On the 25th of October a courier arrived, direct from Vienna, with the startling intelligence that the Emperor Charles VI. had died five days before. The king was at the time suffering from a severe attack of chills and fever. There was quite a long deliberation in the court whether it were safe to communicate the agitating intelligence to his majesty while he was so sick. They delayed for an hour, and then cautiously informed the king of the great event. Frederick listened in silence; uttered not a word; made no sign.[36] Subsequent events proved that his soul must have been agitated by the tidings to its profoundest depths. The death of the emperor, at that time, was unexpected. But it is pretty evident that Frederick had, in the sombre recesses of his mind, resolved upon a course of action when the emperor should die which he knew would be fraught with the most momentous results. In fact, this action proved the occasion of wars and woes from which, could the king have foreseen them, he would doubtless have shrunk back appalled.
The Emperor Charles VI. left no son. He therefore promulgated a new law of succession in a decree known throughout Europe as the “Pragmatic Sanction.” By the custom of the realm the sceptre could descend only to male heirs. But by this decree the king declared that the crown of the house of Hapsburg should be transmitted to his daughter, Maria Theresa. This law had been ratified by the estates of all the kingdoms and principalities which composed the Austrian monarchy. All the leading powers of Europe—England, France, Spain, Prussia, Russia, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Germanic body—had bound themselves by treaty to maintain the “Pragmatic Sanction.” It was a peaceable and wise arrangement, acceptable to the people of Austria and to the dynasties of Europe as a means of averting a war of succession, which might involve all the nations of the Continent in the conflict.
The death-scene of the emperor was an event which must interest every reader. Upon his return from a hunting excursion into Hungary, he was attacked, on Thursday evening, October 16th, by slight indisposition, which was supposed to have been caused by eating imprudently of mushrooms. His sickness, baffling the skill of the doctors, increased, and by Saturday night became alarming. On Tuesday it was thought that he was dying. The pope’s nuncio administered to him the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. His majesty manifested great composure in view of the sublime change before him, and said to one who was weeping at his bedside,
“I am not afraid in contemplating the dread tribunal before which I must now so soon appear. I am certain of my cause. Look at me! A man that is certain of his cause can enter on such a journey with good courage and a composed mind.”
To his physicians, who were doubtful respecting the nature of his disease, he said, “If Doctor Gazelli were here you would soon know what is my complaint. As it is, you will only learn after you have dissected me.”
He then requested to be shown the cup in which his heart would be placed after that operation. His daughter, Maria Theresa, who had married the Grand-duke Francis, was in a delicate state of health. The death of her father would place the weighty crown upon her youthful brow. Grief and agitation threw her helpless upon her bed. So important was her life to the world that the emperor was unwilling that, in her then condition, she should enter the death-chamber. “Tell my Theresa,” said he, in faint and dying accents, “that I bless her, notwithstanding her absence.”
The empress had fainted away at the bedside, and had been borne, in the arms of the attendants, into her daughter Maria Theresa’s chamber. She was now summoned, with the younger children, for the final adieu. As the empress, almost delirious with grief, re-entered the apartment, she threw herself upon the bed of her dying husband, and exclaimed, in frenzied tones, “Do not leave me! Do not leave me!”
During all the day of Wednesday weeping friends stood around the bed, as the lamp of life flickered in its socket. Every moment it was expected that the emperor would breathe his last. At two o’clock the next morning the spirit took its flight, and the lifeless clay alone remained. The grief-stricken empress closed the eyes of her departed husband, kissed his hands, and “was carried out more dead than alive.” Thus ended the male line of the house of Hapsburg, after five centuries of royal sway. The emperor died on the 20th of October 1740, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.
As Frederick received the tidings of this death, he rose, dressed himself, and his ague disappeared, to return no more. A courier was immediately dispatched, at the top of his speed, to summon to his presence General Schwerin and M. Podewils, his chief minister. Two days must elapse before they could reach him. In the mean time, the king, taking counsel of no one, was maturing his plans, and making quiet but vigorous preparations for their execution. He wrote the next day to Voltaire, in allusion to the emperor’s death,
“I believe that there will, by June next, be more talk of cannon, soldiers, trenches, than of actresses and dancers for the ballet. This small event changes the entire system of Europe. It is the little stone which Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, loosening itself and rolling down on the image made of four metals, which it shivers to ruin.”