Madame Loudon laughed, for her husband was then eight-and-thirty, and the baton of a marshal seemed yet to be a long way off. In 1756 the Seven Years' War was threatened. A league was formed by the Court of Vienna for stripping the King of Prussia of his dominions. The French threatened the electorate of Hanover, and formed an alliance with Sweden and Austria against Britain and Prussia, the king of which, on receiving evasive answers from Vienna as to the object of the Austrian armaments, prepared for immediate strife. Anxious for employment, and remembering, perhaps, the manner in which Frederick II. had insulted him at his levee in Berlin, the enterprising spirit of Loudon induced him to visit Vienna and solicit a command against Prussia; but having left his regiment without obtaining leave of absence, he was on the point of being reprimanded and ordered back to Croatia, when by good fortune he obtained the friendship and patronage of Prince Kaunitz, the head of a noble family, whose possessions lie on the Iglau in Moravia. By the prince's interest he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of eight hundred Croats. These wild and hardy troops were destined to be ordered on every desperate service, and as their mode of fighting resembled in every respect that of the Pandours, Loudon was well fitted to command them; more especially as he had acquired their dialect while quartered in their native province. They were all clad in short waistcoats with sleeves, long white breeches, light boots, and rough huzzar caps. They had each a long firelock with a rifle barrel and short bayonet, a crooked sabre, and brace of pistols. This corps formed part of five thousand Croats levied by the Empress-Queen for the new war against Prussia. Like the Pandours of Baron Trenck, they had no pay or provisions, but such as their swords and the terror of their presence won them; and as irregular troops they were a scourge wherever they marched. On the 29th of August, 1756, the King of Prussia entered Saxony at the head of seventy battalions of foot and eighty squadrons of horse, in three columns, which marched by three different routes, but formed a junction at Dresden and captured it. The Elector, who was King of Poland by the title of Augustus III., took refuge in a camp at Pirna, while Frederick marched into Bohemia and found the Austrians encamped at Lowositz under Marshal Count Brown, who was defeated there in October; and after a long and bloody contest forced to retire in rear of Egra.