Peace of Aachen (1748)
The Peace of Aachen was an international treaty concluded on October 18, 1748 , which ended the War of the Austrian Succession . This was preceded by a congress that began on April 24, 1748 in the free imperial city of Aachen .
Content and consequences
- General return of the conquests made in the previous war. The French released the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch border towns from the occupation and Madras in India to the British. The British, for their part, returned the Louisbourg fortress on Cape Breton Island in Canada .
- Empress Maria Theresa had to pass the duchies of Parma , Piacenza and Guastalla in northern Italy to her enemy Philip, Duke of Parma , and several territories in western Lombardy (Angera, Vigevano, Voghera and Bobbio) to her allied Charles Emanuel III. , King of Sardinia, resign. The Pragmatic Sanction was generally recognized for this.
- The Duchy of Modena and Reggio and the Republic of Genoa were restored to their previous extent.
- The Asiento and the right to send a ship to the Spanish colonies annually , both guaranteed in the Peace of Utrecht , were confirmed and renewed.
- Prussia was confirmed the possession of Silesia and Glatz .
Nothing was stipulated regarding the trade war between England and France in the West Indies, Africa and India; the peace treaty was therefore no basis for a lasting peace. There was general outrage in France for viewing the peace treaty as an unnecessary abandonment of benefits, particularly because of the Austrian Netherlands , which was conquered mainly because of the brilliant strategy of Marshal Moritz Graf von Sachsen . In Paris , the phrase "bête comme la paix" ("stupid as peace") came up. The Aachen Peace brought stability in Italy . The new territorial determinations and the inauguration of the peaceful Ferdinand VI. of Spain allowed the Aachen determinations to endure until the outbreak of the First Coalition War in 1792.
Spain later resisted the Asiento clauses, and the later Peace of Madrid supplemented the Aachen Peace on October 5, 1750. The Treaty of Madrid stipulated that Britain waived its claims under the Asiento clauses in exchange for £ 100,000 in compensation .
In April 1749, to celebrate peace, the fireworks music that the British King George II had commissioned from George Frideric Handel was performed in London's Green Park .
literature
- Adolf Beer: On the history of the Peace of Aachen in 1748. Commissioned by Karl Gerold's son, Vienna 1871.
- Reed Browning: The War of the Austrian Succession. St. Martin's Griffin, New York 1995, ISBN 0-312-12561-5 .
Web links
- For the text of the Aachen Peace Treaty, see European Pre-Modern Peace Treaties - online from the Institute for European History Mainz
- Proof of printing of the contract text