1744 - Political Events

Political Events

An armada of 27 French and Spanish warships attacks 29 Royal Navy ships February 21 and breaks a British siege of Toulon. France deserts Frederick II and declares war on both Britain and Austria's Maria Theresa.

Sweden officially designates Adolf Frederik of Holstein-Gottorp-Eutin as heir apparent, and Russia withdraws her occupation troops by July (see 1743).

France's indolent Louis XV assumes personal command of his army in Flanders at the insistence of his mistress Mme. de Châteauroux that he emulate the late Louis XIV. He takes along the haughty duchesse and her sister Mme. de Lauragais, a fat, jolly woman with whom Louis sometimes goes to bed in preference to Mme. de Châteauroux. The king's immorality outrages his troops, and he removes himself with his companions to Metz, where he falls deathly ill August 8. The bishop of Soissons threatens to withhold last rites unless the king gets rid of the unpopular Mme. de Châteauroux and Louis agrees; the bishop then announces that le roi is sincerely penitent and "asks pardon of God and man." Louis recovers, Queen Marie arrives at Metz to find him convalescent, he apologizes for having caused any unhappiness, but he has no intention of resuming sexual relations with her.

The Battle of Velletri August 11 ends in victory for 6,000 Austrians over a 10,000-man Spanish-Neapolitan army in the continuing War of the Austrian Succession (see 1743; 1745).

Prussia's Frederick II starts a Second Silesian War by marching through Saxony with 80,000 troops. He invades Bohemia in August and takes Prague in September before the Hapsburg forces of Austria's Maria Theresa drive him back into Saxony.

Louis XV enters Paris in triumph November 13. Now 34 and the handsomest man in France if not in all of Europe, Louis the Well-Beloved (le Bien-Aimé: a popular poet named Vadé has coined the soubriquet) appoints René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, 50, marquis d'Argenson, his minister of foreign affairs and soon effects a reconciliation with Mme. de Châteaurox, recalling her to Versailles, but she falls ill, probably of typhus, and dies in a delirium December 8. Argenson tries to implement schemes for ending hostilities through international arbitration, but the king undermines his activities through secret diplomacy, and court intrigues compound his difficulties.

King George's War breaks out March 15 in the Caribbean and will include engagements in North America—an offshoot of the War of the Austrian Succession between Britain and France, whose Western Hemisphere interests are now fiercely competitive. Britain has the advantage since her squadrons are permanently based in Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, with naval dockyards at Jamaica and Antigua, while the French have no dockyard facilities in the Caribbean, can rarely dispatch a ship from Europe for more than 6 months at a time, and must rely on convoys to protect their sugar shipments (French merchants pay for naval escorts). Edward Boscawen, 32, Royal Navy, distinguished himself 3 years ago in the siege of Cartagena and captures the French frigate Médée, the first prize taken in the new war.

The Iroquois Confederacy in North America agrees under terms of the Treaty of Lancaster to renounce its claims to western Maryland and Virginia in return for a bounty of trade goods (see 1722), but the charter of the Virginia colony gives it claims to land as far west as the "island of California." The Iroquois have earlier traded away to the French their claim to the Ohio country, but British colonial authorities have been weakening the confederacy's neutrality, and within a year the Virginia House of Burgesses will have granted about 300,000 acres of land along the Ohio River to speculators with good political connections, thereby infuriating the French, who have settlements in eastern Canada and in the Illinois country; they begin building a chain of forts from Lake Erie south to The Forks of the Ohio (later Pittsburgh) in order to defend their settlements (see Ohio Company, 1752).