Part 100

Louis sought peace, and was willing to go far in surrenders to obtain it. But the allies pressed him too hard in their demands. They would have him not only abandon the Bourbon dynasty that he had set up in Spain, but join them in overthrowing it. He refused to negotiate on such terms, and Fortune approved his resolution, by giving decisive victories to his arms in Spain, while dealing, out disaster and defeat in every other field. England grew weary of the war when it came to appear endless, and Marlborough and the Whigs, who had carried it on, were ousted from power. The Tories, under Harley and Bolingbroke, came into office and negotiated the famous Peace of Utrecht (1713), to which all the belligerents in the war, save the Emperor, consented. The Emperor yielded to a supplementary treaty, signed at Rastadt the next year. These treaties left the Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., on his throne, but bound him, by fresh renunciations, not to be likewise King of France. They gave to England Gibraltar and Minorca, at the expense of Spain, and Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay at the expense of France. They took much more from Spain. They took Sicily, which they gave to the Duke of Savoy, with the title of King; they took Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia, which they gave to Austria, or, more strictly speaking, to the Emperor; and they took the Spanish Netherlands, which they gave to Austria in the main, with some barrier towns to the Dutch. They took from France her conquests on the right bank of the Rhine; but they left her in possession of Alsace, with Strasburg and Landau. The great victim of the war was Spain.

France at the death of Louis XIV.

Louis XIV. was near the end of his reign when this last of the fearful wars which he caused was brought to a close. He died in September, 1715, leaving a kingdom which had reasons to curse his memory in every particular of its state. He had foiled the exertions of as wise a minister, Jean Colbert, as ever strove to do good to France. He had dried the sources of national life as with a searching and monstrous sponge. He had repressed everything which he could not absorb in his flaunting court, in his destroying armies, and in himself. He had dealt with France as with a dumb beast that had been given him to bestride; to display himself upon, before the gaze of an envious world; to be bridled, and spurred at his pleasure, and whipped; to toil for him and bear burdens as he willed; to tread upon his enemies and trample his neighbors' fields. It was he, more than all others before or after, who made France that dumb creature which suffered and was still for a little longer time, and then began thinking and went mad.

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Charles XII. of Sweden.

While the Powers of western Europe were wrestling in the great war of the Spanish Succession, the nations of the North and East were tearing each other, at the same time, with equal stubbornness and ferocity. The beginning of their conflict was a wanton attack from Russia, Poland and Denmark, on the possessions of Sweden. Sweden, in the past century, had made extensive, conquests, and her territories, outside of the Scandinavian peninsula, were thrust provokingly into the sides of all these three neighbors. There had been three Charleses on the Swedish throne in succession, following Christina, the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. Queen Christina, an eccentric character, had abdicated in 1654, in order to join the Catholic Church, and had been succeeded by her cousin, Charles X. The six years reign of this Charles was one of constant war with the Danes and the Poles, and almost uniformly he was the aggressor. His son and successor, Charles XI., suffered the great defeat at Fehrbellin which gave prestige to Brandenburg; but he was shielded by the puissant arm of Louis XIV., his ally, and lost no territory. More successful in his domestic policy than in his wars, he, both practically and formally, established absolutism in the monarchy. Inheriting from his father that absolute power, while inheriting at the same time the ruthless ambition of his grandfather, Charles XII. came to the throne in 1697.

In the first two years of his reign, this extraordinary young autocrat showed so little of his character that his royal neighbors thought him a weakling, and Peter the Great, of Russia, conspired with Augustus of Poland and Frederick IV. of Denmark to strip him of those parts of his dominion which they severally coveted. The result was like the rousing of a lion by hunters who went forth to pursue a hare. The young Swede, dropping, instantly and forever, all frivolities, sprang at his assailants before they dreamed of finding him awake, and the game was suddenly reversed. The hunters became the hunted, and they had no rest for nine years from the implacable pursuit of them which Charles kept up. He defeated the Danes and the Russians in the first year of the war (1700). In 1702 he invaded Poland and occupied Warsaw; in 1704 he forced the deposition of the Saxon King of Poland, Augustus, and the election of Stanislaus Leczinski. Not yet satisfied, he followed Augustus into his electorate of Saxony, and compelled him there to renounce the Polish crown and the Russian alliance. In 1708 he invaded Russia, marching on Moscow, but turning aside to meet an expected ally, Mazeppa the Cossack. It was the mistake which Napoleon repeated a century later. The Swedes exhausted themselves in the march, and the Russians bided their time. Peter the Czar had devoted eight years, since Charles defeated him at Narva, to making soldiers, well-trained, out of the mob which that fight scattered. When Charles had worn his army down to a slender and disheartened force, Peter struck and destroyed it at Pultowa. Charles escaped from the wreck and took refuge, with a few hundreds of is guards, in the Turkish province of Bessarabia, at Bender. In that shelter, which the Ottomans hospitably accorded to him, he remained for five years, intriguing to bring the Porte into war with his Muscovite enemy, while all the fruits of his nine years of conquest in the North were stripped from him by the old league revived. Augustus returned to Poland and recovered his crown. Peter took possession of Livonia, Ingria, and a great part of Finland. Frederick IV., of Denmark, attacked Sweden itself. The kingless kingdom made a valiant defense against the crowd of eager enemies; but Charles had used the best of its energies and its resources, and it was not strong.

Near the end of 1710, Charles succeeded in pushing the Sultan into war with the Czar, and the latter, advancing into Moldavia, rashly placed himself in a position of great peril, where the Turks had him really at their mercy. But Catherine, the Czarina, who was present, found means to bribe the Turkish vizier in command, and Peter escaped with no loss more serious than the surrender of Azov. That ended the war, and the hopes of the Swedish king. But still the stubborn Charles wearied the Porte with his importunities, until he was commanded to quit the country. Even then he refused to depart,--resisted when force was used to expel him, and did not take his leave until late in November, 1714, when he received intelligence that his subjects were preparing to appoint his sister regent of the kingdom and to make peace with the Czar. That news hurried him homeward; but only for continued war. He was about to make terms with Russia, and to secure her alliance against Denmark, Poland and Hanover, when he was killed during an invasion of Norway, in the siege of Friedrickshall (December, 1718). The crown of Sweden was then conferred upon his sister, but shorn of absolute powers, and practically dependent upon the nobles. All the wars in which Charles XII. had involved his kingdom were brought to an end by great sacrifices, and Russia rose to the place of Sweden as the chief power in the North. The Swedes paid heavily for the career of their "Northern Alexander."

Alliance against Spain.

Before the belligerents in the North had quieted themselves, those of the West were again in arms. Spain had fallen under the influence of two eager and restless ambitions, that of the queen, Elizabeth of Parma, and an Italian minister, Cardinal Alberoni; and the schemes into which these two drew the Bourbon king, Philip V., soon ruptured the close relations with France which Louis XIV. had ruined his kingdom to bring about. To check them, a triple alliance was formed (1717) between France, England and Holland,--enlarged the next year to a quadruple alliance by the adhesion of Austria. At the outset of the war, Spain made a conquest of Sardinia, and almost accomplished the same in Sicily; but the English crushed her navy and her rising commerce, while the French crossed the Pyrenees with an army which the Spaniards could not resist. A vast combination which Alberoni was weaving, and which took in Charles XII., Peter the Great, the Stuart pretender, the English Jacobites, and the opponents of the regency in France, fell to pieces when the Swedish king fell. Alberoni was driven from Spain and all his plans were given up. The Spanish king withdrew from Sicily and surrendered Sardinia. The Emperor and the Duke of Savoy exchanged islands, as stated before, and the former (holding Naples already) revived the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while the latter became King of Sardinia.

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War of the Polish Succession.

These disturbances ended, there were a few years of rest in Europe, and then another war, of the character peculiar to the eighteenth century, broke out. It had its cause in the Polish election of a king to succeed Augustus II. As usual, the neighboring nations formed a betting ring of onlookers, so to speak, and "backed" their several candidates heavily. The deposed and exiled king, Stanislaus Leczinski, who received his crown from Charles XII. and lost it after Pultowa, was the French candidate; for he had married his daughter to Louis XV. Frederick Augustus of Saxony, son of the late King Augustus, was the Russian and Austrian candidate. The contest resulted in a double election (1733), and out of that came war. Spain and Sardinia joined France, and the Emperor had no allies. Hence the House of Austria suffered greatly in the war, losing the Two Sicilies, which went to Spain, and were conferred on a younger son of the king, creating a third Bourbon monarchy. Part of the duchy of Milan was also yielded by Austria to the King of Sardinia; and the Duke of Lorraine, husband of the Emperor's daughter, Maria Theresa, gave up his duchy to Stanislaus, who renounced therefor his claim on the crown of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine received as compensation a right of succession to the grand duchy of Tuscany, where the Medicean House was about to expire. These were the principal consequences, humiliating to Austria, of what is known as the First Family Compact of the French and Spanish Bourbons.

War of Jenkins' Ear.

This alliance between the two courts gave encouragement to hostile demonstrations in the Spanish colonies against English traders, who were accused of extensive smuggling, and the outcome was a petty war (1739), called "the War of Jenkins' Ear."

War of the Austrian Succession.

Before these hostilities were ended, another "war of succession," more serious than any before it, was wickedly brought upon Europe. The Emperor, Charles VI., died in 1740, leaving no son, but transmitting his hereditary dominions to his eldest daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, married to the ex-Duke of Lorraine. Years before his death he had sought to provide against any possible disputing of the succession, by an instrument known as the Pragmatic Sanction, to which he obtained, first, the assent of the estates of all the provinces and kingdoms of the Austrian realm, and, secondly, the guaranty by solemn treaty of almost every European Power. He died in the belief that he had established his daughter securely, and left her to the enjoyment of a peaceful reign. It was a pitiful illusion. He was scarcely in his grave before half the guarantors of the Pragmatic Sanction were putting forward claims to this part and that part of the Austrian territories. The Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Saxony (in his wife's name) and the King of Spain, claimed the whole succession; the two first mentioned on grounds of collateral lineage, the latter (a Bourbon cuckoo in the Spanish-Hapsburg nest) as being the heir of the Hapsburgs of Spain.

While these larger pretensions were still jostling each other in the diplomatic stage, a minor claimant, who said little but acted powerfully, sent his demands to the Court of Vienna with an army following close at their heels. This was Frederick II. of Prussia, presently known as Frederick the Great, who resuscitated an obsolete claim on Silesia and took possession of the province (1740-41) without waiting for debate. If, anywhere, there had been virtuous hesitations before, his bold stroke ended them. France could not see her old Austrian rival dismembered without hastening to grasp a share. She contracted with the Spanish king and the Elector of Bavaria to enforce the latter's claims, and to take the Austrian Netherlands in prospect for compensation, while Spain should find indemnity in the Austro-Italian states. Frederick of Prussia, having Silesia in hand, offered to join Maria Theresa in the defense of her remaining dominions; but his proposals were refused, and he entered the league against her. Saxony did the same. England and Sardinia were alone in befriending Austria, and England was only strong at sea. Maria Theresa found her heartiest support in Hungary, where she made a personal appeal to her subjects, and enlarged their constitutional privileges. In 1742 the Elector of Bavaria was elected Emperor, as Charles VII. In the same year, Maria Theresa, acting under pressure from England, gave up the greater part of Silesia to Frederick, by treaty, as a price paid, not for the help he had offered at first, but barely for his neutrality. He abandoned his allies and withdrew from the war. His retirement produced an immense difference in the conditions of the contest. Saxony made peace at the same time, and became an active ally on the Austrian side. So rapidly did the latter then recover their ground and the French slip back that Frederick, after two years of neutrality, became alarmed, and found a pretext to take up arms again. The scale was now tipped to the side on which he threw himself, but not immediately; and when, in 1745, the Emperor, Charles VII., died suddenly, Maria Theresa was able to secure the election of her husband, Francis of Lorraine (or Tuscany), which founded the Hapsburg-Lorraine dynasty on the imperial throne. This was in September. In the following December Frederick was in Dresden, and Saxony--the one effective ally left to the Austrians, since England had withdrawn from the war in the previous August--was at his feet. Maria Theresa, having the Spaniards and the French still to fight in Italy and the Netherlands, could do nothing but make terms with the terrible Prussian king. The treaty, signed at Dresden on Christmas Day, 1745, repeated the cession of Silesia to Frederick, with Glatz, and restored Saxony to the humbled Elector.

Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.

France and Spain, deserted the second time by their faithless Prussian ally, continued the war until 1748, when the influence of England and Holland brought about a treaty of peace signed at Aix-la-Chapelle. France gained nothing from the war, but had suffered a loss of prestige, distinctly. Austria, besides giving up Silesia to Frederick of Prussia, was required to surrender a bit of Lombardy to the King of Sardinia, and to make over Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to Don Philip of Spain, for a hereditary principality. Under the circumstances, the result to Maria Theresa was a notable triumph, and she shared with her enemy, Frederick, the fruitage of fame harvested in the war. But antagonism between these two, and between the interests and ambitions which they respectively represented--dynastic on one side and national on the other--was henceforth settled and irreconcilable, and could leave in Germany no durable peace.

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Colonial conflicts of France and England.

The peace was broken, not for Germany alone, but for Europe and for almost the world at large, in six years after the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The rupture occurred first very far from Europe--on the other sides of the globe, in America and Hindostan, where England and France were eager rivals in colonial conquest. In America, they had quarreled since the Treaty of Utrecht over the boundaries of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which that treaty transferred to England. Latterly, they had come to a more serious collision in the interior of the continent. The English, rooting their possession of the Atlantic seaboard by strong and stable settlements, had been tardy explorers and slow in passing the Alleganies to the region inland. On the other hand, the French, nimble and enterprising in exploration, and in military occupation, but superficial and artificial in colonizing, had pushed their way by a long circuit from Canada, through the great lakes to the head waters of the Ohio, and were fortifying a line in the rear of the British colonies, from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the valley of the Mississippi, before the English were well aware of their intent. Then the colonists, Virginians and Pennsylvanians, took arms, and the career of George Washington was begun as leader of an expedition in 1754 to drive the French from the Ohio. It was not successful, and a strong force of regular troops was sent over next year by the British government, under Braddock, to repeat the attempt. A frightful catastrophe, worse than failure, came of this second undertaking, and open war between France and England, which had not yet been declared, followed soon. This colonial conflict of England and France fired the train, so to speak, which caused a great explosion of suppressed hostilities in Europe.

The House of Hanover in England.

If the English crown had not been worn by a German king, having a German principality to defend, the French and English might have fought out their quarrel on the ocean, and in the wilderness of America, or on the plains of the Carnatic, without disturbing their continental neighbors. But England was now under a new, foreign-bred line of sovereigns, descended from that daughter of James I., the princess Elizabeth, who married the unfortunate Elector Palatine and was queen of Bohemia for a brief winter term. After William of Orange died, his wife, Queen Mary, having preceded him to the grave, and no children having been born to them, Anne, the sister of Mary, had been called to the throne. It was in her reign that the brilliant victories of Marlborough were won, and in her reign that the Union of Scotland with England, under one parliament as well as one sovereign, was brought about. On Anne's death (1714), her brother, the son of James II., called "the Pretender," was still excluded from the throne, because of his religion, and the next heir was sought and summoned, in the person of the Elector George, of Hanover, whose remote ancestress was Elizabeth Stuart. George I. had reigned thirteen years, and his son, George II., had been twenty-seven years on the throne, when these quarrels with France arose. Throughout the two reigns, until 1742, the English nation had been kept mostly at peace, by the potent influence of a great minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and had made a splendid advance in material prosperity and strength; while the system of ministerial government, responsible to Parliament and independent of the Crown, which has been in later times the peculiar feature of the British constitution, was taking shape. In 1742, Walpole fell from power, and the era of peace for England was ended. But her new dynasty had been firmly settled, and politically, industrially, and commercially, the nation was so sound in its condition as to be well prepared for the series of wars into which it plunged. In the War of the Austrian Succession England had taken a limited part, and with small results to herself. She was now about to enter, under the lead of the high spirited and ambitious Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, the greatest career of conquest in her history.

[Image: Europe 1768 A. D.]

The Seven Years War.