Balance of Power

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

• Account for how European states tried to establish and maintain a balance of power on the continent between 1648 and 1815, identifying specific coalitions and treaties (LO E; Skill 3.A; KC-1.5.II, KC-1.5.II.A, KC-2.1.III).
• Account for how technological advances reshaped the developing balance of power on the continent between 1648 and 1815: infantry, firearms, mobile artillery, fortifications, and the larger taxation and bureaucracy that funded them (LO F; KC-1.5.II.B).
• Account for KC-2.1.III.B: how Austria's 1683 defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna halted Ottoman westward expansion and reshaped the eastern European balance of power.
• Account for KC-2.1.III.C: how Louis XIV's nearly continuous wars drew opposing European powers into coalitions against him.
• Account for KC-2.1.I.D: why Poland's monarchical weakness allowed Prussia, Russia, and Austria to partition the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, 1793, and 1795, removing it from the European map.

The European balance of power was a structural principle of post-Westphalian interstate relations and the central organizing concept of Unit 3's diplomatic history. KC-1.5.II captures the underlying point: the competitive European state system produced new patterns of diplomacy and new forms of warfare. Two sub-codes elaborate. KC-1.5.II.A: after the Peace of Westphalia, religion lost its central place as a cause of European interstate war; the concept of the balance of power organized diplomatic and military objectives in its place. KC-1.5.II.B: advances in military technology produced new forms of warfare that relied on infantry, firearms, mobile cannon, and elaborate fortifications, funded by heavier taxation and a larger bureaucracy. The military revolution tilted the balance of power toward states able to marshal the resources the new warfare demanded.

Three further sub-codes from KC-2.1.III specify the principal eighteenth-century cases. KC-2.1.III: after 1648, dynastic and state interests, together with Europe's expanding colonial empires, shaped European diplomacy and frequently led to war. KC-2.1.III.B: after Austria's 1683 defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna, Ottoman westward expansion came to a halt. KC-2.1.III.C: Louis XIV's nearly continuous wars, fought to advance both dynastic and state interests, drew opposing European powers into coalitions against him. And KC-2.1.I.D captures the dramatic eighteenth-century instance of state failure: Poland's monarchy could not consolidate authority over its nobility; Prussia, Russia, and Austria partitioned Poland in the late eighteenth century, removing it from the European map.

The Bourbon-Habsburg-coalition rivalry of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries illustrates the balance-of-power principle. Louis XIV fought four major wars across his personal reign (1661-1715). The War of Devolution (1667-1668) acquired parts of the Spanish Netherlands. The Dutch War (1672-1678), launched against the Dutch Republic, was the Rampjaar of 1672 from the Dutch perspective. The Nine Years' War (1688-1697) pitted France against the League of Augsburg coalition (the Dutch Republic, England after 1688, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Savoy, several German principalities). The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), Louis's largest war, sought to install his grandson Philip on the Spanish throne; the resulting Grand Alliance of England, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, and other powers contested the prospect of a Bourbon France-Spain superstate. The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht was the diplomatic settlement: Philip V kept Spain but renounced any claim to the French throne, separating the Bourbon crowns; Britain received Gibraltar, Minorca, and the asiento (slave-trade contract); Austria received the Spanish Netherlands and most Italian territories. The treaty's preamble explicitly invoked balance of power as a treaty principle.

The Habsburg-Ottoman struggle reshaped eastern Europe. The Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1683 was the high-water mark of Ottoman westward expansion: Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa led an Ottoman army of 150,000 to besiege the Habsburg capital, but the September 1683 relief led by King Jan III Sobieski of Poland-Lithuania (with German and Habsburg forces) shattered the Ottoman army. The subsequent Great Turkish War (1683-1699) drove Ottoman forces from Hungary and produced the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz, which transferred most of Habsburg-Hungary, Croatia-Slavonia, and Transylvania from Ottoman to Habsburg control. Further Ottoman defeats in 1718 (the Treaty of Passarowitz) confirmed Habsburg gains in northern Serbia and Wallachia. The Ottoman Empire continued as a major power, but it was no longer expanding westward; the 1683 reversal began the long Ottoman retreat that runs through Unit 7's nineteenth-century Eastern Question.

The rise of Brandenburg-Prussia transformed the central European balance. The Hohenzollern Elector Frederick William (the “Great Elector,” r. 1640-1688) consolidated central authority over the disparate Hohenzollern lands (Brandenburg, Prussia, Cleves, Mark, Ravensberg) by suppressing noble assemblies, building a standing army, and securing tax revenues from the Junker noble landlord class. His successor Frederick I (r. 1688-1713) obtained royal title as “King in Prussia” in 1701. Frederick II (Frederick the Great, r. 1740-1786), within months of his accession, invaded Habsburg Silesia in 1740, triggering the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and producing the long Prussian-Austrian rivalry. Frederick's Prussia survived the existential Seven Years' War (1756-1763) against an Austrian-French-Russian-Swedish coalition through tactical brilliance, well-drilled infantry, and the lucky 1762 withdrawal of Russia after Empress Elizabeth's death. Prussia entered the late eighteenth century as the fifth great power of Europe, alongside Britain, France, Austria, and Russia.

The Polish partitions illustrated the rule that states unable to compete militarily were absorbed by those that could. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an elective monarchy in which the szlachta (Polish noble class, around 8-10 percent of the population) elected each new king and retained substantial veto rights through the liberum veto, which allowed any single noble to block legislation. The arrangement made it nearly impossible for Polish kings to consolidate central administrative, fiscal, and military authority. By the late eighteenth century, the powerful neighbors took advantage of this weakness. The First Partition (1772) gave territory to Prussia, Russia, and Austria. The Second Partition (1793) followed Polish reformers' attempt to strengthen the monarchy through the May 3 Constitution of 1791; Russia and Prussia took further territory. The Third Partition (1795) eliminated Poland entirely, dividing the remaining territory among the three powers. Poland did not return to the European map until the 1918 Treaty of Versailles. The partitions were the most dramatic illustration of KC-2.1.I.D and of the broader military-revolution rule that defined the eighteenth-century balance of power.

The military revolution — KC-1.5.II.B — underlay all of these developments. Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European armies grew dramatically in size: Louis XIV's standing army peaked at roughly 400,000 troops in the 1690s; Frederick the Great's Prussian army reached 200,000 by 1789; Russian armies grew from roughly 200,000 in 1700 to 500,000 by the Napoleonic period. New tactical formations (the line-and-column infantry formation, mobile field artillery), professional officer corps, standardized uniforms and weapons, and the trace italienne star-fortification system replaced medieval cavalry-and-castle warfare. The states that could finance these forces — Britain through funded public debt (Bank of England, 1694), France through Colbert's tax system, Prussia through Junker land taxes, Russia through expanding state lands and serf taxation — rose; states that could not, including Poland-Lithuania and (after 1683) the Ottomans, fell. The military revolution was thus a structural cause of both the Polish partitions and the Ottoman retreat, not merely a tactical or technological development.

Four sources documenting the balance-of-power century: the Treaty of Utrecht's classical statement, an eyewitness account of the Siege of Vienna, Frederick the Great's reflections on his statecraft, and the First Partition of Poland treaty.

1. (Causation, Skill 3.A) Account for KC-1.5.II.A: how did the Peace of Westphalia replace religion with balance of power as the principal organizing concept of European interstate relations? What specific claim about the security of all European states does the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht make?
2. (Causation) Account for KC-2.1.III.C: how did Louis XIV's nearly continuous wars draw opposing European powers into coalitions against him? Which of his four major wars was decisive in establishing the coalition pattern?
3. (Causation) Account for KC-1.5.II.B: how did the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century military revolution reshape the balance of power? What specific connections existed between the new warfare's resource demands and state-building (taxation, bureaucracy)?
4. (Causation) Account for KC-2.1.III.B: why was the Habsburg-led 1683 defeat of the Ottomans at Vienna the high-water mark of Ottoman westward expansion? What specific later developments confirmed the Ottoman retreat?
5. (Causation) Account for KC-2.1.I.D: how did Poland's monarchical weakness allow Prussia, Russia, and Austria to partition the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late eighteenth century?

Draft alignment — pending educator review. AP European History codes correspond to the official College Board Course and Exam Description (Effective Fall 2023, V.1). Statements below are paraphrased in the CountryReports voice; refer to the College Board's published CED for verbatim wording.