It is the same with military affairs: however brave and courageous the French nobility may be, they have little or no genius for war: the hardship of a campaign immediately puts them out of conceit. France has no military school[2]. A young nobleman is made a Colonel before he is an officer, and then steps into the general command, without any experience. If two Frenchmen are appointed to command the armies in Flanders or Germany, immediately the spirit of envy kindles among them, and they will gratify their private piques and quarrels, whatever becomes of the state. In the mean time, the enemies profit by these divisions, and forward their schemes. In the late war, the King was obliged to commit the safety of his crown to two foreigners: had it not been for the Counts Saxe and Lowendahl, the enemies of France might have been at the gates of Paris.
It is a mistake to think that a woman, who is in distinguished favour with a Prince, stands in need of weak ministers and bad generals to support her: incapacity spoils all and answers no purpose. Political mistakes, at the same time that they throw a shade on the Prince’s glory, utterly efface the lustre of his favourite. I can truly say, that most of the vexations I have gone through, since my residence at court, proceeded from hence. On every advantage gained by our enemies the king used to be melancholy and full of thought; and though this Prince be extremely polite, and not one disobliging word came from his mouth, yet his discomposure, at that time, embittered every other enjoyment of my life.
I never made a minister, I never advised the King to confer the command of an army on any person, of whose abilities I was not certainly convinced, and whose merit was not universally confessed. The great used to compliment me on it, and the King himself congratulated me on my good judgment of men; their fitness was proclaimed by the universal voice.
I must here mention the troubles the court laboured under, when the King gave me an apartment at Versailles; the occurrences of those times belonging to the plan of these Memoirs. Without that crowd of incidents which then fell out, and which the King used to communicate to me, my favour perhaps had never risen to such a height; for the events of this world are always directed by second causes.
Ever since the year 1741, France had continued to wage war in Italy, in Flanders, and in Germany. Charles the VIth, the last male descendant of the house of Austria by the male side, had an ambition, which was not to be limited even by death; he was for surviving himself, and transmitting his power beyond the grave.
This Prince, after acquiring a very large extent of dominions, had procured them to be guarantied by the chief powers of Christendom. The small military force at that time on foot in Europe, had induced the Christian Princes, to such a weak compliance. Italy was quite spent; all the petty governments of the empire were under a political slavery; and the great houses of the North were little better. On the decease of that Prince all began to breathe, and every one claimed their respective right.
The Elector of Bavaria demanded a part of the succession; Augustus King of Poland set forth his pretensions; the King of Spain likewise put in for a share: and, what is more, there appeared two pragmatic fanctions; one giving the Austrian dominions to the Archduchess, spouse to the Polish Prince; and the other securing them to Maria Theresa, Charles’s eldest daughter. Such a contrariety of interests must of course give rise to a general war; but it began from a quarter which policy would never have apprehended.
The King of Prussia, almost the only Prince in Europe who had no pretensions to the Austrian succession, yet made his demands, and, instead of manifestoes, asserted them by the sword. His troops invaded the very best province of all the Queen of Hungary’s dominions, and made themselves masters of it. The crown was of no long standing in the Brandenburgh family: it had first obtained the title of Majesty from the Emperor Leopold; and this honour had little added to its real greatness. The King of Prussia was of little account among the European potentates; and what claims he had to any of the Austrian effects were merely on a private account; and turns on the restitution of some duchies, which his family had been possessed of by right of purchase; yet he invades Silesia as a sovereign.
I have heard that Maria Theresa was on the brink of ruin, when her very enemies saved her. The Hungarians, who for ages past had been endeavouring to overthrow that family, now, one and all, vigorously rose in her defence.
The Duke of Belleisle told me, that this change in the political world was wrought by that Princess’s haranguing them in Latin; “a great change, indeed (added he), for had the Hungarians abandoned that princess, very probably we should have heard no more of the house of Austria.”