Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the treaty to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances; she intended to regain ascendancy in the Holy Roman Empire.

[1] In 1754, escalating tensions between Britain and France in North America offered the Empress the opportunity to regain her lost territories and to limit Prussia's ever growing power.

Britain aligned herself with the Kingdom of Prussia; this alliance drew in not only the British king's territories held in personal union, including Hanover, but also those of his relatives in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel.

With French forces threatening his western flank, Frederick moved to engage them, leaving some 40,000 soldiers to defend Silesia and Lusatia from the Austrians under the command of Augustus William of Brunswick Bevern.

Bevern's duty was to block any Austrian advance on Saxony; he also left Hans Karl von Winterfeldt to "assist" him.

Bevern became alarmed by the lack of his supplies, and withdrew to Görlitz, leaving Winterfeldt's corps on the opposite side of the Lusatian Neisse river, near Moys.