enlisted her in an intrigue against Fleury.  The king was engaged with
his old preceptor; the queen sent for him; he did not return.  Fleury
waited a long while.  The duke and Paris-Duverney had been found with the
queen; they had papers before them; the king had set to work with them.
When he went back, at length, to his closet, Louis XV. found the bishop
no longer there; search was made for him; he was no longer in the palace.

The king was sorry and put out; the Duke of Mortemart, who was his
gentleman of the bed-chamber, handed him a letter from Fleury.  The
latter had retired to Issy, to the countryhouse of the Sulpicians; he
bade the king farewell, assuring him that he had for a long while been
resolved, according to the usage of his youth, to put some space between
the world and death.  Louis began to shed tears; Mortemart proposed to go
and fetch Fleury, and got the order given him to do so.  The duke had to
write the letter of recall.  Next morning the bishop was at Versailles,
gentle and modest as ever, and exhibiting neither resentment nor
surprise.  Six months later, however, the king set out from Versailles to
go and visit the Count and Countess of Toulouse at Rambouillet.  The duke
was in attendance at his departure.  "Do not make us wait supper,
cousin," said the young monarch, graciously.  Scarcely had his equipages
disappeared, when a letter was brought: the duke was ordered to quit the
court and retire provisionally to Chantilly.  Madame de Prie was exiled
to her estates in Normandy, where she soon died of spite and anger.  The
head of the House of Conde came forth no more from the political
obscurity which befitted his talents.  At length Fleury remained sole
master.

He took possession of it without fuss or any external manifestation;
caring only for real authority, he advised Louis XV. not to create any
premier minister, and to govern by himself, like his great-grandfather.
The king took this advice, as every other, and left Fleury to govern.
This was just what the bishop intended; a sleepy calm succeeded the
commotions which had been caused by the inconsistent and spasmodic
government of the duke; galas and silly expenses gave place to a wise
economy, the real and important blessing of Fleury's administration.
Commerce and industry recovered confidence; business was developed; the
increase of the revenues justified a diminution of taxation; war, which
was imminent at the moment of the duke's fall, seemed to be escaped; the
Bishop of Frejus became Cardinal Fleury; the court of Rome paid on the
nail for the service rendered it by the new minister in freeing the
clergy from the tax of the fiftieth (_impot du cinquantieme_).
"Consecrated to God, and kept aloof from the commerce of men," had been
Fleury's expression, "the dues of the church are irrevocable, and cannot
be subject to any tax, whether of ratification or any other."  The clergy
responded to this pleasant exposition of principles by a gratuitous gift
of five millions.  Strife ceased in every quarter; France found herself
at rest, without lustre as well as without prospect.

It was not, henceforth, at Versailles that the destinies of Europe were
discussed and decided.  The dismissal of the Infanta had struck a deadly
blow at the frail edifice of the quadruple alliance, fruit of the
intrigues and diplomatic ability of Cardinal Dubois.  Philip V. and
Elizabeth Farnese, deeply wounded by the affront put upon them, had
hasted to give the Infanta to the Prince of Brazil, heir to the throne of
Portugal, at the same time that the Prince of the Asturias espoused a
daughter of John V.  Under cover of this alliance, agreeable as it was to
England, the faithful patron of Portugal, the King of Spain was
negotiating elsewhere, with the Emperor Charles VI., the most ancient and
hitherto the most implacable of his enemies.  This prince had no son, and
wished to secure the succession to his eldest daughter, the Arch-duchess
Maria Theresa.  The Pragmatic-Sanction which declared this wish awaited
the assent of Europe; that of Spain was of great value; she offered,
besides, to open her ports to the Ostend Company, lately established by
the emperor to compete against the Dutch trade.

The house of Austria divided the house of Bourbon, by opposing to one
another the two branches of France and Spain; the treaty of Vienna was
concluded on the 1st of May, 1725.  The two sovereigns renounced all
pretensions to each other's dominions respectively, and proclaimed, on
both sides, full amnesty for the respective partisans.  The emperor
recognized the hereditary rights of Don Carlos to the duchies of Tuscany,
Parma, and Piacenza; he, at the same time, promised his good offices with
England to obtain restitution of Gibraltar and Mahon.  In spite of the
negotiations already commenced with the Duke of Lorraine, hopes were even
held out to the two sons of Elizabeth Farnese, Don Carlos and Don Philip,
of obtaining the hands of the arch-duchesses, daughters of the emperor.

When the official treaty was published and the secret articles began to
transpire, Europe was in commotion at the new situation in which it was
placed.  George I. repaired to his German dominions, in order to have a
closer view of the emperor's movements.  There the Count of Broglie soon
joined him, in the name of France.  The King of Prussia, Frederick
William I., the King of England's son-in-law, was summoned to Hanover.
Passionate and fantastic, tyrannical, addicted to the coarsest excesses,
the King of Prussia had, nevertheless, managed to form an excellent army
of sixty thousand men, at the same time amassing a military treasure
amounting to twenty-eight millions; he joined, not without hesitation,
the treaty of Hanover, concluded on the 3d of September, 1725, between
France and England.  The Hollanders, in spite of their desire to ruin the
Ostend Company, had not yet signed the convention; Frederick William was
disturbed at their coming in.  "Say, I declare against the emperor," said
he in a letter which he communicated on the 5th of December to the
ambassadors of France and England: "he will not fail to get the
Muscovites and Poles to act against me.  I ask whether their majesties
will then keep my rear open?  England, completely surrounded by sea, and
France, happening to be covered by strong places, consider themselves
pretty safe, whilst the greater part of my dominions are exposed to
anything it shall seem good to attempt.  By this last treaty, then, I
engage in war for the benefit of Mr. Hollander and Co., that they may be
able to sell their tea, coffee, cheese, and crockery dearer; those
gentlemen will not do the least thing for me, and I am to do everything
for them.  Gentlemen, tell me, is it fair?  If you deprive the emperor of
his ships and ruin his Ostend trade, will he be a less emperor than he is
at this moment?  The pink of all (_le pot aux roses_) is to deprive the
emperor of provinces, but which?  And to whose share will they fall?
Where are the troops?  Where is the needful, wherewith to make war?
Since it seems good to commence the dance, it must of course be
commenced.  After war comes peace.  Shall I be forgotten?  Shall I be the
last of all?  Shall I have to sign perforce?"  The coarse common sense of
the Vandal soon prevailed over family alliances; Frederick William broke
with France and England in order to rally to the emperor's side.  Russia,
but lately so attentive to France, was making advances to Spain.  "The
czar's envoy is the most taciturn Muscovite that ever came from Siberia,"
wrote Marshal Tesse.  "Goodman Don Miguel Guerra is the minister with
whom he treats, and the effect of eight or ten apoplexies is, that he has
to hold his head with his hands, else his mouth would infallibly twist
round over his shoulder.  During their audience they seat themselves
opposite one another in arm-chairs, and, after a quarter of an hour's
silence, the Muscovite opens his mouth and says, 'Sir, I have orders from
the emperor, my master, to assure the Catholic King that he loves him
very much.'  'And I,' replies Guerra, 'do assure you that the king my
master loves your master the emperor very much.'  After this laconic
conversation they stare at one another for a quarter of an hour without
saying anything, and the audience is over."

The tradition handed down by Peter the Great forbade any alliance with
England; M. de Campredon, French ambassador at Petersburg, was seeking to
destroy this prejudice.  One of the empress's ministers, Jokosinski,
rushed abruptly from the conference; he was half drunk, and he ran to the
church where the remains of the czar were lying.  "O my dear master!"  he
cried before all the people, "rise from the tomb, and see how thy memory
is trampled under foot!"  Antipathy towards England, nevertheless, kept
Catherine I. aloof from the Hanoverian league; she made alliance with the
emperor.  France was not long before she made overtures to Spain.  Philip
V. always found it painful to endure family dissensions; he became
reconciled with his nephew, and accepted the intervention of Cardinal
Fleury in his disagreements with England.  The alliance, signed at
Seville on the 29th of November, 1729, secured to Spain, in return for
certain commercial advantages, the co-operation of England in Italy.  The
Duke of Parma had just died; the Infante Don Carlos, supported by an
English fleet, took possession of his dominions.  Elizabeth Farnese had
at last set foot in Italy.  She no longer encountered there the able and
ambitious monarch whose diplomacy had for so long governed the affairs of
the peninsula; Victor Amadeo had just abdicated.  Scarcely a year had
passed from the date of that resolution, when, suddenly, from fear, it
was said, of seeing his father resume power, the young king, Charles
Emmanuel, had him arrested in his castle of Pontarlier.  "It will be a
fine subject for a tragedy, this that is just now happening to Victor,
King of Sardinia," writes M. d'Argenson.  "What a catastrophe without a
death!  A great king, who plagued Europe with his virtues and his vices,
with his courage, his artifices, and his perfidies, who had formed round
him a court of slaves, who had rendered his dominion formidable by his
industry and his labors; indefatigable in his designs, unresting in every
branch of government, cherishing none but great projects, credited in
every matter with greater designs than he had yet been known to execute,
--this king abdicates unexpectedly, and, almost immediately, here he
finds himself arrested by his son, whose benefactor he had been so
recently and so extraordinarily!  This son is a young prince without
merit, without courage, and without capacity, gentle and under control.
His ministers persuaded him to be ungrateful: he accomplishes the height
of crime, without having crime in his nature; and here is his father shut
up like a bear in a prison, guarded at sight like a maniac, and separated
from the wife whom he had chosen for consolation in his retirement!"
Public indignation, however, soon forced the hand of Charles Emmanuel's
minister.  Victor Amadeo was released; his wife, detained in shameful
captivity, was restored to him; he died soon afterwards in that same
castle of Pontarlier, whence he had been carried off without a voice
being raised in his favor by the princes who were bound to him by the
closest ties of blood.

The efforts made in common by Fleury and Robert Walpole, prime minister
of the King of England, had for a long while been successful in
maintaining the general peace; the unforeseen death of Augustus of
Saxony, King of Poland, suddenly came to trouble it.  It was,
thenceforth, the unhappy fate of Poland to be a constant source of
commotion and discord in Europe.  The Elector of Saxony, son of Augustus
H., was supported by Austria and Russia; the national party in Poland
invited Stanislaus Leckzinski; he was elected at the Diet by sixty
thousand men of family, and set out to take possession of the throne,
reckoning upon the promises of his son-in-law, and on the military spirit
which was reviving in France.  The young men burned to win their spurs;
the old generals of Louis XIV. were tired of idleness.

The ardor of Cardinal Fleury did not respond to that of the friends of
King Stanislaus.  Russia and Austria made an imposing display of force in
favor of the Elector of Saxony; France sent, tardily, a body of fifteen
hundred men; this ridiculous re-enforcement had not yet arrived when
Stanislaus, obliged to withdraw from Warsaw, had already shut himself up
in Dantzic.  The Austrian general had invested the place.

News of the bombardment of Dantzic greeted the little French corps as
they approached the fort of Wechselmunde.  Their commander saw his
impotence; instead of landing his troops, he made sail for Copenhagen.
The French ambassador at that court, Count Plelo, was indignant to see
his countrymen's retreat, and, hastily collecting a hundred volunteers,
he summoned to him the chiefs of the expeditionary corps.

"How could you resolve upon not fighting, at any price?" he asked.  "It
is easy to say," rejoined one of the officers roughly, "when you're safe
in your closet."  "I shall not be there long!"  exclaims the count, and
presses them to return with him to Dantzic.  The officer in command of
the detachment, M. de la Peyrouse Lamotte, yields to his entreaties.
They set out both of them, persuaded at the same time of the uselessness
of their enterprise and of the necessity they were under, for the honor
of France, to attempt it.  Before embarking, Count Plelo wrote to M. de
Chauvelin, the then keeper of the seals, "I am sure not to return; I
commend to you my wife and children."  Scarcely had the gallant little
band touched land beneath the fort of Wechselmunde, when they marched up
to the Russian lines, opening a way through the pikes and muskets in
hopes of joining the besieged, who at the same time effected a sally.
Already the enemy began to recoil at sight of such audacity, when M. de
Plelo fell mortally wounded; the enemy's battalions had hemmed in the
French.

[Illustration: Death of Plelo----130]

La Peyrouse succeeded, however, in effecting his retreat, and brought
away his little band into the camp they had established under shelter of
the fort.  For a month the French kept up a rivalry in courage with the
defenders of Dantzic; when at last they capitulated, on the 23d of June,
General Munich had conceived such esteem for their courage that be
granted them leave to embark with arms and baggage.  A few days later
King Stanislaus escaped alone from Dantzic, which was at length obliged
to surrender on the 7th of July, and sought refuge in the dominions of
the King of Prussia.  Some Polish lords went and joined him at
Konigsberg.  Partisan war continued still, but the arms and influence of
Austria and Russia had carried the day; the national party was beaten in
Poland.  The pope released the Polish gentry from the oath they had made
never to intrust the crown to a foreigner.  Augustus III., recognized by
the mass of the nation, became the docile tool of Russia, whilst in
Germany and in Italy the Austrians found themselves attacked
simultaneously by France, Spain, and Sardinia.

Marshal Berwick had taken the fort of Kehl in the month of December,
1733; he had forced the lines of the Austrians at Erlingen at the
commencement of the compaign of 1734, and he had just opened trenches
against Philipsburg, when he pushed forward imprudently in a
reconnoissance between the fires of the besiegers and besieged; a ball
wounded him mortally, and he expired immediately, like Marshal Turenne;
he was sixty-three.  The Duke of Noailles, who at once received the
marshal's baton, succeeded him in the command of the army by agreement
with Marshal d'Asfeldt.  Philipsburg was taken after forty-eight days'
open trenches, without Prince Eugene, all the while within hail, making
any attempt to relieve the town.  He had not approved of the war.  "Of
three emperors that I have served," he would say, "the first, Leopold,
was my father; the Emperor Joseph was my brother; this one is my master."
Eugene was old and worn out; he preserved his ability, but his ardor was
gone.  Marshal Noailles and D'Asfeldt did not agree; France did not reap
her advantages.  The campaign of 1735 hung fire in Germany.

It was not more splendid in Italy, where the outset of the war had been
brilliant.  Presumptuous as ever, in spite of his eighty-two years,
Villars had started for Italy, saying to Cardinal Fleury, "The king may
dispose of Italy, I am going to conquer it for him."  And, indeed, within
three months, nearly the whole of Milaness was reduced.  Cremona and
Pizzighitone had surrendered; but already King Charles Emmanuel was
relaxing his efforts with the prudent selfishness customary with his
house.  The Sardinian contingents did not arrive; the Austrians had
seized a passage over the Po; Villars, however, was preparing to force
it, when a large body of the enemy came down upon him.  The King of
Sardinia was urged to retire.  "That is not the way to get out of this,"
cried the marshal, and, sword in hand, he charged at the head of the
body-guard; Charles Emmanuel followed his example; the Austrians were
driven in.  "Sir," said Villars to the king, who was complimenting him,
"these are the last sparks of my life; thus, at departing, I take my
leave of it."

Death, in fact, had already seized his prey; the aged marshal had not
time to return to France to yield up his last breath there; he was
expiring at Turin, when he heard of Marshal Berwick's death before
Philipsburg.  "That fellow always was lucky," said he.  On the 17th of
June, 1734, Villars died, in his turn, by a strange coincidence in the
very room in which he had been born when his father was French ambassador
at the court of the Duke of Savoy.

Some days later Marshals Broglie and Coigny defeated the Austrians before
Parma; the general-in-chief, M. de Mercy, had been killed on the 19th of
September; the Prince of Wurtemberg, in his turn, succumbed at the battle
of Guastalla, and yet these successes on the part of the French produced
no serious result.  The Spaniards had become masters of the kingdom of
Naples and of nearly all Sicily; the Austrians had fallen back on the
Tyrol, keeping a garrison at Mantua only.  The Duke of Noailles, then at
the head of the army, was preparing for the siege of the place, in order
to achieve that deliverance of Italy which was as early as then the dream
of France, but the King of Sardinia and the Queen of Spain were already
disputing for Mantua; the Sardinian troops withdrew, and it was in the
midst of his forced inactivity that the Duke of Noailles heard of the
armistice signed in Germany.  Cardinal Fleury, weary of the war which he
had entered upon with regret, disquieted too at the new complications
which he foresaw in Europe, had already commenced negotiations; the
preliminaries were signed at Vienna in the month of October, 1735.

The conditions of the treaty astonished Europe.  Cardinal Fleury had
renounced the ambitious idea suggested to him by Chauvelin; he no longer
aspired to impose upon the emperor the complete emancipation of Italy,
but he made such disposition as he pleased of the states there, and
reconstituted the territories according to his fancy.  The kingdom of
Naples and the Two Sicilies were secured to Don Carlos, who renounced
Tuscany and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza.  These three
principalities were to form the appanage of Duke Francis of Lorraine,
betrothed to the Archduchess Maria Theresa.  There it was that France was
to find her share of the spoil; in exchange for the dominions formed for
him in Italy, Duke Francis ceded the duchies of Lorraine and Bar to King
Stanislaus; the latter formally renounced the throne of Poland, at the
same time preserving the title of king, and resuming possession of his
property; after him, Lorraine and the Barrois were to be united to the
crown of France, as dower and heritage of that queen who had been but
lately raised to the throne by a base intrigue, and who thus secured to
her new country a province so often taken and retaken, an object of so
many treaties and negotiations, and thenceforth so tenderly cherished by
France.

The negotiations had been protracted.  England, stranger as she had been
to the war, had taken part in the diplomatic proposals.  The Queen of
Spain had wanted to keep the states in the north of Italy, as well as
those in the south.  "Shall I not have a new heir given me by and by? "
said the Duke of Tuscany, John Gaston de Medici, last and unworthy scion
of that illustrious family, who was dying without posterity.  "Which is
the third child that France and the empire mean to father upon me?"
The King of Sardinia gained only Novara and Tortona, whilst the emperor
recovered Milaness.  France renounced all her conquests in Germany; she
guaranteed the Pragmatic-Sanction.  Russia evacuated Poland: peace seemed
to be firmly established in Europe.  Cardinal Fleury hasted to
consolidate it, by removing from power the ambitious and daring
politician whose influence he dreaded.  "Chauvelin had juggled the war
from Fleury," said the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the great Frederick;
"Fleury in turn juggles peace and the ministry from him."

"It must be admitted," wrote M. d'Argenson, "that the situation of
Cardinal Fleury and the keeper of the seals towards one another is a
singular one just now.  The cardinal, disinterested, sympathetic, with
upright views, doing nothing save from excess of importunity, and
measuring his compliance by the number, and not the weight, of the said
importunities,--the minister, I say, considers himself bound to fill his
place as long as he is in this world.  It is only as his own creature
that he has given so much advancement to the keeper of the seals,
considering him wholly his, good, amiable, and of solid merit, without
the aid of any intrigue; and so his adjunction to the premier minister
has made the keeper of the seals a butt for all the ministers.  He has
taken upon himself all refusals, and left to the cardinal the honor of
all benefits and graces; he has, transported himself in imagination to
the time when he would be sole governor, and he would have had affairs
set, in advance, upon the footing on which he calculated upon placing
them.  It must be admitted, as regards that, that he has ideas too lofty
and grand for the state; he would like to set Europe by the ears, as the
great ministers did; he is accused of resembling M. de Louvois, to whom
he is related.  Now the cardinal is of a character the very opposite to
that of this adjunct of his.  M. Chauvelin has embarked him upon many
great enterprises, upon that of the late war, amongst others; but
scarcely is his Eminence embarked, by means of some passion that is
worked upon, when the chill returns, and the desire of getting out of the
business becomes another passion with him.  Altogether, I see no great
harm in the keeper of the seals being no longer minister, for I do not
like any but a homely (_bourgeoise_) policy, whereby one lives on good
terms with one's neighbors, and whereby one is merely their arbiter, for
the sake of working a good long while and continuously at the task of
perfecting the home affairs of the kingdom, and rendering Frenchmen
happy."

M. d'Argenson made no mistake; the era of a great foreign policy had
passed away for France.  A king, who was frivolous and indifferent to his
business as well as to his glory; a minister aged, economizing, and
timid; an ambitious few, with views more bold than discreet,--such were
henceforth the instruments at the disposal of France; the resources were
insufficient for the internal government; the peace of Vienna and the
annexation of Lorraine were the last important successes of external
policy.  Chauvelin had the honor of connecting his name therewith before
disappearing forever in his retreat at Grosbois, to expend his life in
vain regrets for lost power, and in vain attempts to recover it.

Peace reigned in Europe, and Cardinal Fleury governed France without
rival and without opposition.  He had but lately, like Richelieu, to
whom, however, he did not care to be compared, triumphed over
parliamentary revolt.  Jealous of their ancient, traditional rights, the
Parliament claimed to share with the government the care of watching over
the conduct of the clergy.  It was on that ground that they had rejected
the introduction of the Legend of, Gregory VII., recently canonized at
Rome, and had sought to mix themselves up in the religious disputes
excited just then by the pretended miracles wrought at the tomb of Deacon
Paris, a pious and modest Jansenist, who had lately died in the odor of
sanctity in the parish of St. Medard.  The cardinal had ordered the
cemetery to be closed, in order to cut short the strange spectacles
presented by the convulsionists; and, to break down the opposition of
Parliament, the king had ordered, at a bed of justice, the registration
of all the papal bulls succeeding the Unigenitus.  In vain had
D'Aguesseau, reappointed to the chancellorship, exhorted the Parliament
to yield: he had fallen in public esteem.  Abbe Pernelle, ecclesiastical
councillor, as distinguished for his talent as for his courage, proposed
a solemn declaration, analogous, at bottom, to the maxims of the Gallican
church, which had been drawn up by Bossuet, in the assembly of the clergy
of France.  The decision of the Parliament was quashed by the council.
An order from the king, forbidding discussion, was brought to the court
by Count Maurepas; its contents were divined, and Parliament refused to
open it.  The king iterated his injunctions.  "If his Majesty were at the
Louvre," cried Abbe Pernelle, "it would be the court's duty to go and let
him know how his orders are executed."  "Marly is not so very far!"
shouted a young appeal-court councillor (_aux enquetes_) eagerly.  "To
Marly!  To Marly!" at once repeated the whole chamber.  The old
councillors themselves murmured between their teeth, "To Marly!"
Fourteen carriages conveyed to Marly fifty magistrates, headed by the
presidents.  The king refused to receive them; in vain the premier
president insisted upon it, to Cardinal Fleury; the monarch and his
Parliament remained equally obstinate.  "What a sad position!" exclaimed
Abbe Pernelle, "not to be able to fulfil one's duties without falling
into the crime of disobedience!  We speak, and we are forbidden a word;
we deliberate, and we are threatened.  What remains for us, then, in this
deplorable position, but to represent to the king the impossibility of
existing under form of Parliament, without having permission to speak;
the impossibility, by consequence, of continuing our functions?"  Abbe
Pernelle was carried off in the night, and confined in the abbey of
Corbigny, in Nivernais, of which he was titular head.  Other councillors
were arrested; a hundred and fifty magistrates immediately gave in their
resignation.  Rising in the middle of the assembly, they went out two and
two, dressed in their long scarlet robes, and threaded the crowd in
silence.  There was a shout as they went, "There go true Romans, and
fathers of their country!"  "All those who saw this procession," says
the advocate Barbier, "declare that it was something august and
overpowering."  The government did not accept the resignations; the
struggle continued.  A hundred and thirty-nine members received letters
under the king's seal (_lettres de cachet_), exiling them to the four
quarters of France.  The Grand Chamber had been spared; the old
councillors, alone remaining, enregistered purely and simply the
declarations of the keeper of the seals.  Once more the Parliament was
subdued; it had testified its complete political impotence.  The iron
hand of Richelieu, the perfect address of Mazarin, were no longer
necessary to silence it; the prudent moderation, the reserved frigidity,
of Cardinal Fleury had sufficed for the purpose.  "The minister,
victorious over the Parliament, had become the arbiter of Europe," said
Frederick II., in his _History of my Time_.  The standard of
intelligences and of wills had everywhere sunk down to the level of the
government of France.  Unhappily, the day was coming when the thrones of
Europe were about to be occupied by stronger and more expanded minds,
whilst France was passing slowly from the hands of a more than
octogenarian minister into those of a voluptuous monarch, governed by his
courtiers and his favorites.  Frederick II., Maria Theresa, Lord Chatham,
Catherine II., were about to appear upon the scene; the French had none
to oppose them but Cardinal Fleury with one foot in the grave, and, after
him, King Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour.

It was amidst this state of things that the death of the Emperor Charles
VI., on the 20th of October, 1740, occurred, to throw Europe into a new
ferment of discord and war.  Maria Theresa, the emperor's eldest
daughter, was twenty-three years old, beautiful, virtuous, and of a lofty
and resolute character; her rights to the paternal heritage had been
guaranteed by all Europe.  Europe, however, soon rose, almost in its
entirety, to oppose them.  The Elector of Bavaria claimed the domains of
the house of Austria, by virtue of a will of Ferdinand I., father of
Charles V.  The King of Poland urged the rights of his wife, daughter of
the Emperor Joseph I.  Spain put forth her claims to Hungary and Bohemia,
appanage of the elder branch of the house of Austria.  Sardinia desired
her share in Italy.  Prussia had a new sovereign, who spoke but little,
but was the first to act.

Kept for a long while by his father in cruel captivity, always carefully
held aloof from affairs, and, to pass the time, obliged to engage in
literature and science, Frederick II. had ascended the throne in August,
1740, with the reputation of a mind cultivated, liberal, and accessible
to noble ideas.  Voltaire, with whom he had become connected, had
trumpeted his praises everywhere.  The first act of the new king revealed
qualities of which Voltaire had no conception.  On the 23d of December,
after leaving a masked ball, he started post-haste for the frontier
of Silesia, where he had collected thirty thousand men.  Without
preliminary notice, without declaration of war, he at once entered the
Austrian territory, which was scantily defended by three thousand men and
a few garrisons.  Before the end of January, 1741, the Prussians were
masters of Silesia.  "I am going, I fancy, to play your game," Frederick
had said, as he set off, to the French ambassador: "if the aces come to
me we will share."

Meanwhile France, as well as the majority of the other nations, had
recognized the young Queen of Hungary.  She had been proclaimed at Vienna
on the 7th of November, 1740; all her father's states had sworn alliance
and homage to her.  She had consented to take to the Hungarians the old
oath of King Andreas II., which had been constantly refused by the house
of Hapsburg: "If I, or any of my successors, at any time whatsoever,
would infringe your privileges, be it permitted you, by virtue of this
promise, you and your descendants, to defend yourselves, without being
liable to be treated as rebels."

When Frederick II., encamped in the midst of the conquered provinces,
made a proposal to Maria Theresa to cede him Lower Silesia, to which his
ancestors had always raised pretensions, assuring her, in return, of his
amity and support, the young queen, deeply offended, replied haughtily
that she defended her subjects, she did not sell them.  At the same time
an Austrian army was advancing against the King of Prussia; it was
commanded by Count Neipperg.  The encounter took place at Molwitz, on the
banks of the Neiss.  For one instant Frederick, carried along by his
routed cavalry, thought the battle was lost, and his first step towards
glory an unlucky business.  The infantry, formed by the aged Prince of
Anhalt, and commanded by Marshal Schwerin, late comrade of Charles XII.,
restored the fortune of battle; the Austrians had retired in disorder.
Europe gave the King of Prussia credit for this first success, due
especially to the excellent organization of his father's troops.  "Each
battalion," says Frederick, "was a walking battery, whose quickness in
loading tripled their fire, which gave the Prussians the advantage of
three to one."

Meanwhile, in addition to the heritage of the house of Austria, thus
attacked and encroached upon, there was the question of the Empire.  Two
claimants appeared: Duke Francis of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's husband,
whom she had appointed regent of her dominions, and the Elector of
Bavaria, grandson of Louis XIV.'s faithful ally, the only Catholic
amongst the lay electors of the empire, who was only waiting for the
signal from France to act, in his turn, against the Queen of Hungary.

Cardinal Fleury s intentions remained as yet vague and secret.  Naturally
and stubbornly pacific as he was, he felt himself bound by the
confirmation of the Pragmatic-Sanction, lately renewed, at the time of
the treaty of Vienna.  The king affected indifference.  "Whom are you for
making emperor, Souvre?" he asked one of his courtiers.  "Faith, sir,"
answered the marquis, "I trouble myself very little about it; but if your
Majesty pleased, you might tell us more about it than anybody."  "No,"
said the king; "I shall have nothing to do with it; I shall look on from
Mont-Pagnotte" (a post of observation out of cannon-shot).  "Ah, sir,"
replied Souvre, "your Majesty will be very cold there, and very ill
lodged."  " How so?" said the king.  "Sir," replied Souvre, because your
ancestors never had any house built there."  "A very pretty answer," adds
the advocate Barbier; "and as regards the question, nothing can be made
of it, because the king is mighty close."

A powerful intrigue was urging the king to war.  Cardinal Fleury,
prudent, economizing, timid as he was, had taken a liking for a man of
adventurous, and sometimes chimerical spirit.  "Count Belle-Isle,
grandson of Fouquet," says M. d'Argenson, "had more wit than judgment,
and more fire than force; but he aimed very high."  He dreamed of
revising the map of Europe, and of forming a zone of small states,
destined to protect France against the designs of Austria.  Louis XV.
pretended to nothing, demanded nothing for the price of his assistance;
but France had been united from time immemorial to Bavaria: she was bound
to raise the elector to the imperial throne.  If it happened afterwards,
in the dismemberment of the Austrian dominions, that the Low Countries
fell to the share of France, it was the natural sequel of past conquests
of Flanders, Lorraine, and the Three Bishoprics.  Count Belle-Isle did
not disturb with his dreams the calm of the aged cardinal; he was modest
in his military aspirations.  The French navy was ruined, the king had
hardly twenty vessels to send to sea; that mattered little, as England
and Holland took no part in the contest; Austria was not a maritime
power; Spain joined with France to support the elector.  A body of forty
thousand men was put under the orders of that prince, who received the
title of lieutenant-general of the armies of the King of France.  Louis
XV. acted only in the capacity of Bavaria's ally and auxiliary.
Meanwhile Marshal Belle-Isle, the King's ambassador and plenipotentiary
in Germany, had just signed a treaty with Frederick II., guaranteeing to
that monarch Lower Silesia.  At the same time, a second French army,
under the orders of Marshal Maillebois, entered Germany; Saxony and
Poland came into the coalition.  The King of England, George II.,
faithful to the Pragmatic-Sanction, hurrying over to Hanover to raise
troops there, found himself threatened by Maillebois, and signed a treaty
of neutrality.  The elector had been proclaimed, at Lintz, Archduke of
Austria nowhere did the Franco-Bavarian army encounter any obstacle.  The
King of Prussia was occupying Moravia; Upper and Lower Austria had been
conquered without a blow, and by this time the forces of the enemy were
threatening Vienna.  The success of the invasion was like a dream; but
the elector had not the wit to profit by the good fortune which was
offered him.  On the point of entering the capital abandoned by Maria
Theresa, he fell back, and marched towards Bohemia; the gates of
Prague did not open like those of Passau or of Lintz; it had to be
besieged.  The Grand-duke of Tuscany was advancing to the relief of the
town; it was determined to deliver the assault.

Count Maurice of Saxony, natural son of the late King of Poland, the most
able and ere long the most illustrious of the generals in the service of
France, had opposed the retrograde movement towards Bohemia.  In front of
Prague, he sent for Chevert, lieutenant-colonel of the regiment of
Beauce, of humble origin, but destined to rise by his courage and merit
to the highest rank in the army; the two officers made a reconnoissance;
the moment and the point of attack were chosen.  At the approach of night
on the 25th of November, 1741, Chevert called up a grenadier.  "Thou
seest yonder sentry?"  said he to the soldier.  "Yes, colonel."  "He will
shout to thee, 'Who goes there?'"  "Yes, colonel."  "He will fire upon
thee and miss thee."  "Yes, colonel."  "Thou'lt kill him, and I shall be
at thy heels."  The grenadier salutes, and mounts up to the assault; the
body of the sentry had scarcely begun to roll over the rampart when
Colonel Chevert followed the soldier; the eldest son of Marshal Broglie
was behind him.

Fifty men had escaladed the wall before the alarm spread through the
town; a gate was soon burst to permit the entrance of Count Maurice with
a body of cavalry.  Next day the elector was crowned as King of Bohemia;
on the 13th of January, 1742, he was proclaimed emperor, under the name
of Charles VII.

A few weeks had sufficed to crown the success; less time sufficed to undo
it.  On flying from Vienna, Maria Theresa had sought refuge in Hungary;
the assembly of the Estates held a meeting at Presburg; there she
appeared, dressed in mourning, holding in her arms her son, scarce six
months old.  Already she had known how to attach the magnates to her by
the confidence she had shown them; she held out to them her child; "I am
abandoned of my friends," said she in Latin, a language still in use in
Hungary amongst the upper classes; "I am pursued by my enemies, attacked
by my relatives; I have no hope but in your fidelity and courage; we--my
son and I--look to you for our safety."

The palatines scarcely gave the queen time to finish; already the sabres
were out of the sheaths and flashing above their heads.  Count Bathyany
was the first to shout, "_Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa!"  The
same shout was repeated everywhere; Maria Theresa, restraining her tears,
thanked her defenders with gesture and voice; she was expecting a second
child before long.  "I know not," she wrote to her mother-in-law, the
Duchess of Lorraine, "if I shall have a town left to be confined in."

[Illustration: "Moriamur pro rege nostro."----142]

Hungary rose, like one man, to protect her sovereign against the excess
of her misfortunes; the same spirit spread before long through the
Austrian provinces; bodies of irregulars, savage and cruel, formed at
all points, attacking and massacring the French detachments they
encountered,--and giving to the war a character of ferocity which
displayed itself with special excess against Bavaria.  Count Segur,
besieged in Lintz, was obliged to capitulate on the 26th of January, and
the day after the Elector of Bavaria had received the imperial crown at
Frankfurt, February 12, 1742--the Austrians, under the orders of General
Khevenhuller, obtained possession of Munich, which was given up to
pillage.  Jokes then began to fly about in Paris at the expense of the
emperor who had just been made after an interregnum of more than a year.
"The thing in the world which it is perceived that one can most easily do
without," said Voltaire, "is an emperor."  "As Paris is always crammed
with a number of Austrians in heart who are charmed at the sad events,"
writes the advocate Barbier, "they have put in the Bastille some
indiscreet individuals who said in open cafe that the emperor was John
Lackland, and that a room would have to be fitted up for him at
Vincennes.  In point of fact, he remains at Frankfurt, and it would be
very hard for him to go elsewhere in safety."

Meanwhile England had renounced her neutrality; the general feeling of
the nation prevailed over the prudent and farsighted ability of Robert
Walpole; he succumbed, after his long ministry, full of honors and
riches; the government had passed into warlike hands.  The women of
society, headed by the Duchess of Marlborough, raised a subscription of
one hundred thousand pounds, which they offered unsuccessfully to the
haughty Maria Theresa.  Parliament voted more effectual aid, and English
diplomacy adroitly detached the King of Sardinia from the allies whom
success appeared to be abandoning.  The King of Prussia had just gained
at Czezlaw an important victory; next day, he was negotiating with the
Queen of Hungary.  On the 11th of June the treaty which abandoned Silesia
to Frederick II. was secretly concluded; when the signatures were
exchanged at Berlin in the following month, the withdrawal of Prussia was
everywhere known in Europe.  "This is the method introduced and accepted
amongst the allies: to separate and do a better stroke of business by
being the first to make terms," writes M. d'Argenson on 30th June; "it
used not to be so.  The English were the first to separate from the great
alliance in 1711, and they derive great advantages from it; we followed
this terrible example in 1735, and got Lorraine by it; lastly, here is
the King of Prussia, but under much more odious circumstances, since he
leaves us in a terrible scrape, our armies, in the middle of Germany,
beaten and famine-stricken; the emperor, despoiled of his hereditary
dominions and his estates likewise in danger.  All is at the mercy of the
maritime powers, who have pushed things to the extremity we see; and we,
France, who were alone capable of resisting such a torrent at this date--
here be we exhausted, and not in a condition to check these rogueries and
this power, even by uniting ourselves the most closely with Spain.  Let
be, let us meddle no more; it is the greatest service we can render at
this date to our allies of Germany."

Cardinal Fleury had not waited for confirmation of the King of Prussia's
defection to seek likewise to negotiate; Marshal Belle-Isle had been
intrusted with this business, and, at the same time with a letter
addressed by the cardinal--to Field-Marshal Konigseck.  The minister was
old, timid, displeased, disquieted at the war which he had been surprised
into; he made his excuses to the Austrian negotiator and delivered his
plenipotentiary into his hands at the very outset.  "Many people know,"
said he, "how opposed I was to the resolutions we adopted, and that I was
in some sort compelled to agree to them.  Your Excellency is too well
informed of all that passes not to divine who it was who set everything
in motion for deciding the king to enter into a league which was so
contrary to my inclinations and to my principles."

For sole answer, Maria Theresa had the cardinal's letter published.  At
Utrecht, after the unparalleled disasters which were overwhelming the
kingdom, and in spite of the concessions they had been ordered to offer,
the tone of Louis XIV.'s plenipotentiaries was more dignified and prouder
than that of the enfeebled old man who had so long governed France by
dint of moderation, discretion, and patient inertness.  The allies of
France were disquieted and her foes emboldened.  Marshal Belle-Isle, shut
up in Prague, and Marshal Broglie, encamped near the town, remaining
isolated in a hostile country, hemmed in on all sides by a savage foe,
maintaining order with difficulty within the fortress itself.

"Marshal Broglie is encamped under the guns of Prague," says Barbier's
journal: "his camp is spoken of as a masterpiece.  As there is reason to
be shy of the inhabitants, who are for the Queen of Hungary, a battery
has been trained upon Prague, the garrison camps upon the ramparts, and
Marshal Belle-Isle patrols every night."

Marshal Maillebois was at Dusseldorf, commissioned to observe the
Hollanders and protect Westphalia; he received orders to join Marshals
Broglie and Belle-Isle.  "It is the army of redemption for the captives,"
was the saying at Paris.  At the same time that the marshal was setting
out for Prague, Cardinal Fleury sent him the following instructions:
"Engage in no battle of which the issue may be doubtful."  All the
defiles of Bohemia were carefully guarded; Maillebois first retired on
Egra, then he carried his arms into Bavaria, where Marshal Broglie came
to relieve him of his command.  Marshal Belle-Isle remained with the sole
charge of the defence of Prague; he was frequently harassed by the
Austrians; his troops were exhausted with cold and privation.  During the
night between the 16th and 17th of December, 1742, the marshal sallied
from the town.  "I stole a march of twenty-four hours good on Prince
Lobkowitz, who was only five leagues from me," wrote Belle-Isle, on
accomplishing his retreat; "I pierced his quarters, and I traversed ten
leagues of plain, having to plod along with eleven thousand foot and
three thousand two hundred and fifty worn-out horses, M. de Lobkowitz
having eight thousand good horses and twelve thousand infantry.  I made
such despatch that I arrived at the defiles before he could come up with
me.  I concealed from him the road I had resolved to take, for he had
ordered the occupation of all the defiles and the destruction of all the
bridges there are on the two main roads leading from Prague to Egra.  I
took one which pierces between the two others, where I found no obstacles
but those of nature, and, at last, I arrived on the tenth day, without a
check, though continually harassed by hussars in front, rear, and flank."
The hospitals at Egra were choke full of sick soldiers; twelve nights
passed on the snow without blankets or cloaks had cost the lives of many
men; a great number never recovered more than a lingering existence.
Amongst them there was, in the king's regiment of infantry, a young
officer, M. de Vauvenargues, who expired at thirty-two years of age, soon
after his return to his country, leaving amongst those who had known him
a feeling that a great loss had been suffered by France and human
intellect.

Chevert still occupied Prague, with six thousand sick or wounded; the
Prince of Lorraine had invested the place and summoned it to surrender at
discretion.  "Tell your general;" replied Chevert to the Austrian sent to
parley, "that, if he will not grant me the honors of war, I will fire the
four corners of Prague, and bury myself under its ruins."  He obtained
what he asked for, and went to rejoin Marshal Belle-Isle at Egra.  People
compared the retreat from Prague to the Retreat of the Ten Thousand; but
the truth came out for all the fictions of flattery and national pride.
A hundred thousand Frenchmen had entered Germany at the outset of the
war; at the commencement of the year 1743, thirty-five thousand soldiers,
mustered in Bavaria, were nearly all that remained to withstand the
increasing efforts of the Austrians.

Marshal Belle-Isle was coldly received at Paris.  "He is much
inconvenienced by a sciatica," writes the advocate Barbier, "and cannot
walk but with the assistance of two men.  He comes back with grand
decorations: prince of the empire, knight of the Golden Fleece, blue
riband, marshal of France, and duke.  He is held accountable, however,
for all the misfortunes that have happened to us; it was spread about at
Paris that he was disgraced and even exiled to his estate at Vernon, near
Gisors.  It is true, nevertheless, that he has several times done
business with the king, whether in M. Amelot's presence, on foreign
affairs, or M. d'Aguesseau's, on military; but this restless and
ambitious spirit is feared by the ministers."

Almost at the very moment when the Austrians were occupying Prague and
Bohemia, Cardinal Fleury was expiring, at Versailles, at the age of
ninety.  Madame Marshal Noailles, mother of the present marshal, who is
at least eighty-seven, but is all alive, runs about Paris and writes all
day, sent to inquire after him.  He sent answer to her, "that she was
cleverer than he--she managed to live; as for him, he was ceasing to
exist.  In fact, it is the case of a candle going out, and being a long
while about it.  Many people are awaiting this result, and all the court
will be starting at his very ghost, a week after he has been buried."
[_Journal de Barbier,_ t. ii.  p. 348.]

Cardinal Fleury had lived too long: the trials of the last years of his
life had been beyond the bodily and mental strength of an old man
elevated for the first time to power at an age when it is generally seen