The King's Honor and the King's Cardinal

The War of the Polish Succession

John L. Sutton

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780813155012
• eBook ISBN: 9780813186641
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

Early in 1733 Augustus II, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, died in Warsaw from complications of a gangrenous foot. The elective throne of Poland thus fell vacant, and the states of Europe began cautious maneuvers designed to secure for each some national advantage in the choice of a successor. Before the year was out, diplomacy had given way to military force. Yet the Age of Reason fostered a relationship between diplomacy and warfare that limited the violence of military action.

The War of Polish Succession might have produced widespread carnage. It was a major struggle among the great powers of Europe with actions in Poland, the Rhineland, and Italy. Many illustrious commanders took part—Marshal Villars and Prince Eugene, Maurice de Saxe and Count Daun. Behind them stood the powerful figures of Cardinal Fleury, anxious to uphold the honor of King Louis even as he guarded against escalation of the war, and Emperor Charles VI, obsessed with his desire to keep the Holy Roman Empire in Hapsburg hands. After three years of wary military action the war ended as it had begun, in a series of secret diplomatic maneuvers. No nation was annihilated, no prince unthroned, and once again Europe's precarious balance of power had been restored.

John L. Sutton's engrossing account, the first in any major European language to bring together the evidence from the great diplomatic and military archives of Europe, reveals the very essence of eighteenth-century warfare, with its grand campaigns as formal as minuets, its sieges as gentlemanly as court receptions. On another level, the plight of the mercenaries who did much of the fighting yet had no stake in the conflict beyond day-to-day survival is portrayed just as vividly in this clear-eyed examination of a dynastic war and its setting.

CHAPTER ONE

A Problem of Succession

On a day in the last week of August 1733, six horsemen left the great castle of Chambord in the Loire Valley of France and took the road to Brittany. Five of the men were obviously an escort for the sixth, whom they treated with great respect and addressed as “Your Majesty.” The escorting riders understood the sensitivity and importance of their mission, for they had been told that they were to accompany Stanislas Leszczynski, the father-in-law of King Louis XV, from his estate at Chambord to a rendezvous with the French fleet which would take him to Poland. Stanislas was addressed as royalty because he was the former king of Poland, who had been hustled off his throne by the Russians some years before and replaced by a German prince. But on 1 February that prince had died, and the elective Polish throne would be vacant until a king was chosen by the Polish nobility and gentry. All Europe waited to see whether France would back Stanislas as a candidate against the solemn warnings of the Russians and the Austrians. Frenchmen talked of the honor of the Bourbon house at stake. The Poles had called a Diet of Election to convene in late August. Could or would Stanislas present himself in Warsaw?

There were many rumors. According to one, the exiled king was already secretly in Warsaw; another had it that he was crossing Prussia by permission of the king of Prussia; a third that he was preparing to arrive at the port of Danzig with a French naval escort. The Russian ambassador in Warsaw reported the rumors to his capital and recommended using any justification to arrest Stanislas on the Baltic Sea.¹

In Paris the British ambassador, Lord Waldegrave, had been watching for any move that might indicate a French fleet moving into the Baltic with Stanislas. He was aware that the ships were ready at Brest, but in June thought it rather “remote” that the French would send Stanislas to Poland.² Other observers in France were watching too and were promptly aware of a meeting on 22 August between Stanislas and French Foreign Minister Chauvelin at Versailles. One of these observers noted in his diary that after the meeting Stanislas departed Versailles, dined at the chateau of Meudon nearby, and left for Brest.³ Some days and hours later Stanislas was seen embarking on the Brittany coast where a French fleet was at anchor. A salvo of cannon was fired. The fleet commander, the marquis de La Luzerne, welcomed him on board and the fleet sailed for the Baltic. The horsemen who had escorted him to Brittany must have felt satisfied that they had accomplished their mission.

But all was not as it seemed. Stanislas did not sail away at high tide with the French fleet. It was not even Stanislas who went to Brittany and was seen boarding a ship. While the five horsemen were galloping westward toward Brittany with their charge, the real Stanislas was rolling rapidly eastward in a German-style vehicle with three trusted companions.

Stanlislas had indeed met with Chauvelin on 22 August and had left for Chambord, possibly dining at Meudon as well. But on the way he was diverted to the estate of a Cardinal Bissi where a Commander Thianges appeared, a man similar in appearance to Stanislas. Thianges put on Stanislas’s clothes and continued the trip to Chambord. It was he who, the next day or day after, left for Brittany with an escort who thought he was King Stanislas.⁴

Chauvelin had arranged it all, perhaps with old Cardinal Fleury—the first minister of Louis XV—looking over his shoulder with some misgivings. As early as 22 March, Chauvelin wrote to the governor of Alsace, Marshal Du Bourg, asking that trusted officer and personal friend of Stanislas to look into ways by which Stanislas could leave the country in secret. Money for secret expenses was set aside, and the special German-style vehicle, a chaise à deux allemande, was procured by Du Bourg and sent to Paris; Chauvelin queried Du Bourg on the strictness of border inspections in the German states next to France and advised that two passports would be needed under the names of George Baur and Ernst Brauback, German businessmen traveling with two domestics.⁵

Stanislas had lived through enough adventures when he lost his throne many years before and was unhappy about crossing Europe incognito. But there was no way out, and he was driven away acting the part of a private secretary to his traveling companion, the chevalier d’Andlau, an Alsatian who spoke fluent German. Chauvelin was even afraid there might be some backsliding on the part of Stanislas when in cryptic terms he alerted the French ambassador in Warsaw, the marquis de Monti.⁶

The journey began at ten o’clock this evening with one person accompanying and two valets de chambre for the principal traveler. They will avoid Mainz, Frankfurt, and Kassel, and expect to join the main highway from Wesel to Berlin at Münster. At Frankfurt on the Oder they will conform to the arrangements which you have made. The principal traveler seems very hesitant about the possibility of learning at Frankfurt that the Russians may be in Poland. It is for you to determine his progress by the news you will give him.

Stanislas arrived safely in Warsaw, and the secret of Commander Thianges was kept until he reached Copenhagen with the fleet. Here La Luzerne learned that the real Stanislas had reached Warsaw.⁷ It was an operatic finish when Stanislas on 10 September revealed himself in Warsaw in the company of Monti, ready to be elected once again as king of Poland.

The German prince whose death as king of Poland brought about the journey of Stanislas to Warsaw was Augustus II, elector of Saxony. The news of his death on 1 February 1733 came to a Europe that had been largely at peace since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the death of Louix XIV in 1715. The workings of a system based on a balance of power had emerged more clearly during the series of alliances and wars that had prevented Louis XIV from achieving a French hegemony over Europe. Constantly shifting alliances and treaties, with a more limited form of conflict, would keep this balance until the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

The reaction of the great powers to the news from Poland varied. England was not greatly concerned. She had no candidate, and her ministers had said on more than one occasion that Poland was a faraway place. As the leader of the victorious coalition against France that led up to Utrecht, she had since enjoyed the fruits of trade with the continent and maintained a naval and diplomatic presence from the Mediterranean to the Baltic to stabilize her authority. Two sensitive and possibly vulnerable points remained, however, which suggested caution to the English Whig leadership. First the Stuart Pretender lived on the continent with his court and had contact with Tory supporters in Parliament. He could be thrown into the balance by the French if they wished to gamble on some form of intervention or an invasion of the British Isles. Could he be a candidate for election to the throne of Poland? James Stuart was a Catholic of royal blood with a Polish wife—he could not be ruled out. The second matter of sensitivity was the continental holding of the Hanoverian kings, namely the Electorate of Hanover. As hereditary elector of Hanover, George I had ruled as an autocrat in his German dominions—something he could not do in England—and he spent a large part of his time in Germany. His son, George II, king since 1728, was more reassuringly English. But Parliament had reason for disquiet at the thought of the English monarch and executive head of the government as possessor of a state that was an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire, and potentially hostage to a strong military power on the continent. William Pitt, later in the century, would speak critically of the “Hanover rudder” in British foreign policy. As far as England was concerned, let the Baltic and the German states remain quiet, and the port of Danzig remain open, and the Poles might have any king they desired, excepting of course the Pretender, and if it did not unduly benefit the French.

Austria, imperial Austria, was a more concerned observer of the Polish scene. Austria had a border with Poland, and information on the various contenders for the throne was carefully collected and analyzed in Vienna. The emperor had reestablished leadership over the German states after Utrecht, although his influence over the larger states, such as Saxony, was diminishing as these took on more the character of modern sovereign states. Augustus II had been too friendly with France; his death promised a chance to bring Saxony back to a more subservient position. It was not to the advantage of the emperor to see any German prince enjoy the additional dignity of a Polish crown, although he had been forced to tolerate it up to this time. His control over even the hereditary lands of the Habsburg family—as opposed to those states which recognized him only as a kind of overlord whose authority emerged during war—was administratively weak. The great nobles tended to live on their estates unmolested by the government in Vienna, a condition which became crucial when the emperor found himself unable to raise funds for his army. And, perhaps not surprisingly in this century of dynastic struggles, Austria too had a succession problem. Emperor Charles VI had no male heir and wished to guarantee the passing of his holdings in undivided form to his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa. There is something strangely naïve in the effort, drawn out over many years, to exact written agreements to what was known as the Pragmatic Sanction from the courts of Europe. Treaties were broken as readily in those days as today. But it was a single-minded policy of the emperor that continued until his death in 1740.

So the emperor watched the Polish situation carefully, partly for fear of marauding bands entering his lands during the chaos of an interregnum, and partly because he wished to control, or at least approve, the succession. He must be assured that it did not favor his ancient enemy the house of Bourbon in France, and he had a tentative agreement with the Russians on a successor prince. He wanted a foreign prince, a non-Pole, who would not provide too much leadership for the various Polish factions.

Even faraway Spain and Portugal were not indifferent to the Polish succession. Spain resented the loss of her Italian appanages in the settlement of Utrecht and was probably the most dissatisfied of the major powers. To an extraordinary extent this discontent was centered in a single person, Elisabeth Farnese, queen of Spain as the second wife of Philip V. From the ruling house of Parma, Elisabeth had come to Spain in 1714 and soon had three sons for whom she sought kingdoms. Philip’s son by his first marriage was expected to succeed to the throne of Spain, and Elisabeth set out with great energy to reverse the dictate of Utrecht and recover the Italian provinces for her sons. So at this time the appearance of a vacant throne could not be overlooked as a possibility for the Spanish princes, and Spanish representatives were ready to test the diplomatic waters in eastern Europe when the moment came.

In Portugal there waited a prince who believed himself chosen by the major powers in the East to be the next king of Poland. The emperor had convinced the Russians during the previous year that a Portuguese prince was the best answer to the expected Polish succession problem, and the tentative agreement was in effect as Augustus II lay dying. Prince Emmanuel of Portugal was ready to make his money contribution to the Polish magnates and accept the crown.

Other states in Europe had played lesser roles in the active diplomacy of the first part of the eighteenth century, but they were alert as to how they might profit from the succession in Poland. Saxony would hope to keep the Polish throne in the hands of its ruling house and possibly make it hereditary. Prussia, on the other hand, had no desire to see a rival German state increase itself and would block this as far as possible.

Sweden had seen her client king of Poland, Stanislas Leszczynski, driven from the throne by the Russians and replaced by Augustus II before the end of the Great Northern War in 1721. Sweden hoped for a restoration of influence in Poland but no longer had the will or resources to counter the growth of Russia, which was seeking, physically and spiritually, a way to the West. In the southeast, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, not yet the sick man of Europe, still held the Balkans and had a border with Poland. The Turks acted as a counterweight to policies the Austrians undertook in the West, a fact that French diplomacy frequently exploited. At this time, however, the Turks were beset by the Persians and would be unable to act against either Russia or Austria.

France had been keeping the closest watch on events in Poland, although seeking—not very successfully—to conceal her attention. Stanislas, living comfortably as the father-in-law of the king of France, had insisted more than once that he was content to forget his former kingship. But there were many in high positions in France who felt that his eventual restoration was necessary for the honor and glory of his daughter and for the house of Bourbon. It was assumed by all that France would make some move when the succession was open.

France had emerged from the wars of Louis XIV somewhat chastened although not truly diminished in power. But the death of the Sun King had left a void in leadership, for he had acted as his own first minister, and his successor had been a five-year old child. His son, grandson, and one great-grandson in line for the throne had all died within a four-year period. The second great-grandson, the infant Louis XV, survived, although he was destined to remain an indifferent executive. This lack of strong political leadership was to be a mark of French policies for most of the century while the country went on to assume the unquestioned intellectual leadership of Europe.

Since 1725 France had been allied with England against a strong Spanish-Austrian plan to reduce vastly her place in Europe. But Spain was shifting back toward an understanding with France. Cardinal Fleury, the young king’s tutor, came to power in 1726 and carefully avoided antagonizing either England or Spain. Already over seventy years old, patient and pacific by nature, he nevertheless possessed the shrewdness to cling to his position until his death in 1743.

The beginning of 1733 had seen a relatively quiet Europe. Dissatisfaction in Spain had been given some relief by provision for Spanish succession in several Italian duchies; British trade was unhampered; Cardinal Fleury and his counterpart in Britain, Robert Walpole, seemed to understand that neither sought war. But the death of Augustus would set some of the old tensions in play once again. There were no heated exchanges, no appeals to the masses, no patriotic statements, no undue haste; but the machinery of the sovereign states of Europe was in motion and some adjustments must be made. Eventually military action would ensue.

When military force was applied to effect or hasten these adjustments, it tended to be a stylized and limited form of conflict. Scholars have commented on the decline of military violence after the religious wars of the seventeenth century and the re-emergence of large-scale sanguinary conflicts in the French Revolution. It can be argued that since the French Revolution, national wars on a great scale have become the standard. The unpleasantness of their ferocity and destruction has been balanced by a more appealing justification of their objectives. Contrariwise, if one considers the limited conflicts of the eighteenth century, the terms “mercenary forces” and “dynastic wars” come to mind with mildly distasteful overtones. Neither the instruments nor the objectives of such wars were truly admirable by nineteenth- or twentieth-century standards. War in these latter centuries became a matter too serious for mercenaries; everyone could and must participate in it. Nor was it fought for capricious sentiments of dynastic pride, but for reasons that governments tied closely to the national well-being and the interests of every citizen.

The War of the Polish Succession may have been the most typical of eighteenth-century wars, a kind of model for the cautious and restricted warfare of the time. It cannot be termed insignificant, because it was a struggle among the great powers of Europe, with actions in Poland, the Rhineland, and Italy, and it resulted in significant changes in the political map of Europe. But military historians of recent decades have found it, by their standards, a spiritless conflict and have given it scant attention. Delbrück, for example, in his multivolume history of warfare, apparently found in it little relevance to his theory of military history and barely mentioned it.⁸

The mass citizen army is indeed the great military manifest...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. A Problem of Succession
• 2. The Commitment to War
• 3. The Habsburg Position
• 4. The Road to Danzig
• 5. Military Operations North of the Alps in 1733
• 6. The War in Italy to May 1734
• 7. The Siege of Danzig
• 8. The War in the Rhineland in 1734
• 9. Military Climax and Denouement
• 10. The Negotiations
• Notes
• Bibliographical Note
• Index