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

of Catalonia, was then the principal sea-port of the Spanish peninsula on the Mediterranean. It contained a population of about one hundred and forty thousand. It was strongly fortified. West of the city there was a mountain called Montjoy, upon which there was a strong fort which commanded the harbor and the town. After a short siege this fort was taken by storm, and the city was then forced to surrender.

Philip soon advanced with an army of French and Spaniards to retake the city. The English fleet had retired. Twenty-eight French ships of war blockaded the harbor, which they could not enter, as it was commanded by the guns of Montjoy. The siege was very desperate both in the assault and the defense. The young king, Charles, was in the most imminent danger of falling into the bands of his foes. There was no possibility of escape, and it seemed inevitable that the city must either surrender, or be taken by storm. The French and Spanish army numbered twenty thousand men. They first attempted to storm Montjoy, but were repulsed with great slaughter. They then besieged it, and by regular approaches compelled its capitulation in three weeks.

This noble resistance enabled the troops in the city greatly to multiply and increase their defenses. They thus succeeded in protracting the siege of the town five weeks longer. Every day the beleagured troops from the crumbling ramparts watched the blue expanse of the Mediterranean, hoping to see the sails of an English fleet coming to their rescue. Two breaches were already effected in the walls. The garrison, reduced to two thousand, and exhausted by superhuman exertions by day and by night, were almost in the last stages of despair, when, in the distant horizon, the long looked-for fleet appeared. The French ships, by no means able to cope with such a force, spread their sails, and sought safety in flight.

The English fleet, amounting to fifty sail of the line, and transporting a large number of land troops, triumphantly entered the harbor on the 3rd of May, 1708. The fresh soldiers were speedily landed, and marched to the ramparts and the breaches. This strong reinforcement annihilated the hopes of the besiegers. Apprehensive of an immediate sally, they retreated with such precipitation that they left behind them in the hospitals their sick and wounded; they also abandoned their heavy artillery, and an immense quantity of military stores.

Whatever energy Charles might have shown during the siege, all seemed now to evaporate. When the shot of the foe were crumbling the walls of Barcelona, he was in danger of the terrible doom of being taken a captive, which would have been the annihilation of all his hopes. Despair nerved him to effort. But now his person was no longer in danger; and his natural inefficiency and dilatoriness returned. Notwithstanding the urgent intreaties of the Earl of Peterborough to pursue the foe, he insisted upon first making a pilgrimage to the shrine of the holy Virgin at Montserrat, twenty-four miles from Barcelona.

This curious monastery consists of but a succession of cloisters or hermitages hewn out of the solid rock. They are only accessible by steps as steep as a ladder, which are also hewn upon the face of the almost precipitous mountain. The highest of these cells, and which are occupied by the youngest monks, are at an elevation of three or four thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean. Soon after Charles's pilgrimage to Montserrat, he made a triumphal march to Madrid, entered the city, and caused himself to be proclaimed king under the title of Charles III. But Philip soon came upon him with such force that he was compelled to retreat back to Barcelona. Again, in 1710, he succeeded in reaching Madrid, and, as we have described, he was driven back, with accumulated disaster, to Catalonia.

Three months after this defeat, when his affairs in Spain were assuming the gloomiest aspect, a courier arrived at Barcelona, and informed him that his brother Joseph was dead; that he had already been proclaimed King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria; and that it was a matter of the most urgent necessity that he should immediately return to Germany. Charles immediately embarked at Barcelona, and landed near Genoa on the 27th of September. Rapidly pressing on through the Italian States, he entered Milan on the 16th of October, where he was greeted with the joyful intelligence that a diet had been convened under the influence of Prince Eugene, and that by its unanimous vote he was invested with the imperial throne. He immediately proceeded through the Tyrol to Frankfort, where he was crowned on the 22d of December. He was now more than ever determined that the diadem of Spain should be added to the other crowns which had been placed upon his brow.

In the incessant wars which for centuries had been waged between the princes and States of Germany and the emperor, the States had acquired virtually a constitution, which they called a capitulation. When Charles was crowned as Charles VI., he was obliged to promise that he would never assemble a diet or council without convening all the princes and States of the empire; that he would never wage war, or conclude peace, or enter into alliance with any nation without the consent of the States; that he would not, of his own authority, put any prince under the ban of the empire; that confiscated territory should never be conferred upon any members of his own family, and that no successor to the imperial crown should be chosen during his lifetime, unless absence from Germany or the infirmities of age rendered him incapable of administering the affairs of the empire.

The emperor, invested with the imperial crown, hastened to Vienna, and, with unexpected energy, entered upon the administration of the complicated interests of his widespread realms. After passing a few weeks in Vienna, he repaired to Prague, where, in May, he was, with much pomp, crowned King of Hungary. He then returned to Vienna, and prepared to press with new vigor the war of the Spanish succession.

Louis XIV. was now suffering the earthly retribution for his ill-spent life. The finances of the realm were in a state of hopeless embarrassment; famine was filling the kingdom with misery; his armies were everywhere defeated; the imprecations of a beggared people were rising around his throne; his palace was the scene of incessant feuds and intrigues. His children were dead; he was old, infirm, sick, the victim of insupportable melancholy - utterly weary of life, and yet awfully afraid to die. France, in the person of Louis XIV., who could justly say, "I am the State," was humbled.

The accession of Charles to the throne of the empire, and to that of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, while at the same time he claimed sovereignty over the vast realms of the Spanish kingdom, invested him with such enormous power, that England, which had combined Europe against the colossal growth of France, having humbled that power, was disposed to form a combination against Austria. There was in consequence an immediate relaxation of hostilities just at the time when the French batteries on the frontiers were battered down, and when the allied army had apparently an unobstructed way opened to the gates of Paris. In this state of affairs the British ministry pressed negotiations for peace. The preliminaries were settled in London on the 8th of October, 1711. By this treaty Louis XIV. agreed to make such a change in the law of hereditary descent, as to render it impossible for any king to wear at the same time the crowns of France and of Spain, and made various other important concessions.

Charles, whose ambition was roused by his sudden and unexpected elevation, exerted all his energies to thwart the progress of negotiations, and bitterly complained that the allies were dishonorably deserting the cause which they had espoused. The emperor dispatched circular letters to all the courts of Europe, and sent Prince Eugene as a special ambassador to London, to influence Queen Anne, if possible, to persevere in the grand alliance. But he was entirely unsuccessful. The Duke of Marlborough was disgraced, and dismissed from office. The peace party rendered Eugene so unpopular that he was insulted in the streets of London. The Austrian party in England was utterly defeated, and a congress was appointed to meet at Utrecht to settle the terms of peace. But Charles was now so powerful that he resolved to prosecute the war even though abandoned by England. He accordingly sent an ambassador to Utrecht to embarrass the proceedings as much as possible, and, in case the grand alliance should be broken up, to secure as many powers as possible in fidelity to Austria.

The States of the Netherlands were still warmly with Austria, as they dreaded so formidable a power as France directly upon their frontier. The other minor powers of the alliance were also rather inclined to remain with Austria. The war continued while the terms of peace were under discussion. England, however, entered into a private understanding with France, and the Duke of Ormond, who had succeeded Marlborough, received secret orders not to take part in any battle or siege. The developments, upon fields of battle, of this dishonorable arrangement, caused great indignation on the part of the allies. The British forces withdrew, and the French armies, taking advantage of the great embarrassments thus caused, were again gaining the ascendency. Portugal soon followed the example of England and abandoned the alliance. The Duke of Savoy was the next to leave. The alliance was evidently crumbling to pieces, and on the 11th of April, 1713, all the belligerents, excepting the emperor, signed the treaty of peace. Philip of Spain also acceded to the same articles.

Charles was very indignant in being thus abandoned; and unduly estimating his strength, resolved alone, with the resources which the empire afforded him, to prosecute the war against France and Spain. Having nothing to fear from a Spanish invasion, he for a time relinquished his attempts upon Spain, and concentrating his armies upon the Rhine, prepared for a desperate onset upon France. For two years the war raged between Austria and France with war's usual vicissitudes of defeat and victory on either side. It was soon evident that the combatants were too equally matched for either party to hope to gain any decisive advantage over the other. On the 7th of September, 1714, France and Austria agreed to sheathe the sword. The war had raged for fourteen years, with an expenditure of blood and treasure, and an accumulation of misery which never can be gauged. Every party had lost fourfold more than it had gained. "A war," says Marshal Villers, "which had desolated the greater part of Europe, was concluded almost on the very terms which might have been procured at the commencement of hostilities."

By this treaty of peace, which was signed at Baden, in Switzerland, the States of the Netherlands were left in the hands of Austria; and also the Italian States of Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia. The thunders of artillery had hardly ceased to reverberate over the marshes of Holland and along the banks of the Rhine, ere the "blast of war's loud organ" and the tramp of charging squadrons were heard rising anew from the distant mountains of Sclavonia. The Turks, in violation of their treaty of peace, were again on the march, ascending the Danube along its southern banks, through the defiles of the Sclavonian mountains. In a motley mass of one hundred and fifty thousand men they had passed Belgrade, crossed the Save, and were approaching Peterwarden.

Eugene was instantly dispatched with an efficient, compact army, disciplined by twelve years of warfare, to resist the Moslem invaders. The