All Europe was in a ferment. Italy had taken arms to defend a liberty which it no longer enjoyed. I have been told that the Pope himself entered into treaties tending to continue and spread the war.
The balance of Europe seems to have been the point in question; but all states aimed at giving France some underhand wounds.
Cardinal Fleury, though he had avoided war, had not studied peace so much as he ought. He had, for some years past, perfectly doated through length of age, and his sticklers took his reveries for so many refined strokes of policy.
Some people in France have greatly cried up his order and œconomy, whereas they were nothing more than the effects of his niggardliness; for so penurious was he, that he never could prevail on himself to furnish his house. All the affairs of France savoured of avarice and parsimony.
On his death, the King became his own master; for till then Lewis had been in reality only the second person in the state: but he made not the least alteration in the tenour of affairs. The same faults went on; so that a judicious person who, at that time, had a place at court, told me lately, that things looked as if the Cardinal had been living after his death, small armies being sent into Germany, by way of œconomy; which all perished like the former. The Dutch, after many prayers and threats, had declared themselves.
I have been told by a person who has made it his business to observe the policy of every nation, that the Dutch have two maxims from which they never depart, the first is, whatever wars arise between the great powers, to be always neuter, that they may engross the whole commerce of Europe. The second is, to watch the moment of France’s being over-powered by its enemies, and then declare against it. It was unquestionably in consequence of the latter, that they joined their troops to those of England, and took the field. This last alliance was offensive and defensive, and all Europe found itself in a state of war.
Germany, Holland, Flanders, Piedmont, and every part of Italy, swarmed with soldiers. The Count d’Argenson calculated that Europe had then nine hundred thousand men on foot, ready to cut each others throats, without any known reason. Particularly France was ruining its finances, and losing the flower of its people, to no manner of purpose; for, after all, said an able politician to me one day, on this head, what was an Elector of Bavaria’s being Emperor of Germany to us; or Don Philip being Duke of Parma? I shall never forget what I read in Voltaire concerning this: It was, says he, a game that Princes were playing all over Europe, hazarding, pretty equally, their people’s blood and treasure; and by a medley of fine actions, faults, and losses, keeping fortune a long time suspended. It must be observed that, amidst all this fighting, no war had been declared; the greater part of the troops slaughtered each other only as auxiliaries.
Charles VII. the cause of this general conflagration, had now neither subjects nor dominions left; he was not allowed so much as to bear the title of Emperor, the only honour remaining to him; and his election was declared all over Germany to be null and void; so that he saw himself reduced to accept of a neutrality in his own cause. This step alone ought to have put an end to the German war; but, by my own experience, I have since known, that princes do not make war from any connected system, but only as coinciding with the motions of second causes.
The large French armies were now withdrawn out of Germany; indeed most of the troops left there had been made prisoners of war. The Marshal de Noailles has several times said to me, that of all the political errors committed in Europe for these thousand years past, the German war was the greatest.
In reading the history of that time, it appeared to me, that of all the princes engaged in the war, Emanuel King of Sardinia was the only one who had any shadow of reason for it. France was for settling contiguous to his dominions, a prince of the house of Bourbon, whose settlement must have been highly inconvenient to him; accordingly, in order to exclude this dangerous neighbour, he struck in with the enemies of France. From the beginning of the war, this prince had assisted the house of Austria, and now entered into a treaty with it. England supplied him with money to defray the charges of the war: but the Queen of Hungary went farther, conferring on him a little state, which did not belong to her[3].