Light Troops in the Seven Years War: Irregular Warfare in Europe and North America, 17551763

Histories of the Seven Years War or French and Indian War tend to concentrate on the larger engagements. In the European theater, the attention goes to Rossbach and Leuthen (1757) or Minden (1759). By the same token, in the North American theater, historians tend to dedicate the most time to engagements such as the Battle of the Monongahela (1755), the attack on Fort Carillon (1758), later renamed Ticonderoga, or the battle on the Plains of Abraham (1759). One consequence of this focus on the larger engagements has been a general tendency to overlook the more constant war of raids, ambushes and scouting that pervaded in both theaters, what contemporaries referred to as the petite guerre or kleine krieg. Light Troops in the Seven Years War fills this gap by examining not only the conduct of these smaller, but at times operationally and even strategically significant engagements. It draws parallels between the theaters as well. The work surveys the development of irregular troops,