46
THE SILESIAN WARS, 1740-5than enough for his allies, and, fearing that the French might shortly
be driven into signing a separate peace, he decided to anticipate them
b making an advantageous accommodation with the Austrians.
The negotiations went ahead at Breslau through the mediation
of the British envoy Hyndford. Acting under Frederick's instructions,
the foreign minister Podewils reached preliminary terms of peace
with the Austrians on 11 June. The definitive treaty was concluded in
July, and became known as the Peace of Breslau. It put an end to the
Prussian and Austrian conflict which is called the First Silesian War.
The Austrians made over Lower Silesia with Breslau, and all of
Upper Silesia except for some of the border townships and passes.
Frederick was sorry not to have gained Koniggratz and Pardubitz in
Bohemia, but he congratulated Podewils on 'a great and happy event
that has terminated this glorious war by putting us in possession of
one of the most flourishing provinces of Germany' (PC 888).
Frederick felt under an obligation to justify his conduct to
himself and others. In a long letter to Jordan he made the dubious
assertion that he had been let down by his allies, and he claimed that
having already acquired sufficient conquests, glory and military
experience he would have damaged his army and state if he had
remained at war any longer; lastly he sought to persuade Jordan that
the modern sovereign should be revered as a kind of martyr, for he
must be prepared to injure his conscience and his engagements for the
good of the people (13 June, Oeuvres, XVII, 226-7).
Frederick later worked up these ideas for the first printed volume
of his Histoire de Mon Temps, but a more positive and expansionist
driving force is revealed in the preface to the first draft, which was
written in 1743: 'Whether the state in question is tiny or huge, we
may be sure that aggrandisement is the fundamental law of the
government... The passions of princes are limited only by the extent
of their power. This is the immutable principle of European politics,
and every statesman must conform with it' (Koser, 1921, I, 401-2).
Frederick's conduct amounted to a clear contradiction of those
few, and probably uncharacteristic, passages of the Antimachiavel in
which he had once maintained that public and personal morality
were inseparable. Voltaire was too flattered by the attentions of a
great man to be able to break off his relationship with the King of
Prussia, but his confidence in Frederick, as a unique assemblage of
private and civic virtues, was never restored.
Frederick was now recognised as the legal master of the duchy of
Silesia and the County of Glatz. These territories represented a huge
accession of force to the Prussian monarchy. By 1752 Silesia yielded
more than one-quarter of the state revenues, and out of all the