It is perhaps time to ask whether Kaunitz, as a prime begetter of the Seven Years War, was right to have called forth such stupendous efforts on the part of Austria and her allies.

In the first place, it must be stated that the military ends were realistic and attainable and thus fulfilled one of the classic requirements for a 'just' war. Whereas in retrospect the shape and outcome of the Second World War appear preordained by the end of the second week of December 1941, the issue of the Seven Years War remained in the balance until the fianl months. The alliance was within an almost literal heartbeat of victory at the outset of 1762, by when the Prussians had lost their western provinces, East Prussia and Glatz, the Russians were overwintering in Pommerania, and the Austrians (thanks to Loudon) had gained the key fortress of Schweidnitz and a firm footing in Silesia [ 14]. Frederick was saved only by the death of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, as was widely acknowledged.

We must next address a persistent tradition in French historiography, which would make Austria and therefore Kaunitz responsible for inveigling France into a continental land war, which left the French navy weak and the colonies exposed to British attack, and which in more than one way brought the French Revolution nearer:

French nationalists, by the 1760s, hated the Church because they associated it with defeat in war. In the Seven Years War France, allied with Catholic Austria, had been decisively defeated by Protestant Prussia, allied with Protestant England. The Catholic monarchy and its Catholic ally had allowed the French nation to be huniliated. The detested alliance and theassociated humiliation were incarnated in the person of the foreign Quenn: the hated Austrian, Maria Antoinette. Well before the French Revolution, French nationalists promoted the expulsion of the Jesuits from France as an act of liberation from Catholic internationalism. [15]

In reality France was far from being a passive victim of the Diplomatic Revolution. War with Britain was in any case inevitable, and at the very least the new connection with Austria spared the French from having to maintain large forces on their Netherlandish, Rhenish and Italian borders. France showed singularly little eagerness to attack the great Prussian fortress-depot of Magdeburg, which would have been the only French enterprise of any real benefit to Austria. The French served their own interests more immediately by invading Hanover, an operation which was an indirect, but telling blow against the Protestant succession and establishment in Britain. A negotiated passage through the electorate for allied forces had been by no means impossible when Kaunitz made a first demand on Hanover on January 4, 1757, but it became altogeather out of the question after Colloredo, his ambassador in London, delivered a near-ultimatum which had been composed by the French, and which required a virtual military occupation of the electorate. Frederick's stock was now rising rapidly in Britain, and any demand couched in such preremptory terms was bound to be rejected. [ 16] If Kaunitz was to blame, it was because he was too compliant towards the French, and not polite enough to the Hanoverians and British.

We finally turn to a question which on the face of it is absurd, but still needs to be answered. Did Austria after all lose the Seven Years War? The alliance certainly failed to attain any of its tangible objectives, which turned on the return of Silesia to the Austrians and territorial gains at the expense of Prussia by other parties. However, one of the prime aims of Kaunitz was to diminish Prussian power, and Johannes Kunisch has drawn attention to a passage in Clausewitz's essay Uber Koalitionen , which argues that, without the Seven Years War, Frederick would have retained an intact army and led it on to further aggrandizements. [171

The history of the Prussian army lends credence to this hypothesis. The army which had won Rossbach and Leuthen had been battered beyond repair by the Austrians and Russians, and after the war the efforts on the part of Frederick to repair the damage only made its condition worse, in all but the material sense. It is not impossible that the strivings of Kaunitz had, unkown to himself, consolidated Austria's position against her northern neighbor for generations to come.

Footnotes

1. Franz Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753-1780, Cambridge 1994, esp. pp. 49-60.
2. To Montazet, Archives de Guerre, Vincennes, Correspondence Generale, Al 2433.
3. Communication from Professor Szabo.
4. Rapport ...contenant le Projet d'Etablissement d'un Conseil d'Etat ,December 9, 1760, HHStA (Haus-Hof and Staatsarchiv), Vienna, Staatskanzlei Vortrage 87.
5. To Maria Theresa, April 28, 1758, HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vortrage 82. On this evidence, Kaunitz would have taken issue with the 'revisionist' assessments of Pitt to be found, for example, in R.Middleton, The Bells of Victory. The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years War, 1757-1762, Cambridge 1985; and R.Harding , Amphibious Warefare in the Eighteenth Century. The British Expedition to the West Indies 1740-42, London 1991.
6. Daun to Maria Theresa, October 23, 1761; Kriegsarchiv, Vienna Cabinets Akten 1761 X 10.
7. 'Votum des Hof and Staats Canzlern Grafens zu Kaunitz Rittberg, October 17, 1761,' HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vortrage 88.
8. Quoted in Georg Kuntzel , Furst Kaunitz-Rittberg als Staatsmann, Fankfurt-am-Main 1932, 32.
9. HHStA, Staatskanzlei Vortrage 80.
10. See the "Note pour le Mll Daun' , early 1758, Moravski Zemski Archiv, Brno, G 436, communicated by Professor Szabo ; also Hans Bleckwenn Graf Kaunitz. Votum uber das Militare, 1762 (Zeitgenossische Studien ueber die altpreussische Armee), Osnabruck 1974 - this important document has been re-dated by Professor Szabo to October 1761, see Szabo, Kaunitz, 279.
11. D.E. Bangert , Die russisch-osterreichsiche militarische Zusammenarbeit im siebenjahrigen Kriege in den Jahren 1758-1759, Boppard 1971, 345.
12. Brown to Kaunitz, August 18, 1756, HHStA, Kriegsakten 413.
13. Szabo, Kaunitz, 278-9.
14. Kaunitz to Maria Theresa, November 15, 1762, HHStA Staatskanzlei Vortrage 90.
15. Conor Cruise O'Brien , The Wrath of Ages. Nationalism's Primordial Roots, review article, in Foreign Affairs, 72, no. 5 (New York 1993) 145.
16. Uriel Dann , Hanover and Great Britain 1740-1760, Leicester 1991, 108-9.
17. Johannes Kunisch , Die grosse Allianz der Gegner Preussens im siebenjahrigen Kriege; Munich 1989, p. 97.

Count Kaunitz Rietberg, Military Strategist: 1756-1763

Introduction
The Spheres of the Military Activity of Kaunitz
Some Final Assessments