Joseph, soon after his coronation, made a visit to his sister Maria Antoinette in France, where he was received with the most profuse hospitality, and the bonds of friendship between the two courts were much strengthened. The ambition for territorial aggrandizement seems to have been an hereditary disease of the Austrian monarchs. Joseph was very anxious to attach Bavaria to his realms. Proceeding with great caution he first secured, by diplomatic skill, the non-intervention of France and Russia. England was too much engaged in the war of the American Revolution to interfere. He raised an army of eighty thousand men to crush any opposition, and then informed the Duke of Bavaria that he must exchange his dominions for the Austrian Netherlands. He requested the duke to give him an answer in eight days, but declared peremptorily that in case he manifested any reluctance, the emperor would be under the painful necessity of compelling him to make the exchange.
The duke appealed to Russia, France and Prussia for aid. The emperor had bought over Russia and France. Frederic of Prussia, though seventy-four years of age, encouraged the duke to reject the proposal, and promised his support. The King of Prussia issued a remonstrance against this despotic act of Austria, which remonstrance was sent to all the courts of Europe. Joseph, on encountering this unexpected obstacle, and finding Europe combining against him, renounced his plan and published a declaration that he had never intended to effect the exchange by force. This disavowal, however, deceived no one. A confederacy was soon formed, under the auspices of Frederic of Prussia, to check the encroachments of the house of Austria. This Germanic League was almost the last act of Frederic. He died August 17, 1786, after a reign of forty-seven years, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.
The ambitious Empress of Russia, having already obtained the Crimea, was intent upon the subversion of the Ottoman empire, that she might acquire Constantinople as her maritime metropolis in the sunny south. Joseph was willing to allow her to proceed unobstructed in the dismemberment of Turkey, if she would not interfere with his plans of reform and aggrandizement in Germany.
In January, 1787, the Empress of Russia set out on a pleasure excursion of two thousand miles to the Crimea; perhaps the most magnificent pleasure excursion that was ever attempted. She was accompanied by all the court, by the French, English and Austrian ministers, and by a very gorgeous retinue. It was mid-winter, when the imperial party, wrapped in furs, and in large sledges richly decorated, and prepared expressly for the journey, commenced their sleigh ride of a thousand miles. Music greeted them all along the way; bonfires blazed on every hill; palaces, brilliant with illuminations and profusely supplied with every luxury, welcomed them at each stage where they stopped for refreshment or repose. The roads were put in perfect order; and relays of fresh horses every few miles being harnessed to the sledges, they swept like the wind over the hills and through the valleys.
The drive of a few weeks, with many loiterings for pleasure in the cities on the way, took them to Kief on the Dnieper. This ancient city, the residence of the grand dukes of Russia, contained a population of about twenty-six thousand. Here the imperial court established itself in the ducal palaces, and with music, songs and dances beguiled the days until, with the returning spring, the river opened. In the meantime an immense flotilla of imperial barges had been prepared to drift down the stream, a thousand miles, to its mouth at Kherson, where the river flows into the Black sea. These barges were of magnificent dimensions, floating palaces, containing gorgeous saloons and spacious sleeping apartments. As they were constructed merely to float upon the rapid current of the stream, impelled by sails when the breeze should favor, they could easily be provided with all the appliances of luxury. It is difficult to conceive of a jaunt which would present more of the attractions of pleasure, than thus to glide in saloons of elegance, with imperial resources and surrounded by youth, beauty, genius and rank, for a thousand miles down the current of one of the wildest and most romantic streams of Europe.
It was a beautiful sunny morning of May, when the regal party, accompanied by the music of military bands, and with floating banners, entered the barges. The river, broad and deep, rolls on with majestic flow, now through dense forests, black and gloomy, where the barking of the bear is heard and wolves hold their nightly carousals; now it winds through vast prairies hundreds of miles in extent; again it bursts through mountain barriers where cliffs and crags rise sublimely thousands of feet in the air; here with precipitous sides of granite, bleak and scathed by the storms of centuries, and there with gloomy firs and pines rising to the clouds, where eagles soar and scream and rear their young. Flocks and herds now graze upon the banks; here lies the scattered village, and its whole population, half civilized men, and matrons and maidens in antique, grotesque attire, crowd the shores. Now the pinnacles and the battlements of a great city rise to view. Armies were gathered at several points to entertain the imperial pleasure-party with all the pomp and pageantry of war. At Pultowa they witnessed the maneuverings of a battle, with its thunderings and uproar and apparent carnage—the exact representation of the celebrated battle of Pultowa, which Peter the Great gained on the spot over Charles XII. of Sweden.
The Emperor Joseph had been invited to join this party, and, with his court and retinue, was to meet them at Kherson, near the mouth of the Dneister, and accompany the empress to the Crimea. But, perhaps attracted by the splendor of the water excursion, he struck across the country in a north-east direction, by the way of Lemberg, some six hundred miles, to intercept the flotilla and join the party on the river. But the water of the river suddenly fell, and some hundred miles above Kherson, the flotilla ran upon a sand bar and could not be forced over. The empress, who was apprised of the approach of the emperor, too proud to be found in such a situation, hastily abandoned the flotilla, and taking the carriages which they had with them, drove to meet Joseph. The two imperial suites were soon united, and they swept on, a glittering cavalcade, to Kherson. Joseph and Catharine rode in a carriage together, where they had ample opportunity of talking over all their plans of mutual aggrandizement. As no one was permitted to listen to their conversations, their decisions can only be guessed at.
They entered the city of Kherson, then containing about sixty thousand inhabitants, surrounded by all the magnificence which Russian and Austrian opulence could exhibit. A triumphal arch spanned the gate, upon which was inscribed in letters of gold, "The road to Byzantium." Four days were passed here in revelry. The party then entered the Crimea, and continued their journey as far as Sevastopol, where the empress was delighted to find, within its capacious harbor, many Russian frigates at anchor. Immense sums were expended in furnishing entertainments by the way. At Batcheseria, where the two sovereigns occupied the ancient palace of the khans, they looked out upon a mountain in a blaze of illumination, and apparently pouring lava floods from its artificial volcanic crater.
Joseph returned to Vienna, and immediately there was war—Austria and Russia against Turkey. Joseph was anxious to secure the provinces of Bosnia, Servia, Moldavia and Wallachia, and to extend his empire to the Dneister. With great vigor he made his preparations, and an army of two hundred thousand men, with two thousand pieces of artillery, were speedily on the march down the Danube. Catharine was equally energetic in her preparations, and all the north of Europe seemed to be on the march for the overthrow of the Ottoman empire.
Proverbially fickle are the fortunes of war. Joseph commenced the siege of Belgrade with high hopes. He was ignominiously defeated, and his troops were driven, utterly routed, into Hungary, pursued by the Turks, who spread ruin and devastation widely around them. Disaster followed disaster. Disease entered the Austrian ranks, and the proud army melted away. The emperor himself, with about forty thousand men, was nearly surrounded by the enemy. He attempted a retreat by night. A false alarm threw the troops into confusion and terror. The soldiers, in their bewilderment fired upon each other, and an awful scene of tumult ensued. The emperor, on horseback, endeavored to rally the fugitives, but he was swept away by the crowd, and in the midnight darkness was separated from his suite. Four thousand men perished in this defeat, and much of the baggage and several guns were lost. The emperor reproached his aides-de-camp with having deserted him. One of them sarcastically replied,