Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/338

 326 THE BOURBON AGE and England was what we must call inevitable, not on dynastic grounds, but because the two nations were not prepared to go shares in India and in North America. It was also extremely improbable that the long-standing dispute between England and Spain over the right to trade in South America would have got settled without war, but even here it was dynastic rather than national considerations which caused Spain and Wars of the France to unite against England. Yet this was a Eighteenth war in which the rest of Europe had no interest. Century. r^^ Q regt ^ £ ur0 p e was fighting over the question of the Austrian succession. In that war there was one com- batant who cared nothing whatever about the succession question, but was playing entirely for the extension and security of his own dominion. But for the personality of this one man, Frederick the Great, the war would not have had the same effect on Europe ; but owing to his personality Prussia emerged at the end as a first-class military power. This group of wars in its second stage, called the Seven Years' War, became resolved into a struggle for life and for empire, no longer dynastic in its motives. But even before this group of wars began there was another dynastic war of succession in which most of Europe managed to involve itself, though the stubborn determination of Walpole kept Great Britain free from it; so that she waxed in wealth, while the rest of the nations were exhausting themselves, and so was better able than any of them to endure the strain when she herself was ultimately plunged into war. Augustus of Saxony and Poland wanted his son to succeed him on the Polish throne. His old rival, Stanislaus Leczinski, The Polish now father-in-law of the King of France, wanted the Succession, succession for himself. The powers for their own 1733, ends took one side or the other. But for the anxiety of the emperor Charles vi. as to the succession to his own dominions, there would probably have been no general con- flagration, since Russia was quite determined that the second Augustus of Saxony should be king, and France was only half- hearted in supporting Leczinski. But Charles wished his own daughter Maria Theresa to succeed to the Austrian inheritance,