The Empire of Austria - John S. C. Abbott (best books to read now TXT) 📗

of Christ, and rendering an account to the sovereign pastor of the flock which has been intrusted to my care, I am bound to give such advice as will not reproach my conscience on the day of judgment. Your majesty ought not to put the interests of the house of Austria in competition with those of eternity. Neither should you be ignorant that the French claimants are the rightful heirs of the crown, and no member of the Austrian family has the smallest legitimate pretension. It is therefore your duty to omit no precaution, which your wisdom can suggest, to render justice where justice is due, and to secure, by every means in your power, the undivided succession of the Spanish monarchy to the French claimants."

Charles, as fickle as the wind, still remained undecided, and his anxieties preying upon his feeble frame, already exhausted by disease, caused him rapidly to decline. He was now confined to his chamber and his bed, and his death was hourly expected. He hated the French, and all his sympathies were with Austria. Some priests entered his chamber, professedly to perform the pompous and sepulchral service of the church of Rome for the dying. In this hour of languor, and in the prospect of immediate death, they assailed the imbecile monarch with all the terrors of superstition. They depicted the responsibility which he would incur should he entail on the kingdom the woes of a disputed succession; they assured him that he could not, without unpardonable guilt, reject the decision of the holy father of the Church; and growing more eager and excited, they denounced upon him the vengeance of Almighty God, if he did not bequeath the crown, now falling from his brow, to the Bourbons of France.

The dying, half-delirious king, appalled by the terrors of eternal damnation, yielded helplessly to their demands. A will was already prepared awaiting his signature. With a hand trembling in death, the king attached to it his name; but as he did so, he burst into tears, exclaiming, "I am already nothing." It was supposed that he could then survive but a few hours. Contrary to all expectation he revived, and expressed the keenest indignation and anguish that he had been thus beguiled to decide against Austria, and in favor of France. He even sent a courier to the emperor, announcing his determination to decide in favor of the Austrian claimant. The flickering flame of life, thus revived for a moment, glimmered again in the socket and expired. The wretched king died the 1st of November, 1699, in the fortieth year of his age, and the thirty-sixth of his reign.

On the day of his death a council of State was convened, and the will, the very existence of which was generally unknown, was read. It declared the Dauphin of France, son of the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, to be the successor to all the Spanish dominions; and required all subjects and vassals of Spain to acknowledge him. The Austrian party were astounded at this revelation. The French party were prepared to receive it without any surprise. The son of Maria Theresa was dead, and the crown consequently passed to her grandson Philip. Louis XIV. immediately acknowledged his title, when he was proclaimed king, and took quiet possession of the throne of Spain on the 24th of November, 1700, as Philip V.

It was by such fraud that the Bourbons of France attained the succession to the Spanish crown; a fraud as palpable as was ever committed; for Maria Theresa had renounced all her rights to the throne; this renunciation had been confirmed by the will of her father Philip IV., sanctioned by the Cortes of Spain, and solemnly ratified by her husband, Louis XIV. Such is "legitimacy - the divine right of kings." All the great powers of Europe, excepting the emperor, promptly acknowledged the title of Philip V.

Leopold, enraged beyond measure, dispatched envoys to rouse the empire, and made the most formidable preparations for war. A force of eighty thousand men was soon assembled. The war commenced in Italy. Leopold sent down his German troops through the defiles of the Tyrol, and, in the valley of the Adige, they encountered the combined armies of France, Spain and Italy. Prince Eugene, who had already acquired great renown in the wars against the Turks, though by birth a French noble, had long been in the Austrian service, and led the Austrian troops. William, of England, jealous of the encroachments of Louis XIV., and leading with him the States of Holland, formed an alliance with Austria. This was pretty equally dividing the military power of Europe, and a war of course ensued, almost unparalleled in its sanguinary ferocity. The English nation supported the monarch; the House of Lords, in an address to the king, declared that "his majesty, his subjects and his allies, could never be secure till the house of Austria should be restored to its rights, and the invader of the Spanish monarchy brought to reason." Forty thousand sailors and forty thousand land troops were promptly voted for the war.

William died on the 16th of March, in consequence of a fall from his horse, and was succeeded by Anne, daughter of James II. She was, however, but nominally the sovereign. The infamously renowned Duke of Marlborough became the real monarch, and with great skill and energy prosecuted the eleven years' war which ensued, which is known in history as the War of the Spanish Succession. For many months the conflict raged with the usual fluctuations, the Austrian forces being commanded on the Rhine by the Duke of Marlborough, and in Italy by Prince Eugene. Portugal soon joined the Austrian alliance, and Philip V. and the French becoming unpopular in Spain, a small party rose there, advocating the claims of the house of Austria. Thus supported, Leopold, at Vienna, declared his son Charles King of Spain, and crowned him as such in Vienna. By the aid of the English fleet he passed from Holland to England, and thence to Lisbon, where a powerful army was assembled to invade Spain, wrest the crown from Philip, and place it upon the brow of Charles III.

And now Leopold began to reap the bitter consequences of his atrocious conduct in Hungary. The Hungarian nobles embraced this opportunity, when the imperial armies were fully engaged, to rise in a new and formidable invasion. Francis Ragotsky, a Transylvanian prince, led in the heroic enterprise. He was of one of the noblest and wealthiest families of the realm, and was goaded to action by the bitterest wrongs. His grandfather and uncle had been beheaded; his father robbed of his property and his rank; his cousin doomed to perpetual imprisonment; his father-in-law proscribed, and his mother driven into exile. The French court immediately opened a secret correspondence with Ragotsky, promising him large supplies of men and money, and encouraging him with hopes of the coöperation of the Turks. Ragotsky secretly assembled a band of determined followers, in the savage solitudes of the Carpathian mountains, and suddenly descended into the plains of Hungary, at the head of his wild followers, calling upon his countrymen to rise and shake off the yoke of the detested Austrian. Adherents rapidly gathered around his standard; several fortresses fell into his hands, and he soon found himself at the head of twenty thousand well armed troops. The flame of insurrection spread, with electric rapidity, through all Hungary and Transylvania.

The tyrant Leopold, as he heard these unexpected tidings, was struck with consternation. He sent all the troops he could collect to oppose the patriots, but they could make no impression upon an indignant nation in arms. He then, in his panic, attempted negotiation. But the Hungarians demanded terms both reasonable and honorable, and to neither of these could the emperor possibly submit. They required that the monarchy should no longer be hereditary, but elective, according to immemorial usage; that the Hungarians should have the right to resist illegal power without the charge of treason; that foreign officers and garrisons should be removed from the kingdom; that the Protestants should be reëstablished in the free exercise of their religion, and that their confiscated estates should be restored. The despot could not listen for one moment to requirements so just; and appalled by the advance of the patriots toward Vienna, he recalled the troops from Italy.

About the same time the Duke of Bavaria, disgusted with the arrogance and the despotism of Leopold, renounced allegiance to the emperor, entered into an alliance with the French, and at the head of forty thousand troops, French and Bavarians, commenced the invasion of Austria from the west. Both Eugene and Marlborough hastened to the rescue of the emperor. Combining their forces, with awful slaughter they mowed down the French and Bavarians at Blenheim, and then overran all Bavaria. The elector fled with the mutilated remnants of his army to France. The conquerors seized all the fortresses, all the guns and ammunition; disbanded the Bavarian troops, took possession of the revenues of the kingdom, and assigned to the heart-broken wife of the duke a humble residence in the dismantled capital of the duchy.

The signal victory of Blenheim enabled Leopold to concentrate his energies upon Hungary. It was now winter, and the belligerents, during these stormy months, were active in making preparations for the campaign of the spring. But Leopold's hour was now tolled. That summons came which prince and peasant must alike obey, and the emperor, after a few months of languor and pain, on the 5th of May, 1705, passed away to that tribunal where each must answer for every deed done in the body. He was sixty-five years of age, and had occupied the throne forty-six years. This is the longest reign recorded in the Austrian annals, excepting that of Frederic III.

The reign of Leopold was eventful and woeful. It was almost one continued scene of carnage. In his character there was a singular blending of the good and the bad. In what is usually called moral character he was irreproachable. He was a faithful husband, a kind father, and had no taste for any sensual pleasures. In his natural disposition he was melancholy, and so exceedingly reserved, that he lived in his palace almost the life of a recluse. Though he was called the most learned prince of his age, a Jesuitical education had so poisoned and debauched his mind, that while perpetrating the most grievous crimes of perfidy and cruelty, he seemed sincerely to feel that he was doing God service. His persecution of the Protestants was persistent, relentless and horrible; while at the same time he was scrupulous in his devotions, never allowing the cares of business to interfere with the prescribed duties of the Church. The Church , the human church of popes, cardinals, bishops and priests, was his guide, not the divine Bible . Hence his darkness of mind and his crimes. Pope Innocent XI. deemed him worthy of canonization. But an indignant world must in justice inscribe upon his tomb, "Tyrant and Persecutor."

He was three times married; first, to Margaret, daughter of Philip IV. of Spain; again, to Claudia, daughter of Ferdinand of Tyrol; and a third time, to Eleonora, daughter of Philip, Elector Palatine. The character and history of his third wife are peculiarly illustrative of the kind of religion inculcated in that day, and of the beautiful spirit of piety often exemplified in the midst of melancholy errors.

In the castle of her father, Eleonora was taught, by priests and nuns, that God was only acceptably worshiped by self-sacrifice and mortification. The devout child longed for the love of God more than for any thing else. Guided by the teachings of those who, however sincere, certainly misunderstood the spirit of the gospel, she