FROM THE PEACE OF UTRECHT TO THE PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE
In the last, short, chapter I tried to tell the story of the early
years of the eighteenth century up to the Peace of Utrecht in 1713.
Principally it is the story of the humbling of France, and of the
checking of the ambition of Louis XIV. to unite in his descendants,
together with the Crown of France, all that was included in the
monarchy of Spain. That ambitious design was checked, and from now
onward we shall see that a great motive in the story is the
preservation of what became known as "the balance of power in
Europe"; so that no one nation should have too preponderant a
superiority over the rest.
The purpose of the present chapter is to carry forward the story to
the middle of the century, or, more precisely, to another very
important peace treaty, that between England and France, signed at
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748.
The Peace of Utrecht had indeed included in its provisions a
settlement between England and France; but within a few years war
broke out again in Europe, which involved both these countries, and
again it was war over the succession to thrones. There was war over
the succession to the throne of Poland, to the throne of Austria,
and, although it is not written of {115} by historians as a war of
succession, it really was a small war of the same kind in which
England very soon found herself engaged in Scotland.. And, as ever
of old, France and her Catholic king sided with the Scottish
Catholics against the English Protestant king. The Court of France
had, as we have noted, given welcome and shelter to the son, by his
second marriage, of James II., who had a claim by birth to the
English Crown.
[Sidenote: Hanoverian English Kings]
But by a recent law of England no Catholic could succeed to the
throne. The Act of Settlement gave the Crown of England to George,
Elector of Hanover, who was a Protestant and son of a Protestant
grand-daughter of James I. It was thus that the Hanoverian dynasty,
represented by our present King George V., attained the throne of
England. Until Queen Victoria's accession, the sovereignty of
Hanover, which became a kingdom when the Bourbon king was restored to
the throne of France, also belonged to the King of England. But the
laws of Hanover did not recognise succession through the female line,
or admit of a queen as ruler; and therefore the two Crowns were
separated when Victoria became sovereign of England.
The son of James II. came over to Scotland in 1715 and raised a
revolt there, with the aid of some of the Highland clans; but this
rising, known in history, from its date, as "The Fifteen," was easily
put down and made no abiding mark on the story.
The next, which really was of some importance, of the wars of
succession was that waged about the throne of Poland. It was a
throne, as we have seen, in frequent dispute, but generally the
trouble was fought out between Russia, Sweden, and Poland itself,
with eastern German States taking some hand in it. Usually these
German States acted as a kind of buffer between that particular
trouble and the West of Europe, {116} rather as Austria, southward,
acted as a buffer for the West against the Turk. But now the King of
France was drawn into the fight, because he had married a daughter of
the Leszynska whom Charles of Sweden had made King of Poland for a
few years before the disastrous overthrow of the Swedes at Pultowa.
Russia supported the cause of a rival candidate to the throne, and
Leszynska and his French allies were defeated. The chief importance
of this war of the Polish succession, for the general story, is that
it resulted in a large increase of Russia's power over Poland. The
successive rulers of Russia began to be more and more fully
recognised as the heads of the Slav people and the supreme upholders
of the Greek Church.
At the same time another power, a Protestant power, that of Prussia,
was becoming more and more formidable along the shores of the Baltic
to the north of Poland, and the time is near at hand when we shall
see these two, Russia and Prussia, playing a very leading part in the
story.
For the moment, however, the western nations are perhaps not
considering them greatly. They are occupied with wars amongst
themselves. France and Spain are in arms against each other within a
very few years after the peace signed at Utrecht. In the
Mediterranean, fighting is nearly perpetual. Venice takes part of
Greece from the Turks, and the Turks regain it. Italy and the
islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily are the scenes of battles
and exchanges of territory. But still we have to remember what we
have seen reason to note before, that we should quite misunderstand
the effect of the wars if we were to estimate them by anything like
the scale which the last Great War has painfully made known to us.
The fighting was all done by the professional soldiers, and the
numbers engaged were what we should deem {117} very small, even in
comparison with the far smaller population of the countries at that
date. The area of the fighting was restricted, so that comparatively
small tracts were laid waste; nor was the land so cultivated as it is
now. There were not the same crops to be destroyed.
[Sidenote: The Austrian Succession]
After the war over the Spanish Succession, which terminated with the
Peace of Utrecht in 1713, the most important of the wars of the same
kind was that over the succession to the Austrian throne, which begun
in 1740 on the accession of Maria Theresa, who was the daughter and
heiress of the Emperor and Austrian Grand Duke, Charles VI.
Frederick II., King of Prussia, known in history as Frederick the
Great, appears to have thought the opportunity good for getting a
slice of Austrian territory for himself. It was that land which was
called Silesia, and he claimed it on the ground that it had at one
time belonged to the Electors of Brandenburg. The Electors of
Brandenburg, we shall remember, had become rulers of the kingdom of
Prussia.
Frederick was a great general, and two successive victories quickly
induced Maria Theresa to make peace with him, ceding him a portion of
that Silesia for which he had gone to war.
Maria Theresa was married to Francis of Lorraine, who was Grand Duke
of Tuscany. She was of the Habsburg house. Louis XIV. was a
Bourbon--a younger branch of the Capet family--and in direct descent
from the Henry IV., who was the first of the Bourbons to be King of
France. And of the same Bourbon family was the King of Spain and of
Southern Italy and Sicily--"the Two Sicilies," as they were called.
Nearly thirty years before his death, the Emperor Charles had secured
the assent of the great powers of Europe to his decree that if he
died without sons his {118} daughter should succeed to the Austrian
dominions. The Bourbons, with others, had assented. Nevertheless,
directly Charles died and Maria Theresa, according to this
arrangement, claimed to succeed him, they took sides with the Elector
of Bavaria, who claimed the throne.
For allies, she had only England, with Hanover, in the north, and, in
the south, the small but ancient kingdom of Savoy, often, in course
of the story, the object of fighting between France and Spain, yet
still, after varying fortunes, maintaining its independence.
Moreover, Sardinia, which had long been a Spanish possession, now
belonged to Savoy. The armies of this small State had a great
reputation, due to the genius for generalship shown by Prince Eugene
of Savoy both against the Turks and in Marlborough's service.
Mainly, however, it was the valour and devotion of the Hungarians
that saved Austria for Maria Theresa. The armies of France and
Bavaria advanced through Russian territory, but they were flung back
by Hungarians and Austrians. Maria Theresa returned to the throne
from which she had fled. Her principal enemy, the Bavarian Elector,
who had been chosen as Emperor, died, and her own husband, Francis,
was elected Emperor in his place.
In the north, England and France met in the battles of Dettingen and
Fontenoy. The English were assisted by the Dutch, for Holland was
now a member of the alliance, but neither of the allies gained much
glory in the campaign. They did at least divert some of the strength
of France from the Austrian battlefields, while the armies of Savoy
occupied the attention of Spain in Italy and also of such troops as
France had to spare for that quarter of the far-flung war. Frederick
the Great broke his word, with the cynicism which the Prussian has
always shown since, and took the field {119} on the side of France
and Bavaria. Again he was victorious. He was confirmed in
possession of Silesia, though he assented to the election of Francis
as Emperor.
[Sidenote: Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle]
The result of this various fighting was summed up in the Provisions
of the famous Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed at that place in 1748.
Maria Theresa was established on the Austrian throne, with the formal
assent of the other powers. Her dominion in Northern Italy,
including Milan and Tuscany, was confirmed. And the territory of
Savoy was extended. In the south, the Bourbon king of the Two
Sicilies retained these dominions. Thus, in the main, the position
of neither Spain nor of France was greatly affected. We may note
that one of the treaty provisions put Genoa under the protection of
France. That may seem a detail rather small for attention in so
outlined a story as this. It is, however, a detail of which the
importance must be realised when we observe that Genoa claimed a
sovereignty over the little island of Corsica. Corsica shortly
afterwards rebelled against this sovereignty, with the ultimate
result that the island was annexed by France in 1755. And in 1769
was born, in Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was in direct consequence, therefore, of this protectorate of
Genoa by France under the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and of France's
annexation of Corsica a few years later, that Napoleon was born a
French subject. That seemingly accidental circumstance was of some
importance in the world's history.
The disposition of the various States in Italy, made by this Peace of
1748, was maintained with little disturbance until the armies of the
French Republic, under the leadership of the wonderful Corsican,
broke up every European disposition.
If France, in the course of this war over the Austrian succession,
had possessed an army free for an attack {120} in any force on
England, it might have gone very hardly for our country. The son of
James II., known as the Old Pretender (pretender to the Crown of
England) was still living at the French Court in 1745; and in that
year his son, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, landed in
Scotland, and led that rising which is known from its date as "the
Forty-five." With the Highland clans to aid, he gained victories
over the English generals sent against him, he conquered practically
all Scotland and made his way southward in England as far as Derby.
If he had shown determination, if he had pushed on towards London, it
is quite likely that much of the future story of England and of the
whole Anglo-Saxon community in the world might have to be written
very differently. For England was not warmly devoted to her
Hanoverian kings. The Young Pretender might have picked up many more
adherents as he went south. Had a French force been poured in to his
assistance at this critical moment, it seems to be the opinion of
historians that his cause would have been won.
But no French force appeared. Probably France had all her available
armies fully engaged. Charles Edward did not show determination. He
went back to Edinburgh, and the clans, held together by no central
authority, but only by their sympathy with the Scottish royal family
of Stuart, dispersed to their Highland homes. For a while the
Pretender played the king in Edinburgh, but at length a strong
English force under the Duke of Cumberland was sent to Scotland. A
decisive engagement was fought on the wild moor of Culloden, near
Inverness. It settled for all time the fate of the Stuart dynasty,
and set the Hanoverians firmly on the throne of England. The clans
which had arisen for the Stuarts in the previous attempt by the Old
Pretender in "the {121} Fifteen" had suffered slight punishment at
the hands of the victorious English. After "the Forty-five," on the
contrary, their punishment was cruelly severe; but it had at least
the effect of quelling their spirit so that they did not imperil the
peace of the realm again.
[Sidenote: Ireland's misfortunes]
At the same moment, towards the middle of this eighteenth century,
Ireland was in terrible suffering also. In 1739 had happened her
worst famine, due to failure of the potatoes on which most of the
people depended, almost entirely, for their livelihood. It was
estimated that no less than one-fifth of the population actually
died, and there can be no doubt that the effect of that starvation on
the survivors must have been to weaken the stock for more than one
generation.
And we are obliged to confess, with shame, that England's dealing
with Ireland during all that half-century was as cruel and selfish as
it was stupid and short-sighted. There was a moment when it seems as
if the people of the smaller island were anxious for union with the
greater; but that union was opposed by a section of the English
themselves--especially the powerful section interested in the trade
of wool with the continent of Europe. A law passed as far back as
the second half of the seventeenth century prohibited the Irish from
exporting cattle. Consequently they had largely devoted their
excellent pasture to producing sheep, for the wool. The English wool
traders wished to keep this profitable commerce to themselves. To
attain that selfish end they opposed the proposed union, which
presumably would have put the Irish wool producers on the same
footing as the English. Further, under William III., they succeeded
in passing through Parliament a bill prohibiting the Irish from
either making up their home-grown wool or from exporting it.
{122}
The not unnatural result was that the unfortunate Irish turned to all
sorts of secret devices for shipping their wool, contrary to the
provisions of this extraordinarily cruel law, to France; and this
secret traffic is generally regarded as the starting-point of all the
many secret societies, the Whiteboys, the Fenians, and so on, which
have figured largely in Ireland's later political story. So much of
the bitter feud between England and Ireland has been due to the folly
and injustice of the former nation! For all our just pride in the
greatness of our country, we must try to keep a clear vision and not
let that proper pride blind us to England's faults.
One of the reasons why I suggested that a French force landing in
England in "the Forty-five" might have changed the subsequent story
of the Anglo-Saxon people, is that it might have had the result of
modifying those very stupid measures by which England drove her
American colonies to revolt, and so caused the separation from the
mother land of the United States. It is always interesting to
speculate about what might have happened to the world story had this
or the other event gone just a little differently. It is
interesting; but we can never know the answers to such questioning.
The story of that lamentable separation belongs to the second half of
the century with which we are now dealing. For the moment
preparation is in making for it by the continual increase of the
English colonists and their continual expansion over more and more of
the virgin land. But still the French are in possession of all that
vast extent then included under the name of Louisiana.
In a former chapter we saw how unmeasured were the hopes of Spain
regarding that fabled city of El Dorado, which seems to have been
imagined as built and paved with gold. In the new world which the
voyagers of the previous century had begun to open {123} out for men
of Europe, no vision seemed impossible to realise, and the French, in
their American possessions, appear to have deemed that they had found
something equivalent to a city of gold--a land with boundless
possibilities of wealth. Nor were the less imaginative English
immune from the like delusive dreams. We had our "South Sea Bubble";
the French their "Mississippi Bubble."
Bubble was the name applied to those schemes only when they had
proved themselves, by bursting, to be filled with nothing more
substantial or golden than the air. The English bubble, at its
inception, was a grave business proposition styled the South Sea
Company. The French equivalent was the Mississippi Company, or
Compagnie de l'Occident. Like the East India Company, these were
formed by persons who subscribed funds for exploiting the wealth,
real or imaginary, of the countries indicated by the titles of each.
Shares in both one and the other rose to ridiculous values; and the
bursting of the one, as of the other, brought ruin to very many in
both countries.
[Sidenote: The French bourgeois]
Nevertheless the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in the middle of the
eighteenth century was the starting-point from which began a
remarkable commercial prosperity in France. It was a prosperity of
the bourgeois, the burghers or dwellers in the towns, who developed
the industries and trades, but it did not reach down to the paysans,
the peasants or dwellers in the country. They were in a very bad
way, ground down by heavy taxes and by the enforced labour demanded
from them by the seigneurs, or landowners.
France had expected great things from her Compagnie de l'Occident,
and her extensive colony of Louisiana; but the trading stations which
she established in increasing number in the East brought her far
richer gains. The war of the Austrian Succession engaged England and
France in fighting on {124} battlefields as far apart as Canada and
Louisiana in the West, and India in the East; and in the East the
French, under Dupleix, at first had the advantage again and again.
They repulsed an attack of the English on Pondicherry and they
captured Madras. Indications, for the moment, pointed towards an
Indian Empire for France as far more likely than an English Indian
Empire. In the West, England fared better, but the results of the
victories of either side were largely neutralised by that
far-reaching Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which provided that both
should relinquish their recent conquests to the other. So the
apparent effect of that far-off fighting was to show England
increasing in strength westward, but losing, relatively to France, in
the East. The events of the next few years were to prove that
appearance true for the West, but completely to disprove it in the
East. And we should note here once again that it was mainly on the
sea-coasts of India, not inland, that the French established
themselves. In the interior, the great empire of the Moguls was
passing from its zenith of power. The most remarkable monument to
its glory is that surpassingly beautiful Taj Mahal, regarded as one
of the world's wonders--the shrine erected by the Mogul emperor in
memory of his best beloved wife. And as the Mogul supremacy wanes,
the power of the Hindu States of Mahratta and Sindhia increases, so
that the balance is nearly equal between the Mahommedans and the
Buddhists.
[Sidenote: Taj Mahal]
[Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.]
The little kingdom of Afghanistan which we have seen rise on the
north-eastern frontier of India established its complete independence
towards the middle of the century, after long fighting, with varying
fortune, against Persia. On her other boundary, westward and
northward, Persia was engaged, on the whole successfully, in
perpetual fighting against the Turk; but the result, except as it
indicated a decrease {125} in Turkey's striking force, had little or
no effect on the Great Story. Under the famous Shah Nadir, Persian
armies had penetrated as far eastward as Delhi. But after Nadir's
death, in 1747, his eastern conquests were lost.
On its north-western border, India was menaced by Chinese armies,
that conquered the warlike Ghurkas and subdued Nepal. At no other
moment of our story does China appear so successful or so aggressive
in arms or so likely to play an important part in the world drama.
Her great emperor Keenlung had come to the throne in 1735, commencing
a reign of no less than sixty years. Nor even then did he leave the
throne to die, but voluntarily relinquished it to his son--to the
fifteenth, in seniority, of his many sons.
This, however, was the farthest limit of Chinese extension in the
direction of India. The Ghurkas, a {126} tribe of martial hill-men
destined to distinguished service under the British flag in later
years, soon regained their independence. China contented herself
with a much disputed sovereignty over the more northern province of
Tibet.
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