Voltaire's anti-war views, his hatred of war with all its brutalities, are quite prominent in Candide. In Western Europe, in South America, in Morocco, and in Turkey, warfare occurred with all its attendant horrors. Voltaire was particularly depressed by the Seven Years War, which began in 1556, the year after the Lisbon earthquake, and was still raging in Europe and in the New World when he wrote Candide. The Seven Years War, of course, was the name given to the conflict that arose from a coalition of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony against Prussia, with the aim to destroy, or at least to weaken appreciably, the growing power of Frederick the Great. Historians may point out that the war led to the emergence of Germany as a great modern power, and that it laid the foundations of the British Empire, what with English victories on the American continent. But to Voltaire it was a hideous crime. In the Battle of Prague (May 5, 1756) alone, the Germans lost 20.8 per cent of their strength; there was a comparable number of casualties on the other side, and inevitably the civilian population in the theater of war suffered greatly.
Voltaire had endeavored to play the diplomat and to bring together Frederick the Great and the Duc de Richelieu in hope that peace could be secured; he failed. On October 11, 1557, he wrote to Mme. de Saxe-Gothe that 20,000 men had already died in a quarrel in which no one was interested. And he wrote many other letters on this subject. In one addressed to M. D'Alembert, he declared that those who get themselves killed in the service of kings are terrible fools. One remembers that, while serving with the Bulgars, Candide did his best to hide himself during the conflict. So, far from depicting him as a coward in this episode, Voltaire expected his readers to applaud the youth's behavior.
