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Text originally published in 1884 under the same title.
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LOUDON: A SKETCH OF THE MILITARY LIFE OF
GIDEON ERNEST, FREIHERR VON LOUDON,
SOMETIME GENERALISSIMO OF THE AUSTRIAN FORCES.
BY
COLONEL G. B. MALLESON C.S.I.
Author Of The Decisive Battles Of India, etc.
CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY.
Charles VI., Emperor of Germany, died on the 20 th October, 1740, leaving no male heir, and before he had taken the precaution to have the husband of his daughter, Francis of Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, crowned King of the Romans. To secure his vast dominions to that daughter, Charles had obtained from every state of importance in Europe a guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, an instrument which broke the entail established by his elder brother Joseph, and settled the right of succession, in default of male issue, first on his own daughters in the order of their birth, then on the daughters of Joseph, and, after them, on the Queen of Portugal and the other daughters of his father, the Emperor Leopold. On his death, then, his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, succeeded, under the title of Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, to all the dominions of the house of Habsburg, and she entertained the hope that the Electoral College would shortly confer the dignity of emperor upon her husband, Francis of Lorraine.
But events were very soon to prove the wisdom of the counsel addressed by Prince Eugene to Charles VI., when, noticing the ardour with which the emperor pursued the idea of obtaining from Europe guarantees for the due execution of the Pragmatic Sanction, he told him that the only guarantee worth having was an army of 200,000 men and a full treasury. Charles VI., obstinate and self-willed, was not the man to listen to advice, even when that advice came from Prince Eugene. Throughout his life he neglected the substance and pursued the shadow. Maria Theresa, far from finding, on her accession, an army of 200,000 men and a full treasury to support her title, realised to her dismay that the army, exclusive of the troops in Italy and the Low Countries, did not amount to 30,000 men; that the treasury contained only 100,000 florins, and that even these were claimed by the Empress Dowager as her personal property!
The majority of the guarantors of the Pragmatic Sanction very soon convinced the Queen of Hungary how lightly they regarded the engagements wrung from them by her father, how fully they appreciated the helplessness of her position. Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, at once asserted his claims to the kingdom of Bohemia and the Grand Duchy of Austria, on the ground that the will of Ferdinand I. had devised those territories to his daughters and their descendants on the failure of the male line, and that he was the lineal descendant from Anne, eldest daughter of that prince. Philip II., King of Spain and the Indies, as pretended representative of the extinct Spanish line of the Habsburgs, from which he was descended on the mothers side, demanded the cession of the Spanish-Austrian hereditary lands in Italy as well as Milan, Mantua, Parma, and Piacenza. Emanuel III., King of Sardinia, and Augustus III., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, who had married daughters of the Emperor Joseph, put forth less extravagant demands. But the most formidable claimant was Frederic II., King of Prussia. This prince had succeeded his father but five months previously, to find ready to his hand the army and the treasury which were wanting to Maria Theresa. Seeing in the actual state of affairs a great opportunity, such as might never occur again, Frederic revived a claim once preferred by his ancestors, but expressly renounced by them in 1688, and again in 1694, to the Silesian duchies of Liegnitz, Glogau, Brieg, and Jgerndorf.
Nor was the action of the two great western powers at this crisis calculated to reassure Maria Theresa. Franco, guided by Cardinal Fleury, vouchsafed no public answer to the notification of the queens accession. The tone of the private communications from her foreign office, coldly polite, signified an intention to hold aloof until the claims of the Elector of Bavaria should have been disposed of, and, in the meanwhile, to use her influence to oppose the election of the Duke of Lorraine to the imperial dignity. England, whilst acknowledging the queen, had accompanied the recognition by an exhortation to distrust the designs of France, and by a proposal that Austria should join her in an alliance against the House of Bourbon. The relations of Maria Theresa with the other powers of Germany were too uncertain to allow her to think of a war of aggression. But still hopeful with respect to France she received with coldness the proposals of the only guarantor of the Pragmatic Sanction who sincerely desired to uphold the conditions of that settlement.
The feeling of suspense and uncertainty which the conduct of the several powers of Europe had aroused at the Court of Vienna was not of long duration. Frederic II. of Prussia was the first to prove the worthlessness of treaties which cannot be maintained by force of arms. Amusing the Court of Vienna for a few weeks with protestations of his readiness to serve the House of Austria, he assembled a considerable body of troops in the vicinity of Berlin; then, throwing off the mask, he despatched Count Gotter to Vienna to formulate his proposals. Gotter was instructed to place the services of Frederic and his array at the disposal of the queen, to defend her against all her enemies, on condition that she would cede to him the two Silesias, Lower Silesia because Frederic claimed it as aright, Upper Silesia as a compensation for the costs of the war. The Court of Vienna having been informed that Frederic, not waiting for a reply to his demands, had actually entered Silesia, refused to negotiate until his troops should be withdrawn from that province. Gotter was, in consequence, dismissed, and war ensued.
