In 1747 the Duke of Cumberland again assumed the command with the usual disastrous result. The Dutch contingent, also as usual, was very inadequate: commercial nations are perhaps apt to treat international engagements in too commercial a spirit. But the irruption into Dutch Flanders of twenty thousand Frenchmen roused a spirit of a different kind. The Dutch rose like one man, overturned their rulers, and once more entrusted the Stadtholderate to the House of Orange. This was a national gain. But the luckless Cumberland again sustained a bloody defeat at Lauffeld. The battle, however, had one indirect but happy consequence. Our best General, Ligonier, was captured, and, being of French birth, was favourably received by Louis XV., who threw out hints of peace and placed him in communication with Marshal Saxe. The Marshal admitted that the war, and he himself as concerned in it, were profoundly unpopular in France, that peace might be obtained on easy terms, and suggested that Cumberland and he should be the negotiators.
Pelham was naturally eager for a pacification, George II. less so, and what the King wished Newcastle was anxious to wish. But a congress to adjust a treaty met at Aix-la-Chapelle in March 1748, and in April the preliminaries of a treaty were signed by the British and French and Dutch plenipotentiaries.
Maria Theresa held aloof. To her it seemed that the first and only duty of the British, and, indeed, of all other nations, was to fight and work and pay that she might regain Silesia, just as her father had held that the first, last, and only duty of Europe was to establish him in Spain. This peace would ratify the acquisition of Silesia by Frederick, and though she herself had ceded it, she could not bring herself to declare the cession definite. England, however, could no longer agree to the general interest being overridden by the obstinacy of the Empress-Queen; there had been bloodshed and suffering enough on her account. However just a cause may be, there are limits to human endurance, more especially when the cause to be upheld has no substantial importance for the defending nation. The definitive treaty was signed on October 18.1748. Two days later, Spain, the original belligerent, acceded to it. There were, a philosopher may note, no stipulations regarding the commercial regulations which had been the original cause of our war with Spain. On the 23rd it was accepted by the Austrian Government.
This is a narrative, as condensed as possible, of the foreign affairs which entered into our parliamentary debates. That part of the war which took place in Italy has been excluded. It was a mere contest of petty rapine in which strange princes parcelled out Italy; which can scarcely be said to have concerned Great Britain, and Pitt not at all. Nor has it left the least visible trace in history.
The greater war which we have summarised is a sufficient tangle. Leslie Stephen calls it 'that complicated series of wars which lasted some ten years, and passes all power of the ordinary human intellect to understand or remember. For what particular reason Englishmen were fighting at Dettingen, or Fontenoy, or Lauffeld is a question which a man can only answer when he has been specially crammed for examination, and his knowledge has not begun to ooze out.'[150] This is the exact truth, as the ill-fated chronicler who gropes about among the treaties and conventions is fain to confess. But apart from its complications this war is not in itself very memorable or exalted, though it has left an indelible result in the great Prussian monarchy. It was not beautiful or glorious. The guarantors of Austria at the first sign of her weakness had hurried, most of them, to divide her spoils, at the same time betraying each other from time to time without scruple, as their immediate interests required. Frederick had a business-like candour which almost disarms criticism. Macaulay in a famous passage has pointed out that innocent peasants perished in thousands all over the world that he might obtain and retain an Austrian province. And Maria Theresa, with all her maternal charm, is not wholly admirable. It was natural that she should fight for her rights, and induce all she could to fight for her; natural, perhaps, that she should be content that all Europe should bleed so that she might retain her territory. But we cannot forget that she who was ready that myriads should perish, not of Austrians or Magyars alone, but of all the nations that she could enlist in her cause, to maintain the sanctity of her rights to Silesia, was later on an accomplice in the partition of Poland; a reluctant accomplice, it is fair to add, as she herself was awake to the inconsistency of her position.
Among all these stately figures and famous slaughters we see the central fact of the period, the shameless and naked cynicism of the eighteenth century, which, turning its back for ever on the wars of faith and conviction, looked only to contests of prey. And so it continued till the great Revolution cleared the air, and, followed up by the poignant discipline of Napoleon, made way for the wars of nationality.