Seven Years' War - Cultural References

Cultural References

• The novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray is set against the backdrop of the Seven Years' War. This is a quote about the war from the novel:

"It would require a greater philosopher and historian than I am to explain the causes of the famous Seven Years' War in which Europe was engaged; and, indeed, its origin has always appeared to me to be so complicated, and the books written about it so amazingly hard to understand, that I have seldom been much wiser at the end of a chapter than at the beginning, and so shall not trouble my reader with any personal disquisitions concerning the matter."

• Stanley Kubrick's movie Barry Lyndon (1975) is based on the Thackeray novel.
• The events in the early chapters of Voltaire's Candide are based on the Seven Years' War; according to Jean Starobinski, ("Voltaire's Double-Barreled Musket," in Blessings In Disguise, (California, 1993) p 85), all the atrocities described in Chapter 3 are true to life. At the time Candide was written, Voltaire was opposed to militarism, and the book's themes of disillusionment and suffering underscore this position.
• The board games Friedrich and, more recently, Prussia's Defiant Stand and Clash of Monarchs are based on the events of the Seven Years' War.
• The Grand strategy wargame Rise of Prussia covers the European campaigns of the Seven Years' War
• The novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) by James Fenimore Cooper and its subsequent adaptations are set in the Northern American Theatre of the Seven Years' War.
• The Partisan in War (1789), a treatise on light infantry tactics written by Colonel Andreas Emmerich, is based on his experiences in the Seven Years' War.
• The Seven Years' War is the central theme of G.E. Lessing's play Minna von Barnhelm.
• Numerous towns and other places now in United States were named after Frederick the Great to commemorate the victorious conclusion of the war, including Frederick, Maryland and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
• The fourth scenario of the second act in the RTS Age of Empires III is about this military conflict, with the player fighting along with the French and against the British.