Excerpt from The Alliance of Hanover: A Study of British Foreign Policy in the Last Years of George I The purpose of the present work is to expose in detail British foreign policy during the time of European turmoil begun in the spring of 1725 with the treaties of Vienna and ended by the signature of preliminaries of peace with Austria and Spain in the early summer of 1727, just before the death of the protagonist in the combat, the experienced and strong-willed George I. The period is short, but full of incident, and the author hopes that information gathered mainly from original sources may be of use to students of history. The four years preceding the treaties of Vienna were years of calm in Europe. In the south, in 1721, Great Britain, France and Spain had made alliance under their treaty of Madrid of June, conspiring to force on Austria fulfilment of the conditions of the Quadruple Alliance, while in the north, in September, Peter the Great had concluded his Baltic work at Nystad. True, that during the remainder of his life he continued to keep Denmark and Hanover in affright, but his real attention he turned to new conquests on the Caspian. These were the years of the congress of Cambray, the actual business of which was transacted, until 1724, not there, but by interminable correspondence among the chanceries of the courts concerned. In the autumn of that year Elizabeth of Spain, weary of the futilities of the congress, determined to try the emperor privately. That singular emissary of hers, the baron de Ripperda, appeared at Vienna in the first days of 1725. At the same time the massacre of protestants at Thorn threatened war in Poland. In February 1725 Peter the Great died and the disordered reign of Catherine I began. In March Spain was violently sundered from France by the repudiation of the little infanta living at Paris as the intended bride of Louis XV. Elizabeth, in her wrath, grasped at terms offered by Charles VI which else had been contemptuously rejected. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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