ministers, none the less, had the best of reasons for the "absurd peevishness" with which they placed the eventual recovery of Silesia before all other objects. Silesia had been the Habsburgs' best province. Its loss not merely damaged their prestige both in Germany and throughout their heterogeneous empire but constituted a grave strategic threat both to Prague and to Vienna. More weighty still was the shock which the rape of Silesia gave to the moral basis upon which all States rested and dynastic Austria most of all. "The Prussian soldier and his atheist theory", it has even been maintained,2 "had compassed the first mere conquest of European territory which had been achieved by any European power" since Europe had been Christian. If Silesia remained Prussian, European anarchy would begin. His Most Christian Majesty, indeed, the Habsburgs' hereditary foe, was as little moved as was the British public by such refinements. To the one Prussia formed an efficient if untrustworthy ally, while the other could not regret Protestant success in a domestic quarrel between Germans. Since Silesia had become Prussian, the interest on the Silesian loan had been paid, a duty which Austria had consistently neglected.3 Prussia's remaining neighbours, however, viewed her rise with less indifference. Augustus, Elector of Saxony and King in Poland, could not be unaware that Saxony and Polish Prussia ranked next to Silesia on the list of Prussian desiderata. Elector George of Hanover distrusted and detested his nephew Frederick on every ground. Sweden, a distracted Power threatened with dissolution, feared for her remnant of Pomerania. In Russia, Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great, now reigned (1741-62). Indolent and dissolute as she was, her deepest feelings were outraged by Frederick's life and tongue, and she never lacked energy when it was a question of removing such an obstacle to the advance of Russia as this satirist of herself and standing offence to God. Such were the clouds on Prussia's horizon which made it possible to argue that of all possible allies for Britain Frederick was the worst, since he must bring with him the enmity of all Europe. In 1748, therefore, a British servant of George II had two chief problems to consider, a German and a French. The rise in Germany of a Power inherently aggressive, spending five-sixths of its revenue upon armaments, and fettered neither by geography nor by morality in its advance, rendered further aggression or counter-aggression certain, whether Frederick lived or died. No less certain was the renewal of the strife between France and Britain. Conscious of what we had gained by the destruction of the French marine and the dissipation of the Stuart threat, we could await without dismay the 1 F.O., Prussia, 65, Mitchell, Berlin, 24 June 1756. 2 Belloc, H., Marie Antoinette, p. 8. Satow, Sir E., The Silesian loan and Frederick the Great, p. 2. THE PROBLEM OF ALLIANCES 463 outbreak of such a struggle, if only it was uncomplicated by the intrusion of other Powers. On and across the seas our superiority was enough for victory. On land, however, our inferiority was no less marked. And on land we were painfully vulnerable both in the Netherlands, which were vital to the nation, and in Hanover, which was vital to the King. So long as George II remained alive, British policy must be swayed by that separate interest which prompted the words "Your America, your lakes, your Mr Amherst might ruin you or make you rich, but in all events I shall be undone".1 The famous constitutional formula of the Princess of Wales, "The King may sputter and make a bustle, but" [when the ministers say it is necessary for his service] "he must do it" might hold for domestic politics but not for British-Hanoverian. We were, therefore, indeed become "an insurance office for Hanover", and with such risks as France and Prussia impending, the premium would be a high one. 2 In the Netherlands, indeed, we reckoned upon help from the Emperor, who owned them, and from the Dutch, to whom it was a vital interest that they should not be French. Austria, however, might contend with some reason that, since the defence of these provinces was vital to the Sea Powers, and since the commerce of Ostend and of Antwerp was restricted for their advantage, they should regard it as their privilege to do the work themselves. Austrian pride was outraged by the renewed stipulation in 1748 for a chain of forts to be garrisoned by the Sea Powers and to defend the Austrian Netherlands against France. If, therefore, France and Prussia remained allies, a future Silesian war meant for Austria either the detachment of an enormous garrison to hold the Netherlands or, at the peace, the sacrifice for their redemption of what she might have conquered nearer home. The connection between France and Prussia, indeed, was so embarrassing to Austria that it might well prompt her to reconsider the policy traditional since Charles V. Why should the House of Habsburg continue to regard itself as bound by fate to struggle always and everywhere against the House of Bourbon? The crime of France against the Pragmatic Sanction seemed as nothing in comparison with that of Prussia, and at Aix-la-Chapelle the deepest wounds had been inflicted not by France but by Britain. If post-war France were anywhere aggressive, it was beyond the seas, in regions with which Austria had no concern. In Kaunitz, moreover, Austria now possessed a statesman capable of new ideas, and one who by 1749 had already framed a project of entente with France.4 That France would consent seemed indeed to many as improbable as that Austria would ever 1 Williams, 1, 384. 2 Dodington, Diary, 8 Feb. 1753. 3 Cf. Rousset, Recueil historique d'actes, etc. 1, 37 seqq.; and Koch et Schöll, Histoire abrégée des traités de paix, n, 420. 4 Koser, R., König Friedrich der Grosse, 1, 474. ask. Newcastle pooh-poohed the idea,1 and, fed with the ordinary fair words of diplomacy, persisted for seven years more in endeavouring to galvanise and fortify "the old system". But in the argument: France and Britain must stand opposed; Austria must regain Silesia; for this purpose Britain can give less help than France, there lay too much of truth to perish, and the ever-famous Revolution in Alliances of 1756 was the result. If indeed "the old system" were not moribund beyond hope, the conduct of the British Government during the six years after 1748 cannot be called unwise. The sluggishness or ill will of Austria, the mainstay of "the old system", was overlooked, and every opportunity of propitiating her was eagerly accepted. To spare her susceptibilities, Britain shunned a new entente with France.2 George II laboured unceasingly to secure the succession of Maria Theresa's firstborn to the imperial crown and actually procured the marriage of her second son to a Modena princess. The great object of reconciling the Habsburgs with the Dutch was in part at least accomplished. Sardinia, invaluable to Austria in Italy, was secured so far as such a term could ever be appropriate to her inconstant and shifting alliance. It was hardly less important to Austria than to Britain that Spain should stand aloof from France, and the cleavage between these Bourbon Powers was happily maintained. Above all Britain prepared to follow the advice given by Kaunitz in October 1749 by securing Russia, "a power raised up by Providence to supply the losses the alliance had suffered in the late wars, and to bring things. to their ancient equality". Within four years the rumour ran that 30,000 Russians had been brought into Livonia, with the plain intent of forbidding Frederick to move. France threatened in that case to despatch an equal force to Flanders, but no long time elapsed before Britain returned to the idea. If "the old system" meant that Prussia might be paralysed by a British-paid Russian army, Vienna would not lightly let it go. In March 1754, then, when "Pelham fled to heaven", and Newcastle, unchallenged alike in the Foreign Office and in Parliament, succeeded, the peace of eastern Europe seemed unstable. Armed beyond all precedent, the conqueror of Silesia could hardly be expected to remain contented with a single acquisition, or to view with passive tolerance the hostile entente with which he was confronted. Have I", he once exclaimed, "a nose intended to be pulled?" and his attitude, uninfluenced by niceties of law save when they favoured him, was well displayed when in 1752 he suspended the payment of 1 F.O., Germany, 180, to Keith, 3 March 1749 O.S. 2 Ibid., 1749, passim. 3 Ibid., 191, 14 Aug. 1753. 4 Conversation with Keith; cf. F.O., Germany, 30 Oct. 1749. F.O., Germany, 191, 21 Sept. 1753. FRENCH AND BRITISH IN AMERICA 465 his debts to individual Britons in order to convert their Government to his view. The populations and resources of his enemies were perhaps eight times superior to his own and their comparative efficiency was growing. If Frederick lived, a preventive war, if not a war of retribution, could hardly be long delayed. Yet, as posterity knows well, war broke out first between France and Britain and forced itself upon their reluctant statesmen as the result of local quarrels outside Europe. In the Britain of 1754, King, premier, chancellor, secretaries of state, heads of the Army and Navy -each seemed less likely than the other to design a great war about America, and the Commons at that time existed only to register the ministers' decrees. The late war had been one "in which Great Britain and France gained nothing but the experience of each other's strength and power".2 France had been the more exhausted and remained in the feebler hands. Puysieulx, the author of the peace, had even proclaimed a vision of the two States, supreme by sea and land respectively, united as in 1717 to dictate peace to Europe. The local and spontaneous strife of their nationals in India was stifled at any cost. So pronounced was the novel accent of his ally, and so clear the signs of her degeneracy, that Frederick came to regard her alliance as of doubtful value. Beyond the Atlantic, however, a different tone prevailed. When the history of colonial expansion, British and Russian alike, throughout the nineteenth century is reviewed, the folly of ascribing conscious duplicity to Louis XV and his ministers becomes apparent. On the North American mainland the French continued as they had begun, preferring the fur trade to axe and plough, ranging far afield rather than pursuing intensive development, organising empire instead of multiplying homes. Since Canada, theirs by every title, was severed from the mother country by waters often impassable and always commanded by British coasts and islands, it would have been strange if they had not sought to connect that province with their sally-port at New Orleans. Always more intelligent and often more humane than the New Englanders towards the Indians, they were strengthening this connection by building forts and expanding their empire by conversion and by annexation. Year by year, while the French and British commissioners at Paris vainly strove to determine boundaries, these accomplished facts grew more numerous. La Galissonière, who as Governor of Canada had in 1749 initiated the aggressive defensive of French America against the instinctive expansion of the British masses, enjoyed the luxury, two years later, of rending asunder the juridical cobwebs spun by our statesmen to veil some of these proceedings. With regard to Nova Scotia, he declared, the boundary claims of Britain rested on the assumption that France had never possessed it save by her gift, and upon an interpretation of the Treaty of Utrecht invented some forty years afterwards and contradicted by the documents which she herself produced.1 The French claims on the Ohio doubtless lay open to an equally destructive analysis. But in the whole collision2 English critics, like those of every country and of every age, saw clear proof of the unscrupulousness of the foreign Government and of the incompetence of their own. To the younger Horace Walpole the sins of the French in evading the due evacuation of Tobago and other islands and in disturbing Nova Scotia seemed to be but part of a scheme of general aggression overseas. "In the East", he declared, "they were driving us out of our settlements, and upon the coast of Africa seizing our forts, raising others, inveigling away our allies, and working us out of our whole negro and Gold Coast trade." Although the French king was at this time steeped in pleasure, his ministers of foreign affairs transient phantoms, and his diplomatists parodies upon their predecessors, it is true that the interests of France and Britain overseas clashed so sharply that in many regions desultory fighting had gone on unchecked by peace in Europe. Louisbourg had been refortified and, early in 1751, news reached Whitehall that no fewer than 7800 troops had left Rochefort for the colonies.5 In America French reinforcements found a field where though the British residents might be twenty times the more numerous, expeditionary forces were reckoned only by hundreds, while bands of cannibals stood ready to join the victors. To maintain French claims on the Ohio the mere show of local force might be enough. In other disputes meanwhile the French were trying British patience but by no means challenging to war. After discussions prolonged over several years, it was arranged that the four disputed West India islands, St Lucia, Dominica, St Vincent and Tobago, should be evacuated until the question of right could be determined. The method seemed drastic, and the Governor of Martinique protested that he could not hunt the settlers out like wild boars, but the pacific Puysieulx gave way. In 1753, moreover, the dreaded works at Dunkirk, which were supposed to contravene the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle, were actually submitted to inspection, though the result proved that British suspicion was well founded. More inflammatory and no less juridically obscure were the unending quarrels with regard to Nova Scotia. Here boundaries, allegiance and development were all contested. In 1749 the town of Halifax had been created, and in three years its population, mainly of disbanded soldiers, passed 4000. This challenge to Louisbourg impelled the 1 Mémoires des commissaires sur les possessions et les droits respectifs des deux couronnes en Amérique (Paris, 1755), 1, 181. 2 Cf. Carlyle, Frederick the Great, bk xvi, chap. xiv. 4 Williams, 1, 218. Memoirs (finished Oct. 1759), 1, 82. |