Winning the Peace
“All say that they sincerely want peace, but each would like it with his advantage, which is the same as saying he does not want it.”
- Archbishop Carlo Francesco Durini, Papal Nuncio to France
While the War of the Austrian Succession was sparked by an opportunistic territory grab by the King of Prussia, it quickly transformed into a contest of grand designs for the future of Europe. The French had plunged into the conflict dreaming of breaking the power of the House of Austria once and for all, placing the imperial crown upon the head of their puppet Wittelsbach emperor, and gaining the continental hegemony that French monarchs far more formidable than
Louis XV had tried and failed to achieve. The Spanish had joined the fight to complete the long struggle of King
Felipe V to finally make good his claims upon the territory of the Spanish Habsburgs and establish Bourbon dominion over Italy from Sicily to the Alps, with his son Don
Felipe ruling as King of Lombardy. Britain had entered the war reluctantly, initially serving only as Austria’s paymaster to prevent their continental ally from collapsing totally. Under Carteret’s administration, however, Britain too had aspired to great heights, daring to imagine the Bourbons driven back from Germany and Italy - even Lorraine - and confined safely within their own territories by a grand anti-Bourbon European alliance.
Six years of war had not been kind to these lofty aspirations. Politically, militarily, and especially economically, the belligerent states were exhausted, and their expectations for the peace had grown dramatically less ambitious as a consequence. Spain still demanded a state for Don Felipe, but given the destruction of their army and Felipe’s own imprisonment they now appeared to be ready to settle for any state at all, a far cry from the total expulsion of Austria from Italy. Britain, looking apprehensively at the dire state of the Netherlands, would be quite satisfied with the
status quo ante bellum - although they hoped that their conquest of the French port of Louisbourg in the Americas might be made permanent. France’s goals, which had been the grandest of all in 1741, had diminished to almost nothing: King Louis appeared to want little more than the satisfaction of his allies and the return of lost territory. The King of Sardinia was unique in that his goals had started small and had never wavered:
Carlo Emanuele III wished only to preserve the Treaty of Worms and the territorial gains, minor but strategically important, which he had been promised by Vienna.
Standing apart from this crowd was Austria. The Empress-Queen
Maria Theresa had begun the war with the least visionary of goals, although that did not mean it was easily achieved: the preservation of the lands and crowns of the House of Habsburg. After the 1745 Treaty of Berlin, however, the empress had sought to mitigate her loss of Silesia with conquests elsewhere. Austria had become the most aggressive of the belligerent powers, and the only state which outwardly appeared to be in no hurry to make peace. Maria Theresa hoped by sheer obstinacy to impose her will upon enemies and allies alike. This strategy of defiance, however, was seriously compromised by her financial dependence on Britain.
Goals for the Peace
This list does not necessarily cover
all of a state’s aspirational goals, but rather goals which were earnestly pursued by the diplomats of the belligerent powers in 1746-47. Spain, for instance, wanted the return of Minorca and Gibraltar, but nobody seriously considered these territories to be in play.
Britain
- Restoration of the status quo ante bellum in the Austrian Netherlands
- Retention of Louisbourg, conquered from the French in 1745
- Recovery of Madras from the French, conquered from the EIC in 1746
- Restoration of the Asiento and the Annual Ship, commercial rights concerning the Spanish Americas secured by the British in 1713
- Recognition of the Hanoverian succession by the Bourbons and the expulsion of the Jacobites in exile
Austria
- Recovery of the Austrian Netherlands from France
- Territorial compensation to counterbalance the loss of Silesia
- Abrogation of the Treaty of Worms which obliged Austria to cede territory to Sardinia
- Recognition of Franz Stefan as Holy Roman Emperor
- No recognition for Prussia’s acquisition of Silesia
Sardinia
- Recovery of Savoy from the Spanish
- Recognition of the Treaty of Worms which obliged Austria to cede territory to Sardinia
- Cession of Finale from Genoa (and any other Genoese territory which might be procured)
Spain
- Liberty for Don Felipe and his establishment in a principality
- Denial of the Asiento and Annual Ship concessions to Britain
France
- Liberty for Don Felipe and his establishment in a principality
- Recovery of Cape Breton Island from the British
- Recovery of occupied Provence from the Austrians
- Lifting of fortification restrictions on Dunkirk
- Recovery of all allied (Genoese and Modenese) territory
Modena
- Liberty for the Duke and the recovery of all Modenese territory
- Territorial and/or monetary compensation for Modena’s support for the Bourbon cause
Genoa
- Recovery of all Genoese territory including Finale
- Recognition of Genoese rights to Corsica
- Termination of foreign assistance to the Corsican rebels
- Abrogation of Genoa’s remaining indemnity to Vienna
Beginning in late 1746, Britain had sought to capitalize on the regime change in Spain by breaking the Bourbon alliance and seeking a separate peace with the new king
Fernando VI, whose wife
Barbara was Portuguese and an advocate of peace. Despite Spain’s weak position, the British were open to making concessions in Italy - or, more accurately, forcing their allies to make concessions in Italy - because they reasoned that it would be easier to get what they wanted in the Americas from Spain if the Spanish were appeased with Italian gains. Informal talks in Lisbon, however, failed to make any progress. The British demanded commercial concessions that Fernando did not wish to grant, while the Spanish brought up matters like the return of Minorca and Gibraltar which the British were not even interested in discussing.
Parallel to these informal talks were the formal discussions at Breda between the British and French (but hosted and observed by the Dutch). The Congress of Breda, however, never really had a chance to succeed. The British delegate
John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich had been specifically instructed to obstruct and accomplish nothing, as the British hoped for their negotiating position to improve on the battlefield. The talks finally collapsed in the spring of 1747 over a dispute as to whether a Spanish delegate should be formally seated. France’s delegate
Louis Philogène Brûlart, vicomte de Puisieulx was the one who objected to a Spanish presence, arguing that he sufficiently represented his alliance and that more parties would further confuse the matter.
If the British proved intractable, France could potentially turn to Vienna for a peace, and this was very seriously considered. As the ambassadors spun their wheels at Breda, Saxony mediated secret talks between the French and Austrians. These talks were mainly attractive to the Austrians because a separate peace with France offered the potential of the renunciation of the Worms treaty, as the French seemed willing to abide Austria betraying her Sardinian allies in a way that the British would not. Yet while the Austrian representatives suggested that they would be willing to forgo any gains at the expense of Genoa and Modena, they would hear nothing of Don Felipe’s establishment in Italy. Riding high after the crushing defeat of the Bourbon forces at Piacenza, the occupation of Genoa, and the invasion of Provence, Maria Theresa was not in a conciliatory mood, and Austria’s representative Count
Bartenstein scoffed at the notion that the man they currently held prisoner - who, he hastened to add, had no claim whatsoever to an inch of soil in Italy - would be granted any of the empress-queen’s land. The most Vienna was willing to give Felipe was his freedom.
The greatest enemy to peace was now the enthusiasm which the 1746-47 campaigns had enkindled among the anti-Bourbon allies. The Bourbons had been crushed in Italy and for the first time were on the defensive in Provence. Abroad, the British racked up victory after victory; although they had been unable to seize any American territory from Spain, they had taken and held the key French colony of Cape Breton Island. The French fleet was everywhere beaten and their merchant shipping savaged by British cruisers and privateers; only in distant India, where an inconclusive naval skirmish had led to the British garrison at Madras being exposed and conquered by a French detachment, had King Louis managed to find victory abroad. Even the Dutch cheered for war (despite the fact that they were still not actually
at war), believing that the Battle of Maastricht had demonstrated the high water mark of French arms.
In such a position the allies scarcely seemed to need peace. But the allied armies were not advancing everywhere, for that fall
Maximilian Ulysses, Graf von Browne once more broke off the siege of Toulon. His victory at Draguignan had been a tactical success but in retrospect did not alter the overall strategic situation, which was that he was operating with limited forces deep in French territory.
Louis François de Bourbon, Prince de Conti had quickly made up his losses from Draguignan with fresh reinforcements, while the allied army grew ever smaller from sickness and desertion. Browne held on as long as he could with a superior French army once more looming over him, but eventually ambition gave way to prudence, and the Austro-Sardinian army executed a gradual retreat back over the Argens. The truth was that the Austrians, despite their feigned belligerence, had lost the will to fight; the empress had congratulated Browne after Draguignan but subsequently instructed him to conserve his forces and seek no more battles. Maria Theresa did not trust her allies and had no desire to spill torrents of Austrian blood for what she saw as Britain’s private obsession with Toulon.
This retreat breathed new life into the moribund Austro-French talks. For the first time, the Austrians began to speak of a compromise on the matter of Don Felipe.
Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz, a rising star in Austrian diplomacy, had devised an intriguing solution: Austria, he proposed, would be willing to establish Don Felipe in Italy, but with a proviso: if the prince died without heirs,
or if he succeeded his brother Don Carlos in Naples, the territory would revert to Austria. Kaunitz further proposed that Don Carlos cede Naples to his younger brother if he should gain the throne of Spain, not a particularly unlikely scenario given that King Fernando VI and his wife were thus far childless. The notion would have upset the Spanish had they been privy to the talks, but the French received it favorably, as it appeared to be a way that King Louis could save face and honor his commitments to his Spanish kinsmen. The only question that remained was whether this principality was to be Parma or presently-occupied Savoy, in which case the Austrians proposed to compensate Carlo Emanuele by giving him the revenues of Austrian Parma as long as Savoy remained in Bourbon hands.
[1]
While Vienna and Paris seemed to be reaching an accord, the prospects for an Anglo-French peace looked grim. When Puisieulx and Sandwich - the men who had failed at Breda - sat down at Liège in late summer (this time without any Dutch, Spanish, or anyone else to observe them), Puisieulx found his interlocutor almost completely intractable. Sandwich refused to consider any settlement for Don Felipe or any retrocession of Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island, France’s two foremost objectives. This “negotiation” broke up after only a single day of discussion, although both men agreed that a peace conference was in order.
Nevertheless, the French negotiators were convinced that only an agreement with Britain could offer a comprehensive peace. The British (specifically, their subsidies) were necessary to the Austrian war effort, but the reverse was not true; the Austrians were a mere token presence in the Netherlands and the British could certainly keep up their ruinous war against French shipping without Austrian help. More importantly, however, Britain possessed Cape Breton Island, which meant only Britain could give it back. If France and Austria made a separate peace, the British might simply decide to keep their winnings in the Americas. The only leverage which France exerted on the British was by their presence in the Netherlands, but if a peace with Austria was reached the French army would necessarily have to vacate the province. Without a French army in the Austrian Netherlands, the French could place no pressure on the Dutch, and thus no pressure on the British.
October saw the announcement that the peace conference which Puisieulx and Sandwich had agreed upon was to be held at the city of Aix-la-Chapelle. All the major belligerents would be sending delegations - the Spanish, French, British, Austrians, Sardinians, and Dutch - as well as the states of Genoa and Modena, despite being wholly occupied by hostile forces. Notably absent was Prussia, which had left the war some years prior; Naples, which had never officially joined the war and presently claimed neutrality; and of course Corsica, which was expected given that none of the belligerent parties recognized the island’s independent government.
The great number of parties present at Aix-la-Chapelle belied the fact that the resolution to the war was to come from an Anglo-French agreement. By early 1748, the British had backed off somewhat from their earlier standoffishness and were ready to deal. This was partly a product of Browne’s retreat from Toulon and his steady withdrawal eastwards; although he entered winter quarters in Provence, the possibility remained that he might be driven behind the Siagne once more, and the Austrian reinforcements necessary to turn the situation around were not forthcoming. The development which truly shocked the British, however, was the revelation that the Dutch were even weaker than everyone assumed - in January and February of 1748 it became apparent that the Dutch would be able to field only a small fraction of the forces they had promised, and even this would require significantly larger subsidies from the British. A rollback of the French presence in the Austrian Netherlands was clearly not possible, and
Maurice de Saxe might even be able to resume the offensive despite his army being depleted by reinforcements sent south. With all of Britain’s allies clearly fatigued, it was clear that a maximalist position was no longer tenable.
Footnotes
[1] The notion of offering
Corsica to Don Felipe was also brought up, but this proved impractical - not because the Austrians were reluctant to sell out the Corsicans (they weren’t), but because it was intolerable to the French, who would see any attempt to carve out Felipe’s principality from the territory of a Bourbon
ally as tantamount to an admission of defeat.
