The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power

by John S. C. Abbott

These losses the emperor felt most keenly. Upon the Rhine he had made great preparations, strengthening fortresses and collecting troops, which he placed under the command of his veteran general, Prince Eugene. He was quite sanguine that here he would be abundantly able to repel the assaults of his foes. But here again he was doomed to bitter disappointment. The emperor found a vast disproportion between promise and performance. The diet had voted him one hundred and twenty thousand troops; they furnished twelve thousand. They voted abundant supplies; they furnished almost none at all.

The campaign opened the 9th of April, 1734, the French crossing the Rhine near Truerbuch, in three strong columns, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Austrians to resist them. Prince Eugene, by birth a Frenchman, reluctantly assumed the command. He had remonstrated with the emperor against any forcible interference in the Polish election, assuring him that he would thus expose himself, almost without allies, to all the power of France. Eugene did not hesitate openly to express his disapprobation of the war. "I can take no interest in this war," he said; "the question at issue is not important enough to authorize the death of a chicken."

Eugene, upon his arrival from Vienna, at the Austrian camp, found but twenty-five thousand men. They were composed of a motley assemblage from different States, undisciplined, unaccustomed to act together and with no confidence in each other. The commanders of the various corps were quarreling for the precedence in rank, and there was no unity or subordination in the army. They were retreating before the French, who, in numbers, in discipline, and in the materiel of war, were vastly in the superiority. Eugene saw at once that it would be folly to risk a battle, and that all he could hope to accomplish was to throw such embarrassments as he might in the path of the victors.

The young officers, ignorant, impetuous and reckless, were for giving battle, which would inevitably have resulted in the destruction of the army. They were so vexed by the wise caution of Eugene, which they regarded as pusillanimity, that they complained to the emperor that the veteran general was in his dotage, that he was broken both in body and mind, and quite unfit to command the army. These representations induced the emperor to send a spy to watch the conduct of Eugene. Though deeply wounded by these suspicions, the experienced general could not be provoked to hazard an engagement. He retreated from post to post, merely checking the progress of the enemy, till the campaign was over, and the ice and snow of a German winter drove all to winter quarters.

While recruiting for the campaign of 1735, Prince Eugene wrote a series of most earnest letters to his confidential agent in London, which letters were laid before George II., urging England to come to the help of the emperor in his great extremity. Though George was eager to put the fleet and army of England in motion, the British cabinet wisely refused to plunge the nation into war for such a cause, and the emperor was left to reap the bitter fruit of his despotism and folly. The emperor endeavored to frighten England by saying that he was reduced to such an extremity that if the British cabinet did not give him aid, he should be compelled to seek peace by giving his daughter, with Austria in her hand as her dowry, to Carlos, now King of Naples and heir apparent to the crown of Spain. He well knew that to prevent such an acquisition of power on the part of the Spanish monarch, who was also in intimate alliance with France, England would be ready to expend any amount of blood and treasure.

Charles VI. waited with great impatience to see the result of this menace, hardly doubting that it would bring England immediately to terms. Bitter was his disappointment and his despair when he received from the court of St. James the calm reply, that England could not possibly take a part in this war, and that in view of the great embarrassments in which the emperor was involved, England would take no offense in case of the marriage of the emperor's second daughter to Carlos. England then advised the emperor to make peace by surrendering the Netherlands.

The emperor was now greatly enraged, and inveighed bitterly against England as guilty of the grossest perfidy. He declared that England had been as deeply interested as he was in excluding Stanislaus from the throne of Poland; that it was more important for England than for Austria to curb the exorbitant power of France; that in every step he had taken against Stanislaus, he had consulted England, and had acted in accordance with her counsel; that England was reaping the benefit of having the father-in-law of the French king expelled from the Polish throne; that England had solemnly promised to support him in these measures, and now having derived all the advantage, basely abandoned him. There were bitter charges, and it has never been denied that they were mainly true. The emperor, in his indignation, threatened to tell the whole story to the people of England. It is strange that the emperor had found out that there were people in England. In no other part of Europe was there any thing but nobles and peasants.

In this extraordinary letter, addressed to Count Kinsky, the imperial ambassador in London, the emperor wrote:

"On the death of Augustus II., King of Poland, my first care was to communicate to the King of England the principles on which I acted. I followed, in every instance, his advice.... England has never failed to give me promises, both before and since the commencement of the war, but instead of fulfilling those promises, she has even favored my enemies.... Let the king know that I never will consent to the plan of pacification now in agitation; that I had rather suffer the worst of extremities than accede to such disadvantageous proposals, and that even if I should not be able to prevent them, I will justify my honor and my dignity, by publishing a circumstantial account of all the transaction, together with all the documents which I have now in possession.... If these representations fail, means must be taken to publish and circulate throughout England our answer to the proposal of good offices which was not made till after the expiration of nine months. Should the court of London proceed so far as to make such propositions of peace as are supposed to be in agitation, you will not delay a moment to circulate throughout England a memorial, containing a recapitulation of all negotiations which have taken place since 1710, together with the authentic documents, detailing my just complaints, and reclaiming, in the most solemn manner, the execution of the guaranties."

One more effort the emperor made, and it was indeed a desperate one. He dispatched a secret agent, an English Roman Catholic, by the name of Strickland, to London, to endeavor to overthrow the ministry and bring in a cabinet in favor of him. In this, of course, he failed entirely. Nothing now remained for him but to submit, with the best grace he could, to the terms exacted by his foes. In the general pacification great interests were at stake, and all the leading powers of Europe demanded a voice in the proceedings. For many months the negotiations were protracted. England and France became involved in an angry dispute. Each power was endeavoring to grasp all it could, while at the same time it was striving to check the rapacity of every other power. There was a general armistice while these negotiations were pending. It was, however, found exceedingly difficult to reconcile all conflicting interests. New parties were formed; new combinations entered into, and all parties began to aim for a renewal of the strife. England, exasperated against France, in menace made an imposing display of her fleet and navy. The emperor was delighted, and, trusting to gain new allies, exerted his skill of diplomacy to involve the contracting parties in confusion and discord.