Polish Intervention: Thirty Years War

The Ottomans defeated the Poles, who were supporting the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years' War, at the Battle of Cecora in September–October 1620, but were not able to further intervene efficiently before the Bohemian defeat at the Battle of the White Mountain in November 1620. File:Defending the Polish banner at Chocim, by Juliusz Kossak, 1892


The attack on Transylvania followed long Habsburg efforts to enlist Polish support. Poland was potentially a more important ally than Spain, and Sigismund III was as devout a Catholic as Philip III. Poland’s military power was to be demonstrated in 1621 when it was to raise an army of 45,000 backed by 40,000 Cossacks. More significantly, Poland bordered on Silesia and Hungary, placing it in a direct position to help, and it had signed a mutual assistance pact in 1613 promising aid against rebellions. As Emperor Ferdinand’s sister, the Polish queen naturally championed intervention, but the king remained undecided. His own ambitions remained firmly fixed on the Baltic and he was disappointed at his in-law’s lack of assistance when Sweden invaded Livonia in 1617–18. (Ferdinand would again fail to help against a second invasion in 1621.) Sigismund also had to consider his nobles who preferred raiding against their traditional targets, the Turks and Muscovites. However, the Russians had made peace in December 1618, widening Sigismund’s options.

Many Polish clergy were receptive to Habsburg arguments that the Protestant Bohemians posed a common threat. Sigismund had instructed his son Wladyslaw to decline a Bohemian invitation to stand in their royal election. As the situation worsened during 1619, Ferdinand held out inducements, including an offer to relinquish the bishopric of Breslau to Poland. Many Polish historians regard the Thirty Years War as a lost opportunity, arguing that Sigismund should have accepted this offer, or grabbed Silesia by playing the role later adopted by Sweden and joining the German Protestants. Sigismund had no such plans. Instead, he sought a way of satisfying the Polish pro-Habsburg lobby without committing himself to a long war that would distract from his primary objective of recovering Sweden. The leaders of the Sejm agreed, because limited intervention provided a way of removing the 30,000 unpaid Cossacks. These troops had been discharged after the recent war with Russia and their raiding across the southern frontier risked provoking a new conflict with the sultan. The Cossacks have entered history as the Lisowczycy, after their original commander, Aleksander Lisowczycy, a Lithuanian veteran who commanded a regiment in the Russian war. The Lisowczycy were the kind of cavalry that ‘God would not want and the Devil was afraid of’. Unlike the traditional Polish cavalry, they wore no body armour, relying on speed and fake retreats to lure opponents into traps. They were happy to be paid, but also fought for booty, deliberately terrorizing civilians into submission.

The Habsburg ambassador intended to recruit the Cossacks to reinforce the imperial army, but they were reluctant to serve too far from home in a land they considered full of impregnable fortresses where plunder would be hard to take. Plans were changed so that 4,000 Lisowczycy joined 3,000 other Cossacks recruited by György Homonnai, an Upper Hungarian magnate who was also a member of the Transylvanian Estates and a personal enemy of Bethlen, who he believed had cheated him in that country’s election of 1613. Having been driven into exile, Homonnai had already fostered two failed rebellions. He now struck across from his estates in Podolia at the end of October 1619. Bethlen had left Rákóczi with only 4,000 men in Transylvania, refusing to believe Homonnai posed a threat. The two armies met near Ztropka (Stropkow in modern Slovakia) on 22 November, where Rákóczi’s men were routed after they mistook the classic feigned retreat for the real thing.

Homonnai’s attack fuelled an already volatile situation in east Central Europe. Despite the grand vizier’s promise, the Ottomans had hesitated to break their truce with the Habsburgs. Nonetheless, they regarded Bethlen as their client and did not want him driven from Transylvania, especially by the Poles who were already interfering in neighbouring Moldavia. Peace had just been concluded with Persia, allowing the sultan to send the Tartars, backed by Ottoman regulars, into Moldavia where they routed a Polish relief force at Cecora in October 1620. Sigismund sent a huge army the following year that entrenched at Chocim (Hotim) on the Dneister and managed to repel almost twice its number of Tartars and Turks. Fresh problems with Sweden forced Sigismund to agree peace later in 1621, restoring the pre-1619 situation, though Poland had to accept the sultan’s candidate as prince of Moldavia. This conflict was separate from the Thirty Years War, but nonetheless proved significant for the Empire in preventing Poland and the Ottomans from intervening.

The threat to Bethlen was already receding before he left his camp outside Vienna. He had arrested most of Homonnai’s supporters after the earlier rebellions. Finding few willing to support him, Homonnai was already in retreat by 2 December. With the wider situation remaining unclear, Bethlen was nonetheless forced to accept the mediation of the Hungarian diet, agreeing an eight-month truce with Ferdinand on 16 January 1620. Bethlen remained a threat to Ferdinand, but the immediate danger had passed.

Sigismund refused to allow the Lisowczycy back into Poland, and redirected them along the mountains into Silesia to join the imperial army. Five detachments totalling 19,000 fighters set out between January and July 1620, though some were intercepted by the Silesian militia. The steady reinforcement enabled Bucquoy to resume the offensive, launching three attacks from Krems in March, April and early June against Thurn’s Bohemians and Austrians entrenched around Langenlois to the north. The Silesians and Moravians returned, bringing the Confederate army up to 25,000 by May when Anhalt arrived to take command. They were joined by 8,000 Hungarian and Transylvanian cavalry sent by Bethlen who, despite Ferdinand’s generous terms, still distrusted the emperor and decided to re-enter the war. Bethlen and Frederick had already sent a joint delegation to Constantinople in March 1620 to seek Ottoman assistance for the revolt. Mehmed Aga reached Prague in July to deliver the sultan’s belated congratulations on Frederick’s coronation. He asked to see where the Defenestration had taken place and enthusiastically promised 60,000 Ottoman auxiliaries for Bohemia. Many in Prague were deeply uncomfortable with courting the Ottomans, yet the leadership was seduced by the fantastical scheme of a grand alliance smashing both Poland and the Habsburgs. Scultetus did a theological somersault to stress common ground between Calvinism and Islam, while Baron Tschernembl argued any means were justified provided they saved the true cause from the papists. Despite misgivings, Frederick wrote to the sultan on 12 July, making Bohemia a tributary state of the Ottoman empire in return for assistance. A delegation of a hundred Bohemians, Hungarians and Transylvanians set out for Constantinople with 70,000 fl. in bribes to seal the deal. Meanwhile, Frederick promised 300,000 fl. to Bethlen, even pawning his jewels to raise the first instalment.

With support growing, and having easily repulsed another attack by Homonnai in August 1620, Bethlen seized control of the diet at Neusohl in Upper Hungary. This had convened in May at Ferdinand’s request to broker peace among all Hungarians. Bethlen’s supporters declared the abolition of the clerical Estate and the confiscation of the property of all who opposed them. Ferdinand ordered the diet to disband on 13 August. Twelve days later, Bethlen’s supporters elected him king of Hungary. Throughout, the solidly Catholic Croatian diet (Sabor) rejected the Hungarians’ overtures and aligned itself with its Inner Austrian neighbours, still loyal to the Habsburgs.

THE HEGEMONY OF FRANCE I

Adam Frans van der Meulen - Louis XIV Arriving in the Camp in front of Maastricht.

The Peace of Saint-Germain provides only one of many examples of what can reasonably be called the hegemony of France during the second half of the seventeenth century, ‘hegemony’ here being used in the dictionary sense of ‘leadership, predominance, preponderance; especially the leadership or predominant authority of one state of a confederacy or union over the others’. As we have seen, out of the French monarchy’s trials and tribulations of the 1640s and 1650s there developed an apparatus effective enough to make France’s overwhelming demographic and material advantage tell. No other country was blessed with human material resources so deep and so varied. The power that resulted was given majestic visual expression in the Salon of War at Versailles, whose decorative scheme was begun in 1678. The room is dominated by an enormous bas-relief by Antoine Coysevox, depicting ‘Louis XIV on horseback, trampling on his enemies and crowned by glory’, while a smaller bas-relief below shows the muse Clio dutifully recording his exploits for posterity. On the ceiling, the central fresco by Charles Le Brun depicts ‘France in arms, sitting on a cloud surrounded by victories’, and holding a shield bearing the image of the Sun King. This is surrounded by four further frescoes identifying the vanquished: an impotently menacing Spain, a collapsing Dutch Republic, a grovelling Germany and a subdued spirit of civil strife. As if that were not enough, next door in the Hall of Mirrors, seventeen of the twenty-seven ceiling paintings are devoted to victories in war and diplomacy. Well might Saint-Simon lament in 1695 that this sort of gloating triumphalism had played a significant part in uniting the rest of Europe against the hegemon: ‘have they not played a little part in irritating all of Europe and causing it once again to league against the person of the king and his kingdom?’

Louis XIV’s power, which had allowed him to reverse the verdict of five years of warfare between Sweden and Brandenburg, rested on several foundations. One was the settlement that brought the Thirty Years War to an end in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia gave France very little in terms of territory–ten towns in Alsace and the fortress of Breisach–but a great deal in terms of security. The formal recognition of Dutch independence by Spain greatly diminished, if it did not entirely dispel, the nightmare dating back to the late fifteenth century of encirclement by Habsburg territory. The agreement with the German princes forced on the Emperor Ferdinand III meant that his father’s dreams of turning the Holy Roman Empire into a monarchical state had receded half-way to oblivion. The soft centre of Europe was to remain soft and, now that both France and her Swedish satrap were guarantors of the Westphalian settlement, the way was open for future intervention in German affairs to make sure that it stayed that way. The French diplomat who remarked that the Peace of Westphalia was ‘one of the finest jewels in the French crown’ would have enjoyed reading Geoffrey Barraclough’s later verdict: ‘broken, divided, economically weak, and lacking any sense of national unity, Germany became virtually a French protectorate: even in the imperial diet at Regensburg the dominant voice was that of the French ambassador’.

As we shall see later, that contemptuous dismissal of the Holy Roman Empire is at the very least exaggerated. In the short term too, the French voice everywhere in Europe was stifled by the civil disturbances known as the Frondes, which began just a few months after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia and lasted for the best part of five years. One reason for their prolongation was their cross-fertilization with the continuing war between France and Spain, the only major international conflict not to have been resolved in 1648. Neatly encapsulating this interaction between foreign and domestic strife was the final major battle of the war, outside Dunkirk on 14 June 1658, when the French army was commanded by the vicomte de Turenne, younger son of the duc de Bouillon, and the Spanish army by the prince de Condé, Louis XIV’s cousin. Both men had served on both sides during the Frondes. Moreover, on the French side there was a substantial force of English soldiers, sent by Lord Protector Cromwell, and on the Spanish side a substantial force of English (and Irish) soldiers, commanded by the Duke of York, brother of the exiled Charles II. The ‘battle of the Dunes’ ended in a decisive victory for the Anglo-French forces and paved the way for the Peace of the Pyrenees, signed in November the following year. This took France’s southern frontier to the eponymous mountain range by the acquisition of Roussillon and Cerdagne, while the northern frontier was extended by the acquisition of Artois and some fortified towns in Flanders. The prospect of far greater gains in the future was also opened up by the marriage of Philip IV’s daughter Maria Theresa to Louis XIV. Although she formally gave up all claims to the Spanish throne, her renunciation was conditional on a substantial dowry being paid, a remote contingency in view of endemic Spanish insolvency. Not that anyone supposed that such a pledge would be allowed to interfere with the prosecution of French interests. Back in 1646 when such a match was first mooted, Cardinal Mazarin had stated bluntly, ‘once the Infanta marries His Majesty, we can hope for the succession to the Spanish thrones, whatever renunciations she has to make’.

Two years later, when Mazarin died, Louis took personal control of his country. What is perhaps most surprising about his personal rule is that he took so long to start throwing his weight about. In 1664 the Pensionary of Holland, Johan de Witt, composed a prescient memoir in which he observed that as France now had ‘a twenty-six-year-old king, vigorous of body and spirit, who knows his mind and who acts on his own authority, who possesses a kingdom populated by an extremely bellicose people and with very considerable wealth’, war was inevitable, for such a king would have to ‘have an extraordinary and almost miraculous moderation, if he stripped himself of the ambition which is so natural to princes…to extend his frontiers’. De Witt was the most important official of the most dynamic and prosperous republic in Europe, but his belief that monarchs had an inbuilt expansionist streak was well-founded. As John Lynn has argued, war was not a means to an end but an essential attribute of sovereignty, to be pursued by a king for its own sake. For only success in war could bestow the ‘gloire’ that formed the core of the royal and aristocratic value-system. As Cardinal de Retz put it: ‘that which makes men truly great and raises them above the rest of the world is the love of la belle gloire’.

When Mazarin told his protégé that ‘it is up to you to become the most glorious king that has ever been’, he did not have social welfare or economic prosperity in mind. Louis got his first opportunity to achieve martial glory when Philip IV of Spain died. On behalf of his wife, Louis claimed parts of the Spanish Netherlands (Brabant, the marquisate of Antwerp, Limburg, Malines, Upper Gelders, Namur) and a third of Franche-Comté under the local ‘law of devolution’, by which the daughters of a first marriage took precedence over the sons of a subsequent union. In fact, the right of devolution was a private not a public law, as the Spanish could easily demonstrate. Undeterred, in 1667 Louis prosecuted this claim by sending an army under Turenne into the Netherlands in May and another under Condé (now back in favour) into Franche-Comté the following February. As if to emphasize the royal virility exemplified by this exercise, he himself set off for war in a carriage containing, among others, his wife and two mistresses. Military success was total, but it provoked a less agreeable diplomatic response in the shape of a hostile triple alliance of the Dutch Republic, Sweden and England. At the Peace of Aachen, signed on 2 May 1668, Franche-Comté had to be handed back, but several towns in the north were gained: Bergues, Furnes, Armentières, Oudenaarde, Courtrai, Douai, Tournai, Binche, Ath, Charleroi and–most importantly–Lille.

This was a triumph sufficient to unleash a torrent of odes, medals, paintings and statues, but the manner in which his progress had been checked clearly stuck in Louis’ craw. In particular, he was outraged by the ‘ingratitude, bad faith and insupportable vanity’ of the Dutch, traditionally France’s ally but now taking the view that a flaccid Spain was a more attractive neighbour than a rampant France: Gallicus amicus sed non vicinus (France as a friend but not as a neighbour). As the ‘royal historiographer’ Racine put it, the Dutch Republic had been ‘blinded by prosperity, [and so] it failed to recognize the hand that so many times had strengthened and supported it. Leagued with the enemies of France, it preferred to give the law to Europe and prided itself on limiting the conquests of the King.’ To add insult to injury, French suggestions that the two countries might partition the Spanish Netherlands went unheeded. There were also commercial considerations at stake, for Colbert believed that whereas the Dutch had 15–16,000 ships and the English had 3–4,000, the French had just 600 and that, as a result, Dutch shipping annually drained 4,000,000 livres from France. Dutch retaliation for the protective tariffs imposed in 1667 by banning imports of wines and spirits from France was another bone of contention.

After the slippery Charles II of England had been detached from the Triple Alliance by the secret Treaty of Dover of 1670, the eastern frontier had been secured by the occupation of the Duchy of Lorraine in 1670, and the support of two strategically important German ecclesiastical states (Cologne and Münster) had been purchased, Louis declared war on the Dutch in April 1672. At first, the enormous French army of around 130,000, led by Turenne, Condé and the duc de Luxembourg under the overall command of the King in person, carried all before it, not surprisingly as it enjoyed a numerical advantage of four to one. In twenty-two days they captured forty towns and were within striking distance of Amsterdam, defended by a garrison of just 20,000. Then things went wrong. Indeed, with the advantage of hindsight, it might even be argued that this was the turning point of the reign. For Louis now committed the same cardinal sin that was to preordain the failure of Napoleon: he forgot that war should be nothing more than the continuation of policy by other means and allowed military success to dictate his war aims. With total victory apparently certain, he dictated terms to the Dutch that were ‘as brutal and uncompromisingly vindictive as any that European powers have inflicted on each other in the course of their history as nation states’ (Simon Schama). They amounted to territorial, financial, economic, religious and military subjection. As a reminder of their subservient status, a Dutch delegation was to attend the King of France each year, bearing a medallion giving visual expression to their repentance, subjection and gratitude for being allowed to retain even a vestige of their independence. Just to rub it in, the cathedral of Utrecht was reconsecrated as a Catholic place of worship and the first Mass for a hundred years was celebrated with suitable triumphalist pomp.

In this crisis the Dutch leadership did not distinguish itself, although victory at sea over a combined French and English fleet on 6 June showed that their enemies were not invincible. On land, the dykes were breached to create a defensive ‘water line’ running from Muiden before Amsterdam to Gorcum on the river Waal. Yet the mood in the councils remained defeatist and Louis XIV might well have secured a surrender if the common people of the towns had not risen to demand resistance and the appointment of William of Orange to lead it. On 2 and 3 July, William was proclaimed Stadtholder of Zealand and Holland respectively. Although the war went badly for some months to come, the corner had been turned. And not just for the Dutch Republic: for the first time, a major European state was in the hands of a ruler with the necessary intelligence, determination and resources to arrest the French juggernaut. This is one of the great might-have-beens of world history. If Jonathan Israel is correct in his view that the ‘water line’ could have been crossed easily for two weeks after it was flooded, because a dry summer had reduced water levels, a final French advance might well have brought the permanent subjection of the Dutch Republic, its navy, its commerce and its overseas empire.

Louis XIV Expansions I

The siege of Spanish-occupied Dunkirk, 1658, by Turenne's Franco-English forces, covered by ships of the Royal Navy.

The Netherlands of the seventeenth century was a disjointed group of provinces. The northern area was known as the United Provinces and was controlled by the Dutch, whereas the southern provinces (modern Belgium) were under the control of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy, which had ruled all of the Netherlands prior to the successful Dutch rebellion in the sixteenth century. The southern provinces first attracted French interest when King Louis XIV decided to establish a more secure northern border at the expense of the Spanish, who had long been French rivals.

Louis believed that the Scheldt River should serve as a natural northern boundary for France, and in 1667 he set about to make it so.

Louis had an extremely tenuous legal claim to that territory through his marriage to Spanish Princess Maria Theresa, who was the daughter of Philip IV by his first marriage. Though Charles II 100 came to the throne, he was the son of Philip’s second marriage. Louis claimed that Maria Theresa’s inheritance should outrank that of the progeny of Philip’s second marriage and, therefore, the Netherlands were Maria Theresa’s by right. It was an incredibly weak claim, but almost no one was in a position to challenge it. Louis had created one of the largest European armies ever, numbering some 120,000 men, and he entered the Spanish Netherlands on 24 May 1667. He enjoyed early success against the unprepared Spanish. By October, Louis’ general Turenne captured a vast number of towns and forts and controlled the entire area. Having accomplished such easy victories in the north, Louis turned eastward in 1668 to occupy the Habsburg province of Franche-Comte on the Swiss frontier.

No one was prepared for Louis to launch a winter offensive, but he ordered Conde, the governor of Burgundy, to do just that. Conde’s force of 15,000 invaded the province on 3 February 1668 and conquered it in two weeks. Louis rode to Franche-Comte to accept the surrenders of the local leaders; within three weeks the province was in French hands before any other country could react.

Louis had spent the last months of 1667 negotiating with possible rivals, and had threatened or bribed many into submission, or at least cooperation. Most German princes accepted his bribes and stayed clear of his military power. In January he concluded a secret treaty with Leopold, Holy Roman Emperor, in which Louis would cede to him the Spanish throne upon the imminent death of Charles II; he would also give up French claims in the West Indies, Milan, and Tuscany. In return, Louis would receive the Spanish Netherlands, Franche-Comte, Naples, Sicily, and Spanish possessions in Africa and the Philippines. Though the treaty would reward him handsomely and confirm his possession of France’s northern frontier, it depended on Charles II’s death, and that could not be predicted. Therefore, Louis continued plans for invading deeper into the Netherlands.

Afraid of his aggression, three nations allied themselves to oppose Louis. Holland convinced Sweden and England to join forces, and the alliance proposed a negotiation period through May 1668, beyond which the three nations would make war against France on land and sea. Louis’ advisers were divided on the wisdom of continuing the fighting. Spain had been unable to provide troops for the defense of the Netherlands because of problems at home, but the Spanish had made peace with Portugal and might now turn their attention to Louis. The possibility of being surrounded convinced Louis that the secret treaty with Leopold was worth waiting for, so he entered into negotiations with his opponents and signed the Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle on 29 May 1668. Under this treaty Louis kept only two small pieces of land along the northern French province of Artois.

The invasion Louis launched in the summer of 1667, sometimes called the War of Devolution, was nothing more than a precursor of fighting to come. It proved his ability to handle international diplomacy, and it was the first serious military campaign in which he himself participated; this gave him increased confidence in the ability of his nation and his subordinates, and provided France with a small province that acted as a buffer for possible Austrian or Swiss invasion into northern France. The peace signed in May 1668 proved to be nothing more than a ceasefire, and Louis invaded the Netherlands again in 1672.

Louis realized that to gain control of the Spanish Netherlands as soon as he hoped, he would have to break the Dutch, who feared France as an immediate neighbor. Between the two wars, Louis broke the Triple Alliance of Holland, England, and Sweden. Sweden had long had profitable trade relations with France, and was easily convinced to change sides. Remarkably, England proved almost as easy. Though the two nations had long been at odds, England’s King Charles II was a Catholic ruling a predominantly Protestant country, and he had continual troubles with Parliament. Louis offered moral support not only as a fellow Catholic but as a fellow monarch, one who exercised more power in his country than did Charles in England. The thought of gaining personal power at the expense of Parliament (as well as strengthening English naval dominance at Dutch expense) appealed to Charles, and he fell in with Louis’ plans in 1670. The Holy Roman Empire maintained the neutrality it had pledged in the secret 1668 treaty, and most German princes were quiet or cooperative with French bribes. Holland was isolated, and Louis could depend on the British navy to counter the Dutch fleet.

Britain struck first, declaring war on Holland in March 1672. Louis was quick to follow up with an army much strengthened since the end of the last war. Aided by the talented general Turenne, who had trained Louis’ army, and the brilliant fortification engineer Vauban, Louis had what seemed to be an unbeatable force. French armies rolled into Holland, and towns fell with remarkable ease. The country seemed helpless before the onslaught, and was saved only by Louis himself, who ignored Turenne’s advice for a quick drive on to Amsterdam in favor of laying siege to a number of forts that he could easily have bypassed. The hesitation in attacking Amsterdam saved the Dutch. They sacrificed years of work for their own defense: They broke the dikes and flooded the approaches to the capital city.

No one expected such a radical maneuver, and it brought French operations to a halt. A change of government in Holland brought William of Orange to power, and he proposed to cede Maastrict and the Rhine towns and pay a large indemnity. Louis refused that, and a later, more generous offer. Louis’ pride cost him dearly, because he gave up the chance to gain virtually all he wanted for little cost. Instead, he demanded that the Dutch demilitarize their southern border and pay a higher indemnity, which they refused. War was declared, but the flooding ended campaigning in the Netherlands for a while. The following summer, a new coalition formed to oppose Louis; it was made up of the Dutch, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Spanish. They successfully captured cities in German states Louis had previously bribed. Louis’ money proved too little an inducement to resist the new coalition; most German states began to join it because they were Protestant and feared Louis’ increasingly Catholic viewpoint. Britain also pulled out of the conflict when Parliament forced Charles II to make peace with Holland.

Louis was now isolated but undaunted. He ordered Turenne to invade the Franche-Comte, which he had so easily conquered in 1668. The campaign took six months and provoked a response from the coalition. In August 1674, they drove Turenne back along the Rhine frontier and threatened to invade, held back only by the arrival of winter. Turenne surprised them with another winter offensive just after Christmas and secured the French frontier by a successful campaign in Alsace. After that, the war settled into one of defense. Turenne died in July 1675, and Louis lost his most able general. Conde replaced Turenne, but failing health forced his retirement by the end of the year.

Louis spent his time between the battlefield and Versailles, and in the spring of 1676 was back with his troops. He was in a position to score a significant victory over William’s forces near Valenciennes, but hesitated when he received conflicting opinions from his advisers. He returned to his favorite pastime of siegecraft, and the Dutch army remained intact. The French navy was successful in the Mediterranean in 1676, but the lack of progress on land, coupled with a rising discontent among segments of the French population, gave Louis pause. The destruction in the frontier provinces was costly, and he had had to increase taxes and revert to the sale of offices to pay for this war. There was little active campaigning in 1677 other than some successful sieges, but William of Orange married Mary, daughter of England’s James II, a union which could presage a closer Anglo-Dutch bond, and this worried Louis. In 1678 he agreed to peace terms at Nijmegen in Holland, then concluded separate treaties with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Though required to surrender many Dutch towns, he acquired many more in the Spanish Netherlands and had a belt of fortresses covering his northern frontier reaching from Dunkirk to the Meuse River. The two conflicts against the Netherlands had taken France to the height of its prestige, power not to be seen again until the time of Napoleon. The financial cost had provoked some domestic discontent, but Louis’ success solidified his strength as absolute monarch. It also whetted his appetite for more glory and more secure borders, both of which he pursued in later campaigns: the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession.

References: Hassall, Arthur, Louis XIV and the Zenith of French Monarchy (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1972 [1895]); Israel, Jonathan, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Sonino, Paul, Louis XIV and the Origins of the Dutch War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Imperial Russia and the Caucasus and Iran

Count Pavel Tsitsianov.

This painting once decorated the Abbas Mirza's palace. Depicted on this huge canvas is the defeat of the Russian Trinity Infantry Regiment in the battle near Sultanabad, which took place on 13 February 1812. Persian soldiers wearing European uniforms and bearing Persian banners, on which a lion holds a sabre in its paw against a background of the rising sun.

This painting by Franz Roubaud illustrates an episode when 493 Russians for two weeks repelled attacks by a 20,000-strong Persian army. They made a "live bridge", so that two cannons could be transported over their bodies.

Imperial Russia had not forgotten the dreams of Peter the Great: the conquest of the Caucasus, domination of Iran and the Persian Gulf with ambitions towards British India. Fathali Shah and Iran would soon be facing the might of imperial Russia, a military challenge for which the armies of the Qajars were wholly unprepared.

Iran was ruled by a series of princes in the major cities and provinces as well as tribes beholden to their leaders. The country would be stable so long as these forces acknowledged the shah’s authority, however the large degree of autonomy in the provinces did facilitate rebellion against the government or center. When Iran faced the armies of Russia, a series of rebellions broke out in the northeast (Khorasan) as well as the north (Astarabad and Mazandaran). These types of rebellions often forced the diversion of troops to provincial areas when they could otherwise have been used in critical battles against foreign armies. An example of fickle khans and the threats these posed to Qajar military activities in Khorasan as late as 1832 is provided by Hedayat’s Fihrist ol Tavareekh. Iran was to eventually lose all of the Caucasus due to a combination of Qajar mismanagement, outdated technology, and opportunistic khans who were willing to side with the Russians in hopes of increasing their personal wealth and status.

Agha Mohammad Khan’s assassination left his conquests in Georgia unconsolidated, inviting the Russians to forcibly pursue the establishment of their preferred Russo-Iranian border, as far south as the Kura River and even the Araxes River bordering Azarbaijan. There are indications that Fathali Shah did seek better relations with the Russians, especially in the earlier days of his rule. Tsar Paul was willing to accommodate Fathali Shah’s overtures and reciprocated by agreeing that Russian merchants should pay duties on goods they imported to Iran, the export of 18,000 tons of iron into Iran and that Russian warships not enter the port of Anzali arbitrarily. Despite these constructive acts of accommodation, the thorny issue of Georgia remained. No Iranian shah could conceive of ruling just a part of Iran by abandoning its other provinces, a practice which had occurred at the time of Karim Khan and Shahrokh Afshar. Fathali viewed Georgia as a prized province that had to be restored to the Iranian state. Tsar Paul I in turn was determined to treat Georgia as his protectorate, making the prospect of war all but inevitable.

The pattern of events unfolded as they had before. Fathali Shah wrote a highly threatening letter to Giorgi XII (son of Heraclius who had died in 1798), the new king of Karli-Kakheti, in the summer of 1798 ordering him to submit to his authority or face the prospect of “doubly increased subjection… Georgia will again be annihilated… Georgian people given to our wrath.” Giorgi XII sent emissaries to St. Petersburg in September 1800 in order to negotiate a new pact with Tsar Paul I (r. 1796–1801), The pact entitled Paul I to nominate himself as the tsar of Russia and Georgia, thereby considering the latter as a Russian protectorate. Giorgi also demanded that his eldest son David succeed him as king of Georgia.

Confrontation was also hastened by Russian imperialist ambitions. Andreeva has noted that “Territorial aggrandizement … would make the empire rich and … the empire could in return benefit subject peoples by introducing them to civilization and Christianity.”  Russia was a major European power, thanks to her “absorption of western technology and military skills…” as well as her participation in the Napoleonic wars and European politics. From St. Petersburg, Iran and her Caucasian possessions looked ripe for imperial conquest and economic domination.

Catherine the Great had considered Georgia as the lynchpin of Russian foreign policy to her south. From Georgia Russia could project its military power against both the Iranians and the Ottomans. The Russian navy would also benefit greatly from having access to Georgia’s western ports along the Black Sea. With ports already established in southern Russia, access to Georgian seaports would transform the Black Sea into a Russian-dominated lake. As Georgia and the Caucasus stood at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, control of this region would greatly benefit Russian commerce. Control of Georgia as well as the khanates to its east and south would allow the Russians to dominate the maritime trade of both the Black and Caspian seas. Control of the Caspian Sea would allow the Russians to extend their maritime and commercial interests into northern Iran and Central Asia.