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

upon the banks of the Oder, near Frankfort. For seven hours the action lasted, and the allies were routed with enormous slaughter; but the king, pursuing his victory too far with his exhausted troops, was turned upon by the foe, and was routed himself in turn, with the slaughter of one half of his whole army. Twenty-four thousand of the allies and twenty thousand Prussians perished on that bloody day.

Frederic exposed his person with the utmost recklessness. Two horses were shot beneath him; several musket balls pierced his clothes; he was slightly wounded, and was rescued from the foe only by the almost superhuman exertions of his hussars. In the darkness of the night the Prussians secured their retreat.

We have mentioned that at first Frederic seemed to have gained the victory. So sanguine was he then of success that he dispatched a courier from the field, with the following billet to the queen at Berlin: -

"We have driven the enemy from their intrenchments; in two hours expect to hear of a glorious victory."

Hardly two hours had elapsed ere another courier was sent to the queen with the following appalling message: -

"Remove from Berlin with the royal family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam, and the capital make conditions with the enemy."

In this terrible battle the enemy lost so fearfully that no effort was made to pursue Frederic. Disaster never disheartened the Prussian king. It seemed but to rouse anew his energies. With amazing vigor he rallied his scattered forces, and called in reënforcements. The gold of England was at his disposal; he dismantled distant fortresses and brought their cannon into the field, and in a few days was at the head of twenty-eight thousand men, beneath the walls of his capital, ready again to face the foe.

The thunderings of battle continued week after week, in unintermitted roar throughout nearly all of Germany. Winter again came. Frederic had suffered awfully during the campaign, but was still unsubdued. The warfare was protracted even into the middle of the winter. The soldiers, in the fields, wading through snow a foot deep, suffered more from famine, frost and sickness than from the bullet of the foe. In the Austrian army four thousand died, in sixteen days of December, from the inclemency of the weather. Thus terminated the campaign of 1759.


CHAPTER XXX.

MARIA THERESA.

From 1759 to 1780.

Desolations of War. - Disasters of Prussia. - Despondency of Frederic. - Death of the Empress Elizabeth. - Accession of Paul III. - Assassination of Paul III. - Accession of Catharine. - Discomfiture of the Austrians. - Treaty of Peace. - Election of Joseph to the Throne of the Empire. - Death of Francis. - Character of Francis. - Anecdotes. - Energy of Maria Theresa. - Poniatowski. - Partition of Poland. - Maria Theresa as a Mother. - War With Bavaria. - Peace. - Death of Maria Theresa. - Family of the Empress. - Accession of Joseph II. - His Character.


The spring of 1760 found all parties eager for the renewal of the strife, but none more so than Maria Theresa. The King of Prussia was, however, in a deplorable condition. The veteran army, in which he had taken so much pride, was now annihilated. With despotic power he had assembled a new army; but it was composed of peasants, raw recruits, but poorly prepared to encounter the horrors of war. The allies were marching against him with two hundred and fifty thousand men. Frederic, with his utmost efforts, could muster but seventy-five thousand, who, to use his own language, "were half peasants, half deserters from the enemy, soldiers no longer fit for service, but only for show."

Month after month passed away, during which the whole of Prussia presented the aspect of one wide field of battle. Frederic fought with the energies of desperation. Villages were everywhere blazing, squadrons charging, and the thunders of an incessant cannonade deafened the ear by night and by day. On the whole the campaign terminated in favor of Frederic; the allies being thwarted in all their endeavors to crush him. In one battle Maria Theresa lost twenty thousand men.

During the ensuing winter all the continental powers were again preparing for the resumption of hostilities in the spring, when the British people, weary of the enormous expenditures of the war, began to be clamorous for peace. The French treasury was also utterly exhausted. France made overtures to England for a cessation of hostilities; and these two powers, with peaceful overtures, addressed Maria Theresa. The queen, though fully resolved to prosecute the war until she should attain her object, thought it not prudent to reject outright such proposals, but consented to the assembling of a congress at Augsburg. Hostilities were not suspended during the meeting of the congress, and the Austrian queen was sanguine in the hope of being speedily able to crush her Prussian rival. Every general in the field had experienced such terrible disasters, and the fortune of war seemed so fickle, now lighting upon one banner and now upon another, that all parties were wary, practicing the extreme of caution, and disposed rather to act upon the defensive. Though not a single pitched battle was fought, the allies, outnumbering the Prussians, three to one, continually gained fortresses, intrenchments and positions, until the spirit even of Frederic was broken by calamities, and he yielded to despair. He no longer hoped to be able to preserve his empire, but proudly resolved to bury himself beneath its ruins. His despondency could not be concealed from his army, and his bravest troops declared that they could fight no longer.

Maria Theresa was elated beyond measure. England was withdrawing from Prussia. Frederic was utterly exhausted both as to money and men; one campaign more would finish the work, and Prussia would lie helpless at the feet of Maria Theresa, and her most sanguine anticipations would be realized. But the deepest laid plans of man are often thwarted by apparently the most trivial events. One single individual chanced to be taken sick and die. That individual was Elizabeth, the Empress of Russia. On the 5th of January, 1762, she was lying upon her bed an emaciate suffering woman, gasping in death. The departure of her last breath changed the fate of Europe.

Paul III., her nephew, who succeeded the empress, detested Maria Theresa, and often inveighed bitterly against her haughtiness and her ambition. On the contrary, he admired the King of Prussia. He had visited the court of Berlin, where he had been received with marked attention; and Frederic was his model of a hero. He had watched with enthusiastic admiration the fortitude and military prowess of the Prussian king, and had even sent to him many messages of sympathy, and had communicated to him secrets of the cabinet and their plans of operation. Now, enthroned as Emperor of Russia, without reserve he avowed his attachment to Frederic, and ordered his troops to abstain from hostilities, and to quit the Austrian army. At the same time he sent a minister to Berlin to conclude an alliance with the hero he so greatly admired. He even asked for himself a position in the Prussian army as lieutenant under Frederic.

The Swedish court was so intimately allied with that of St. Petersburg, that the cabinet of Stockholm also withdrew from the Austrian alliance, and thus Maria Theresa, at a blow, lost two of her most efficient allies. The King of Prussia rose immediately from his despondency, and the whole kingdom shared in his exultation and his joy. The Prussian troops, in conjunction with the Russians, were now superior to the Austrians, and were prepared to assume the offensive. But again Providence interposed. A conspiracy was formed against the Russian emperor, headed by his wife whom he had treated with great brutality, and Paul III. lost both his crown and his life, in July 1762, after a reign of less than six months.

Catharine II., wife of Paul III., with a bloody hand took the crown from the brow of her murdered husband and placed it upon her own head. She immediately dissolved the Prussian alliance, declared Frederic an enemy to the Prussian name, and ordered her troops, in coöperation with those of Austria, to resume hostilities against Frederic. It was an instantaneous change, confounding all the projects of man. The energetic Prussian king, before the Russian troops had time so to change their positions as to coöperate with the Austrians, assailed the troops of Maria Theresa with such impetuosity as to drive them out of Silesia. Pursuing his advantage Frederic overran Saxony, and then turning into Bohemia, drove the Austrians before him to the walls of Prague. Influenced by these disasters and other considerations, Catharine decided to retire from the contest. At the same time the Turks, excited by Frederic, commenced anew their invasion of Hungary. Maria Theresa was in dismay. Her money was gone. Her allies were dropping from her. The Turks were advancing triumphantly up the Danube, and Frederic was enriching himself with the spoils of Saxony and Bohemia. Influenced by these considerations she made overtures for peace, consenting to renounce Silesia, for the recovery of which province she had in vain caused Europe to be desolated with blood for so many years. A treaty of peace was soon signed, Frederic agreeing to evacuate Saxony; and thus terminated the bloody Seven Years' War.

Maria Theresa's eldest son Joseph was now twenty-three years of age. Her influence and that of the Emperor Francis was such, that they secured his election to succeed to the throne of the empire upon the death of his father. The emperor elect received the title of King of the Romans. The important election took place at Frankfort, on the 27th of May, 1764. The health of the Emperor Francis I., had for some time been precarious, he being threatened with apoplexy. Three months after the election of his son to succeed him upon the imperial throne, Francis was at Inspruck in the Tyrol, to attend the nuptials of his second son Leopold, with Maria Louisa, infanta of Spain. He was feeble and dejected, and longed to return to his home in Vienna. He imagined that the bracing air of the Tyrol did not agree with his health, and looking out upon the summits which tower around Inspruck exclaimed,

"Oh! if I could but once quit these mountains of the Tyrol."

On the morning of the 18th of August, his symptoms assumed so threatening a form, that his friends urged him to be bled. The emperor declined, saying,

"I am engaged this evening to sup with Joseph, and I will not disappoint him; but I will be blooded to-morrow."

The evening came, and as he was preparing to go and sup with his son, he dropped instantly dead upon the floor. Fifty-eight years was his allotted pilgrimage - a pilgrimage of care and toil and sorrow. Even when elevated to the imperial throne, his position was humiliating, being ever overshadowed by the grandeur of his wife. At times he felt this most keenly, and could not refrain from giving imprudent utterance to his mortification. Being at one time present at a levee, which the empress was giving to her subjects, he retired, in chagrin, from the imperial circle into a corner of the saloon, and took his seat near two ladies of the court. They immediately, in accordance with regal etiquette, rose.

"Do not regard me," said the emperor bitterly, and yet with an attempt at playfulness, "for I shall remain here until the court has retired, and shall then amuse myself in contemplating the crowd."

One of the ladies replied, "As long as your imperial majesty is