He Never Wants for Suitable Instruments: The Seven Years War as a War of Religion

Abstract

In late spring 1756 news arrived in Belfast that the country was, again, officially at war. On 28 May the News-Letter printed the king’s declaration of war, and the province braced itself for yet another round of hostilities with Britain’s arch-rival, France. At noon on 1 June the declaration was read to the inhabitants of Belfast at ‘the several public Places … in the usual Manner’.¹ Over the course of the summer, as the other European powers fell into one camp or the other, it became clear that this conflict was different in character from its most recent predecessor. The belligerents were now largely divided along confessional lines. Britain’s alliance with Austria, negotiated by the Duke of Newcastle earlier in the century to contain French ambitions on the continent, had fallen by the wayside. A powerful Bourbon-Hapsburg bloc emerged that included Austria, France and — from 1762 — Spain. Britain now found itself treaty-bound to several small, largely Protestant, German states — most notably Prussia and, of course, Hanover. From the beginning, this war was to be about religion as well as empire. From 2 July onwards the News-Letter routinely made mention of Britain and its allies as ‘the Protestant Powers’. Correspondents to the paper used similar language. One observer, for example, hoped that ‘Rome may receive a fatal blow, in consequence of the coalition between France and Austria to oppress or ruin the Protestant cause.’²