Renversement des alliances

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Europe at the time of the Seven Years' War

The Renversement des alliances (German "reversal of alliances") was a fundamental turning point in European foreign policy towards the mid-1750s, which preceded the Seven Years' War . This “diplomatic revolution” led to a union between France and the House of Habsburg, who had previously been enemies for centuries (→ Habsburg-French opposition ). The designation renversement des alliances for these processes was already used by Sismondi ; it has been used as a fixed term since the work of Richard Waddington (1896).

prehistory

Various factors led to the fact that Louis XV. reconsidered his European policy, which until then provided for the maintenance of the order of the Peace of Westphalia and an alliance policy with the Ottoman Empire , Poland , Sweden and Prussia . This alliance was directed against Austria , England and the rising Russia . In addition to personal quarrels between the king in Prussia and the French king, a new alliance policy by Prussia, which entered into an alliance with England with the Westminster Convention in 1756, disrupted the relationship between the two states. France had been at war with England on the American continent since 1754. The British wanted to consolidate their supremacy in North America through the French and Indian War . France had to understand the announcement of an alliance between its ally Prussia and the enemy as a breach of the alliance concluded in the Aachen Peace .

contracts

In return, Austria had refused allegiance to the British when they demanded that it reinforce its troops in the Netherlands and thus trigger a new threat of war against the French. Mainly because of the rapprochement with France favored by the State Chancellor Count Kaunitz , which he had tried unsuccessfully for a long time, the alliance with England was nominally dissolved in August 1755. After lengthy secret negotiations, a defensive treaty between Austria and France was finally concluded in March 1756 in the event of an Austro-Prussian war. In May of the same year, the Versailles Treaty between the two states followed, which provided for mutual troop aid for the armed conflicts that were looming apart from the Franco-English. This alliance was expanded in May 1757 by an offensive treaty. Since the Austrians did not want to accept the loss of Silesia through the annexation of Prussia, but the King in Prussia wanted to anticipate a counterattack, the Prussians invaded Saxony in a preventive attack and triggered the Third Silesian War . France was involved in the Seven Years' War through its alliance with Austria and therefore had to come to its military aid. Finally, in 1758, a third Treaty of Versailles followed .

consequences

At the end of the war, Prussia had finally risen to become a new major European power. For France, which had little to gain in the German conflict, the Seven Years' War was a political, territorial and financial disaster from which it was not to recover for a long time. In the Peace of Paris in 1763 it lost a. a. his colonial empire in North America, India and Africa.

Despite the unfavorable initial situation for France, the new alliance continued to exist after the war. To seal the Habsburg-French alliance, the marriage of the French heir to the throne, Louis XVI. arranged with the Austrian Princess Marie Antoinette . In the course of the French Revolution , which was also due to the consequences of the Seven Years' War, the alliance was terminated and France declared war on Austria in 1792. In the coalition wars that followed, Austria allied itself with Prussia.

With the exception of the Napoleonic interlude, however, from the 1750s the German dualism Austria – Prussia replaced the dualism Austria – France as a co-determining power constellation in the European pentarchy .

literature

  • Max Braubach : Versailles and Vienna from Ludwig XIV. To Kaunitz. The preliminary stages of the diplomatic revolution in the 18th century. Röhrscheid, Bonn 1952.
  • Heinz Duchhardt : Balance of Power and Pentarchy. International Relations 1700–1785 (= Handbook of the History of International Relations. Volume 4). Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-506-73724-4 .
  • Sven Externbrink : Louis XV. as a foreign policy maker. On the political “style” of the monarch (using the example of the Renversement des alliances). in: Klaus Malettke , Christoph Kampmann (ed.): French-German relations in modern history. Festschrift for Jean Laurent Meyer on the occasion of his 80th birthday (= research on the history of modern times. Volume 10). Lit, Berlin / Münster 2007, ISBN 3-8258-0480-1 , pp. 221-240.
  • René Hanke: Brühl and the Renversement des alliances. The anti-Prussian foreign policy of the Dresden court 1744–1756 (= Historia profana et ecclesiastica. Volume 15). Lit, Berlin / Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9455-X .
  • David B. Horn: The Duke of Newcastle and the Origins of the Diplomatic Revolution. In: John H. Elliot, Helmut G. Koenigsberger (Eds.): The Diversity of History. Essays in Honor of Sir Herbert Butterfield . Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1970, pp. 245-268.
  • Walter G. Rödel: A secret French initiative as the trigger for the Renversement des alliances? In: Johannes Kunisch (Ed.): Expansion and balance. Studies on the European power politics of the ancien régime (= journal for historical research . Supplement 2). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-428-06065-2 , pp. 97-112.
  • Heinz Schilling : Courts and Alliances. Germany 1648–1763. Goldmann, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-442-75523-9 .
  • Lothar Schilling: Kaunitz and the Renversement des alliances. Studies on the foreign policy conception of Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz (= historical research. Volume 50). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-08084-X .
  • Lothar Schilling : How revolutionary was the diplomatic revolution? Reflections on the caesura character of the alliance change of 1756. In: Research on Brandenburg and Prussian History NF. Volume 6, 1996, pp. 163-202.
  • Arno Strohmeyer : A “revolution” between unity and system stability. The Renversement des alliances of 1756. In: Historicum. Volume 19, No. 2, 1999/2000, pp. 12-19.
  • Jörg Ulbert: The history of the impact of the "diplomatic revolution". The assessment of the renversement des alliances and the alliance with Austria in the French public and politics , in: Sven Externbrink (Ed.): The Seven Years War (1756–1763). A European World War in the Age of Enlightenment, Berlin 2011, pp. 159–179.
  • Richard Waddington : Louis XV et le Renversement des alliances. Préliminaires de la Guerre de sept ans 1754–1756. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1896 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. u. a. William R. Nester: The First Global War. Britain, France, and the fate of North America 1756-1775 . Westport 2000.