port the claims of Prussia to a portion of the Duchy, excluding, however, Dusseldorf, the capital.1 This was a real ground of difference. The claims of Prussia to the greater part of the Austrian province of Silesia were of a much more flimsy description. The Duchy of Jägerndorf had once been in the possession of a collateral branch of the House of Brandenburg, which had been deprived of it, it was alleged unjustly, in 1623, and Frederick claimed the territory as lineal descendant, though it had remained undisturbed in Austrian hands for more than a century. It is plain that by the application of such a principle the security of Europe might be at any moment destroyed, for there is no State which has not at some distant period gained or lost territory by acts of at least disputable justice. The Duchies of Liegnitz, Brieg, and Wohlan were claimed on somewhat more complicated grounds. About 1635 a family compact had been made between Frederick, who then governed them as Duke, and the Elector Joachim II., Duke of Brandenburg, providing that in the event of the failure of the male issue of either sovereign, his territory was to pass to the descendants of the other. Ferdinand I., King of Bohemia, who was the feudal lord, refused to recognise this compact, and its validity was in consequence very doubtful; and when in 1675 the ducal house of Liegnitz became extinct, Austria took possession of the territory, and the Elector of Brandenburg was soon after induced to renounce for himself and his descendants all claim to its possession. Frederick maintained this renunciation to be invalid, and he claimed by virtue of the original compact.2 These, however, were mere pretexts for a course of conduct which was decided on very different grounds. With consummate address, and with consummate baseness, Frederick lulled the suspicions of the young Queen to rest by professions of the warmest friendship till his army was on the eve of marching. He made no alliance, but just before starting for the war he said significantly to the French ambassador, I am going, I believe, to play your game, and if I should throw doublets, we See the details of this negotiation in Ranke's Hist. of Prussia. 2 The original statements of the causes of the war both on the Prussian and Austrian side are given at length in the Histoire de la Dernière Guerre de Bohême, par D. M. V. L. N. (Amsterdam, 1756). will share the stake.' Without making any demands, or stating any conditions, without any previous notice, or any declaration of war, he suddenly poured 30,000 soldiers into Silesia, which was plunged in the security of profound peace, and left almost wholly destitute of troops. Then, and not till then, he apprised Maria Theresa of his designs, and offered, if she would cede to him the whole Lower Duchy which he had invaded, to defend her title to the Austrian throne. The offer was rejected as an insult, and the whole province was overrun by Prussian soldiers. Breslau and several minor towns were captured, and an army which marched from Moravia, under Marshal Neipperg, to the rescue of Silesia was defeated at the great battle of Molwitz. The signal was given, and from every side the wolves rushed upon their prey. France had at first duped the Queen of Hungary by false and treacherous assurances, but she now flung off the mask, espoused the cause of the Elector of Bavaria, and with that Power entered into the war. The Kings of Spain and of Sardinia and the Elector of Saxony laid claims to portions of the Austrian dominions, and proposed openly or secretly to dismember them. In June 1741 a treaty was signed between France and Prussia, and by the end of October the fortunes of Austria appeared desperate. Silesia was irrecoverably gone. Moravia was invaded by the Prussians. Bohemia was overrun by a united army of French and Bavarians; Vienna was seriously menaced; Linz and Passau were taken; the capture of Prague soon followed, and, before the close of the year, the Elector of Bavaria was crowned King of Bohemia. The Queen of Hungary, however, presented an inflexible front to her enemies. Driven from Vienna she threw herself on the loyalty of her Hungarian subjects, who received her with an enthusiasm that dispelled every hesitation from her mind, and she urgently called on those Powers which had accepted the Pragmatic Sanction, guaranteeing her succession to the whole Austrian dominions, to assist her in her struggle. Of these Powers, France, Prussia, Spain, and Poland, whose sovereign was the Elector of Saxony, had combined to plunder her. Russia, Gotter, who was sent on this message, arrived at Vienna two days after the Prussians had entered Silesia. Frederick, Mém. de Mon 2 Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV. chiefly by French intrigues, was embroiled in war with Sweden. The Dutch desired above all things to avoid the conflict. In England the feeling of the King, of the people, and of Newcastle and Hardwicke, was in favour of war; but Walpole strained every nerve to maintain peace. In addition to his constitutional and very honourable hatred of war he had many special reasons. He clearly foresaw from the first, what Maria Theresa refused till the last moment to believe, that the French were secretly meditating the dismemberment of Austria, and he was therefore anxious at all costs to put an end to the war between Austria and Prussia. Besides this, England was already at war with Spain, and a French war would probably lead to a Jacobite insurrection. Walpole urgently, but vainly, laboured to induce the Queen of Hungary to propitiate Frederick by the cession of the whole or part of Silesia, to induce Frederick, through fear of the ascendancy of France, to secede from the confederation, and, having failed in both objects, he was dragged reluctantly into the war. In April 1741 the King's speech called upon Parliament to aid him in maintaining the Pragmatic Sanction, and a subsidy of 300,000l. to the Queen of Hungary was voted. In the following month the King, in spite of the remonstrances of Walpole, went over to Hanover to organise a mixed army of English and German troops, but a French army passed the Meuse, and marched rapidly upon Hanover, and the King, scared by the threatened invasion of his Principality, concluded, in his capacity of Elector, without consulting or even informing his English ministers, a treaty pledging Hanover to neutrality for a year. Ever since the accession of the House of Brunswick, Hanover had been a perpetual source of embarrassment and danger to England, but a German war was one of the very few contingencies in which its alliance was of some real value. The indignation excited in England by the treaty of neutrality was in consequence very violent, and nearly at the same time the news arrived that 15,000 Spanish troops, under the protection of a French squadron, had sailed from Barcelona, in spite of the neighbourhood of a British fleet, to attack the Austrian dominions in Italy. Many of these faults and misfortunes can in no degree be ascribed to Walpole. Many of them were, in fact, the direct consequence of the abandonment of his policy; but in the mood in which the nation then was, they all contributed to his unpopularity. He was, in fact, emphatically a peace minister, and even had it been otherwise, no minister can command the requisite national enthusiasm if he is conducting a war of which he notoriously disapproves. There are few pictures more painful or humiliating than are presented by the last few months of his power. He had lived so long in office, and he had so few other tastes, that he clung to it with a desperate tenacity. His private fortune was disordered. He knew that his fall would be followed by an impeachment, and he had none of the magnanimity of virtue that has supported some statesmen under the ingratitude of nations, and has enabled them to look forward with confidence to the verdict of posterity. Once, it is true, he placed his resignation in the hands of the King, who desired him to continue in office, and he consented too readily for his fame. He encountered the opposition within Parliament, and the obloquy without, with a courage that never flinched, but he felt that the end was drawing near, and his old buoyancy of spirits was gone. He who in former years,' wrote his son, 'was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow... now never sleeps above an hour without waking; and he who at dinner always forgot he was minister, and was more gay and thoughtless than all his company, now sits without speaking, and with his eyes fixed, for an hour together.' He met a motion for his removal, which was brought forward by Sandys, with a speech of consummate power, and the secession of Shippen and his followers gave him on this occasion the victory. He tried in vain to detach the Prince of Wales from the Opposition by inducing the King to offer him the increase of his allowance which he had long desired. He tried to crush Pitt by depriving him of his commission in the army. He even tried at one time to win a few Jacobite votes by an insincere and futile overture to the Pretender. The great frost at the close of 1739 added seriously to his difficulties by the distress and the discontent it produced. The harvest that followed To Sir H. Mann. Oct. 19, 1741. 2 See the account of this very curious overture (which was made in 1739 through the medium of Carte, the historian) in Lord Stanhope's Hist. of England, iii. pp. 23-24. was miserably bad. Bread rose almost to famine price. Bakers' shops were broken open, and fierce riots took place in many parts of England. The people were angry, sullen, and wretched, and quite disposed to make the minister responsible for their sufferings. At the moment when his unpopularity was at its height the period for a dissolution of Parliament arrived. The feelings of the people could not be doubted, but party connections, borough influence, and a lavish expenditure of secretservice money might still protract his rule, and all three were strained to the uttermost. An unforeseen circumstance appears to have turned the scale. An injudicious and hasty interference of some soldiers in a riot that took place at the Westminster election, though Walpole was certainly wholly unconcerned in it, was made the basis of an absurd and malignant report that the ministers were attempting to coerce the voters by military force, and the indignation thus aroused affected several elections. When Parliament met, in the beginning of December 1741, Walpole had only a bare majority, and after eight weeks of fierce and factious wrangling, being defeated on January 28 on a question relating to an election petition, he resigned.' He had already provided, with his usual caution, for his fall. In the course of his ministry he had bestowed upon his sons permanent offices, chiefly sinecures, amounting in all to about 15,000l. a-year, and had obtained the title of Baron for his eldest son, and the Orders of the Bath and of the Garter for himself. He now procured for himself the title of Earl of Orford, and a pension of 4,000l. a-year, and for his illegitimate daughter the rank and precedence of an Earl's daughter. He is said, many years before, to have disarmed the animosity of Shippen by saving from punishment a Jacobite friend of that statesman; and he endeavoured in vain to avert an impeachment by inducing the King to offer Pulteney the chief place in the Government on the condition that he would save his predecessor from prosecution. The King, though he had always See the graphic account of this last struggle in H. Walpole's letters to Sir H. Mann. Glover asserts in his Memoirs that the Prince of Wales assured him that the last votes against Walpole cost the Opposition 12,0007. 2 See the list in Coxe's Walpole, i. 730-731, and Horace Walpole's Memoir of his own income in Walpole's Life and Letters (ed. |