War of the Austrian Succession

The War of the Austrian Succession was a conflict that took place from 16 December 1740 to 18 October 1748 between the various European powers of the time. The conflict was not restricted to Europe, but also spilled into their colonial holdings in Asia.

The war established Prussia as a regional hegemon for years to come, altering the very balance of power in Europe. In India, the rivalry between Britain and France in the Austrian War of Succession resulted in the First Carnatic War.

This article will give further details about the War of the Austrian Succession within the context of the UPSC Exams.

What was the reason behind the War of the Austrian Succession?

The pretext for the war came when a succession crisis happened upon the death of the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI in 1740. To understand how this crisis happened, one must keep in mind the following events:

• In 1703, a Mutual Pact of Succession was agreed upon. It stated that should the male line of the Habsburgs become extinct, the female line would take precedence.
• In this case, the female line referred to the heirs of the elder brother of Charles VI, Emperor Joseph I.
• But the Salic law excluded women of the royal family from inheriting the throne. But if the various Habsburk territories and the Imperial Diet granted approval, then exceptions would be made.
• Emperor Joseph’s death in 1711 left two potential female heirs, Maria Josepha and Maria Amalia. But in April 1713, the Pragmatic Sanction was issued by Charles, which allowed female inheritance by the progeny of Charles VI.
• This sanction effectively ignored the 1703 agreement and created a potential for conflict because it placed the children of Charles VI ahead of his nieces. The birth of his daughter Maria Theresa in 1717 ensured that conflict was on the horizon.

Charles required his nieces to renounce their claim to the imperial throne in favour of their cousin Maria Theresa in 1719 by marrying Frederick Augustus of Saxony and Charles Albert of Bavaria. He believed that it would secure his daughters’ position, as Saxony and Bavaria – bitter rivals themselves – could not tolerate either gaining control of the Habsburg inheritance. Instead, he provided a legitimate claim on Habsburg territories.

A family issue became a European one due to tensions within the Holy Roman Empire, caused by dramatic increases in the size and power of Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony, mirrored by the post-1683 expansion of Habsburg power into lands previously held by the Ottoman Empire.

Since theoretically, the Holy Roman Emperor has always been a Habsburg since 1437, Bavaria and Saxony could both lay a claim on the throne. Soon other European powers like France began backing the claims of Charles Albert of Bavaria despite it accepting the Pragmatic Sanction in 1735

Compounded by the failure to prepare Maria Theresa for her new role, many European statesmen were sceptical Austria could survive the contest that would follow Charles’ death, which finally occurred in October 1740. In a matter of months, Europe was on a collision course for a prolonged War.

Course of the Austrian War of Succession

The war began on December 16, 1740, when Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, one of the richest Habsburg provinces. His army defeated the Austrians at Mollwitz in April 1741 and overran Silesia.

His victory enhanced the suspicion in Europe that the Habsburg dominions were incapable of defending themselves, and thus ensured that the war would become general. Within a month, France’s Charles-Louis-Auguste Fouquet, comte (later marshal and duc) de Belle-Isle, constructed an alliance with Bavaria and Spain and, later, with Saxony and Prussia against Austria.

Maria Theresa derived her main foreign support from the British Empire, which feared that, if the French achieved hegemony in Europe, the British commercial and colonial empire would be untenable. Thus, the War of the Austrian Succession was, in part, one phase of the struggle between France and Britain that lasted from 1689 to 1815. As a consequence, the British would clash against their French counterparts in India during the Battle of Madras in 1746. It would end in a French victory.

The invasion of Austria and Bohemia by the French and Bavarian forces fell apart for lack of unity of purpose and military capability. Austria temporarily neutralized Prussia by allowing it to retain Silesia in July 1742, drove the French and Bavarians out of Bohemia (1742), and overran Bavaria. Austria’s allies—the British, Hanoverians, and Hessians—defeated the French at the Battle of Dettingen (June 27, 1743) in Bavaria.

This Second Silesian War was concluded by the Treaty of Dresden in December 1745. It confirmed Prussian possession of Silesia.

The last major French success was Marshal Maurice de Saxe’s conquest of the Austrian Netherlands (1745–46), which followed his great victory at the Battle of Fontenoy on May 11, 1745. From 1746 to 1748 the war dragged on indecisively.

The British had withdrawn their army to England to oppose the French-supported efforts of the young pretender, Charles Edward, to win the thrones of Scotland and England for the Stuarts. The financial burden finally pushed the powers to the conference table.

End of the War of the Austrian Succession

The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) by which Maria Theresa was confirmed as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary. The treaty reflected that stalemate since most of the commercial issues that had led to the war were left unresolved, and many of the signatories were unhappy with the terms. Although the war had nearly bankrupted the state, Louis XV of France withdrew from the Low Countries for minimal benefit, to the dismay of France’s nobility and populace.

The Spanish considered their gains in Italy inadequate since they had failed to recover Menorca or Gibraltar and viewed the reassertion of British commercial rights in the Americas as an insult.

Although Maria Theresa was acknowledged as her father’s heir, she did not consider that a concession and deeply resented Britain’s role in forcing her to cede Silesia to Prussia. For British statesmen, the war demonstrated the vulnerability of George II’s German possession of Hanover to Prussia, and many politicians considered they had received little benefit from the enormous subsidies paid to Austria.

The result was the realignment known as the Diplomatic Revolution in which Austria aligned itself with France, which marked the end of their centuries-old enmity, and Prussia became an ally of Britain. The new alliances would fight the 1756 to 1763 Seven Years’ War.

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