THE GERMANIES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE IN DECLINE
[Sidenote: Backwardness of the Germanies]
In another connection we have already described the political condition
of the Germanies in the sixteenth century. [Footnote: See above, pp. 10
ff.] Outwardly, little change was observable in the eighteenth. The
Holy Roman Empire still existed as a nominal bond of union for a loose
assemblage of varied states. There was still a Habsburg emperor. There
were still electors--the number had been increased from seven to nine
[Footnote: Bavaria became an electorate in 1623 and Hanover in 1708; in
1778 Bavaria and the Palatinate were joined, again making eight.]--with
some influence and considerable honor. There was still a Diet, composed
of representatives of the princes and of the free cities, meeting
regularly at Ratisbon. [Footnote: Ratisbon or Regensburg--in the
Bavarian Palatinate. The Diet met there regularly after 1663.] But the
empire was clearly in decline. The wave of national enthusiasm which
Martin Luther evoked had spent itself in religious wrangling and
dissension, and in the inglorious conflicts of the Thirty Years' War.
The Germans had become so many pawns that might be moved back and forth
upon the international chessboard by Habsburg and Bourbon gamesters.
Switzerland had been lost to the empire; both France and Sweden had
deliberately dismembered other valuable districts. [Footnote: For the
provisions of the treaties of Westphalia, see above, pp. 228 f.]
[Sidenote: Deplorable Results of the Thirty Years' War]
It seemed as though slight foundation remained on which a substantial
political structure could be reared, for the social conditions in the
Germanies were deplorable. It is not an exaggeration to say that during
the Thirty Years' War Germany lost at least half of its population and
more than two-thirds of its movable property. In the middle of the
seventeenth century, at about the time Louis XIV succeeded to a fairly
prosperous France, German towns and villages were in ashes, and vast
districts turned into deserts. Churches and schools were closed by
hundreds, and religious and intellectual torpor prevailed. Industry and
trade were so completely paralyzed that by 1635 the Hanseatic League
was virtually abandoned, because the free commercial cities, formerly
so wealthy, could not meet the necessary expenses. Economic expansion
and colonial enterprise, together with the consequent upbuilding of a
well-to-do middle class, were resigned to Spain, Portugal, Holland,
France, or England, without a protest from what had once been a proud
burgher class in Germany. This elimination of an influential
bourgeoisie was accompanied by a sorry impoverishment and oppression of
the peasantry. These native sons of the German soil had fondly hoped
for better things from the religious revolution and agrarian
insurrections of the sixteenth century; but they were doomed to failure
and disappointment. The peasantry were in a worse plight in the
eighteenth century in Germany than in any other country of western or
central Europe.
[Sidenote: The German Princes]
The princes alone knew how to profit by the national prostration.
Enriched by the confiscation of ecclesiastical property in the
sixteenth century and relieved of meddlesome interference on the part
of the emperor or the Diet, they utilized the decline of the middle
class and the dismal serfdom of the peasantry to exalt their personal
political power. They got rid of the local assemblies or greatly
curtailed their privileges, and gradually established petty tyrannies.
After the Thirty Years' War, it became fashionable for the heirs of
German principalities to travel and especially to spend some time at
the court of France. Here they imbibed the political ideas of the Grand
Monarch, and in a short time nearly every petty court in the Germanics
was a small-sized reproduction of the court of Versailles. In a silly
and ridiculous way the princes aped their great French neighbor: they
too maintained armies, palaces, and swarms of household officials,
which, though a crushing burden upon the people, were yet so
insignificant in comparison with the real pomp of France, that they
were in many instances the laughingstock of Europe. Beneath an external
gloss of refinement, these princes were, as a class, coarse and
selfish, and devoid of any compensating virtues. Neither the common
people, whom they had impoverished, nor the Church, which they had
robbed, was now strong enough to resist the growing absolutism and
selfishness of the princes.
THE HABSBURG DOMINIONS
[Sidenote: Charles VI and his Hereditary Dominions]
At the opening of the eighteenth century, the largest and most
important states of the Holy Roman Empire were those which owned the
direct sovereignty of the Austrian Habsburgs. Charles VI (1711-1740),
who as the Archduke Charles had vainly struggled against Louis XIV to
secure the whole Spanish inheritance in the War of the Spanish
Succession (1702-1713), reigned over extensive and scattered dominions.
Around Vienna, his capital city, were gathered his hereditary
possessions: (1) Lower Austria, or Austria proper, on the Danube; (2)
Inner Austria, which comprised Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; (3)
Further Austria, consisting of the mountainous regions about Innsbruck,
commonly designated the Tyrol; and (4) Upper Austria, embracing
Breisgau on the upper Rhine near the Black Forest. To this nucleus of
lands, in the greater part of which the German language was spoken
universally, had been added in course of time the Czech or Slavic
kingdom of Bohemia with its German dependency of Silesia and its Slavic
dependency of Moravia, and a portion of the Magyar kingdom of Hungary,
with its Slavic dependencies of Croatia and Slavonia and its Rumanian
dependency of Transylvania. Charles VI, like so many of his Habsburg
ancestors, was also emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and was thereby
accounted the foremost of German princes. But neither Bohemia nor
Hungary was predominantly German in language or feeling, and Hungary
was not even a part of the Holy Roman Empire.
[Sidenote: Conquests of Charles VI]
What additions were made to the Habsburg dominions by Charles VI were
all of non-German peoples. The treaty of Utrecht had given him the
Flemish- and French-speaking Belgian Netherlands and the Italian-
speaking duchy of Milan and kingdom of the Two Sicilies. [Footnote: See
above, p. 253, footnote.] A series of wars with the Ottoman Turks had
enabled his family to press the Hungarian boundaries south as far as
Bosnia and Serbia and to incorporate as a dependency of Hungary the
Rumanian-speaking principality of Transylvania. [Footnote: Definitely
ceded by Turkey by the treaty of Karlowitz (1699).] Of course all these
newer states of the Habsburgs remained outside of the Holy Roman
Empire.
[Sidenote: Diversity of Habsburg Dominions]
Between the various peoples who were thus brought under the Habsburg
sway, the bond was of loosest description. They spoke a dozen different
languages and presented an even greater diversity of interests. They
did not constitute a compact, strongly centralized, national state like
France. Charles VI ruled his territories by manifold titles: he was
archduke of Austria, king of Bohemia, king of Hungary, duke of Milan,
and prince of the Netherlands; and the administration of each of these
five major groups was independent of the others. The single bond of
union was the common allegiance to the Habsburg monarch.
[Sidenote: Check upon Habsburg Ambitions in the Germanies]
To adopt and pursue a policy which would suit all these lands and
peoples would hardly be possible for any mortal: it certainly surpassed
the wit of the Habsburgs. They had made an attempt in the seventeenth
century to develop a vigorous German policy, to unify the empire and to
strengthen their hold upon it, but they had failed dismally. The
disasters of the Thirty Years' War, the jealousies and ambitions of the
other German princes, the interested intervention of foreign powers,
notably Sweden and France, made it brutally clear that Habsburg
influence in the Germanies had already reached its highest pitch and
that henceforth it would tend gradually to wane.
Blocked in the Germanies, the Austrian Habsburgs looked elsewhere to
satisfy their aspirations. But almost equal difficulties confronted
them. Extension to the southeast in the direction of the Balkan
peninsula involved almost incessant warfare with the Turks. Increase of
territory in Italy incited Spain, France, and Sardinia to armed
resistance. Development of the trade of the Belgian Netherlands aroused
the hostility of the influential commercial classes in England,
Holland, and France. The time and toil spent upon these non-German
projects obviously could not be devoted to the internal affairs of the
Holy Roman Empire. Thus, not only were the Germanies a source of
weakness to the Habsburgs, but the Habsburgs were a source of weakness
to the Germanies.
[Sidenote: Continued Prestige of the Habsburgs]
Despite these drawbacks, the Habsburg family was still powerful. The
natural resources and native wealth of many of the regions, the large,
if rather cosmopolitan, armies which might be raised, the intricate
marriage relationships with most of the sovereign families of Europe,
the championship of the Catholic Church, the absolutist principles and
practices of the reigning prince, all contributed to cloak the
weaknesses, under a proud name and pretentious fame, of the imperial
Austrian line.
[Sidenote: Question of the Habsburg Inheritance]
[Sidenote: The "Pragmatic Sanction" of Charles VI]
In the eighteenth century a particularly unkind fate seemed to attend
the Habsburgs. We have already noticed how the extinction of the male
line in the Spanish branch precipitated a great international war of
succession, with the result that the Spanish inheritance was divided
and the greater part passed to the rival Bourbon family. Now Charles VI
was obliged to face a similar danger in the Austrian inheritance. He
himself had neither sons nor brothers, but only a daughter, Maria
Theresa. Spurred on by the fate of his Spanish kinsman, Charles VI
directed his energies toward securing a settlement of his possessions
prior to his death. Early in his reign he promulgated a so-called
Pragmatic Sanction which declared that the Habsburg dominions were
indivisible and that, contrary to long custom, they might be inherited
by female heirs in default of male. Then he subordinated his whole
foreign policy to securing general European recognition of the right of
Maria Theresa to succeed to all his territories. One after another of
his manifold principalities swore to observe the Pragmatic Sanction.
One after another of the foreign powers--Prussia, Russia, Great
Britain, Holland, the Empire, Poland, France, Spain, and Sardinia,--to
whom liberal concessions were made--pledged their word and their honor
most sacredly to preserve the Pragmatic Sanction. When Charles VI died
in 1740, he left his daughter a disorganized state, a bankrupt
treasury, and a small ill-disciplined army, but he bequeathed her an
ample number of parchment guarantees. The cynical Prussian king
remarked that 200,000 fighting men would have been a more useful
legacy, and, as events proved, he was right.
THE RISE OF PRUSSIA. THE HOHENZOLLERNS
[Sidenote: The Hohenzollern Family]
Next to the Habsburgs, the most influential German family in the
eighteenth century was the Hohenzollern. As far back as the tenth
century, a line of counts was ruling over a castle on the hill of
Zollern just north of what is now Switzerland. These counts slowly
extended their lands and their power through the fortunes of feudal
warfare and by means of a kindly interest on the part of the Holy Roman
Emperors, until at length, in the twelfth century, a representative of
the Hohenzollerns became by marriage burgrave of the important city of
Nuremberg.
[Sidenote: Brandenburg]
So far the Hohenzollerns had been fortunate, but as yet they were no
more conspicuous than hundreds of petty potentates throughout the
empire. It was not until they were invested by the Habsburg emperor
with the electorate of Brandenburg in 1415 that they became prominent.
Brandenburg was a district of northern Germany, centering in the town
of Berlin and lying along the Oder River. As a mark, or frontier
province, it was the northern and eastern outpost of the German
language and German culture, and the exigencies of almost perpetual
warfare with the neighboring Slavic peoples had given Brandenburg a
good deal of military experience and prestige. As an electorate,
moreover, it possessed considerable influence in the internal affairs
of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the sixteenth century, the acceptance of Lutheranism by the
Hohenzollern electors of Brandenburg enabled them, like many other
princes of northern Germany, to seize valuable properties of the
Catholic Church and to rid themselves of a foreign power which had
curtailed their political and social sway. Brandenburg subsequently
became the chief Protestant state of Germany, just as to Austria was
conceded the leadership of the Catholic states.
[Sidenote: The Hohenzollerns and the Thirty Years' War]
The period of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) was as auspicious to
the Hohenzollerns as it was unlucky for the Habsburgs. On the eve of
the contest, propitious marriage alliances bestowed two important
legacies upon the family--the duchy of Cleves [Footnote: Though the
alliance between Brandenburg and Cleves dated from 1614, the
Hohenzollerns did not reign over Cleves until 1666. With Cleves went
its dependencies of Mark and Ravensberg.] on the lower Rhine, and the
duchy of East Prussia, [Footnote: Prussia was then an almost purely
Slavic state. It had been formed and governed from the thirteenth to
the sixteenth century by the Teutonic Knights, a military, crusading
order of German Catholics, who aided in converting the Slavs to
Christianity. In the sixteenth century the Grand Master of the Teutonic
Knights professed the Lutheran faith and transformed Prussia into an
hereditary duchy in his own family. In a series of wars West Prussia
was incorporated into Poland, while East Prussia became a fief of that
kingdom. It was to East Prussia only that the Hohenzollern elector of
Brandenburg succeeded in 1618.] on the Baltic north of Poland.
Henceforth the head of the Hohenzollern family could sign himself
margrave and elector of Brandenburg, duke of Cleves, and duke of
Prussia. In the last-named role, he was a vassal of the king of Poland;
in the others, of the Holy Roman Emperor. In the course of the Thirty
Years' War, the Hohenzollerns helped materially to lessen imperial
control, and at the close of the struggle secured the wealthy
bishoprics of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg, [Footnote: The right
of accession to Magdeburg was accorded the Hohenzollerns in 1648; they
did not formally possess it until 1680.] and the eastern half of the
duchy of Pomerania.
[Sidenote: The Great Elector]
The international reputation of the Hohenzollerns was established by
Frederick William, commonly styled the Great Elector (1640-1688). When
he ascended the throne, the Thirty Years' War had reduced his scattered
dominions to utmost misery: he was resolved to restore prosperity, to
unify his various possessions, and to make his realm a factor in
general European politics. By diplomacy more than by military prowess,
he obtained the new territories by the peace of Westphalia. Then,
taking advantage of a war between Sweden and Poland, he made himself so
invaluable to both sides, now helping one, now deserting to the other,
that by cunning and sometimes by unscrupulous intrigue, he induced the
king of Poland to renounce suzerainty over East Prussia and to give him
that duchy in full sovereignty. In the Dutch War of Louis XIV (1672-
1678) he completely defeated the Swedes, who were in alliance with
France, and, although he was not allowed by the provisions of the peace
to keep what he had conquered, nevertheless the fame of his army was
established and Brandenburg-Prussia took rank as the chief competitor
of Sweden's hegemony in the Baltic.
In matters of government, the Great Elector was, like his contemporary
Louis XIV, a firm believer in absolutism. At the commencement of his
reign, each one of the three parts of his lands--Brandenburg, Cleves,
and East Prussia--was organized as a separate, petty state, with its
own Diet or form of representative government, its own army, and its
own independent administration. After a hard constitutional struggle,
Frederick William deprived the several Diets of their significant
functions, centered financial control in his own person, declared the
local armies national, and merged the three separate administrations
into one, strictly subservient to his royal council at Berlin. Thus,
the three states were amalgamated into one; and, to all intents and
purposes, they constituted a united monarchy.
The Great Elector was a tireless worker. He encouraged industry and
agriculture, drained marshes, and built the Frederick William Canal,
joining the Oder with the Elbe. When the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes caused so many Huguenots to leave France, the Great Elector's
warm invitation attracted to Brandenburg some 20,000, who were settled
around Berlin and who gave French genius as well as French names to
their adopted country. The capital city, which at the Great Elector's
accession numbered barely 8000, counted at his death a population of
over 20,000.
[Sidenote: Brandenburg-Prussia a "Kingdom," 1701]
Brandenburg-Prussia was already an important monarchy, but its ruler
was not recognized as "king" until 1701, when the Emperor Leopold
conferred upon him that title in order to enlist his support in the War
of the Spanish Succession. In 1713, by the treaty of Utrecht, the other
European powers acknowledged the title. It was Prussia, rather than
Brandenburg, which gave its name to the new kingdom, because the former
was an entirely independent state, while the latter was a member of the
Holy Roman Empire. Thereafter the "kingdom of Prussia" [Footnote: At
first the Hohenzollern monarch assumed the title of king _in_
Prussia, because West Prussia was still a province of the kingdom of
Poland. Gradually, however, under Frederick William I (1713-1740), the
popular appellation of "king of Prussia" prevailed over the formal
"king in Prussia." West Prussia was definitely acquired in 1772 (see
below, p. 387).] designated the combined territories of the
Hohenzollern family.
Prussia rose rapidly in the eighteenth century. She shared with Austria
the leadership of the Germanies and secured a position in Europe as a
first-rate power. This rise was the result largely of the efforts of
Frederick William I (1713-1740).
[Sidenote: King Frederick William I, 1713-1740]
King Frederick William was a curious reversion to the type of his
grandfather: he was the Great Elector over again with all his practical
good sense if without his taste for diplomacy. His own ideal of
kingship was a paternal despotism, and his ambition, to use most
advantageously the limited resources of his country in order to render
Prussia feared and respected abroad. He felt that absolutism was the
only kind of government consonant with the character of his varied and
scattered dominions, and he understood in a canny way the need of an
effective army and of the closest economy which would permit a
relatively small kingdom to support a relatively large army. Under
Frederick William I, money, military might, and divine-right monarchy
became the indispensable props of the Hohenzollern rule in Prussia.
By a close thrift that often bordered on miserliness King Frederick
William I managed to increase his standing army from 38,000 to 80,000
men, bringing it up in numbers so as to rank with the regular armies of
such first-rate states as France or Austria. In efficiency, it probably
surpassed the others. An iron discipline molded the Prussian troops
into the most precise military engine then to be found in Europe, and a
staff of officers, who were not allowed to buy their commissions, as in
many European states, but who were appointed on a merit basis,
commanded the army with truly professional skill and devoted loyalty.
In civil administration, the king persevered in the work of
centralizing the various departments. A "general directory" was
intrusted with the businesslike conduct of the finances and gradually
evolved an elaborate civil service--the famous Prussian bureaucracy,
which, in spite of inevitable "red tape," is notable to this day for
its efficiency and devotion to duty. The king endeavored to encourage
industry and trade by enforcing up-to-date mercantilist regulations,
and, although he repeatedly expressed contempt for current culture
because of what he thought were its weakening tendencies, he
nevertheless prescribed compulsory elementary education for his people.
King Frederick William, who did so much for Prussia, had many personal
eccentricities that highly amused Europe. Imbued with patriarchal
instincts, he had his eye on everybody and everything. He treated his
kingdom as a schoolroom, and, like a zealous schoolmaster, flogged his
naughty subjects unmercifully. If he suspected a man of possessing
adequate means, he might command him to erect a fine residence so as to
improve the appearance of the capital. If he met an idler in the
streets, he would belabor him with his cane and probably put him in the
army. And a funny craze for tall soldiers led to the creation of the
famous Potsdam Guard of Giants, a special company whose members must
measure at least six feet in height, and for whose service he attracted
many foreigners by liberal financial offers: it was the only luxury
which the parsimonious king allowed himself.
[Sidenote: Accession of Frederick the Great, 1740]
During a portion of his reign the crabbed old king feared that all his
labors and savings would go for naught, for he was supremely
disappointed in his son, the crown-prince Frederick. The stern father
had no sympathy for the literary, musical, artistic tastes of his son,
whom he thought effeminate, and whom he abused roundly with a quick and
violent temper. When Prince Frederick tried to run away, the king
arrested him and for punishment put him through such an arduous, slave-
like training in the civil and military administration, from the lowest
grades upward, as perhaps no other royal personage ever received. It
was this despised and misunderstood prince who as Frederick II
succeeded his father on the throne of Prussia in 1740 and is known in
history as Frederick the Great.
The year 1740 marked the accession of Frederick the Great in the
Hohenzollern possessions and of Maria Theresa in the Habsburg
territories. [Footnote: Below are discussed the foreign achievements
(pp. 354 ff.) of these two rival sovereigns, and in Chapter XIV (pp.
440 ff.) their internal policies.] It also marked the outbreak of a
protracted struggle within the Holy Roman Empire between the two
foremost German states--Austria and Prussia.
THE MINOR GERMAN STATES
[Sidenote: German States Other than Austria and Prussia]
Of the three hundred other states which composed the empire, few were
sufficiently large or important to exert any considerable influence on
the issue of the contest. A few, however, which took sides, deserve
mention not only because in the eighteenth century they preserved a
kind of balance of power between the rivals but also because they have
been more or less conspicuous factors in the progress of recent times.
Such are Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover.
[Sidenote: Bavaria]
Bavaria lay on the upper Danube to the west of Austria and in the
extreme southeastern corner of what is now the German Empire. For
centuries it was ruled by the Wittelsbach family, whose remarkable
prince, Maximilian I (1597-1651), had headed the Catholic League and
loyally supported the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War, and by the
peace of Westphalia had gained a part of the Palatinate [Footnote: The
other part of the Palatinate, under another branch of the Wittelsbachs,
was reunited with Bavaria in 1779.] together with the title of
"elector." His successor had labored with much credit in the second
half of the seventeenth century to repair the wounds caused by the war,
encouraging agriculture and industries, building or restoring numerous
churches and monasteries. But the Bavarian electors in the first half
of the eighteenth century sacrificed a sound, vigorous policy of
internal reform to a far-reaching ambition in international politics.
Despite the bond of a common religion which united them to Austria,
they felt that their proximity to their powerful neighbor made the
Habsburgs their natural enemies. In the War of the Spanish Succession,
therefore, Bavaria took the side of France against Austria, and when
Maria Theresa ascended the throne in 1740, the elector of Bavaria, who
had married a Habsburg princess disbarred by the Pragmatic Sanction of
Charles VI, immediately allied himself with Frederick of Prussia and
with France in order to dismember the Austrian dominions.
[Sidenote: Saxony]
The Saxony of the eighteenth century was but a very small fraction of
the vast Saxon duchy which once comprised all northwestern Germany and
whose people in early times had emigrated to England or had been
subjugated by Charlemagne. Saxony had been restricted since the
thirteenth century to a district on the upper Elbe, wedged in between
Habsburg Bohemia and Hohenzollern Brandenburg. Here, however, several
elements combined to give it an importance far beyond its extent or
population. It was the geographical center of the Germanies. It
occupied a strategic position between Prussia and Austria. Its ruling
family--the Wettins--were electors of the empire. It had been,
moreover, after the championship of Martin Luther by one of its most
notable electors, [footnote: Frederick the Wise( 1486-1525)] a leader
of the Lutheran cause, and the reformer's celebrated translation of the
Bible had fixed the Saxon dialect as the literary language of Germany.
At one time it seemed as if Saxony, rather than Brandenburg-Prussia,
might become the dominant state among the Germanies. But the trend of
events determined otherwise. A number of amiable but weak electors in
the seventeenth century repeatedly allied themselves with Austria
against the Hohenzollerns and thereby practically conceded to
Brandenburg the leadership of the Protestant states of northern
Germany.[Footnote: Another source of weakness in Saxony was the custom
in the Wettin family of dividing the inheritance among members of the
family. Such was the origin of the present infinitesimal states of
Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Saxe-Meiningen, and Saxe-Altenburg.]
[Sidenote: Personal Union of Saxony and Poland]
Then, too, toward the close of the century, the elector separated
himself from his people by becoming a Roman Catholic, and, in order
that he might establish himself as king of Poland, he burdened the
state with continued Austrian alliance, with war, and with heavy taxes.
The unnatural union of Saxony and Poland was maintained throughout the
greater part of the eighteenth century: it was singularly disastrous
for both parties.
[Sidenote: Hanover, and its Personal Union with Great Britain]
A part of the original ancient territory of the Saxons in north western
Germany was included in the eighteenth century in the state of Hanover,
extending between the Elbe and the Weser and reaching from Brandenburg
down to the North Sea. Hanover was recognized as an electorate during
the War of the Spanish Succession, [Footnote: The emperor had given the
title of elector to Ernest Augustus in 1692; the Powers recognized
George I as elector in 1708.] but its real importance rested on the
fact that its first elector, through his mother's family, became in
1714 George I of Great Britain, the founder of the Hanoverian dynasty
in that country. This personal union between the British kingdom and
the electorate of Hanover continued for over a century, and was not
without vital significance in international negotiations. Both George I
and George II preferred Hanover to England as a place of residence and
directed their primary efforts towards the protection of their German
lands from Habsburg or Hohenzollern encroachments.
Enough has now been said to give some idea of the distracted condition
of the Germanies in the eighteenth century and to explain why the Holy
Roman Empire was an unimportant bond of union. Austria, traditionally
the chief of the Germanies, was increasingly absorbed in her non-German
possessions in Hungary, Italy, and the Netherlands. Prussia, the rising
kingdom of the North, comprised a population in which Slavs constituted
a large minority. Saxony was linked with Poland; Hanover, with Great
Britain. Bavaria was a chronic ally of France. Add to this situation,
the political domination of France or Sweden over a number of the petty
states of the empire, the selfishness and jealousies of all the German
rulers, the looming bitter rivalry between Prussia and Austria, and the
sum-total is political chaos, bloodshed, and oppression.
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN HOHENZOLLERNS AND HABSBURGS
[Sidenote: Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa]
In the struggle between Prussia and Austria--between Hohenzollerns and
Habsburgs--centered the European diplomacy and wars of the mid-
eighteenth century. On one side was the young king Frederick II (1740-
1786); on the other, the young queen Maria Theresa (1740-1780). Both
had ability and sincere devotion to their respective states and
peoples,--a high sense of royal responsibilities. Maria Theresa was
beautiful, emotional, and proud; the Great Frederick was domineering,
cynical, and always rational. The Austrian princess was a firm believer
in Catholic Christianity; the Prussian king was a friend of Voltaire
and a devotee of skepticism.
[Sidenote: Coalition against Maria Theresa]
Frederick inherited from his father a fairly compact monarchy and a
splendidly trained and equipped army of 80,000 men. He smiled at the
disorganized troops, the disordered finances, the conflicting interests
in the hodge-podge of territories which his rival had inherited from
her father. He also smiled at the solemn promise which Prussia had made
to respect the Austrian dominions. No sooner was the Emperor Charles VI
dead and Maria Theresa proclaimed at Vienna than Frederick II entered
into engagements with Bavaria and France to dismember her realm. The
elector of Bavaria was to be made Holy Roman Emperor as Charles VII and
Prussia was to appropriate Silesia. France was suspected of designs
upon the Austrian Netherlands.
[Sidenote: Frederick's Designs on Silesia]
Silesia thus became the bone of contention between Frederick II and
Maria Theresa. Silesia covered the fertile valley of the upper Oder,
separating the Slavic Czechs of Frederick's Bohemia on the west from
the Slavic Poles on the east. Its population, which was largely German,
was as numerous as that of the whole kingdom of Prussia, and if annexed
to the Hohenzollern possessions would make them overwhelmingly German.
On the other hand, the loss of Silesia would give Austria less direct
influence in strictly German affairs and would deprive her of a
convenient point of attack against Berlin and the heart of Prussia.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession, 1740]
Trumping up an ancient family claim to the duchy, Frederick immediately
marched his army into Silesia and occupied Breslau, its capital. To the
west, a combined Bavarian and French army prepared to invade Austria
and Bohemia. Maria Theresa, pressed on all sides, fled to Hungary and
begged the Magyars to help her. The effect was electrical. Hungarians,
Austrians, and Bohemians rallied to the support of the Habsburg throne;
recruits were drilled and hurried to the front; the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740-1748) was soon in full swing.
[Sidenote: Entrance of Great Britain and Spain]
A trade war had broken out between Great Britain and Spain in 1739,
[Footnote: Commonly called the War of Jenkins's Ear. See above, p. 311]
which speedily became merged with the continental struggle. Great
Britain was bent on maintaining liberal trading privileges in the
Belgian Netherlands and always opposed the incorporation of those
provinces into the rival and powerful monarchy of France, preferring
that they should remain in the hands of some distant and less-feared,
less commercial power, such as Austria. Great Britain, moreover, had
fully recognized the Pragmatic Sanction and now determined that it was
in accordance with her own best interests to supply Maria Theresa with
money and to dispatch armies to the Continent to defend the Netherlands
against France and to protect Hanover against Prussia. On the other
side, the royal family of Spain sympathized with their Bourbon kinsmen
in France and hoped to recover from Austria all the Italian possessions
of which Spain had been deprived by the treaty of Utrecht (1713).
The main parties to the War of the Austrian Succession were, therefore,
on the one hand, Prussia, France, Spain, and Bavaria, and, on the
other, Austria and Great Britain. With the former at first joined the
elector of Saxony, who wished to play off Prussia against Austria for
the benefit of his Saxon and Polish lands, and the king of Sardinia,
who was ever balancing in Italy between Habsburg and Bourbon
pretensions. With Austria and Great Britain was united Holland, because
of her desire to protect herself from possible French aggression.
[Sidenote: Course of the War]
The war was not so terrible or bloody as its duration and the number of
contestants would seem to indicate. Saxony, which inclined more
naturally to Austrian than to Prussian friendship, was easily persuaded
by bribes to desert her allies and to make peace with Maria Theresa.
Spain would fight only in Italy; and Sardinia, alarmed by the prospect
of substantial Bourbon gains in that peninsula, went over to the side
of Austria. The Dutch were content to defend their own territories.
[Sidenote: Success of Frederick]
Despite the greatest exertions, Maria Theresa was unable to expel
Frederick from Silesia. Her generals suffered repeated reverses at his
hands, and three times she was forced to recognize his occupation in
order that she might employ all her forces against her western enemies.
By the third treaty between the two German sovereigns, concluded at
Dresden in 1745, Silesia [Footnote: Except a very small district, which
thereafter was known as "Austrian Silesia."] was definitely ceded by
Austria to Prussia. Frederick had gained his ends: he coolly deserted
his allies and withdrew from the war.
Meanwhile the Austrian arms had elsewhere been more successful. The
French and Bavarians, after winning a few trifling victories in
Bohemia, had been forced back to the upper Danube. Munich was occupied
by the troops of Maria Theresa at the very time when the elector was
being crowned at Frankfort as Holy Roman Emperor. The whole of Bavaria
was soon in Austrian possession, and the French were in retreat across
the Rhine. Gradually, also, the combined forces of Austria and Sardinia
made headway in Italy against the Bourbon armies of France and Spain.
In the last years of the war, the French managed to protect Alsace and
Lorraine from Austrian invasion, and, under the command of the gifted
Marshal Saxe, they actually succeeded in subjugating the greater part
of the Austrian Netherlands and in carrying the struggle into Holland.
On the high seas and in the colonies, the conflict raged between France
and Great Britain as "King George's War," which has already been
separately noted. [Footnote: See above, pp. 311 f.]
[Sidenote: Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748): Indecisive Character of
Struggle between Prussia and Austria]
The treaties which ended the War of the Austrian Succession were signed
at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. They guaranteed the acquisition of Silesia
by Frederick II of Prussia and restored everything else to the
situation at the opening of the conflict. The Wittelsbach family was
reinstated in Bavaria and in the Palatinate, and the husband of Maria
Theresa, Francis of Lorraine, succeeded Charles VII as Holy Roman
Emperor. France, for all her expenditures and sacrifices, gained
nothing. The War of the Austrian Succession was but a preliminary
encounter in the great duel for German leadership between Prussia and
Austria. It was similarly only an indecisive round in the prolonged
battle between France and Great Britain for the mastery of the colonial
and commercial world.
[Sidenote: Coalition against Frederick the Great]
In the war just closed, Austria had been the chief loser, and the
resolute Maria Theresa set herself at once to the difficult task of
recovering her prestige and her ceded territory. Her first efforts were
directed toward internal reform--consolidating the administrations of
her various dominions by the creation of a strong central council at
Vienna, encouraging agriculture, equalizing and augmenting the taxes,
and increasing the army. Her next step was to form a great league of
rulers that would find a common interest with her in dismembering the
kingdom of Frederick. She knew she could count on Saxony. She easily
secured an ally in the Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia, who had been deeply
offended by the caustic wit of the Prussian king. She was already
united by friendly agreements with Great Britain and Holland. She had
only France to win to her side, and in this policy she had the services
of an invaluable agent, Count Kaunitz, the greatest diplomat of the
age. Kaunitz held out to France, as the price for the abandonment of
the Prussian alliance and the acceptance of that of Austria, the
tempting bait of Frederick's Rhenish provinces. But Louis XV at first
refused an Austrian alliance: it would be a departure from the
traditional French policy of opposing the Habsburgs. Kaunitz then
appealed to the king's mistress, the ambitious Madame de Pompadour,
who, like the Tsarina Elizabeth, had had plenty of occasions for taking
offense at the witty verses of the Prussian monarch: the favor of the
Pompadour was won, and France entered the league against Prussia.
[Sidenote: The "Diplomatic Revolution"]
Meanwhile, however, Great Britain had entered into a special agreement
with Frederick with the object of guaranteeing the integrity of Hanover
and the general peace of the Germanies. When, therefore, the colonial
war between Great Britain and France was renewed in 1754, it was quite
natural that the former should contract a definite alliance with
Prussia. Thus it befell that, whereas in the indecisive War of the
Austrian Succession Prussia and France were pitted against Austria and
Great Britain, in the determinant Seven Years' War, which ensued,
Austria and France were in arms against Prussia and Great Britain. This
overturn of traditional alliances has been commonly designated the
"Diplomatic Revolution."
[Sidenote: The Seven Years' War, 1756-1763]
The Seven Years' War lasted in Europe from 1756 to 1763, and, as
regards both the number of combatants and the brilliant generalship
displayed, deserves to rank with the War of the Spanish Succession as
the greatest war which the modern world had so far witnessed. The story
has already been told of its maritime and colonial counterpart, which
embraced the French and Indian War in America (1754-1763) and the
triumphant campaigns of Clive in India, and which decisively
established the supremacy of Great Britain on the seas, in the Far
East, and in the New World. [Footnote: See above, pp. 312 ff.] There
remains to sketch its course on the European continent.
[Sidenote: Frederick's Victory at Rossbach, 1757]
Without waiting for a formal declaration of hostilities, Frederick
seized Saxony, from which he exacted large indemnities and drafted
numerous recruits, and, with his well-trained veteran troops, crossed
the mountains into Bohemia. He was obliged by superior Austrian forces
to raise the siege of Prague and to fall back on his own kingdom.
Thence converged from all sides the allied armies of his enemies.
Russians moved into East Prussia, Swedes from Pomerania into northern
Brandenburg, Austrians into Silesia, while the French were advancing
from the west. Here it was that Frederick displayed those qualities
which entitle him to rank as one of the greatest military commanders of
all time and to justify his title of "the Great." Inferior in numbers
to any one of his opponents, he dashed with lightning rapidity into
central Germany and at Rossbach (1757) inflicted an overwhelming defeat
upon the French, whose general wrote to Louis XV, "The rout of our army
is complete: I cannot tell you how many of our officers have been
killed, captured, or lost." No sooner was he relieved of danger in the
west than he was back in Silesia. He flung himself upon the Austrians
at Leuthen, took captive a third of their army, and put the rest to
flight.
The victories of Frederick, however, decimated his army. He still had
money, thanks to the subsidies which Pitt poured in from Great Britain,
but he found it very difficult to procure men: he gathered recruits
from hostile countries; he granted amnesty to deserters; he even
enrolled prisoners of war. He was no longer sufficiently sure of his
soldiers to take the offensive, and for five years he was reduced to
defensive campaigns in Silesia. The Russians occupied East Prussia and
penetrated into Brandenburg; in 1759 they captured Berlin.
[Sidenote: French Reverses. The "Family Compact"]
The French, after suffering defeat at Rossbach, directed their energies
against Hanover but encountered unexpected resistance at the hands of
an army collected by Pitt's gold and commanded by a Prussian general,
the prince of Brunswick. Brunswick defeated them and gradually drove
them out of Germany. This series of reverses, coupled with disasters
that attended French armies in America and in India, caused the French
king to call upon his cousin, the king of Spain, for assistance. The
result was the formation of the defensive alliance (1761) between the
Bourbon states of France, Spain, and the Two Sicilies, and the entrance
of Spain into the war (1762).
[Sidenote: Withdrawal of Russia]
What really saved Frederick the Great was the death of the Tsarina
Elizabeth (1762) and the accession to the Russian throne of Peter III,
a dangerous madman but a warm admirer of the military prowess of the
Prussian king. Peter in brusque style transferred the Russian forces
from the standard of Maria Theresa to that of Frederick and restored to
Prussia the conquests of his predecessor. [Footnote: Peter III was
dethroned in the same year; his wife, Catherine II, who succeeded him,
refused to give active military support to either side.] Spain entered
the war too late to affect its fortunes materially. She was unable to
regain what France had lost, and in fact the Bourbon states were
utterly exhausted. The Austrians, after frantic but vain attempts to
wrest Silesia from Frederick, finally despaired of their cause.
[Sidenote: Treaty of Hubertusburg (1763): Humiliation of the Habsburgs
and Triumph of the Hohenzollerns]
The treaty of Hubertusburg (1763) put an end to the Seven Years' War in
Europe. Maria Theresa finally, though reluctantly, surrendered all
claims to Silesia. Prussia had clearly humiliated Austria and become a
first-rate power. The Hohenzollerns were henceforth the acknowledged
peers of the Habsburgs. The almost synchronous treaty of Paris closed
the war between Great Britain, on the one hand, and France and Spain on
the other, by ceding the bulk of the French colonial empire to the
British. Thereafter, Great Britain was practically undisputed mistress
of the seas and chief colonial power of the world.
[Sidenote: Frederick the Great and the Partition of Poland]
Frederick the Great devoted the last years of his life to the
consolidation of his monarchy [Footnote: For the internal reforms of
Frederick, see below, pp. 440 ff.] and to enlarging its sphere of
influence rather by diplomacy than by war. Frederick felt that the best
safeguard against further attempts of Austria to recover Silesia was a
firm alliance between Prussia and Russia. And it was an outcome of that
alliance that in 1772 he joined with the Tsarina Catherine in making
the first partition of Poland. Catherine appropriated the country east
of the Düna and the Dnieper rivers. Frederick annexed West Prussia,
except the towns of Danzig and Thorn, thereby linking up Prussia and
Brandenburg by a continuous line of territory. Maria Theresa, moved by
the loss of Silesia and by fear of the undue preponderance which the
partition of Poland would give to her northern rivals, thought to
adjust the balance of power by sharing in the shameful transaction: she
occupied Galicia, including the important city of Cracow. Maria Theresa
repeatedly expressed her abhorrence of the whole business, but, as the
scoffing Frederick said, "She wept, but she kept on taking."
The partition of Poland was more favorable to Prussia than to Austria.
In the former case, the land annexed lay along the Baltic and served to
render East Prussia, Brandenburg, and Silesia a geographical and
political unit. On the other hand, Austria to some extent was
positively weakened by the acquisition of territory outside her natural
frontiers, and the addition of a turbulent Polish people further
increased the diversity of races and the clash of interests within the
Habsburg dominions.
When, a few years later, the succession to the electorate of Bavaria
was in some doubt and Austria laid claims to the greater part of that
state (1777-1779), Frederick again stepped in, and now by intrigue and
now by threats of armed force again prevented any considerable
extension of Habsburg control. His last important act was the formation
of a league of princes to champion the lesser German states against
Austrian aggression.
By hard work, by military might, by force of will, unhampered by any
moral code, Frederick the Great perfected the policies of the Great
Elector and of Frederick William I and raised Prussia to the rank of
partner with Austria in German leadership and to an eminent position in
the international affairs of Europe. Had Frederick lived, however, but
a score of years longer, he would have witnessed the total extinction
of the Holy Roman Empire, the apparent ruin of the Germanies, and the
degradation of his own country as well as that of Austria. [Footnote:
See below, Chapter XVI.] He might even have perceived that a personal
despotism, built by bloodshed and unblushing deceit, was hardly proof
against a nation stirred by idealism and by a consciousness of its own
rights and power.
[Illustration: THE HOHENZOLLERN FAMILY (1415-1915): ELECTORS OF
BRANDENBURG, KINGS OF PRUSSIA, AND GERMAN EMPERORS]
ADDITIONAL READING
GENERAL. Brief narratives: J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard, _The
Development of Modern Europe_, Vol. I (1907), ch. iv, v; E. F.
Henderson, _A Short History of Germany_, Vol. II (1902), ch. i-iv; A.
H. Johnson, _The Age of the Enlightened Despot, 1660-1789_ (1910), ch.
vii, viii; Ferdinand Schevill, _The Making of Modern Germany (1916)_,
ch. i, ii; Arthur Hassall, _The Balance of Power, 1715-1789_ (1896),
ch. vi-ix; C. T. Atkinson, _A History of Germany, 1715-1813_ (1908),
almost exclusively a military history; H. T. Dyer, _A History of Modern
Europe from the Fall of Constantinople_, 3d ed. rev. by Arthur Hassall,
6 vols. (1901), ch. xlv-xlviii. Longer accounts: _Cambridge Modern
History_, Vol. V (1908), ch. xii, xx, xxi, and Vol. VI (1909), ch. vii-
ix, xx; _Histoire générale_, Vol. V, ch. xix, Vol. VI, ch. xvi, and
Vol. VII, ch. iv, v; Émile Bourgeois, _Manuel historique de politique
étrangère_, 4th ed., Vol. I (1906), ch. vi, xii, valuable for
international relations of the Germanies; Bernhard Erdmannsdörffer,
_Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740_, 2 vols. (1892-1893).
THE HABSBURG DOMINIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. In English: Sidney
Whitman, _Austria (1899)_, and, by the same author, _The Realm of the
Habsburgs_ (1893), brief outlines; Louis Leger, _A History of Austro-
Hungary from the Earliest Time to the Year 1889_, trans. by Mrs. B.
Hill from a popular French work (1889); William Coxe, _House of
Austria_, 4 vols. (1893-1895) in the Bohn Library, originally published
nearly a century ago but still useful, especially Vol. Ill; C. M.
Knatchbull-Hugessen, _The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation_,
Vol. I (1908), ch. iv-vii; Ármin Vámbéry, _The Story of Hungary_
(1894), in the "Story of the Nations" Series. In German: Franz Krones,
_Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs_, 5 vols. (1876-1879), Vol. IV,