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As 1741 drew to a close, the view from Vienna was depressing in the extreme. Even without the support of King Friedrich II of Prussia, who had momentarily backed out of the war with assurances from Austria that he could keep Lower Silesia, Franco-Bavarian forces had succeeded in taking Prague by the end of November with most of the rest of Bohemia falling under their control by the end of the year. The success was so swift and unexpected that it even startled Friedrich, who now feared that he had quit the war too early. Friedrich’s personal aim was Silesia, but he had his own reasons to desire the fulfillment of the claims of Bavaria and Saxony set out at Nymphenburg. With Bavaria in control of Bohemia and Saxony ruling Moravia, Prussia would no longer share a border with Austria, and thus these countries would serve as buffer states to shield Prussia from prospective Austrian revanchism in future years. The king abruptly tore up his agreement with Austria and invaded Moravia alongside French and Saxon forces, despite warnings from the French general Maurice de Saxe that such an attack in winter would be ill-advised. Initially, Friedrich’s gambit paid off, and by late December his army entered Olmutz (Olomouc), Moravia’s capital.

Maria Theresa was still without effective allies in Germany. Diplomatic attempts to break up the alliance of France, Bavaria, Saxony, and Prussia failed despite the sometimes conflicting interests of these states, and Britain’s participation remained limited to subsidies, which were necessary but not sufficient on their own. Austria’s other ally, Russia, had been tied up by a Swedish invasion encouraged by the French. The miserable failure of this invasion and Russia’s swift victory over the Swedes (although a treaty would not be signed until the summer of 1743) was welcome news in Vienna, but hopes that a Russian army would soon come marching westwards were dashed in December when Elizabeth Petrovna, the daughter of Peter the Great, seized power in a palace coup from the infant Tsar Ivan VI and his German-born mother Anna of Mecklenburg. Elizabeth’s new court favored the French, and she was not particularly eager to ride to Maria Theresa’s rescue. Austria’s agony was given a ceremonial capstone in February, when Karl Albrecht, Elector of Bavaria, was crowned as Emperor Karl VII after having been unanimously chosen by the electors (Bohemia’s vote was denied to Maria Theresa on the dubious basis that the kingdom was presently contested). It was the first time in more than 300 years that anyone but a Habsburg had ruled the Empire.

Yet even at the apparent nadir of Austrian fortunes, not all was as it seemed. 1741 had been an unlucky year for the Austrians - to put it mildly - but the Queen’s enemies had mistaken her state’s misfortune for real weakness. They could not have been more wrong. Friedrich’s victories against the Austrians and the splendidly executed French conquest of Bohemia had led many to assume that Austria was nothing but a paper tiger, but her armies remained formidable, her finances were in reasonably good order thanks to Britain’s support, and Vienna had a singular coherence of purpose and leadership that was not possessed by the bickering and mutually distrustful French-backed alliance. The onset of winter had provided a brief respite from the Franco-Bavarian advance, and now all that was needed for a recovery was competent leadership. This was found in the person of Field Marshal Khevenhüller, whom Maria Theresa now entrusted with an audacious offensive. The last thing anyone expected was an Austrian counterattack in the dead of winter, but in January, Khevenhüller crossed the Enns river and invaded enemy-occupied Upper Austria, taking the French and Bavarians completely by surprise.

The French were swiftly driven from Linz, the only city in Upper Austria which was strongly garrisoned, and fell back over the Bavarian frontier. Khevenhüller then invaded Bavaria itself and inaugurated a brutal campaign of revenge upon the usurper’s country. A great mass of Austrian irregular troops - Croats and other light infantry from the Ottoman frontier (the so-called “Grenzers”) - swarmed into the electorate, looting and burning in all directions. In February, Khevenhüller’s troops occupied Munich itself, Bavaria’s capital, which was to change hands several times in the coming months.

Meanwhile in Silesia, Saxe’s warning to Friedrich was starting to look prescient. There was no Austrian army in the province which could oppose the King of Prussia, but the harsh winter coupled with local resistance from the Moravian peasantry and guerrilla warfare led by the Austrian irregular troops inflicted mounting casualties on the Prussians. Once his French and Saxon allies withdrew their contingents from Moravia to deal with Khevenhüller’s offensive, Friedrich realized that his Moravian expedition was a blunder he could no longer afford to continue. In April, despite being undefeated in the field, the King of Prussia withdrew from Moravia and retreated into Bohemia to rejoin his allies.

Friedrich was humbled, but far from vanquished. In May he encountered the Austrian army in Bohemia under Prince Karl Alexander of Lorraine, the younger brother of King-Consort Franz Stefan, and battle was joined at the town of Chotusitz. The sides were closely matched in numbers, and the fate of the battle seemed in considerable doubt for some time as the Prussians and Austrians mounted charges and counter-charges against one another. Ultimately Friedrich held the field and claimed another victory, but it was due more to the ineptitude of Prince Karl than any great deficiency in the Austrian army, and Prussian casualties were nearly as high as those suffered by the Austrians. Such victories against a comparable opponent were all well and good, but Austria’s manpower was vast compared to little Prussia, and both Friedrich and his allies were beginning to appreciate that Austria’s strength was not so easily depleted nor its leaders easily discouraged. “It is true that lovely feathers have been torn from [Austria’s] wings,” remarked Count Podewils, the Prussian foreign minister, “nevertheless that will not stop it from flying quite high.”

Yet though Chotusitz was but a momentary setback for Austria, the defeat changed the strategic calculus in Vienna. By the summer of 1742, Austrian armies were advancing victoriously both in Bavaria and in Italy, where an Austro-Sardinian force had driven the Spanish and Neapolitans back over the length of the peninsula. Only Prussia and its army had provided meaningful resistance to Austria’s campaign of recovery. It seemed sensible, then, to seek out a new accomodation with Prussia despite Friedrich’s duplicity, for if Prussia was removed from the equation Austrian armies would be able to concentrate their full strength against the French in Bohemia and presumably carry all before them. Moreover, Maria Theresa was no longer so strongly attached to the absolute preservation of the Pragmatic Sanction, for the Spanish failure in Italy seemed to suggest that she might be able to gain compensation for the loss of Silesia with the prize of Naples.

Thanks to the combined military minds of Marshal Belle-Isle, Marshal Broglie, and Maurice de Saxe, the French succeeded in inflicting several tactical defeats upon the Austrians in Bohemia that spring, but by June they were nevertheless falling back in the face of vastly superior Austrian numbers fielded by Prince Karl and Field Marshal Lobkowitz. Their retreat to Prague was devastating; harried by Austria’s famed hussars, the French were badly bloodied and abandoned an enormous amount of materiel. Once at Prague they found themselves trapped, as the Austrians had cut off every avenue of retreat. Compounding the distress of the French was the cessation of hostilities between Prussia and Austria which was formalized in late July by the Treaty of Berlin, in which which the Austrians accepted the cession of most of Silesia to the Kingdom of Prussia in exchange for Friedrich’s withdrawal for the war. For the second time in less than a year, Friedrich had signed a separate peace and left his allies in the lurch, and it could not have come at a worse time.

Now it was France’s turn to face isolation. Saxony’s vacillating king-elector Augustus III, never a very enthusiastic participant, had followed Prussia's lead and made peace with Austria, for with Prussia out of the war the annexation of Moravia which had been promised to him at Nymphenburg now seemed a very distant dream. Bavaria was still in the fight, but they had lost nearly all their territory and the army they still had was wholly dependent upon French subsidies (as it had admittedly been from the start of the war). Driven even from his own capital, the Bavarian Emperor had become something of an international joke, and he had clearly lost touch with reality. Despite not even controlling Bavaria, he announced loftily that he would deign to make peace only if he received Bohemia, Further Austria, Tyrol, and either Upper Austria or the Austrian Netherlands (as presumably he did not want to seem too greedy).

Reeling from Prussia’s betrayal, Cardinal Fleury instructed Belle-Isle to sue for peace. Even willing to throw France’s pet emperor under the proverbial bus, Fleury quietly proposed through Belle-Isle that France would not object to the continued Austrian occupation of Bavaria so long as the French army was allowed to vacate Bohemia. Yet the British chief minister Lord Carteret urged a continuation of the war, determined to bring the Bourbon powers to their knees, and Maria Theresa was happy to oblige. At the very least she still needed to extract compensation for her loss of Silesia, but she was also driven by a more personal and emotional desire to see France pay for their aggression and insolence. When Fleury sent the queen an apologetic private letter in which he attempted to lay the blame for the war on the over-exuberance of Belle-Isle, Maria Theresa responded by having it published in the newspapers, merely as a means to publicly humiliate the cardinal.

With the British and Austrians unwilling to negotiate, the French were forced to pursue military means to rescue their besieged soldiers, who by the end of the summer had been reduced to eating their horses. To muster the forces necessary to relieve them, 40,000 men previously stationed in northeast France were sent to Germany under Marshal Lautrec.[A] This left a greatly diminished force to guard the French frontier from potential Anglo-Dutch aggression, but the British and Dutch were at odds over the wisdom of a joint offensive against France and the French correctly guessed that the British would be unable to make anything of the opportunity. Lautrec’s force was joined in the Palatinate by Saxe and his 20,000 men. Saxe suggested a simultaneous drive by this so-called “Army of Redemption” towards Prague while Broglie, in command of the besieged force, would lead a breakout towards them. Broglie made some initial headway, and it seemed for a moment as if this plan might work, but it was foiled by the prompt mustering of an Austrian army of 60,000 men which interposed itself between Broglie and Lautrec. Broglie was forced to retreat back to Prague, although this Austrian victory came at a cost, as in their absence a Bavarian army under Count Seckendorff was able to liberate most of Bavaria.

The size of Lautrec’s force and the fall of Bavaria caused some concern in Vienna, but the combined Austrian army nevertheless offered a stout defense of Bohemia. Obstructed by mountainous terrain, a lack of supplies, the harassment of Austrian irregulars, and the prudent disposition of the Austrian forces, Lautrec was unable to make headway into the kingdom. An engagement was possible, but both sides were under instructions to avoid battle; the French feared risking their only effective army left in Germany, while the Austrians reasoned that a battle was not necessary if a French surrender at Prague could be gained by mere patience. Lautrec ultimately found his task impossible and withdrew into the Palatinate.

As the situation in Prague grew desperate, the French attempted to shake things up with a leadership change. Broglie left Prague, disguised as a courier, to relieve Lautrec of command, while Belle-Isle was left in charge of the besieged army. Broglie did not turn out to be of much help; having gained control of the “Army of Redemption,” he promptly went into winter quarters in Bavaria. Nevertheless, Belle-Isle had been instructed to extricate his army at all costs, a goal which he pursued with great shrewdness and energy. He concealed his preparations even from his own men, and convinced everyone that he had decided to hold Prague through the winter. In mid-December, leaving only 5,000 soldiers (mostly invalids) at Prague, Belle-Isle slipped out of the city with 14,000 men. His army marched through the night to gain as much of a lead on the Austrian cavalry as he could. Then, against all expectations, he departed from the lowland roads and took his army straight over the mountains, which the Austrians had presumed was quite impossible for such a force.

Belle-Isle’s march was ten days of utter misery. Hungry and shivering, the French army trudged upwards through the snow; tales were told of men freezing to death on their feet. Belle-Isle himself fell seriously ill. In all, the army lost around 1,500 men, mostly to the harsh conditions. On the day after Christmas, however, the marshal and his exhausted army finally reached Eger and were out of danger. Belle-Isle had succeeded in rescuing some 12,500 French soldiers from almost certain doom, and had mitigated the loss to French honor by avoiding the humiliating capitulation of an entire French army.[1] Retreats are seldom celebrated as much as victories and Belle-Isle’s feat won him little acclaim at home, but it was a masterpiece of misdirection and maneuver, and arguably the greatest single military achievement of the entire war.

Thus, for all the ups and downs of the war thus far, the end of 1742 saw the return of something like the status quo ante bellum - at least in terms of territory.[2] The Bavarians had recovered Bavaria, the Austrians had recovered Bohemia, and the Spanish had accomplished nothing of note aside from the occupation of Savoy. Nevertheless, there was no prospect of peace on the horizon. Maria Theresa still desired compensation for Silesia, Lord Carteret still dreamed of a great abasement of the Bourbons in Europe, and King Felipe V - or, perhaps more accurately, his wife Elisabetta Farnese - still yearned to make gains in Italy at Habsburg expense. Cardinal Fleury cursed the day Belle-Isle had lured France into war with dreams of German dominion, which he now regretted as misguided and ruinous, but he was mercifully spared from having to watch the conflict drag on for years to come. The ancient cardinal, who had directed French policy since 1726, died early the next year.

As the year drew to a close only King Friedrich appeared to be a clear winner, having gained both peace and his coveted Silesia. Yet he was uneasy in victory, for every success of Austrian arms reminded him that Maria Theresa ruled a powerful state and might yet grow confident enough to tear up the Treaty of Berlin and reclaim her lost province. If the Bourbons were defeated and Prussia was compelled to face Austrian might alone, how long would he be able to preserve his ill-gotten gains?


Footnotes
[1] Another 4,000 men left behind in the Prague garrison were later repatriated when Chevert, the French commander there, threatened to burn down the city unless those men who could walk were allowed to leave.
[2] The war overseas had also stalled, largely due to Britain and Spain turning their attentions firmly towards European battlegrounds. The only significant operation in the Americas in 1742 was a Spanish invasion of Georgia which was decisively repulsed by the British.

Timeline Notes
[A] This is the first bit of alt-history so far in my account of the WoAS. IOTL, the “Army of Redemption” was under the command of Marshal Maillebois, the conqueror of Corsica. ITTL, Lautrec was sent to Corsica instead of Maillebois, and as a consequence Lautrec received the marshal’s baton that Maillebois got historically. (IOTL Lautrec did eventually become a Marshal of France, but not until 1757 when he was 71 years old.) Accordingly, I gave Lautrec command of the army Maillebois led in 1742. That said, however, the course of history in this “update” is not otherwise changed. My feeling is that the replacement of Maillebois with Lautrec would not make a meaningful difference in the conduct of the relief army, which was was cut off from Prague by a strong Austrian army which held all the mountain passes. Perhaps a commander with exceptional ambition or genius, like Saxe or Belle-Isle, would have ignored the orders from Paris and sought battle or found some ingenious way of circumventing the Austrian defenses, but Lautrec - while competent - is not that man. His ascendance over Maillebois is more likely to have an impact later in the war, as Maillebois was subsequently a major French commander in the Italian theater. 1742 may end up being the last year in which the war remains pretty much identical to OTL.