On the 26th of December and the 4th and 8th of January, three letters were written by Frederick,[283] which show that events are moving rapidly. He declares that if negotiations are to be undertaken, it must be done at once;[284] that he has himself to deal with twenty thousand Hungarians in Upper Silesia;[285] that a strong detachment of Prince Charles's army is on the confines of Bavaria;[286] and that events of gravity are only to be averted by the reinforcement of the army of the Lower Rhine, and the despatch of immediate and effective succour to the Emperor and the Bavarian army. "At the present moment, these two positions appear to me of capital importance. They are no slight reverses of which we are running the risk, but the frustration of all our present measures, and even of those for the coming campaign." (January 8, 1745).[287]
The reception which awaited these representations is significant. In the first days of January, an Austrian force, after repulsing a weak French detachment, established itself upon Bavarian territory.[288] At that very moment the Emperor, in reply to his prayers and entreaties, received a letter[289](January 2nd), in which the French King, with manifest impatience, declared himself unable to satisfy his demands. Upon the 9th Louis, in a reply to Frederick, asserted that there was no reason to believe that an Austrian advance was imminent,[290] and declined to pursue further the steps taken in the direction of peace. The letter is described as "très froide et très maladroite" (Zevort).[291]
The inference implied throughout the preceding appears explicitly in a letter to Frederick of the 19th of January. Drafted by d'Argenson, it was revised and signed by Louis XV. The two hands and the two policies are apparent in every line. "Our union, our strength and our efforts," d'Argenson wrote, "give us promise of victory and peace." Under the hand of the King it became "must give us victory." As to Bavaria and the Lower Rhine, "I am thinking of these two objects;" Louis appended, "without forgetting Flanders." To the last line this odd dualism is continued.[292]
This letter was written on the 19th of January. On the following day a new chapter was opened with the death of the Emperor Charles VII., after an illness of twenty-four hours.[293] So far, two months of d'Argenson's ministry have elapsed. Their history has revealed one fact with impressive clearness. Upon the question of peace and the question of war, there is a radical divergence of principle and policy between the French Government and the French Minister. The King will listen to no overtures which may thwart his desire of overrunning Flanders. D'Argenson is earnestly desirous of peace, to be secured by a strong defensive campaign in Germany. Which was the wiser will soon appear.
The death of the Emperor (January 20, 1745) was perhaps one of the most terrible blows which French policy has ever sustained. It came at a moment when fortune had turned to the side of the Austrians, and when every step lost by France was a tenfold gain to Maria Theresa.
Louis XV. had been disposed for war; he found that he had no longer the power to choose. It is true that for the French ministry there were two conceivable courses; but only one was practically open. It was conceivably possible to make terms with Maria Theresa, and to use the death of the Emperor as an excuse for withdrawing from the war. Such doubtless was the view of the trampled German populations and of the tax-burdened householder of the faubourgs; but it could only be maintained by sacrificing every principle of honour and policy, and by ignoring the only considerations which would weigh for a moment either with Louis XV. or Maria Theresa.
For the French King the course was marked out with terrible clearness. He had combined with other powers to rend the inheritance of a defenceless woman; and now, when that woman had faced him, uncrowned but veritably imperial, to beg forgiveness on his knees—the very thought was impossible. Nor could the King of France yet bow before his former vassal of Lorraine. Even if his enemy deigned to listen to him, he would have to take or leave humiliating terms; and it would be a cold return for that generous jubilation with which his people had greeted him a year before. But not only were his own honour and popularity concerned; there was another motive, to which he perhaps may have been less sensible. To accept a peace upon any such terms as Maria Theresa would be willing to grant would have been to inflict a blow upon the future of French foreign policy, from which it might not recover for half a century or more. The last would have been seen of French influence in Central Europe: the upstart of Brandenburg would be swept into the sea: two centuries of effort might be totally erased: and Maria Theresa would resume the throne from which Charles V. had descended. If not to the King, to d'Argenson at least, such a prospect was at once conclusive.[294]
And when looked at from Vienna, peace was equally distant. As well seek to recall a falcon striking its prey as to breathe of peace to Maria Theresa. A statesman to her finger-tips, she saw at once that the two objectives of the next campaign were Frankfort and Breslau. Her armies were already on the plains of Breslau: her armies were within striking distance of Frankfort: if but for a few months the breeze would hold, the Flemish towns might fall to whom they pleased. And the path of victory was the path of vengeance. She regarded the man who had failed to wrong her, not, as is said, with the spleen of a woman, but with the proud wrath of a queen; she had not forgotten that he had driven her from her capital, and forced her to throw herself on the generosity of the men her own fathers had oppressed; nor would she have been slow to tender him the bitter cup from which she had drunk.
She might indeed have listened to him upon one condition—the abandonment of Frederick to her vengeance. In June last she had sworn that she would never lower her sword against the man who had torn up the Treaty of Breslau, until her generals could dictate terms to him from Breslau. Proposals on behalf of Frederick—she would have trampled upon them, as she trampled upon the Treaty of Hanover in August, when presented to her by her ally of England. In a word, the French King had to choose between indelible dishonour and the disdainful rejection of his terms.
If these reasons were decisive to the King, they were not less so to d'Argenson himself.[295] No man longed so much as he for peace; but he was not prepared to purchase it with the humiliation of his country, and with the undreamed aggrandisement of that hated House against which, all his life, he had consistently inveighed. The provinces were henceforth to be beaten with scorpions; for the efforts of France had been as nothing to that which the new enterprise would involve. Yet cost what it might, the effort must be made; and d'Argenson was at one with the Council[296] in the hope that by a single brilliant and advantageous campaign, France and Frederick might establish a position from which an honourable peace could be obtained.