Under the ruined walls of the fortress of Fulek, which Emerich had taken from the enemy, Mustapha handed him the diploma of royalty which had been drawn up in Constantinople; at the same time bestowing upon him the rank of a Turkish general, and presenting him with a standard and a horsetail.
The newly-appointed king pledged himself, in return, to consider the Sultan as his lord-paramount, and to pay him a yearly tribute of forty thousand florins. He was so elated with his title, and so desirous of humiliating Austria, that, to free himself from the emperor, he consented to become a vassal of the Porte. He signed the treaty, whereupon Kara Mustapha rejected the proposals of alliance which Leopold was making, and began to dream of extending the dominion of the Crescent, and of founding a Moslem empire in the West, whose capital should be Vienna. He dismissed the Austrian ambassadors with cold indifference, and promised the Sultan that the green banner of the Prophet should carry terror and devastation into the very heart of Austria. This was the danger which threatened the emperor from the East. He had equally powerful enemies in the West. Hungary had sent ambassadors to the court of Louis XIV. These ambassadors had been received in Paris as the accredited envoys of an independent and recognized kingdom; and King Louis, a son of the Catholic Church, had carried his hatred to Austria so far, that he entered into a secret alliance with the unbelieving Porte, and promised assistance to the Protestant rebels of Hungary. This assistance he sent at once in the form of money and arms. French officers were dispatched to Hungary, to join the insurgents and discipline their soldiers. And, while Louis was secretly upholding Turkey and Hungary, he was calling councils at home to establish claims to a portion of the imperial dominions of Austria.
These juridical councils were established at Metz and Brisach, and they had instructions from Louis to reannex to his crown all the domains which had ever been held in fief by any of his predecessors, however remote. They began by summoning the lords of the Trois- Eveches to acknowledge their vassalage to France; and they went on to cite before their tribunal the Elector Palatine, the King of Spain, and the King of Sweden; all and each of whom were called upon to do homage to the king, or have their possessions sequestrated.
All Europe was aghast at these monstrous pretensions, but nobody ventured to put them down, for Louis had a standing army of one hundred and forty thousand men, while the German empire, still suffering from its losses in the Thirty Years' War, could scarcely put into the field one-third of this number.
So that, without the drawing of a sword, Louis was suffered to possess himself of the important city of Strasburg, and subsequently of all Alsatia. Finally he claimed the cloister of Wasserburg and the province of Germersheim, and pushed his greed and arrogance to such a height, that Germany at last awakened from her lethargy, and found resolution enough to protest against the aggressions of this royal robber. Louis, in return, proposed to call a universal council at Frankfort, and have his claims investigated. This was agreed to, and each sovereign sent his plenipotentiaries. Meanwhile the King of France kept possession of all the lands in dispute, and stationed his troops at Strasburg, and at every other town in Alsatia.
Here was danger enough for the Emperor Leopold, from the west; while, north and south, his horizon darkened also. The ambitious Victor Amadeus, seeing that Austria was encompassed by enemies, now bethought himself of annexing Lombardy to his dominions, while there was every reason to fear that the bold and enterprising Peter the Great would extend his frontiers to the Baltic Sea, and, with quite as much right as Louis ever had to Strasburg, declare Dantzic to be a part of his Russian territories.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD I.
The Emperor Leopold had just returned from early mass. Throughout the services, and during the excellent sermon of his celebrated court-preacher Father Abraham, the face of his imperial majesty had worn a troubled aspect; it had not even brightened at the appearance of the Empress Eleonora. But when, in his cabinet, he saw his professor of music, Herr Kircher, Leopold smiled, and his brow cleared at once. The professor was occupied in putting a new string to the emperor's spinet, which the evening before had been broken by his majesty at a concert; and, having his back turned to the door, was not aware of the emperor's entrance until the latter laid his hand upon Kircher's shoulder.
The musician would have risen, but Leopold gently forced him back into his seat, observing that it was unbecoming in a teacher to rise at the entrance of his pupil.