Military equipment remained reasonably standard during the 1700’s. European armies adopted similar caliber flintlock muskets between 1692 and 1705, and this weapon, despite the introduction of the more accurate but less durable rifle, became the primary infantry arm of the century. Although heavy and cumbersome, it decidedly improved its user’s killing efficiency. Firearms, rather than swords, daggers, and pole arms, now decided battles. The centuries-old pike was replaced by a bayonet that locked onto the end of the musket, allowing the musket to be used simultaneously as both a firearm and a shortened pike.
Of all weaponry, artillery displayed the most noticeable improvements. At the beginning of the century, cannons were divided into two categories: defensive for fortress use and offensive for regimental and siege work. The latter accompanied the army in long artillery trains and were heavy, cumbersome, and slow to move, hindering the offensive movements so important to men such as Eugene, Churchill, and Frederick the Great.
Change, however, followed the War of the Spanish Succession. Jean de Maritz (1680-1743) revolutionized the casting of cannon, allowing for smaller guns to fire a projectile farther and use less powder. This development enabled Europeans to make lighter, smaller artillery pieces, often 4-, 8-, and 12-pound guns, and to increase their maneuverability on the battlefield.
Uniforms, standard by 1700, changed little until the French Revolution of 1789, but armor was almost totally discarded. Only in the heavy cavalry, and especially among the French, was armor retained. Deflective chest plates were worn on the front and the back, but they were unable to withstand direct musket fire. Regimentals remained much the same until the levée en masse, a French draft of sorts, mandating large numbers of new battalions, including light infantry and cavalry. At this point, and especially under Napoleon, different uniform designs and colors would proliferate.
While armies were increasing in numbers and units were being independently deployed, cavalry as awhole was being reduced, because it was less effective than infantry as a striking and killing force. Yet, light cavalry, like light infantry, was becoming increasingly popular. Such units were seen as useful in shielding maneuvering formations, artillery, and attacks.
A new formation, the column, was also emerging in French thought and training. It was created by Jean-Charles de Folard (1699-1752), who sought to save time in battle by using the marching column as a direct vehicle of attack, substituting shock for traditional firepower.
Naval ships of the period changed little. The ships of most nations were similar in design; the vessels of individual navies differed only in construction techniques, quantity, and quality. France, for example, built a better ship and used fewer, but heavier, guns, whereas England, whose vessels sailed better, used sturdier construction. Yet, all nations divided their major capital ships into categories with the top three categories carrying more than 100 guns, more than 80 guns, and from 74 to 80 guns. The last, a third-class ship of the line, was generally the workhorse of every fleet.
The War of the Polish Succession
Frederick-William I (1713—1740) the King of Prussia was the only monarch with whom the German-born king of Poland, Augustus II, maintained friendly relations until the end of his long and disastrous reign, contrary to the interests of the country where he wanted his son, Frederick-Augustus, to be elected after his death. He was even prepared to pay for Prussian support by territorial concessions.
It is true that in these years Russia did not favor the plan of Saxon succession in Poland. Twice, in 1726 and 1732, she made agreements with Austria in order to exclude the Wettins from the Polish throne. But both of them were even more opposed to the election of Stanislaw Leszczynski, the exiled pretender whose chances were increased through the marriage of his daughter Mary, in 1725, to Louis XV of France. And since the pro-German Russian empress as well as Emperor Charles VI permitted the King of Prussia to take part in their projects, it was easy to anticipate, first, that the forthcoming Polish election would be decided, even more than the preceding one, by the joint pressure of the future partitioning powers, and secondly, that contrary to the wishes of the great majority of the Poles, disgusted with Saxon misrule, the elector of Saxony would have the best chance to succeed his father in Poland also.
France and her possible allies, the Bourbon king of Spain, and also Sweden and Turkey, were decidedly opposed to such a solution, and the Polish succession was therefore a big problem of international relations when Augustus II died in 1733. But at the same time it had ceased to be a problem which the Poles themselves could decide. Their country, which already under the first Saxon king had lost any initiative in the field of foreign policy, was to have no such independent policy at all under his son. The last free country in East Central Europe, encircled by the cooperation of Russia and Prussia, with Austria’s inconsiderate participation, was under the appearance of neutrality a mere pawn in the game of power politics. This became clearly apparent during the European wars of the next generation which disturbed the precarious balance of power on the Continent until the partitions of Poland destroyed it completely.
When Poland’s King Augustus II (1670-1733) died, Stanislaus I Leszczyñski (1677-1766), now father-in-law of France’s King Louis XV (1710- 74), sought again to take the Polish throne, receiving diplomatic and military support from France, Spain, and Sardinia. Most Polish nobles wanted him king, but others, notably Lithuanians, gained support from Russia and Austria for their candidate, Augustus III (1696-1763), elector of Saxony and son of Augustus II. A Russian army marched to Warsaw and forced a rump parliament there to declare Augustus III king in 1733, forcing Stanislaus to flee to Danzig. Russian and Saxon troops besieged Stanislaus and his supporters, including a French relief force, from January to June 1734, when Stanislaus fled from Danzig just before its surrender. The war was then primarily fought on two fronts. In the Rhineland, it was inconclusive except for the French siege and capture of Philippsburg after occupying Lorraine in 1734. In Italy the Austrians won at the Battle of Parma on June 29, 1734, the French at the Battle of Luzzara on September 29, 1734, and the Austrians again at the Battle of Bitonto on May 25, 1735, the final major engagement of the war. Meanwhile, Poland was in the throes of civil strife between rival factions backing Stanislaus and Augustus. A preliminary peace in 1735 was finally settled by the Treaty of Vienna on November 18, 1738, by which Stanislaus renounced the Polish throne and was made the duke of Lorraine (which was to devolve to the French Crown on his death), and Augustus III (whose coronation had taken place in Cracow [Krakow] in 1734) was recognized as the Polish king.
Russia
The first test of the post-Petrine Russian army, not an especially difficult one, came in Poland. King Augustus II, Peter’s ally in the Northern War, died in February 1733, requiring a new election. Augustus’s son (also named Augustus) inherited the family’s Saxon possessions in Germany smoothly. The Polish election, however, in early fall 1733 handed the crown to the French-backed candidate Stanislaw Leszczynski, Charles XII’s puppet king in Poland during the Northern War. Russia and the Austrian Empire agreed that a pro-French Polish king was absolutely unacceptable and settled on the younger Augustus as the best practical alternative. Russia and Austria intervened to depose Leszczynski and give the younger Augustus his father’s throne.
The physical distance between France and its ally meant the War of the Polish Succession was an anticlimax. Anna’s government massed troops on the Polish border under General Peter Lacy, an Irish exile long in Russian service, and invaded even before Stanislaw’s actual election. Lacy carefully managed a second election that named the younger Augustus king of Poland. Leszczynski fled to temporary refuge in Danzig (now Gdansk). Lacy besieged him there in early 1734, then handed the siege to Münnich. France could do little to support its distant client besides desultory attacks on Austrian territory in western Europe. It sent a fleet to the Baltic that landed tiny ground forces, only 2,000 men, on the Polish coast. After Polish and French efforts to break the siege of Danzig failed, Leszczynski fled to a final refuge in France. Poland was confirmed as a Russian-dominated buffer state where Russian troops intervened at will. France and Austria continued to fight in Germany and Italy, and a small Russian force under Lacy went west to support Austria but saw no action. From Russia’s point of view, the war ended entirely satisfactorily.
Poland
Polish military prowess held its own for most of the seventeenth century. Reformed by Batary and reconstructed by W3adys3aw IV, the Republic’s armies were the equal of their contemporaries at least until the Great Northern War. Batary’s victorious campaign in Russia ; Żółkiewski’s advance to Moscow; Koniecpolski’s spirited defence of Prussia against Gustavus Adolphus; Czarnecki’s remarkable recovery against Charles X; Sobieski’s defeat of the Turks at Chocim; and above all, the stupendous charge of Sobieski’s Winged Hussars at the Siege of Vienna; all attest to the valour and technical competence of Polish arms. Thereafter, the military establishment collapsed. In the Great Northern War a divided Republic was no match for Charles XII or Peter the Great. The Russian-sponsored Silent Sejm of, which limited the Republic’s forces to a meagre 24,000 left it virtually defenceless. Polish armies played no significant part in the War of the Polish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, or the Seven Years’ War, most of whose eastern operations were disputed on Polish territory.
France
But even France, where a Polish embassy signed a pact of friendship with Cardinal Fleury, then directing the policy of Louis XV, did not take her engagements very seriously. She had declared war on Austria and Russia, together with Spain, Naples, and Sardinia, but was more interested in the situation in Italy and Western Germany. While the French attacked the Austrian forces in Italy, Russia was supposed to be checked by Sweden and Turkey. But neither country seized that opportunity for a joined action against the rising Russian power, and General Münnich’s forces soon appeared in the Rhineland. It was therefore in Western Europe that the war was decided and it was there that France was looking for compensation for the setback of her policy in East Central Europe. When it became obvious that St. Petersburg would not accept the ally and father-in-law of Louis XV as king of Poland, Fleury, at the Peace of Vienna, signed on October 3, 1735, obtained for him, instead of Poland, the duchy of Lorraine from Emperor Charles VI, it being understood that after his death that province would be united with France.
Lorraine
This duchy bordering on the Champagne district of France lay across a strategic route leading from the center of French power at Paris and Louis XIV’s newly acquired territory of Alsace. In Louis’ mind, its independent existence thus threatened Paris. More objectively, it tempted Louis to aggression. He struck at Lorraine in August 1670, driving Charles IV into exile and alliance with the United Provinces. The refusal of Charles V to accept the terms of Lorraine’s return to him agreed to in the treaties of Nijmegen (1678) vitiated that part of the settlement and left Lorraine in the eager hands of the French king. Louis XIV kept the province until 1697, when it was returned to its dukes at the end of the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697). France invaded Lorraine again during the War of the Polish Succession (1733) but did not annex it outright until 1766.
Hanover
Threats to Hanover, for example by Russia in the early 1720s, Austria and her allies in 1726-7, Prussia in 1729, or a French advance east of the Rhine in 1734 or 1735, were not realised. Crucially, there was no war involving Hanover in 1725-7, while in 1733-5, in the War of the Polish Succession, Hanover, although a combatant, was not endangered. Although Belle-Isle’s advance down the Moselle Valley in 1734 briefly caused concern on this head, it was not the basis of an advance across the Rhine. Indeed, the French followed a much more cautious policy north of the Alps than in Italy, and this included observing a neutrality for the Austrian Netherlands, an arresting instance of limited war. George as elector sent troops to the Imperial army in 1734, but Hanover did not need to be rescued from attack by British diplomatic or, even more problematic, military action. This was important because, whatever the cause of the conflict, and however defended in public debate, the dynamic of events in such a conflict might have cruelly exposed differences over Hanover.
