Vice Admiral Sir George Anson’s Victory against the French off Cape Finisterre in May 1747, by Samuel Scott (1702–1772), painted in 1749. In the USA, the War of the Austrian Succession is named ‘King George’s War’, but King George II was a most reluctant participant. It began as Frederick the Great’s war, and became Louis XV’s war, though in the event Louis did not gain all he had hoped for. Sir George Anson and Rear-Admiral Sir Edward Hawke put an end to Louis’s dreams of snatching empire from Britain by cutting off military supplies bound for her forces and allies in North America, in May and October 1747.
Part 1 of 2
IN 1740, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI died, leaving Austria to his daughter Maria Theresa. By the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713,* she inherited prosperous Silesia too, but then King Frederick of Prussia invaded it,* and Maria called on the treaty’s signatories, including Britain, to intervene.
Britain, however, was already at war. Relations with her bitter colonial rival in central America, Spain, had broken down in 1739 after a British merchant sailor, Captain Robert Jenkins, lost an ear to a Spanish coastguard’s sword. France, seeing a chance to expand her own territory in Europe and North America, took Spain’s part, and also backed Prussia.
Yet London wavered. King George II was anxious mainly about the threat to Hanover, of which he was hereditary Head of State. His trusted adviser John Carteret, Northern Secretary of State,* was itching to take on Louis XV’s France, but the public had little interest in European adventures; and in 1742 the divisions cost Prime Minister Robert Walpole his job.
The Pragmatic Sanction was part of the settlement following The War of the Spanish Succession, which ended with the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. With the death of each Holy Roman Emperor, unrest peaked as the states owing him allegiance were distributed among his heirs and their spouses, some of whom were major European monarchs and rivals in war.
Frederick the Great (r. 1740-1786) began the process whereby Prussia, and later Germany, took the fading Emperors’ place in Europe, unifying smaller states and using ‘enlightened absolutism’ to harmonise and secularise their culture. In Otto von Bismarck’s eyes he was a natural model for all his successors, and he won the undisguised admiration of Napoleon Bonaparte. John Buchan however understood where the glorification of elite State power led: see The Machinery of State.
Prior to 1782, there were two Secretaries of State, one for the Northern Department and one for the Southern. The Northern Secretary was responsible for foreign relations with the Protestant states of Northern Europe, whereas the Southern (the more senior) was tasked with diplomatic relations with the Catholic and Muslim states of Europe. The reform of 1782 saw the Northern become the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and the Southern become Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Précis
The invasion of Silesia by Prussia in 1740 triggered a defence pact between Austria and Britain. Reluctantly, for London was already at war with Spain, King George II came to Austria’s aid, in part because Hanover was also threatened; but there was much unhappiness at the additional burden, and two years later Robert Walpole lost his place as Prime Minister. (59 / 60 words)
Part Two
King George II at the Battle of Dettingen, with the Duke of Cumberland and Robert, 4th Earl of Holderness. The battle was fought on June 27th, 1743, and but for incompetent French generalship and hard fighting by his soldiers, George might well have been captured. The escapade underlined how dangerous George’s solicitude for Hanover could be for British foreign policy, surrounded as it was by greedy European powers. From George I in 1714 to the death of William IV in 1837, Britain’s kings were also hereditary Electors of Hanover, but the tie was broken with the accession of William’s niece Queen Victoria.
THAT same year, 1742, French favourite Charles VII was elected Holy Roman Emperor. Maria Theresa promptly drove him from Bavaria; and Carteret, taking advantage of Walpole’s fall, encouraged George II to bring Hanoverian troops south to help her. But Carteret’s ploy almost got his King captured in a nail-bitingly narrow victory over the French at Dettingen on June 27th, 1743,* and nettled Louis XV into joining Spain’s war on Britain the following year.
The momentum now shifted dangerously. In Scotland, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s French-backed Jacobite Rising of 1745 drew off British troops. In India, French forces captured Madras in 1746. However, back-to-back victories for the Royal Navy near Cape Finisterre in 1747 ended French hopes of annexing Britain or her American colonies, and Madras was traded for Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, captured by Britain in 1745.* Maria Theresa grudgingly ceded Silesia to Prussia, but Louis’s audacious bid for the Austrian Netherlands fizzled out, and Walpole’s successor Henry Pelham helped negotiate peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.*
Now Karlstein am Main. This was the last occasion when a reigning British monarch commanded his troops on the battlefield. The victory, so nearly a disaster, was celebrated with relief in London on November 27th, 1743, with a Royal command performance of the Te Deum to music by George Frideric Handel, in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace.
Nova Scotia was a British colony founded on land ceded by France to Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which ended The War of the Spanish Succession. The French had an enclave at Cape Breton Island (Île-Royale), including the town of Louisbourg, which was besieged and captured by the British in 1745, and restored to the French in exchange for Madras. The Battle of Louisbourg in 1758 saw Britain’s control over Nova Scotia firmly re-established. See The Seven Years’ War.
Henry Pelham (1696-1754), Prime Minister from 1743 to 1754. Not to be confused with his elder brother Thomas Pelham-Holles (1693-1768), 4th Duke of Newcastle, Prime Minister from 1754 to 1756 and (in coalition with William Pitt the Elder) from 1757 to 1762.
Précis
After Britain helped Austria to eject France’s ally, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII, from Bavaria, Louis XV made sure the war spread to the colonies of North America and even Madras. Fortunately, thanks to the Royal Navy it escalated no further, and a peace was agreed in 1748 which left the territories of both Europe and the colonies largely unchanged. (59 / 60 words)
