in January, 1756, a defensive alliance with Prussia for the preservation of the existing peace, the mutual guaranty of Hanover and Silesia, and against the entrance of foreign troops into Germany. This mutation in the continental alliances of Great Britain produced a correspondent change in the federative system of France. She formed, in the month of May, in the same year, a defensive alliance with Austria, which was converted into an alliance offensive and defensive in 1758. Frederick commenced the seven years war by invading Saxony, and on his arrival at Dresden, found in the electoral archives, documents, which he published as proofs that the courts of Vienna, Dresden, and Petersburg, had concerted a plan for the invasion and partition of the Prussian monarchy. But the Count de Hertzberg, his confidential minister, in a memoir read before the Academy of Berlin, in 1787, admits that this plan was only eventual and presupposed that the king of Prussia should become the aggressor; that it was at least possible that the plan would never have been executed, and problematic whether the peril of this contingency would have been greater than that of provoking a war by which the national existence of Prussia was put at hazard. On the other hand, from the very valuable collection of state papers relating to the times of Frederick II, recently published by Mr. Von Raumer, it results in the opinion of that author:

1. That Frederick has not proved, and could not prove that a formal offensive alliance against him had been concluded between Austria, Russia, and Saxony.

the case of the Silesian loan, it is stated that in the maritime war terminated by the peace of Aix la Chapelle, French ships and effects wrongfully taken after the Spanish war, and before the French war were, flagrante bello, restored to the French owners, because had it not been for the wrong first done, these effects would not have been within the British territory. (Martens, Causes célèbres, tom. ii. p. 72.)

• Hertzberg, Recueil des Deductions, etc. tom. i. p. 1.

Schoell, Histoire abrégée des Traités de Paix, tom. iii. p. 28,

2. But the designs of these powers were unquestionably hostile. Austria cherished the natural wish to reconquer Silesia, and provoked Frederick to attack in order to avail herself of the aid of Russia and France for this end.

3. The king was aware of this danger, but he nevertheless drew on himself the appearance of being the aggressor,. because he was impressed with the conviction that he could not escape entire ruin except by anticipating the designs of his enemies. He professedly acted in self-defence according to the principle of his declaration to the British minister "that he who gave the first blow was not to be considered as the aggressor, but he that made that blow necessary and unavoidable."g

§ 3. Peace of Paris and

The peace of Utrecht studiously aimed to separate forever, the crowns of France and Spain. The family com- Hubertsburg. pact of 1761, sought again to reünite the two branches of the house of Bourbon, and to realize the prediction of Louis XIV, that there should be no more Pyrénées. By this treaty, concluded between the crowns of France and Spain, the two powers formed a perpetual alliance offensive and defensive, guarantying mutually their respective possessions, and agreeing on the conclusion of peace, to compensate the advantages which one party might obtain, with the losses sustained by the other. Spain became thus involved in the war between her ally and Great Britain and Portugal. The combined naval forces of France and Spain proved inadequate to cope with those of Great Britain, and the maritime war was terminated by the peace of Paris, in 1763. By this treaty France lost all her remaining possessions on the North American continent, Louisiana having been previously ceded to Spain by a secret treaty, as an indemnity for Florida, which Spain ceded to Great Britain by the treaty of Paris. France also ceded Grenada and several other West India Islands to her rival,

Von Raumer, Frederick II, and his Times, pp. 277, 294.

and renounced all her acquisitions in Hindostan made since the year 1749. The naval ascendency of Great Britain was thus confirmed, and the maritime and colonial balance of power completely destroyed.

The continental war was simultaneously terminated by the peace of Hubertsburg between Austria and Prussia which confirmed to the latter the possession of Silesia. The treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg revived and confirmed the treaties of Westphalia, Utrecht, and Aix la Chapelle. The seven years war by land and sea, was thus terminated, after an immense waste of blood and treasure, without any material change in the previous state of possession, except the colonial acquisitions made by Great Britain, at the expense of France and Spain.

Though the seven years war was thus terminated without any material change in the international relations of the states of Central and Southern Europe in respect to territorial possession, yet it marks the era of a very important alteration in the relative power and influence of the principal European nations, the effect of which is felt even at the present time.

1. The rank acquired by Prussia as a first rate power by the development of its military resources in the conquest of Silesia, and the brilliant genius displayed by its great monarch, in a protracted and unequal struggle with the combined forces of Austria, France, and Russia, was confirmed by the peace of Hubertsburg. A Protestant power arose in Germany adequate to balance the influence of Austria as a Catholic power, in the affairs of the empire, and to neutralize the effect of the Austrian alliance with. France. The seven years war was not a war of religion, but it was the last war waged in Europe in which religious feeling mingled with a struggle for political ascendency. The protestant peasantry of Silesia received Frederick as a deliverer, whilst the standards of Marshal Daun were consecrated by the pope. The triumph of Prussia was felt

to be the triumph of Protestantism, notwithstanding the indifference of her philosophic king.h

2. Russia now first took an active part in the affairs of central Europe. Under Czar Peter I, from a mere Asiatic, she became a European state, and from an inland, a maritime power. The treaty of Neustadt in 1721, annexed the provinces of Sweden, on the eastern shores of the Baltic, Livonia, Esthonia, and Ingria, to the Russian empire, which had gained by conquest a vast extent of territory, and not less than ten millions of population from the accession of Peter I, in 1689, to that of Catherine II, in 1762. 3. Besides the above cessions to Russia of territory equal to the whole extent of the present kingdom of Sweden, the latter power had been compelled to cede her German provinces of Bremen and Verden, to Hanover, with a part of Pomerania to Prussia. Sweden thus became impoverished and weakened, and lost her influence in Germany with that rank in Europe she had held ever since the thirty years war.

4. Spain, from being the first military and naval power in Europe, under Charles V and Philip II, though she still retained her immense colonial possessions, had fallen to the rank of a second rate power, the subordinate ally of France.

5. Holland remained neutral during the war of 1756, and thus concealed the secret of her internal decline, which was completely disclosed during the subsequent war of the American Revolution, when she fell into that subordinate rank she has ever since continued to occupy.

riod.

The period we are now reviewing was fruitful in exPublic jupounders of the science created by Gentili and Grotius, rists of this pecultivated with unequal success by Puffendorf, and transmitted to a long succession of public jurists, bred in the schools of Germany and Holland.

Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, herausgegeben von Gans, § 434.

§ 4. System

of Wolf.

success.

Christian Frederick Von Wolf, born in 1679, at Breslau in Silesia, was a disciple of Leibnitz in philosophy and in jurisprudence. His youth was devoted almost exclusively to mathematical studies, which he pursued at the university of Jena, and afterwards taught at Leipzic with eminent He was subsequently named professor at Halle on the recommendation of Leibnitz, where he taught the dogmatic philosophy of his great master, and contributed to popularize it, by giving instruction in the German language. He became the victim of theological hatred and calumny and was arbitrarily banished from the Prussian dominions on a charge of infidelity by king Frederick William I, in 1723.i On the accession of Frederick II to the throne in 1740, Wolf was recalled from banishment and restored to his professor's chair. He died in 1754, at the age of seventy-six years, after having contributed to prolong the reign of the Leibnitzian philosophy in Germany until it was finally overthrown by the system of Kant. "He was a man of little genius, originality, or taste, but whose extensive and various learning seconded by a methodical head, and by an incredible industry, and perseverance, seems to have been peculiarly fitted to command. the admiration of his countrymen."

The public jurists of the school of Puffendorf had con

i The following anecdote on this subject is told by Euler: "Lorsque du temps du feu roi de Prusse, M. Wolf enseignoit à Halle le systeme de l'harmonie préetablie, le roi s'informa de cette doctrine qui faisoit grand bruit alors; et un courtesan répondit à Sa Majesté, que tous les soldats, selon cette doctrine, n'étoient que des machines; et quand quelques uns désertoient, que c'était une suite nécessaire de leur structure et qu'on avoit tort par conséquent de les punir, comme on l'auroit si on punissoit une machine pour avoir produit tel ou tel mouvement. Le roi se facha si fort sur ce rapport, qu'il donna ordre de chasser M. Wolf de Halle sous peine d'être pendu s'il s'y trouvoit au bout de 24 heures." (Lettres à une Princesse d'Allemagne, Lettre 84 me.)

* Stewart's Dissertation on the Progress of Methaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, p. 188.