With the Peace of Breslau, then, the first period of the war ends, and the second begins, in which it assumes a new character. It is not Frederick and France fighting against Austria; it is Austria supported by Britain, and to some extent Holland, fighting, with the secret sympathy of Germany, against France and Spain. Elizabeth, too, the daughter of Peter the Great, had mounted the throne of Russia, and assisted her sister sovereign with sympathy and with money. The wholeDec. 1741. aspect of the war was suddenly changed. Austria was now free to turn her whole forces on France, and she did so with terrible effect. The French had to evacuate Bohemia in a retreat so heroic and so appalling that it anticipated the horrors of 1812. Of the 40,000 men with whom he had crossed the Rhine, Belleisle brought back but 8000 into France. The share of Great Britain in the war became substantial and direct. The Elector of Hanover, relieved from apprehension by his treaty with Prussia and the success of Austria, reduced his army by 16,000 men, but the King of England took them into his pay. This measure exasperated his British subjects, whose attention was thus once more called to the jarring interests of the Kingdom and the Electorate combined in George's person. But Ministers carried the day, and in June 1743 the King himself took the field with an Anglo-German army of some 40,000 men under the command of Lord Stair. At Dettingen, not far from Frankfort, in escaping from a position of extreme jeopardy, they encountered and defeated the French. The strangest part of this engagement was that there was then nominally no war between France and Great Britain, and that these operations were only accidental auxiliary conflicts. It was not for nine months afterwards that war between the two countries was formally declared.
Sept. 1743.
Later on in this year George II. took an even more active measure, and through Carteret, as Secretary of State, though behind the back of his other ministers, signed the Treaty of Worms. For many years past it had been the policy of the House of Savoy to put itself up to auction, and by the Treaty of Worms George II. became the successful bidder. The King of Sardinia was to receive some territory from Austria, and 200,000l. a year from Great Britain, while he was to assist the Austrian cause with 45,000 men. Carteret at the same time covenanted to pay Maria Theresa a subsidy of 300,000l. a year 'so long as the war should continue, or the necessity of her affairs should require.' But this the British Ministry refused to recognise, and it became the subject of fierce debate in Parliament.
To meet this combination, Louis XV., on the advice of his Minister but against his own better judgment, signed one of those one-sided and altruistic treaties which characterised French policy at this time, and renewed the family compact of 1733 by a treaty signed at Fontainebleau in October 1743. In this new edition the Bourbons of France and Spain pledged themselves to an indissoluble union. France was to declare war against Great Britain and Sardinia, to help Spain to reconquer Parma and the Milanese for Don Philip, and to compel Great Britain to give up her colony of Georgia. Finally, the two Powers were not to make peace until Gibraltar and, if possible, Minorca were restored to Spain.[148]
But the Austrian successes once more brought Frederick into the field to redress the balance, which now inclined too much to Austria, as it had inclined too much to France. Austria had acquired Bavaria for the moment, and perhaps would never evacuate it; she might be encouraged to attempt the reconquest of Silesia. Her armies were now in Alsace; where would they stop? The Queen, he knew, was only a degree less tenacious than himself. So he signed a new convention at Frankfort with the Emperor, the King of France, the King of Sweden as Landgrave of Hesse, and the Elector Palatine, and again took up arms against Austria, whichMay 1744. was almost drained of troops. France about the same time formally declared war against Great Britain and Austria, whom she had been fighting, so to speak, incognito, for three years past. On the other hand a quadruple alliance was concluded between Great Britain, Austria, Holland, and Saxony; based as usual on British subsidies, which Parliament ungrudgingly voted, with the eloquent but surprising support of Pitt.
Here begins the third period of the war. Louis XV. and Marshal Saxe at the head of 80,000 men entered the Austrian Netherlands almost without resistance. Frederick soon made himself master of Bohemia and Bavaria, and returned the Electorate to its sovereign, the Emperor Charles VII. In January 1745, worn out with misfortunes and anxieties and dignities, but once more in his capital, that hapless monarch died. Within three months his successor had concluded peace with Austria through the earnest pressure of the British Cabinet on the haughty Queen; the Elector abandoning his claims on the Austrian dominions, and promising his vote for the Empire to Maria Theresa's husband. Peace between Austria and the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, followed in May, when the contracting parties entered into a premature concert for the partition of the Prussian dominions.
Otherwise 1745 was a disastrous year for Austria. The Allies, Austrians, British, and Dutch, under the Duke of Cumberland, sustained a bloody defeat at Fontenoy in May; and Great Britain, occupied with the domestic disturbance caused by the landing of Charles Edward, had to withdraw from active participation in the war. In August a secret convention was concluded at Hanover between the Kings of Prussia and Great Britain, by which the latter Power guaranteed Silesia to the former. This was the beginning of the end. The British Ministry now notified to the unyielding Queen that she must come to terms with her enemy, or expect no more assistance from England or Holland. The Austrian arms met everywhere with reverses. While the young Queen was planning with Saxony a triumphant march on Berlin, Frederick broke into Saxony and occupied Dresden. On this final blow Maria Theresa accepted the mediation of Great Britain and signed, on Christmas Day, 1745, the peace of Dresden which gave Silesia and Glatz to Frederick. So ends the third period of this strange and erratic war; a labyrinth of fugitive conventions and transient alliances, with two strong purposes in the centre.
But the auxiliary combatants remained at strife, just as the seconds in a duel have sometimes fought after their principals had settled their own differences. And so we now enter on its fourth period, that in which the British, Austrians, and Dutch (with the assistance of the Piedmontese in Italy) contended against France and Spain. The part of this war which chiefly concerns Great Britain was fought in Flanders. And in all these transactions it must be noted that a main difficulty of the British Ministry, both from the practical and from the parliamentary point of view, lay in the problem of moving the Dutch. The Hollanders had everything to apprehend from the triumph of the French arms, but their phlegmatic temper, and still more the impracticable nature of their constitution, offered great obstacles to their co-operation. Anglers may see an analogy between these British negotiations with the Dutch and the tardy and tantalising sport of sniggling for eels. At the beginning of 1746, matters seemed to have come to a climax. The French were harrying Flanders, and were threatening to invade Holland. The Dutch Government were now stirred into proposing active measures, and the raising of a large army, to be under the command of the Prince of Waldeck; but they declined to declare war against France. The British agreed to a joint force of 100,000 men, comprising 40,000 to be furnished by the States-General, 30,000 by Austria, some Hanoverians and Saxons to be paid by England and Holland, and 6000 Hessians to be provided by England after Charles Edward had been finally defeated. The Dutch regarded the British offers as inadequate; for it is a cardinal principle of all Continental wars in which Great Britain is concerned that her purse is to be open to her allies, and that she is to find the funds.
'The Dutch we know are good allies,
So are they all with subsidies.'[149]
They were, moreover, not indisposed to negotiate with the French. These, meanwhile, under the leadership of Marshal Saxe, were occupying the Low Countries almost without interruption or resistance. In February they entered Brussels; in May, Antwerp. Mons, Charleroi, and Namur successively fell into their hands, and they ended the campaign by defeating the allies at Roucoux, and remaining practically in possession of the Austrian Netherlands. But there was a glimpse of peace, in that some negotiations, abortive though they were destined to be, were opened at Breda.