The Coalitions

Seemingly random and pointless Coalitions were a major component of 18th Century warfare as diplomats cobbled together states large and small for virtually any purpose you can conceive.  The War of the Henzlein Inheritance is a perfect example of nations cobbled together in pursuit of their occasionally common aims.  The war started with two Coalitions:

LIX Coalition: Deutschland fur die Deutschen

The LIX Coalition included initially Austria and Prussia.  Empress-to-be  Maria Theresa, nearly new to the throne with her non-entity husband Emperor Francis were determined to enforce their rights as Holy Roman Emperors In Waiting by posing as defenders of the minor houses, cheaply gained prestige and perhaps a puppet in north Germany were the objectives.  As was often the case for Prussia intervention was designed for the acquisition of territory and along with the territory a new pool of conscriptable young men.  The public explanations and rationale were that the vast debits owed to Prussia by the last Demi-Bishop would allow them to seize all or some of the territory in compensation, possession being 9/10ths of international law who could say when or if it would ever be returned?


LX Coalition: Pour la defense des droits de ces Allemands 

This Coalition comprised at the start of the war a motley assemblage of nations each with their own motives and several with their own claimant for the Demi-Bishophric, but all of them allied to ensure that the ancient founding principle of the Holy Roman Empire (specifically the right for the lots of small states to be manipulated and controlled by their larger non-German neighbors) be stoutly defended. 

Coalition members Britain, France, and Russia each had their own preferred, and at least slightly plausible, candidates and, through adroit diplomacy and bribery convinced Landgrave Helmut Freidrich  Adenauer-Kohl to declare that the Demi-Bishophric would resist any attempts by other Imperial and German states to seize it's territory.  From the east, sailing in a rented fleet came the Russians sent by Tsarina Anna who, due to the untimely death of her husband Frederick Wilhelm Duke of Courland, was a bit off in the head and determined to seize ports in the Baltic.  Following in the tried and true footsteps of Richelieu and Louis XIV, the French intervened decisively by bribing Herr Adenauer-Kohl and convincing the British that another war in North Germany was The Thing To Do.  Sir Robert Walpole, PM, MP, KG, KB, & etc who was all too amenable to being bribed, found a theoretically probable inheritor of the Demi-Bishophric on a farm in East Surrey and dispatched his own expedition.

The board was set, the pieces were in movement, the players would get some inkling of what was going on...