168. Holy Roman Empire
In the twenty-first century, Germans, Austrians, Swiss, Anglo-Saxons (the English), Dutch, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes, Icelanders, and the northerners within France (the Franks) are all classed as pan-Germanic peoples. Their common traits are blond hair, light eyes, and tall stature.
In the tenth century, Otto I inherited Charlemagne’s legacy in eastern Europe—the East Frankish Kingdom—and went on to establish an emerging German kingdom. A later king, Barbarossa, formally renamed this German kingdom the Holy Roman Empire, and he himself was crowned Emperor in Rome by the Pope. Beginning in 1438, the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire fell to the House of Habsburg as a hereditary possession.
It must be explained that the so-called Holy Roman Empire, in full, was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. “Holy Roman Empire” was a political and religious term: a loose empire of more than two hundred electorates, independent states, and free cities of differing confessions (Catholic and Protestant), “neither holy nor Roman.” Thus Europeans, and especially the French, often referred to it simply as “Germany.”
Under the famous constitutional charter known as the Golden Bull, issued at Nuremberg in the fourteenth century by Carlos IV, any lord within the German lands—and, in theory, even a free German (though the chance was vanishingly small)—could, in legal terms, become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire so long as he was unanimously chosen by the seven prince-electors.
Among the seven electorates were three ecclesiastical electors—the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Cologne, and the Archbishop of Trier—and four secular electors: the Duc de Saxe (the Duchy of Saxony), the Margrave of Brandenburg (the Kingdom of Prussia), the Comte Palatin (the Duchy of Bavaria), and the King of Bohemia (the Austrian kingdom).
Although, in 1710, the Imperial Diet also approved Hanover (the Duc de Brunswick–Lüneburg) as an elector, Hanover was, deliberately or not, squeezed out by the original seven electorates. The embittered Hanoverian delegates therefore stayed away for years from the imperial sessions at Regensburg (which were, in truth, largely ceremonial).
Yet from October 1792 onward, when France’s War of National Defence abruptly became a “European war of liberation” against the Holy Roman Empire, the situation changed in barely more than two months. Under the powerful advance of two French corps—nearly one hundred thousand French troops—the entire territories of the three Catholic ecclesiastical electorates (Mainz, Cologne, and Trier), as well as the Comte Palatin’s lands west of the Rhine, fell one after another.
Precisely speaking, half of the seven electorates had already fallen into André’s hands. On that basis, a senior Danish diplomat, making a brief visit in Vienna, joked at a banquet, “Today, in the Holy Roman Empire, the most authoritative man is not Emperor Francis II, who likes to stay in the kitchens of Schönbrunn making taffy, but the Marshal of the French Republic, who has effectively seized almost four electoral seats. If Francis II were to suffer some indescribable mishap, that military commander who claims descent from the Franks could at any moment trade the four occupied electorates for the imperial crown and become the next Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.”
It was only a political joke; taking it literally was to lose the point. Even so, the King of Prussia, who had long competed with Austria for leadership in the German world, found this “untrue truth” deeply pleasing.
In early October, when news reached Vienna that the Prussian and French commanders had signed the Secret Treaty of Valmy, Emperor Francis II angrily accused the Kingdom of Prussia of violating the Germanic sacred alliance by abandoning its allies and concluding a comprehensive peace with the rebel French government without the Imperial Diet’s approval.
Berlin’s Frederick Wilhelm II responded with open contempt. In the eyes of the Prussian king—handsome, easygoing, yet weak-willed and lacking confidence—nothing mattered more than getting the Prussian corps of fifty thousand men (its actual strength was forty-three thousand) safely back onto Prussian soil.
Wilhelm II even began to suspect that Emperor Francis II had deliberately incited Prussia to attack France. Meanwhile, Austria’s Bohemian Corps and the Austrian Netherlands army had lingered beyond the frontier, stalled in the Ardennes Forest. Their true aim, he believed, was simply to let the French weaken the Prussian army for them.
Thus, when the Secret Treaty of Valmy was originally delivered to Sanssouci, and after Wilhelm II secured the backing of most princes, nobles, and cabinet ministers, he hesitated for only thirty minutes. Then, upon the “secret treaty” that was no longer secret, he signed and sealed it, giving legal recognition to the land-for-soldiers contract, and tacitly accepting France’s military occupation of German lands west of the Rhine, including the Austrian Netherlands and the United Provinces.
In exchange, André would release Prussian prisoners in three batches, and cut the self-ransom of noble officers by half. In addition, André gave the following oral assurance to the Prussian envoy, Comte de Görtz, who had come in person to Sedan to deliver the original instrument: the Northern Command Headquarters and its four French field armies would never interfere with Prussia’s partition of Poland, and had no intention of exporting any revolution east of the Rhine.
Moreover, at the Prussian envoy’s request, André readily moved the time and place of his talks with Austria’s peace emissaries to Brussels in early December—also the day André ordered the release of the second batch of thirty thousand Prussian prisoners.
Duc de Brunswick departed only on December fifth. He led thirty thousand Prussian officers and men out of the Suippes prisoner-of-war camp under the supervision of two thousand French gendarmes, travelled through Luxembourg–Trier–Mainz (already under French control), crossed the Rhine, and regained his freedom on the far bank beside the free city of Frankfurt.
As for Prussian muskets, sabres, artillery, and large numbers of warhorses, the French delivered them to Frankfurt a few days later. Wilhelm II paid two million thalers to redeem them from André. From the moment he signed the treaty, the Prussian king—fond of luxury—entered a life of austerity. He diverted most of Berlin’s urban expansion funds and froze indefinitely the refurbishment plan for Sanssouci.
In mid-to-late December, after receiving replacements and restoring morale, sixty thousand Prussian troops surged east with killing intent. Duc de Brunswick donned armour once more and set out again. He had to secure Prussia’s share of spoils before Russia swallowed Poland entirely, thereby compensating for the enormous losses suffered on the French front.
On 1793-01-23, after several rounds of mutual military intimidation, Russia and Prussia signed in Saint Petersburg the agreement for the Second Partition of Poland. Under the treaty, Russia took Poland’s Belarus (including Minsk), most of Ukraine on the west bank of the Dnieper, and part of Lithuania—an area of 250,000 square kilometres with a population of three million. Prussia took Gdańsk (Danzig) and Toruń, several provinces of Greater Poland, and part of Mazovia—an area of 58,000 square kilometres with a population of one million one hundred thousand.
Only a few days after completing the partition did Russia and Prussia notify Austria of the fait accompli. Vienna gained nothing from the entire process. This political event directly triggered the formal end of the military alliance between Prussia and the Austrian Empire. By late October, the anti-French coalition within the Holy Roman Empire also collapsed entirely.
By the end of 1792, Empress Catherine II of Russia seemed eager to display her civil and military glory, and proposed organising a renewed anti-French coalition among Europe’s monarchs. Austria and Prussia, however, showed little interest, and politely declined on the grounds that they had already concluded bilateral arrangements.
At the same time, Marshal Suvorov, stationed on the Russo-Polish frontier, warned the Empress that roughly half the Polish and Lithuanian nobles in the newly acquired territories refused to swear loyalty to Saint Petersburg, and many were still secretly planning uprisings against the occupying forces. The celebrated Russian Marshal therefore strongly urged that armed intervention against revolutionary France be postponed for the time being—at least until after 1794.
…
Southwest of Vienna lay Schönbrunn Palace, a magnificent Austrian royal residence with Baroque gardens. Its total area was 26,000 square metres, second in scale and fame only to Versailles. Versailles, having lost Louis XVI and his family, had withered in the three years since, after suffering repeated plunder. Schönbrunn, by contrast, remained resplendent, constantly displaying the enduring wealth and splendour of the Habsburg dynasty.
In an Oriental-style reception room inlaid with precious materials such as rosewood, ebony, and ivory, Francis II paced back and forth at the centre of the hall, his face drawn with anxiety. He no longer showed any trace of the excitement, joy, and pride he had felt on July fifth of this year, when eight prince-electors unanimously chose him and he was crowned the new Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
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At his accession, Francis II was only twenty-four. The Emperor was, in truth, young to excess: he loved fine food, waltzes, and taffy, and possessed neither the experience nor the patience to lead a vast empire. After all, not every Habsburg could match the diligence, patience, and indomitable faith of Maria Theresa, the Austrian “mother of the nation” and Francis II’s grandmother.
Encouraged by French émigré nobles, Francis II ignored the firm opposition of the cabinet’s chief minister, Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg, and formed an anti-French military alliance with the King of Prussia at Mainz. In the Emperor’s name, he also rallied a large number of German princes, forming an invading army of one hundred and forty thousand: fifty thousand Austrians, fifty thousand Prussians, thirty thousand troops from the German states, and ten thousand French émigrés. In late August, they carried the flames of war into France.
At the outset, everyone within the Empire believed that France’s revolutionaries would collapse at a touch, and that the French armies—allegedly formed of sans-culotte rabble—could not withstand the elite German forces. The expedition would recapture Paris before Christmas, rescue Louis XVI and his family, and end in complete success.
Under the agreement with the Comte d’Artois, Austria would, after victory, receive Lille and Dunkirk from France. Metz and Strasbourg in Alsace would be ceded to Prussia. As for the German states that joined the invasion, they too would be rewarded with the funds they claimed were indispensable, extracted from a restored Louis XVI.
Following the strategic plan jointly drawn up by Duc de Brunswick and Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg, Austria would threaten France from two directions: the German southwest across the Rhine, and the Austrian Netherlands. The former was a feint against Strasbourg, with only five thousand Austrian troops relying on the Rhine and its fortresses. The Austrian Netherlands front was the main effort: thirty thousand of the Bohemian Corps would advance along the Meuse into the Ardennes, while fifteen thousand more would participate in the sieges of Lille and Dunkirk.
Meanwhile, Duc de Brunswick would lead fifty thousand Prussians, thirty thousand troops from the German states, and ten thousand French émigrés into France’s northeast from the Moselle direction. Under the original plan, the grand Prussian army of ninety thousand would meet the Bohemian Corps of thirty thousand beneath the walls of Reims, the kingly city of Champagne, then push west along the Marne to strike Paris one hundred and sixty kilometres away. Before December, they would stand before the capital, force unconditional surrender, and “rescue” their uncle Louis XVI and their aunt Marie and her household.
Only a few weeks later, the rapid turn of events on the battlefield left the Austrian and Prussian monarchs, the German princes, and indeed the rulers of Europe, stunned. The grand Prussian army fell into a carefully prepared trap laid by two hundred thousand French troops (the actual engaged force was one hundred and thirty thousand). After a week of desperate struggle, the German central coalition ran out of ammunition and provisions. Duc de Brunswick and his grand Prussian army abandoned resistance and marched into the Suippes prisoner-of-war camp.
The French then launched a full counteroffensive. The central coalition’s fifty thousand Prussians, thirty thousand troops from the German states, and ten thousand French émigrés—ninety thousand in all—were virtually annihilated. Most men, together with their commanders Duc de Brunswick and Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg, became prisoners. Only a little more than ten thousand escaped the encirclement by luck.
On the Austrian Netherlands front, one hundred and fifty kilometres away, the defeat was equally crushing. Although the Bohemian Corps, aided by Archduke Charles of Austria, narrowly avoided destruction, its main body of twenty thousand was still trapped by the Army of the Meuse and the Army of the North inside the fortress of Liège, and its annihilation was only a matter of time. The remaining Austrian forces, outnumbered, abandoned the major cities of the central and northern districts under Walloon resistance and retreated into the port of Antwerp. With British diplomats’ help, they barely maintained their last western stronghold.
When Francis II received the reports, he first believed them a revolutionary bluff. Soon, however, Austrian agents embedded in Paris sent Vienna verified news: the grand Prussian army had been destroyed, and in the Austrian Netherlands only Antwerp and the fortress of Liège remained—both, in fact, already in French hands.
Now the base Prussians had once again broken faith, concealing from Vienna a separate armistice with France. To curry favour with André, they released more than forty thousand Prussian prisoners and even allowed the flood of revolution to be directed into the German states west of the Rhine’s left bank.
At this point, most German-state forces were already lost on French soil. Austria itself could scarcely protect its own troops, and had no capacity to provide relief. Militia hastily assembled in the German lands could not endure a single sustained bombardment or charge from the Army of the Rhine and the Army of the Moselle; they collapsed and were forced to surrender.
By November 1792, all of western Germany and the left bank of the Rhine—including Luxembourg, Trier, Koblenz, Mainz, Bonn, Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Duisburg—fell in succession. As the rolling flood of French armies approached the territories of Brunswick and Hanover, and under the diplomatic mediation of Duke of Dorset, Britain’s ambassador in Paris, André accepted London’s proposal for peace. He ordered the French armies to halt along the line of Wesel, Duisburg, and the Rhine, on the border with the United Provinces, and to deploy in place.
Although voices within Vienna’s privy council still cried for war to the end, once news arrived that Prussia had abandoned Austria and made peace with France, Emperor Francis II and his close ministers finally accepted that the anti-French war was utterly lost and could not be sustained.
With no other choice, Francis II issued a summons for the former chief minister, Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg—who had withdrawn to a country estate on grounds of illness in opposition to the war—to return. He was to accept a new appointment at Schönbrunn: as Austria’s plenipotentiary envoy, he was to go at once to seek negotiations and end the war as soon as possible.
Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg, however, told the Emperor that while he would accept this diplomatic mission without hesitation, the venue could not be Paris, and the negotiating counterpart would not be the revolutionary government in Paris.
“It is André Franck,” Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg said. “The supreme commander of the northern French armies.”
“In fact, all signs indicate that the Marshal of France has become the highest dictator of the northern provinces. With Paris’s reluctant acquiescence, all major military and civil affairs in the north are planned and executed by the Northern Command Headquarters under André’s leadership—including the armistice with Prussia concluded a few weeks ago.”
Even in rural retirement, the eighty-one-year-old Austrian fox could still see through the haze and grasp the true condition of French politics. He perceived keenly the difference between André and the Parisian revolutionaries. In this, Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg may have owed thanks to the analysis once provided in Vienna by a French émigré, the former Bishop of Autun, Comte de Talleyrand, who had offered detailed assessments of the National Convention and the Jacobin factions.
Francis II proposed Austria’s conditions for withdrawal: France must unconditionally evacuate the Austrian Netherlands and the German lands west of the Rhine, and must release captured Austrian soldiers.
“Forgive me, Sire—this war is one we have lost. The French, or rather André, are the victors.” The old prince stated the point bluntly. The young monarch’s hope of recovering victory through negotiations was naive in the extreme.
“In truth, the southern Netherlands can no longer be held, and the French will not withdraw from west of the Rhine. As for redeeming our captured soldiers, and the more than thirty thousand troops still trapped in Liège and Antwerp, I require full powers from Your Majesty, including the authority to cede territory and pay indemnities. If Your Majesty permits, I suggest reducing our losses through a dynastic marriage.
“…Sire, we also need time to examine carefully the lessons of this defeat, so that we may reduce errors in the next war against France. Why, before hostilities began, did the Prusso-Austrian Coalition’s intelligence organs fail to detect the strength André had concealed in Champagne—one hundred and twenty thousand trained elite troops, several hundred heavy guns, and semaphore stations everywhere?
“There is another matter. Our ambassador in Saint Petersburg has written to me that Russia and Prussia are on the verge of reaching compromise over the Second Partition of Poland. Under those circumstances, as a matter of strategic judgement, Austria may also seek compensation in Poland’s south next year, to make up for our losses in the southern Netherlands.”
…
While Prussia and Austria actively sought an armistice with Andréan France, the prince-electors, archbishops, and free-city councils of the German lands were likewise searching for peace with the French.
Although the Duchy of Saxony lay far from France, Friedrich August I still sent five thousand soldiers to join the invading army of one hundred and forty thousand. When the bad news arrived in October, only half of that Saxon force retreated to the Rhine’s right bank; the remainder were either captured or killed beneath the walls of Verdun.
Although the French ultimately halted west of the Rhine and could not truly threaten Dresden, Saxony’s capital, the Empire’s prince-elector nevertheless, upon learning that Prussia had secretly concluded an armistice with André, also dispatched an envoy to Brussels to seek a lasting peace with France.
In Munich, the Bavarian prince-elector, Karl Theodor von der Pfalz-Bayern, was furious that the French had occupied large tracts west of the Rhine long held by Bavaria through the Comte Palatin’s possessions. Yet in the end he too had to yield to reality. He also sent emissaries to Sedan and then to Brussels, hoping to redeem captured Bavarian officers and men, above all his nephew, the first heir of Bavaria, Lieutenant General Maximilian I Joseph von Bayern.
Almost at the same time, envoys from Württemberg, Baden, Hesse, Weimar, Frankfurt, Oldenburg, and other German states likewise hurried to Sedan, then diverted to Brussels in Belgium, seeking armistice and settlement with the French.
…
In late October, the émigré noble long hunted by revolutionary France, Comte de Talleyrand, suddenly reappeared in a new guise. Bearing the honoured status of André’s private envoy, he took his seat on the second floor of Brussels City Hall—an imposing building begun in 1402—on the right side of the Grand Place, where he received diplomatic envoys from the German states. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Penduvas of MI6 served as his assistant.
Upon arriving in Brussels, the German envoys had already drawn from City Hall an astonishing “inside” report: André, Marshal of the French Command Headquarters, wished to arrange a marriage alliance with one of the German prince-electors. Although Comte de Talleyrand and Brigadier General Penduvas later announced that this was a rumour, the envoys remained convinced. One after another, they wrote to their rulers, seeking the prince-elector’s personal authorisation…