Mistral Commentary
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Battle of Toulon, 1744 The War of the Austrian Succession at Sea The Western Med. 1740-1748 Historical Commentary By Ian Weir & David Hughes Maps by Paul Dangel ©2011 Red Sash Games & Ian Weir The War of the Austrian Succession. Bother. Do I really have to Anatomy of a Naval Disaster, covering the French Nova Scotia go over all that again? Go read my other works. Better yet, look expedition, which also covers politics and administration from the over the bibliographies from my other works. What’s that? You’re French side in some detail. Also, The French Navy and the Seven too busy [lazy]? Sigh… Years War, by Dull – again, useful for naval structure, but not as a source for corroborating or refuting Richmond’s list of events. La The War of the Austrian Succession was really a collection of Marine Française au XVIIIe Siècle, by Vergé-Franceschi, helps interrelated conflicts, only two of which concern us – the so- here. Older French works have been placed online: Histoire de la called War of Jenkin’s Ear (a name coined by the historian, Marine Française by le Comte de Lapeyrouse Bonfils (1845) and Thomas Carlyle, in 1858) and what might be called the Italian Histoire Maritime de France by Léon Guerin (1844). War. Jenkin’s Ear was a Trade War, pure and simple, though there were geopolitical reasons for it as well. The Italian War, dignified For the Spanish, try whistling. There is one prime English by historians into a dynastic struggle, was in great measure a language source: Trafalgar and the Spanish Navy, by Harbron. glorified cat-fight between two queens. (And that is why, ladies, it Despite its title, two-thirds of the book deals with Spain’s navy in was the longest-running part of the conflict). the 18th Century. Information in the Spanish language lies mainly in online articles: La campana de don Juan José Navarro en el For the rest, war raged in Germany from December of 1740 to Mediterraneo y la batalla de Sicie, by Martinez-Valverde, and La December of 1745, in the Low Countries from the spring of 1744 Armada Real al comienzo de la Guerra de Asiento, by Santiago to the final peace in 1748, and on the high seas around the globe Gómez until the dispatch boats brought news of the end of the European war. There is greater information on orders of battle and the ships themselves. Stephen Manley issued a comprehensive naval OOB Sources for the War of the Austrian Succession. His information is quite For an overview of the war as a whole, Reed Browning’s War of accurate, but not perfect. Other, “more learnéd” works include: the Austrian Succession is highly recommended. It is a recent The Line of Battle, by Gardiner; British Warships in the Age of work, and despite complaints from some regarding its complexity, Sail, Volume 2, by Winfield, and The History of English Sea this author has found it invaluable on several occasions (and, after Ordnance, by Caruana. Online, the best sources are probably all, the war is a complex subject). Three Decks, at http://threedecks.org/index.php, and a comparable Spanish site, http://www.todoababor.es/listado/index.htm. These As regards the historical narrative, this author is tempted to write are works in progress, but contain much detail on all the ships of nothing and refer the reader to Rear Admiral H.W. Richmond’s the period. books – a three volume set called The Navy in the War of 1739-48. The books are available online as free PDFs. Apart from DEEP BACKGROUND being a noted scholar, Richmond was a veteran of the Great War Can’t Tell a Player Without a Program (his career can also be found online). His work, published in 1920, is still the most comprehensive available. Unfortunately, it The War of the Austrian Succession was at bottom a dynastic war is written solely from the British viewpoint and tends to gloss – territories swapped between royal families at gunpoint. There over the failures of some of its “heroes”. There also appear to be were grand strategic and economic factors, too, but these were minor inaccuracies – mainly order of battle issues – which were subsidiary. Thus, though the war had a number of themes, most of probably inherent in his own sources. His contemporaries gave them centred on Maria Theresa of Austria. him an ‘A’ for meticulous research, but admitted he was biased in favour of The Service; the Navy’s political “opponents”, in contrast, are stripped bare. Nonetheless, Richmond remains the primary source for the narrative portion of this commentary. [Richmond argues that in size and technical skill the Royal Navy was already dominant, but that she lagged in the operational art (and in technology). Shades of the Jutland debate.] Two works by a modern author, Richard Harding, apply a corrective: The Emergence of Britain’s Global Naval Supremacy. The War of 1739-1748 and (more as an example of Richmond’s ‘puffing’) Amphibious Warfare in the 18th Century; The British Expedition to the West Indies (showing an entirely different impression of land-sea noncooperation). There is also Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, 1727-1783, by Robert Beatson (in six volumes – volume 1 contains the pertinent information). This works was published in 1804 and is available as an online document. It lacks the accuracy of Richmond but provides some additional material (to be handled circumspectly), particularly on minor actions. Beatson felt ‘British arms’ should be glorified wherever possible, no matter how small the affair. Technical information can be found in Tunstall’s Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail, The Evolution of Fighting Tactics and Willis’ Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century. The latter is a balanced view, while Tunstall’s is dominated by the Royal Navy. To find information about the ‘other side of the hill’ is not easy, even in the Spanish or French languages. There is Pritchard’s 1 Maria was of the Habsburg dynasty. She was the surviving heir of Against them were ranged the Habsburg Army, not so ruined as it the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, who died in 1739. Thanks appeared, many of the minor princes of the Empire, King George to a disastrous war against the Ottoman Empire (which hastened II of England, and the United Provinces (who were pro-French, his death), he bequeathed her a tattered army and an empty but were bullied along by the English as the other half of an treasury. Supposedly, she would have time to rebuild the position economic bloc called the Maritime Powers). of their House. Charles had spent the last decade supplicating Europe in hopes of guaranteeing his daughter’s accession to all King George was, like Frederick of Brandenburg, an Electoral his domains. It was a vain hope. Prince as well as a king; he was Elector of Hanover. This is important, because British policy, including British naval policy, Understand, the Habsburgs did not rule a unified kingdom such as was subordinated to the needs of Hanover – to put it bluntly, France or England. They ruled widely scattered territories, from George tried to use England as his war chest. For the British king Belgium (the Austrian Netherlands) to Transylvania, and over and his Administration, Germany and Flanders were the crucial peoples with very different modes of governance. Habsburg rule zones. The Mediterranean, though, was also important, for two was guaranteed bilaterally, in most cases. In their core lands, such reasons: a) it contained naval bases close to Spain and southern as Austria proper, they owned the land outright. In Bohemia and France, which needed watching, and b) if Maria Theresa were Hungary, they were kings (or, in Maria’s case, queens) – but since threatened with the loss of Italy to the Bourbon bloc, she would both Bohemians and Hungarians were independent-minded be forced to divert resources from the struggle in Germany and cusses, a certain amount of wheeling and dealing was in order. Flanders. In Italy, the focus of this work, the Habsburgs ruled as dukes and [An Elector was a German prince who held one of the few Electoral Votes duchesses of various locales. This made them no more than the that were cast when choosing a Holy Roman Emperor. Frederick was equals of the native aristocracy, and of their rivals the House of styled King In Prussia, not King of Prussia, the implication being he was Bourbon, who were steadily encroaching upon them. Indeed, one a subject of the Emperor while not in Prussia, whereas George was a king anywhere outside the Empire, and a subject within it. Frederick, by the by, could argue that they were ‘outranked’ by both the King of was George’s nephew.] Sardinia (a potential ally) and the King of Naples (a Bourbon foe). Now, the device used to form agreements with all these territories was called a pragmatic sanction. Because he had a daughter for an heir, which was ‘iffy’ under German law, Charles VI went further and sought external guarantors among the princes of his Empire and his neighbours. The agreement in its final form was called the Pragmatic Sanction. Most of those asked, signed, and most broke faith. Maria simply appeared too vulnerable; a woman, in her early twenties, with a husband who had not proven himself in war. In the end, of course, she was to prove one of the greatest rulers of her House, but no one could see it at the time. The whole issue was complicated by the question of the Holy Roman Empire.