THE PEACE of Utrecht was followed by a period of languor and
depression. Spain and Sweden asserted themselves unsuccessfully;
whilst England under Walpole, France under Fleury, Austria under the
ceremonious majesty of Charles VI, were inactive and pacific; The
generation lacked initiative, and was not rich in eminent men.
In Prussia, there was no repose, no leisure, but simply the tension of
a tiger crouching for a spring. The king, who had devoted his life to
creating the greatest army in Europe, never attempted to employ it,
and left it a thunderbolt in the hands of his son. The crown prince
was a musician and a versifier, with a taste for clever men, but also
for cleverish men, an epicurean student, with much loose knowledge,
literary rather than scientific, and an inaccurate acquaintance with
French and Latin. To Bayle, Locke, Voltaire in his first manner, he
owed an abundance of borrowed ideas, conventionally rational; but to
the rising literature; of his own country, which ruled the world
before he died, he did not attend. Hardened by his father's
heartless severity he learnt to live without sympathy, to despise
mankind, to rely on himself. He was the author of a commonplace
treatise against Machiavelli, partly founded on Montesquieu's Grandeur
et Decadence. This unamiable youth, with the aspirations and the
vanity of a minor poet, was the most consummate practical genius that,
in modern times, has inherited a throne.
In the same year, 1740, in which Frederic II succeeded his father, the
Emperor Charles VI died, leaving his hereditary dominions to his
daughter Maria Theresa, wife of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the
House of Lorraine. By an instrument called the Pragmatic Sanction,
which was the subject of protracted negotiations, the Powers had
agreed to acknowledge her right. She was & sensible and reasonable
woman, much the best that had ever reigned; but she was without
culture or superior talent, and he husband was not able to supply the
deficiency. Frederic at once made himself master of Silesia. There
were certain territorial claims. The succession was about to be
disputed, and a scramble might be expected. The death of the Russian
empress, Anne, made it improbable that Austria would be protected on
that side. Frederic was ambitious, and he was strong enough to
gratify his ambition. No accepted code regulated the relations
between States. It could not be exactly the same as that between men;
and in what respect it differed was not determined. States were
absolute, and acknowledged no law over them. Grave and disinterested
men would have admitted that that may be done for the State which
could not be done for the individual; that robbery was not robbery,
that murder was not murder, if it was committed in the public
interest. There might be a want of generosity, a want of delicacy
about it; but if conquest by unprovoked attack was a crime, in the
same sense or the same degree as poisoning a man to obtain his
property, history must undergo a fundamental revision, and all respect
for sovereign authority must be banished from the world. How far that
revision has been accomplished or that respect has departed, at the
present day, may be hard to say. At that time, Frederic was much more
widely applauded for his prompt success than detested or despised for
his crime.
At Molwitz, his first battle, the Austrian cavalry carried all before
them, and Schwerin got the king to quit the field before the solid
infantry of Brandenburg won the day. Voltaire, who hated him behind a
mask of flattery, said that he had never known what it was to be
grateful, except to the horse that carried him out of fire at Molwitz.
That humiliation taught Frederk to remodel and increase his cavalry,
and he afterwards owed to it much of his success. Nobody again
advised him to ride out of the way of danger. He was soon known to an
invariable victor, and Maria Theresa ended the war by surrendering the
contested province. Frederic concluded a treaty of alliance with
France, which was to last fifteen years, and did last until, in 1756,
Kaunitz effected the great change in the attitude of European Powers.
On the extinction of the Habsburg dynasty of emperors, the Bavarian
House of Wittelsbach claimed the succession; and the French, supported
by Frederic, traversed Germany and invaded Bohemia. Maria Theresa was
loyally defended by Hungary in both the Silesian wars, and maintained
her right, without recovering the country she had lost. She was
ineffectively supported by England against the superiority of French
arms in the Netherlands. That good understanding now came to an end.
The Seven Years' War, otherwise called the Third Silesian War, because
it finally settled the question whether Silesia should be Austrian or
Prussian, though it involved almost every European Power, was an
episode in a far larger controversy. French and English were at peace
in the old world, but a feud had broken out in the backwoods of the
new, where their strife was for the grandest prize ever disputed by
man, dominion over America from the Atlantic ultimately to the Golden
Gates of the Pacific, and for the future of the world. The French
were masters of the lake region and the St. Lawrence, and also of the
Mississippi basin. They claimed the intervening country by right of
discovery, and they began, in 1748, to establish an effective
occupation of the valley of the Ohio. The English might retain the
Atlantic fringe; the French would possess the hinterland from
Louisbourg to New Orleans. They planted a chain of posts, choosing
the place for them with superb intuition. One is now Detroit, another
Chicago. And under the inland slope of the Alleghanies, where the
waters fall towards the Gulf of Mexico, at the confluence of the
Monongahela with the Ohio, a French officer, Duquesne, built a fort,
the most important of all, which closed the interior to our colonies,
but which has undergone a significant change of name, for Fort
Duquesne is called after Pitt, and is the Birmingham of America.
This annexation of debatable land was an act of aggression to which
the colonists were not bound to submit. The first to understand that
it was a question of existence was the man on whose head the destinies
of the country rested. Washington twice led expeditions against
Duquesne, the second time with Regulars under Braddock, and was each
time defeated. The question of the possession of the interior was
left to be decided on the Heights of Abraham. It was worth more to
the English people than any continental issue. The quarrel spread to
the ocean, and we made no scruple to assail French ships wherever the
conditions were favourable.
Kaunitz, the minister of Maria Theresa, saw his opportunity for a
grand stroke of policy. By transplanting the struggle from the New
World to the Old, and from sea to land, he would obtain a French
alliance against Prussia. Ostensibly his purpose was the recovery of
the lost province; but the circumstances seemed promising, and he
spoke of reducing Frederic to the position of a margrave of
Brandenburg. He asked, at first, for no assistance in the field. If
France would set up an army of observation on the frontier, the house
of Hanover would be disabled from joining Prussia. France was glad,
in a quiet way, to check the House of Hanover. By degrees a complete
understanding was achieved, and Lewis XV undertook to help Austria
with an army in the field and a vast sum of money. Belgium was to be
the price of it, partly for France, partly for the Bourbon, who was
Duke of Parma, in exchange for his Italian dominions. This change of
front was much facilitated by the civilities of Kaunitz to the person
whom the Austrian envoy described as the French Prime Minister, Madame
de Pompadour.
He was equally successful with Russia. There the government had come
to the conclusion that the danger to the empire was not from Austria,
which was expanding towards the Mediterranean, and had just lost its
northern province, but from Prussia, which was aspiring and
aggressive, and on the watch for opportunities. Therefore the
Russians were only too eager for the attack to begin, and had to be
restrained by the Austrians, who could only bring France into line by
a negotiation in several stages. The Russian government agreed,
reluctantly, to wait for the spring of 1757. But the hereditary
grand-duke was an admirer of Frederic; the chancellor, Bernstorff, was
secured by the English; and the action of the Russians was half-hearted
throughout.
The first half of 1756 was spent by the three great military Powers in
preparing the attack for next year. Nobody could blame the Austrians
for plotting to reconquer what had belonged to them, and it is at
Vienna that their initiative has been demonstrated. At Berlin, the
discovery has been received with some resistance. They were proud of
the great Frederic as a warrior and a conqueror; they were not ready
to admire him as a quaker, and the victim of designing foes. He had
been quite willing to commence a new war when the occasion should
warrant it. He hoped, some day, to conquer Bohemia as he had
conquered Silesia, and to exchange it for Saxony. But the conditions
needed for such an enterprise did not exist, and he was in no hurry.
He concluded a very harmless Convention at Westminster, in January
1756; but he was not arming at a time when the scheme of Kaunitz was
about completed. It was midsummer before he knew the danger that
threatened him. Certain despatches which were opened as they passed
through the Prussian Post Office, others which were stolen, revealed
the whole plot. Without an ally, except the House of Hanover, and
such confederates from North-western Germany as English gold might
induce to join, he had to defend himself against Austria, Russia,
France, great part of Germany, and eventually Sweden and Spain. The
help of England was assured, for, in May, war had been declared
between England and France. But the English had not been preparing
for a very formidable effort. They at once lost Minorca, the advanced
post in the Mediterranean, from which they watched the Gulf of Lyons
and the naval arsenal of Toulon, and felt the loss so acutely that
they shot the admiral who had failed to relieve the place. Calcutta
too was taken, and the English perished in the Black Hole. In the
Lake region the French, at first, had the best of it.
Frederic underrated the value of the alliance, and mismanaged it
badly. He knew that there was a Whig dogma against letting England be
taken in tow by Hanover. The great propounder of the doctrine was
William Pitt, who now rose to power. Frederic did not know that this
turgid declaimer was as able, as powerful, as ambitious as himself,
and did not divine that he would make the German quarrel and the
compulsory defence of Hanover the means of occupying the military
forces of France until the contest for' oceanic empire was decided in
favour of England. Pitt declared that he would conquer America in
Germany. He armed one hundred and forty-eight ships of the line and
fifty frigates, with which he swept the Atlantic, and Montcalm, for
many months, received neither instructions nor supplies. But Frederic
required that the army in English pay, which was to defend Hanover,
and thus to cover his right flank, should be commanded by the Duke of
Cumberland. Upon this Pitt went out of office. The duke did not
justify the king's choice of him. He was beaten by d'Estrees, and
agreed to dissolve his force. But Pitt, who had soon returned to
power, rejected the Convention, gave Frederic a subsidy of L670,000 a
year, and maintained a force against the French, under Ferdinand of
Brunswick, who did his work well. There was more of English gold
in his camp than of English steel. One of our commanders was
court-martialled. When the Marquis of Granby did better, at Warburg,
the joy was great, and he became a popular hero. His hat and wig
were blown off as he led the charge, and his portrait, bareheaded,
in a high wind, is at Trinity, and was on the sign of many an inn,
especially of a well-known one at Dorking, in Mr. Pickwick's time.
On 21st July, 1756, when Frederic II discovered the whole of the peril
that confronted him, although it was far more than he had dreamt of,
he lost neither hope nor courage. His army of 145,000 men was not the
largest, but was much the best. Three or four of his generals, his
brother Henry, the Prince of Brunswick, Schwerin, who had served under
Eugene at Blenheim, and had followed Charles XII into Turkey, above
all, Seydlitz, were superior to the men on the other side, so far as
these were known. There were three millions in ready money, which was
enough for two campaigns in those economical days. The Russians had a
long march before them, in order to come within range; the French
might be left to the army of English mercenaries. The king might
hope, by energy and rapidity, to crush the Austrians in the valley of
the Elbe, which is Bohemia, or the valley of the Oder, which is
Silesia, before their friends came to aid them. Nearer still than
Austria were the Saxons, whose elector was King of Poland, and whose
minister, Bruhl, like Beust in 1866, was the centre of anti-Prussian
politics.
Frederic began by seizing Dresden, and carrying off the secret papers
of his enemies. The Saxon army held out for some weeks, and was then
forced to serve in the ranks of their conqueror, who thus altered the
proportion of numbers, by moving 20,000 men from one side to the
other. The Saxon officers remonstrated when called on to take the
oath of allegiance to their enemy. They said that such a thing was
unexampled. He replied that he was not afraid of being original.
Their resistance had compelled him to withdraw from Bohemia, after an
indecisive action. In 1757 he won a great battle at Prague, where he
sacrificed 18,000 men and Schwerin was killed. The main Austrian army
was shut up in the city, and Frederic expected them to surrender; but
a relieving force, under Daun, defeated him at Kollin, and he withdrew
to his own country, that is, he withdrew into Saxony, which he had
made his home, Dresden being then the most civilised and luxurious
place in Germany. For six years he did not see Berlin, which was
twice occupied by the enemy. Up to that midsummer of 1757 his success
in war, like that of Marlborough, had been unbroken. Kollin was the
first of three great battles which he lost. In the following year he
was again defeated by Daun, in a night attack at Hochkirch, with the
loss of 100 guns. And in 1759, which is the turning of the tide, the
Russians beat him at Kunersdorf. And yet it is to this chequered year
1757, not to the preceding career of incessant victory, that Frederic
the Great owes the immensity of his military fame.
The French had triumphed on the western side of the seat of war, and
had driven Cumberland before them, when Frederic attacked them with a
much smaller force, at Rossbach, in Saxony. With hardly any
resistance and hardly any loss, he gained a complete victory over them
and their Imperialist allies. Then he hurried to Silesia, where the
Austrians were masters. He defeated them at Leuthen, a month after
Rossbach, recovered Breslau, and made 38,000 prisoners. Nothing like
it had been seen in war. The defeat of the French made him a national
hero. Previously, his enemies were Germans, and the French were his
allies. That was forgotten and rectified. That Germany had so much
to suffer at his hands was forgiven. And the victory was so complete,
so artistic, that he was not less admired in France, where they
laughed at their unsuccessful marshals. Not long before he was spoken
of in Paris as one who had just missed being a great man. Such
language was never used again. And the tremendous reduction of
Austrian forces at Leuthen and Breslau was a still greater surprise.
A man who could do that might do anything, and was out of proportion
with the ordinary race of men.
There is an undefinable quantity in military genius which makes the
event uncertain. At the beginning the emperor had written that
Frederic's secret had been discovered, and consisted in what was
called the oblique order--that is, to make one wing much stronger than
the other, to refuse with the weak wing, and to attack with
overwhelming force with the strong. That method did not originate
with him, but he repeatedly employed it. Then there was his
innovation in the use of cavalry. He had learnt its value, against
the musket of those days, by experience; and he believed that
Seydlitz, in the open, at the head of seventy squadrons, was a thing
which no infantry could resist. Then there was the impetus his troops
derived from the extraordinary renown of their king, that there was
nothing to counterbalance on the other side. This was evident, was
matter of common knowledge. But even in his own army, on his own
staff, in the royal family, there were two opinions. There was a
school which taught that actual fighting must not be resorted to until
the use of brains has been exhausted, that the battle comes in when
the manoeuvre has failed, that the seizure of a strategic position, or
a scientific retreat, like that of Wellington into Portugal, of
Barclay in 1812 before Napoleon, of Johnston before Sherman, is the
first defence of armies, so that a force which is tactically inferior
may be strategically superior. Frederic was, I believe, the first
great soldier to reject this doctrine, and to act on the principle
that nothing can destroy the enemy except a pitched battle, and that
the destruction of the enemy, not the weakening of the enemy, is the
right object of war. His battles were very numerous and very
sanguinary, and not always decisive. Napoleon followed in his
footsteps, manoeuvring less, as he grew older, and fighting more. It
is the adopted teaching of the Prussian school, since Clausewitz and
Moltke.
During the French campaign of 1814 Napoleon said to Marmont: "We are
still 100,000." "No!" said the marshal; "only 60,000." "Exactly,"
Napoleon replied; "60,000 and myself, that is 100,000." Something of
this kind must be allowed in the person of the great king; and it kept
up his hopes after his enemies began to prevail in 1759. In 1760 he
was still successful at Liegnitz and at Torgau. But his country was
exhausted; his ranks were thinned by the wasteful expenditure of life;
there was nothing to look forward to, unless the Turk effected a
diversion on the Danube; and Frederic was repeatedly on the point of
taking poison. In 1755 he had written that war must always be
aggressive. Even a successful defence weakens the victor.
The zeal of his only ally was beginning to cool. Pitt had
accomplished more than he intended when he offered his subsidies to
Prussia. Our fleet commanded the ocean. The Mediterranean squadron
had been defeated at Lagos, the Atlantic squadron at Quiberon; Canada
had been conquered, and with Canada, the interior of North America,
with its population of savages and its inexhaustible resources.
Bengal was English, and the rivalry of the French in India had ceased
to be formidable. In four years England had grown into a boundless
empire, offering, what no other war had done, compensation for
expenditure and increase of debt. Trade had learnt to follow the
flag, and Pitt's profusion was not waste. Much of this success was
due to the Prussian Alliance. The vicissitudes of the French army had
hampered the French navy. Frederic, who was several times very near
destruction, had been saved by his ally. He had retained his disputed
province, while England annexed dominions as vast as Europe. His
genius and his power had been made so manifest that he was not again
attacked during the remainder of his reign. England possessed that
which, if it had been duly husbanded and developed, would make her
mistress of the world. The object of each, in concluding their
alliance, had been gained, but there was no proportion between them.
In 1760 Pitt rejected peace with France when it would have damaged his
treaty with Prussia. But when there was no prospect of a final
triumph, and Frederic was only thinking of the terms on which he might
obtain peace, Pitt advised him to negotiate. Then, in the autumn of
1761, under a new king, he was expelled from office. The subsidy
came to an end, and Bute opened negotiations.
Frederic had resolved that he would not wear a diminished crown; that
he would disappear from the scene if he could not preserve by treaty
of peace the full integrity of the monarchy which he no longer hoped
to preserve by war. But he stood alone. The change of reign, the
fall of Pitt, the termination of the subsidy, the pacific disposition
of Bute, somewhat exaggerated by those through whom he heard of it,
weakened him so seriously that he allowed the struggle to languish
while he sounded the courts, and especially sounded the Turk, as to
his feelings towards his Austrian neighbour. Then, in an instant, the
scene was entirely transformed. Elizabeth, the last of the children
of Peter the Great, died in January 1762. She had been his bitter
enemy throughout, personally as well as on grounds of pure policy, by
which he was held to be the menacing obstruction to the expansion of
Russia in Europe. Her heir was a German prince, married to a German
princess, the famous Catharine, and they at once offered terms of
peace.
Meanwhile Spain went to war with England, and the government began to
treat apart from Frederic. Newcastle would have renewed the subsidy,
but Bute refused, and Newcastle thereupon resigned, while Bute
concluded peace. Frederic, quite unable to continue active
operations, retained Silesia, but gave up his conquest, Saxony.
Therefore, at the price of immense suffering to his people, he emerged
from the unequal contest victorious and successful.
William III, Lewis XIV, Peter of Russia, had been great and able
sovereigns; but none had left on the world such an impression of his
genius. When Frederic appeared at the Te Deum at Charlottenburg in
all his glory, he broke down utterly and burst into tears. He had
been the victor, but it was England that carried away the prize. He
had acquired in his campaigns immeasurable authority and renown, but
his people had been decimated and impoverished, and he had gained no
accession of territory.
In the first years of peace that followed, it appeared that there was
a neighbouring country in which that deficiency might be repaired, and
the disappointing issue of the war might be made good by the art of
the statesman. The republic of Poland covered an enormous territory,
but was the most backward of the civilised nations. It was governed,
socially and politically, by the aristocratic class, and it was their
prerogative that any minority, or even a single noble, might exert the
right of veto on the proceedings of the Diet. The political
conditions were those of the eleventh century. The government was the
weakest in Europe. The Poles had been the earliest people to
establish religious toleration; but they had succumbed to the
Counter-Reformation, and they still refused liberty of conscience to
the Dissidents, mainly of the Greek Church. It was the plain policy
of Russia to maintain the grievance and the occasion for intervention,
and to frustrate every attempt of intelligent Poles to reform their
constitution and create a regular government.
In the reign of Catharine in Russia, and of her admirer Stanislas
Poniatowski in Poland, the republic became a Russian dependency. The
empress desired that this convenient situation should continue, and
esteemed that a partition would be injurious to her interests. From
the same point of view it appeared desirable to Austria and Prussia.
Poland, undivided as it was, was useless to anybody but Catharine.
Poland divided among friends would strengthen each of them at the
expense of Catharine. What they succeeded in appropriating would be
so much taken from the sphere of Russian power. The Russian empress
endeavoured to turn their thoughts elsewhere. She pointed to Turkey,
which was a dreadful blot on the map of Christendom, and proposed that
Austria should rectify its frontier on that side. But Turkey could
defend itself, and could not be subjected to spoliation without a
struggle, which Austria would have to carry on. That was a wretched
bargain compared with Poland, which must yield if the three Powers
showed their teeth. And Turkey could be of no use to Frederic the
Great. Therefore Kaunitz proposed that he should give back Silesia,
and compensate himself richly out of Polish territory, where Austria
also had some local claims to enforce.
Frederic was ready to annex part of Poland, but he saw no reason for
giving up anything that he possessed. If Austria wished to enlarge
her boundaries, Poland was extensive enough to satisfy her demands as
well as his own. There would be no difficulty, no obstacle on the
spot, no resistance of European opinion. England had already proposed
the Polish solution of territorial controversy. In France there would
be some genuine or affected displeasure. But Poland was a Catholic
country, much influenced by prelates. The men who guided French
thought would be easily consoled for its disappearance from the
political stage. It was not modern enough to interest them, and its
treatment of the Dissidents was a glaring offence. Therefore,
although Catharine annexed as much as both the others together, the
partition was accomplished in opposition to her real policy. About
one-third of Poland was thus taken. The reckoning proved correct.
Europe remained unmoved. By a series of treaties it had condoned the
seizure of Silesia. It was too late to complain of the dismemberment
of Poland. The work was completed, under very different conditions,
twenty years later. It was overthrown by Napoleon; but, as he was
without a Polish policy, and was disgusted by the obtrusive Liberalism
of the Poles in his time, it was revived and sanctioned by the wisdom
of united Europe at the Congress of Vienna.
The years which followed the Seven Years' War were a time of peace for
a great part of the Continent, in the course of which a memorable
change took place in European polity. It was the age of what may be
called the Repentance of Monarchy. That which had been selfish,
oppressive, and cruel became impersonal, philanthropic, and
beneficent. The strong current of eighteenth-century opinion left the
State omnipotent, but obliged it to take account of public, as
distinct from dynastic, interests. It was employed more or less
intelligently, for the good of the people. Humanity contended for the
mastery with ambition. It was still a despotism, but an enlightened
despotism. The competent expert more than ever was supreme, but he
was influenced by great writers--Locke, Montesquieu, Turgot, Beccaria,
Adam Smith. There was a serious tendency to increase popular
education, to relieve poverty, to multiply hospitals, to promote
wealth by the operations of the engineer, to emancipate the serf, to
abolish torture, to encourage academies, observatories, and the like.
Prisons had never been so bad--attempts were made to reform them. The
slave trade had never been so prosperous; people began to doubt
whether it was moral. Laws were codified, and though the codes were
surprisingly bad, the laws were improved by them. The movement was
almost universal, from Spain to Denmark and Russia. Piedmont dealt
successfully with the feudal and social question, which baffled the
National Assembly in France. The rich plain of the Milanese was
administered by a proconsul of Maria Theresa, in a manner which made
it the example of Europe. A strenuous disciple of the economists
governed Baden. Wuerzburg and Bamberg, under the last Prince Bishop,
were considered the happiest region in the empire. Turgot,
Bernstorff, Firmian, were admired and imitated as Lewis XIV had been
in a former phase of absolute monarchy. Society was enjoyable, apart
from politics, and was studied like a fine art in the homes of
luxury--Paris, Brussels, Rome, and Venice. Things went very well in
those days with any man who was not a Whig, and had no views as to
what makes governments legitimate and averts revolution.
In that age of the enlightenment of despotism the most enlightened
despot was Frederic II. Of all rulers and reformers he was the most
laborious and incessant. "A king," said he, "is the first servant of
the State." He did more work and had fewer pleasures than any of them.
The dominant influence was philosophy, not religion, emancipation of
the State from the Church. That corresponded well with Frederic's
temper. He was tolerant, and on the whole consistently tolerant. In
those days the Jesuits were suppressed, first by the secular power in
Bourbon countries, then by the Papacy. The Jesuits peculiarly
represented the old order that was changing, and the authority of the
ecclesiastical law that was being restrained. When they ceased to
exist in Catholic countries, they sought a refuge in England, and at
Petersburg; but their best and most determined protector was Frederic
the Great. The only one of all the princes of that generation who saw
farther, and understood that the time of absolute monarchy,
enlightened or unenlightened, was very near its end, was Leopold of
Tuscany, ancestor of the Austrian dynasty. That was a thing which
Frederic never perceived. The great change that came over Europe in
his time did not make for political freedom. We shall see how that
greater change was to come from beyond the Atlantic.