Southern India but spread into Bengal, where British forces under Robert Clive recaptured Calcutta from the Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah, a French ally, and ousted him from his throne at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In the same year, the British also captured Chandernagar, the French settlement in Bengal.

In the south, although the French captured Cuddalore, their siege of Madras failed, while the British commander Sir Eyre Coote decisively defeated the Comte de Lally at the Battle of Wandiwash in 1760 and overran the French territory of the Northern Circars. The French capital in India, Pondicherry, fell to the British in 1761; together with the fall of the lesser French settlements of Karikal and Mahé this effectively eliminated French power in India.

In 1758, at the urging of an American merchant, Thomas Cumming, Pitt dispatched an expedition to take the French settlement at Saint Louis. The British captured Senegal with ease in May 1758 and brought home large amounts of captured goods. This success convinced Pitt to launch two further expeditions to take the island of Gorée and the French trading post on the Gambia. The loss of these valuable colonies further weakened the French economy.

The Anglo-French hostilities were ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which involved a complex series of land exchanges, the most important being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Faced with the choice of regaining either New France or its Caribbean island colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, France chose the latter to retain these lucrative sources of sugar, writing off New France as an unproductive, costly territory. France also returned Menorca to the British. Spain lost control of Florida to Great Britain, but it received from the French the Île d'Orléans and all of the former French holdings west of the Mississippi River. The exchanges suited the British as well, as their own Caribbean islands already supplied ample sugar, and, with the acquisition of New France and Florida, they now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi.

In India, the British retained the Northern Circars, but returned all the French trading ports. The treaty, however, required that the fortifications of these settlements be destroyed and never rebuilt, while only minimal garrisons could be maintained there, thus rendering them worthless as military bases. Combined with the loss of France's ally in Bengal and the defection of Hyderabad to the British as a result of the war, this effectively brought French power in India to an end, making way for British hegemony and eventual control of the subcontinent. France's navy was crippled by the war. Only after an ambitious rebuilding program in combination with Spain was France again able to challenge Britain's command of the sea.

Bute's settlement with France was mild compared with what Pitt's would have been. He had hoped for a lasting peace with France, and he was afraid that if he took too much, the whole of Europe would unite in envious hostility against Great Britain. Choiseul, however, had no intention of making a permanent peace, and, when France went to war with Great Britain during the American Revolution, the British found no support among the European powers. France's defeat caused the French to embark upon major military reforms, with particular attention being paid to the artillery. The origins of the famed French artillery that played a prominent role in the wars of the French Revolution and beyond can to be traced to military reforms that started in 1763.

The Treaty of Hubertusburg, between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, was signed on 15 February 1763, at a hunting lodge between Dresden and Leipzig. Negotiations had started there on 31 December 1762. Frederick, who had considered ceding East Prussia to Russia if Peter III helped him secure Saxony, finally insisted on excluding Russia (in fact, no longer a belligerent) from the negotiations. At the same time, he refused to evacuate Saxony until its elector had renounced any claim to reparation. The Austrians wanted at least to retain Glatz, which they had in fact reconquered, but Frederick would not allow it. The treaty simply restored the status quo of 1748, with Silesia and Glatz reverting to Frederick and Saxony to its own elector. The only concession that Prussia made to Austria was to consent to the election of Archduke Joseph as Holy Roman emperor. Saxony emerged from the war weakened and bankrupt; despite losing no territory, Saxony had essentially been a battleground between Prussia and Austria throughout the conflict, with many of its' towns and cities (including the capital of Dresden) damaged by bombardment and looting.

Austria was not able to retake Silesia or make any significant territorial gain. However, it did prevent Prussia from invading parts of Saxony. More significantly, its military performance proved far better than during the War of the Austrian Succession and seemed to vindicate Maria Theresa's administrative and military reforms. Hence, Austria's prestige was restored in great part and the empire secured its position as a major player in the European system. Also, by promising to vote for Joseph II in the Imperial elections, Frederick II accepted the Habsburg preeminence in the Holy Roman Empire. The survival of Prussia as a first-rate power and the enhanced prestige of its king and its army, however, was potentially damaging in the long run to Austria's influence in Germany.

Not only that, Austria now found herself estranged with the new developments within the empire itself. Beside the rise of Prussia, Augustus III, although ineffective, could muster an army not only from Saxony, but also Poland, since he was also the King of Poland as well as Elector of Saxony. Bavaria's growing power and independence was also apparent as it asserted more control on the deployment of its army, and managed to disengage from the war at its own will. Most importantly, with the now belligerent Hanover united personally under George III of Great Britain, It amassed a considerable power, and even brought Britain in, on future conflicts. This power dynamic was important to the future and the latter conflicts of the "Reich". The war also proved that Maria Theresa's reforms were still insufficient to compete with Prussia: unlike its enemy, the Austrians were almost bankrupt at the end of war. Hence, she dedicated the next two decades to the consolidation of her administration.

Prussia emerged from the war as a great power whose importance could no longer be challenged. Frederick the Great's personal reputation was enormously enhanced, as his debt to fortune (Russia's volte-face after Elizabeth's death) and to British financial support were soon forgotten, while the memory of his energy and his military genius was strenuously kept alive. Though depicted as a key moment in Prussia's rise to greatness, the war weakened Prussia. Prussia's lands and population were devastated, though Frederick's extensive agrarian reforms and encouragement of immigration soon solved both these problems. Unfortunately for Prussia, its army had taken heavy losses (particularly the officer corps), and in the war's aftermath, Frederick could not afford to rebuild the Prussian Army to what it was before the war. In the War of the Bavarian Succession, the Prussians fought poorly despite being led by Frederick in person. During the war with France in 1792–1795, the Prussian Army did not fare well against revolutionary France, and in 1806, the Prussians were annihilated by the French at the Battle of Jena. It was only after 1806 when Prussian government brought in reforms to recover from the disaster of Jena that Prussia's rise to greatness later in the 19th century was realized. However, none of this had happened yet, and after 1763, various nations all sent officers to Prussia to learn the secrets of Prussia's military power. After the Seven Years' War, Prussia become one of the most imitated powers in Europe.
Russia, on the other hand, made one great invisible gain from the war: the elimination of French influence in Poland. The First Partition of Poland (1772) was to be a Russo-Prussian transaction, with Austria only reluctantly involved and with France simply ignored. Though the war had ended in a draw, the performance of the Imperial Russian Army against Prussia had improved Russia's reputation as a factor in European politics, as many had not expected the Russians to hold their own against the Prussians in campaigns fought on Prussian soil. The American historian David Stone observed that Russian soldiers proved capable of going head-on against the Prussians, inflicting and taking one bloody volley after another "without flinching", and though the quality of Russian generalship was quite variable, the Russians were never decisively defeated once in the war. The Russians defeated the Prussians several times in the war, but the Russians lacked the necessary logistical capability to follow up their victories with lasting gains, and in this sense, the salvation of the House of Hohenzollern was due more to Russian weakness with respect to logistics than to Prussian strength on the battlefield. Still, the fact that the Russians proved capable of defeating in battle the army of a "first-rate" European power on its own soil despite the often indifferent quality of their generals improved Russia's standing in Europe. A lasting legacy of the war was that it awakened the Russians to their logistic weaknesses, and led to major reforms of the Imperial Russian Army's quartermaster department. The supply system that allowed the Russians to advance into the Balkans during the war with the Ottomans in 1787–92, Marshal Alexander Suvorov to campaign effectively in Italy and Switzerland in 1798–99, and for the Russians to fight across Germany and France in 1813–14 to take Paris was created directly in response to the logistic problems experienced by the Russians in the Seven Years' War.

The British government was close to bankruptcy, and Britain now faced the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects as well as the many American Indian tribes who had supported France. In 1763, Pontiac's War broke out as a group of Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region and the Northwest (the modern American Midwest) said to have been led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac (whose role as the leader of the confederation seems to have been exaggerated by the British), unhappy with the eclipse of French power, rebelled against British rule. The Indians had long established congenial and friendly relations with the French fur traders, and the Anglo-American fur traders who had replaced the French had engaged in business practices that enraged the Indians, who complained about being cheated when they sold their furs. Moreover, the Indians feared that with the coming of British rule might lead to white settlers displacing them off their land, whereas it was known that the French had only come as fur traders. Pontiac's War was a major conflict in which the British temporarily lost control of the Great Lakes-Northwest regions to the Indians. By the middle of 1763, the only forts the British held in the region were Fort Detroit (modern Detroit, Michigan ), Fort Niagara (modern Youngstown, New York) and Fort Pitt (modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) with the rest all being lost to the Indians. It was only with the British victory at the Battle of Bushy Run that prevented a complete collapse of British power in the Great Lakes region. King George III's Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, was intended to appease the Indians but led to considerable outrage in the Thirteen Colonies, whose inhabitants were eager to acquire native lands. The Quebec Act of 1774, similarly intended to win over the loyalty of French Canadians, also spurred resentment among American colonists. The act protected Catholic religion and French language, which enraged the Americans, but the Québécois remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution and did not rebel.

The war also brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe, In the years after the war, under the direction of Lord Sandwich, the British attempted to re-establish this system. But after her surprising grand success against a coalition of great powers, European states such as Austria, The Dutch Republic, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Ottoman Empire, and Russia now saw Britain as a greater threat than France and did not join them, while the Prussians were angered by what they considered a British betrayal in 1762. Consequently, when the American War of Independence turned into a global war between 1778–83, Britain found itself opposed by a strong coalition of European powers, and lacking any substantial ally.