Prince Wenzel von Kaunitz
Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz directed Habsburg foreign policy for forty years and reversed two centuries of alliances. Born in Vienna in 1711, the second son of a Moravian noble family, he was intended for the church and turned to law and diplomacy when an elder brother died. He served at the peace congress at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, where he watched Austria lose Silesia to Prussia and concluded that the traditional enmity with France was now the secondary problem. His argument, set out in a memorandum to Maria Theresa, was that Prussia had become the real threat, that Britain was an unreliable ally interested only in Hanover and colonies, and that Austria should therefore reconcile with France, its enemy since the sixteenth century, to isolate Frederick II. He was sent as ambassador to Paris to try it, and cultivated Madame de Pompadour, who was received at other courts with contempt and by Kaunitz with elaborate courtesy. He became state chancellor in 1753, and the opportunity came when Britain and Prussia signed a convention in 1756. France agreed to the First Treaty of Versailles months later, and Russia joined — the diplomatic revolution, and the alliance system that fought the Seven Years' War. It did not recover Silesia, and Austria emerged intact and better organised. He also reformed the administration at home, centralising it under a state council, subordinating the church to the state and supporting Joseph II's ecclesiastical policy, and pressing for the partition of Poland while Maria Theresa wept over it. He served three monarchs and retired in 1792, dying two years later.
- Lived: 1711 CE – 1794 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: state_chancellor_of_austria, diplomat, ambassador_to_france
