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CHAPTER XLV.
THE WAR OF THE
AUSTRIAN SUCCESSION,
1740-1748
THE next epoch, of
which we shall treat in the two following chapters, extending from the third
Treaty of Vienna, in 1738, to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, is marked
by two wars; a maritime war between England and Spain, and the war of the
Austrian Succession. The complicated relations which arose out of the latter
soon caused these two wars to run into one; or rather, perhaps, the interest
inspired by that of the Austrian Succession caused the other to be forgotten.
Under the reign of
Charles II of Spain, the English merchants had been allowed considerable
privileges in their trade with the Spanish colonies in America. The ministers
of that King, having need of the friendship of Great Britain, had winked at the
contraband trade carried on by the English, and had exercised the right of
search indulgently. But all this was altered after the accession of Philip V.
We have seen that at the Peace of Utrecht the privilege of supplying the
Spanish possessions with slaves was assigned to the English by the Asiento for
thirty years, besides the right of sending an annual ship to the fair of Vera
Cruz. There can be no doubt that these privileges were abused by the English
merchants; while, on the other hand, useless difficulties were thrown in the
way even of the legitimate trade by the Spaniards, and illegal seizures were
frequently made by their guarda costas, or cruisers. Hence demands for redress on the
part of the English, and counter-claims on the part of Philip V, on account of
his reserved share of the profits of the Asiento, and for duties
evaded. Horrible stories were told on both sides of barbarities committed; the
tale of “Jenkins’ ears” will be familiar to all readers of English history.
Disputes also
arose respecting the boundaries of Carolina and Florida, and the feeling
against Spain ran so high in England that the peaceful Sir Robert Walpole was
at length reluctantly compelled to make some hostile demonstrations.
The position was
more important than, at first sight, it might appear to be. It was far from
merely involving some commercial questions between England and Spain. It was
nothing less than the commencement of a struggle between the Anglo-Saxon race
and the Latin nations to obtain a predominance in the colonies, and the
principal share of the commerce of the world. The Bourbon Courts of France and
Spain had again approached each other and formed a league against the maritime
and colonial power of Great Britain. In November, 1733, Philip V and Louis XV
had concluded, at the Escurial, a family
compact, in which Philip declared his intention of depriving the English of
their commercial privileges; while Louis promised to support him in that
purpose by maintaining a fleet at Brest, and equipping as many privateers as
possible. Articles in favour of French
maritime commerce were agreed upon, and Louis engaged to procure the
restoration of Gibraltar to Spain, even by resorting, if necessary, to force.
In pursuance of this treaty, the French, after the close of the war of the
Polish succession, in 1735, devoted great attention to their navy; and the
Count de Maurepas, who was to pursue the same policy forty years later
with more success, made preparations for building in the ports of Toulon and
Brest twenty-six ships of the line and thirty of; an inferior class. Spain also
had been actively employed at Ferrol and Cadiz.
The English
nation, or more properly, perhaps, the commercial portion of it, had thus taken
a juster view of its interests than the
ministry. The warlike demonstrations made by Walpole, however, extorted from
the Spanish Cabinet the “Convention of the Pardo”, January 14th, 1739. The
King of Spain engaged to pay £95,000 in satisfaction of the damages claimed by
English merchants; but, on the other hand, he demanded from the South Sea
Company, which traded under the Asiento, £68,000 for his share of
the profits of the trade, and for duties on negroes imported. If this sum were
not shortly paid, he reserved the right to suspend the Asiento, and
he declared that the Convention entered into was not valid except subject to
this declaration. Walpole endeavored to persuade the English Parliament to
accept these terms, which were fair and adequate, but the popular discontent,
stirred up by an unscrupulous Opposition, ran so high that he found himself
compelled to make preparations for war. A treaty of subsidies was concluded
with Denmark, March 25th, by which that Power engaged to keep on foot an army
of 6,000 men, for three years, at the rate of thirty crowns for each
foot-soldier, and forty-five crowns for each horse-soldier, besides an annual
subsidy of 250,000 crowns. A British fleet was sent to Gibraltar—a proceeding
which greatly irritated the Spaniards. Philip V complained of it as an insult,
and announced to Mr. Keene, the British Minister at Madrid, his determination
to revoke the Asiento, and to seize the effects of the South Sea
Company in satisfaction of his demands. This declaration brought matters to a
crisis. The English Government demanded the immediate execution of the Convention
of the Pardo, the acknowledgment of the British claims in Georgia and
Carolina, and the unequivocal renunciation of the rights of search. Spain
replied by a manifesto and declaration of war, which was followed by another on
the part of England, November 9th. Letters of reprisal had been previously
issued, by which, at the outset, the English appear to have been the greatest
sufferers. During the first three months of the war the Spanish privateers made
forty-seven prizes, valued at £234,000. All English merchandise was prohibited
in Spain on the penalty of death, so that many neutral vessels arriving at
Cadiz could not discharge their cargoes. Meanwhile Admiral Vernon, setting sail
with the English fleet from Jamaica, captured Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of
Darien, December 1st—an exploit for which he received the thanks of both Houses
of Parliament. His attempt on Carthagena, in the
spring of 1741, proved, however, a complete failure through his dissensions, it
is said, with General Wentworth, the commander of the land forces. A squadron,
under Commodore Anson, dispatched to the South Sea for the purpose of annoying
the Spanish colonies of Peru and Chili, destroyed the Peruvian town of Paita, and made several prizes; the most important of which
was one of the great Spanish galleons trading between Acapulco and Manilla,
having a large treasure on board. It was on this occasion that Anson
circumnavigated the globe, having sailed from England in 1740, and returned to
Spithead in 1744. Meanwhile France, at the demand of Spain, had begun to arm
and equip her fleets, though protesting her pacific intentions.
Scarcely had the
war broken out between England and Spain when the Emperor Charles VI died,
October 20th, 1740, soon after completing his fifty-fifth year. He was the last
male of the House of Habsburg, which had filled the Imperial throne during
three centuries without interruption. His eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, had
been appointed heir to the Austrian dominions by the Pragmatic Sanction, which
instrument had been guaranteed by most of the European Powers, and she assumed
the government with the title of Queen of Hungary and Bohemia. Maria Theresa
was now in her twenty-fourth year, handsome, with winning manners.
She had married,
in 1736, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francis of Lorraine, the man of her choice,
by whom she already had a son and heir, the Archduke Joseph. Charles VI, in the
forlorn hope that he might still have male issue, had neglected to procure the
Roman Crown for his son-in-law, and the Imperial dignity consequently remained
in abeyance till a new Emperor should be elected. After Charles's death,
therefore, the Austrian dominions figured only as one among the numerous German
States, and even with less consideration than might be due to their extent,
from the circumstance that Maria Theresa’s pretensions to inherit them might
soon be called in question. Eugene had counselled Charles to have in
readiness 200,000 men, as a better security for his daughter’s succession than
any parchment sanctions; but the Emperor had left the army in a bad state,
while the finances were exhausted by the late wars, and by his love for
magnificence and art. The abuse of the Imperial revenue had been enormous. One
of Maria Theresa’s first cares was to put a stop to this extravagance.
The announcement
of Maria Theresa’s accession to the Austrian dominions was answered by England,
Russia, Prussia, and the Dutch States with assurances of friendship and good
will. France returned an evasive answer; the Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria
refused to acknowledge the Queen of Hungary before his pretensions to the
Austrian Succession were examined and decided. These he founded not on his
having married a daughter of Joseph I—a claim which would have been barred not
only by the renunciation of that Archduchess, but also by the superior title of
her elder sister, the Queen of Poland. He appealed to two ancient
instruments—the marriage contract between Albert V Duke of Bavaria and Anne,
daughter of the Emperor Ferdinand I, and to the testament of the same Monarch;
and he contended that by these two deeds the Austrian Succession was assured to
Anne and her descendants in default of male heirs, the issue
of the Archdukes, her brothers. Maria Theresa, however, having called together
the foreign ministers at her Court, caused the testament to be laid before
them; when it appeared that it spoke not of the extinction of the male issue of
Ferdinand’s sons, but of their legitimate issue. In fact, it was intended only
to secure the Archduchess Anne against the pretensions of the Spanish branch of
the House of Habsburg, and, after the extinction of that branch, had no longer
any meaning; for, if the female issue of the Habsburg family was to have claims
to the Austrian Monarchy, the daughter of the last male was the natural
heiress. The Bavarian ambassador, however, was not satisfied. He narrowly
scrutinized the document, in hope of finding an erasure; and having failed in
that search, he boldly contended that, according to the context, the expression
“legitimate heirs” could mean only male heirs. But the
indignation against him at Vienna having grown to a high pitch, he found it
prudent quietly to leave the city. The dispute, however, between the two Courts
was continued in voluminous, unreadable documents, now almost forgotten.
The first blow
struck against the Queen of Hungary came not, however, from any of the
claimants of her inheritance, but from a monarch who had recognized her right.
This was Frederick II, the young King of Prussia, who, taking advantage of the
death of the Tsarina Anna, in the middle of December, 1740, entered the
Austrian province of Silesia with 30,000 men.
Frederick’s
father, Frederick William I of Prussia, had died on May 31st,
1740, about five months before the Emperor Charles VI. This second King of the
House of Hohenzollern disposed of the lives and property of his subjects as
arbitrarily as any Oriental despot; yet the simplicity of his life offered a
favorable contrast to the profligacy and luxury of many of the German Princes
of that age, and he had a strong and determined will, and was, on the whole, so
far as his ignorance, prejudices, and irascible temper would permit, a
well-meaning man. His very faults, however, served to prepare his son’s
greatness. His avarice and meanness had enabled him to leave a full treasury;
his military tastes, yet unwarlike character, had prompted him to get together
a large and well-appointed army, which, from his avoidance of war, descended
undiminished to his son. It may even be suspected that his bigotry and
narrow-mindedness were among the chief causes which, by virtue of their
repulsiveness, produced the opposite qualities in Frederick. The natural
temper, as well as defective education of Frederick William, whose chief pleasure
lay in attending his evening club, or “Tobacco Parliament”, led him to hate and
despise all learning and accomplishments; and hence, in the plan which he
chalked out for his son’s education, he had expressly excluded the study of the
Latin language, of Greek and Roman history, and many other subjects necessary
to form a liberal mind. But the only effect of this prohibition on the active
and inquiring mind of Frederick was to make him pursue the forbidden studies
with tenfold ardour, and to give to the acquisition
of them all the relish of a stolen enjoyment. The conduct of Peter the Great
and Frederick William I towards their sons forms a striking parallel, though in
an inverse sense. The harshness and brutality of both these Sovereigns caused
their heirs apparent to fly; Alexis ultimately met his death from his father’s
hands, and Frederick only narrowly escaped the same fate. But Peter’s hatred of
his son sprang from the latter’s desire to return to the old Russian barbarism;
while that of the Prussian King was excited by Frederick’s love of modern
civilization and art. Frederick William’s bigoted Calvinistic tenets, the long
prayers which he inflicted on his household, the tedious catechizings which his son had to endure from Nolten and other divines, instead of inspiring
Frederick with a love of religion, drove him to the opposite extreme; a natural
turn for scepticism made him a disciple of
Bayle and Voltaire. Even the arbitrary and absolute principles of his father in
matters of government and police found no sympathy, so far at least as
speculation is concerned, in the breast of Frederick II. If Louis XIV had his
maxim, L'état c'est moi, Frederick William asserted with equal force, if
not elegance, “Ich stabilire die Souveraineté wie einen rocher von
Bronze”. His son, on the contrary, at all events in theory, considered a king
to be only the servant of his people; and one of his first announcements, on
ascending the throne, was that he had no interests distinct from those of his
subjects. He immediately abolished all distinctions and civil disabilities
founded on religion, and mitigated the rigour of
the criminal law, which, under his father's reign, had been administered with,
great cruelty, not to say injustice. He also abolished many of the barbarities
practiced under the name of military discipline, and in the recruiting service.
The care, however,
which Frederick William had bestowed on the army proved of the greatest benefit
to his successor and to the Prussian nation. The great Northern War, which had
threatened to sweep Frederick William into its vortex at the commencement of
his reign, the augmentation of the power of his neighbors by the accession of
the Elector of Hanover to the throne of Great Britain, and of the Elector of
Saxony to that of Poland, as well as the growth of Russia into a large military
Power, had compelled him to keep up a considerable army. Under the care of Prince
Leopold of Dessau, who had distinguished himself in the war of the Spanish
Succession, the Prussian infantry were trained to the height of discipline. The
system, indeed, was excessively severe, but its result was to make the Prussian
army act with the precision of a machine. Vauban had already united the pike
and the musket into one arm by affixing the bayonet, and about the same time
the old inconvenient match-lock, or musket fired with a match, had been
exchanged for a fusil, or musket with flint and steel. The weapon of the
infantry soldier had thus been rendered what it continued to be down to a
recent date. The Prince of Anhalt-Dessau improved the infantry drill, or
tactics, by reducing the depth of the line from six men to three, thus
increasing the extent and vivacity of the fire; and especially by introducing
the cadenced step, the secret of the firmness and swiftness of the Roman
legions. From morning to night the Prussian soldiers were engaged in this and
other military exercises. All this was combined with smaller matters of bright
coat-buttons and spotless gaiters, which were enforced as rigidly as the more
important, and those deficient in them were subjected to the most unmerciful
floggings. But the young king knew how to select what was useful in the system,
and to reject what was superfluous; and the result, as shown in his first
battle, was very surprising.
One of Frederick
the Great’s first measures was to increase the effective force of his army by
several regiments; but at the same time he disbanded the three battalions of
gigantic grenadiers, the collecting and exercising of which had been his
father’s chief delight. Thus, having a well-filled treasury and a large and
well-disciplined army, all the means of acquiring what is commonly called glory
were at the young King’s disposal; and he candidly tells us that he resolved to
use them for that purpose, which he considered essential to the prosperity of
his reign. It was, he thought, an enterprise reserved for him to put an end to
the curious constitution of his State, and to determine whether it should be an
electorate or a kingdom. Frederick William, towards the end of his reign, had
thought himself deceived in the matter of the duchies of Berg and Ravenstein by the Emperor; a coldness had sprung up
between the two Courts; but the late King does not seem to have conceived any
project of revenge. He appears to have felt his own incapacity for entering
into a war; but, pointing to the Crown Prince, he exclaimed with a prophetic
bitterness to General Grumkow:—“There stands one
who will avenge me!”. He little imagined, perhaps, how soon his prophecy would
be realized. Yet he had evidently discovered, under those qualities which had
once excited his indignation and contempt, the superior genius of his son.
Frederick the
Great himself, soon after his accession, had found cause to complain of Charles
VI’s conduct towards him in a dispute which he had had with the Bishop of
Liege. It was a long while before he would admit to an audience the Imperial
envoy, sent to congratulate him on his accession; and when he at length
received him, he intimated that he perceived in this small affair what he had
to expect in more important matters from the friendship of the Court of Vienna.
He was thus confirmed in his father’s opinion that it was a fixed maxim with
the House of Austria rather to retard than advance the progress of the House of
Brandenburg. The subject of the Duchy of Berg formed another grievance. By a
secret treaty concluded with Charles VI at Berlin, December 23rd, 1728,
Frederick William had again promised to guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction,
provided the Emperor procured for him the Duchy of Berg and county of Ravenstein, in case of the extinction of male heirs of the
House of Neuburg; but in contravention of this
agreement, the Emperor had entered into a treaty with France, January 13th,
1739, by which it was arranged that the Duchies of Berg and Jülich should be assigned to the Sulzbach branch
of the Neuburg family, and guaranteed
against the attempts of Prussia. Had Charles VI lived, however, Frederick’s
attempt upon Silesia would most likely have been indefinitely adjourned. He had
made some preparations for obtaining possession of the Duchy of Berg, and would
probably have expended his military ardour in
that direction had not the unexpected death of the Emperor opened out to him a
more promising field of enterprise.
Frederick’s
invasion of Silesia astonished all Europe, and none more than Queen Maria
Theresa, to whom he had given the strongest assurances of friendship. These,
indeed, he reiterated after he had entered her territories with his army. He
declared to her and to all foreign courts that his only object in invading
Silesia, on which he had some ancient claims, was to preserve it from being
seized by those who had pretensions to the Austrian succession. At the same
time he proposed to the Hungarian Queen, in return for the cession of all
Silesia, a close alliance with himself, in conjunction with the Maritime Powers
and Russia, his assistance in upholding the Pragmatic Sanction, his vote for
her husband as Emperor, and an advance of two million dollars. The
high-spirited Queen, who was naturally indignant at Frederick’s conduct,
rejected these proposals with contempt. Frederick now began to bargain. He told
Maria Theresa that he should be content with part of Silesia; and he now first
brought forward in a distinct Prussian shape his asserted claims upon that
province. They related to the Silesian Duchies of Jagerndorf, Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau, and the Lordships of Beuthen and Oderberg. The Margrave John George, a younger son of the
House of Brandenburg, had held Jagerndorf, Beuthen, and Oderberg, which
belonged to that house, in appanage, at the time of the Thirty Years’ War;
but, on his taking up arms against the Emperor Ferdinand II in favour of the Palatine Frederick, the winter King of
Bohemia, these possessions had been confiscated. But it was contended that,
admitting John George to have been guilty, his fault could not annul the rights
of his minor son, still less those of the Electoral House of Brandenburg, in
which all alienation of its States was forbidden by family compacts. Liegnitz, Brieg, and Wohlau were claimed in virtue of a treaty of
confraternity and succession between the Elector Joachim II and Duke Frederick
II of Liegnitz in 1537, but declared
invalid by the Emperor Ferdinand I. On the death, in 1675, of the last Duke
of Liegnitz, of the Polish Piast family, these Duchies had been claimed by
Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg. The Emperor Leopold had,
however, persuaded the Elector to abandon his pretensions to them, as well as
to Jagerndorf; and by a treaty concluded in 1686
Frederick William had ceded his claims in consideration of receiving the
Silesian Circle of Schwiebus. By an
understanding with the Electoral Prince, Frederick, the successor of the Great
Elector, Leopold, had retained these possessions in 1694, on payment of 225,000
gulden, and on assigning to Frederick the reversion to the principality of East
Friesland and the counties of Limburg and Speckfeld in
Franconia, together with some other privileges.
Such was the
nature of the claims advanced by Frederick II. He seems not to have laid any
stress upon them himself. They were the pretence,
not the cause, of his invasion, and had they not existed, some other pretext
for making war would have been discovered. That he was not serious in asserting
them appears from his own mouth; since he tells us in his History that in the
first months of 1741 he would have been content to accept the duchy of Glogau, or that district of Silesia which lies nearest to
the Prussian borders. But in strange contrast with the speculative theories he
had laid down in his studies at Rheinsberg and
in his Anti-Machiavel, Frederick had now adopted, as an avowed principle of
action, that system of lax political morality which most other Princes were
content tacitly to follow in practice.
Maria Theresa, who
had determined not to begin her reign by dismembering her dominions, and who
had then no conception of the part which France was preparing to play against
her, again gave Frederick's proposals a flat refusal. She accompanied it with
the somewhat contemptuous promise that if he would retire he should be
forgiven, and no damages insisted on. Frederick meanwhile had pushed on his
conquests in Conquest of Silesia. They were facilitated by the want of
preparation on the part of the Austrians, and by the temper of the Protestant inhabitants,
who, in many places welcomed the Prussians as deliverers. By the end of
January, 1741, all Silesia, with the exception of Glogau, Brieg, and a few other places, had been overrun almost
without opposition. As the season prevented further operations, Frederick
returned for a while to Berlin. In March he again appeared at the head of his
army. Glogau was taken on the 9th of that
month; hence he proceeded to form a junction with Field-Marshal Schwerin, whom
he had left in occupation of the southern parts of Silesia; and ignorant of the
motions of the Austrians, who had at length assembled in force, he marched
upon Jagerndorf, on the frontiers of Moravia,
pushing on some of his divisions towards Troppau. Meanwhile Neipperg, the unfortunate commander of the Austrians at the
Peace of Belgrade, yet no bad general, who had been released from prison on the
accession of Maria Theresa, was advancing from Moravia by way of Freudenthal, at the head of 15,000 men, threatening to cut
Frederick’s line of operation by crossing the mountains towards Ziegenhals and Neisse, and boasting that he would send
the young King back to Berlin, to Apollo and the Muses. At the same time
another body of Austrians was menacing the Prussians between Jagerndorf and Troppau, and a third, under
General Lentulus, was pressing forwards
from Glatz. The Prussians were now compelled to retreat, while the
Austrians pushed on towards Ohlau, the chief
Prussian depot, and encamped about five miles beyond Brieg,
at Mollwitz and the neighbouring villages.
Neipperg’s plan of operations was well conceived, but he was too slow in
executing it. By advancing to Ohlau, he might
have seized all the Prussian artillery and stores. His march, however, had cut
off the King’s communications with Lower Silesia, and Frederick found it
necessary to risk a battle. With this view he advanced by Michelau and Lowen to
the village of Pogarell, about six miles
from Mollwitz. Here he gave his wearied troops a
day’s rest, and on the 10th of April, marched in four columns to attack the
enemy. In infantry and artillery he was much superior to the Austrians, having
16,000 foot against their 11,000, and 60 guns against 18; but his cavalry
consisted of little more than 3,000 men, while the Austrians had 8,000. This
explains the course of the battle. The Prussian cavalry were routed at the
first charge; the battle seemed lost; Frederick, at the earnest entreaty of
Marshal Schwerin, fled with all speed towards Lowen,
escorted by a squadron of cavalry; thence he pushed on to Oppeln, which he reached at night. That place had been
occupied by the Austrian hussars, and his demand for admittance was answered by
a shower of musket-balls. Frederick now rode back in all haste to Lowen, where he arrived in an exhausted state, having
accomplished between fifty and sixty miles in the day. On the following morning
he was surprised by the intelligence that his troops had gained the Battle
of Mollwitz! This result was owing to the
excellent drill of the Prussian infantry, the precision of their manoeuvres, the rapidity of their fire. Frederick now
rejoined his army, not without some feelings of shame at his premature flight
and of anger against Schwerin, the adviser of it, whom he is said never to have
forgiven. He neglected, however, to pursue his victory, and instead of
attacking the Austrians, who were retreating in disorder within a few miles of
him, remained upwards of six weeks inactive in his camp at Mollwitz.
It must be
confessed that Frederick’s first appearance against the young and beautiful
Queen of Hungary does not show his military qualities in any very favorable
light. His enterprise, however, chiefly from its sudden and unexpected nature,
was attended with substantial success. Though not apparently very decisive, the
victory of Mollwitz was followed by more
important results than perhaps any other battle of the eighteenth century. To
Frederick himself it assured the possession of Lower Silesia and the capture
of Brieg, while it established the hitherto
equivocal reputation of the Prussian troops. But its effect on the policy of
Europe was infinitely of more importance, by calling into action those Powers
which had postponed their schemes till they should have learnt the issue of
Frederick’s attempt.
We have seen that
Spain and England were already at war, that France was preparing to aid the
former Power, and that she had given but equivocal assurances to Maria Theresa,
while England was hearty in her support. Among so many claimants, in whole or
in part, to the Queen of Hungary’s dominions—the Electors of Bavaria and
Saxony, the Kings of Prussia, Spain, and Sardinia, besides other minor
pretenders—were provided all the elements of a great European conflagration;
and France considered it her interest to apply the torch. It seemed a favorable
opportunity to revive the schemes of Henry IV and Richelieu against the House
of Austria, to despoil it of a great part of its possessions, and to reduce it
to the condition of a second-rate Power, so that, on the Continent, France
might rule without control. Cardinal Fleury, indeed, now eighty-five years of
age, wanted only to enjoy repose, and to respect the guarantee which France had
given to the Pragmatic Sanction; but he was overborne by the war party. At the
head of this stood Marshal Belle-Isle, a grandson of Fouquet. Belle-Isle saw in
the affairs of Austria a favorable opportunity to oppose, and perhaps overturn,
Fleury, and to display his own diplomatic and military talents. Through the
influence of Madame de Vintimille, one of Louis
XV’s mistresses, he obtained the appointment of French minister plenipotentiary
at the Electoral Diet to be held at Frankfurt, as well as to the Courts of all
the German Princes. Thus armed with the power of mischief, he set off in the
spring of 1741 on his mission into Germany.
France, the
ancient ally of the House of Wittelsbach, had by several treaties between
1714 and 1738, promised her aid to the Elector of Bavaria, in his claims to the
Austrian succession, in case of the extinction of heirs male in the House of
Austria; but these treaties had been superseded by that of Vienna, guaranteeing
the Pragmatic Sanction, signed November 18th, 1738. France, however, remained
free to support the election of Charles Albert as Emperor; but that would not
have suited her views without also investing him with part of the spoils of
Austria. The French Cabinet had therefore projected a partition of the Austrian
dominions in the following manner:—Bavaria was to have Bohemia, Upper Austria,
Tyrol, and the Breisgau; to the Elector of Saxony was to be assigned
Moravia with Upper Silesia, with the royal title; to Prussia, Lower Silesia; to
Spain, Austrian Lombardy; while to Maria Theresa were to be left the Kingdom of
Hungary, the Lower Netherlands, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola.
Belle-Isle’s
mission was a successful one. After visiting the ecclesiastical Electors and
procuring their votes for Charles Albert, he proceeded to the King of Prussia’s
camp at Mollwitz, where he arrived towards the
end of April. The camp was soon filled with the ambassadors of other Powers,
anxious to gain the support of Frederick in the great contest which impended.
In spite of the ardent popular feeling in England in favor of Maria Theresa, it
was perceived that, after his victory at Mollwitz,
it would be necessary to make some concessions to the King of Prussia; and
Lord Hyndford, the English ambassador at the
Court of Vienna, was instructed by Walpole to conciliate him at the smallest
sacrifice possible on the part of Austria. Frederick himself was not much
inclined to weaken Austria for the benefit of French policy, and still less to
become himself dependent on France. Nor had he any inclination to work for
Saxony and Bavaria. His sole wish was to secure the greatest possible portion
of Silesia, in whatever way that object might be best accomplished. But the high
tone assumed by the Queen of Hungary, who insisted that the English and Dutch
ambassadors should require Frederick to evacuate Silesia, put an end to all
negotiation in that quarter. Neither Maria Theresa nor her minister, Bartenstein, could believe that France had any serious
intention of making war upon her, and she refused to listen to the moderate
sacrifices proposed by England. All that she could be prevailed upon to offer
was, to place Schwiebus, Grünberg, and Glogau, for a
certain time, as pledges in the hands of Frederick.
The King of
Prussia was thus, almost of necessity, thrown into the hands 0f
France. As the price of his alliance, however, he stipulated that France should
bring two large armies into the field; that she should stir up Sweden to attack
and hamper Russia; and that she should induce Augustus, the Elector of Saxony
and King of Poland, to join the league. For this last purpose, Belle-Isle
proceeded to the Court of Dresden. The conduct of Augustus, who was entirely
governed by his intriguing minister Count Brühl, had
been wavering and equivocal. The Queen of Hungary had at first counted upon his
friendship, and the guarantee which he had given; but when, in spite of the
Elector’s warning to the contrary, as one of the Vicars of the Empire during
the interregnum, Frederick invaded Silesia, Augustus, instead of remonstrating,
displayed a wish to profit by the occasion at the expense of Austria. Maria
Theresa had, therefore, found it necessary to propitiate him with the prospect
of obtaining the duchy of Saxony. Crossen, which
would connect Saxony with Poland; and he had then entered into an alliance with
her for the maintenance of the Pragmatic Sanction. Nevertheless, he claimed for
his son the exercise of the electoral vote of Bohemia, on the ground that it
could not be given by a female; and he took it very ill when Maria Theresa, to
evade this objection, made her husband co-Regent, and transferred the vote to
him. This afterwards served the Elector as a pretext for joining the Queen’s enemies,
when he saw her placed in a critical situation through the interference of
France, to whose policy he was won by the visit of Belle-Isle, and the prospect
held out to him by the Marshal of obtaining Moravia.
From Dresden,
Belle-Isle had proceeded to Munich, where, towards the end of May, 1741, he had
assisted at the conclusion of a treaty between Spain and Bavaria, at the palace
of Nymphenburg. The King of Spain pretended to
the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, by virtue of a convention between Philip
III of Spain and Ferdinand, Archduke of Gratz. By this instrument Philip
had ceded to the Archduke, his cousin, his claims to Hungary and Bohemia
through his mother, Anne, daughter of Maximilian II, reserving, however, the
rights of his descendants, in case of the extinction of Ferdinand’s male heirs.
The Court of Spain was not, however, serious in advancing these antiquated
pretensions, which, indeed, clashed with those of Bavaria, its new ally. Its
only Headed by aim was to find some pretext, no matter what, to procure for the
Queen’s second son, Don Philip, lately married to a daughter of Louis XV, an
establishment in Italy, at the expense of Austria. Spain and Bavaria were to
enjoy the Austrian spoils, according to the partition already indicated. France
made no open declaration of war against Austria. She retained the appearance of
supporting Bavaria with auxiliary troops and money, as her ancient ally, and by
virtue of the faith of treaties. The King of Spain promised to pay the Elector
12,000 piastres a month for the maintenance of 5,000 men.
The alliance
between France, Spain, and Bavaria was soon joined by other Powers. The King of
Prussia acceded to it through a treaty concluded in the greatest secrecy with
France, June 5th. France guaranteed to Frederick Lower Silesia and Breslau, and
he, in return, renounced his claims to Berg in favor of the Palatine House
of Sulzbach, favored by France, and promised his
vote for the Elector of Bavaria at the Imperial Diet. The King of Poland, as
Elector of Saxony, the King of Sardinia, the Elector Palatine, and the Elector
of Cologne, also acceded to the league. Charles Emanuel, King of Sardinia,
renewed his pretensions to the Milanese, founded on the marriage contract of
his great-great-grandfather with the Infanta Catharine, daughter of
Philip II of Spain.
To this formidable
coalition Maria Theresa could oppose only a few allies. England she regarded as
the surest of them. The English people espoused her cause with warmth; but,
while Walpole’s administration lasted, little was done in her favor except in
the way of diplomacy. George II, being in Germany, had, indeed concluded with
her a treaty called the Alliance of Hanover (June 24th, 1741), by which he
engaged to march 6,000 Danes and 6,000 Hessians to her succour,
and to pay her within a year a subsidy of =£300,000. The States-General, who at
that period generally followed in the track of England, were also in alliance
with her; but the aid of these two Powers was not for the first year or two of
much service to her cause. The Pope (Clement XII) had testified great joy at
the birth of Maria Theresa’s son, the Archduke Joseph; he was ready to lend his
spiritual assistance to the Queen, and had in a measure made Frederick’s
invasion of Silesia an affair of the Church; yet he refused her the loan of a
few hundred thousand crowns, and, by raising some pretensions to Parma and
Piacenza, even appeared to rank himself among state of her enemies. A better
prospect seemed to open on the side Russia. The Empress Anna had died a
few days after Charles VI. (October 27th, 1740). Ivan, the heir presumptive to
the throne, was an infant of two months, the son of Peter’s great-niece, Anna,
Princess of Mecklenburg, who, in 1739, had married Anthony Ulric, Duke of
Brunswick-Bevern, the brother-in-law of Frederick of
Prussia. After the death of the Empress, her favourite, Biron,
Duke of Courland, had seized the Regency, but after a few weeks was overthrown
by Miinnich and the Princess Anna (November
20th). Though Anna now became Regent, Münnich in
reality enjoyed the supreme power, till, towards the end of March, 1741, she
dismissed him as too favorable to Prussia. The Regency of Anna lasted till
December 6th, 1741, when Peter the Great’s daughter, Elizabeth Petrowna, contrived to overthrow her with the aid of only
200 private grenadiers, and became Empress of Russia. Frederick had secured the
neutrality of Russia during his invasion of Silesia through Marshal Münnich, who detested the Austrians on account of the Peace
of Belgrade; but the Regent Anna had been gained for Maria Theresa’s cause by
the handsome Pole, Count Lynar, and had promised
the Austrian ambassador, Count Botta, to support
his mistress’s cause with 30,000, or 40,000 men. But the domestic troubles of
the Muscovite Court, and subsequently the war with Sweden, prevented the
realization of this promise.
All being ready
for action, the Elector of Bavaria entered invasion of the Austrian territories
with his forces towards the end of June, 1741, and being joined in August by a
French army, he occupied Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, without striking a
blow. Here he assumed the title of an Austrian archduke, and received the
homage of the States. About the same time the King of Poland had set in motion
an army of 20,000 men to march through Bohemia, and take possession of Moravia,
his allotted portion. As the ground of his invasion, he proclaimed that Maria
Theresa had violated the Pragmatic Sanction by appointing her husband
co-Regent. He also published another manifesto, in which he asserted his wife’s
claims as well as his own to the Austrian inheritance. The former rested on the
Act of Succession made by the Emperor Leopold in 1703, as already explained. In
his own name he claimed the duchies of Austria and Styria, as descended from
the ancient Margraves of Meissen, who, on the extinction of the House of
Babenberg, in 1250, should have reaped the Austrian succession, but
had been excluded from it by the usurpation, first of Ottocar and then of Rodolph of Habsburg. Augustus also complained that the House of
Habsburg had never fulfilled its promise to procure him the succession of Jülich and Cleves, nor compensated him for the damage done
by the Swedes in Saxony in 1706, which would not have happened had the Emperor
fulfilled his treaty engagements. He also demanded large sums of money owing to
him by the Court of Vienna.
The Queen of
Hungary’s chief security lay in the jealousy which her adversaries felt of one
another, and the bad understanding which consequently prevailed among them. The
Elector of Bavaria, suspicious of the intentions of the King of Poland, instead
of marching on Vienna from Linz, turned to the left and entered Bohemia. With
the assistance of the Saxons, who were advancing from the north, Prague was
captured, November 26th; and a few days after, Charles Albert caused himself to
be crowned King of Bohemia. Meanwhile a French army of more than 40,000 men,
under Marshal Maillebois, had entered Westphalia
to observe the Dutch, who were arming, and to threaten Hanover. George II had
got together a considerable force, and was preparing to enter Prussia; but the
advance of the French, as well as the presence of a Russian army on the Elbe,
compelled him to abandon his purpose. On September 27th he concluded a treaty
of neutrality, and promised to give his vote for the Elector of Bavaria as
Emperor. At the same time, Maria Theresa was deprived of the aid which she had
expected from Russia, in consequence of Sweden, at the instigation of France,
having declared war against that Power.
When the part
which France meant to play against her Maria became at last but too plain,
Maria Theresa wrote some touching letters to Louis XV and Fleury. She is even
said to have offered Louis part of Flanders as the price of his friendship, but
without effect. To her complaints of the infraction of the guarantee given in
the last Treaty of Vienna, Fleury replied by a miserable subterfuge, and
pretended that it supposed the clause, “saving the rights of a third party”. To
this he added another subtlety. He reminded her that the Emperor had not
accomplished the principal article of the treaty, by procuring the sanction of
the States of the Empire to the definitive peace. The French invasion had
struck Maria Theresa like a thunderbolt. To the last moment she had refused to
believe that the French Cabinet would be guilty of so gross a breach of faith.
Now everything seemed to threaten impending ruin. She had no allies but the
English, and they were far away; she had no money, and scarcely any army.
Silesia had been occupied, and Bohemia was threatened with the same fate. In
this extremity of misfortune she turned her eyes towards Hungary. The House of
Habsburg had but small claims to the gratitude of that country. The Hungarian
Constitution had been overthrown by her grandfather, Leopold, who had converted
it from an elective into an hereditary Monarchy. Maria Theresa had, indeed,
attempted some amends. At her coronation, in the preceding May, she had taken
the famous oath of King Andrew II, the Magna Carta of the Hungarians;
omitting only, with the consent of the Diet, the clause which allowed armed
resistance against the Sovereign. The Hungarians, as we have said, had
recognized the Pragmatic Sanction, and, though their ancient customs excluded
females from the throne, they had proclaimed Maria Theresa after her coronation
as their King (June 25th). Among this gallant but restless people, she sought a
refuge on the approach of her enemies. According to the well-known story, she
appeared before the Diet at Pressburg clothed
in mourning, with the Crown of St. Stephen upon her head and the sword of the
Kings of Hungary at her girdle. In this costume she presented to the assembly
her little son, whom she carried in her arms, telling them that she had no
longer any hope for her own safety, and that of her family, but in their valour and fidelity; when the chief Magyars, moved by
the sight of so much beauty and majesty in distress, at these touching words
drew their sabres, crying enthusiastically, “Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria
Theresa”. In reply to her appeal, the Diet unanimously voted the
“Insurrection of the nobles”, or levée en masse of 30,000 foot and 15,000 horse, besides 20,000 recruits for the
regular army. Whole hordes of Croats, Pandours, Redmantles, and other tribes dependent on Hungary, flew to
arms for the Queen, led by such famous partisan chiefs as Mentzel, Trent, Barenklau,
and others. Including these tribes the Kingdom of Hungary must have provided at
least 100,000 men. The Tyrolese also rose almost in a mass. The ill-advised
march of the Elector of Bavaria into Bohemia afforded time to prepare and arm
these levies. During Maria Theresa’s retreat at Pressburg,
her fortune seemed to lie, in a great measure, in the hands of Frederick II,
who, with a superior force, was separated only by the Neisse from the sole army
which she held in the field, and threatened it with an immediate attack. In
these circumstances she listened to the advice of the English Ambassador to
conciliate the Prussian king by some concessions. Frederick had promised France
and Bavaria to do nothing without their concurrence, and, therefore, he would
not commit himself by any written engagements. But at the Castle of Klein-Schnellendorf, and in the presence of Lord Hyndford, he came to a verbal agreement with the Austrian
generals, Neipperg and Lentulus, that he would content himself with Lower Silesia,
with the addition of the town of Neisse; from which, after a little sham
fighting, the Austrians were to retire unmolested. Frederick required that the
agreement should be kept a profound secret, and the draft of it bore only the
signature of Lord Hyndford.2 A definitive treaty was to be made, if possible,
before the end of the year.
After this
convention, Frederick expressed the liveliest interest for the Queen of
Hungary; yet he broke it in a month, and perhaps had never intended to observe
it. Indeed one might almost suspect that his object was merely to get
possession of Neisse and Upper Silesia, without having to fight for them. The
tenor of the twelfth article, which empowered part of the Prussian army to take
up its winter quarters in Silesia, seems to favor this supposition. A few weeks
after the conclusion of this convention, on the pretext that the secret had not
been kept, Frederick renewed his connection with the anti-Austrian party by a
secret alliance with Saxony and Bavaria at Frankfurt (November 1st), and by
another Treaty of Guarantee with the latter Power at Breslau (November
4th); by which the Elector, as King of Bohemia, ceded to the King of Prussia,
for 400,000 dollars, the county of Glatz, although it was not yet
conquered. Meanwhile the Austrians, after a few mock engagements, had
surrendered Neisse to the Prussians and evacuated Silesia; and before the end
of the year the Prussians occupied Troppau, and even entered Moravia.
During these events the Franco-Bavarian and Saxon armies had marched upon Prague,
as already related.
The Imperial
election was now approaching. The Electoral Diet having assembled at Frankfurt
in January, 1742, on the 24th of that month the Elector of Bavaria was
unanimously chosen King of the Romans and Emperor Elect. The Electors who
belonged to the alliance, Saxony, Brandenburg, Cologne, were of course in his
favor; the Palatine was his cousin; the Elector of Hanover, George II, as we
have said, had bound himself by treaty to vote for Charles Albert; those of
Mainz and Treves had been compelled to do so by the threats of Belle-Isle. In
order to render the election unanimous, and also apparently to avoid
recognizing Maria Theresa as the lawful possessor of Bohemia, the Electoral
College had excluded the vote of that Kingdom. The new Emperor was crowned
February 12th, and assumed the title of Charles VII. But at the moment when he
had attained the object of his ambition, his own territories were being
occupied by the Austrians. Maria Theresa’s Hungarian forces were now in motion;
20,000 men, with the addition of drafts from the Lombard garrisons, under
General Khevenhiller, recovered Upper Austria in
January. A Franco-Bavarian corps, under Count Segur and
General Minucci, surrendered Linz by
capitulation on the 24th of that month. Another Austrian army, under the Grand
Duke of Tuscany, augmented by the troops withdrawn from Silesia, after the
Convention of Klein-Schnellendorf, which thus proved
of temporary advantage to Maria Theresa, entered Bohemia. Khevenhiller, reinforced by 6,000 Croats who had penetrated
through Tyrol, invaded Bavaria in February, and took possession of Munich on
the 13th, only a few days after Charles VII’s election had been celebrated in
that capital.
On the other hand
the King of Prussia had been advancing in Moravia, Olmütz was taken, December 26th. A Prussian division which had been dispatched into
Bohemia subdued the town and county of Glatz, with the exception of the
castle, in January, 1742. When the Austrians were penetrating into Bavaria,
Frederick saw the necessity of making a diversion by marching upon Vienna, in
conjunction with a French and a Saxon corps. But dissension was already
springing up among the allies. Augustus III, or rather his minister, Brühl, was lukewarm in prosecuting a war from which Saxony
was to derive but little benefit in comparison with Prussia. He excused himself
from furnishing heavy artillery for the siege of Brünn on
the ground of want of money, although only a little before Augustus had given
400,000 dollars for a large green diamond! At Znaym the
Saxons refused to march further southwards. A body of 5,000 Prussians pushed
on, and a party of their hussars showed themselves at Stockerau,
only about twenty miles from Vienna. This advance caused 10,000 Austrians to be
recalled from Bavaria, and arrested Khevenhiller’s further
progress towards the west. But the ill support which Frederick met with from
his allies and the approach of the Austrian and Hungarian forces compelled him
to evacuate Moravia with all his army and to retreat into Bohemia. During this
march negotiations went on under the mediation of Lord Hyndford for
a peace between Frederick and Maria Theresa. The latter, however, would concede
nothing; a bitter spirit was engendered, and Frederick resolved to settle their
differences by the arbitrament of a battle with his pursuer ; which
took place on May 17th in the neighborhood of Czaslau.
The Austrians, commanded by Prince Charles of Lorraine, had slightly the
advantage in point of numbers, but Frederick was much superior in artillery.
After a long and hard-fought battle, the Austrians retired in good order
behind Czaslau, where Frederick forebore to pursue them.
This victory was
hailed by the Emperor as a fortunate event; but Frederick had resolved once
more to change sides, and the negotiations with the Court of Vienna were
renewed. He had now exhausted the greater part of his father's hoards, and he
was discontented with and suspicious of his allies. He had discovered that
Cardinal Fleury was in secret correspondence with the Court of Vienna, and that
the French Court was willing that Sweden, in a peace with Russia, should be
compensated at the expense of his Pomeranian dominions. Maria Theresa on her
side had been induced by the English minister to make larger concessions. Under
these circumstances the preliminaries of a peace were concluded at Breslau,
June 11th, 1742, and were followed by the definitive Treaty of Berlin, July
28th. By the preliminaries Prussia was to obtain both Lower and Upper Silesia,
except the principality of Teschen, the town
of Troppau, and the district beyond the Oppa and
in the mountains; also, the county of Glatz. But these concessions were
somewhat curtailed in the definitive peace. Frederick refused to give any
active aid to the Austrian cause, and stipulated only for his neutrality.
George II, both as King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, the Empress of
Russia, the King of Denmark, the States-General, the House of Brunswick, and
the King of Poland as Elector of Saxony, were included in the peace; the last,
however, only on condition that he should, within sixteen days after formal
notice, separate his troops from the French army and withdraw them from
Bohemia. Augustus III. hesitated not to avail himself of this article, and
reconciled himself with Austria by reciprocal declarations, without any regular
treaty. George II. guaranteed the preliminaries of Breslau by an Act signed at
Kensington, June 24th, 1742; and in the following November, Great Britain,
Prussia, and the States-General entered into a defensive alliance by the Treaty
of Westminster.
In consequence of
these arrangements the French, under Belle-Isle, deprived of the co-operation
of the Prussians and Saxons, were forced by the manoeuvres of
Charles of Lorraine to shut themselves up in Prague, where they were blockaded
by the Austrians under Count Konigseck. Prague
was bombarded by the Austrians on August 19th; but the approach of Maillebois with the French army of Westphalia
compelled them to raise the siege and attack Maillebois,
whom they drove with considerable loss into Bavaria. Here, however, he obtained
some compensation for his failure in Bohemia. Having joined Field-Marshal Seckendorf, who had quitted the Austrian service for that
of Charles VII, their united forces succeeded in expelling the Austrians and
Hungarians from Bavaria before the close of the year 1642. After Maillebois’s retreat the Austrians had again blockaded
Prague. But Belle-Isle succeeded in escaping with 16,000 men on the night of
December 15th, and after unspeakable sufferings, during a ten days’ march in a
rigorous season, he arrived, though with great loss, at Eger, on the frontier
of the Upper Palatinate. Hence he reached France early in 1743, with only
12,000 men, the remnants of 60,000 with whom he had begun the campaign. The
small garrison which he had left in Prague obtained an honorable capitulation,
December 26th.
The fortunes of
Maria Theresa in other quarters had been favorable as she might reasonably have
anticipated. In Italy, the King of Sardinia had been detached from the
confederacy of her enemies. Alarmed by the arrival of large Spanish armies in
Italy, Charles Emanuel signed a convention, February 1st, 1742, by which he agreed
to aid the Queen of Hungary in defending the Duchies of Milan, Parma, and
Piacenza; reserving, however, to some future time his own pretensions to the
Milanese. Towards the end of 1741, 15,000 Spaniards entered the Tuscan ports,
and, in January, 1742, further reinforcements landed in the Gulf of Spezia. The
Spanish fleet which conveyed them was accompanied by a French one; an English
fleet, under Admiral Haddock, was also in those waters; but the French admiral,
having given Haddock notice that if the Spaniards were attacked he should
assist them, the English admiral, who did not feel himself a match for both,
retired into Port Mahon. It is said, however, that his object in not attacking
the Spaniards was to make the King of Sardinia feel his danger and alter his
politics. The Spaniards under Montemar were joined by some Neapolitan
troops under the Duke of Castropignano. The
Spaniards had for their allies Naples and Modena; all the other Italian
potentates had declared their neutrality, and among them even Maria Theresa’s
husband, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, with the view of preserving his dominions.
The Italian campaign of 1742 proved, however, altogether unimportant. The
English fleet, appearing before Naples, compelled Don Carlos, by a threat of
bombardment, to declare his neutrality (August 20th). Don Philip and the Count
de Glime, having entered Provence with 15,000
Spaniards, endeavored to penetrate into Piedmont by way of Nice; but being
repulsed, they entered Savoy by St. Jean Maurienne,
and occupied Chambery early in September. At the beginning of the following
month, however, on the approach of the King of Sardinia and General
Schulenburg, they hastily evacuated Savoy. The Spaniards and Neapolitans in
Lombardy were repulsed by the Austrians, who entered the Modenese, and
drove the Spaniards into the Pontifical States. In the north of Europe, the
attack of Sweden upon Russia, undertaken in an evil hour, at the instigation of
the French, had resulted only in disaster to the Swedes.
The treaties by
which the great Northern War had been concluded seemed to have placed the
Scandinavian kingdoms in a position to enjoy a long period of tranquillity. This was really the case with Denmark, where
the wise and paternal government of Frederick IV, who died in 1730, and of his
successor, Christian VI, was, during many years, almost solely occupied with
the care of preserving the peace and increasing and consolidating the national
prosperity. Sweden, however, adopted a different line of policy. She could not
digest the losses inflicted upon her by the Treaty of Nystadt,
and the war in which the question of the Austrian Succession had embroiled
Europe seemed to present a favourable opportunity
to avenge her injuries.
Unfortunately,
however, the form of government which had been adopted in Sweden since the
revolution of 1719, rendered her peculiarly unfit for such an enterprise. The
new constitution had been principally the work of Count Arved Horn, one of the chiefs of the old nobility.
Horn wished to put an end to the absolutism of Charles XI and Charles XII; but
he introduced in its stead only the abuse of popular freedom clothed in legal
forms. King Frederick I, the husband of Ulrica Eleanora, who was also
reigning Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, had neither talent nor resolution to oppose
these innovations, but tamely submitted to all the dictates of the oligarchy.
It was not he that governed, but the Council, or rather that member of it who,
as President of the Chancery, stood at the head of the Ministry. The Council
itself, however, whose members were elected by a deputation from which the
fourth estate, or that of the peasants, was excluded, was under the control of
the Secret Committee of the Diet. To this committee, from which it received its
instructions, and which had the power of retaining it or dismissing it from
office, the Council was obliged to give an account of its proceedings from one
Diet to another. The real power of the State, therefore, was vested in the
Secret Committee, which consisted of 100 members; of whom fifty belonged to the
Order of the Nobles, twenty-five to the clergy, and twenty-five to the burgher
class. The Order of the Peasants was here also excluded. Such a constitution,
of course, threw the chief power into the hands of the nobility. This class,
the majority of which consisted, as in Poland, of impoverished families with
lofty pretensions, whilst it thus tyrannized at once over king and people, was
itself the sport of faction. The heads of the different parties sold themselves
to foreign Powers, which sought either to retain Sweden in a state of weakness
or to make her the tool of their own interests. The two chief factions were led
by Counts Horn and Gyllenborg. Horn held the chief power and governed wisely.
Like Fleury, Walpole, and Patino, he was a peace
minister, and was opposed to an adventurous foreign policy. Till the year
1734, Gyllenborg’s faction had inclined to
Russia, that of Horn to France; but at the Diet of that year they changed
sides, and in June, 1735, Gyllenborg persuaded the Secret Committee to conclude
a Treaty of Subsidies with the Court of Versailles. Count Horn, however,
having, shortly afterwards, brought about an alliance with Russia, France refused
to ratify the Treaty of Subsidies. The poorer nobility, a numerous body, whose
chance of bettering themselves lay only in war, and many of whom served in the
French army, were loud in their complaints of the King’s love of peace, and now
added their weight to the Gyllenborg party. It was the policy of the Court of
Versailles to foment the hatred of the Swedes against Russia, with the view of
hampering that power in its war with Turkey, and of increasing the royal power
in Sweden. Since the late revolution, Sweden had become almost a nullity,
because a warlike policy required the convocation of the States of the kingdom
; and hence, under this system of government, the alliance of Sweden was almost
useless to France. Great Britain, on the contrary, together with Denmark and
Russia, favored a state of things which seemed to insure the maintenance of
peace.
Count Horn was now
driven from office by the Secret Committee, composed almost wholly of members
of the Gyllenborg faction; and in their disputes at the Diet of 1738 the war
and peace factions reciprocally bestowed upon each other the nicknames of Hats
and Nightcaps. The conquest of Livonia was the object of the Hats,
or war party, who, in November, 1738, effected a treaty with France for an
alliance of ten years, during three consecutive years of which France was to
furnish an annual subsidy of 300,000 crowns. Count Gyllenborg was placed at the
head of the administration, and the influence of France in Sweden became
supreme. A brutal act on the part of the Russian Government envenomed the
hostility of the Hats against that Power. The more extended
political relations which had sprung up in the eighteenth century, chiefly
through the appearance of Russia as a great Power, now embraced Europe through
its whole extent. Nations which had formerly been almost ignorant of one
another’s existence, or, at all events, profoundly indifferent to one another’s
policy, now found themselves brought into contact by common interests and
sympathies. The vast extent of the Russian Empire, touching Sweden on the north
and Turkey on the south, had united the Scandinavian and the Osmanli against
a common aggressor; and the Swedish Government had perceived that the aid and
friendship of the Sublime Porte would be of essential service to it in any
contest with Russia. In January, 1737, a Treaty of Commerce had been concluded
with the Porte; and in the following year Major Malcolm Sinclair was dispatched
to Constantinople to negotiate a Treaty of Alliance and Subsidies.
These negotiations
had excited the jealousy and suspicion of the Russian Government, which was
then at war with the Porte. In order to learn the object of them it was
determined to waylay and murder Sinclair, and to seize his dispatches, and the
consent of the King of Poland’s Ministry, as well as of the Cabinet of Vienna,
was obtained to any act of violence which might be perpetrated on Sinclair
during his journey. On his return from Constantinople, in June, 1738, he was
tracked and pursued through Poland by some Russian officers; but it was not
till he had reached Silesia that they found a convenient opportunity to attack
him. The Austrian magistrates at Breslau gave them a warrant to pursue him; he
was overtaken near Grüneberg, dragged from his
carriage into a neighboring wood, where he was shot and his dispatches seized.
These, after they had been duly read by the Russian officials, were transmitted
to Gyllenborg, who then filled the post of Swedish Vice-Chancellor, by the
Hamburg post, in a well-sealed and apparently original packet. One Couturier,
however, who had accompanied Sinclair on his journey, and who, on his arrival
at Dresden, had, at the instance of the Russian Ambassador in that capital,
been confined for a short period at Sonnenstein,
on his arrival at Stockholm, in August, related all that had happened. The
Russian Empress Anna, in a circular to the foreign ministers, disclaimed all
knowledge of this barbarous violation of international law; the murderers of
Sinclair were banished into Siberia, and they were not released till the
accession of Elizabeth. But the fate of Sinclair roused in Sweden a cry for
vengeance which reechoed through the Kingdom. The Hats seized
the occasion to lash the old national hatred of the Swedes against the Russians
into fury. Towards the end of 1739 a defensive alliance was concluded with the
Porte; preparations were made for an attack upon Russia, and troops were
dispatched into Finland; but the Peace of Belgrade, which enabled Russia to
march 80,000 men to Finland, and the advice of France induced the Swedish
Government to postpone the hour of vengeance.
The breaking out
of the war of the Austrian Succession seemed to offer a favorable opportunity
for attacking Russia. France, in order to divert the Russian forces from Prussia,
now exhorted the Swedish Government to avail themselves of it; and, by
encouraging the plans of the Princess Elizabeth against the government of the
infant Tsar Ivan, and the Regent Anna, his mother, endeavored to embarrass the
Russian Government. An extraordinary Diet, convoked at Stockholm, declared war
against Russia, August 4th, 1741. The Swedes charged the Court of St.
Petersburg with violating the Peace of Nystadt,
interfering with the Swedish Constitution, especially as regarded the
succession to the throne, prohibiting the exportation of grain from Livonia,
excluding the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp from the Russian throne, and finally, with causing the assassination of Major
Sinclair. The object of Sweden was to reconquer the boundaries which she had
possessed in 1700. But the dominant party took not the proper steps to insure
success. Finland, the destined theatre of war, was unprovided with
troops and magazines; and General Lowenhaupt, to
whom the chief command was entrusted, had neither military knowledge nor
experience. The hopes of a diversion by the Ottoman Porte were proved to be
ill-founded, and even the expectations founded on the French alliance proved
exaggerated.
The war which
ensued was shamefully conducted through the selfishness of the Swedish
oligarchy. It was interrupted for two or three months by an armistice
consequent on the revolution, which, in December, 1741, placed the Empress
Elizabeth, second daughter of Peter the Great, on the throne of Russia. The Empress
Anna might have ruled without control, and probably have transmitted the throne
to her son Ivan, had Elizabeth been left to the quiet enjoyment of her peculiar
tastes. Her indolence made her utterly averse to business. She would never have
thought of encumbering herself with the care of government had she not been
restricted in her amusements, reproved for her behavior, and, what was worst of
all, threatened with a compulsory marriage with the ugly and disagreeable
Anthony Ulric, of Brunswick-Bevern, brother of
the Regent’s husband. At the instigation, and with the money, of the French
ambassador, La Chetardie, a revolution was
effected, in which Lestocq, a surgeon, son of a
French Protestant settled in Hanover, and one of Elizabeth’s friends, was the
chief agent. In the night of December 5th, 1741, Elizabeth was escorted by
about a hundred soldiers of the guard, who had previously secured the officer
of the watch, to the Winter Palace, where they were joined by the rest of the
soldiery. The Empress, her son Ivan, and his sister, and all the members of the
Government were arrested by their own sentinels, and by eight o'clock in the
morning the revolution was accomplished. The Empress and her husband were
conducted under custody from one place to another; while the unfortunate Ivan
was thrown into a dungeon. Marshal Münnich, Ostermann,
and others were banished to Siberia.
Elizabeth, in a
manifesto which she published on the day of her accession, declared that the
throne belonged to her by right of birth, in face of the celebrated
ukase, issued by her father in 1722, which empowered the reigning Sovereign to
name his successor, and her whole reign promised to be a Muscovite reaction
against the principles of reform and progress adopted by Peter the Great. On
communicating her accession to the Swedish Government, she expressed her desire
for peace, and her wish to restore matters to the footing on which they had
been placed by the Treaty of Nystadt. The
Swedes, who took credit for having helped the revolution which raised her to
the throne, demanded from the gratitude of the Empress the restitution of all
Finland, with the town of Wiborg and part
of Carelia; but Elizabeth, with whom it was a point
of honor to cede none of the conquests of her father, would consent to nothing
further than the re-establishment of the Peace of Nystadt.
On the renewal of the war the Swedes were again unsuccessful in every
encounter. General Bousquet, who had succeeded Lowenhaupt,
cashiered for incapacity and afterwards beheaded, concluded a disgraceful
capitulation with the Russians, September 4th, 1742, by which ten Finnish
regiments were disarmed, and the Swedish regiments permitted to return home
only on condition of abandoning all Finland.
These events
spread consternation throughout Sweden. Peace was now earnestly desired, and
the Diet was summoned to deliberate on the situation of the Kingdom. The
Swedish Queen, Ulrica Eleanora, who, in spite of her close affinity
with the House of Holstein, was always decidedly opposed to it, had died,
November 23rd, 1741; and the Diet, in order to conciliate the Empress
Elizabeth, resolved to name her nephew, Charles Peter Ulric, Duke of
Holstein-Gottorp, to the succession of the Swedish
throne. But Elizabeth had higher views for that young prince. Before the
arrival of the Swedish deputies at St. Petersburg, she had declared him Grand
Duke and heir presumptive of the Russian throne, and he publicly embraced the
Greek confession of faith.
At this period
Russia renewed her alliance with Great Britain, with a view to the preservation
of the general peace of Europe, and especially that of the North. By the Treaty
of Moscow, December 11th, 1742, the two Powers were reciprocally to help and
advice each other in their wars, except those which Russia might wage with the
Ottoman Porte and the East, or those which England might be carrying on in the
Spanish peninsula and in Italy. The Kings of Poland and Prussia and the
States-General were to be invited to accede to the treaty. This alliance
increased the difficulties of the Swedish Government, and caused them to look
to Denmark, as the only Power which could aid them in their distress. A project
was formed to renew the ancient union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms, and
Christian VI of Denmark, on condition that his son Frederick should be
appointed to the succession of the Swedish Crown, offered the aid of twelve
ships of the line, and of an army of 12,000 men. The report of this alliance
helped the Swedes in their negotiations with Russia in the Congress already
opened at Abo in Finland. The Russians wished to preserve the greater part of
their conquests; but the menace of the Swedish plenipotentiaries that if a
peace were not concluded by June 26th, 1743, the Prince Royal of Denmark should
be elected to succeed to the Swedish throne, induced the Court of St.
Petersburg somewhat to moderate its pretensions. Elizabeth wished to procure
the Crown of Sweden for Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp,
Bishop of Lübeck, who was the guardian of her nephew, Charles Peter Ulric.
Preliminaries were signed and an armistice agreed on, June 27th: when, after
the election of Adolphus Frederick by the Swedes, the restitution of the
Swedish provinces by Russia was to be arranged in a definitive treaty.
The peasants
of Dalecarlia, incited, it is said, by a promise
of assistance from Denmark, and supported with Danish money, opposed the
election of the Russian nominee. They even entered Stockholm in arms, and it
became necessary to employ the regular troops against them. After this
insurrection had been quelled, the Bishop of Lübeck was elected, July 4th,
1743; and the treaty of peace was then proceeded with and signed, August 17th.
By the Treaty of Abo Sweden ceded to Russia in perpetuity all the provinces and
places assigned to the latter Power by the Peace of Nystadt.
Russia, on the other hand, restored her recent conquests, except the Province
of Kymmenegord, the towns and fortresses
of Friedrichshanm and Willmanstrand, and some other places. Henceforth the
river Kimmene was to form the boundary of
the two States. The inhabitants of the places ceded by Sweden were to enjoy
their former civil and religious privileges. The Russians insisted upon a
clause for the extradition not only of fugitive criminals, but even subjects.
By this peace
Sweden for ever renounced the hope of
recovering the provinces situated on the Gulf of Finland. The conclusion of it,
and the election of Adolphus Frederick of Holstein as successor to the Swedish
Throne, had nearly involved Sweden in a war with Denmark. Christian VI prepared
to assert by force the rights of his son; George II, as Elector of Hanover, was
disposed to assist him; while the Empress of Russia sent to the aid of Sweden a
formidable fleet and army, and promised a subsidy of 400,000 roubles. After much negotiation, however, an arrangement
was concluded in February, 1744, by which the Prince Royal of Denmark renounced
his pretensions to the Swedish Succession.
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