Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 113. Threadbear Bells. 1758 had been a pivotal year in the Americas.

When the campaigning season of 1757, Druze were close, things looked grim. The attempted British assault on Quebec from the east had failed as

Lowndon had failed to take Louisbourg and had instead been pushed back. There had been the

Fort William Henry Massacre in northern New York and the frontier along the west continued

to disintegrate as the French and Indians launched raids along Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas.

What a difference a year can make?

Sure, there had been the disaster at Fort Carillon, but Louisbourg had been captured on Cape Breton Island,

Fort Frontenac had been captured on Lake Ontario, and Fort Duquesne, which had caused this whole

war in the first place, had been taken and destroyed. In its place, Pittsburgh was already rising. The French run the back foot,

which was crucial in Pitt's plan to focus on France's colonial holdings. Horace Walpole

quipped that the bells were threadbare, won out after ringing in so many victories. However,

North America was just one theatre of the Seven Years' War, and today it's time once more to

zoom out and look at the big picture. We'll start with Europe.

When we left Europe in 1757, things were not looking good for the British and Prussians.

King Frederick's invasion of Bohemia had not gone well and he'd been forced back from Prague.

The Swedes had invaded Pomerania in the north. The Russians were looming in the east, although the Russians had supply problems.

The Russian army was large, but was a very long way from its base in Moscow, and while it had reached Koinersburg, the modern Kaliningrad,

they had failed to take it and instead pulled back. And then there was the fiasco of the French

attack on Hanover, which led to the humiliating surrender by Cumberland and Hanover dropping out of the war.

All in all, 1757 had not been a good year.

King George II repudiated the Convention of Closter Zeven, which was the treaty that saw

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