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1730 Recent Diplomacy
Date: 2022-01-01 06:16 pm (UTC)1725: Treaty of Vienna
1725: Treaty of Hanover
1726: Treaty of Wusterhausen
1727: Preliminaries of Paris
1728: Peace of Pardo
1729: Treaty of Seville
1731: Treaty of Vienna
1733: Bourbon Family Compact
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1725 Treaty of Vienna
Date: 2022-01-01 06:18 pm (UTC)Spain and Austria/the HRE shock everyone by allying. This is triggered by two events:
1) The Duc de Bourbon sent Philip V's daughter, who was living at the French court and supposed to marry Louis XV, back to Spain, because she's too young to produce heirs asap. This move results in a diplomatic breach between France and Spain and causes a very offended Spain to start looking for allies elsewhere.
2) Britain, Hanover, France, and Prussia have joined forces in an alliance of their own, thus pushing Spain and Austria closer together.
Terms
Spain renounces claims in the Italian peninsula.
Spain signs the Pragmatic Sanction.
Spain allows the Austrian Ostend Company to trade with the Spanish empire.
Austria accepts Don Carlos claims to inherit in Tuscany and Parma.
Austria agrees that one of the Emperor’s daughters will marry one of the King of Spain’s sons (sometimes presented as MT + Don Carlos, but while that was definitely Spain's preferred interpretation, some of my sources say that Austria deliberately left it more vague than that.)
Austria agrees that the Emperor will provide at least moral support to Spain for getting Gibraltar and Minorca back.
Sending back princesses
Date: 2022-01-07 01:00 am (UTC)First a reminder: in 1721 ten-year-old Louis XV was engaged to a three-year-old Spanish princess, daughter of Philip V, because Regent Philippe d'Orleans and Philip V were the two candidates next in line to the throne if Louis died, and they had a vested interest in keeping it that way as long as possible. So a French queen who couldn't give Louis an heir for another 11 years at the earliest was an excellent choice if you were Philippe or Philip V (who would then have started a civil war over the throne as soon as Louis died). Reminder that Philip V was more closely related, but he had renounced the throne because there was so much resistance to having him on the throne of both France and Spain. But in the 1720s, he had an army and could easily have invaded.
Then regent Philippe dies in late 1723, and the Duc de Bourbon comes to power. He has a vested interest in *not* having a d'Orleans inherit (or a civil war break out), so he sends the Spanish princess back to Spain and engages Louis to Marie Leszczynska, who is able to give him an heir in 1729.
Now, the normal account by historians is that the Spanish get offended and therefore send the French princess who had been married to Philip V's son (now dead, leaving her a widow) back to France in high dudgeon.
But the Philip V biographer I had read, Henry Kamen, said that the Spanish were already planning to send her back, and that they initiated the exchange. Selena and I were a bit confused by this, since pretty much everyone else has the French initiating it.
But I wanted to believe Kamen, not because he's such a great scholar (he thinks the Pragmatic Sanction is about leaving the imperial throne to MT), but because he's by definition focused on the Spanish side of things. So if there was documentary evidence that the Spanish were already planning this, he would be more likely to pick up on it, compared to the France/England/Germany-focused authors we had read.
Well, I've been rereading Horowski for German practice, and his account matches Kamen's almost line-by-line. This led me to suspect Kamen was his source, and lo, Kamen is cited in his sources for this episode.
Close reading of both texts I think clarifies the issue for me. So here's what they say:
In 1724, Philip V abdicated in favor of his son Luis. Luis was married to the French princess (daughter of Regent Philippe). He became Luis I (because it wasn't the usual practice for non-Bourbon kings to name their firstborn sons Louis, lol).
Seven months later, still in 1724, Luis I dies. Philip reluctantly allows himself to be pressured into resuming the throne, because his next son is only 11 and would need a regent anyway.
French princess Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, now Dowager Queen of Spain, is entitled to a large amount of money for the rest of her life, is spending money like crazy, and is unpopular because her behavior is out of control. I have no idea how much of the following is true vs. gossip, but Wikipedia says:
She would walk around naked, belch and fart in public, run around the palace corridors, or jump off her horse to climb on trees. Modern diagnosis deem many of her behavioural traits compatible with an out-of-hand borderline personality disorder.
She would appear in public dirty and smelly, refusing to use underwear, and would try to provoke courtiers by showing her intimate parts in public. She would refuse to touch the food on her table, but would then hide away and compulsively gobble down anything that she could put her hands on, whether it was edible or not. Her behaviour seemingly got worse over time. At some point, she developed the custom of cleaning the windows and tiles of the palace using her own clothes: she would leave her courtiers astonished by suddenly undressing in public to clean the windows in the room with her dress.
Anyway, Philip V wants to send her back. He writes a letter to France going, "Is there any chance you want her?"
In Horowski's words, Philip could never have guessed what would happen next. Which was...
"Sure! You can have yours back too. She's too young for childbearing, and I'm not the next in line for the throne if Louis dies without a son."
At which point Philip and Isabella, who had absolutely not been trying to initiate an exchange for their daughter who had done nothing wrong (she's the one Selena describes as the "adorable moppet"), are highly offended. Furthermore, they're already upset with France over the way it recently (1719-1720) invaded Spain to keep Spain from reconquering territory (Gibraltar, Sicily, etc.) lost in the War of the Spanish Succession. So they break off relations with France and conclude a hasty alliance with their old enemy Austria, recognizing the Pragmatic Sanction and trying to get MT married to their son Don Carlos. This is the 1725 Treaty of Vienna, which you can read about in one of my millions of posts on 1720s diplomacy.
Also, I really need to reread Kamen, as I have a ton more context now. :)
Re: Sending back princesses
Date: 2022-01-11 06:11 am (UTC)Re: Sending back princesses
Date: 2022-01-13 03:11 pm (UTC)Here to deliver more gossip: in the volume that
Weber starts by saying that the rumors that went around concerning the incident were very similar to the Königsmarck affair. But whereas the Hanoverian affair is still talked about, the Spanish one has been totally forgotten. Possibly the Spanish court was better at coverups!
Weber then says that our sources about this episode are all unreliable, third-hand, and full of holes. So he only very tentatively draws conclusions, and makes it clear we have no idea what happened. Here's his account of what we know.
In 1723, just before his father Philip V abdicates and makes him king, soon-to-be Luis of Spain marries Louise Elisabeth, daughter of Regent Philippe d'Orleans. The groom is sixteen, the bride fourteen. Being used to France, young Louise Elisabeth rebels like you'd expect a teen to rebel when she encounters the strict etiquette of the Spanish court. Nothing in this 19th century essay about taking off her clothes to scrub the windows and tiles, but she likes running around the palace all day and buying drums and kids' toys and playing with them. This is not considered commensurate with the dignity of a queen.
One hot summer evening, she's wearing light clothes and romping around in the park with her ladies and some cavaliers of the court. Her husband looks out a window and sends someone to her to stop and come back inside immediately. She obeys, but in a big huff with body language so annoyed and protesting that he can see it from the window. Teenager alert! So he places her under house arrest and takes away the members of her retinue that have been supporting her in this behavior. (My sympathies are 100% with her from this description. Not sure how its accuracy compares to the one in Wikipedia; one could be bowdlerized and the other could be wildly exaggerated rumors.)
She protests by refusing to eat and drink, but after a few days is eventually allowed to go for supervised walks.
So now all of Europe is buzzing with rumors. One such rumor is that Luis locked her up out of jealousy. Which naturally leads to rumors that she was caught with a lover.
Some rumors point to the Marquis d'Aiseau, an obscure nobleman who has recently traveled to Spain, as this hypothetical lover. His initial letters said he'd been received well at court, but then--! He disappears! No more word from him.
Rumors abound that he started flirting with the Queen, Luis gave him 24 hours to leave Spain, he refused and behaved more outrageously, and so he was killed. There are various rumors about his manner of death: he was caught at night while climbing a ladder to the Queen's room, he was stabbed in a corridor leading to her room, or even killed in her room!
Weber: So what really happened? We don't know, because our sources suck. All we know is that he disappeared. But it seems unlikely that it was connected to Louise Elisabeth, because Luis let her go after only a few days, apparently convinced that she hadn't really meant any harm. (OTOH, maybe he was just better at coverups than the Hanovers!)
But where it gets gossipy and fun is when these rumors make an appearance in Brussels. Now, in 1724, Eugene is governor of the now Austrian Netherlands, but since who would want to live in the Netherlands when you could live in Vienna, has a deputy there. The deputy's wife and daughter are exchanging letters with their contacts in Spain. One such letter contains this passage:
You won't be surprised that the Marquis d'Aiseau would dare to aspire to a queen, but what's really surprising is that such a well-formed young man would fall in love with such a little monster.
Enter the Comte de Bonneval. This Comte de Bonneval guy had an interesting career, to say the least. I'll supplement Weber with Wikipedia here.
First Bonneval joins the French army, pisses off his superiors, is court martialed, gets a death sentence, and flees to Germany. There he pisses off Eugene, who sends him to the Austrian Netherlands. There he pisses off Eugene's deputy, gets court martialed, and is condemned to death again. But Charles VI commutes his sentence to imprisonment and banishment. Banished, Bonneval goes to join the Turks, converts to Islam, and changes his name to Ahmed. While working for the Ottomans, Bonneval helps them defeat the Austrians in the late 1730s. This is FS's first war, where he *really* doesn't distinguish himself with his martial prowess like he was expected to, and the Austrians lose a bunch of territory that Eugene (d. 1736) had conquered. Then Bonneval--stop me if you saw this coming--pisses off his Ottoman superiors and gets banished to the Black Sea. Eventually, he dies in Constantinople.
So 1724 is the episode where he pisses off Eugene's deputy in the Netherlands. See, Bonneval claims to be related to the Bourbons! And when he hears what was said about the "little monster" he's allegedly related to, he has to defend her honor. Playing Don Quixote (as a contemporary described it), he gives the wife of the deputy such a chewing out that she "fears the sharpness of Bonneval's tongue more than the sharpness of his sword," and shuts up.
But then her husband, Eugene's deputy, has Bonneval locked up. Nothing daunted, Bonneval writes to Eugene that he's ready to risk his neck on the scaffold for this. Fortunately for him, that's when Charles VI comes through with the commutation of the sentence. And then Bonneval goes to Turkey and begins the next chapter of his life.
So what happened to the disappearing Marquis? At least in 1861, that was a mystery.
But more fun from Wikipedia:
The Memoirs published under his name are spurious. See
Prince de Ligne, Mémoire sur le comte de Bonneval (Paris, 1817);
It's our RPF writer again! (Weber has a footnote citing Bonneval's memoirs, but warning the reader that their authenticity is doubted.)
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1725 Treaty of Hanover
Date: 2022-01-01 06:20 pm (UTC)The Treaty of Vienna is being negotiated in 1725 between Austria and Spain. The other powers are getting antsy at the prospect of a revival of the Charles V empire, and start trying to form a bloc to counter it. This in turn creates pressure on Austria and Spain to ally, the very thing the members of this alliance wanted to prevent. (Game theory is hard, let's go shopping.)
Terms
France, Great Britain, Hanover, and Prussia will send troops if war is declared against the Austria-Spain bloc.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1726 Treaty of Wusterhausen
Date: 2022-01-01 06:21 pm (UTC)FW, who just signed a treaty with one of the two major blocs currently in Europe, now decides to switch sides. Like he did 6 years ago when abandoning Russia.
Terms
Prussia leaves the alliance of Hanover.
Prussia guarantees the Pragmatic Sanction.
Prussia agrees to supply 10,000 troops to Austria.
Emperor Charles VI agrees that he'll probably support FW's claims to Jülich and Berg when the time comes (some sources say just Berg).
This will be ratified by the Treaty of Berlin in 1728.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1727 Preliminaries of Paris
Date: 2022-01-01 06:22 pm (UTC)Britain and Spain are kind of at war (a little bit). Everyone is squabbling. France is trying to make peace.
"Preliminaries" means these aren't put into action, they're the things that everyone is trying to get everyone else to agree on. Spain is the last holdout. This is the one where Rottembourg gets a slap on the wrist from Fleury because the British aren't happy with what the concessions he made to Spain (even though he was probably told to do exactly that).
Terms
Austria is supposed to to suspend the Ostend Company for 7 years (a face-saving device to keep them from having to agree to shut it down for good).
Everyone's supposed to stick to the various treaties of 1713-1721 (these are the things everyone's squabbling over). Britain and Spain are supposed to stop fighting and return to the status quo.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1728 Peace of Pardo
Date: 2022-01-01 06:23 pm (UTC)This is basically Spain finally agreeing to the Preliminaries of Paris. Isabella, who most emphatically did not want to agree to these terms, decides to give them the broadest possible interpretation, on the assumption that no matter what she does, France will never go to war. French diplomats, including Rottembourg, have to spend a lot of time in the next 5 years telling her that she can't just do whatever she wants, that at some point France will reach the limit of its patience with her.
Terms
See the Preliminaries of Paris, 1727.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1729 Treaty of Seville
Date: 2022-01-01 06:24 pm (UTC)Britain and Spain have been at war (a little bit) since 1727, over things like ships, trade, and Gibraltar. This treaty is when they finally make peace, with France's help. This is considered a great diplomatic triumph for Fleury, who brokered the peace.
Terms
Britain and Spain go back to trading with each other.
Spain stops trying to take Gibraltar back.
Don Carlos gets to be the heir to Parma and Tuscany.
Spain can install Spanish garrisons to ensure he inherits when the current dukes die.
Britain will use its navy to carry the Spanish troops to Italy.
If necessary, Britain and France will use military force against Austria to get the Spanish garrisons installed in Italy.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1731 Treaty of Vienna
Date: 2022-01-01 06:32 pm (UTC)Context
Britain is trying to get Austria to agree to the terms that Britain and France just agreed to with Spain. They're also trying to settle a number of other issues. This treaty represents them finally abandoning the French alliance (they did try to convince the French to be okay with the separate treaty with Austria, but the French were having none of it), and going back to the "old system" of England and Austria against France and Spain, which felt more natural to most people.
Terms
Austria finally agrees to shut down the Ostend Company for good.
Austria agrees to allow the Spanish garrisons in Parma and Tuscany so that Don Carlos can be heir when the local dukes die (the Duke of Parma in fact has already just died, in January 1731).
Britain agrees to the Pragmatic Sanction. Britain, Austria and the Dutch Republic gave each other a reciprocal territorial guarantee against aggression.
A month after this treaty, George II finally gets the investitures for Bremen and Verden. The timing is significant because G2 wanted to hold out for the investitures as part of the treaty, but the Hanoverian concerns were abandoned in favor of getting Britain the badly needed treaty with Austria asap.
1730 Recent Diplomacy: 1733 Bourbon Family Compact
Date: 2022-01-01 06:33 pm (UTC)Context
Fed up with Britain's apparent defection (signing the Pragmatic Sanction), paranoid that Britain has agreed to force the Pragmatic Sanction on France (they have not), determined to bring down the Habsburgs, and eyeing Lorraine among other things, France makes an agreement with Spain. Philip V, remember, is Louis XV's uncle, hence this is called a "family pact."
Terms
Philip gets Naples and Sicily back.
Don Carlos still gets to inherit Parma and Tuscany (remember, Gian Gastone won't die until 1737).
Spain takes trading privileges away from Britain and gives them to France.
France agrees to defend Spain if Britain attacks Spain over this.
France will help Spain try to retake Gibraltar.
FW: Awkward Negotiator
Date: 2022-01-01 06:35 pm (UTC)In 1725, G2 and Fleury are fighting with Eugene and Charles VI over who can get Prussia into their respective alliance. McKay:
Despite his bombast, Frederick William was a rather sensitive soul who appreciated having a fuss made of him, especially by Eugene and the emperor. He had tried his best to please Eugene the previous year in May 1725 when he had offered him a team of Prussian horses for his stables and a couple of elks and a bison for his zoo at the Belvedere.
Unfortunately,
Embarrassed at what seemed an obvious bribe, Eugene had replied that he never accepted presents and that his zoo was full.
In the end, FW agrees to join the anti-Austrian alliance of Hanover with France and Great Britain/Hanover, and commits to send troops in the event of a war. But--
FW: But I also get to send troops to Austria, because the Holy Roman Emperor is my boss!
Everyone else: ...
Lavisse:
When he became allied to France and England, in 1725, he reserved to himself the right to furnish to the Emperor the contingent that he owed, in his quality of Elector, at the same time that he assisted the King of France with the number of troops fixed by the treaty. It certainly is to be regretted that this clause had not been put into action, and that Europe had not witnessed this spectacle of the King of Prussia fighting the Elector of Brandenburg.
But theeeen, in 1726, Seckendorff is sent to Berlin to try to lure FW away from the alliance of Hanover. Once FW switches sides and Austria and Prussia are allies again, presents are okay! Mckay again.
The first [treaty] was sealed by the dispatch to Berlin of the almost classical tribute of twenty giant recruits for the Prussian army; then in 1727 Eugene willingly accepted the king’s animals for his zoo and in return sent some Spanish stallions for the royal stud.