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and schemed for a judicious increase of French power, the party of action, crying, “Down with the Habsburgs", captured the King and nation. Belleisle, earnest, abstemious and soldierly in a society which lacked those virtues, led a sumptuous mission into Germany, to substitute for Austria at the head of affairs an aggrandised Bavaria crowned with the imperial crown and dependent upon France.1 French success, both in the imperial election and in war, seemed to depend on Prussia. Frederick, whose victory at Mollwitz (April 1741) proved that the only Austrian army could not drive him from Silesia, skilfully prolonged the auction at which the irreconcileables, Britain and France, "the most stupid and the most ambitious powers of Europe", bid for his support. The interference of George II, zealous for Hanover, helped to decide his Prussian rival against Britain. The British plan would have purchased by concessions in Silesia the adhesion of Prussia to a league with Austria, the Sea Powers, Russia and other States to uphold the Pragmatic Sanction, for, apart from treaty obligations, a strong Austria seemed a necessary bulwark against France. The party of no surrender at Vienna, however, relied on King George and our guarantees, and Frederick cheerfully bound himself to lay Germany and the Habsburgs at the feet of France. In a three days' struggle at Versailles, speaking for seven hours on one of them, Belleisle battered Fleury into compliance.2 In August, cheered by the news of our reverse at Cartagena, French troops crossed the Rhine, while the Swedes, prompted by France, marched against Austria's ally, Russia. Claimants to the Habsburg dominions threatened almost every province. Vienna itself, where many hoped that the Bavarian Charles Albert would drive out Maria Theresa's detested husband, Francis of Lorraine, was described as being in the state prayed for by the Scotch preacher "who asked of God to spread confusion over the earth that He might show His omnipotence in restoring order".3 But worse was yet to come, for the French advance and the menaces of Prussia drove George to approach Versailles, to declare Hanover neutral, and to promise the Bavarians his vote. British diplomacy might still be used to reconcile Frederick with Maria Theresa; Britain might raise an auxiliary army for her defence; her personality and the justice of her cause were not to be despised; and bandits like the Kings of Prussia and Sardinia were poor material for an enduring coalition. France, moreover, whose hegemony seemed to be assured when her accomplice Elizabeth seized the throne of Russia (December 1741), was justly suspected by her German confederates of aiming at their permanent subjugation. Belleisle, indispensable in the field, could not always coerce Fleury into decisive and dangerous action. French 1 Cf. Coxe, W., Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole, 1678-1757 (London, 1802), p. 232. 2 Koser, pp. 115 seqq. 3 Charteris, Cumberland, p. 109. Kluchevsky, V. O., Hist. of Russia (trans. Hogarth), IV, 314; Hildebrand, E., Sveriges historia, VII, 135 etc.

AUSTRIAN RECOVERY: TREATY OF WORMS

373 troops, none the less, wintered in Prague, and, in January 1742, the Bavarian protégé of France became the Emperor Charles VII.

How the tide turned and flowed swiftly in Austria's favour; how the Prussians and Saxons left the divided and distracted French to save themselves and their Bavaria as best they could; how the Spanish Bourbons were foiled in Italy and the Swedes in Finland-all this belongs to the chequered history of 1742. For Britain, the great event was the fall of Walpole, a peace minister forced to preside over impolitic and ineffective war. Although the King still looked to him for counsel and his former followers remained in power, the resolute Carteret became the steersman of belligerent Britain, and we turned to fight in Europe for the Protestant Succession and America. The detachment of Prussia and Saxony from the hostile coalition was a British success. Britain helped to detach Sardinia also and enabled its King to fight the better for the Pragmatic Sanction by threatening Naples with bombardment and forcing the Spanish Bourbons to be neutral. When Fleury died at ninety, in January 1743, France was already meditating a descent upon our shores to induce us to leave Germany and Italy alone.

The campaigns, both military and diplomatic, of the year 1743, however, went strongly in favour of the Hungarian Queen. While her own troops conquered Bavaria, British, Hessians and Hanoverians moved south from Flanders to shield her from the new French army of Noailles. By sheer good fortune, our stout-hearted but ill-led "Pragmatic Army" escaped destruction at Dettingen and won a resounding victory. "The devil take my uncle," wrote Frederick, "let no one name the French troops and generals in my hearing."1 He had not made peace to look on while the Austrians and Hanoverians became supreme in Germany, and he preferred to head a union of imperial States with German liberty as its watch-word. This line of thought was soon to find its parallel in Britain, though for the moment Carteret went from strength to strength. In September 1743, at Worms, he brought Sardinia into league with Austria and Britain for the more vigorous prosecution of the war, and the Dutch, Saxony and Russia took the same side. To its author, the Treaty of Worms seemed destined to end the struggle. In reality, it immediately provoked France to surrender herself to Spain, and to wage open and earnest war with Austria and Britain. At the same time it disgusted the British public with Austria, and augmented their disgust with Hanover. The miracle which saved the Habsburg at the opening of the Thirty Years' War had been repeated for his descendant, and at that "good Englishmen" rejoiced. But to lead another Grand Alliance into a Thirty Years' War for Habsburg and Guelph aggrandisement was far from their intention. Twelve years

1 To Podewils, July 1743, Politische Correspondenz Friedrichs des Grossen, п, 380.

later, their dissatisfaction bore its momentous fruit and led to the salvation of Prussia.

The campaigns of 1744 to 1747 shed much blood for little profit. In Maurice of Saxony, a natural son of King Augustus, the French found a Marlborough whose victories steadily won the Netherlands and who even snatched fortresses from neutral Holland. Against the most scientific soldier of the age and his superior numbers and supplies, the British could set no better captain-general than the King's son Cumberland, whose aim, the wits declared, was to lead his men into the hottest place he could find and to keep them there as long as possible. Dettingen, wrote his aide-de-camp, was play to Fontenoy,1 where a third of the British infantry were cut down. Great victories every year, Fontenoy, Roucoux, Lauffeldt, punctuated a chapter which Choiseul, who frankly confessed the delight of summer campaigns and Paris winters, declared was prolonged for the marshal's own advantage.2 Maurice at least added to France valuable regions which advanced her vulnerable frontiers on the north-east and at the same time would enable her to threaten her enemy across the sea. In Italy, meanwhile, fortune fluctuated from year to year as different hands clutched at the rudder which Louis was incompetent to hold. When the ministers met, jeered Paris, God's thunder was inaudible.3 In Spain, on the other hand, the death of Philip (July 1746) transferred control from his Italian Queen to the Portuguese Queen of his successor, Ferdinand VI, a change which tended towards a more rational and more successful conduct of policy and war. On the whole, however, Austrians, Sardinians and British did well in Italy, and the short-lived invasion of Provence in the autumn of 1746 formed something of a moral offset to the Belgian triumphs of the French. Continuous warfare in the Netherlands and Italy was accompanied by intermittent though conspicuous struggles in other fields. In 1744 Frederick plunged into the second Silesian war. The motive was fear lest Austria should conquer Alsace and Lorraine, Bavaria and Silesia. The course was a disastrous offensive, followed by a brilliant defensive, which saved his own jeopardised provinces and won a separate peace on the lines laid down by Britain (December 1745). It might safely be predicted that Prussia, now conscious of the antipathy of almost all Europe, would take no further part in the

war.

As between France and Britain, the year 1745 had seen two new forces help to turn the scale. Belleisle, brought captive from Hanover in 1744, declared that he could conquer the island with 5000 scullions of the French army. Next year the Young Pretender seemed to justify this boast and the tandem triumphans on his banner when he

1 Wyndham, M., Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century, 1, 134.

2 Choiseul, Mémoires, pp. 35, 44.

3 Koser, p. 218.

4 Charteris, Cumberland, p. 206.

"THE 'FORTY-FIVE": LOUISBOURG AND PEACE 375 first encountered George's troops. The work of Walpole, however, had been too well done. The old statesman, who drank to the health of his rivals for winning Dettingen, lived to see neither Fontenoy nor the fulfilment of his prophecy that the Crown would again be fought for on British soil. But his policy had weaned the masses from the Stuarts, and 1745 saw the failure of this deadly stroke by France. Thus the year which confirmed Frederick upon his throne, restored the Bavarian line, and gave the Empire once more to the House of Habsburg, also repulsed the long-drawn Stuart threat to the Protestant Succession. While the 'Forty-five ran its course, Britain replied with a colonial effort which both counted for much at the time and pointed towards great things in the future. Some 4000 militia, chiefly from Massachusetts, very efficiently aided by the King's ships, captured Louisbourg, a fortress upon which the French were said to have spent a million sterling. Only eternity, urged a divine, would be long enough for the due thanksgiving.1 Soon all Cape Breton Island was ours, "the key and protection of their whole fishery", making us the gate-keepers of North America for defence, commerce, and control of the native races. "Had we not taken Cape Breton this year and the French had taken Annapolis," it was believed, "all the inhabitants of Nova Scotia would have declared for France immediately." In London, however, neither this distant success, nor the prospect of seizing the French fishery and controlling their commerce, nor Culloden with Cumberland's repression of the Highlands, nor the triumph of ministers over the King which barred Pulteney and Carteret from power and brought Pitt into employment -none of these could dispel the gloom caused by the irresistible progress of the French in the Low Countries. Louisbourg might safeguard New England, but Antwerp imperilled Old, and Antwerp seemed defenceless against Maurice de Saxe.

2

At the close of the year, indeed, the Government raised £4,000,000 in two days and as much again was offered, while the revolution which made the King's bellicose son-in-law, William of Orange, stadholder, held out hope of more vigorous Dutch participation in the war. The Russians, too, were disposed to help Maria Theresa, and were presently reported to be moving from the Vistula to the Rhine at the rate of some two miles a day.4 To Newcastle, however, it seemed politic to desist from a war which was no longer waged for any British aim nor with any reasonable hope of reaching an anti-French decision. Though bitterly opposed by Maria Theresa, who clung to the hope of recovering Silesia, and hampered as usual by the proHanoverian intrigues of George II, Newcastle in 1747 steadily shepherded Britain and her allies towards peace. France was no less

1 Robertson, C. G., op. cit. p. 111; and vide infra, p. 525.
Anderson, I, 248.
Ibid. m, 252.

• Mordaunt to Cumberland, May 1748, cit. Charteris, Cumberland, p. 341.

weary of the financial strain of war. In 1746 she had gained Madras, but next year the victories of Anson and Hawke in the Bay of Biscay destroyed the relics of her marine and with them all present hope of victory overseas. So weary was her court of the war that the bargain was struck unknown to Spain, her sole ally, and all Flanders was given back. By the close of April 1748, France and the Sea Powers had reached an understanding at Aix-la-Chapelle, and in the autumn the impossibility of fighting on without their aid brought all Powers into agreement. The peace of 1748 bore out the theory that with Europe divided between French and British camps future conquests had become impossible. In every continent the principle of restitution prevailed. Austria, indeed, must compensate Prussia with Silesia, Spain with Parma and Piacenza, and Sardinia with the frontier of the Ticino, sacrifices which disgusted her with Britain. But she secured the Pragmatic Sanction, the surrender of her conquered Netherlands, and the return of the Empire to her House. France gave up Madras and the seaward fortifications of Dunkirk, proving her loyalty to the Hanoverian Succession by expelling the Pretender. To complete that security of Old England which had been the dominant desire of British statesmen since the death of Anne, France and Austria were induced to accept the re-establishment of the Flemish Barrier. The price was the return to France of the key of the St Lawrence, although this must mean that New England would be insecure. Britain surrendered Cape Breton, but recovered in principle her favoured position with regard to Spanish trade. The full enjoyment of her rights could be gained, however, only by negotiation at Madrid on the questions of the South Sea Company's trade and the measures to be taken against abuses. Such negotiation must in any event be tedious and uncertain. It remained to be seen whether Spanish disgust with France for abandoning her cause would outweigh the former disgust with Britain for the conquest of Gibraltar and Minorca. If, moreover, by sanctioning the rape of Silesia, the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle marked the end of the old Europe based on hereditary right, it erected no firm barrier against the resumption of the old struggle between France and Britain. In the seven years' truce which preceded the Seven Years' War, the injured Powers prepared to reverse its verdict, while France and Britain, intent on profit from overseas, moved towards their inevitable trial of strength.

1 Choiseul, Mémoires, p. 56.

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