Europe Goes to War, Part III
War! What is it good for?
King Louis XV of France
In the spring of 1744, the Pragmatic Allies seemed to be in an unimpeachable position. Prussia had been removed from the equation with the cession of Silesia, and as a result Austrian armies had conquered Bavaria, crossed the Rhine into Alsace, and were poised to invade Naples as well. The British had been battered at Toulon, a surprising result for the great maritime power, but had inflicted heavier material losses upon the French at Dungeness shortly thereafter and scuttled a French plan to invade England. Yet the War of the Austrian Succession was plagued by overreach, a folly which Austria was hardly immune to. The Neapolitan invasion came to nothing, and nearly cost Austria its Italian territories after Genoa entered the war on the side of the Bourbons and ushered a Spanish army into Lombardy. In the Netherlands, a French offensive led by King
Louis XV himself (and more importantly, his brilliant commander
Maurice de Saxe) swiftly conquered Dutch-held fortresses with an ease that stunned the Dutch and British. But the heaviest blow fell in August, when Prussia abruptly repudiated its treaty with Austria and invaded Bohemia.
Such a turn, which struck the courts of Europe like a thunderbolt, deserves some explanation. By the 1742 Treaty of Berlin, Queen
Maria Theresa of Hungary had ceded most of Silesia to
Friedrich II of Prussia. For Austria, it had been a painful but necessary expedient, and the dividends had paid off immediately. Without Prussian support, the French and Bavarians were rapidly chased from Bohemia, and eventually evicted from Germany altogether. But although his own actions had allowed it to happen, this success did not sit well with Friedrich, who evidently had expected the French to put up more of a fight. The treaty with Prussia which Austria had made under duress might not be honored when she was supreme, and the omission of any reference to the Treaty of Berlin and its terms in the 1743 Treaty of Worms deeply worried him. But the fundamental problem was that there was no outcome which offered security to the ambitious Friedrich. He had defected from the French alliance because he did not wish to be constrained by an Empire dominated from Paris, but the only alternative appeared to be an Empire dominated from Vienna, whose intrepid queen he had wronged.
Friedrich prepared the ground for his reentry into the war by portraying himself as a zealous servant of the Wittelsbach emperor
Karl VI Albrecht, who (in Friedrich’s stated view) had been illegitimately deprived of his territories. To this end, in May of 1744 Friedrich founded the (initially secret) “Union of Frankfurt,” a pact between Prussia, Bavaria, the Electoral Palatinate, and Hesse-Kassel to defend the empire and the territories and privileges of its emperor. The parties of the union called for a general truce to peacefully resolve the dispute, but if that should not be forthcoming they pledged to defend each other's territories and called upon France to fulfill its obligations pursuant to the Peace of Westphalia to defend the German states. For Friedrich, all this was merely a convenient fiction. He had nothing but contempt for the emperor, from whom he even concealed information about the Union. “We keep it mostly secret from the poor Kaiser,” Friedrich wrote of his diplomatic efforts, “who is apt to blab.” Friedrich’s real objective was to justify the actions which he had already determined to take, actions which he was only delaying until he could obtain suitable concessions from France.
King Friedrich II of Prussia
Friedrich’s offer was to help reconquer Bohemia for the emperor in exchange for a few pieces of additional territory, including northern Bohemia across the Elbe and that part of Silesia which Austria still possessed. Aside from territorial concessions, however, Friedrich was looking for a deeper commitment from France. Not satisfied with the French offensive in the Netherlands, he wanted a full French invasion of Germany; France, in turn, demanded direct Prussian assistance to Spain. Both sides ultimately moderated their positions. The Spanish demand was dropped, while Friedrich was able to secure a promise from France that they would at least pursue the Austrian army of Prince
Karl Alexander back over the Rhine. Satisfied that he would receive no better conditions, Friedrich launched his invasion of Bohemia with 80,000 men.
Austria proved better able to parry this attack than Friedrich had expected. It helped that London had just sent Vienna another £150,000 to expand her army, and that Maria Theresa was able to turn to her loyal Hungarians once more and raise another 25,000 or so “insurrection” troops. But Friedrich’s own miscalculations are primarily to blame for the failure of the 1744 invasion. The French turned out to be a broken reed, for the Austrian army of Prince Karl and Field Marshal
Otto Ferdinand, Graf von Abensperg und Traun proved swifter in retreat than expected, while the army of Marshal
Adrien Maurice, Duc de Noailles performed only a perfunctory harassment of the retreating Austrians. Once the French belatedly crossed the Rhine in September, Noailles turned south to begin a strategically meaningless siege of Freiburg im Breisgau, and sent a corps into Bavaria under Lieutenant-General
Henri François, Comte de Ségur which did not greatly inconvenience the Austrians. Furthermore, Friedrich had inexplicably failed to take Saxony into account, whose elector
Friedrich Augustus (also King Augustus III of Poland) had reluctantly sided with France in 1741-42 but had since been convinced to join the Austrian cause. The elector furnished the Austrians with 20,000 Saxon troops, which when combined with Prince Karl’s army and the corps of FZM
Károly József Batthyány amounted to 70,000 men.
King Friedrich had advanced with great speed to try and crush the retreating Austrians between his own forces and those of the French, but the failure of the French to make an appearance and the unexpected strength of the Austrians left him overextended. Friedrich could only retreat, but in the process his position collapsed entirely. Traun waged a Fabian campaign of countermarching and harassment, refusing to face Friedrich in battle while Austrian irregulars and Bohemia’s defiant subjects wreaked havoc on Prussian supply lines. The King of Prussia had a formidable and well-trained army, but he had neglected its logistics and now paid the price. The temperature dropped, provisions became scarce, disease spread, and in the end the vaunted discipline of the Prussian army collapsed. Without a single pitched battle, the Prussians were routed and ejected from Bohemia entirely with heavy losses, and the Austrians followed this up with a counter-invasion of Upper Silesia, where they went into winter quarters. Having embarked upon a new war to humble Austria and expand his dominions, the King of Prussia would now have to struggle merely to retain what was already his.
By the end of the year it was clear that the advance of the Pragmatic Allies had been checked. The ambitious conquests of Alsace and Naples had been abandoned, France advanced steadily in the Netherlands, and most of Bavaria was liberated by Ségur in the absence of Austrian forces. Austria and her allies had succeeded in parrying enemy invasions of Bohemia and Piedmont, but the Pragmatic cause was now on the defensive everywhere except Silesia, where Maria Theresa thought she might be able to reverse the humiliation of the Treaty of Berlin.
Much depended on the strategy of France, whose options were numerous. The original purpose of the war, or at least France’s participation in it, had been to dethrone the Habsburgs and prop up Karl Albrecht as a client emperor. If that aim was still primary, it suggested that France ought to commit itself most forcefully to war in Germany. But this project was met with some reluctance by French generals and certain statesmen, who had been soured on German adventures by their previous failure in 1741-42 and had little confidence in Friedrich’s allegiance to the Bourbon-Wittelsbach cause. Some preferred the Netherlands as an avenue of advance, logistically unchallenging and evidently easier since the Dutch army had demonstrated itself to be a thoroughly rotten edifice which could not even hold the greatest masterpieces of Vauban against French siegeworks. For his part, Friedrich wanted the French to attack Hanover so as to strike Vienna’s paymasters, the British, more directly.
And then there was Italy. Here French intervention was driven less by strategic considerations than the personal interest of the king, who felt obligated by family ties (and a lingering sense of guilt over Sardinia’s duplicity) to assist his uncle King
Felipe V of Spain in his quest to gain a principality for his youngest son, Don
Felipe. Yet although Louis was motivated to aid his Spanish relatives, working with them had proved more difficult than anticipated as the failure of the 1744 campaign had demonstrated, and it was not at all clear what France’s role in Italy would be henceforth or how much the French would contribute to that theater.
The rudderless drift of French policy was driven in large part by the fact that the king himself was running it. Since Cardinal Fleury’s death in January of 1743, French politics had not been dominated by any one man. Since April of 1744 France had actually been without a foreign minister, as
Jean-Jacques Amelot de Chaillou had been sacked as a consequence of the failed invasion of England and was not immediately replaced. The king had presumed to take the portfolio for himself, but because Louis was neither capable of nor very interested in doing the job it was farmed out informally to a council of ministers. It took the stunning collapse of French policy in late 1744, with the routing of Prussia from Bohemia and the humiliating failure of the Italian campaign, to convince Louis to put someone at the helm of France’s foreign affairs. That man was
René Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marquis d’Argenson.
Undoubtedly d’Argenson was an intelligent man and a diligent worker. But he was more familiar with philosophy and political theory than the actual functioning of diplomacy and politics, and it showed. It is all well and good for a statesman to have principles, but d’Argenson frequently mistook philosophical principles for actionable policy. He had a vision for the proper order of Europe and France’s place in it which he had arrived at through his philosophical study, but with no experience in foreign policy and no real capacity for intrigue - a serious deficiency in a diplomat - his attempts to realize it were often impractical or counterproductive. It was joked by some that he had dropped into politics straight out of Plato’s
Republic.
In d’Argenson’s view of the world, France was not an ambitious country. It was a satisfied power with no inclination towards conquest. France’s natural role was to be the arbiter and guarantor of Europe, the benevolent power gliding above all who preserved peace and stability among Europe’s lesser states in a harmonious and just “European republic.” The chief enemies of this order, and thus of France, were the grasping empires which sought to dominate Europe’s peoples by conquest. First among these was Austria: above all, the Habsburg colossus had to be destroyed, and the obvious first step was to deny them the empire and dismantle Maria Theresa’s imperial dominions. In this respect, at least, he was part of a long tradition of anti-Habsburg French foreign policy in the vein of Belle-Isle a few years earlier and Richelieu a century before.
But then he took a sharp turn in an unexpected direction, for Austria was not the only ambitious empire which d’Argenson saw as a disturbance to France’s peace. The other was Spain. By denying Austria the imperial crown, d’Argenson wrote, France had helped Germany “shatter a colossus of greatness that had enchained their liberty. Well, let us do as much in Italy.” Spain, in his view, was a destabilizing force in Europe, and an obstructor of an “ideal” Italy, which would consist of small native states under France’s benevolent hegemony. France’s present alliance with Madrid was but a millstone around France’s neck. “The destiny of Spain,” he lamented, “is always to ruin us.” And d’Argenson knew exactly who was to blame for Spain’s present course - Queen
Elisabetta Farnese, for whom he reserved the worst of his contempt. He much preferred Carlo Emanuele, whose country he considered to be an excellent example of a “free” and appropriately-sized Italian state which could serve as an ideal buffer for France, and would be doing so now had Spanish greed not forced Carlo Emanuele into the arms of Austria. Yet d’Argenson’s hatred of Spain did not change the fact that Louis felt obligated by blood and honor to support his dear relatives.
By the end of 1744, King Louis had arrived at a framework for peace which he believed would be satisfactory for France. As it pertained to Italy, the king maintained that the creation of a principality for Don Felipe remained France’s primary war goal. The king suggested that Savoy and Nice (then occupied by the French and Spanish) would suffice for this purpose, and that in exchange the Sardinians should be given some of the Austrian Milanese. Insofar as the installation of Felipe in Savoy was an expansion of the odious Spanish crown in Italy, d’Argenson was not in favor of it, but his job was to do the king’s bidding. He argued, however, that to satisfy Sardinia it would be necessary to richly reward them, perhaps with
all of the Milanese. Convinced that Carlo Emanuele could be won over in this way, d’Argenson’s plan called for an emphasis on the German war and the scaling back of French military commitments in Italy and the Netherlands, where the Sardinians and Dutch could be pried away from their allies by more diplomatic means.
And then on the verge of its execution, the whole plan collapsed, for in January of 1745 the Holy Roman Emperor abruptly died. Karl VII Albrecht was only 47 years old, but while his death came suddenly it was probably not a surprise to those who were close to him and knew how bad his health really was. He had been stricken by gout for years - he was nearly paralyzed with it on the day of his coronation - and by 1745 his health was obviously deteriorating. An autopsy revealed lesions on his heart, lungs, and liver. His short reign had been spent in misery and disappointment, and largely in exile from his own country. “Misfortune will not leave me before I leave it,” the emperor had said not long before his death, and he was proven correct.
Undaunted by this setback, d’Argenson argued that France should support Karl Albrecht’s heir in the electorate, his 18 year old son
Maximilian III Joseph. Everything possible had to be done to restore Maximilian to his hereditary lands and prevent Grand Duke Franz Stefan from gaining the imperial crown. He assured Louis that Maximilian would be loyal, and in the interim attempted to confound Franz Stefan’s election prospects by proposing the Elector of Saxony as a candidate, notwithstanding the fact that Friedrich August was presently Austria’s ally. Yet the king-elector displayed little interest in this proposal, and Maximilian proved less reliable than d’Argenson had imagined. He was not so young as to have missed the past few years in which his country had been repeatedly ravaged and his father reduced to a helpless, despondent exile on a French leash. He vacillated between the advice of the pro-war party and the pro-peace party in his own court, until his mind was made up for him by a swift invasion of Bavaria by Batthyány in March. Ségur was on hand to meet him, but the French were outnumbered and unsupported by the Bavarians, who abandoned their positions and left the French to fend for themselves. That Field Marshal
Friedrich Heinrich von Seckendorff, Bavaria’s top general, was a key member of the “peace party” might have played a role. The French were ejected from Bavaria, Austria’s plundering irregulars were unleashed once more upon the electorate, and Maximilian faced the prospect of exile from his country like his father before him. He could take no more, and sued for peace.
Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria
It took only one week after Batthyány’s defeat of Ségur for Maximilian and Maria Theresa to agree to a peace treaty. She would return all the Bavarian lands and acknowledge that Karl VII had been a legitimate emperor, and in exchange Maximilian would quit the French alliance, ratify the Pragmatic Sanction, and support the candidacy of Franz Stefan for the imperial crown. The last point was crucial because while Maximilian himself was only one elector, he could credibly promise the vote of Cologne as well, also held by a Wittelsbach, and such support would be necessary for the success of Franz Stefan’s candidacy.
These terms were somewhat surprising for their leniency; Batthyany held Bavaria in the palm of his hand, and the Queen could conceivably have extracted a much greater cost from the upstart electorate which had dared to try and steal her patrimony and dragged Europe into war. Yet Maria Theresa was not presently inclined to demand territorial concessions. After the Treaty of Berlin she had considered exacting her “compensation” for the loss of Silesia from Bavaria, but now that Friedrich II had torn up his own treaty Silesia was once more up for grabs. Karl Albrecht, being dead, could not be punished, and the Queen of Hungary saw no reason to antagonize a humbled foe who bore no personal responsibility for the war. Far better to win Bavaria’s loyalty and gain territory at the expense of a man she detested far more, the King of Prussia.
D’Argenson stubbornly believed that Friedrich August might still be induced to run, perhaps because of the king-elector’s evasive public stance that while he would not seek the crown, he would not turn it down if it was offered. If such an outcome was possible, however, it would have required French action, and that was sorely wanting. France’s army of the Rhine was 50,000 strong, and if it had been used decisively much may have been accomplished. But d’Argenson refrained from using this cudgel, as he believed that Friedrich August would not want to be perceived as being foisted upon the empire by French arms as Karl Albrecht had been. His forbearance rendered the French irrelevant, leaving Austria free to campaign vigorously for Franz Stefan’s election and to concentrate most of their forces against the Prussians in Silesia.
The King of Prussia was astonished and enraged, for the betrayer had now become the betrayed. Friedrich had re-entered the war fortified with promises of French assistance. Instead, France had failed to effectively pursue the Austrians retreating over the Rhine, failed to save Bavaria before it was overrun by the Austrians and knocked out of the war, and failed to do anything with their Rhenish army while Austria prepared for an invasion of Silesia. He pleaded with the French to send an army to Bohemia, or to put pressure on Austria’s British paymasters by attacking Hanover. But the French would do neither. From 1745 the War of the Austrian Succession was really two wars fought in parallel: The “Second Silesian War,” in which Austria and Saxony fought against Prussia for control of Silesia, and a broader European war between the Worms allies and the Bourbon powers in Italy and the Netherlands for more vaguely defined goals. They were related only insofar as Austria was involved in both, for Prussia and the Bourbons had ceased to be “allies” in any meaningful sense.
It is reasonable to ask at this point why the war did not end in the spring of 1745. Austria and Prussia were clearly still at odds, but why did France continue to take the offensive given that their original reason for war, to enthrone the Wittelsbachs upon the imperial seat, was clearly moot? Conquest was not a motive, because France aspired to none - in fact the only war goal Louis had outlined which directly benefited France was the lifting of treaty restrictions on the fortification of Dunkirk, a pitifully small gain for years of war. The war, it may be argued, was now chiefly about honor: France had to appear the victor lest she suffer the infamy of defeat, and to do that it was necessary to force a "just" peace upon Austria even if the only beneficiaries of that peace were the Genoese Republic and a Spanish princeling. This was not totally vacuous reasoning, as prestige and martial reputation were not meaningless in 18th century power politics; if France could not fulfill her obligations to her clients and allies, perhaps she was not so formidable as was thought. Yet as Louis’ government raised taxes, confiscated private wealth, conscripted men into the military, and otherwise plundered France to continue pressing on towards victory, one wonders whether the kingdom would not have been better served by ending a war which appeared to no longer serve French ends.
