DBWI: Prussia not destroyed?

[ThatOneGuy]

Just so we are all up to speed The Kingdom of Prussia, by the Seven Years War was a rapidly rising power in the HRE under King Frederick II. It had already won a surprising and rapid victory in the Silesian War and was preparing to seize Saxony from Augustus III of Poland. However, after the disaster that was the Battle of Kunersdorf King Frederick was captured, Prussia was humbled before Austria and Russia, Silesia was lost as was a variety of other concessions that essentially broke the back of Prussia. It was then divided amongst Austria and Poland with Russia nabbing the weakened Prussia into its sphere of influence.

However, what if things went differently? What if Ludon and Saltykov did not march on Berlin like in OTL and instead hesitated for some reason? Could Prussia recover from such a defeat? If so could they go on to challenge Austrian hegemony in the HRE?

 

[BootOnFace]

Even if Prussia miraculously survived, it was only a big fish in the small pond of the HRE. It has to contend with the much larger and more powerful Poland and Austria, where Bavaria only had to deal with Austria and still lost horribly. This doesn't even take into account the Swedish and their Pomeranian possessions. Prussia, in a best case scenario of surviving the Seven Years War, borders Sweden, Austria, and Poland. If Prussia wants to challenge Austria it has to be able to beat Austria one-on-one without Poland or Sweden getting involved.

Maybe if Prussia becomes France's and Russia's favored German state in order to cut Austrian power, it could expand, but the tides of geopolitics are fickle, and if Prussia becomes too powerful, they will cut them off, or even sponsor Austria to beat them back down. I mean we saw what happened during the Coalition Wars. France gave their ally Bavaria all the land between Austria and the Rhine and even expanded them north, but when it looked like a Wittelsbach was ending up on the throne of Brandenburg, France turned on them and installed their own candidate forcibly.

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Would it be ASB to think that a up and coming Prussia could combine with Bavaria & a few of the other principle German speaking states & revive a reworked HRE, or a northern German nation. German nationalism became a thing in the 19th Century. Bavaria, the North Hanoverian Confederation, & the Germanic sub state of the Austro Hungarian Empire are the result. With Saxony in tow, a coalition of some sort of a strong Prussia & Bavaria might coalesce into a unified entity by the late 19th Century?