and although at the end of the war he kept Strassburg, he had to give up Freiburg, Philipsburg, Breisach, and the places he War of Spanish Succession. had seized because of their former connexion with Alsace. In the War of the Spanish Succession two powerful princes, the elector of Bavaria and the elector of Cologne, joined Louis; but as the states of the Empire declared war against him in 1702, the other princes, more or less loyally, supported the emperor and his allies. Leopold died during the progress of this war, but it was vigorously continued by his son Joseph I.
Joseph’s brother and successor, Charles VI., also went on with it; and such were the blows inflicted on France by the victories of Blenheim, Ramillies and Malplaquet that the war was generally expected to end in her utter discomfiture. But the conclusion of the treaty of Utrecht by England, in 1713, Charles VI. so limited the military power of Charles VI. that he was obliged to resign the claims of Austria to the Spanish throne, and to content himself with the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sardinia. He cared so little for Germany, as distinguished from Austria, that he allowed Louis to compel the diet to cede the imperial fortress of Landau. At a later stage in his reign he was guilty of an act of even grosser selfishness; for after the War of the Polish Succession, in which he supported the claims of Augustus III., elector of Saxony, he yielded Lorraine to Stanislaus Leszczynski, whose claims had been defended by France, and through whom France ultimately secured this beautiful German Pragmatic sanction. province. Having no son, Charles drew up in 1713 the pragmatic sanction, which ordained that, in the event of an Austrian ruler being without male heirs, his hereditary lands and titles should pass to his nearest female relative. The aim of his whole policy was to secure for this measure, which was proclaimed as a fundamental law in 1724, the approval of Europe; and by promises and threats he did at last obtain the guarantee of the states of the Empire and the leading European powers.
Germany was now about to be aroused from the torpor into which she had been cast by the Thirty Years’ War; but her awakening was due, not to the action of the Empire, which was more and more seen to be practically dead, but to the rivalry of two great German states, Austria Growth of Prussia. and Prussia. The latter had long been laying the foundations of her power. Brandenburg, the centre of the Prussian kingdom, was, as we have seen, granted in the 15th century by the emperor Sigismund to Frederick, count of Hohenzollern. In his hands, and in those of his prudent successors, it became one of the most flourishing of the North-German principalities. At the time of the Reformation Albert, a member of a subordinate branch of the house of Hohenzollern, happened to be grand master of the Teutonic Order. He became a Protestant, dissolved the order, and received in fief of the king of Poland the duchy of Prussia. In 1611 this duchy fell by inheritance to the elector of Brandenburg, and by the treaty of Wehlau, in 1657, in the time of Frederick William, the Great Elector, it was declared independent of Poland. By skill, foresight and courage Frederick William managed to add largely to his territories; and in an age of degenerate sovereigns he was looked upon as an almost model ruler. His son, Frederick, aspired to royal dignity, and in 1701, having obtained the emperor’s assent, was crowned king of Prussia. The extravagance of Frederick drained the resources of his state, but this was amply atoned for by the rigid economy of Frederick William I., who not only paid off the debts accumulated by his father, but amassed an enormous treasure. He so Maria Theresa. organized all branches of the public service that they were brought to a point of high efficiency, and his army was one of the largest, best appointed and best trained in Europe (see Prussia: History). He died in 1740, and within six months, when Frederick II. was on the Prussian throne, Maria Theresa claimed, in virtue of the pragmatic sanction, the lands and hereditary titles of her father Charles VI.
Frederick II., a young, ambitious and energetic sovereign,
longed not only to add to his dominions but to play a great
part in European politics. His father had guaranteed the pragmatic
sanction, but as the conditions on which the guarantee had
Frederick the Great.
First Silesian War.
been granted had not been fulfilled by Charles VI., Frederick
did not feel bound by it, and revived some old claims
of his family on certain Silesian duchies. Maria
Theresa would not abate her rights, but before she
could assert them Frederick had entered Silesia and
made himself master of it. Meanwhile, the elector of Bavaria
had come forward and disputed Maria Theresa’s right to the
succession, and the elector of Saxony had also put in a
claim to the Austrian lands. Taking advantage of
these disputes, France formed an alliance with the two
electors and with the king of Prussia against Austria; and in
the war which followed the allies were at first so successful
that the elector of Bavaria, through the influence of France,
was crowned emperor as Charles VII. (1742–1745). Maria
Theresa, a woman of a noble and undaunted spirit,
appealed, with her infant son, afterwards Joseph II.,
Charles VII.
Second Silesian War.
in her arms, to the Hungarian diet, and the enthusiastic
Magyars responded chivalrously to her call. To be more at
freedom she concluded peace with Frederick, and ceded Silesia
to him, although greatly against her will. Saxony also was
pacified and retired from the struggle. After this Maria Theresa,
supported by England, made way so rapidly and so triumphantly
that Frederick became alarmed for his new possessions; and
in 1742 he once more proclaimed war against her,
nominally in aid of the emperor, Charles VII. Ultimately,
in 1748, she was able to conclude an honourable
peace at Aix-la-Chapelle; but she had been forced,
as before, to rid herself of Frederick by confirming him in the
sovereignty of the territory he had seized.
After the death of Charles VII., Francis, grand duke of Tuscany, Maria Theresa’s husband, was elected emperor. Francis I. (1745–1765), an amiable nonentity, with the instincts of a shopkeeper, made no pretence of discharging Francis I. important imperial duties, and the task of ruling the hereditary possessions of the house of Habsburg fell wholly to the empress-queen. She executed it with discretion and vigour, so that Austria in her hands was known to be one of the most formidable powers in the world. Her rival, Frederick II., was, if possible, still more active. It did not occur to him, any more than to the other German sovereigns of the 18th century, to associate his people with him in the government of the country; he was in every respect a thoroughly absolute sovereign. But he shared the highest ideas of the age respecting the responsibilities of a king, and throughout his long reign acted in the main faithfully as “the first servant of the state.” The army he always kept in readiness for war; but he also encouraged peaceful arts, and diffused throughout his kingdom so much of his own alert and aggressive spirit that the Prussians became more intelligent and more wealthy than they had ever before been. He excited the admiration of the youth of Germany, and it was soon the fashion among the petty princes to imitate his methods of government. As a rule, they succeeded only in raising far larger armies than the taxpayers could afford to maintain.
Maria Theresa never gave up the hope of winning back Silesia, and, in order to secure this object, she laid aside the jealousies of her house, and offered to conclude an alliance with France. Frederick had excited the envy of surrounding sovereigns, and had embittered them against him by stinging sarcasms. Not only France, therefore, but Russia, Saxony and ultimately Sweden, willingly came to terms with Austria, and the aim of their union was nothing short of the partition of Prussia. The Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763. Frederick, gaining knowledge of the plot, turned to England, which had in the previous war helped Austria. At the close of 1755 his offer of an alliance was acceded to; and in the following year, hoping by vigorously taking the initiative to prevent his enemies from united action, he invaded Saxony, and began the Seven Years’ War (q.v.), the result of which was to confirm Prussia in the possession of Silesia.
Prussia now took rank as one of the leading European powers, and by her rise a new element was introduced into the political
