Part 8

"_Celle du Mein_, sous les ordres du Maréchal de Maillebois, a commencé à pousser l'ennemi. Je serais d'avis qu'on lui continuerât ce généralât. Elle pourra aller _jusqu'en Westphalie et à Hanovre_. _Celle de Bavière_ doit être rassemblée incessamment, avec des magasins à vos dépens, puisque l'électorât de Bavière n'en peut fournir. Il faut la mettre en état de faire le siège d'Ingolstadt, resserrer nos quartiers, et _allant du Leck à Passau elle pénétrera en Autriche et donnera la main au roi de Prusse_.

"Comptez, Sire,[314] que ce puissant allié sortira de sa défensive; qu'il ira en Bohême, en Moravie, et même en Autriche, s'il se peut, quand nous lui montrerons si bonne exemple. Avec cela _Votre Majesté soutiendra ses alliances et même les augmentera_. Le Palatin, la Hesse, la Bavière nous seconderont; et _la Saxe_ même, assurée de nos succès, _n'hésitera plus d'accepter la couronne impériale_. Au moins retarderons-nous cette élection, et elle sera le scéau de la paix. _Si au contraire, nous n'envisageons que la Flandre_ comme objet principal, et que nous négligeons l'Allemagne, _nous perdrons tous nos alliés, les unes après les autres, et notre ennemi sera élu empereur sous nos yeux_."[315]

There are many striking suggestions to be found in this memoir; but it may be scrutinised in vain for any evidence of that doubt, hesitation, looseness of grasp, by which d'Argenson's conduct is too readily explained; while, on the contrary, we have only to read it in the light of the measures actually taken by the French Government to detect the real foundation for those charges: and to know how much weight it is necessary to attach to them in so far as they concern the Marquis d'Argenson.

We have only to read the above memoir with any of those prepared by Frederick, and to sketch the chain of circumstances which took Louis to Fontenoy, to be in possession of all the threads of the long complication of 1745.

In a memoir of the 6th of March,[316] Frederick represents that if the election of the Grand Duke is to be prevented, a majority in the Electoral College must be regained; if that is to be done, the communications between Hanover and the three ecclesiastical Electorates must be severed by the vigour of the army of Maillebois; and the decisive movement must come from the army of Bavaria, which, under vigorous command, must capture Passau, march upon Vienna, and by drawing off the Austrian troops, throw open Moravia to the Prussian army. He does not mince the meaning of his proposals.

"If another course is taken in this war, the King of France will reduce his allies to the necessity of withdrawing from it as best they can; for there must be a prompt end to this, and the matter must be decided one way or the other before the imperial election."[317]

Frederick's communications with the French Court are one long reiteration of this demand. Never did a man plead more eloquently the cause of reason and manliness; and never was eloquence more desperately sincere.

The action, not of the French Minister, but of the French Government, is almost incredible. They had deliberately embarked upon a great policy, and they deliberately refused to take a single step by which it could be realised. All that depended on d'Argenson indeed, was done as strenuously as man could do it. He exhausted himself in efforts to win over the King of Poland, trampling down or shutting his eyes to the obstacles which faced him; and he never relaxed in his entreaties to Frederick to second his efforts at Dresden.

"Will your Majesty consider that by this alliance, if it should ever take place, we should become absolute masters of the situation."[318] ... "If your Majesty cannot lay aside the feelings which alienate him from the King of Poland, I see only the prospect[319] of a long war, the Grand Duke Emperor, and the Empire turned against us, whatever efforts we may make."[320]

D'Argenson might beg and entreat, and write despatches: but he was powerless to enforce his words with the weight of his little finger.[321] On the 10th of March he drafted a reply to Frederick, in which he undertook that the army of Bavaria should be reinforced and should push the war with vigour. The reply never went to Berlin; it remains marked with the words "n'a pas servi."[322] Indeed the French policy was already decided. For no political reason whatever, the King had set his heart upon a campaign in Flanders; and to that desire his own interest, the interest of his allies, and every statesmanlike consideration must of necessity yield. He was not likely to meet with resistance from Noailles, still less from Count d'Argenson or Maurepas; and the Foreign Minister stood alone in fruitless opposition to this brilliant piece of political fatuity.

The effects of it were apparent already. The arms of France were paralysed in Germany in order that troops might be concentrated in Flanders; the army of Bavaria could not be reinforced; little could be done for the army of the Main; and d'Argenson, while persistently demanding ready co-operation in his overtures at Dresden, was obliged to evade and trifle with the equally persistent demands of Frederick. His position was a very thankless one; and it would have been as ridiculous as it at first would seem, had it been of his own choosing. That it was not, there is ample evidence to prove.

From this anomalous disposition of the French Government the four decisive events of the year 1745 descend in lineal succession. Each was a political disaster of the first magnitude; every one of them was richly deserved, and not one was really attributable to the Minister who has ordinarily borne the burden and the blame. Those events are--first, the loss of Bavaria; second, the Convention of Hanover; third, the election of Francis I.; and fourth, the Treaty of Dresden.

It was on the 21st of January that the young prince Maximilian succeeded to the Electorate of Bavaria; on the 19th of April he signed a convention with Maria Theresa.[323]

The Emperor on his death-bed had adjured his son to rely on the support of France;[324] and Chavigny, the French minister at Munich, was ready to assure him that he would never do so in vain.[325] The Austrian troops were already in Bavaria; repeated warnings were given both by Frederick and Chavigny of the critical position of the young Elector; and every means of persuasion was exhausted by Chavigny in order to secure the reinforcement of the Bavarian army. The French Government were deaf to his representations; the Council rejected d'Argenson's despatches;[326] d'Argenson himself was at last irritated at the reiteration of demands with which he had no power to comply.[327] Chavigny had to pacify the Elector with promises and assurances, in default of troops.

In the meanwhile no effort was spared by Maria Theresa to detach the Elector from the League of Frankfort.[328] Her diplomatic agents were Colloredo and Count Batthiany. Colloredo negotiated at Munich with humiliating terms of peace; Batthiany advanced upon Munich with an army eleven thousand strong, before which Ségur, with a small French force, had withdrawn to the Bavarian frontier. Accordingly, Chavigny and the Elector fled to Augsburg, where, on the 19th of April, a treaty of peace, dictated by the Austrian envoy, was signed by Maximilian.

The event of the 19th of April was the signal for what M. de Broglie himself calls "the breakup and rout of all that in a greater or less degree was still holding to France."[329] The Prince of Hesse, the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Wurtemburg, and the Electors of Trèves and Mayence were at no pains to conceal their view that the French cause in Germany was lost; while the Elector of Saxony, Augustus himself, the very man upon whom for three months the efforts of French diplomacy had been centred, made haste to summon the troops of France to withdraw from the soil of the Empire, where there remained no excuse for their continued presence.[330]

Such was the disaster d'Argenson had foreseen and endeavoured vainly to avert. He is said[331] to have cherished with blind fatuity an unfounded faith in the fidelity of Bavaria. That faith was more than justified, if we are to believe Chavigny, who said that up to the very day when the unhappy Elector was forced to abandon his capital to the Austrians, he remained firmly attached to the French alliance.[332] The truth is this: that not only at Munich, but at Dresden and Frankfort, d'Argenson's action must appear ridiculous; because, while prosecuting his negotiations with energy and enthusiasm, he was unable, through no fault of his own, to give them the weight of a single cannon-shot. In a word, the bold policy of the 31st of January, while actively prosecuted by the French Minister, was tacitly abandoned by the French Government.

Of that fact Frederick needed no further evidence than the Convention of Augsburg. His mind was made up. He saw at once that the real object of that Government was, not the protection of German liberties, not the election of the King of Poland, not a decisive war and an honourable peace, but simply a holiday campaign in Flanders. He was utterly exasperated by the vain selfishness of the French policy, while his impatience at its continued tenderness for Saxony mounted to the brim.

"We are on the eve of a new war," he wrote to Louis XV., a fortnight after the loss of Bavaria, "and what I want to know is this: Is Your Majesty going to declare himself for a prince who is giving auxiliaries to the enemies of France, or for the man whose diversion disentangled Alsace; does Your Majesty prefer the artifices of a crafty and secret enemy to the frankness of an honest friend, who has drawn upon himself the whole burden of the war, and whose provinces are now only being ravaged in order to secure the sweets of tranquillity to the subjects who live under French dominion. In a word, I must know if the justice, the honour, the generosity of Your Majesty can consent to leave me without the real assistance which He is bound by treaties to render, and to sacrifice me to a prince who has dethroned Your Majesty's father-in-law, a prince who is sold to the enemies of France, and who is only awaiting the favourable moment to give vent to his hatred and animosity against her."[333]

He gives the French king to understand that for the purposes of the common cause, the siege of Babylon will be as useful as the siege of Tournay;[334] and in despair of producing any effect, he concludes:

"It is simply in the force of his own arms and in the fortune of battles that the King of Prussia puts his greatest trust, in the hope that the goodness of his cause and the valour of his troops will never fail him."[335]

He sees but one remedy for the crisis produced by the loss of Bavaria--the immediate invasion of Hanover by Conti, with the army of the Main.[336]

This advice was a marvel of astuteness. He saw that with the abandonment of France he had nothing further to hope from the war; and that his only resource lay in bringing pressure to bear upon the maritime powers, and extricating himself as best he could. He proceeded to do so, needless to say, without the least compunction. To Frederick, the difference between the open rupture of an alliance and the tacit abandonment of an ally, was one for a casuist and not for a statesman. Events deepened his determination. Decided by the fall of Bavaria, Augustus on the 18th of May had ratified the Treaty of Warsaw arranged in January with Maria Theresa;[337] and on the 4th of June, a combined army of Austrians and Saxons strayed into the "trap" which Frederick had spread for them at Friedbourg.[338] On the 11th of May, Louis XV. had reaped the utterly vain glory of Fontenoy; and shortly afterwards Conti, upon the Main, received orders to detach twenty thousand men for the army of Flanders.[339] The Statesman at Vienna seized the opportunity to unite her armies in Bavaria and Franconia, and Conti, menaced by superior forces, withdrew with his troops beyond the Rhine.[340] There was not a Frenchman left in Germany; and the army of the Empress closed round Frankfort.

At the end of an ironical letter of compliment to the French king, Frederick writes (August 25th):

"It is a pity that in such a fine picture there should be one blot to spoil it a little. I speak of the retreat of the Prince of Conti. It is he who crowns the Grand Duke, and places Your Majesty's allies in a desperate and fatal position."[341]

From that position Frederick was determined to escape; but his success would have been more than doubtful, were it not that at this very moment, a critical conjunction of untoward events softened the obduracy of George II. The French advance in the Low Countries, the clamour of the peace party, and above all, the sweeping success of the gallant Prince Charles Edward, forced King George to listen to terms.[342] If the English troops were to be withdrawn from the Continent, Hanover could not be left at the mercy of Frederick; and only by the suspension of arms in Silesia, could a force be drafted from the Austrian army to relieve the English in the defence of Flanders. A determined effort was made to induce Maria Theresa to consent to a pacification. She would have nothing whatever to do with the traitor of Brandenburg; nor would she listen to any proposal which would involve the withdrawal of a single man from the Silesian frontier.[343] In the meanwhile time pressed; Charles Edward was marching on Edinburgh; and on the 26th of August, the King of England signed the Convention of Hanover, guaranteeing, for himself and his allies, the suspension of the war and the maintenance of Frederick in Silesia.[344]

If Maria Theresa had rejected, three weeks before, the proposals presented to her by her ally of England, she was not more likely to recognise the Convention signed by England upon her behalf. On the very day when Robinson, the English envoy at Vienna, endeavoured to obtain her acceptance of a treaty which snatched her enemy from her grasp, she received the news[345] that the long conflict she had maintained so manfully had ended at last in triumph, and that her husband, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had been elected Emperor at Frankfort.

This election took place on the 3rd of September. It shattered once for all the diplomatic combinations which the labour and enthusiasm of d'Argenson had endeavoured singly to sustain. To crown the catastrophe, he was abandoned by the man to whom everything had been sacrificed; for the King of Poland, a few days before, declared in favour of the Austrian candidate.[346] At the very moment of this palpable collapse of French influence in Germany, the air became heavy with rumours of the withdrawal of Frederick from the French alliance.

It is no easy matter to determine d'Argenson's real share in these events; but it seems clear that whatever tone be assumed in regard to it, it cannot be that of harsh contempt.

At a terrible crisis in the beginning of the year, he had acquiesced in the adoption of a daring policy; he had discerned the measures by which alone that policy could be realised; and he had endeavoured, in conjunction with the greatest of the French allies, to enforce them upon his colleagues. He had seen those measures, one by one, deliberately and wantonly rejected; and the policy which could only be maintained by a couple of armies was left him to support without a single man. Inevitably his time was spent in apprehending disaster, in futile attempts to hamper its approach, and in transparent efforts, when it came at last, to give it the appearance of success.[347] In a constitutional government he might have resigned his place, declining the responsibility for measures which he had no power to control. As the minister of Louis XV., such a course was impossible. He might again have refused to pursue his negotiations at Dresden and in the several Electorates; but to have done so would have been to deprive the French intervention of its only possible pretext. A third course would have been to shrug his shoulders, tear up the policy of January last, and accept his share in the unprincipled by-play which was the only form that French diplomacy in Germany could reasonably take. He had simply to choose between acting like a knave, and looking like a fool. The qualities requisite for the former part he had never been able to acquire; and he had a profound faith that knavishness was the very last attribute of a statesman. In short, his only resource was to believe, in spite of himself, that there still remained some serious possibility of success, to shut his eyes to ominous circumstances, and to clutch at every shred of hope. By dint of trying to persuade others, he succeeded at last in persuading himself. He lost sight of the fact which had once been clear to him, that to Frederick mere protestations of confidence, with nothing to support them, were not worth the paper they were written on; and he clung to the belief that the suave indecisions of the Court of Dresden were more than a diplomatic veil for an absolute refusal. So it was that when the disasters he had foreseen occurred in due course, he found that it was less easy to accept than to apprehend the inevitable; and the Treaty of Hanover and the election at Frankfort came to him as a cruel blow. In a sorrowful letter to Marshal de Belleisle he says:

"I have received your letter. As to what you say of me, I must say nothing, and with good reason; I fear your praises more than any man's, for I know your sincerity. Nevertheless, I cannot believe that I have the least capacity for affairs, where, up to the present, I have had so little success."[348]

Knowing as we do in how slight a degree d'Argenson was himself responsible for these disasters, we can only be impressed by the touching readiness with which he was content to accept the blame. For eight months he had been in as thankless a position as was ever occupied by mortal man. His representations had been neglected; his despatches had been revised or rejected by the Council; deprived of means, his enterprises had been doomed to failure; and it was only by his own enthusiasm and devotion that they had been maintained so long as they were. If on occasion he had been blindly credulous, there were occasions when only by blind credulity could his position be maintained at all.

It was by a courier from the headquarters of Prince Charles's army that the news of the treaty which guaranteed to Frederick a suspension of arms was conveyed to Maria Theresa.[349] She at once communicated with Count Brühl, the all-powerful favourite at Dresden. Immediately afterwards (September 10th), the Saxon minister placed in the hands of the French agent a draft of the Convention of Hanover, and gave him to understand that if France desired to be avenged upon her faithless ally, she would not be repulsed at Vienna.[350]

The French Ministry was at once placed in possession of this startling news; and it was resolved, by a majority of the Council, that negotiations should be opened at Dresden with Maria Theresa.[351] The feeling against Frederick was at fever-heat.

D'Argenson's time had come at last. He had opposed without success the resolution of the Council; but his own credit had fallen with the defection of the man whose fidelity he had guaranteed. Nevertheless, he knew that persuasion was the least of his resources; and he resolved that it should be no fault of his if anything came of the overtures of the Empress.

His position is clear. It was not for nothing that for twenty years he had studied and thought upon public affairs; he was as deeply versed in the interests of the kingdom as the rest were skilled in the intrigue of the Court. The meaning of the Austrian proposals was not mistaken for an instant. Maria Theresa, roused by the thought that her enemy was escaping, had resolved to sacrifice her lesser hate; and by making terms with France, even at the cost of some of her Belgian provinces, to set free an army, forty thousand strong, for service in Silesia. D'Argenson knew the meaning of that; it would be all over with Frederick II.

The prospect suggested two questions. In the first place: Was it just? Had Frederick deserved the fate to which the French Council were ready to abandon him? D'Argenson had only to recall his correspondence with Prussia during the spring, the loss of Bavaria, and the retreat of Conti, to satisfy himself that if France had at last been abandoned by Prussia, she had only herself to blame. But there was a further consideration. Was it wise? and to that question d'Argenson alone in the French Ministry was capable of desiring or conceiving the answer. To the rest, to Noailles or Maurepas or Count d'Argenson, the paltry personality of the month or of the moment, the time-killing, time-winning shuffle or shift, was the decisive factor in politics. D'Argenson's statesmanship had a broader base. It had regard, not to the interest of his place or to the opinion of de Pompadour, but to the interest of his country and the tradition of Richelieu. He alone could weigh the gravity of the course the Council undertook so lightly. He alone could see that so long as the Prussians remained in Breslau, France would be sure of a powerful ally, and the right hand of Austria would be paralysed in Europe; while, upon the other hand, if Frederick were compelled to bow before fate and Maria Theresa, the heiress of Austria would draw the sword of Charles V. against her own enemy and the enemy of her House. Months before, d'Argenson had revealed his feeling in one of those master-sayings of depth and directness, which only tend to strengthen the belief that his history deserves to be re-written. At a not dissimilar crisis he declared:

"We must not listen, we must not even permit a word of such a thing. If the Low Countries were offered to me, I should believe them too dearly bought at such a price as this. You have to make it clearly understood that His Majesty is resolved never to stand by and see this prince despoiled of what has been ceded to him by his treaty with the Queen of Hungary at Breslau in 1742; and that His Majesty would prefer to surrender the dearest interests of his realm than ever consent to allow this prince to be deprived of Silesia and the county of Glatz."[352]

It is the saying of a man who is not easy to understand, but who is worth the trouble which the attempt involves. To put his attitude in a word, he regarded Silesia as strategically the most valuable of the French provinces. He would have preferred almost to sacrifice Lorraine.

The Council, in arriving at the above resolution, had reckoned without the minister who was to carry it into effect. At this juncture d'Argenson found that the very circumstances which had paralysed his efforts in the beginning of the year were telling powerfully in his favour; for the anarchy prevailing in the French Government was such that the only means of positive action open to any of the ministers was in the frustration of his colleagues' designs. To that task d'Argenson addressed himself with right good will. In transmitting his instructions to Vaulgrenant, the French envoy at Dresden, he allowed him to understand that if he could only succeed in failing, his failure would not go unforgiven.[353] The Austrian majority in the Council were by no means unanimous; and their different resolutions were communicated to Vaulgrenant without the faintest attempt to reconcile them.[354]

"I agree that the matter is one of some difficulty," wrote d'Argenson; "M. de Vaulgrenant will get out of it as best he can."[355]