Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle ( 1748 ) The Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle of 1748 , sometimes called the Treaty of Aachen , ended the War of the Austrian Succession following a congress assembled on 24 April 1748 at the Free Imperial City of Aachen — called " Aix - la - Chapelle " in French and then also in English — in the west of the Holy Roman Empire . The resulting treaty was signed on 18 October 1748 by Great Britain , France , and the Dutch Republic . Two follow - up implementation treaties were signed at Nice on 4 December 1748 and 21 January 1749 by Austria , Spain , Sardinia , Modena , and Genoa . Terms . Great Britain and France dictated the proposed terms of the treaty , which had previously been agreed at the Congress of Breda , and other nations accepted them . These were : Reactions . For the most part , the Treaty of Aix - la - Chapelle and the War of Austrian Succession concluded status quo ante bellum . In the commercial struggle between Britain 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 phrases " Bête comme la paix " ( " Stupid as the peace " ) and " La guerre pour le roi de Prusse " ( " The war for the king of Prussia " ) . By the same token , British colonists in New England and merchants back in Great Britain resented the return of Louisbourg to the French after they had captured the stronghold in a 46 - day siege . This resentment was an early seed of the later American Revolution . In fact , Britain had exchanged Louisbourg so that France would withdraw from the Netherlands . Madras , captured by French Admiral La Bourdonnais in 1746 , was returned to Britain likewise . It was described thus by Lord Macaulay : In Britain itself , George II and his ministers were seen as having conducted the war and the peace to the best advantage of Brunswick - Lüneburg ( of which George was Elector ) rather than Britain , and so the main British celebrations of the peace were only held six months later , with a fireworks display in Green Park for which Handel wrote his Music for the Royal Fireworks . This celebration was deliberately held near the royal residence of Buckingham House so as to present the king in a better light , as a British king and as the prime mover in a peace that was successful for Britain . ( The display proved less successful than the music - the enormous wood building from which the fireworks were to be launched caught fire due to the fall of the bas relief of George II ) . George and Britain did gain from the treaty in one respect : that one clause of it had finally compelled the French to recognise the Hanoverian succession to the British throne and expel the Jacobites from France . In contrast to French and British unhappiness with the treaty , Italy gained stability for the first time in the 18th century . The new territorial settlement and the accession of the pacific Ferdinand VI of Spain allowed the Aix settlement to last until the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 .