After the War of the Spanish Succession, in which Austria played a major part, the Habsburgs were ceded by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1715 the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, and Milan. Austria ranked with France and Britain as one of the most powerful states in Europe. In the seventeenth century the Austrian hegemony within the German confederation had suffered a set-back by the conversion of much of north Germany to the Protestant religion and by the Thirty Years War. Yet the only principalities in a position even to challenge Austrian leadership were Bavaria, Saxony, and Brandenburg; of these Brandenburg was generally considered to be the weakest. During the course of the century, however, Brandenburg attracted to its Mark and to its newly won territories in East Prussia immigrant populations from Holland and the Rhineland. Even so, its total population did not exceed four million. But energetic and capable Prussian rulers reorganized the government, finance, agriculture, education, and the army. In 1701 the Elector of Brandenburg, with the prior agreement of the Austrian Emperor, had himself styled King of Prussia, and by 1740 felt strong enough to challenge the Austrian primacy in Germany. The nature of the challenge was made clear by the invasion of the Austrian province of Silesia by Prussian troops. The Austrian Emperor, Charles VI, being without a son, had succeeded in persuading the principal German rulers and the major European powers to agree to the Pragmatic Sanction, the succession of his daughter, Maria Theresa, to the Habsburg hereditary lands. The Elector of Bavaria was the only objector. But as soon as Charles died, Frederick the Great, the newly crowned King of Prussia, disregarding any earlier understanding made by his father, demanded Silesia as the price of his agreement to Maria Theresa’s succession. The demand came at the same time as his troops crossed the Silesian border.
Military Machine 
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