sovereign; and more and more completely Austrian interests and
Austrian policy became removed and estranged from the interests
of the Germanic people. The ambitions and the cares of the
House of Hapsburg were increasingly in directions most
opposite to the German side of its relations, tending towards
Italy and the southeast; while, at the same time, the narrow
church influence which depressed the Austrian states widened a
hopeless intellectual difference between them and the northern
German people.
Brandenburg.--Prussia.
The most notable movements in dull German affairs after the
Peace of Westphalia were those which connected themselves with
the settling and centering in Brandenburg of a nucleus of
growing power, around which the nationalizing of Germany has
been a crystalizing process ever since. The Mark of
Brandenburg was one of the earliest conquests (tenth century)
of the Germans from the Wends. Prussia, afterwards united with
Brandenburg, was a later conquest (thirteenth century) from
Wendish or Slavonic and other pagan inhabitants, and its
subjugation was a missionary enterprise, accomplished by the
crusading Order of Teutonic Knights, under the authority and
direction of the Pope. The Order, which held the country for
more than two centuries, and ruled it badly, became
degenerate, and about the middle of the fifteenth century it
was overcome in war by Casimir IV. of Poland, who took away
from it the western part of its territory, and forced it to do
homage to him for the eastern part, as a fief of the Polish
crown. Sixty years later, the Reformation movement in Germany
brought about the extinguishment of the Teutonic Order as a
political power. The Grand Master of the Order at that time
was Albert, a Hohenzollern prince, belonging to a younger
branch of the Brandenburg family. He became a Lutheran, and
succeeded in persuading the Polish king, Sigismund I., to
transfer the sovereignty of the East Prussian fief to him
personally, as a duchy. He transmitted it to his descendants,
who held it for a few generations; but the line became extinct
in 1618, and the Duchy of Prussia then passed to the elder
branch of the family and was united with Brandenburg. The Mark
of Brandenburg had been raised to the rank of an Electorate in
1356 and had been acquired by the Hohenzollern family in 1417.
The superior weight of the Brandenburg electors in northern
Germany may be dated from their acquisition of the important
Duchy of Prussia; but they made no mark on affairs until the
time of Frederick William I., called the Great Elector, who
succeeded to the Electorate in 1640, near the close of the
Thirty Years War. In the arrangements of the Peace of
Westphalia he secured East Pomerania and other considerable
additions of territory. In 1657 he made his Duchy of Prussia
independent of Poland, by treaty with the Polish king. In 1672
and 1674 he had the courage and the independence to join the
allies against Louis XIV., and when the Swedes, in alliance
with Louis, invaded his dominions, he defeated and humbled
them at Fehrbellen, and took from them the greater part of
their Pomeranian territory. When the Great Elector died, in
1688, Brandenburg was the commanding North-German power, and
the Hohenzollern family had fully entered on the great career
it has since pursued.
{1080}
Frederick William's son Frederick, with none of his father's
talent, had a pushing but shallow ambition. He aspired to be a
king, and circumstances made his friendship so important to
the Emperor Leopold I. that the latter, exercising the
theoretical super-sovereignty of the Cæsars, endowed him with
the regal title. He was made King of Prussia, not of
Brandenburg, because Brandenburg stood in vassalage to the
Empire, while Prussia was an independent state.
Poland and Russia.
When Brandenburg and Prussia united began to rise to
importance, the neighboring kingdom of Poland had already
passed the climax of its career. Under the Jagellon dynasty,
sprung from the Duke Jagellon of Lithuania, who married
Hedwig, Queen of Poland, in 1386, and united the two states,
Poland was a great power for two centuries, and seemed more
likely than Russia to dominate the Slavonic peoples of Europe.
The Russians at that time were under the feet of the Mongols
or Tartars, whose terrific sweep westwards, from the steppes
of Asia, had overwhelmed them completely and seemed to bring
their independent history to an end. Slowly a Russian duchy
had emerged, having its seat of doubtful sovereignty at
Moscow, and being subject quite humbly to the Mongol Khan.
About 1477 the Muscovite duke of that time, Ivan Vasilovitch,
broke the Tartar yoke and acquired independence. But his
dominion was limited. The Poles and Lithuanians, now united,
had taken possession of large and important territories
formerly Russian, and the Muscovite state was entirely cut off
from the Baltic. It began, however, in the next century, under
Ivan the Terrible, first of the Czars, to make conquests
southward and south-eastward, from the Tartars, until it had
reached the Caspian Sea. The dominion of the Czar stretched
northward, at the same time, to the White Sea, at the single
port of which trade was opened with the Russian country by
English merchant adventurers in the reign of Elizabeth. Late
in the sixteenth century the old line of rulers, descended
from the Scandinavian Ruric, came to an end, and after a few
years Michael Romanoff established the dynasty which has
reigned since his time.
As between the two principal Slavonic nations, Russia was now
gaining stability and weight, while Poland had begun to lose
both. It was a fatal day for the Poles when, in 1573, on the
death of the last of the Jagellons, they made their monarchy
purely elective, abolishing the restriction to one family
which had previously prevailed. The election was by the
suffrage of the nobles, not the people at large (who were
generally serfs), and the government became an oligarchy of
the most unregulated kind known in history. The crown was
stripped of power, and the unwillingness of the nobility to
submit to any national authority, even that of its own
assembly, reached a point, about the middle of the seventeenth
century, at which anarchy was virtually agreed upon as the
desirable political state. The extraordinary "liberum veto,"
then made part of the Polish constitution, gave to each single
member of the assemblies of the nobles, or of the deputies
representing them, a right to forbid any enactment, or to
arrest the whole proceedings of the body, by his unsupported
negative. This amazing prerogative appears to have been
exercised very rarely in its fullness; but its theoretical
existence effectually extinguished public spirit and paralyzed
all rational legislation. Linked with the singular feebleness
of the monarchy, it leaves small room for surprise at the
ultimate shipwreck of the Polish state.
The royal elections at Warsaw came to be prize contests at
which all Europe assisted. Every Court set up its candidate
for the paltry titular place; every candidate emptied his
purse into the Polish capital, and bribed, intrigued,
corrupted, to the best of his ability. Once, at least (1674),
when the game was on, a sudden breeze of patriotic feeling
swept the traffickers out of the diet, and inspired the
election of a national hero, John Sobieski, to whom Europe
owes much; for it was he who drove back the Turks, in 1683,
when their last bold push into central Europe was made, and
when they were storming at the gates of Vienna. But when
Sobieski died, in 1696, the old scandalous vendue of a crown
was re-opened, and the Elector of Saxony was the buyer. During
most of the last two centuries of its history, Poland sold its
throne to one alien after another, and allowed foreign states
to mix and meddle with its affairs. Of real nationality there
was not much left to extinguish when the time of extinction
came. There were patriots, and very noble patriots, among the
Poles, at all periods of their history; but it seems to have
been the very hopelessness of the state into which their
country had drifted which intensified their patriotic feeling.
Russia had acquired magnitude and strength as a barbaric
power, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it was
not until the reign of Peter the Great, which opened in 1682,
that the great Slavonic empire began to take on a European
character, with European interests and influences, and to
assimilate the civilization of the West. Peter may be said to
have knotted Russia to Europe at both extremities, by pushing
his dominions to the Baltic on the north and to the Black Sea
on the south, and by putting his own ships afloat in both.
From his day, Russia has been steadily gathering weight in
each of the two continents over which her vast bulk of empire
is stretched, and moving to a mysterious great destiny in time
to come.
The Turks.
The Turks, natural enemies of all the Christian races of
eastern and southeastern Europe, came practically to the end
of their threatening career of conquest about the middle of
the sixteenth century, when Suleiman the Magnificent died
(1566). He had occupied a great part of Hungary; seated a
pasha in Buda; laid siege to Vienna; taken Rhodes from the
Knights of St. John; attacked them in Malta; made an alliance
with the King of France; brought a Turkish fleet into the
western Mediterranean, and held Europe in positive terror of
an Ottoman domination for half a century. His son Selim added
Cyprus to the Turkish conquests; but was humbled in the
Mediterranean by the great Christian victory of Lepanto, won
by the combined fleets of Spain, Venice and the Pope, under
Don John of Austria. After that time Europe had no great fear
of the Turk; though he still fought hard with the Venetians,
the Poles, the Russians, the Hungarians, and, once more,
carried his arms even to Vienna. But, on the whole, it was a
losing fight; the crescent was on the wane.
{1081}
Last glories of Venice.
In the whole struggle with the Ottomans, through the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, the republic
of Venice bore a noble part. She contested with them foot by
foot the Greek islands, Peloponnesus, and the eastern shores
of the Adriatic. Even after her commerce began to slip from
her control, and the strength which came from it sank rapidly,
she gave up her eastern possessions but slowly, one by one,
and after stout resistance. Crete cost the Turks a war of
twenty-four years (1645-1669). Fifteen years afterwards the
Venetians gathered their energies afresh, assumed the
aggressive, and conquered the whole Peloponnesus, which they
held for a quarter of a century. Then it was lost again, and
the Ionian Islands alone remained Venetian territory in the
East.
Rise of the House of Savoy.
Of Italy at large, in the seventeenth century, lying prostrate
under the heavy hand of Spain, there is no history to claim
attention in so brief a sketch as this. One sovereign family
in the northwest, long balanced on the Alps, in uncertainty
between a cis-Alpine and a trans-Alpine destiny, but now
clearly committed to Italian fortunes, had begun to win its
footing among the noticeable smaller powers of the day by
sheer dexterity of trimming and shifting sides in the
conflicts of the time. This was the House of Savoy, whose
first possessions were gathered in the crumbling of the old
kingdom of Burgundy, and lay on both slopes of the Alps,
commanding several important passes. On the western and
northern side, the counts, afterwards dukes, of Savoy had to
contend, as time went on, with the expanding kingdom of France
and with the stout-hearted communities which ultimately formed
the Swiss Confederacy. They fell back before both. At one
period, in the fifteenth century, their dominion had stretched
to the Saone, and to the lake of Neufchatel, on both sides of
it, surrounding the free city of Geneva, which they were never
able to overcome, and the lake of Geneva entire. After that
time, the Savoyards gradually lost territory on the Gallic
side and won compensations on the Italian side, in Piedmont,
and at the expense of Genoa and the duchy of Milan. The Duke
Victor Amadeus II. was the most successful winner for his
house, and he made his gains by remarkable manœuvering on both
sides of the wars of Louis XIV. One of his acquisitions (1713)
was the island kingdom of Sicily, which gave him a royal title. A
few years later he exchanged it with Austria for the island
kingdom of Sardinia--a realm more desirable to him for
geographical reasons only. The dukes of Savoy and princes of
Piedmont thus became kings of Sardinia, and the name of the
kingdom was often applied to their whole dominion, down to the
recent time when the House of Savoy attained the grander
kingship of united Italy.
First wars of Louis XIV.
The wars of Louis XIV. gave little opportunity for western and
central Europe to make any other history than that of struggle
and battle, invasion and devastation, intrigue and faithless
diplomacy, shifting of political landmarks and traffic in
border populations, as though they were pastured cattle, for
fifty years, in the last part of the seventeenth century and
the first part of the eighteenth (1665-1715). It will be
remembered that when this King of France married the Infanta
of Spain, he joined in a solemn renunciation of all rights on
her part and on that of her children to such dominions as she
might otherwise inherit. But such a renunciation, with no
sentiment of honor behind it, was worthless, of course, and
Louis XIV., in his own esteem, stood on a height quite above
the moral considerations that have force with common men. When
Philip IV. of Spain died, in 1665, Louis promptly began to put
forward the claims which he had pledged himself not to make.
He demanded part of the Netherlands, and Franche Comté--the
old county (not the duchy) of Burgundy--as belonging to his
queen. It was his good fortune to be served by some of the
greatest generals, military engineers and administrators of
the day--by Turenne, Condé, Vauban, Louvois, and others--and
when he sent his armies of invasion into Flanders and Franche
Comté they carried all before them. Holland took alarm at
these aggressions which came so near to her, and formed an
alliance with England and Sweden to assist Spain. But the
unprincipled English king, Charles II., was easily bribed to
betray his ally; Sweden was bought over; Spain submitted to a
treaty which gave the Burgundian county back to her, and
surrendered an important part of the Spanish Netherlands to
France. Louis' first exploit of national brigandage had thus
been a glorious success, as glory is defined in the vocabulary
of sovereigns of his class. He had stolen several valuable
towns, killed some thousands of people, carried misery into
the lives of some thousands more, and provoked the Dutch to a
challenge of war that seemed promising of more glory of like
kind.
In 1672 he prepared himself to chastise the Dutch, and his
English pensioner, Charles II., with several German princes,
joined him in the war. It was this war, as related already,
which brought about the fall and the death of John de Witt,
Grand Pensionary of Holland; which raised William of Orange to
the restored stadtholdership, and which gave him a certain
leadership of influence in Europe, as against the French king.
It was this war, likewise, which gave the Hohenzollerns their
first great battle-triumph, in the defeat of the Swedes,
allies of the French, at Fehrbellin. For Frederick William,
the Great Elector, had joined the Emperor Leopold and the King
of Spain in another league with Holland to resist the
aggressions of France; while Sweden now took sides with Louis.
England was soon withdrawn from the contest, by the determined
action of Parliament, which forced its king to make peace.
Otherwise the war became general in western Europe and was
frightful in the death and misery it cost. Generally the
French had the most success. Turenne was killed in 1675 and
Condé retired the same year; but able commanders were found in
Luxemburg and Crequi to succeed them. In opposition to William
of Orange, the Dutch made peace at Nimegueu, in 1678, and
Spain was forced to give up Franche Comté, with another
fraction of her Netherland territories; but Holland lost
nothing. Again Louis XIV. had beaten and robbed his neighbors
with success, and was at the pinnacle of his glory. France, it
is true, was oppressed and exhausted, but her king was a
"grand monarch," and she must needs be content.
{1082}
For a few years the grand monarch contented himself with small
filchings of territory, which kept his conscience supple and
gave practice to his sleight-of-hand. On one pretext and
another he seized town after town in Alsace, and, at last,
1681, surprised and captured the imperial free city of
Strasburg, in a time of entire peace. He bombarded Genoa, took
Avignon from the Pope, bullied and abused feeble Spain, made
large claims on the Palatinate in the name of his
sister-in-law, but against her will, and did nearly what he
was pleased to do, without any effective resistance, until
after William of Orange had been called to the English throne.
That completed a great change in the European situation.
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The change had already been more than half brought about by a
foul and foolish measure which Louis had adopted in his
domestic administration. Cursed by a tyrant's impatience at
the idea of free thought and free opinion among his subjects,
he had been persuaded by Catholic zealots near his person to
revoke the Edict of Nantes and revive persecution of the
Huguenots. This was done in 1685. The fatal effects within
France resembled those which followed the persecution of the
Moriscoes of Spain. The Huguenots formed a large proportion of
the best middle class of the kingdom,--its manufacturers, its
merchants, its skilled and thrifty artisans. Infamous efforts
were made to detain them in the country and there force them
to apostacy or hold them under punishment if they withstood.
But there was not power enough in the monarchy, with all its
absolutism, to enclose France in such a wall. Vast numbers
escaped--half a million it is thought--carrying their skill,
their knowledge, their industry and their energy into Holland,
England, Switzerland, all parts of Protestant Germany, and
across the ocean to America. France was half ruined by the
loss.
The League of Augsburg.
At the same time, the Protestant allies in Germany and the
North, whom Louis had held in subserviency to himself so long,
were angered and alarmed by his act. They joined a new
defensive league against him, formed at Augsburg, in 1686,
which embraced the Emperor, Spain, Holland, and Sweden, at
first, and afterwards took in Savoy and other Italian states,
along with Germany almost entire. But the League was miserably
unprepared for war, and hardly hindered the march of Louis'
armies when he suddenly moved them into the Rhenish
electorates in 1688. For the second time in his reign, and
under his orders, the Palatinate was fearfully devastated with
fire and sword. But this attack on Germany, occupying the arms
of France, gave William of Orange his opportunity to enter
England unopposed and take the English crown. That
accomplished, he speedily brought England into the League,
enlarging it to a "grand alliance" of all western Europe
against the dangerous monarch of France, and inspiring it with
some measure of his own energy and courage. France had now to
deal with enemies on every side. They swarmed on all her
frontiers, and the strength and valor with which she met them
were amazing. For three years the French more than held their
own, not only in land-fighting, but on the sea, where they
seemed likely, for a time, to dispute the supremacy of the
English and the Dutch with success. But the frightful draft
made on the resources of the nation, and the strain on its
spirit, were more than could be kept up. The obstinacy of the
king, and his indifference to the sufferings of his people,
prolonged the war until 1697, but with steady loss to the
French of the advantages with which they began. Two years
before the end, Louis had bought over the Duke of Savoy, by
giving back to him all that France had taken from his Italian
territories since Richelieu's time. When the final peace was
settled, at Ryswick, like surrenders had to be made in the
Netherlands, Lorraine, and beyond the Rhine; but Alsace, with
Strasburg, was kept, to be a German graft on France, until the
sharp Prussian pruning knife, in our own time, cut it away.
War of the Spanish Succession.
There were three years of peace after the treaty of Ryswick,
an then a new war--longer, more bitter, and more destructive
than those before it--arose out of questions connected with
the succession to the crown of Spain. Charles II., last of the
Austro-Spanish or Spanish-Hapsburg kings, died in 1700,
leaving no heir. The nearest of his relatives to the throne
were the descendants of his two sisters, one of whom had
married Louis XIV. and the other the Emperor Leopold, of the
Austrian House. Louis XIV., as we know, had renounced all the
Spanish rights of his queen and her issue; but that
renunciation had been shown already to be wasted paper.
Leopold had renounced nothing; but he had required a
renunciation of her Spanish claims from the one daughter,
Maria, of his Spanish wife, and he put forward claims to the
Spanish succession, on his own behalf, because his mother had
been a princess of that nation, as well as his wife. He was
willing, however, to transfer his own rights to a younger son,
fruit of a second marriage, the Archduke Charles.
The question of the Spanish succession was one of European
interest and importance, and attempts had been made to settle
it two years before the death of the Spanish king, in 1698, by
a treaty, or agreement, between France, England, and Holland.
By that treaty these outside powers (consulting Spain not at
all) undertook a partition of the Spanish monarchy, in what
they assumed to be the interest of the European balance of
power. They awarded Naples, Sicily, and some lesser Italian
possessions to a grandson of Louis XIV., the Milanese
territory to the Archduke Charles, and the rest of the Spanish
dominions to an infant son of Maria, the Emperor's daughter,
who was married to the elector of Bavaria. But the infant so
selected to wear the crown of Spain died soon afterwards, and
a second treaty of partition was framed. This gave the
Milanese to the Duke of Lorraine, in exchange for his own
duchy, which he promised to cede to France, and the whole
remainder of the Spanish inheritance was conceded to the
Austrian archduke, Charles. In Spain, these arrangements were
naturally resented, by both people and king, and the latter
was persuaded to set against them a will, bequeathing all that
he ruled to the younger grandson of Louis XIV., Philip of
Anjou, on condition that the latter renounce for himself and
for his heirs all claims to the crown of France. The
inducement to this bequest was the power which the King of
France possessed to enforce it, and so to preserve the unity
of the Spanish realm. That the argument and the persuasion
came from Louis' own agents, while other agents amused
England, Holland and Austria with treaties of partition, is
tolerably clear.
{1083}
Near the end of the year 1700, the King of Spain died; his
will was disclosed; the treaties were as coolly ignored as the
prior renunciation had been, and the young French prince was
sent pompously into Spain to accept the proffered crown. For a
time, there was indignation in Europe, but no more. William of
Orange could persuade neither England nor Holland to war, and
Austria could not venture hostilities without their help. But
that submissiveness only drew from the grand monarch fresh
displays of his dishonesty and his insolence. Philip of
Anjou's renunciation of a possible succession to the French
throne, while occupying that of Spain, was practically
annulled: The government of Spain was guided from Paris like
that of a dependency of France. Dutch and English commerce was
injured by hostile measures. Movements alarming to Holland
were made on the frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands.
Finally, when the fugitive ex-king of England, James II., died
at St. Germains, in September, 1701, Louis acknowledged James'
son, the Pretender, as King of England. This insult roused the
war spirit in England which King William had striven so hard
to evoke. He had already arranged the terms of a new defensive
Grand Alliance with Holland, Austria, and most of the German
states. There was no difficulty now in making it an offensive
combination.
But William, always weak in health, and worn by many cares and
harassing troubles, died in March, 1702, before the war which
he desired broke out. His death made no pause in the movement
of events. Able statesmen, under Queen Anne, his successor,
carried forward his policy and a great soldier was found, in
the person of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to command
the armies of England and the Dutch. Another commander, of
remarkable genius, Prince Eugene of Savoy, took service with
the Emperor, and these two, acting cordially together, humbled
the overweening pride of Louis XIV. in the later years of his
reign. He had worn out France by his long exactions. His
strong ministers, Colbert, Louvois and others, were dead, and
he did not find successors for them. He had able generals, but
none equal to Turenne, Condé or Luxemburg,--none to cope with
Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The war was widespread, on a
stupendous scale, and it lasted for twelve years. Its
campaigns were fought in the Low Countries, in Germany, in
Italy and in Spain. It glorified the reign of Anne, in English
history, by the shining victories of Blenheim, Ramilies,
Oudenarde and Malplaquet, and by the capture of Gibraltar, the
padlock of the Mediterranean. The misery to which France was
reduced in the later years of the war was probably the
greatest that the much suffering nation ever knew.
The Peace of Utrecht.
Louis sought peace, and was willing to go far in surrenders to
obtain it. But the allies pressed him too hard in their
demands. They would have him not only abandon the Bourbon
dynasty that he had set up in Spain, but join them in
overthrowing it. He refused to negotiate on such terms, and
Fortune approved his resolution, by giving decisive victories
to his arms in Spain, while dealing, out disaster and defeat
in every other field. England grew weary of the war when it
came to appear endless, and Marlborough and the Whigs, who had
carried it on, were ousted from power. The Tories, under
Harley and Bolingbroke, came into office and negotiated the
famous Peace of Utrecht (1713), to which all the belligerents
in the war, save the Emperor, consented. The Emperor yielded
to a supplementary treaty, signed at Rastadt the next year.
These treaties left the Bourbon King of Spain, Philip V., on
his throne, but bound him, by fresh renunciations, not to be
likewise King of France. They gave to England Gibraltar and
Minorca, at the expense of Spain, and Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland and Hudson's Bay at the expense of France. They
took much more from Spain. They took Sicily, which they gave
to the Duke of Savoy, with the title of King; they took
Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia, which they gave to
Austria, or, more strictly speaking, to the Emperor; and they
took the Spanish Netherlands, which they gave to Austria in
the main, with some barrier towns to the Dutch. They took from
France her conquests on the right bank of the Rhine; but they
left her in possession of Alsace, with Strasburg and Landau.
The great victim of the war was Spain.
France at the death of Louis XIV.
Louis XIV. was near the end of his reign when this last of the
fearful wars which he caused was brought to a close. He died
in September, 1715, leaving a kingdom which had reasons to
curse his memory in every particular of its state. He had
foiled the exertions of as wise a minister, Jean Colbert, as
ever strove to do good to France. He had dried the sources of
national life as with a searching and monstrous sponge. He had
repressed everything which he could not absorb in his
flaunting court, in his destroying armies, and in himself. He
had dealt with France as with a dumb beast that had been given
him to bestride; to display himself upon, before the gaze of an
envious world; to be bridled, and spurred at his pleasure, and
whipped; to toil for him and bear burdens as he willed; to
tread upon his enemies and trample his neighbors' fields. It
was he, more than all others before or after, who made France
that dumb creature which suffered and was still for a little
longer time, and then began thinking and went mad.
{1084}
Charles XII. of Sweden.
While the Powers of western Europe were wrestling in the great
war of the Spanish Succession, the nations of the North and
East were tearing each other, at the same time, with equal
stubbornness and ferocity. The beginning of their conflict was
a wanton attack from Russia, Poland and Denmark, on the
possessions of Sweden. Sweden, in the past century, had made
extensive, conquests, and her territories, outside of the
Scandinavian peninsula, were thrust provokingly into the sides
of all these three neighbors. There had been three Charleses
on the Swedish throne in succession, following Christina, the
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. Queen Christina, an eccentric
character, had abdicated in 1654, in order to join the
Catholic Church, and had been succeeded by her cousin, Charles
X. The six years reign of this Charles was one of constant war
with the Danes and the Poles, and almost uniformly he was the
aggressor. His son and successor, Charles XI., suffered the
great defeat at Fehrbellin which gave prestige to Brandenburg;
but he was shielded by the puissant arm of Louis XIV., his
ally, and lost no territory. More successful in his domestic
policy than in his wars, he, both practically and formally,
established absolutism in the monarchy. Inheriting from his
father that absolute power, while inheriting at the same time
the ruthless ambition of his grandfather, Charles XII. came to
the throne in 1697.
In the first two years of his reign, this extraordinary young
autocrat showed so little of his character that his royal
neighbors thought him a weakling, and Peter the Great, of
Russia, conspired with Augustus of Poland and Frederick IV. of
Denmark to strip him of those parts of his dominion which they
severally coveted. The result was like the rousing of a lion
by hunters who went forth to pursue a hare. The young Swede,
dropping, instantly and forever, all frivolities, sprang at
his assailants before they dreamed of finding him awake, and
the game was suddenly reversed. The hunters became the hunted,
and they had no rest for nine years from the implacable
pursuit of them which Charles kept up. He defeated the Danes
and the Russians in the first year of the war (1700). In 1702
he invaded Poland and occupied Warsaw; in 1704 he forced the
deposition of the Saxon King of Poland, Augustus, and the
election of Stanislaus Leczinski. Not yet satisfied, he
followed Augustus into his electorate of Saxony, and compelled
him there to renounce the Polish crown and the Russian
alliance. In 1708 he invaded Russia, marching on Moscow, but
turning aside to meet an expected ally, Mazeppa the Cossack.
It was the mistake which Napoleon repeated a century later.
The Swedes exhausted themselves in the march, and the Russians
bided their time. Peter the Czar had devoted eight years,
since Charles defeated him at Narva, to making soldiers,
well-trained, out of the mob which that fight scattered. When
Charles had worn his army down to a slender and disheartened
force, Peter struck and destroyed it at Pultowa. Charles
escaped from the wreck and took refuge, with a few hundreds of
is guards, in the Turkish province of Bessarabia, at Bender. In
that shelter, which the Ottomans hospitably accorded to him,
he remained for five years, intriguing to bring the Porte into
war with his Muscovite enemy, while all the fruits of his nine
years of conquest in the North were stripped from him by the
old league revived. Augustus returned to Poland and recovered
his crown. Peter took possession of Livonia, Ingria, and a
great part of Finland. Frederick IV., of Denmark, attacked
Sweden itself. The kingless kingdom made a valiant defense
against the crowd of eager enemies; but Charles had used the
best of its energies and its resources, and it was not strong.
Near the end of 1710, Charles succeeded in pushing the Sultan
into war with the Czar, and the latter, advancing into
Moldavia, rashly placed himself in a position of great peril,
where the Turks had him really at their mercy. But Catherine,
the Czarina, who was present, found means to bribe the Turkish
vizier in command, and Peter escaped with no loss more serious
than the surrender of Azov. That ended the war, and the hopes
of the Swedish king. But still the stubborn Charles wearied
the Porte with his importunities, until he was commanded to
quit the country. Even then he refused to depart,--resisted
when force was used to expel him, and did not take his leave
until late in November, 1714, when he received intelligence
that his subjects were preparing to appoint his sister regent
of the kingdom and to make peace with the Czar. That news
hurried him homeward; but only for continued war. He was about
to make terms with Russia, and to secure her alliance against
Denmark, Poland and Hanover, when he was killed during an
invasion of Norway, in the siege of Friedrickshall (December,
1718). The crown of Sweden was then conferred upon his sister,
but shorn of absolute powers, and practically dependent upon
the nobles. All the wars in which Charles XII. had involved
his kingdom were brought to an end by great sacrifices, and
Russia rose to the place of Sweden as the chief power in the
North. The Swedes paid heavily for the career of their
"Northern Alexander."
Alliance against Spain.
Before the belligerents in the North had quieted themselves,
those of the West were again in arms. Spain had fallen under
the influence of two eager and restless ambitions, that of the
queen, Elizabeth of Parma, and an Italian minister, Cardinal
Alberoni; and the schemes into which these two drew the
Bourbon king, Philip V., soon ruptured the close relations
with France which Louis XIV. had ruined his kingdom to bring
about. To check them, a triple alliance was formed (1717)
between France, England and Holland,--enlarged the next year
to a quadruple alliance by the adhesion of Austria. At the
outset of the war, Spain made a conquest of Sardinia, and
almost accomplished the same in Sicily; but the English
crushed her navy and her rising commerce, while the French
crossed the Pyrenees with an army which the Spaniards could
not resist. A vast combination which Alberoni was weaving, and
which took in Charles XII., Peter the Great, the Stuart
pretender, the English Jacobites, and the opponents of the
regency in France, fell to pieces when the Swedish king fell.
Alberoni was driven from Spain and all his plans were given
up. The Spanish king withdrew from Sicily and surrendered
Sardinia. The Emperor and the Duke of Savoy exchanged islands,
as stated before, and the former (holding Naples already)
revived the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, while the latter
became King of Sardinia.
{1085}
War of the Polish Succession.
These disturbances ended, there were a few years of rest in
Europe, and then another war, of the character peculiar to the
eighteenth century, broke out. It had its cause in the Polish
election of a king to succeed Augustus II. As usual, the
neighboring nations formed a betting ring of onlookers, so to
speak, and "backed" their several candidates heavily. The
deposed and exiled king, Stanislaus Leczinski, who received
his crown from Charles XII. and lost it after Pultowa, was the
French candidate; for he had married his daughter to Louis XV.
Frederick Augustus of Saxony, son of the late King Augustus,
was the Russian and Austrian candidate. The contest resulted
in a double election (1733), and out of that came war. Spain
and Sardinia joined France, and the Emperor had no allies.
Hence the House of Austria suffered greatly in the war, losing
the Two Sicilies, which went to Spain, and were conferred on a
younger son of the king, creating a third Bourbon monarchy.
Part of the duchy of Milan was also yielded by Austria to the
King of Sardinia; and the Duke of Lorraine, husband of the
Emperor's daughter, Maria Theresa, gave up his duchy to
Stanislaus, who renounced therefor his claim on the crown of
Poland. The Duke of Lorraine received as compensation a right
of succession to the grand duchy of Tuscany, where the
Medicean House was about to expire. These were the principal
consequences, humiliating to Austria, of what is known as the
First Family Compact of the French and Spanish Bourbons.
War of Jenkins' Ear.
This alliance between the two courts gave encouragement to
hostile demonstrations in the Spanish colonies against English
traders, who were accused of extensive smuggling, and the
outcome was a petty war (1739), called "the War of Jenkins'
Ear."
War of the Austrian Succession.
Before these hostilities were ended, another "war of
succession," more serious than any before it, was wickedly
brought upon Europe. The Emperor, Charles VI., died in 1740,
leaving no son, but transmitting his hereditary dominions to
his eldest daughter, the celebrated Maria Theresa, married to
the ex-Duke of Lorraine. Years before his death he had sought
to provide against any possible disputing of the succession,
by an instrument known as the Pragmatic Sanction, to which he
obtained, first, the assent of the estates of all the
provinces and kingdoms of the Austrian realm, and, secondly,
the guaranty by solemn treaty of almost every European Power.
He died in the belief that he had established his daughter
securely, and left her to the enjoyment of a peaceful reign.
It was a pitiful illusion. He was scarcely in his grave before
half the guarantors of the Pragmatic Sanction were putting
forward claims to this part and that part of the Austrian
territories. The Elector of Bavaria, the Elector of Saxony (in
his wife's name) and the King of Spain, claimed the whole
succession; the two first mentioned on grounds of collateral
lineage, the latter (a Bourbon cuckoo in the Spanish-Hapsburg
nest) as being the heir of the Hapsburgs of Spain.
While these larger pretensions were still jostling each other
in the diplomatic stage, a minor claimant, who said little but
acted powerfully, sent his demands to the Court of Vienna with
an army following close at their heels. This was Frederick II.
of Prussia, presently known as Frederick the Great, who
resuscitated an obsolete claim on Silesia and took possession
of the province (1740-41) without waiting for debate. If,
anywhere, there had been virtuous hesitations before, his bold
stroke ended them. France could not see her old Austrian rival
dismembered without hastening to grasp a share. She contracted
with the Spanish king and the Elector of Bavaria to enforce
the latter's claims, and to take the Austrian Netherlands in
prospect for compensation, while Spain should find indemnity
in the Austro-Italian states. Frederick of Prussia, having
Silesia in hand, offered to join Maria Theresa in the defense
of her remaining dominions; but his proposals were refused,
and he entered the league against her. Saxony did the same.
England and Sardinia were alone in befriending Austria, and
England was only strong at sea. Maria Theresa found her
heartiest support in Hungary, where she made a personal appeal
to her subjects, and enlarged their constitutional privileges.
In 1742 the Elector of Bavaria was elected Emperor, as Charles
VII. In the same year, Maria Theresa, acting under pressure
from England, gave up the greater part of Silesia to
Frederick, by treaty, as a price paid, not for the help he had
offered at first, but barely for his neutrality. He abandoned
his allies and withdrew from the war. His retirement produced
an immense difference in the conditions of the contest. Saxony
made peace at the same time, and became an active ally on the
Austrian side. So rapidly did the latter then recover their
ground and the French slip back that Frederick, after two
years of neutrality, became alarmed, and found a pretext to
take up arms again. The scale was now tipped to the side on
which he threw himself, but not immediately; and when, in
1745, the Emperor, Charles VII., died suddenly, Maria Theresa
was able to secure the election of her husband, Francis of
Lorraine (or Tuscany), which founded the Hapsburg-Lorraine
dynasty on the imperial throne. This was in September. In the
following December Frederick was in Dresden, and Saxony--the
one effective ally left to the Austrians, since England had
withdrawn from the war in the previous August--was at his
feet. Maria Theresa, having the Spaniards and the French still
to fight in Italy and the Netherlands, could do nothing but make
terms with the terrible Prussian king. The treaty, signed at
Dresden on Christmas Day, 1745, repeated the cession of
Silesia to Frederick, with Glatz, and restored Saxony to the
humbled Elector.
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
France and Spain, deserted the second time by their faithless
Prussian ally, continued the war until 1748, when the
influence of England and Holland brought about a treaty of
peace signed at Aix-la-Chapelle. France gained nothing from
the war, but had suffered a loss of prestige, distinctly.
Austria, besides giving up Silesia to Frederick of Prussia,
was required to surrender a bit of Lombardy to the King of
Sardinia, and to make over Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to
Don Philip of Spain, for a hereditary principality. Under the
circumstances, the result to Maria Theresa was a notable
triumph, and she shared with her enemy, Frederick, the
fruitage of fame harvested in the war. But antagonism between
these two, and between the interests and ambitions which they
respectively represented--dynastic on one side and national
on the other--was henceforth settled and irreconcilable, and
could leave in Germany no durable peace.
{1086}
Colonial conflicts of France and England.
The peace was broken, not for Germany alone, but for Europe
and for almost the world at large, in six years after the
signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. The rupture occurred
first very far from Europe--on the other sides of the globe,
in America and Hindostan, where England and France were eager
rivals in colonial conquest. In America, they had quarreled
since the Treaty of Utrecht over the boundaries of Acadia, or
Nova Scotia, which that treaty transferred to England.
Latterly, they had come to a more serious collision in the
interior of the continent. The English, rooting their
possession of the Atlantic seaboard by strong and stable
settlements, had been tardy explorers and slow in passing the
Alleganies to the region inland. On the other hand, the
French, nimble and enterprising in exploration, and in
military occupation, but superficial and artificial in
colonizing, had pushed their way by a long circuit from
Canada, through the great lakes to the head waters of the
Ohio, and were fortifying a line in the rear of the British
colonies, from the valley of the St. Lawrence to the valley of
the Mississippi, before the English were well aware of their
intent. Then the colonists, Virginians and Pennsylvanians,
took arms, and the career of George Washington was begun as
leader of an expedition in 1754 to drive the French from the
Ohio. It was not successful, and a strong force of regular
troops was sent over next year by the British government,
under Braddock, to repeat the attempt. A frightful
catastrophe, worse than failure, came of this second
undertaking, and open war between France and England, which
had not yet been declared, followed soon. This colonial
conflict of England and France fired the train, so to speak,
which caused a great explosion of suppressed hostilities in
Europe.
The House of Hanover in England.
If the English crown had not been worn by a German king,
having a German principality to defend, the French and English
might have fought out their quarrel on the ocean, and in the
wilderness of America, or on the plains of the Carnatic,
without disturbing their continental neighbors. But England
was now under a new, foreign-bred line of sovereigns,
descended from that daughter of James I., the princess
Elizabeth, who married the unfortunate Elector Palatine and
was queen of Bohemia for a brief winter term. After William of
Orange died, his wife, Queen Mary, having preceded him to the
grave, and no children having been born to them, Anne, the
sister of Mary, had been called to the throne. It was in her
reign that the brilliant victories of Marlborough were won,
and in her reign that the Union of Scotland with England,
under one parliament as well as one sovereign, was brought
about. On Anne's death (1714), her brother, the son of James
II., called "the Pretender," was still excluded from the
throne, because of his religion, and the next heir was sought
and summoned, in the person of the Elector George, of Hanover,
whose remote ancestress was Elizabeth Stuart. George I. had
reigned thirteen years, and his son, George II., had been
twenty-seven years on the throne, when these quarrels with
France arose. Throughout the two reigns, until 1742, the
English nation had been kept mostly at peace, by the potent
influence of a great minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and had
made a splendid advance in material prosperity and strength;
while the system of ministerial government, responsible to
Parliament and independent of the Crown, which has been in
later times the peculiar feature of the British constitution,
was taking shape. In 1742, Walpole fell from power, and the
era of peace for England was ended. But her new dynasty had
been firmly settled, and politically, industrially, and
commercially, the nation was so sound in its condition as to
be well prepared for the series of wars into which it plunged.
In the War of the Austrian Succession England had taken a limited
part, and with small results to herself. She was now about to
enter, under the lead of the high spirited and ambitious Pitt,
afterwards Earl of Chatham, the greatest career of conquest in
her history.