Europe Goes to War
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Europe on the eve of the War of Austrian Succession (click for large)
[Note: This is an abbreviated account of the war, its origins, and its attendant diplomatic maneuverings from October 1740 to the end of 1741, to provide you with context for the TL and explain why the various states of Europe are on the side they're on. This account is virtually identical to OTL. It is not a part of the "narrative" of this timeline and can safely be skipped if this is a topic you're already familiar with. It is based principally on Reed Browning's "The War of the Austrian Succession" and Andrew C. Thompson's "George II, King and Elector."]
The death of the Emperor
Karl VI on the 20th of October was to be the trigger for the War of Austrian Succession, a global conflict into which the Corsican Revolution would eventually become subsumed. Certainly Europe had seen war coming; for the Spanish and British, it was already upon them, and had been for a year. That war on the continent would be touched off by the designs of King
Friedrich II of Prussia on the Bohemian crown land of Silesia, however, was not widely anticipated. From the perspective of
King George II of Great Britain, the emperor's death was a surprising preemption of a very different war for which he had been preparing for months. The king had spent his time in Hanover that year trying to rope the King of Prussia into a grand alliance which was to include Austria, Prussia, the Netherlands, Saxony-Poland, Russia, and various German states all welded together in a grand anti-Bourbon league. When war came to the continent - and it seemed to be when, not if - Austria would have its chance to recover Naples and Sicily, which had been lost in the earlier War of Polish Succession, while Prussia would receive Jülich and Berg for its cooperation. Such aspirations, however, were promptly derailed by the death of the emperor.
Even after the emperor's death, the rivalry on the continent which initially seemed most relevant was not between Austria and Prussia, but rather Austria and Bavaria.
Karl Albrecht, the Elector of Bavaria, desired both the imperial crown and the Bohemian crown lands—not just Silesia, but all of them—as he was convinced that with such territory and the imperial title the House of Wittelsbach could rise to the status of a major power. Support for Bavaria's imperial ambitions was longstanding French policy which Cardinal
André-Hercule de Fleury readily agreed with. He did not, however, support the elector’s territorial aims, as they were both a contravention of the Pragmatic Sanction
[1] which Fleury had agreed to and would, if realized, be contrary to French interests. A pro-French, Bavarian-led empire was desirable for France, but Fleury had no desire to humble Austria only for a powerful Bavaria to take its place.
In the meantime, King Friedrich prepared his armies. His objective was at first concealed. His diplomats intimated that his object was really the seizure of Jülich and Berg, duchies which the Prussians had been promised in return for their support of the Pragmatic Sanction back in 1728 until the late emperor had faithlessly reneged. As the Prussian claim to Jülich and Berg was far more substantial and internationally recognized than their claim on Silesia, which was spurious nonsense, this deception appeared credible. It was only towards the end of November that the Austrians began to suspect Friedrich's real intentions and realized that war was probably immanent. On December 9th, Friedrich proclaimed that Prussian troops would occupy Silesia in order to
protect the rights of
Maria Theresa, the Habsburg heiress and Queen of Hungary,
[2] and defend it from any hostile third power (presumably Bavaria). Alarmed, the Austrians repudiated his "help" and warned him against such action, as it would certainly lead to war. But Friedrich’s mind had been made up ever since he learned of the emperor’s death, and on December 16th he led his army across the border into Silesia. His final ultimatum to Vienna arrived two days after the invasion had already begun.
The initial invasion was like kicking open a door that was already ajar. Austria’s outnumbered and ill-prepared garrisons in Silesia were quickly overwhelmed. In a short amount of time, however, it appeared as though Friedrich’s gambit would end in an unmitigated disaster. The King of Prussia had counted on the notion that the young and inexperienced queen would quickly fold, accepting Prussia’s occupation as a
fait accompli and agreeing to the province’s cession in exchange for Prussia’s commitment to honor and defend the remainder of the Habsburg lands from other powers, most notably Bavaria and France. Friedrich was even willing to settle for only part of Silesia, or to buy the occupied province in cash if necessary. Yet while it was true that the Queen of Bohemia was young and inexperienced, she was also stubborn as a mule, and she and her advisors were fully convinced that to compromise even part of the Pragmatic Sanction would be tantamount to its complete dissolution. To Friedrich’s dismay, she refused to submit. Further ill news came from Dresden in February of 1741, where King George II had organized a conference of ministers to take action against Prussia. George was deeply angered by the actions of his Prussian nephew, describing him as "a faithless prince" who "must have his wings clipped," and envisioned a new coalition in which Britain, Hanover, Saxony-Poland, Austria, and Russia - in short, all of Prussia’s neighbors - would converge upon Friedrich and destroy him utterly. It seemed to be a realization of the King of Prussia’s worst nightmares.
France, however, had not yet weighed in. Fleury, as mentioned, supported Bavaria’s imperial ambitions but wished to avoid war. Certainly he had no interest in fighting one for the sake of the King of Prussia, who had clearly bitten off more than he could chew. The cardinal made a fatal mistake, however, by choosing
Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, Duc de Belle-Isle as his emissary to Germany. Belle-Isle was eager for a fight, openly advocated tearing up the Pragmatic Sanction, and used his assignment not merely to drum up support for Karl Albrecht among the electors but to beat the drums of war. Belle-Isle argued that Bavaria’s imperial and territorial ambitions were inseparable because of Bohemia’s status as an electoral state; to ensure a Bavarian electoral victory it was necessary for Bohemia’s vote to be separated from its current holder, the Queen of Hungary herself. Now that war in Germany had begun, he argued, the question was not peace or war, but whether France would gain an advantage from the war which had already begun or stand aside and gain nothing at all. Like King George, Belle-Isle too envisioned a grand alliance, but one aimed at the complete abasement of Austria: France, Bavaria, Saxony, and Prussia would attack Austria in Germany, Spain and Naples would assault her holdings in Italy, and the Ottomans would be induced to strike at the Austrians from the rear. Russian involvement seemed unlikely, as the Tsarina
Anna Ivanovna had died within days of the emperor and the present Tsar,
Ivan VI, was a seven month old infant. The aging and sickly Cardinal Fleury was now clearly losing his grip, and the man who had been master of French policy for decades now found himself inexorably dragged along by the ambitious young Belle-Isle, who delighted King
Louis XV with his promises of a new era of French dominance in Europe undreamed of by his predecessors. In March 1741, all of Europe realized that Bavaria would be going to war and that France would be joining her.
King George had been operating on the assumption that France would leave Prussia to its fate. As yet there was no alliance between the Prussians and the French, but if France and Bavaria were to attack Austria then they would at least be co-belligerents, and it seemed impossible that the two conflicts could be kept separate from one another. Suddenly realizing that he was careening towards a war with France, George backed off, as he did not want to jeopardize Hanover. George’s envoys in Vienna, who had previously urged a hard line against Friedrich, abruptly began pressing for a negotiated peace between Vienna and Berlin in order to salvage the anti-Bourbon front and prevent a Franco-Prussian alliance. It was a gratifying turn of events for Friedrich, who could now deftly play France and Britain against each other.
As yet, the King of Prussia was not committed to either. A Franco-Prussian alliance had been discussed as early as December of 1740, but Friedrich had demurred. What he really wanted, as strange as it may sound in retrospect, was a British alliance. If French help was necessary, he would take it, but he feared France’s ambitions in Germany. Austria’s dismemberment would indeed secure Silesia for his realm, but it would also make France the master of Europe, which was not a prospect that Friedrich relished. The British, in contrast, were by their nature incapable of continental dominance, which made them far less threatening and more attractive as an ally. From Friedrich’s point of view, the best possible outcome was a swift, negotiated end to the war with the help of British good offices, followed by an Anglo-Prussian alliance against overeager French adventurism.
With the diplomatic situation in this uncertain and precarious state, a decision was awaited on the battlefield. It came at the Battle of Mollwitz on April 10th, 1741, when against all expectations an Austrian army dispatched to liberate Silesia was decisively defeated by a smaller Prussian force. Despite its recent lackluster military record, Austria had been heavily favored to win, particularly by the Austrians themselves. According to conventional wisdom, the Prussians were crisply attired and well-trained but inexperienced, while Austria’s soldiers were grizzled veterans of long wars against the Turks and the Bourbons. Yet at Mollwitz, the well-drilled Prussian infantry proved an irresistible force, even making up for the underwhelming Prussian cavalry. Friedrich himself had fled the battle on the advice of Generalfeldmarschall
Kurt Christoph, Graf von Schwerin, when things looked grim, but in the end Schwerin produced the victory. The King of Prussia swore never to abandon his men on the field again, and he never did.
[3]
It was a great and necessary victory, and Friedrich’s bold gambit seemed to be vindicated. Though even Fleury considered him a faithless and untrustworthy, none could deny the unexpected potency of Prussian arms. The elation of victory, however, was followed by disappointment. Alarmed by Austria’s defeat, the British rushed to the aid of Maria Theresa to stave off an Austrian collapse, and within a few weeks of Mollwitz King Friedrich learned that the British Parliament had voted to bolster her resistance with a subsidy of £300,000. Although Friedrich continued in talks with the British, he now considered them a mere sham. It seemed inevitable that he would be denied his first choice of an Anglo-Prussian rapprochement and would have to side with France in order to force Maria Theresa to admit defeat. On June 5th, Prussia and France signed the Treaty of Breslau, which inaugurated a formal alliance against Austria.
What followed, however, was not decisive action but confusion or incompetence on nearly every side. While Friedrich, still set upon a swift campaign, urged his new allies to hurry, the reluctant Fleury dragged his feet on matters both financial and military, compelling Belle-Isle to return to Paris to try to straighten things out. French forces did not even cross the Rhine until mid-August. The Austrians, now confident in full British support, redoubled their efforts and spurned any talk of compromise. Yet British support was anything but full; although the British wished to avoid an Austrian collapse, they continued to urge a negotiated end to the Silesian conflict. Public opinion was split between support for Maria Theresa, who had justice and the aura of a damsel in distress on her side, and reluctance to become involved in a continental war with few discernable advantages for Britain other than the unpopular defense of George’s Hanover.
[A]
British resolve was further weakened in June when news reached Europe that the British assault on the Spanish port of Cartagena de Indias in South America had ended in a spectacular military disaster. Ravaged by tropical disease and hobbled by their squabbling commanders, the massive British force which had been dispatched to storm that city by land and sea had been whittled almost to nothing and forced to withdraw in defeat. Compared to some 800 deaths among the Spanish defenders, the British had lost more than ten thousand men. Spain was overjoyed, while Belle-Isle seized the moment and took full control of French policy, forcefully and convincingly arguing that this was France’s singular opportunity for glory. 80,000 French soldiers would be sent into Germany, half to join the Bavarians and half to serve as a warning to George and the Dutch to keep their neutrality. George heeded the warning, even ordering his Hanoverian diplomats to suggest to France that he was willing to support Karl Albrecht as emperor. Ultimately, in October, George declared the neutrality of Hanover and his support for the Bavarian claim upon the imperial crown, a decision which was wildly unpopular in Britain and forced British diplomats to explain that their monarch’s declaration was made only in his capacity as Elector of Hanover and not King of Great Britain. Regardless, it seemed apparent that Britain would only support Austria financially, not militarily.
Maria Theresa now found herself truly isolated. Austria’s only other ally, Russia, had been effectively neutralized by French diplomacy. In a master stroke, the French had stoked the fires of revanchism in Sweden and encouraged the country to seize the opportunity of Russia’s regency to take back their lost Baltic territories. On August 4th Sweden declared war on Russia, which made it obvious that Russian forces would not be marching into central Europe anytime soon. The panicked Austrians, only now sensing the magnitude of their looming defeat, went so far as to offer Karl Albrecht the Austrian Netherlands, or Lombardy were that his preference, in exchange for peace. When the whole pie seemed to be on offer, however, the Elector of Bavaria was unwilling to settle for a slice.
By September, the French and Bavarians were marching down the Danube into Upper Austria, and the thus-far victorious allies were making plans to carve up the Austrian goose once and for all. At the Treaty of Nymphenburg on the 19th of September, it was agreed that Prussia would receive most of Silesia, while Bavaria would take Bohemia, Tyrol, Further Austria, and Upper Austria. To entice Saxony into joining the cause, the King-Elector
August III was offered a small part of Silesia as well as Moravia, which would be elevated to a kingdom so as to give the House of Wettin a hereditary royal crown.
[4]
There were some hiccups. Concerned about his flanks and troubled by rumors that Friedrich was entertaining some arrangement with Austria, Karl Albrecht decided to break off his march on Vienna and attack Bohemia instead. This was not without some sense; while the possibility of striking Vienna and ending the war with a
coup de main was tempting, it was militarily risky, and Vienna’s defenses were strong. The capture of Bohemia, meanwhile, would in theory gain him its electoral vote (or at least throw enough doubt on Bohemia’s status to prevent the kingdom’s vote from being cast at all), and thus the imperial crown. The rumors of Friedrich’s duplicity would turn out to be true: eager to rest his forces and unenthused about the prospect of a total Franco-Bavarian victory, he had decided to betray his allies and make a separate peace with Vienna in exchange for most of Silesia. Yet the Franco-Saxon-Bavarian alliance pressed on, and in a spectacular feat of arms Prague was captured in late November by the brilliant
Maurice de Saxe with the loss of only fourteen men. Upon hearing the news, the despondent Maria Theresa wept.
Next to such grand maneuverings, Corsica was insignificant, and Italy only marginally less so. The only major party truly interested in opening hostilities in Italy was Spain, which was eager to press its claims in northern Italy against a weakened and isolated Austria. Specifically, Queen
Elisabetta Farnese had claims to Parma and Tuscany, one or both of which she was determined to provide as a state for her younger son Don Felipe (the elder, Don Carlos, was presently the King of Naples). Certainly the opening of another front against the Austrians in Italy with abundant Spanish forces promised to make things even easier for the pro-Bavarian alliance in Germany. Fleury was concerned, however, that an invasion of Italy would force Britain to plunge headlong into the general war, and their present neutrality was quite suitable. It was also likely to provoke
Carlo Emanuele III, King of Sardinia. Fleury proposed a swap to Carlo Emanuele, in which Sardinia would cede Savoy to France and receive part of Austrian Lombardy in compensation. Meanwhile, the Spanish would snap up the remainder of Lombardy as well as Parma, Piacenza, and Mantua.
The King of Sardinia would have had to have been a very great fool to accept this, and Carlo Emanuele was no fool. Sardinian grand strategy involved maintaining a balance between the Bourbons and Habsburgs in Italy for Sardinia’s benefit; one could be played off the other to gradually expand the kingdom’s territory and influence. The king was not so witless as to act as an accomplice for the complete Spanish domination of the peninsula, let alone to trade the royal house’s ancestral land of Savoy for a mere piece of the Milanese. Nor could the French offer anything more generous because of the obstinacy of their ally, King
Felipe V of Spain, for whom even the idea of ceding part of the Milanese was unthinkable. “I will not make war for the King of Sardinia,” he insisted, and scoffed at any compromise with the Sardinians. Desperate for any allies at all, the Austrians offered the King of Sardinia territorial concessions in the Milanese in exchange for his support. This was more amenable to Carlo Emanuele than the folly of a Bourbon alliance, but although his army was capable and efficient Sardinia was still a small state of limited means, and the prospect of facing France and Spain with only the Austrians for support was not very appealing.
Spanish ambition was checked momentarily, but it would not remain so for long. Facing disaster in Germany, the Austrians had ordered much of their army to withdraw from Italy, while the British had critically undermanned their Mediterranean squadron under Admiral
Nicholas Haddock, who by November had only twelve ships in the entire theater. The Spanish were determined to take advantage, and at last convinced France to contribute its navy, if not its army. With a French escort, the Spanish fleet was too formidable for Haddock to challenge, and in November 14,000 Spanish troops landed at Orbetello, less than a hundred miles east of the Corsican coast. Another 11,000 would land at Spezia, a Genoese port, in January of 1742, further demonstrating the illusory quality of Genoese neutrality. Carlo Emanuele’s hand was now forced; although reluctant to go to war under such conditions, Spain’s invasion had given him no choice but to side with Spain’s enemies. For the moment, he would only have to face Spain rather than Spain and France together, and hoped for British aid given that Britain and Spain were already at war. His support was not much of a comfort to Maria Theresa given the disasters unfolding in Bohemia, and Carlo Emanuele would do nothing for free, but Sardinia was now in Austria’s camp.
Thus it was not until the end of 1741 that Italy became a theater of the general war. Once it did, however, Theodore’s warnings about the importance of Corsica to British power seemed prescient. Haddock’s failure only underlined the necessity of putting more emphasis on the Mediterranean theater, for only a strong British presence there could prevent Spain from resupplying and reinforcing its armies newly landed in Italy. It was helpful, too, that early 1742 saw the final collapse of Walpole’s long ministry, which had been steadily falling apart throughout 1741, and his replacement by Lord
John Carteret, whose singular aim in his foreign policy was to roll back Bourbon power and to that end refocus Britain’s efforts from America to Europe. For Theodore, it would be a most welcome change.
[B]
Footnotes
[1] The Pragmatic Sanction was the instrument by which the late emperor declared that, in default of a male heir, his daughter Maria Theresa would inherit the complete and undivided Habsburg lands. The emperor had spent much of his life attempting to secure the acceptance of the Sanction by the European powers, most of whom demanded various concessions in exchange. In the event, however, the dearly-bought promises of many European states proved worthless.
[2] As the imperial title was elective, not heritable, Maria Theresa was not "empress" until the election of her husband Franz Stefan of Lorraine as emperor years later. Although she possessed many titles as a consequence of the Habsburg inheritance, she was most usually referred to during the war as the "Queen of Hungary," and that convention will be followed here.
[3] Inexplicably, the Austrian commander chosen for the duty of confronting the Prussians in Silesia was none other than Wilhelm Reinhard, Graf von Neipperg, the very same Count Neipperg who had been sacked and imprisoned for incompetence after his bungling resulted in the disgraceful Treaty of Belgrade ending the Austro-Turkish War. He was freed by Maria Theresa and seems to have won command in Silesia by promising that he could defeat the Prussians with fewer troops than his peers advised, which was attractive to a state in such dire financial straits as Austria in 1741. More inexplicably still, he was promoted later that year. Suffering from an acute shortage of competence, the Austrians made do with dogged persistence.
[4] The Elector of Saxony was already king, but of Poland, which was an elective monarchy. A Moravian crown would ensure that the Saxon house remained royal no matter who might win the Polish-Lithuanian elections in the future.
Timeline Notes
[A] Reed Browning offers my favorite synopsis of this moment in diplomatic history: “Dithering in France, discipline in Prussia, division in Britain, and delusion in Austria.”
[B] As mentioned, this whole update is OTL. I don’t believe that anything that’s happened in Corsica thus far would directly affect the opening phase of the WoAS, although we will see some new developments on Corsica itself, where the Austrians and French are for the moment sharing the country. As mentioned previously I’ve opted to limit random butterflies, at least in this early stage of the TL, so as to keep the focus on Corsica and avoid having to come up with a whole new WoAS. At least initially, major battles and notable deaths will occur historically. The butterfly net will loosen somewhat as the war goes on, and considerably post-independence.
