Seven Years' War
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50 free Seven Years' War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Seven Years' War is sometimes described as the first truly global conflict. Between 1756 and 1763 the great powers of Europe fought one another across Germany, North America, the Caribbean, West Africa and India, and the result decided which empire would dominate the century that followed. This quiz covers the whole war: the backwoods skirmish that helped set it off, the unlikely alliances that lined up Britain and Prussia against France, Austria and Russia, the famous battles on land and at sea, and the commanders, monarchs and ministers who shaped them. A full run of questions deals with how the war ended, from the peace settlements and the territory that changed hands to the taxes and frontier troubles that followed in Britain's American colonies. It is written for history students revising the period, teachers after a ready-made review, and anyone who enjoys a good history quiz. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which vegetable did pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier champion after eating it as a Seven Years' War prisoner?
The potato
The potato was known to the French only as hog feed when Parmentier's Prussian captors served it to him. He later hosted dinners built around the crop to win over famous guests.
Q 02Which future US president led the 1754 ambush at Jumonville Glen that helped ignite the Seven Years' War?
George Washington
George Washington later signed a surrender written in French, a language he could not read, which admitted that the French commander had been assassinated.
Q 03Which future Pacific explorer helped chart the St Lawrence River for the British assault on Quebec in 1759?
James Cook
James Cook, then a ship's master, took soundings and marked shoals so that troops could be carried across the river for a stealthy night attack.
Q 04Which James Fenimore Cooper novel is set during the 1757 siege of Fort William Henry in the Seven Years' War?
The Last of the Mohicans
The Last of the Mohicans turns the fort's real surrender, and the attack on the British column as it marched away, into the centre of its plot.
Q 05Which British admiral, shot in 1757 for failing to relieve Minorca, did Voltaire satirise in Candide?
John Byng
John Byng faced a firing squad after a court martial ruled he had not done his utmost. Voltaire has a character explain that Britain finds it useful to shoot an admiral now and then as an example to the rest.
Q 06Which Prussian king, nicknamed Old Fritz, held off Austria, France and Russia during the Seven Years' War?
Frederick the Great
Frederick the Great cared more for music and philosophy than war as a young prince, which set him against his authoritarian father. He wrote all his works in French.
Q 07By what name do Americans usually know the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War, begun in 1754?
French and Indian War
French and Indian War names the colonists' opponents. British America usually named its wars after the reigning monarch, but that name had been used up in the 1740s.
Q 08Which city gave its name to the 1763 treaty between Britain, France and Spain that ended the Seven Years' War overseas?
Paris
The Treaty of Paris left France with almost nothing on the North American mainland and opened an era of British dominance outside Europe.
Q 09Which disease did British officers try to spread with hospital blankets while besieged by Native warriors in 1763?
Smallpox
Smallpox had broken out inside the fort, so its officers handed visiting Native envoys two blankets and a handkerchief taken from the sick ward.
Q 10Which Odawa war leader gave his name to the 1763 uprising against British forts around the Great Lakes?
Pontiac
Pontiac opened the war by trying to take Fort Detroit by surprise with 300 followers. The plan was foiled and became a siege as the revolt spread far beyond Detroit.
Q 11Which mountain range marked the line beyond which the Royal Proclamation of 1763 barred new colonial settlement?
The Appalachians
The Appalachians became the edge of a reserve set aside for Native nations, which angered the colonial land speculators and settlers who had expected to move west.
Q 12Which 1765 tax on colonial newspapers and legal papers was meant to fund British troops left in America after 1763?
The Stamp Act
The Stamp Act lasted barely a year: Parliament repealed it in March 1766, after colonists argued that they had already paid their share of the war's costs.
Q 13Which territory did Spain hand to Britain under the 1763 peace, only to win it back twenty years later?
Florida
Q 21Which Habsburg ruler, mother of Marie Antoinette, fought the Seven Years' War to win back a province seized by Prussia?
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa had signed the peace of 1748 only to buy time, using the years that followed to rebuild her army and line up new allies for a second attempt.
Q 22Which prosperous province, seized from Austria in the 1740s, did Prussia fight the Seven Years' War to keep?
Silesia
Silesia stayed Prussian when the fighting ended without a single border moved, a result that confirmed Prussia as a great power and Austria's rival inside Germany.
Q 23Which neighbouring German electorate did Prussia invade in August 1756, opening the Seven Years' War in Europe?
Saxony
Florida proved too large for British officials to run as one colony, so they split it in two, East and West, along the Apalachicola River.
Q 14Which vast French colony did Louis XV secretly hand to Spain in 1762 as the Seven Years' War was ending?
Louisiana
Louisiana changed hands in a deal kept secret even while France was negotiating peace with Britain, and Spain did not formally take possession until 1769.
Q 15Which Caribbean sugar island, captured in 1759, did Britain return to France in 1763 while keeping Canada?
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe mattered more to France than Canada did: given the choice, it took back its sugar islands and wrote off the northern colony as costly and unproductive.
Q 16Which city, Spain's main port in the West Indies, fell to a British fleet and army in August 1762?
Havana
Havana fell after the British arrived from a direction nobody expected and trapped a Spanish fleet inside its own harbour. Spain got the city back at the peace.
Q 17Which Asian colonial capital did a British fleet sailing from Madras seize from Spain in 1762?
Manila
Manila stayed in British hands for 18 months, but mostly Filipino troops loyal to a Spanish lieutenant governor kept the occupiers from spreading beyond the city and nearby Cavite.
Q 18Which British monarch came to the throne aged 22 in 1760, midway through the Seven Years' War?
George III
George III inherited the crown from his grandfather rather than his father, who had died nine years earlier. He went on to reign until 1820.
Q 19Which river became the western boundary of Britain's North American territory under the 1763 peace?
The Mississippi
The Mississippi was split down the middle by the peace terms, though New Orleans on its east bank stayed out of British hands.
Q 20Which pair of islands off Newfoundland did France get back in 1763 as a base for its cod fishermen?
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Pierre and Miquelon gave French crews somewhere to dry their catch, and the islands are a self-governing territory of France to this day.
Saxony saw its army besieged at Pirna and forced to surrender within weeks, after which the men were pressed into the Prussian ranks under Prussian officers.
Q 24What name is given to the 1756 reversal of alliances that paired Austria with its old enemy France?
Diplomatic Revolution
Diplomatic Revolution describes a swap in which Austria left Britain for France and Prussia became Britain's ally. Even the Dutch, long tied to Britain, turned neutral.
Q 25Which influential mistress of Louis XV was asked by Austria's envoy to help broker the 1756 alliance with France?
Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour had stopped being the king's lover around 1750 but stayed on as his friend and confidante, which kept her influence at court intact.
Q 26Which new Russian tsar, an admirer of Prussia's king, pulled Russia out of the Seven Years' War in 1762?
Peter III
Peter III gave back every Russian conquest in Prussia and lent troops to his former enemy. His wife, the future Catherine the Great, overthrew him after 186 days.
Q 27Which Prussian city did Russian and Austrian troops briefly occupy in 1760 during the Seven Years' War?
Berlin
Berlin had been raided once before: in 1757 a Hungarian general slipped 5,000 men, mostly hussars, around the Prussian army and held part of the city for a night.
Q 28Which German electorate, whose ruler was also Britain's king, did France invade during the Seven Years' War?
Hanover
Hanover was knocked out of the war in 1757 when its beaten commander signed a convention with the French. Britain revoked the terms and sent the electorate back into the fight.
Q 29Which British statesman, later Earl of Chatham, directed his country's strategy for most of the Seven Years' War?
William Pitt
William Pitt tied down French troops in Germany while Britain used its naval supremacy to launch expeditions against French possessions around the globe.
Q 30At which 1757 battle did Prussia rout a French and Imperial army nearly twice its size in ninety minutes?
Rossbach
Rossbach so shook France that it refused to send troops against Prussia again, while an impressed Britain increased its financial support for the victors.