Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748)
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The second Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) of 1748 ended the War of the Austrian Succession. A congress assembled at the Imperial Free City of Aachen, in the west of the Holy Roman Empire, on April 24, 1748. The resulting treaty was signed on October 18, 1748.
France and Britain mostly negotiated the treaty, and the other powers involved in the war followed their lead. The terms of the treaty were:
- A general restitution of conquests. The French returned the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch barrier towns to their owners, and restored Madras in India to the British. The British, on their part, returned the fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in Canada.
- Empress Maria Theresa had to cede the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla in northern Italy to her enemy, Duke Philip of Parma from Spain, and various territories in western Lombardy to her ally, the King of Sardinia.
- The Duchy of Modena and the Republic of Genoa were restored.
- The Asiento contract and the right to send an annual vessel to the Spanish colonies, both guaranteed to Great Britain by the March 16, 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, were confirmed and renewed.
In essence, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and the War of Austrian Succession concluded status quo ante bellum. In the commercial struggle between England and France in the West Indies, Africa, and India, nothing was settled; the treaty was thus no basis for a lasting peace.
In France, there was a general resentment at what was seen as a foolish throwing away of advantages (particularly in the Austrian Netherlands, which had largely been conquered by the brilliant strategy of Marshal Saxe), and it came to be popular in Paris to use the phrase "bête comme la paix" ("stupid as the peace").
Italy, however, gained stability for the first time in the eighteenth century.
The new territorial settlement and the accession of the pacific Ferdinand VI of Spain allowed the Aachen settlement to last until the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792. Spain later raised objections to the Asiento clauses, and the Treaty of Madrid, signed on October 5, 1750, stipulated that Great Britain surrendered her claims under those clauses in return for a sum of £100,000.
