The Diplomatic Revolution
France and Austria became allies in 1756 after two and a half centuries as enemies, and Britain and Prussia did the same. The Habsburg-Valois and then Habsburg-Bourbon rivalry had been the organising fact of European politics since 1494, and every alliance system had been built around it. What broke it was Silesia. Maria Theresa had lost the province to Frederick II in 1740 and intended to get it back, and her chancellor Kaunitz argued that Britain would never help her take it — Britain's interest was in a strong Austria as a counterweight in the Netherlands, not in a Habsburg reconquest in Germany — while France might, if the price were right. The mechanism was supplied from the other side. Britain, anxious about Hanover in a coming colonial war with France, signed the Convention of Westminster with Prussia in January 1756 to neutralise Germany. Frederick had thereby abandoned his French alliance without telling Versailles, and Louis XV, insulted, was ready to hear Kaunitz. The first Treaty of Versailles in May 1756 was defensive; a second in 1757, after the war began, made it an offensive alliance for the partition of Prussia, with Russia, Sweden and Saxony joining. Frederick invaded Saxony pre-emptively in August 1756 and spent seven years fighting almost everyone. He survived through British subsidies, interior lines and the death of the Russian empress in 1762. The Austro-French alliance was sealed by the marriage of Marie Antoinette in 1770 and was never popular in France. The rearrangement lasted longer than the war. Austria and France stayed allied until the Revolution, Britain and Prussia went their separate ways almost at once, and the pattern of a continental war fought alongside a colonial one became the standard shape of the following century.
- Year: 1756 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
