by Tom Anderson
Thus, when Sultan Murad V and his Grand Vizier Mehmet Ali Pasha sent troops into Austrian-held Bosnia as a demonstration of Constantinople’s might, to warn the Austrians off interfering as the Ottomans occupied the former Venetian Dalmatian territories, Vienna predictably overreacted. Emperor Francis II proceeded to undermine his own claim to his title by concentrating his armies on repelling the Turks, sending only desultory forces after the retreating French – which was, to put it mildly, not a popular decision among the people of the southern German states.
After Leroux’s death, the French army had split into two factions – the main body under the crazed radical Jacobin Lascelles, who retreated to Regensburg and declared a Bavarian Germanic Republic with himself at its head; and a smaller faction, mostly professional soldiers whose service dated from the ancien régime, who went northwards into Bohemia. The latter, known as the Cougnonistes after its former leader, Colonel Cougnon (treacherously slain by Lascelles), was now led by Major St-Julien, who upgraded himself to general and took command of the army.
The Cougnonistes occupied the town of Budweis and ran it as their personal fief throughout the winter of 1799, subjecting the local Czechs and Germans to military rule. St-Julien recognised Lisieux’s new regime once word of it reached his ears, but the Cougnonistes were too isolated either to help Paris’ agenda or be helped by it. Thus St-Julien contented himself with raiding the Bohemian countryside to feed his men. At first he convinced himself that he was helping the overall war effort by harming Hapsburg possessions, but soon he became disinclined to participate in the war at all, an opinion shared by his men. Some took local wives and settled down, losing their fighting edge as discipline broke down.
Others, though, continued to raid. The Bohemian peasantry were terrified of the Cougnonistes, who were liable to turn up without warning and ‘requisition’ their year’s harvest, leaving them to starve. However, no Austrian troops were sent to Bohemia – those which Francis did send to the German front were mostly focused on liberating the occupied parts of the Archduchy of Austria proper. The Diet in Prague, concerned about what had happened repeatedly in the past in Bohemia when the people became angered, hastily assembled a Czech militia and attacked Budweis in May 1800. The attack failed. St-Julien’s troops might have lost some of their fighting fitness, but barely-trained militiamen were no match for them. The Bohemian regiments of the Austrian army, ironically, were at that moment fighting for their lives against the Turks in the defence of Sarajevo, and were in no position to even try to desert and return home.
In the wake of that defeat, the Diet convened once more to discuss their options. The debate was hampered by the lack of a strong central authority. Empress Maria Theresa had, in 1749, undertaken reforms that had merged the Bohemian Chancellery with that of the Archduchy of Austria, appealing to the Hapsburg centralising instincts that had repeatedly provoked Bohemia into rebellion since the sixteenth century. Although the Diet had been left in place, its authority had been sapped, and without any royal ministers in place there was no single executive to make decisions.
Eventually the Diet rallied around Jan Miler (also known by the German name Johannes Müller), who advocated a policy of appeasement. Essentially St-Julien and his men were paid off to restrict themselves to Budweis and not to raid any Bohemian lands – the payments were dubbed ‘Frankgeld’ by the more historically informed side of the British satirical press. The agreement was made in July 1800; after that time the Cougnonistes only raided lands outside the kingdom, especially Saxony, as the Saxon army was fully engaged in the Second War of the Polish Succession against Prussia and its border with Bohemia remained undefended. This situation would continue for several years. Eventually, the Cougnonistes’ early rapacity was forgotten by the Bohemians, many of whom afterwards viewed St-Julien through romantic eyes, as his men’s Saxon plunder ultimately made Budweis very rich. In any case, from the beginning, the Bohemian people were more angry with Vienna for failing to defend them than with the French for attacking them in the first place.
To the south, Lascelles’ still-disorganised forces were driven back by an Austrian army under Wurmser towards the end of 1799. By the turn of the century, Wurmser had liberated the prince-bishopric of Salzburg, which had been occupied by the French during the war. Just as the moderate Leroux had been unable to restrain his men when it came to the taking of Regensburg, so here part of the city of Salzburg had been burnt and the prince-bishop had been publicly executed by the chirurgien. At this point came Emperor Francis’ second great mistake, if his failure to respond effectively to the Cougnonistes had been his first. Although 1799 had been the year of Austria’s salvation from what looked like certain destruction, it had also been a year of defeats on almost all fronts. Francis had sent Archduke Ferdinand’s army straight to Zagreb, ignoring his uncle’s protests that his men needed time to rest, recruit and recuperate after their march from Italy. The battered veterans had failed to stop the Turks from taking Sarajevo. Desperate to stop his rule crumbling at this crucial stage, Francis searched for any positive news he could use to boost public morale. Firstly he sent troops under General Quosdanovich to occupy the northern parts of the former Venetian Dalmatia (unopposed) which the Turks had not yet reached. Secondly, he declared the annexation of Salzburg to the Archduchy of Austria, purporting this as some sort of territorial gain and therefore a technical victory.
This was almost universally acknowledged as a dangerous mistake even then, and much more so in retrospect. Any gain Francis made by trumpeting this as a minor victory was outweighed a thousand times by the blow he had dealt to the Imperial system and therefore the legitimacy of his Imperial claim. It had been worrying enough for the countless small states that made up the Empire that the Hapsburgs had been on the back foot and unable to defend them against the French hordes. Now, it seemed that even the Imperials had turned against the system of peace and stability they had long protected. It seemed they had shown their true faces. And if not even the Emperor saw anything wrong with snatching minor states and adding them to his personal domain, why should anyone else bother with such moral qualms?
This was the beginning of what was later termed the Mediatisation of Germany, a curiously bloodless term for what amounted to the half-dozen or so most powerful states tearing into their weaker neighbours and conquering them, always claiming that they did it ‘for their own protection’. In truth the mediatisation proceeded in lands far away from any possible threat from the French. The Dutch and Flemish had begun occupying neighbouring Hapsburg territories and Imperial free cities long before this time in order to prevent the French legally sending armies into the midst of their distant exclaves. Now they began officially annexing these adjoining lands. Charles Theodore of Flanders and the Palatinate proclaimed a single united state (usually called Flanders, though it technically had a more complex title) that included the former territories of the prince-bishoprics of Liége and Trier and the Free City of Cologne. He titled himself King of this state, finally stripping away any acknowledgement of the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor, and would pass on this title to his eponymous son when he died a few years later. He would be only the first of many to invent a crown, as the reality of the Imperial system turned to ashes.
Charles Theodore’s ally to the north, Stadtholder William V, approached John George V of Saxony with a proposal. The Saxons were still fighting tooth and nail against the Prussians at the time, while the armies of the Dutch Republic were poised to take over the Saxon possessions in the Rhineland.[2] The Saxons and Dutch avoided war by hammering out the Treaty of Minden, which was signed in August of 1800. This transferred East Frisia and Cleves, the two Saxon territories which the Dutch most coveted, to the United Netherlands as provinces. In exchange, the other Saxon territories of Minden, Lingen, Mark and Dortmund were left untouched. The treaty also divided the Rhineland into spheres of influence, with the Saxons having influence over the eastern independent territories of Paderborn, Lippe and West
phalia, while the Dutch extended their influence over Bistum, Osnabruck and Münster. These lands were not annexed, but they were intimidated into customs unions and other subservient policies.
The Treaty of Minden was strongly opposed by the so-called ‘Mittelbund’ or Central League. This was an impromptu alliance of the Hessian states, Nassau and Würzberg, which soon became a rallying call for other small states throughout the Germanies. Although the Mittelbund could not take any direct action against the Dutch and Flemish due to the fact that it was fighting against Ney’s armies at the time, its protests did attract new members, including Waldeck, Wittgen and Eichsfeld.
These Flemish and Dutch actions also alarmed Britain, or at least that small part of British political society that actually remembered that the crown possessions still included Hanover. With a Prime Minister who openly endorsed the French Revolution and a King who had never even been to Hanover, the prospects of gaining direct British help did not look bright for the electorate. George II, or perhaps William IV, had been the last king to really defend Hanoverian interests at the Court of St. James, and things had gone from bad to worse for Hanover since the Second Glorious Revolution. The defeat of Prussia, Britain’s ally, in the War of the Diplomatic Revolution had resulted in Hanover being partly occupied by French troops, and these were only ejected at the Peace of Amsterdam when Britain traded back the French West Indian possessions. Another attempted French invasion during the Second Platinean War only failed because of the general state of disorganisation in the French high command in that era. Hanover’s army and institutions had been neglected by Britain’s King and Parliament both, and it showed.
Thus it was that during the Jacobin Wars Hanover was essentially ruled in all but name by William FitzGeorge (or Wilhelm FitzGeorg as he was often known), the Duke of Cambridge. He was the son of George FitzGeorge, an illegitimate son of King George II by a Hanoverian mistress, and had followed his father in pursuing a career in the Hanoverian army, eventually rising to the rank of general. Neither he nor his father had ever seemed a likely enough candidate to the throne of Great Britain to be worthy of forming a Williamite resistance around after Frederick won the War of the British Succession. George FitzGeorge had been born while King George had been on one of his many campaigns in Germany, and neither he nor his son spoke English very well.
Nonetheless, when the Treaty of Minden was signed, the British government was sufficiently roused to adopt its usual policy in such times – find the strongest state in Germany and pay it to beat up all the others until Hanover’s position was secure. This was more problematic than usual, however, as the two choices of the past, Prussia and Austria, were both beset by increasing difficulties. Saxony was on the rise but was embroiled in a war, and of course the British could hardly appeal to the Dutch and Flemish to defend against themselves. Eventually Fox’s foreign secretary, Richard Sheridan, appealed to Denmark. The Danes were attractive to Britain for the same reason as Prussia had been in the 1750s: they appeared to be rising to a position of prominence, having defeated Sweden and restored a Scandinavian union as well as gaining more territory in Germany. Denmark had transferred Swedish Pomerania to its own control and had, as part of the price for assisting Russia in the Great Baltic War, acquired control over all the dukedoms of Oldenburg. Oldenburg, though technically separate from the crown of Denmark, then achieved a status similar to that of Schleswig and Holstein within the Danish monarchy. Furthermore, besides the pragmatic reasons, Britain had a romantic connection to Denmark: the kingdom had been the first European power to acknowledge King Frederick’s legitimacy and the Danish King Johannes II was married to Frederick’s daughter Mildred.
The British move was a calculated one, but Sheridan failed to realise that the Danes were out for territorial aggrandisement in Germany themselves. William FitzGeorge could have told him, but communications between him and the British government had been even frostier than usual since the Double Revolution. King Johannes II was concerned that his acquisition of Sweden might stir resentment in Schleswig and Holstein against being part of some primarily Scandinavian empire. Johannes and his government thus wanted to gain more German lands, not purely out of simple greed but also in order to try to balance the numbers of German-speakers with those of Scandinavian languages and prevent dissent. They were not concerns that would have occurred to many European monarchs even twenty years before, but the French Revolution had opened the Pandora’s box that was linguistic and ethnic nationalism, and now no-one could close it.
Thus, Copenhagen accepted London’s cavalry of St George,[3] nodded and smiled, and then turned around and began threatening the Mecklenburgs. As well as the other reasons cited for territorial aggrandisement, the Danes also coveted ever greater control over the Baltic. Ultimately Johannes’ vision was for the Russians to be excluded from it totally, even driven from St Petersburg, and the sea to become a ‘Danish lake’, even as the Mediterranean had once been a Roman lake. This somewhat crazy dream could only lie years in the future, but the acquisition of Mecklenburg’s coast was a first step.
The two Mecklenburg states – Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz – rejected the crude Danish demands in October 1800. The Mittelbund proclaimed its support of Mecklenburger territorial integrity, though it could do little in practice if Denmark invaded.
In the end, the crisis was resolved at the Conference of Hagenow, where the Saxons, Mecklenburgers and Danes reached an agreement, of which more is told elsewhere. But the Hanoverians were appalled at the embarrassing backfire of British foreign policy, and in the end William FitzGeorge began acting wholly independently, without recourse to either the British Government or King Henry IX (who was technically also King Heinrich I of Hanover).[4] He formed his own defensive league, the Alliance of Hildesheim, named after that prince-bishopric in which the treaty was signed. The Alliance was composed of Hanover, Brunswick, Hildesheim itself, Bremen and the Schaumburgs, and was generally aligned with the Mittelbund. If William had dared, he would probably have formally joined the electorate and its allies to that entity in the first place, for the alliance between Hanover and Hesse-Kassel went back a long way. The Alliance and the Mittelbund worked together to resist further encroachment by other powers, whether they be the Danes, the Dutch or the Flemish. The fact that most such powers (except the Austrians and Saxons) were primarily non-German and their capitals lay outside the boundary of the Empire tended to associate the Mittelbund-Alliance with German patriotism, and ultimately German unificationism. We should remember that Pascal Schmidt began his career as a soldier in the Hessian army.
It seems astonishing to us now that the Austrians virtually ignored these dramatic developments in favour of their blinkered focus on the Balkan front. After the failures of the final months of 1799, the campaign season of 1800 saw the built-up Austrian armies repel Damat Melek Pasha’s forces from the siege of Zagreb, but the Turks were left in possession of Bosnia and the vast majority of Dalmatia. Only Istria remained out of Constantinople’s reach, and even that was contested instead by part of Lazare Hoche’s new Italian Patriotic Army.
For 1801, desperate to break the stalemate, Emperor Francis ordered General Alvinczi to shift his army to Transylvania and attack Wallachia over the border. At first this may seem a quixotic move, but it was calculated as an attempt to drag Russia into the war. The Russians were still recovering from their recent civil war, but Francis guessed that no Russian tsar could resist the opportunity to sweep in and take back Bessarabia and Moldavia if the Austrians moved into Wallachia.
Unfortunately for the Austrians, Emperor Paul had already decided on a more leisurely strategy for regaining Russian power in the regions that Sultan Abdulhamid II had extended Turkish influence into during the Russian Civil War. He had concluded that open warfare at this stage would only undermine his rule. He needed some years to cement that rule first before attempting anything ambitious. The Turks, of course, did not know this (though they suspected) and thus Paul’s
ministers were able to wring a number of concessions out of the Ottomans in exchange for remaining neutral. The chief of these was a withdrawal of Turkish troops and influence from Georgia: this act repaid Paul’s debt to Prince Piotr Bagration. For the present the Russians conceded the Ottoman presence in Armenia and in the Khanate of the Crimea. That could wait for another day.
His plan having failed, 1801 ended badly for Emperor Francis. The Turkish armies had ground to a halt, but they had already taken more than Sultan Murad had expected. Alvinczi’s army had occupied the northern half of Wallachia, but Alexandru Morusi, the Prince of Wallachia and Moldavia, had raised an army and fought back with Turkish assistance.[5]
And for the Germans living under the Bavarian Germanic Republic, the future looked bleak. Lascelles was a man whose conception of revolutionary thought had not got past the part about watering the soil with impure blood. The rapacities of the Cougnonistes were mild in comparison to what was inflicted and unleashed upon the people of Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate and those parts of the Archduchy of Austria which were still occupied by the French. Lascelles’ men murdered without compunction anyone suspected of having any noble blood – and in the Holy Roman Empire, scarce less than in Poland, that could be almost anyone. Desperate to escape such a fate themselves, the Germans turned on each other, claiming their neighbours were the illegitimate great-great-grandnephew of a ritter born in 1621. Some said (in hushed voices) that the drains of Munich saw more blood than water drain through them in those dark years. And Lascelles took racialist theories to even greater depths than Lisieux, who he rejected, arguing that the Germanic races were sub-human and it was the task of the Latins to reverse the mistakes of history (i.e. the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire) and reduce them back to their ‘correct’ state of barbarism.