The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power

by John S. C. Abbott

In the midst of these turmoils the congress of Polish nobles met to choose their king. It was immediately apparent that there was a very powerful party organized in favor of Stanislaus. The emperor was for marching directly into the kingdom with an army which he had already assembled in Silesia for this purpose, and with the bayonet make up for any deficiency which his party might want in votes. Though Prussia demurred, he put his troops in motion, and the imperial and Russian ambassadors at Warsaw informed the marshal of the diet that Catharine, who was now Empress of Russia, and Charles, had decided to exclude Stanislaus from Poland by force.

These threats produced their natural effect upon the bold warrior barons of Poland. Exasperated rather than intimidated, they assembled, many thousands in number, on the great plain of Wola, but a few miles from Warsaw, and with great unanimity chose Stanislaus their king. This was the 12th of September, 1733. Stanislaus, anticipating the result, had left France in disguise, accompanied by a single attendant, to undertake the bold enterprise of traversing the heart of Germany, eluding all the vigilance of the emperor, and of entering Poland notwithstanding all the efforts of Austria, Russia and Prussia to keep him away. It was a very hazardous adventure, for his arrest would have proved his ruin. Though he encountered innumerable dangers, with marvelous sagacity and heroism he succeeded, and reached Warsaw on the 9th of September, just three days before the election. In regal splendor he rode, as soon as informed of his election, to the tented field where the nobles were convened. He was received with the clashing of weapons, the explosions of artillery, and the acclamations of thousands.

But the Poles were not sufficiently enlightened fully to comprehend the virtue and the sacredness of the ballot-box. The Russian army was now hastening to the gates of Warsaw. The small minority of Polish nobles opposed to the election of Stanislaus seceded from the diet, mounted their horses, crossed the Vistula, and joined the invading array to make war upon the sovereign whom the majority had chosen. The retribution for such folly and wickedness has come. There is no longer any Poland. They who despise the authority of the ballot-box inevitably usher in the bayonets of despotism. Under the protection of this army the minority held another diet at Kamien (on the 5th of October), a village just outside the suburbs of Warsaw, and chose as the sovereign of Poland Augustus, son of the deceased king. The minority, aided by the Russian and imperial armies, were too strong for the majority. They took possession of Warsaw, and crowned their candidate king, with the title of Augustus III. Stanislaus, pressed by an overpowering force, retreated to Dantzic, at the mouth of the Vistula, about two hundred miles from Warsaw. Here he was surrounded by the Russian troops and held in close siege, while Augustus III. took possession of Poland. France could do nothing. A weary march of more than a thousand miles separated Paris from Warsaw, and the French troops would be compelled to fight their way through the very heart of the German empire, and at the end of the journey to meet the united armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Poland under her king, now in possession of all the fortresses.

Though Louis XV. could make no effectual resistance, it was not in human nature but that he should seek revenge. When shepherds quarrel, they kill each other's flocks. When kings quarrel, they kill the poor peasants in each other's territories, and burn their homes. France succeeded in enlisting in her behalf Spain and Sardinia. Austria and Russia were upon the other side. Prussia, jealous of the emperor's greatness, declined any active participation. Most of the other powers of Europe also remained neutral. France had now no hope of placing Stanislaus upon the throne; she only sought revenge, determined to humble the house of Austria. The mercenary King of Sardinia, Charles Emanuel, was willing to serve the one who would pay the most. He first offered himself to the emperor, but upon terms too exorbitant to be accepted. France and Spain immediately offered him terms even more advantageous than those he had demanded of the emperor. The contract was settled, and the Sardinian army marched into the allied camp.

The King of Sardinia, who was as ready to employ guile as force in warfare, so thoroughly deceived the emperor as to lead him to believe that he had accepted the emperor's terms, and that Sardinia was to be allied with Austria, even when the whole contract was settled with France and Spain, and the plan of the campaign was matured. So utterly was the emperor deluded by a fraud so contemptible, in the view of every honorable mind, that he sent great convoys of grain, and a large supply of shot, shells and artillery from the arsenals of Milan into the Sardinian camp. Charles Emanuel, dead to all sense of magnanimity, rubbed his hands with delight in the successful perpetration of such fraud, exclaiming, "An virtus an dolos, quis ab hoste requirat."

So cunningly was this stratagem carried on, that the emperor was not undeceived until his own artillery, which he had sent to Charles Emanuel, were thundering at the gates of the city of Milan, and the shot and shells which he had so unsuspectingly furnished were mowing down the imperial troops. So sudden was the attack, so unprepared was Austrian Lombardy to meet it, that in twelve weeks the Sardinian troops overran the whole territory, seized every city and magazine, with all their treasures, leaving the fortress of Mantua alone in the possession of the imperial troops. It was the policy of Louis XV. to attack Austria in the remote portions of her widely-extended dominions, and to cut off province by province. He also made special and successful efforts to detach the interests of the German empire from those of Austria, so that the princes of the empire might claim neutrality. It was against the possessions of Charles VI., not against the independent States of the empire, that Louis XV. urged war.

The storms of winter were now at hand, and both parties were compelled to abandon the field until spring. But during the winter every nerve was strained by the combatants in preparation for the strife which the returning sun would introduce. The emperor established strong defenses along the banks of the Rhine to prevent the passage of the French; he also sent agents to all the princes of the empire to enlist them in his cause, and succeeded, notwithstanding the remonstrances of many who claimed neutrality, in obtaining a vote from a diet which he assembled, for a large sum of money, and for an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men.

The loss of Lombardy troubled Charles exceedingly, for it threatened the loss of all his Italian possessions. Notwithstanding the severity of the winter he sent to Mantua all the troops he could raise from his hereditary domains; and ordered every possible effort to be made to be prepared to undertake the offensive in the spring, and to drive the Sardinians from Lombardy. In the beginning of May the emperor had assembled within and around Mantua, sixty thousand men, under the command of Count Merci. The hostile forces soon met, and battle after battle thundered over the Italian plains. On the 29th of June the two armies encountered each other in the vicinity of Parma, in such numbers as to give promise of a decisive battle. For ten hours the demoniac storm raged unintermitted. Ten thousand of the dead covered the ground. Neither party had taken a single standard or a single prisoner, an event almost unparalleled in the history of battles. From the utter exhaustion of both parties the strife ceased. The Sardinians and French, mangled and bleeding, retired within the walls of Parma. The Austrians, equally bruised and bloody, having lost their leader, retired to Reggio. Three hundred and forty of the Austrian officers were either killed or wounded.

The King of Sardinia was absent during this engagement, having gone to Turin to visit his wife, who was sick. The morning after the battle, however, he joined the army, and succeeded in cutting off an Austrian division of twelve hundred men, whom he took prisoners. Both parties now waited for a time to heal their wounds, repair their shattered weapons, get rested and receive reinforcements. Ten thousand poor peasants, who had not the slightest interest in the quarrel, had now met with a bloody death, and other thousands were now to be brought forward and offered as victims on this altar of kingly ambition. By the middle of July they were again prepared to take the field. Both parties struggled with almost superhuman energies in the work of mutual destruction; villages were burned, cities stormed, fields crimsoned with blood and strewn with the slain, while no decisive advantage was gained. In the desperation of the strife the hostile battalions were hurled against each other until the beginning of January. They waded morasses, slept in drenching storms, and were swept by freezing blasts. Sickness entered the camp, and was even more fatal than the bullet of the foe. Thousands moaned and died in their misery, upon pallets of straw, where no sister, wife or mother could soothe the dying anguish. Another winter only afforded the combatants opportunity to nurse their strength that they might deal still heavier blows in another campaign.

While the imperial troops were struggling against Sardinia and France on the plains of Lombardy, a Spanish squadron landed a strong military force of French and Spaniards upon the peninsula of southern Italy, and meeting with no force sufficiently powerful to oppose them, speedily overran Naples and Sicily. The Spanish troops silenced the forts which defended the city of Naples, and taking the garrison prisoners, entered the metropolis in triumphal array, greeted by the acclamations of the populace, who hated the Austrians. After many battles, in which thousands were slain, the Austrians were driven out of all the Neapolitan States, and Carlos, the oldest son of Philip V. of Spain, was crowned King of Naples, with the title of Charles III. The island of Sicily was speedily subjugated and also attached to the Neapolitan crown.