The Empire of Austria by John S. C. Abbott (ebook reader with android os .txt) 📖

thus powerful. Maria Theresa was now in possession of all her vast ancestral domains, and England judged that it would endanger the balance of power to place upon the brow of her husband the imperial crown. The British cabinet consequently espoused the cause of the Elector of Bavaria, and entered into a private arrangement with him, agreeing to acknowledge him as emperor, and to give him an annual pension that he might suitably support the dignity of his station. The wealth of England seems to have been inexhaustible, for half the monarchs of Europe have, at one time or other, been fed and clothed from her treasury. George II. contracted to pay the emperor, within forty days, three hundred thousand dollars, and to do all in his power to constrain the queen of Austria to acknowledge his title.

Maria Theresa had promised the King of Sardinia large accessions of territory in Italy, as the price for his coöperation. But now, having acquired those Italian territories, she was exceedingly reluctant to part with any one of them, and very dishonorably evaded, by every possible pretense, the fulfillment of her agreement. The queen considered herself now so strong that she was not anxious to preserve the alliance of Sardinia. She thought her Italian possessions secure, even in case of the defection of the Sardinian king. Sardinia appealed to England, as one of the allies, to interpose for the execution of the treaty. To the remonstrance of England the queen peevishly replied,

"It is the policy of England to lead me from one sacrifice to another. I am expected to expose my troops for no other end than voluntarily to strip myself of my possessions. Should the cession of the Italian provinces, which the King of Sardinia claims, be extorted from me, what remains in Italy will not be worth defending, and the only alternative left is that of being stripped either by England or France."

While the queen was not willing to give as much as she had agreed to bestow, the greedy King of Sardinia was grasping at more than she had promised. At last the king, in a rage threatened, that if she did not immediately comply with his demands, he would unite with France and Spain and the emperor against Austria. This angry menace brought the queen to terms, and articles of agreement satisfactory to Sardinia were signed. During the whole of this summer of 1743, though large armies were continually in motion, and there were many sanguinary battles, and all the arts of peace were destroyed, and conflagration, death and woe were sent to ten thousand homes, nothing effectual was accomplished by either party. The strife did not cease until winter drove the weary combatants to their retreats.

For the protection of the Austrian possessions against the French and Spanish, the queen agreed to maintain in Italy an army of thirty thousand men, to be placed under the command of the King of Sardinia, who was to add to them an army of forty-five thousand. England, with characteristic prodigality, voted a million of dollars annually, to aid in the payment of these troops. It was the object of England, to prevent France from strengthening herself by Italian possessions. The cabinet of St. James took such an interest in this treaty that, to secure its enactment, one million five hundred thousand dollars were paid down, in addition to the annual subsidy. England also agreed to maintain a strong squadron in the Mediterranean to coöperate with Sardinia and Austria.

Amidst these scenes of war, the usual dramas of domestic life moved on. Prince Charles of Lorraine, had long been ardently attached to Mary Anne, younger sister of Maria Theresa. The young prince had greatly signalized himself on the field of battle. Their nuptials were attended in Vienna with great splendor and rejoicings. It was a union of loving hearts. Charles was appointed to the government of the Austrian Netherlands. One short and happy year passed away, when Mary Anne, in the sorrows of child-birth, breathed her last.

The winter was passed by all parties in making the most vigorous preparations for a new campaign. England and France were now thoroughly aroused, and bitterly irritated against each other. Hitherto they had acted as auxiliaries for other parties. Now they summoned all their energies, and became principals in the conflict. France issued a formal declaration of war against England and Austria, raised an army of one hundred thousand men, and the debauched king himself, Louis XV., left his Pare Aux Cerfs and placed himself at the head of the army. Marshal Saxe was the active commander. He was provided with a train of artillery superior to any which had ever before appeared on any field. Entering the Netherlands he swept all opposition before him.

The French department of Alsace, upon the Rhine, embraced over forty thousand square miles of territory, and contained a population of about a million. While Marshal Saxe was ravaging the Netherlands, an Austrian army, sixty thousand strong, crossed the Rhine, like a torrent burst into Alsace, and spread equal ravages through the cities and villages of France. Bombardment echoed to bombardment; conflagration blazed in response to conflagration; and the shrieks of the widow, and the moans of the orphan which rose from the marshes of Burgundy, were reechoed in an undying wail along the valleys of the Rhine.

The King of France, alarmed by the progress which the Austrians were making in his own territories, ordered thirty thousand troops, from the army in the Netherlands, to be dispatched to the protection of Alsace. Again the tide was turning against Maria Theresa. She had become so arrogant and exacting, that she had excited the displeasure of nearly all the empire. She persistently refused to acknowledge the emperor, who, beyond all dispute, was legally elected; she treated the diet contemptuously; she did not disguise her determination to hold Bavaria by the right of conquest, and to annex it to Austria; she had compelled the Bavarians to take the oath of allegiance to her; she was avowedly meditating gigantic projects in the conquest of France and Italy; and it was very evident that she was maturing her plans for the reconquest of Silesia. Such inordinate ambition alarmed all the neighboring courts. Frederic of Prussia was particularly alarmed lest he should lose Silesia. With his accustomed energy he again drew his sword against the queen, and became the soul of a new confederacy which combined many of the princes of the empire whom the haughty queen had treated with so much indignity. In this new league, formed by Frederic, the Elector Palatine and the King of Sweden were brought into the field against Maria Theresa. All this was effected with the utmost secrecy, and the queen had no intimation of her danger until the troops were in motion. Frederic published a manifesto in which he declared that he took up arms "to restore to the German empire its liberty, to the emperor his dignity, and to Europe repose."

With his strong army he burst into Bohemia, now drained of its troops to meet the war in the Netherlands and on the Rhine. With a lion's tread, brushing all opposition away, he advanced to Prague. The capital was compelled to surrender, and the garrison of fifteen thousand troops became prisoners of war. Nearly all the fortresses of the kingdom fell into his hands. Establishing garrisons at Tabor, Budweiss, Frauenberg, and other important posts, he then made an irruption into Bavaria, scattered the Austrian troops in all directions, entered Munich in triumph, and reinstated the emperor in the possession of his capital and his duchy. Such are the fortunes of war. The queen heard these tidings of accumulated disaster in dismay. In a few weeks of a summer's campaign, when she supposed that Europe was almost a suppliant at her feet, she found herself deprived of the Netherlands, of the whole kingdom of Bohemia, the brightest jewel in her crown, and of the electorate of Bavaria.

But the resolution and energy of the queen remained indomitable. Maria Theresa and Frederic were fairly pitted against each other. It was Greek meeting Greek. The queen immediately recalled the army from Alsace, and in person repaired to Presburg, where she summoned a diet of the Hungarian nobles. In accordance with an ancient custom, a blood-red flag waved from all the castles in the kingdom, summoning the people to a levy en masse , or, as it was then called, to a general insurrection. An army of nearly eighty thousand men was almost instantly raised. A cotemporary historian, speaking of this event, says:

"This amazing unanimity of a people so divided amongst themselves as the Hungarians, especially in point of religion, could only be effected by the address of Maria Theresa, who seemed to possess one part of the character of Elizabeth of England, that of making every man about her a hero."

Prince Charles re-crossed the Rhine, and, by a vigorous march through Suabia, returned to Bohemia. By surprise, with a vastly superior force, he assailed the fortresses garrisoned by the Prussian troops, gradually took one after another, and ere long drove the Prussians, with vast slaughter, out of the whole kingdom. Though disaster, in this campaign, followed the banners of Maria Theresa in the Netherlands and in Italy, she forgot those reverses in exultation at the discomfiture of her great rival Frederic. She had recovered Bohemia, and was now sanguine that she soon would regain Silesia, the loss of which province ever weighed heavily upon her heart. But in her character woman's weakness was allied with woman's determination. She imagined that she could rouse the chivalry of her allies as easily as that of the Hungarian barons, and that foreign courts, forgetful of their own grasping ambition, would place themselves as pliant instruments in her hands.

In this posture of affairs, the hand of Providence was again interposed, in an event which removed from the path of the queen a serious obstacle, and opened to her aspiring mind new visions of grandeur. The Emperor Charles VII., an amiable man, of moderate abilities, was quite crushed in spirit by the calamities accumulating upon him. Though he had regained his capital, he was in hourly peril of being driven from it again. Anguish so preyed upon his mind, that, pale and wan, he was thrown upon a sick bed. While in this state he was very injudiciously informed of a great defeat which his troops had encountered. It was a death-blow to the emperor. He moaned, turned over in his bed, and died, on the 20th of January, 1745.

The imperial crown was thus thrown down among the combatants, and a scramble ensued for its possession such as Europe had never witnessed before. Every court was agitated, and the combinations of intrigue were as innumerable as were the aspirants for the crown. The spring of 1745 opened with clouds of war darkening every quarter of the horizon. England opened the campaign in Italy and the Netherlands, her whole object now being to humble France. Maria Theresa remained uncompromising in her disposition to relinquish nothing and to grasp every thing. The cabinet of England, with far higher views of policy, were anxious to detach some of the numerous foes combined against Austria; but it was almost impossible to induce the queen to make the slightest abatement of her desires. She had set her heart upon annexing all of Bavaria to her realms. That immense duchy, now a kingdom, was about the size of the State of South Carolina, containing over thirty thousand square miles. Its population amounted to about four millions. The death of the Emperor Charles VII., who was Elector of Bavaria, transmitted the sovereignty of this realm to his son, Maximilian Joseph.

Maximilian was anxious to withdraw from the