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became kings. But although the Imperial office was thus nominally elective, it had for centuries past been, with slight interruptions, hereditary in the House of Austria-the family of the Hapsburgs. At the date of which we are treating, however, the actual Emperor was not yet the head of the House of Austria. That head was a woman, the great Maria Theresa, the famous Empress Queen, Empress Dowager since the death of her husband, Francis II. In her own right she was Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, Arch-Duchess of Austria, and Sovereign of all the possessions which at this day form the Austrian Empire, as well as of Belgium and the Milanese, since torn from it. Her career had been a glorious one. It is six-and-thirty years since (in 1740) her father, the Emperor Charles, died, after having, with infinite labour, bound every State in Europe by solemn treaty, as if with a triple cord, to respect and abide by his Pragmatic Sanction, under which his daughter was to be recognised as heiress of all his hereditary dominions. Old Prince Eugene told him in vain that a good army and a well-filled chest would be of more avail to protect his daughter's rights than all the sworn treaties on earth. No sooner was the Emperor dead than almost all Europe-Prussia, Bavaria, France-all set upon her to tear her dominions to pieces. The Elector of Bavaria was made Emperor for a season.

"The bold Bavarian in a luckless hour

Tried the dread summits of Cæsarean power."

Maria Theresa-a young wife and mother-for the time almost knew not where to lay her head. But she appealed to her subjects, and they responded enthusiastically, the Hungarians crying, Moriamur pro rege nostro. "Let us die for our KING, Maria Theresa." And a king she proved herself, beating and baffling all her enemies with one exception, Frederick of Prussia, who held with desperate tenacity, and whose representatives still hold, the plundered province of Silesia. She succeeded in dethroning the Bavarian, and having her own husband, Francis of Lorraine, made Emperor. She is now, in 1776, a broken-hearted widow, inconsolable for the death of her husband. Every month she gives a whole day to seclusion and prayer for him, and once every year, on the anniversary of his death, she descends into the vaults and spends the day beside his tomb. The actual Emperor is her son, Joseph II., a young man of thirty-five, heir-apparent of the Austrian dominions, already by his mother's act associated with her in the Government, and tending more and more to monopolize it. To that position he owed the substantial power which he enjoyed, for the authority of the Emperor merely as such had become the shadow of a shade. All the German States were theoretically feudatories of the Empire, but all of them, great and small (and some were of the smallest), claimed and exercised a real independence. The greatest was Prussia-then Saxony, Bavaria, Hanover, Baden-then a host of Princelets and Dukelets and Landgraves reigning over fragments of States which had been parcelled out from time to time as appanages for younger sons, according to a custom which for centuries prevented the unity and sapped the

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strength of Germany. In addition to these little secular sovereignties there were very considerable territories in the hands of spiritual rulers. The three Archbishop Electors of Cologne, Mentz and Treves, the Bishops of Salzburg, Hamburg, Liege, and several others, governed the territories annexed to their Sees, with full civil as well as ecclesiastical dominion. This state of things, far removed as it is from the centralizing ideas of the present day, was by no means wholly vicious. The multitude of little capitals, with their little courts, were at least so many independent centres of life, preventing the cities from sinking into the dull deadness of mere provincial towns; and the smaller States acted as corps d'amortissement-buffers, so to speak, softening the fierce collisions of their more powerful neighbours. In the ecclesiastical territories, especially, the sway was in the main just and kindly, according to the proverb, vivitur bene sub baculo-it is good to live under the crozier. Taxes were light, prices low, and social life marked by a simplicity and ease almost unknown in our days of endless struggle and competition. Not that ambition then, more than at any other age of the world, was wanting among the greater rulers of mankind. Joseph II. himself was inordinately ambitious. He desired to incorporate Bavaria with Austria, and would have done so but for the resolute opposition of Frederick of Prussia. He desired to gain exclusive command of the Scheldt, shutting out the Dutch. He desired to be an ecclesiastical reformer, according to his own ideas, which were half Jansenistical, half tinged with the prevalent infidelity which Voltaire had sown broadcast. He attempted all these things and failed in all. When he died in 1790, at the age of 50, he directed that there should be inscribed upon his tomb, "Here lies Joseph II., who succeeded in nothing which he undertook." But at the period we now treat of he was universally regarded as a prince of the highest promise and the fairest outlooks. Frederick II. had a picture of him which he always kept in his private room, saying: "He is a young man I must keep an eye on"-Que je ne dois pas perdre de vue. He added with sarcasm, all the more telling for its truth, "He has great abilities, but has the capital fault of taking the second step before he has taken the first." Joseph's prime minister and right hand man was Prince Kaunitz, a name now almost totally forgotten, and yet as familiar in men's mouths a hundred years ago as Prince Bismarck's is at this day. Kaunitz passed for the very king of diplomatists and statesmen, but no opinion could approach that which he had of himself. He was one of those men of intense conceit

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To his schemes more than perhaps to any other cause the partition of Poland may be attributed.

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PRUSSIA. Next comes Prussia, a name of no small significance at this day. Frederick of Prussia is now sixty-four years of age. It is thirteen years since his last war, the terrible war of seven years, in which he

had defied all Europe, and defended himself desperately, like a wolf at bay, ready to be torn to pieces, rather than yield a particle of his stolen goods. Europe was wearied out at last, and, after seven years of frightful warfare, Prussia was left bleeding at every pore, but still in possession of the province of Silesia, which, without a tittle of just right, had been invaded by Frederick in his youth and conquered from Austria. Since 1763 Frederick had clung as eagerly to peace as formerly he had been ardent for war. He described himself as an old dog badly bitten in fight, who sits licking his wounds. Totally destitute of religion, hardly even sharing the faint Deism of Voltaire, time and the political necessity of his position had greatly softened not only his active hostility but even his satirical vein against Christianity. He constantly remonstrated on this subject with Voltaire, whose hatred of religion seemed only to grow more virulent as the grave drew nigh. The suppression of the Jesuits-the work of the House of Bourbon-Frederick looked on with undisguised contempt. Why, he said, with profound truth, why destroy anything that has life? And after his own fashion he made use of the event to provide teachers and trainers for the Catholic youth of Prussia out of the members of the dispersed order. Here is his own declaration made to the Pope: "His Prussian Majesty would by no means renounce his own interest, but combine it with that of the Pope, and meant, by suffering the Jesuits to reside in hist dominions, not to permit the existence of the Society but the utility of its members. The most important object of a sovereign has always been public education. In State like Prussia, where there are so many different sects and religions, education must be various, and the instruction of a million and a half of Catholics, which are in different parts of Prussia, is no small concern."

RUSSIA. In the north of Europe the Czarina or Empress of all the Russias, Catherine II., reigned supreme. She was now in her forty-seventh year (born in 1729). She was the daughter of one of the pettiest of German princelets, the Duke of Anhalt-Zerbst. She had been brought in her girlhood to St. Petersburg to marry the then heir of all the Russias, afterwards Peter II., a weak, wild, well-meaning, but dissipated and half-crazed youth, and she changed her original Lutheran religion for the Greek Church without moment's scruple, as indeed scruples were never her foible. She had undoubtedly great abilities. She relates in her own memoirsbrought to light a few years ago-how at the age of fifteen or sixteen, and in the midst of the despicable atmosphere around her, she devoted several hours daily to the study of Tacitus, and learned to discern that things are not as they seem, and how warily it behoves one to tread the pavements of Imperial Courts. Her husband's reign was brief. He was deposed and strangled, if not by her design at least with her connivance, and she stepped into his place as autocrat. She was full of a certain grandiose ambition. She made incessant and most sanguinary wars upon the Turks, and at a later period christened one of her grandsons Constantine, in the hope (not yet realized, though possibly soon to be) that the Russian banner would float in Constantinople. Her private life was simply infamous, and is a subject upan

which, as Dante says, il tacere é bello-silence is pleasant. As beseemed her, she made much of the French philosophes, and invited the atheist Diderot to her Court. What a contrast does she present to her great contemporary, the Catholic Empress, the tender and devoted wife and mother, the stainless, devout, and magnanimous Maria Theresa.

POLAND. But in those northern parts the great object of interest was still the first partition of Poland, effected five years ago (1771). 16,000 square miles of territory were torn from Poland and divided among her three neighbours, Prussia, Russia, and Austria. This was the first partition. The second came twenty years after, totally extinguishing Poland. The world of western Europe, which had no share in the spoil, has been unanimous from that day to this in denouncing the proceeding as an act of barefaced and high-handed robbery. The spoilers have been eager then and ever since to show that their rapacity was a work of necessity, and even of charity towards their victims. We can hardly take up a German novel at this day without finding the Polish character handled pretty much as the Irish character has been by the English. It would be unjust to the great Maria Theresa not to mention her energetic protest against this act, which in the face of her son and his unscrupulous minister she was powerless to prevent. Here are her own words:

“When all my lands were invaded, and I knew not where in the world I should find a place to be brought to bed in, I relied on my good right and the help of God. But in this thing, where not only public law cries to Heaven against us, but also all natural justice and sound reason, I must confess never in my life to have been in such trouble, and am ashamed to show my face. Let the Prince (Kaunitz) consider what an example we are giving to all the world, if for a miserable piece of Poland or Wallachia we throw our honour and reputation to the winds. I see well that I am alone, and no more in vigour, therefore I must, though to my very great sorrow, let things take their course."

And some days afterwards, here is her majesty's official assent: "Be it so, since so many great and learned men will have it so; but long after I am dead it will be known what this violation of all that was hitherto held sacred and just will give rise to."

What prophetic words! A century has rolled by, and the example thus set of violating all that was sacred and just has been followed in Italy, in Germany, in France, till at this hour there is hardly a pretence of the existence of public law more than in the days of Brennus or Attila.

FRANCE.-France in 1776 was full of the brightest hopes and aspirations. The old king, Louis XV., whose life and reign had been so vicious and disastrous, was two years dead, and in his stead reigned a young king of two-and-twenty, with his queen, one year younger, the beautiful Marie Antoinette, Maria Theresa's daughter. Both were virtuous, generous, devoted to their people-both, as we know, destined in years to come to a most miserable fate. But that future was now all hidden in the golden flush of hope. France was at profound peace with all the world, a peace of no long duration, for her heart beat high on looking to the west, and contemplating the great events transacted there. That was indeed the spectacle which at the hour we write of the whole world hung upon with wonder and expectation, the momen

tous struggle between England and her colonies. In France itself, as we can now discern, the germs of the forthcoming revolution were fast fomenting. Chief among these must be named unbelief in religion among the educated classes (the work of Voltaire), and a fanatical opinion as to the perfectibility of men through the medium of political institutions (the work of Rousseau). Theoretically, the king was absolute, but the old provinces remained, several of which had time-honoured privileges; and the parlements of Paris and the provincial cities (which for the most part had sunk into mere law courts) could still assert and did assert, when public opinion was at their back, the right to invalidate an edict of the king, by refusing to register it. The Bastille still stood, but of late scarcely any one had been sent there. Of the changes which time had brought about no better proof can be given than that in this very year, Necker, a Genevese Protestant, was appointed superintendent of the finances, i.e. chancellor of the exchequer in France.

ENGLAND.-As to England, nothing was thought of but the war with America. If Nicholas of Russia termed the Crimean war of 1854 the war of incapacities, the American war of 1775 might be styled the war of mulish obstinacy and folly. It was essentially the war of King George III. No doubt, there was what Shakspeare calls "a semblable coherence" between his views and those of the unreasoning and unreflecting mass of the English nation; but certain it is that, if the nation had at its head a king less dogged, the American dispute would have been settled without bloodshed, and the separation sure to come in course of time, might have been effected without bitterness or violence. The causes of quarrel were practically nothing. but were in principle everything, and it is in great degree a measure of the political advancement and capacity of a people when they resist for sake of a principle rather than from the pressure of a grievance. The grievance was really nothing in itself to a thriving community. First, an insignificant stamp tax, and when that was withdrawn, a trifling duty on imported tea; but, in either case, the Americans saw nothing but the intolerable pretension to tax them without their own consent. So the taxed tea was thrown into Boston harbour, and the principles asserted on either side being absolutely irreconcilable, war was the only issue. It is remarkable that the two men of indisputably the greatest genius then living in England-the great Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords, the great Edmund Burke in the House of Commons-adopted warmly the American side, and vehemently advocated conciliation according to the American views, but in vain. The former who, at the close of George II.'s reign, had rescued England from defeat and degradation and raised her to an unprecedented height of success and splendour, was to the dull mind of George III. only a "trumpet of sedition;" and in the latter, whose every utterance has been stamped by time as the expression of profound political wisdom, he could see nothing but "the heated imagination of Mr. Burke." George III. is a typical instance of the evil which a good and moral, not ill-intentioned, but thoroughly narrow and vulgar-minded man, placed in a high position, may in flict

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