War of the Polish Succession

War of the Polish Succession Siege of Danzig by Russo-Saxon forces in 1734 Date 1733–1738 Location Poland, Rhineland, Italy Result Treaty of Vienna August III ascends the throne, Bourbon territorial gains Belligerents Poland under Stanisław Leszczyński France (Bourbons)  Spain (Bourbons) Duchy of Savoy Poland under August III of Poland  Russia  Austria (Habsburgs) Saxony

v • d • e Polish–Russian Wars Kiev Expedition – Muscovite/Lithuanian – Livonian – 1577–82 – 1605–18 (Dymitriads) – Smolensk – 1654–67 – War of the Polish Succession  – Bar Confederation – 1792 – Kościuszko Uprising – November Uprising – January Uprising – Polish/Soviet – 1939

v • d • e War of the Polish Succession Kehl – Danzig – Bitonto – Philippsburg – San Pietro – Gaeta – Guastalla – Clausen

The War of the Polish Succession (1733–1738) was a major European war sparked by a Polish civil war over the succession to Augustus II, King of Poland that widened as France and Spain, the two Bourbon powers, attempted to check the power of the Austrian Habsburgs in western Europe. The fighting in Poland resulted in the accession of Augustus III, who was supported by the Habsburgs and Russia. Military campaigns conducted by the Bourbon powers against Habsburg territories in the Rhineland and Italy (where most of the fighting occurred) were largely successful. Great Britain's unwillingness to support Austria demonstrated major cracks in the Anglo-Austrian Alliance and may have contributed to its military failures.

Although a preliminary peace was reached in 1735, the war was formally ended with the 1738 Treaty of Vienna. Augustus III was confirmed as king of Poland and his opponent Stanisław Leszczyński was awarded the Duchy of Lorraine (captured by the French in the Rhineland campaigns). Francis Stephen, who lost Lorraine, was given the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and Habsburg and Bourbon rulers exchanged places in the Duchy of Parma and the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, resulting in territorial gains for the Bourbons.

Causes

Polish succession

Ever since the death of Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, Polish kings were elected by Polish nobility. This and other constitutional reforms gave the nobility a great deal of power over the king. By the early 18th century the system was in decline and subject to interference by Poland's more powerful neighbors.

Stanisław Leszczyński, painting by Jean-Marc Nattier

Former Polish King Stanisław Leszczyński hoped to be elected king once again upon the death of his old adversary, Augustus II of Saxony, who had failed in his attempts to make the Polish crown hereditary within his family. Thirty years earlier, Stanisław had been installed as king of Poland by King Charles XII of Sweden during his period of dominance in the early part of the Great Northern War, and was ousted following the Battle of Poltava by the victorious Russians. Stanisław was supported in his bid to regain the throne by his son-in-law, King Louis XV of France, who hoped to renew France's traditional alliance with Poland as a way to balance Russian and Austrian power in northern and eastern Europe.

In 1732 Empress Anna of Russia, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and King Frederick William I of Prussia, irritated with Augustus but unwilling to allow Stanisław to become king, signed Löwenwolde's Treaty, in which they agreed to jointly back the candidacy of Emmanuel of Portugal for the Polish throne.

French and Spanish aims

France's prime minister, Cardinal Fleury, saw the Polish struggle as a chance to strike at Austrian power in the west without seeming to be the aggressor. While he cared little for who should become King of Poland, the cause of protecting the King's father-in-law was a sympathetic one, and he hoped to use the war as a means of humbling the Austrians, and perhaps securing the long-desired Duchy of Lorraine from its duke, Francis Stephen, who was expected to marry Emperor Charles's daughter Maria Theresa, which would bring Austrian power dangerously close to the French border.

French mounted grenadiers of Louis XV

Louis XV was joined by his uncle, King Philip V of Spain, who hoped to secure territories in Italy for his sons by his second marriage to Elizabeth Farnese. Specifically, he hoped to secure Mantua for the elder son, Don Carlos, who was already Duke of Parma and had the expectation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily for the younger son, Don Felipe. The two Bourbon monarchs were also joined by Charles Emmanuel III of Savoy, who hoped to secure gains from the Austrian Duchy of Milan.

Austrian isolation

Although the Austrians had hoped for aid from the maritime powers, Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, they were disappointed, as both the Dutch and the British chose to pursue a policy of neutrality. The British Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole justified Britain's non-intervention by insisting that the Anglo-Austrian Alliance agreed at the 1731 Treaty of Vienna was a purely defensive agreement, while Austria was in this instance the aggressor. This position was attacked by the Austrophiles who wanted to aid the Austrians against France, but Walpole's dominant position ensured that Britain stayed out of the conflict. The French, not wishing to provoke Britain, chose not to campaign in the Austrian Netherlands.

The Austrians were thus left largely without effective allies on their southern and western frontiers. Their Russian and Saxon allies were occupied with the Polish campaign, and the Emperor distrusted Frederick William I of Prussia, who was willing to provide aid but provided only nominal support. Divisions within the empire also had an impact on the raising of troops in 1733, as Charles-Albert of Bavaria, who harbored ambitions to become the next Holy Roman Emperor, signed a secret agreement with France in November 1733, and tried, with limited success, to prevent other rulers from the Wittelsbach family from providing troops to the emperor under their treaty obligations. While Britain itself did not provide support, the Electorate of Hanover, where George II also ruled as an Imperial Elector, proved willing to help.

War

Poland

Russian grenadier in 1732

Augustus II died on 1 February 1733. Throughout the spring and summer of 1733, France began building up forces along its northern and eastern frontiers, and the Emperor attempted to improve the defenses of imperial fortifications along the Rhine. In August, Polish nobles, led by primate Teodor Potocki, gathered for the election sejm. The Russians and Austrians, seeing the strong support for Leszczyński, gave up their support of Emmanuel of Portugal and turned to Frederick Augustus of Saxony, the previous king's son and the only plausible alternative candidate. On August 11, 30,000 Russian troops under Field Marshal Peter Lascy entered Poland in a bid to influence the sejm's decision. On September 4, France openly declared its support for Leszczyński, who was elected king by the same on September 12.

A group of nobles, mainly Lithuanian magnates led by Duke Michael Wiśniowiecki (the former Lithuanian grand chancellor nominated by Augustus II), left the place of election to join the Russians. This group elected Frederick Augustus King of Poland as Augustus III on October 5. Despite the fact that this group was a minority, Russia and Austria, intent on maintaining their influence within Poland, recognised Augustus as king.

The Russians, led by Munnich, quickly took Warsaw and installed Augustus, forcing Stanisław to flee to Danzig (present-day Gdańsk, Poland), where he was besieged for some time by a Russian-Saxon army. Danzig was occupied in June 1734, and Stanisław fled to France.

The war in Poland was largely over, and was an unambiguous victory for the Russians and their candidate. A group of nobles supporting Stanisław formed the Confederation of Dzikow in 1734, and under their commander, Adam Tarło, tried to fight the Russians and Saxons, but their efforts were ineffective.

Rhineland

Following the election of Augustus, France declared war on Austria and Saxony on October 10, and began military operations three days later, invading the Duchy of Lorraine and besieging the imperial fortress at Kehl, across the Rhine River from Strasbourg, gaining control of both objectives in a few weeks. Unable to attack Austria directly, and unwilling to invade the intervening German states for fear of drawing Great Britain and the Dutch into the conflict, France consolidated its position in Lorraine, and withdrew its troops across the Rhine for the winter.

The emperor mobilized his active forces in response to the French attacks, and began the process of calling up troops from the states of the empire, establishing a defensive line at Ettlingen, near Karlsruhe. In the spring of 1734 French maneuvers successfully flanked this line, and Prince Eugene of Savoy was forced to withdraw these forces to the imperial encampment at Heilbronn. This cleared the way for the French army under the Duke of Berwick to besiege the imperial fort at Philippsburg, which fell after a siege of two months in July 1734. Eugene, who was accompanied by Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, made some attempts to relieve the siege, but never made any decisive attacks against the besieging army owing to its size and relatively poor quality of the troops under his command. Berwick was killed by a shell at Philippsburg.

French armies continued to advance along the Rhine, reaching as far as Mainz, but the growing imperial army, which came to include troops from Russia that had assisted with the capture of Danzig, was able to prevent France from establishing a siege there, and Eugene went on the offensive. A force of 30,000 under Friedrich Heinrich von Seckendorff crossed the Rhine and began pushing the French back toward Trier, defeating them at Clausen in October 1735, in one of the last battles before preliminary peace terms were reached.

Italy

In Italy, the Austrian were soundly defeated. In the north, there were two hard-fought though indecisive battles: the Austrians won the Battle of Parma (or San Pietro) (June 29, 1734) and the French and their allies won the Battle of Luzzara (or Guastalla) (September 19, 1734). However, the Austrians lost disastrously in the south, with the Spanish easily defeating them at Bitonto, and completing the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples when the fortresses of Gaeta and Capua capitulated after lengthy sieges.

Peace settlement

Augustus III of Poland, painting by Pietro Antonio Rotari

With the Austrians being in no real position to continue the fight, and the French concerned by the possible arrival of Russian reinforcements, which did indeed arrive on the Rhine for the first time in this campaign, peace negotiations soon began.

A preliminary peace was concluded in October 1735 and ratified in the Treaty of Vienna in November 1738. Augustus was confirmed as king of Poland, Stanisław was compensated with Lorraine (which would pass on his death, through his daughter, to the French), while the former Duke of Lorraine, Francis Stephen, was made heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which he inherited in 1737.

Charles of Parma gave up Parma, which came under direct Austrian rule, but he was richly compensated by being confirmed instead as king of Naples and Sicily. Although fighting stopped after the preliminary peace in 1735, the final peace settlement had to wait until the death of the last Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone in 1737, to allow the territorial exchanges provided for by the peace settlement to go into effect.

The French (and their allies), hoping for détente and good relations with the Austrians, now recognized the Pragmatic Sanction that would allow Emperor Charles's daughter Maria Theresa to succeed him. This proved a hollow guarantee, however, as the French decided to intervene to partition the Habsburg Monarchy after all following Charles's death in 1740. The acquisition of Lorraine for the former Polish king, however, proved of lasting benefit to France, as it passed under direct French rule with Stanisław's death in 1766.

Stanisław signed the act of abdication in 1736, while Augustus III pronounced a general amnesty. Wiśniowiecki was rewarded: the king made him the Grand Hetman (commander-in-chief) of Lithuania.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Sutton, John L (1980). The King's honor & the King's Cardinal: the war of the Polish succession. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813114170. 
• Wilson, Peter Hamish (1998). German armies: war and German politics, 1648-1806. Routledge. ISBN 9781857281064. 
• Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. Kriegsarchiv (1891) (in German). Geschichte des Kämpfe Österreichs: Feldzüge des Prinzen Eugen von Savoyen: Nach den Feldacten und anderen authentischen Quellen [History of Austrian Battles: Campaigns of Prince Eugene of Savoy: from the field records and other authentic sources]. Verlag des K.K. Generalstabes, in Commission bei C. Gerold's Sohn. http://books.google.com/books?id=-usGAAAAYAAJ&dq=regensburg%20kehl%201733&lr=&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q=regensburg%20kehl%201733&f=false. 
• Colletta, Pietro; Horner, Ann Susan (translator) (1858). History of the kingdom of Naples, 1734-1825, with a suppl, Parts 1825-1856. http://books.google.com/books?id=kpsBAAAAQAAJ&dq=%22San%20Pietro%22%201734&pg=PA31. 

External links

• The war of the Polish succession by Vajiravudh, King of Siam, 1901

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