Joseph II and Bavaria: Two Eighteenth Century Attempts at German Unification

234 Pages·1965·8.115 MB·English

by  Paul P. Bernard (auth.)

JOSEPH II AND BAVARIA
JOSEPH II AND BA V ARIA
TWO EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ATTEMPTS
AT GERMAN UNIFICATION
by
PAUL P. BERNARD
ColOf'do College
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA. B.V.
ISBN 978-94-017-0035-1 ISBN 978-94-015-7575-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7575-1
Copyright 196.5 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by M artinus Nijhofl. The Hague, Netherlands in 196.5
All rights reserved, including the right to iranslate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
To my teacher S. Harrison Thomson in abiding gratitude.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book attempts to treat systematically a subject which has heretofore
been either included only as an incidental part of ]osephinian foreign
policy or developed in fragmentary and monographic form. It is based
largely on the rich resources of the National Archives in Vienna. It is
thus incumbent upon me in the first instance to acknowledge my in
debtedness to the ever-helpful staff of the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv,
in particular its director Hofrat Rath and Drs. Blaas, Coreth, Neck and
Wagner. I am also in the debt of Dr. Allmayer-Beck of the Kriegsarchi·v
for the time he accorded me in guiding me through the voluminous
materials there. Professor Erich ZOllner of the University of Vienna was
good enough to give me valuable advice about the more abstruse ma
terials pertaining to my subject. My colleagues Louis Geiger, Bentley
Gilbert and William Hochman all read and criticized several chapters
of the manuscript. The former Librarian at Colorado College, Ellsworth
Mason, went far beyond his official duties to make it possible for me to
assemble in a small college library the numerous secondary materials
I required. My wife Edna Mary was an invaluable help with such work
aday chores as the typing of the manuscript and the reading of proof. It
is also a pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Ford Foun
dation which, through a Public Affairs Grant, greatly facilitated my
research. Finally, it goes almost without saying, that whatever merit
this small work may possess is due largely to the uninterrupted advice,
criticism and encouragement afforded me over a period of years by my
former teacher, Professor S. Harrison Thomson, late of the University
of Colorado. Those errors which remain are, of course, my sole responsi
bility.
PAUL P. BERNARD
Vienna, January 1965
"Felice la Monarchia Austriaca se non
J •••
avesse ceduto troppo facilmente agli ostacoli
J
che insorgevano .... "
Daniele Dolfin the Younger
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement VII
I. Diplomatic Background 1
II. Joseph II, Bavaria and France 16
III. Death of the Elector Max: Joseph and Austrian Occupation
of Bavaria 35
IV. Frederick II's Counter Measures 51
V. European Reactions 75
VI. Preparations for War 93
VII. The Potato War 107
VIII. The Peace of Teschen 124
IX. The Diplomacy of Joseph as Emperor 134
X. Plans for a Bavarian Exchange 151
XI. Exchange Negotiations 169
XII. Continuing Negotiations 186
XIII. Failure of the Exchange 203
XIV. Epilogue 217
Bibliography 219
Index 224
CHAPTER I
DIPLOMATIC BACKGROUND
The Empire of the Hapsburgs, as distinguished from the old Holy Ro
man Empire, was born out of the convulsions which resulted from the
impact of the Ottoman Turks on an already partly moribund collection
of state systems. With tremendous effort and perhaps more than its
share of good fortune the Duchy of Austria succeeded in establishing a
hegemony over a large portion of Central Europe, something which had
eluded the best efforts of Premyslids and Luxemburgers in Bohemia,
Piasts and Ja gellons in Poland, Arpads and Angevins in Hungary. Con
tinual fighting had been necessary to accumulate the vast domains which
were ruled from Vienna, there was much less truth in "Alii bella gerunt,
tu felix Austria nube" than the Austrians might have wished, and so
long as the Turks remained a power of the first rank, the Austrian
domination over much of their domains was often at best theoretical.
But after the second siege of Vienna in 1683 the Turkish power began
to decline rapidly. Under the leadership of the brilliant and ruthless
Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Hapsburg armies drove deep into the Bal
kans until finally in 1718 the Peace of Passarowitz established Austria
far down the Danube, incorporating the remainder of Hungary, a large
part of Serbia, as well as portions of Wallachia and Bosnia. There were
to be minor revisions in favor of the Turks in 1739, but at any rate in
the reign of Charles VI the possessions of the House of Hapsburg ex
tended from deep in the Balkans to the Upper Rhine, from Mediter
ranean Sicily to the Catholic Netherlands on the Atlantic coast. Austria
was now a power of the very first rank.
It would be quite off the mark to assume, though, that the Hapsburgs
in the first half of the eighteenth century ruled over dominions which
could in any sense be described as cohesive. Quite apart from the fact
that in some cases their holdings were not even physically contiguous,
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DIPLOMATIC BACKGROUND
they represented a congeries of varied languages, cultures and traditions.
Moreover the status of Germany, in theory ruled by the Hapsburgs in
their capacity of Holy Roman Emperors, had since the conclusion of the
Thirty Years War been in some doubt. In practice the Hapsburgs could
count on obedience always in their family dominions, not particularly
extensive and mostly concentrated in the West (Vorderosterreich);
sometimes in the South German Catholic states; and virtually not at all
in the Protestant North. Then, too, in the second half of the seventeenth
century Prussia had emerged as a power, which although still technically
a part of the Empire, was increasingly capable and willing to pursue a
thoroughly independent course.
The position of Charles VI was thus not an entirely happy one. The
long run alternatives which would seem to have confronted him were
either to acquiesce in the continuing erosion of Hapsburg influence in
Germany, which ultimately might well have resulted in his ruling over
a Danubian Empire with a German-speaking minority; or to try to
buttress his position in Germany, which would have required eventually
a viable modus vivendi between his German and non-German subjects.
In the event, the decision was not left in his hands. Charles died in 1740
without leaving a son. He had devoted the greater part of his energies
and great amounts of money in the last decade of his reign to secure the
agreement of the princes of Europe to the Pragmatic Sanction which
recognized the indivisibility of the Hapsburg dominions and the right of
Charles' daughter Maria Theresia to succeed to them. Nevertheless
Frederick II, the young, dynamic and supremely ambitious King of
Prussia at once availed himself of the occasion to stage a raid on the rich
province of Silesia. In spite of a considerable numerical superiority over
the Prussians, Austria was unable to recover its lost territories. The
struggle soon became general, involving the major powers of Europe,
and when peace was restored in 1748 Frederick remained securely in
possession of Silesia. For the remainder of her reign of forty years Maria
Theresia, and from 1765 on her eldest son Joseph II, who at the death
of his father Francis Stephen of Lorraine became co-regent, would con
centrate their energies on opposing the designs of Frederick the Great.
The bitter struggle for power in Germany which was to end with the
clatter of the Prussian needle guns at Sad ow a in 1866 had begun in
earnest.
The chief architect of Maria Theresia's now uncompromisingly anti
Prussian foreign policy was to be Count, later Prince, Wenzel Anton
Joseph von Kaunitz, later also Reichsgraf zu Rietberg, one of six
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DIPLOMATIC BACKGROUND
children of a Bohemian nobleman who himself had enjoyed a distin
guished career in the Austrian diplomatic service. The younger Kaunitz,
who like his father became a diplomat, first distinguished himself in the
services of the Empress Maria Theresia when he represented the Austrian
interests at the Peace Congress of Aix-Ia-Chapelle in 1748 and was the
leading spirit in the great secret conference in the spring of 1749 at
which the lines that imperial policy ought to follow after the disastrous
conclusion to the Silesian Wars were laid down. Here he had argued
that the King of Prussia was the most dangerous enemy of the House of
Austria, even more dangerous than the Porte, and that as the loss of
Silesia was not to be borne, Austrian policy would have to be hence
forward directed at recovering what had been lost and at weakening
Prussia. 1
When in 1753 at the age of forty-two, Kaunitz was chosen as first
minister of the Austrian Empire, he had already acquired the reputation
of being an able statesman, an admirer of philosophy and literature, a
well-rounded man-of-the-world, and a master diplomat. His was a fierce
ly independent nature. He was capable of dispatching incredible quanti
ties of work, of keeping the strands of every important enterprise con
cerning the House of Hapsburg in his hands, but also of treating the
most important affairs with a sovereign and unshakeable neglect when
it suited him. When he had once made up his mind to ignore something,
no remonstrances or pleadings on the part of the rulers could move him,
inasmuch as no one ever dared to insist that Kaunitz work to a time-table
other than his own: «il a raison." Kaunitz soon fell into the habit of re
signing whenever things did not go to suit him, submitting written re
signations in 1766, 1773, 1776 and again in 1779. As his services were
not only thought but probably were in reality indispensable, this in
variably carried the day for him. Whenever the Prince wanted to evade
an unpleasant assignment he would plead ill health, which required no
great stretching of the truth on his part, as he was a hypochondriac who
could compare himself favorably with the protagonist of Moliere's play.
This was by no means his only eccentricity. The Prussian diplomat C. H.
von Ammon, to be sure no unbiased observer, wrote about him that he
was a man cold of appearance, always concerned with his health, the least
1 H. Hantsch, Die Geschichte Osterreichs, II, 177. The standard, if fulsome, treatment
of Kaunitz is G. Kiinzel, Furst Kaunitz-Rietberg als Staatsmann. There is still no full-scale
biography of Kaunitz. The best recent work is A. Novotny, Staatskanzler Kaunitz als geis
tige Personlichkeit. Useful for the early period of his diplomatic career is A. von Arneth,
"Biographie des Fiirsten Kaunitz: Ein Fragment," Archiv fur oSJerreichische Geschichte.
For the diplomatic background of the reversal of alliances and Kaunitz's role in it, see M.
Braubach, Versailles und Wien von Ludwig XIV bis Kaunitz.
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