LEOPOLD I.
From 1662 to 1697.
Invasion of the Turks.—A Treaty concluded.—Possessions of Leopold.—Invasion of the French.—League of Augsburg.—Devastation of the Palatinate.—Invasion of Hungary.—Emeric Tekeli.—Union of Emeric Tekeli with the Turks.—Leopold applies to Sobieski.—He immediately marches to his Aid.—The Turks conquered.—Sobieski's triumphal Receptions.—Meanness of Leopold.—Revenge upon Hungary.—Peace concluded.—Contest for Spain.
While Europe was rousing itself to repel this invasion of the Turks, the grand vizier, leaving garrisons in the strong fortresses of the Danube, withdrew the remainder of his army to prepare for a still more formidable invasion the ensuing year. Most of the European powers seemed disposed to render the emperor some aid. The pope transmitted to him about two hundred thousand dollars. France sent a detachment of six thousand men. Spain, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany and Mantua, forwarded important contributions of money and military stores. Early in the summer the Turks, in a powerful and well provided army, commenced their march anew. Ascending the valley of the Save, where they encountered no opposition, they traversed Styria, that they might penetrate to the seat of war through a defenseless frontier. The troops assembled by Leopold, sixty thousand in number, under the renowned Prince Montecuculi, stationed themselves in a very strong position at St. Gothard, behind the river Raab, which flows into the Danube about one hundred miles below Vienna. Here they threw up their intrenchments and prepared to resist the progress of the invader.
The Turks soon arrived and spread themselves out in military array upon the opposite side of the narrow but rapid stream. As the hostile armies were preparing for an engagement, a young Turk, magnificently mounted, and in gorgeous uniform, having crossed the stream with a party of cavalry, rode in advance of the troop, upon the plain, and in the spirit of ancient chivalry challenged any Christian knight to meet him in single combat. The Chevalier of Lorraine accepted the challenge, and rode forth to the encounter. Both armies looked silently on to witness the issue of the duel. It was of but a few moments' duration. Lorraine, warding off every blow of his antagonist, soon passed his sword through the body of the Turk, and he fell dead from his horse. The victor returned to the Christian camp, leading in triumph the splendid steed of his antagonist.
And now the signal was given for the general battle. The Turks impetuously crossing the narrow stream, assailed the Christian camp in all directions, with their characteristic physical bravery, the most common, cheap and vulgar of all earthly virtues. A few months of military discipline will make fearless soldiers of the most ignominious wretches who can be raked from the gutters of Christian or heathen lands. The battle was waged with intense fierceness on both sides, and was long continued with varying success. At last the Turks were routed on every portion of the field, and leaving nearly twenty thousand of their number either dead upon the plain or drowned in the Raab, they commenced a precipitate flight.
Leopold was, for many reasons, very anxious for peace, and immediately proposed terms very favorable to the Turks. The sultan was so disheartened by this signal reverse that he readily listened to the propositions of the emperor, and within nine days after the battle of St. Gothard, to the astonishment of all Europe, a truce was concluded for twenty years. The Hungarians were much displeased with the terms of this treaty; for in the first place, it was contrary to the laws of the kingdom for the king to make peace without the consent of the diet, and in the second place, the conditions he offered the Turks were humiliating to the Hungarians. Leopold confirmed to the Turks their ascendency in Transylvania, and allowed them to retain Great Wardein, and two other important fortresses in Hungary. It was with no little difficulty that the emperor persuaded the diet to ratify these terms.
Leopold is to be considered under the twofold light of sovereign of Austria and Emperor of Germany. We have seen that his power as emperor was quite limited. His power as sovereign of Austria, also varied greatly in the different States of his widely extended realms. In the Austrian duchies proper, upon the Danube, of which he was, by long hereditary descent, archduke, his sway was almost omnipotent. In Bohemia he was powerful, though much less so than in Austria, and it was necessary for him to move with caution there, and not to disturb the ancient usages of the realm lest he should excite insurrection. In Hungary, where the laws and customs were entirely different, Leopold held merely a nominal, hardly a recognized sway. The bold Hungarian barons, always steel-clad and mounted for war, in their tumultuous diets, governed the kingdom. There were other remote duchies and principalities, too feeble to stand by themselves, and ever changing masters, as they were conquered or sought the protection of other powers, which, under the reign of Leopold, were portions of wide extended Austria. Another large and vastly important accession was now made to his realms. The Tyrol, which, in its natural features, may be considered but an extension of Switzerland, is a territory of about one hundred miles square, traversed through its whole extent by the Alps. Lying just south of Austria it is the key to Italy, opening through its defiles a passage to the sunny plains of the Peninsula; and through those fastnesses, guarded by frowning castles, no foe could force his way, into the valleys of the Tyrol. The most sublime road in Europe is that over Mount Brenner, along the banks of the Adige. This province had long been in the hands of members of the Austrian family.
On the 15th of June, 1665, Sigismond Francis, Duke of Tyrol, and cousin of Leopold, died, leaving no issue, and the province escheated with its million of inhabitants to Leopold, as the next heir. This brought a large accession of revenue and of military force, to the kingdom. Austria was now the leading power in Europe, and Leopold, in rank and position, the most illustrious sovereign. Louis XIV. had recently married Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain. Philip, who was anxious to retain the crown of Spain in his own family, extorted from Maria Theresa, and from her husband, Louis XIV., the renunciation of all right of succession, in favor of his second daughter, Margaret, whom he betrothed to Leopold. Philip died in September, 1665, leaving these two daughters, one of whom was married to the King of France, and leaving also an infant son, who succeeded to the throne under the regency of his mother, Ann, daughter of Ferdinand III., of Austria. Margaret was then too young to be married, but in a year from this time, in September, 1666, her nuptials were celebrated with great splendor at Madrid. The ambitious French monarch, taking advantage of the minority of the King of Spain, and of the feeble regency, and in defiance of the solemn renunciation made at his marriage, resolved to annex the Spanish provinces of the Low Countries to France, and invaded the kingdom, leading himself an army of thirty thousand men. The Spanish court immediately appealed to Leopold for assistance. But Leopold was so embarrassed by troubles in Hungary, and by discontents in the empire that he could render no efficient aid. England, however, and other powers of Europe, jealous of the aggrandizement of Louis XIV. combined, and compelled him to abandon a large portion of the Netherlands, though he still retained several fortresses. The ambition of Louis XIV. was inflamed, not checked by this reverse, and all Europe was involved again in bloody wars. The aggressions of France, and the devastations of Tarenne in the Palatinate, roused Germany to listen to the appeals of Leopold, and the empire declared war against France. Months of desolating war rolled on, decisive of no results, except universal misery. The fierce conflict continued with unintermitted fury until 1679, when the haughty monarch of France, who was as sagacious in diplomacy as he was able in war, by bribes and threats succeeded in detaching one after another from the coalition against him, until Leopold, deserted by nearly all his allies, was also compelled to accede to peace.
France, under Louis XIV., was now the dominant power in Europe. Every court seemed to be agitated by the intrigues of this haughty sovereign, and one becomes weary of describing the incessant fluctuations of the warfare. The arrogance of Louis, his unblushing perfidy and his insulting assumptions of superiority over all other powers, exasperated the emperor to the highest pitch. But the French monarch, by secret missions and abounding bribes, kept Hungary in continued commotion, and excited such jealousy in the different States of the empire, that Leopold was compelled to submit in silent indignation to wrongs almost too grievous for human nature to bear.
At length Leopold succeeded in organizing another coalition to resist the aggressions of Louis XIV. The Prince of Orange, the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg were the principal parties united with the emperor in this confederacy, which was concluded, under the name of the "League of Augsburg," on the 21st of June, 1686. An army of sixty thousand men was immediately raised. From all parts of Germany troops were now hurrying towards the Rhine. Louis, alarmed, retired from the Palatinate, which he had overrun, and, to place a barrier between himself and his foes, ordered the utter devastation of the unhappy country. The diabolical order was executed by Turenne. The whole of the Palatinate was surrendered to pillage and conflagration. The elector, from the towers of his castle at Mannheim, saw at one time two cities and twenty-five villages in flames. He had no force sufficient to warrant him to leave the walls of his fortress to oppose the foe. He was, however, so moved to despair by the sight, that he sent a challenge to Turenne to meet him in single combat. Turenne, by command of the king, declined accepting the challenge. More than forty large towns, besides innumerable villages, were given up to the flames. It was mid-winter. The fields were covered with snow, and swept by freezing blasts. The wretched inhabitants, parents and children, driven into the bleak plains without food or clothing or shelter, perished miserably by thousands. The devastation of the Palatinate is one of the most cruel deeds which war has ever perpetrated. For these woes, which no imagination can gauge, Louis XIV. is responsible. He has escaped any adequate earthly penalty for the crime, but the instinctive sense of justice implanted in every breast, demands that he should not escape the retributions of a righteous God. "After death cometh the judgment."
This horrible deed roused Germany. All Europe now combined against France, except Portugal, Russia and a few of the Italian States. The tide now turned in favor of the house of Austria. Germany was so alarmed by the arrogance of France, that, to strengthen the power of the emperor, the diet with almost perfect unanimity elected his son Joseph, though a lad but eleven years of age, to succeed to the imperial throne. Indeed, Leopold presented his son in a manner which seemed to claim the crown for him as his hereditary right, and the diet did not resist that claim. France, rich and powerful, with marvelous energy breasted her host of foes. All Europe was in a blaze. The war raged on the ocean, over the marshes of Holland, along the banks of the Rhine, upon the plains of Italy, through the defiles of the Alps and far away on the steppes of Hungary and the shores of the Euxine. To all these points the emperor was compelled to send his troops. Year after year of carnage and woe rolled on, during which hardly a happy family could be found in all Europe.
"Man's inhumanity to man
Made countless millions mourn."
At last all parties became weary of the war, and none of the powers having gained any thing of any importance by these long years of crime and misery, for which Louis XIV., as the aggressor, is mainly responsible, peace was signed on the 30th of October, 1697. One important thing, indeed, had been accomplished. The rapacious Louis XIV. had been checked in his career of spoliation. But his insatiate ambition was by no means subdued. He desired peace only that he might more successfully prosecute his plans of aggrandizement. He soon, by his system of robbery, involved Europe again in war. Perhaps no man has ever lived who has caused more bloody deaths and more wide-spread destruction of human happiness than Louis XIV. We wonder not that in the French Revolution an exasperated people should have rifled his sepulcher and spurned his skull over the pavements as a foot-ball.
Leopold, during the progress of these wars, by the aid of the armies which the empire furnished him, recovered all of Hungary and Transylvania, driving the Turks beyond the Danube. But the proud Hungarian nobles were about as much opposed to the rule of the Austrian king as to that of the Turkish sultan. The Protestants gained but little by the change, for the Mohammedan was about as tolerant as the papist. They all suspected Leopold of the design of establishing over them despotic power, and they formed a secret confederacy for their own protection. Leopold, released from his warfare against France and the Turks, was now anxious to consolidate his power in Hungary, and justly regarding the Roman Catholic religion as the great bulwark against liberty, encouraged the Catholics to persecute the Protestants.
Leopold took advantage of this conspiracy to march an army into Hungary, and attacking the discontented nobles, who had raised an army, he crushed them with terrible severity. No mercy was shown. He exhausted the energies of confiscation, exile and the scaffold upon his foes; and then, having intimidated all so that no one dared to murmur, declared the monarchy of Hungary no longer elective but hereditary, like that of Bohemia. He even had the assurance to summon a diet of the nobles to confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights. The nobles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into Transylvania. The despot then issued an insulting and menacing proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from God, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of his vengeance. He then extorted a large contribution of money from the kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to awe them into subjection.
This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the whole form of government of the kingdom, and establishing an unlimited despotism. He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the Protestant religion. The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were instituted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then, as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life. All the nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land.
Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil and religious outrages. They combined, and were aided both by France and Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they might enrich themselves by the spoils. A noble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots. Victory followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reëstablish the ancient laws which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them.
But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious promises. They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli. The emperor, unable to meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg. But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty thousand men. The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command of the imperial troops, was compelled to retreat precipitately before outnumbering foes, and he fled upon the Danube, pursued by the combined Hungarians and Turks, until he found refuge within the walls of Vienna. The city was quite unprepared for resistance, its fortifications being dilapidated, and its garrison feeble. Universal consternation seized the inhabitants. All along the valley of the Danube the population fled in terror before the advance of the Turks. Leopold, with his family, at midnight, departed ingloriously from the city, to seek a distant refuge. The citizens followed the example of their sovereign, and all the roads leading westward and northward from the city were crowded with fugitives, in carriages, on horseback and on foot, and with all kinds of vehicles laden with the treasures of the metropolis. The churches were filled with the sick and the aged, pathetically imploring the protection of Heaven.
The Duke of Lorraine conducted with great energy, repairing the dilapidated fortifications, stationing in posts of peril the veteran troops, and marshaling the citizens and the students to coöperate with the garrison. On the 14th of July, 1682, the banners of the advance guard of the Turkish army were seen from the walls of Vienna. Soon the whole mighty host, like an inundation, came surging on, and, surrounding the city, invested it on all sides. The terrific assault from innumerable batteries immediately commenced. The besieged were soon reduced to the last extremity for want of provisions, and famine and pestilence rioting within the walls, destroyed more than the shot of the enemy. The suburbs were destroyed, the principal outworks taken, several breaches were battered in the walls, and the terrified inhabitants were hourly in expectation that the city would be taken by storm. There can not be, this side of the world of woe, any thing more terrible than such an event.
The emperor, in his terror, had dispatched envoys all over Germany to rally troops for the defense of Vienna and the empire. He himself had hastened to Poland, where, with frantic intreaties, he pressed the king, the renowned John Sobieski, whose very name was a terror, to rush to his relief. Sobieski left orders for a powerful army immediately to commence their march. But, without waiting for their comparatively slow movements, he placed himself at the head of three thousand Polish horsemen, and, without incumbering himself with luggage, like the sweep of the whirlwind traversed Silesia and Moravia, and reached Tulen, on the banks of the Danube, about twenty miles above Vienna. He had been told by the emperor that here he would find an army awaiting him, and a bridge constructed, by which he could cross the stream. But, to his bitter disappointment, he found no army, and the bridge unfinished. Indignantly he exclaimed,
"What does the emperor mean? Does he think me a mere adventurer? I left my own army that I might take command of his. It is not for myself that I fight, but for him."
Notwithstanding this disappointment, he called into requisition all his energies to meet the crisis. The bridge was pushed forward to its completion. The loitering German troops were hurried on to the rendezvous. After a few days the Polish troops, by forced marches, arrived, and Sobieski found himself at the head of sixty thousand men, experienced soldiers, and well supplied with all the munitions of war. On the 11th of September the inhabitants of the city were overjoyed, in descrying from the towers of the city, in the distance, the approaching banners of the Polish and German army. Sobieski ascended an elevation, and long and carefully scrutinized the position of the besieging host. He then calmly remarked,
"The grand vizier has selected a bad position. I understand him. He is ignorant of the arts of war, and yet thinks that he has military genius. It will be so easy to conquer him, that we shall obtain no honor from the victory."
Early the next morning, the 12th of September, the Polish and German troops rushed to the assault, with such amazing impetuosity, and guided by such military skill, that the Turks were swept before them as by a torrent. The army of the grand vizier, seized by a panic, fled so precipitately, that they left baggage, tents, ammunition and provisions behind. The garrison emerged from the city, and coöperated with the victors, and booty of indescribable value fell into their hands. As Sobieski took possession of the abandoned camp, stored with all the wealth and luxuries of the East, he wrote, in a tone of pleasantry to his wife,
"The grand vizier has left me his heir, and I inherit millions of ducats. When I return home I shall not be met with the reproach of the Tartar wives, 'You are not a man, because you have come back without booty.'"
The inhabitants of Vienna flocked out from the city to greet the king as an angel deliverer sent from heaven. The next morning the gates of the city were thrown open, the streets were garlanded with flowers, and the King of Poland had a triumphal reception in the streets of the metropolis. The enthusiasm and gratitude of the people passed all ordinary bounds. The bells rang their merriest peals; files of maidens lined his path, and acclamations, bursting from the heart, greeted him every step of his way. They called him their father and deliverer. They struggled to kiss his feet and even to touch his garments. With difficulty he pressed through the grateful crowd to the cathedral, where he prostrated himself before the altar, and returned thanks to God for the signal victory. As he returned, after a public dinner, to his camp, he said, "This is the happiest day of my life."
Two days after this, Leopold returned, trembling and humiliated to his capital. He was received in silence, and with undisguised contempt. His mortification was intense, and he could not endure to hear the praises which were everywhere lavished upon Sobieski. Jealousy rankled in his heart, and he vented his spite upon all around him. It was necessary that he should have an interview with the heroic king who had so nobly come to his rescue. But instead of meeting him with a warm and grateful heart, he began to study the punctilios of etiquette, that the dreaded interview might be rendered as cold and formal as possible.
Sobieski was merely an elective monarch. Leopold was a hereditary king and an emperor. Leopold even expressed some doubt whether it were consistent with his exalted dignity to grant the Polish king the honor of an audience. He inquired whether an elected monarch had ever been admitted to the presence of an emperor; and if so, with what forms, in the present case, the king should be received. The Duke of Lorraine, of whom he made the inquiry, disgusted with the mean spirit of the emperor, nobly replied, "With open arms."
But the soulless Leopold had every movement punctiliously arranged according to the dictates of his ignoble spirit. The Polish and Austrian armies were drawn up in opposite lines upon the plain before the city. At a concerted signal the emperor and the king emerged from their respective ranks, and rode out upon the open plain to meet each other. Sobieski, a man of splendid bearing, magnificently mounted, and dressed in the brilliant uniform of a Polish warrior, attracted all eyes and the admiration of all hearts. His war steed pranced proudly as if conscious of the royal burden he bore, and of the victories he had achieved. Leopold was an ungainly man at the best. Conscious of his inability to vie with the hero, in his personal presence, he affected the utmost simplicity of dress and equipage. Humiliated also by the cold reception he had met and by the consciousness of extreme unpopularity in both armies, he was embarrassed and deject. The contrast was very striking, adding to the renown of Sobieski, and sinking Leopold still deeper in contempt.
The two sovereigns advanced, formally saluted each other with bows, dismounted and embraced. A few cold words were exchanged, when they again embraced and remounted to review the troops. But Sobieski, frank, cordial, impulsive, was so disgusted with this reception, so different from what he had a right to expect, that he excused himself, and rode to his tent, leaving his chancellor Zaluski to accompany the emperor on the review. As Leopold rode along the lines he was received in contemptuous silence, and he returned to his palace in Vienna, tortured by wounded pride and chagrin.
The treasure abandoned by the Turks was so abundant that five days were spent in gathering it up. The victorious army then commenced the pursuit of the retreating foe. About one hundred and fifty miles below Vienna, where the majestic Danube turns suddenly from its eastern course and flows toward the south, is situated the imperial city of Gran. Upon a high precipitous rock, overlooking both the town and the river, there had stood for centuries one of the most imposing fortresses which mortal hands have ever reared. For seventy years this post had been in the hands of the Turks, and strongly garrisoned by four thousand troops, had bid defiance to every assault. Here the thinned and bleeding battalions of the grand vizier sought refuge. Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine, flushed with victory, hurled their masses upon the disheartened foe, and the Turks were routed with enormous slaughter. Seven thousand gory corpses of the dead strewed the plain. Many thousands were driven into the river and drowned. The fortress was taken, sword in hand; and the remnant of the Moslem army, in utter discomfiture, fled down the Danube, hardly resting, by night or by day, till they were safe behind the ramparts of Belgrade.
Both the German and the Polish troops were disgusted with Leopold. Having reconquered Hungary for the emperor, they were not disposed to remain longer in his service. Most of the German auxiliaries, disbanding, returned to their own countries. Sobieski, declaring that he was willing to fight against the Turks, but not against Tekeli and his Christian confederates, led back his troops to Poland. The Duke of Lorraine was now left with the Austrian troops to struggle against Tekeli with the Hungarian patriots. The Turks, exasperated by the defeat, accused Tekeli of being the cause. By stratagem he was seized and sent in chains to Constantinople. The chief who succeeded him turned traitor and joined the imperialists. The cause of the patriots was ruined. Victory now kept pace with the march of the Duke of Lorraine. The Turks were driven from all their fortresses, and Leopold again had Hungary at his feet. His vengeance was such as might have been expected from such a man.
Far away, in the wilds of northern Hungary, at the base of the Carpathian, mountains, on the river Tarcza, one of the tributaries of the Theiss, is the strongly fortified town of Eperies. At this remote spot the diabolical emperor established his revolutionary tribunal, as if he thought that the shrieks of his victims, there echoing through the savage defiles of the mountains, could not awaken the horror of civilized Europe. His armed bands scoured the country and transported to Eperies every individual, man, woman and child, who was even suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. There was hardly a man of wealth or influence in the kingdom who was not dragged before this horrible tribunal, composed of ignorant, brutal, sanguinary officers of the king. Their summary trial, without any forms of justice, was an awful tragedy. They were thrown into dungeons; their property confiscated; they were exposed to the most direful tortures which human ingenuity could devise, to extort confession and to compel them to criminate friends. By scores they were daily consigned to the scaffold. Thirty executioners, with their assistants, found constant employment in beheading the condemned. In the middle of the town, the scaffold was raised for this butchery. The spot is still called "The Bloody Theater of Eperies."
Leopold, having thus glutted his vengeance, defiantly convoked a diet and crowned his son Joseph, a boy twelve years of age, as King of Hungary, practically saying to the nobles, "Dispute his hereditary right now, if you dare." The emperor had been too often instructed in the vicissitudes of war to feel that even in this hour of triumph he was perfectly safe. He knew that other days might come; that other foes might rise; and that Hungary could never forget the rights of which she had been defrauded. He therefore exhausted all the arts of threats and bribes to induce the diet to pass a decree that the crown was no longer elective but hereditary. It is marvelous that in such an hour there could have been any energy left to resist his will. But with all his terrors he could only extort from the diet their consent that the succession to the crown should be confirmed in the males, but that upon the extinction of the male line the crown, instead of being hereditary in the female line, should revert to the nation, who should again confer it by the right of election.
Leopold reluctantly yielded to this, as the most he could then hope to accomplish. The emperor, elated by success, assumed such imperious airs as to repel from him all his former allies. For several years Hungary was but a battle field where Austrians and Turks met in incessant and bloody conflicts. But Leopold, in possession of all the fortresses, succeeded in repelling each successive invasion.
Both parties became weary of war. In November, 1697, negotiations were opened at Carlovitz, and a truce was concluded for twenty-five years. The Turks abandoned both Hungary and Transylvania, and these two important provinces became more firmly than ever before, integral portions of the Austrian empire. By the peace of Carlovitz the sultan lost one half of his possessions in Europe. Austria, in the grandeur of her territory, was never more powerful than at this hour: extending across the whole breadth of Europe, from the valley of the Rhine to the Euxine sea, and from the Carpathian mountains to the plains of Italy. A more heterogeneous conglomeration of States never existed, consisting of kingdoms, archduchies, duchies, principalities, counties, margraves, landgraves and imperial cities, nearly all with their hereditary rulers subordinate to the emperor, and with their local customs and laws.
Leopold, though a weak and bad man, in addition to all this power, swayed also the imperial scepter over all the States of Germany. Though his empire over all was frail, and his vast dominions were liable at any moment to crumble to pieces, he still was not content with consolidating the realms he held, but was anxiously grasping for more. Spain was the prize now to be won. Louis XIV., with the concentrated energies of the French kingdom, was claiming it by virtue of his marriage with the eldest daughter of the deceased monarch, notwithstanding his solemn renunciation of all right at his marriage in favor of the second daughter. Leopold, as the husband of the second daughter, claimed the crown, in the event, then impending, of the death of the imbecile and childless king. This quarrel agitated Europe to its center, and deluged her fields with blood. If the elective franchise is at times the source of agitation, the law of hereditary succession most certainly does not always confer tranquillity and peace.