"Will your Majesty consider that by this alliance, if it should ever take place, we should become absolute masters of the situation."[318]
... "If your Majesty cannot lay aside the feelings which alienate him from the King of Poland, I see only the prospect[319] of a long war, the Grand Duke Emperor, and the Empire turned against us, whatever efforts we may make."[320]
D'Argenson might beg and entreat, and write despatches: but he was powerless to enforce his words with the weight of his little finger.[321] On the 10th of March he drafted a reply to Frederick, in which he undertook that the army of Bavaria should be reinforced and should push the war with vigour. The reply never went to Berlin; it remains marked with the words "n'a pas servi."[322] Indeed the French policy was already decided. For no political reason whatever, the King had set his heart upon a campaign in Flanders; and to that desire his own interest, the interest of his allies, and every statesmanlike consideration must of necessity yield. He was not likely to meet with resistance from Noailles, still less from Count d'Argenson or Maurepas; and the Foreign Minister stood alone in fruitless opposition to this brilliant piece of political fatuity.
The effects of it were apparent already. The arms of France were paralysed in Germany in order that troops might be concentrated in Flanders; the army of Bavaria could not be reinforced; little could be done for the army of the Main; and d'Argenson, while persistently demanding ready co-operation in his overtures at Dresden, was obliged to evade and trifle with the equally persistent demands of Frederick. His position was a very thankless one; and it would have been as ridiculous as it at first would seem, had it been of his own choosing. That it was not, there is ample evidence to prove.
From this anomalous disposition of the French Government the four decisive events of the year 1745 descend in lineal succession. Each was a political disaster of the first magnitude; every one of them was richly deserved, and not one was really attributable to the Minister who has ordinarily borne the burden and the blame. Those events are—first, the loss of Bavaria; second, the Convention of Hanover; third, the election of Francis I.; and fourth, the Treaty of Dresden.
It was on the 21st of January that the young prince Maximilian succeeded to the Electorate of Bavaria; on the 19th of April he signed a convention with Maria Theresa.[323]
The Emperor on his death-bed had adjured his son to rely on the support of France;[324] and Chavigny, the French minister at Munich, was ready to assure him that he would never do so in vain.[325] The Austrian troops were already in Bavaria; repeated warnings were given both by Frederick and Chavigny of the critical position of the young Elector; and every means of persuasion was exhausted by Chavigny in order to secure the reinforcement of the Bavarian army. The French Government were deaf to his representations; the Council rejected d'Argenson's despatches;[326] d'Argenson himself was at last irritated at the reiteration of demands with which he had no power to comply.[327] Chavigny had to pacify the Elector with promises and assurances, in default of troops.
In the meanwhile no effort was spared by Maria Theresa to detach the Elector from the League of Frankfort.[328] Her diplomatic agents were Colloredo and Count Batthiany. Colloredo negotiated at Munich with humiliating terms of peace; Batthiany advanced upon Munich with an army eleven thousand strong, before which Ségur, with a small French force, had withdrawn to the Bavarian frontier. Accordingly, Chavigny and the Elector fled to Augsburg, where, on the 19th of April, a treaty of peace, dictated by the Austrian envoy, was signed by Maximilian.
The event of the 19th of April was the signal for what M. de Broglie himself calls "the breakup and rout of all that in a greater or less degree was still holding to France."[329] The Prince of Hesse, the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Wurtemburg, and the Electors of Trèves and Mayence were at no pains to conceal their view that the French cause in Germany was lost; while the Elector of Saxony, Augustus himself, the very man upon whom for three months the efforts of French diplomacy had been centred, made haste to summon the troops of France to withdraw from the soil of the Empire, where there remained no excuse for their continued presence.[330]
Such was the disaster d'Argenson had foreseen and endeavoured vainly to avert. He is said[331] to have cherished with blind fatuity an unfounded faith in the fidelity of Bavaria. That faith was more than justified, if we are to believe Chavigny, who said that up to the very day when the unhappy Elector was forced to abandon his capital to the Austrians, he remained firmly attached to the French alliance.[332] The truth is this: that not only at Munich, but at Dresden and Frankfort, d'Argenson's action must appear ridiculous; because, while prosecuting his negotiations with energy and enthusiasm, he was unable, through no fault of his own, to give them the weight of a single cannon-shot. In a word, the bold policy of the 31st of January, while actively prosecuted by the French Minister, was tacitly abandoned by the French Government.