The outbreak of the Seven Years War saw the formation of new alliances
and led to the conduct of military operations in several theaters
simultaneously. The campaign of 1757 saw large-scale maneuvers, with
their necessary operational corollaries of supply and logistics, as
France put an army of 100,000 men into the field. The conduct of the
campaign also testifies to the difficulty of exercising command in the
face of a court and a government for which short-term results took
precedence over means. Notwithstanding such difficulties, the campaign
of the French armies in Westphalia saw its climax play out around the
village of Hastenbeck on 26 July 1757, where the forces of Maréchal
d'Estrées gained a victory that came close to knocking Hanover out of
the war.
The story of the campaign can be told from the human perspective thanks
to the large body of memoirs and letters from officers, both general and
subordinate, of cavalry and infantry regiments. Having left their
garrisons four months earlier, they had come to battle at the gates of
Hanover after having traveled more than 600 kilometers through the Low
Countries and into Germany.