spending the next ten years in half-military, half-administrative work in the Karlovac district on the Military Frontier. At Bunić, where he was stationed, he built a church and planted an oak forest now called by his name. He had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel when the outbreak of the Seven Years' War called him again into the field. From this point began his fame as a soldier. At first rejected by General Wilhelm Reinhard von Neipperg, he soon was promoted colonel at the behest of Chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz and distinguished himself repeatedly. He drew attention at the small but much reported night raid on Ostritz on 1 January 1757 and during that year fought in Bohemia and Saxony under Feldmarschall Maximilian Ulysses Browne and became a Generalfeldwachtmeister (equivalent to major-general) of cavalry as well as a knight of the newly founded Maria Theresa Military Order. In the Third Silesian War campaign of 1758 came his first opportunity for fighting an action as a commander-in-chief, and he used it so well that Frederick the Great was obliged to give up the siege of Olomouc and retire into Bohemia (Battle of Domstadtl, 30 June). He was rewarded with the grade of lieutenant-field-marshal and having again shown himself an active and daring commander in the campaign of Hochkirch, he was created a Freiherr in the Austrian nobility by Maria Theresa and in the peerage of the Holy Roman Empire by her husband the emperor Francis. Maria Theresa gave him, further, the grand cross of the order she had founded and an estate near Kutná Hora in Bohemia. He was placed in command of the Austrian contingent sent to join the Russians on the Oder, and participated in Kunersdorf alongside Pyotr Saltykov where a joint Russo-Austrian contingent won a great victory. As a result, Laudon was promoted Feldzeugmeister and made commander-in-chief in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. In 1760 he destroyed a whole corps of Frederick's army under Fouqué at the Battle of Landeshut and stormed the important fortress of Glatz. In 1760 he sustained a severe reverse at Frederick's hands in the Battle of Liegnitz (15 August 1760), which action led to bitter controversy with Daun and Lacy, the commanders of the main army, who, Laudon claimed, had left his corps unsupported. In 1761 he operated, as usual, in Silesia, but he found his Russian allies as timid as they had been after