great power, and skilled in
continental affairs. Carteret mainly followed the system of his
predecessor. It was in the union of Austria and Prussia that he looked
for the means of destroying the hold France had now established in
Germany by the election of her puppet, Charles of Bavaria, as Emperor;
and the pressure of England, aided by a victory of Frederick at
Chotusitz, forced Maria Theresa to consent to Walpole's plan of a peace
with Prussia at Breslau on the terms of the cession of Silesia. The
peace at once realized Carteret's hopes by enabling the Austrian army to
drive the French from Bohemia at the close of 1742, while the new
minister threw a new vigour into the warlike efforts of England itself.
One English fleet blockaded Cadiz, another anchored in the bay of Naples
and forced Don Carlos by a threat of bombarding his capital to conclude
a treaty of neutrality, and English subsidies detached Sardinia from the
French alliance.

[Sidenote: Dettingen.]

The aim of Carteret and of the Court of Vienna was now not only to set
up the Pragmatic Sanction, but to undo the French encroachments of 1736.
Naples and Sicily were to be taken back from their Spanish king, Elsass
and Lorraine from France; and the imperial dignity was to be restored to
the Austrian House. To carry out these schemes an Austrian army drove
the Emperor from Bavaria in the spring of 1743; while George the Second,
who warmly supported Carteret's policy, put himself at the head of a
force of 40,000 men, the bulk of whom were English and Hanoverians, and
marched from the Netherlands to the Main. His advance was checked and
finally turned into a retreat by the Duc de Noailles, who appeared with
a superior army on the south bank of the river, and finally throwing
31,000 men across it threatened to compel the king to surrender. In the
battle of Dettingen which followed, however, on the 27th June 1743, not
only was the allied army saved from destruction by the impetuosity of
the French horse and the dogged obstinacy with which the English held
their ground, but their opponents were forced to recross the Main. Small
as was the victory, it produced amazing results. The French evacuated
Germany. The English and Austrian armies appeared on the Rhine; and a
league between England, Prussia, and the Queen of Hungary, seemed all
that was needed to secure the results already gained.

[Sidenote: Fall of Carteret.]

But the prospect of peace was overthrown by t