The Pursuit of Glory, page 74
On the other hand, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the loss of Silesia to Prussia, for it was populous (about 1,000,000 inhabitants), economically advanced (a flourishing textile industry and excellent water communications) and fiscally productive (yielding about 25 per cent of the total tax revenue of the Austrian and Bohemian lands). To lose all that was bad enough, but the damage did not stop there. As Silesia had formed an integral part of the economies of the neighbouring provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, they too suffered serious and lasting damage. Moreover, the fact that this great asset had passed to Prussia doubled the depth of the wound: if all the various resources of Silesia were added together and expressed by the algebraic symbol ‘x’, then the power relationship between the Habsburg Monarchy and Prussia changed as a result of its transfer not by ‘x’ but by two times ‘x’, for what had been taken away from the one was added to the other. The same applied to its strategic position. In the hands of the Habsburgs, Silesia was a tongue of territory stretching into northern Germany; its loss not only reduced Habsburg influence there, it also put Prussian armies within 100 miles (160 km) of Prague and 130 miles (210 km) of Vienna. The great victor of the War of the Austrian Succession was undoubtedly Frederick the Great. He had established his supremacy over his great rivals for the domination of northern Germany-Hanover and Saxony-and was now challenging Austria for the mastery of the whole German-speaking world. As Spain and the Dutch Republic had clearly forfeited their great-power status, Prussia joined France, Great Britain, Austria and Russia to form a pentarchy of states capable of acting independently in international affairs.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF FRANCE: THE SEVEN YEARS WAR
In the aftermath of the Aachen treaties, both groups of allies were heartily fed up with each other. Maria Theresa deeply resented the peace that had been dictated to her by the British, who clearly welcomed the rise of Prussia as a bulwark to any renewal of a Habsburg bid for hegemony in the Holy Roman Empire. For their part, the British complained with equal venom about an Austrian greed for subsidies that was matched only by their failure to meet their commitments. On the other side, not only were the French alienated from Frederick by what they saw as his recurring acts of treachery but Louis XV also harboured a personal dislike for this agnostic upstart with a taste for making obscene jokes about the royal mistresses. For his part, Frederick was well aware that the French would have been just as negligent of his interests if it had suited them. In short, the way was clear for a fundamental reorganization of the alliance system. It probably would have happened anyway, but in the event the catalyst proved to be the reappraisal of Habsburg policy undertaken by Count Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz. He was well-placed to carry out this task, for he had served in senior diplomatic positions in both Italy and the Netherlands during the 1740s and had been the Austrian representative at the Aachen peace negotiations. Direct experience had taught him that neither Italy nor the Austrian Netherlands could be defended successfully against a determined French attack and that in every other respect too their value was greatly inferior to that of the central provinces. Habsburg policy, therefore, had to be reorientated from periphery to centre and its primary objective had to become the recovery of Silesia. That was easier said than done: the pitiless exposure of the Monarchy’s military weakness during the previous two decades made this an impossible task without powerful allies. But where were they to be found? The traditional alliance with the maritime powers had proved a broken reed, the Dutch being neutral and the British being perfidious. There was the additional consideration that Silesia was land-locked. Even if the maritime powers were to put their best feet forward, there was little they could do to help Austria regain the lost province. A continental target required continental allies. Russia was already an ally, indeed it had been Charles VI’s anxiety to preserve that alliance that had prompted him to participate in the disastrous war against the Turks of 1737–9. There was nothing less certain than the quality and quantity of Russian assistance, however, as Maria Theresa had discovered to her cost in 1740. Immobilized by palace revolution and diverted by Swedish invasion, Russia had played no part in the Silesian wars of 1740–5. So it was essential that the Monarchy should obtain at least the benevolent neutrality (and preferably the active assistance) of the greatest continental power-France.
This was the analysis presented by Kaunitz to Maria Theresa and her senior ministers in the spring of 1749. Not surprisingly, so radical a proposal aroused scepticism, if not hostility. Nevertheless, Kaunitz was sent to France as ambassador in 1750 and allowed to make his case. What eventually turned the French into a receptive audience was the likelihood and then the certainty that war with the British would resume for the domination of North America. There the French were adopting a forward policy. In 1752 a new governor, the marquis de Duquesne, was sent to Canada, with instructions to reassert possession of the Ohio Valley and thus the geographical link with Louisiana. In 1754 he built a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which together form the Ohio river, and named it after himself. By that point it was only a matter of time before the undeclared war with Great Britain was made official. With Anglo-French interests also clashing with ever-increasing vehemence in the Caribbean, Africa, India and on the high seas, French policy-makers now faced a choice: should they continue to concentrate on maintaining the domination of continental Europe against the Habsburgs (‘to play in Europe that superior role which suits its seniority, its dignity and its grandeur’, as the abbéde Bernis complacently put it), should they switch the emphasis to challenging the British for domination of the world outside Europe, or should they try to do both? If the French chose the second of those options, it made good sense to seek a rapprochement with Austria which would neutralize Germany and the Austrian Netherlands and allow them to devote most of their resources to a naval war.
In Austria the crucial decision was taken at two meetings of the Council of State held on 19 and 21 August 1755, attended by Francis I, Maria Theresa, their senior counsellors and, of course, Kaunitz, who had become foreign minister in 1753. It was agreed to pursue an alliance with France, Russia, Sweden and Saxony that would reduce Prussia to its frontiers of pre-1618. In return for benevolent passivity, France would be rewarded by the cession of Luxemburg to Don Philip, who would of course be a French puppet. Austria would also help the French to secure the election of their candidate, the prince de Conti, as King of Poland when there was a vacancy. On 3 September 1755 the Austrian envoy Prince Starhemberg had a first meeting with the abbéde Bernis of the French foreign office at Bellevue, the château of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV’s mistress-in-chief. The French were hesitant, not surprisingly perhaps, as they were being asked to abandon nearly three centuries of hostility.
Their reservations were eventually overcome by a chapter of accidents. The British too were anxious to neutralize continental Europe, to avoid Hanover being seized by Prussia, still of course France’s ally, and then being used to offset any British colonial conquests. Unable to get any sort of undertaking from Austria, they turned instead to Russia, concluding a convention in September 1755. This had the effect of frightening Frederick the Great, who was only too pleased to sign the Convention of Westminster on 16 January 1756, guaranteeing the neutrality of Germany. As the name suggests, this was in no sense a treaty of alliance, just an ad hoc agreement with a specific purpose. However, it proved to be the last straw for the French, who now decided to drop Frederick once and for all. He had blithely supposed that France and Austria must always be enemies, forgetting-as Friedrich Meinecke pointed out-that even oil and water can mix briefly when shaken. But this left the French isolated in Europe with war looming, so at long last they accepted the Austrian offer of an alliance. Even then, the first Treaty of Versailles, signed on 1 May 1756, which effected the ‘diplomatic revolution’, was purely defensive: only if Austria were attacked by a third party would the French be obliged to respond.
It was now that the consequences of a British miscalculation became apparent. They had seriously underestimated the strength of anti-Prussian feeling in Russia, where both main factions shared a fierce determination to cut Frederick the Great-‘a second Charles XII’-down to size. So the Russian response to news of the Convention of Westminster was a proposal to Austria to launch a joint attack on Prussia later that year. On 22 May the Austrians informed their Russian allies that they would not be able to mobilize in time for a campaign in 1756 and so the assault on Prussia would have to wait until the following year. But the Russian mobilization had already begun and news of it reached Berlin on 17 June. Frederick the Great had not been unduly concerned by the news of the Treaty of Versailles, for that was a defensive alliance, but this latest news was really alarming: if the Russians were arming despite Frederick’s agreement with Britain, then the Austrians must be at the back of it. The awful possibility of a two-front war loomed. He also knew that Saxony-Poland was part of the conspiracy and was making a major military effort to maximize its share of the spoils when Prussia was partitioned. As if that were not enough, it was very likely at least that Sweden, now firmly under the control of the French, would also join the predators. As he wrote to his sister, the Margravine of Bayreuth: ‘I am in the position of a traveller who sees himself surrounded by a bunch of rogues, who are planning to murder him and divide up the spoils among themselves.’
It had taken Frederick some time to wake up to the deadly peril he faced, but by June 1756 he was getting reliable information from a mole in the Saxon foreign office. It was from that source that he learnt of the postponement of the Austro-Russian offensive. Knowing that it would be coming the following year, he decided to launch a pre-emptive strike at Austria through Saxony, hoping to knock the Habsburgs out of the war before the Russian steamroller could be launched. On 29 August 1756 his army marched into Saxony. His intended Blitzkrieg was to last seven years. At first all went well. By October, the Saxon army had been forced to surrender, the King-Elector was sent off to exile in Poland along with his officers, while the 20,000-odd rank-and-file were simply incorporated into the Prussian army (from which most of them deserted as soon as possible, it need hardly be added). But although he won a hard-fought victory over the Austrians commanded by Field Marshal von Browne at Lobositz on 1 October, Frederick was not able to force them out of the war. As his strategy had failed, he appeared to have the worst of all worlds, for his attack on the Habsburg Monarchy had activated the Treaty of Versailles, obliging the French to enter the war. On the other hand, it could be said in his defence that at least he had knocked Saxony out of the war and had put a stop to any invasion of his territory down the River Elbe. In any event, by the spring of 1757 he was confronted by perhaps the most formidable coalition ever assembled in Europe: France, Austria, Russia, Spain, Sweden and most of the German princes, against which he could only count on Great Britain, Hanover, Brunswick and Hessen-Kassel. It could be said, however, that Louis XV would very likely have joined the war anyway, lured by the prospect of the Austrian Netherlands becoming a France satellite and outraged by Frederick’s unprovoked assault on his close Saxon relation-for the Dauphin was married to a daughter of Frederick Augustus III. Moreover, the unfortunate Saxons now found themselves making by far the biggest single contribution to the Prussian war effort, albeit involuntarily, for they supplied about 40 per cent of the total cost of the war in levies and requisitions.
Extracting the pith from the Seven Years War is not easy, for it was both complex and fast-moving. With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that the first full year of conflict was decisive, for it was then that the great coalition had its best chance of destroying Prussia. By the autumn of 1757, indeed, it looked very much as though success was within their grasp. In the spring Frederick had launched a sudden invasion of the Habsburg Monarchy from the north, through Bohemia, hoping to eliminate at least one of his numerous enemies before the remainder could close. Catching the Austrian army off guard had been no more difficult than usual, but inflicting a mortal wound on this soft but infuriatingly slippery target had proved beyond him. Although he had managed to win a hard-fought victory outside Prague on 6 May, the city itself had held out and the ensuing siege had taken more time than he could afford. Turning east to confront a relieving force under Marshal Daun, Frederick had been defeated decisively at Kolin on 18 June and forced to retreat back north into Saxony.
Now the bad news came thick and fast. On 26 July Frederick’s Hanoverian and other German allies, commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, were defeated at Hastenbeck, on the Weser near Hamelin, by the French, who then advanced eastward towards the Elbe. On 8 September they imposed the Convention of Kloster Zeven on Cumberland, which in effect neutralized his army and opened up Frederick’s flank in the west. It also released the duc de Richelieu’s forces to march south to join the main French army advancing from the south-west under the command of the prince de Soubise. Meanwhile in the east, a huge Russian army had invaded East Prussia, inflicting a bloody defeat on the Prussians at Grossjägersdorf on the Pregel river on 30 August. As if that were not enough, the Austrians now sent a raiding party against Berlin, briefly occupying the city on 16 October.
Frederick’s only chance was to prevent the French and the Austrians uniting their armies, so he hurried west to meet the former. On 5 November he found them at Mücheln, some 15 miles (25 km) west of Leipzig. They were 30,200 strong, an imposing total swelled further by 10,900 imperial troops under the command of Prince Joseph Friedrich of Saxony-Hildburghausen. Although outnumbered almost two to one, Frederick was anxious for battle and took up position facing west between the villages of Bedra and Rossbach, about four kilometres from the French camp. What followed was one of the most decisive victories against the odds in military history. Unnerved by a bombardment from the Prussian artillery cleverly positioned above them, the advancing French and imperial infantry were demoralized further by having to watch their cavalry being routed. So when the dreaded Prussian infantry advanced into view in battle-order, there was little resistance. So quick, easy and complete was the Prussian victory that most of the French infantry never even got the chance to fire their weapons. Prussian casualties amounted to 23 officers and 518 soldiers, of whom just 3 and 162 respectively were killed. Their opponents’ losses comprised 700 dead, 2,000 wounded and more than 5,000 prisoners of war, including 5 generals and 300 officers. The results were far-reaching. The suitably impressed British now repudiated the Convention of Kloster Zeven and kept their purse-strings untied for subsidies to their Prussian ally. For their part, the French withdrew into winter quarters to lick their wounds, never again to play a major part in the continental campaign. From then on, their effort was confined to north-western Germany, where the wounds inflicted at Rossbach were regularly reopened by defeats at the hands of the combined forces of Hanover and Brunswick, now under the command of Frederick’s brother-in-law, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.
At Rossbach Frederick managed to pull one foot out of the mire, but the other was still firmly stuck. Indeed it sank deeper when the Austrians moved into Silesia in force and took its capital, Breslau (Wroclaw) on 24 November. Outnumbering the Prussians by at least two to one, they allowed themselves to be drawn out of the city to offer combat at Leuthen, to the east of the River Oder. Here, on 5 December 1757, Frederick won perhaps his greatest victory, all the more meritorious for being gained at the expense of a much better trained and motivated army than the undisciplined rabble he had blown away at Rossbach. It was after this battle that the grateful survivors sang the Lutheran hymn ‘Now thank we all our God’. With the Austrians now forced to evacuate Silesia, including Breslau, the first year of full campaigning in what was to become the ‘Seven Years War’ ended very much in Prussia’s favour.
For contemporaries, of the two battles it was Rossbach which made the greatest impact. Austrian defeats, after all, had scant rarity value in the history of warfare. The rout of a major French army was something else again, especially in view of the numerical superiority it had enjoyed and the upstart nature of its opponent. A story was soon making the rounds that, on the eve of the battle, French officers had observed loftily that they were doing ‘great honour’ to the ‘margrave of Brandenburg’ by condescending to fight him. So Voltaire was not alone in thinking that Rossbach represented a greater humiliation for his country than Crécy, Poitiers or Agincourt. When news of the battle reached France, it had a predictably chilling effect on a public that had never shown any enthusiasm for the war. Earlier in 1757, a government ordinance had sought to intimidate newspapers denouncing royal foreign policy by threatening the death penalty for anyone convicted of writing seditious publications. Rossbach completed the alienation. In April 1758 Bernis, now foreign minister, lamented: ‘Our nation is now more hostile than ever to the war. The King of Prussia is loved here to the point of madness, because those who organize their affairs effectively are always admired. The court of Vienna is detested, because it is regarded as a bloodsucker battening on France and there is very little enthusiasm for seeing it-or indeed France-gaining territory.’
