The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power Part 20

Indeed, Leopold presented his son in a manner which seemed to claim the crown for him as his hereditary right, and the diet did not resist that claim. France, rich and powerful, with marvelous energy breasted her host of foes. All Europe was in a blaze. The war raged on the ocean, over the marshes of Holland, along the banks of the Rhine, upon the plains of Italy, through the defiles of the Alps and far away on the steppes of Hungary and the sh.o.r.es of the Euxine. To all these points the emperor was compelled to send his troops. Year after year of carnage and woe rolled on, during which hardly a happy family could be found in all Europe.

"Man's inhumanity to man Made countless millions mourn."

At last all parties became weary of the war, and none of the powers having gained any thing of any importance by these long years of crime and misery, for which Louis XIV., as the aggressor, is mainly responsible, peace was signed on the 30th of October, 1697. One important thing, indeed, had been accomplished. The rapacious Louis XIV.

had been checked in his career of spoliation. But his insatiate ambition was by no means subdued. He desired peace only that he might more successfully prosecute his plans of aggrandizement. He soon, by his system of robbery, involved Europe again in war. Perhaps no man has ever lived who has caused more b.l.o.o.d.y deaths and more wide-spread destruction of human happiness than Louis XIV. We wonder not that in the French Revolution an exasperated people should have rifled his sepulcher and spurned his skull over the pavements as a foot-ball.

Leopold, during the progress of these wars, by the aid of the armies which the empire furnished him, recovered all of Hungary and Transylvania, driving the Turks beyond the Danube. But the proud Hungarian n.o.bles were about as much opposed to the rule of the Austrian king as to that of the Turkish sultan. The Protestants gained but little by the change, for the Mohammedan was about as tolerant as the papist.

They all suspected Leopold of the design of establishing over them despotic power, and they formed a secret confederacy for their own protection. Leopold, released from his warfare against France and the Turks, was now anxious to consolidate his power in Hungary, and justly regarding the Roman Catholic religion as the great bulwark against liberty, encouraged the Catholics to persecute the Protestants.

Leopold took advantage of this conspiracy to march an army into Hungary, and attacking the discontented n.o.bles, who had raised an army, he crushed them with terrible severity. No mercy was shown. He exhausted the energies of confiscation, exile and the scaffold upon his foes; and then, having intimidated all so that no one dared to murmur, declared the monarchy of Hungary no longer elective but hereditary, like that of Bohemia. He even had the a.s.surance to summon a diet of the n.o.bles to confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights.

The n.o.bles who were summoned, terrified, instead of obeying, fled into Transylvania. The despot then issued an insulting and menacing proclamation, declaring that the power he exercised he received from G.o.d, and calling upon all to manifest implicit submission under peril of his vengeance. He then extorted a large contribution of money from the kingdom, and quartered upon the inhabitants thirty thousand troops to awe them into subjection.

This proclamation was immediately followed by another, changing the whole form of government of the kingdom, and establishing an unlimited despotism. He then moved vigorously for the extirpation of the Protestant religion. The Protestant pastors were silenced; courts were inst.i.tuted for the suppression of heresy; two hundred and fifty Protestant ministers were sentenced to be burned at the stake, and then, as an act of extraordinary clemency, on the part of the despot, their punishment was commuted to hard labor in the galleys for life. All the nameless horrors of inquisitorial cruelty desolated the land.

Catholics and Protestants were alike driven to despair by these civil and religious outrages. They combined, and were aided both by France and Turkey; not that France and Turkey loved justice and humanity, but they hated the house of Austria, and wished to weaken its power, that they might enrich themselves by the spoils. A n.o.ble chief, Emeric Tekeli, who had fled from Hungary to Poland, and who hated Austria as Hannibal hated Rome, was invested with the command of the Hungarian patriots. Victory followed his standard, until the emperor, threatened with entire expulsion from the kingdom, offered to reestablish the ancient laws which he had abrogated, and to restore to the Hungarians all those civil and religious privileges of which he had so ruthlessly defrauded them.

But the Hungarians were no longer to be deceived by his perfidious promises. They continued the war; and the sultan sent an army of two hundred thousand men to cooperate with Tekeli. The emperor, unable to meet so formidable an army, abandoned his garrisons, and, retiring from the distant parts of the kingdom, concentrated his troops at Presburg.

But with all his efforts, he was able to raise an army of only forty thousand men. The Duke of Lorraine, who was intrusted with the command of the imperial troops, was compelled to retreat precipitately before outnumbering foes, and he fled upon the Danube, pursued by the combined Hungarians and Turks, until he found refuge within the walls of Vienna.

The city was quite unprepared for resistance, its fortifications being dilapidated, and its garrison feeble. Universal consternation seized the inhabitants. All along the valley of the Danube the population fled in terror before the advance of the Turks. Leopold, with his family, at midnight, departed ingloriously from the city, to seek a distant refuge.

The citizens followed the example of their sovereign, and all the roads leading westward and northward from the city were crowded with fugitives, in carriages, on horseback and on foot, and with all kinds of vehicles laden with the treasures of the metropolis. The churches were filled with the sick and the aged, pathetically imploring the protection of Heaven.

The Duke of Lorraine conducted with great energy, repairing the dilapidated fortifications, stationing in posts of peril the veteran troops, and marshaling the citizens and the students to cooperate with the garrison. On the 14th of July, 1682, the banners of the advance guard of the Turkish army were seen from the walls of Vienna. Soon the whole mighty host, like an inundation, came surging on, and, surrounding the city, invested it on all sides. The terrific a.s.sault from innumerable batteries immediately commenced. The besieged were soon reduced to the last extremity for want of provisions, and famine and pestilence rioting within the walls, destroyed more than the shot of the enemy. The suburbs were destroyed, the princ.i.p.al outworks taken, several breaches were battered in the walls, and the terrified inhabitants were hourly in expectation that the city would be taken by storm. There can not be, this side of the world of woe, any thing more terrible than such an event.

The emperor, in his terror, had dispatched envoys all over Germany to rally troops for the defense of Vienna and the empire. He himself had hastened to Poland, where, with frantic intreaties, he pressed the king, the renowned John Sobieski, whose very name was a terror, to rush to his relief. Sobieski left orders for a powerful army immediately to commence their march. But, without waiting for their comparatively slow movements, he placed himself at the head of three thousand Polish hors.e.m.e.n, and, without inc.u.mbering himself with luggage, like the sweep of the whirlwind traversed Silesia and Moravia, and reached Tulen, on the banks of the Danube, about twenty miles above Vienna. He had been told by the emperor that here he would find an army awaiting him, and a bridge constructed, by which he could cross the stream. But, to his bitter disappointment, he found no army, and the bridge unfinished.

Indignantly he exclaimed,

"What does the emperor mean? Does he think me a mere adventurer? I left my own army that I might take command of his. It is not for myself that I fight, but for him."

Notwithstanding this disappointment, he called into requisition all his energies to meet the crisis. The bridge was pushed forward to its completion. The loitering German troops were hurried on to the rendezvous. After a few days the Polish troops, by forced marches, arrived, and Sobieski found himself at the head of sixty thousand men, experienced soldiers, and well supplied with all the munitions of war.

On the 11th of September the inhabitants of the city were overjoyed, in descrying from the towers of the city, in the distance, the approaching banners of the Polish and German army. Sobieski ascended an elevation, and long and carefully scrutinized the position of the besieging host.

He then calmly remarked,

"The grand vizier has selected a bad position. I understand him. He is ignorant of the arts of war, and yet thinks that he has military genius.

It will be so easy to conquer him, that we shall obtain no honor from the victory."

Early the next morning, the 12th of September, the Polish and German troops rushed to the a.s.sault, with such amazing impetuosity, and guided by such military skill, that the Turks were swept before them as by a torrent. The army of the grand vizier, seized by a panic, fled so precipitately, that they left baggage, tents, ammunition and provisions behind. The garrison emerged from the city, and cooperated with the victors, and booty of indescribable value fell into their hands. As Sobieski took possession of the abandoned camp, stored with all the wealth and luxuries of the East, he wrote, in a tone of pleasantry to his wife,

"The grand vizier has left me his heir, and I inherit millions of ducats. When I return home I shall not be met with the reproach of the Tartar wives, 'You are not a man, because you have come back without booty.'"

The inhabitants of Vienna flocked out from the city to greet the king as an angel deliverer sent from heaven. The next morning the gates of the city were thrown open, the streets were garlanded with flowers, and the King of Poland had a triumphal reception in the streets of the metropolis. The enthusiasm and grat.i.tude of the people pa.s.sed all ordinary bounds. The bells rang their merriest peals; files of maidens lined his path, and acclamations, bursting from the heart, greeted him every step of his way. They called him their father and deliverer. They struggled to kiss his feet and even to touch his garments. With difficulty he pressed through the grateful crowd to the cathedral, where he prostrated himself before the altar, and returned thanks to G.o.d for the signal victory. As he returned, after a public dinner, to his camp, he said, "This is the happiest day of my life."

Two days after this, Leopold returned, trembling and humiliated to his capital. He was received in silence, and with undisguised contempt. His mortification was intense, and he could not endure to hear the praises which were everywhere lavished upon Sobieski. Jealousy rankled in his heart, and he vented his spite upon all around him. It was necessary that he should have an interview with the heroic king who had so n.o.bly come to his rescue. But instead of meeting him with a warm and grateful heart, he began to study the punctilios of etiquette, that the dreaded interview might be rendered as cold and formal as possible.

Sobieski was merely an elective monarch. Leopold was a hereditary king and an emperor. Leopold even expressed some doubt whether it were consistent with his exalted dignity to grant the Polish king the honor of an audience. He inquired whether an _elected monarch_ had ever been admitted to the presence of an _emperor_; and if so, with what forms, in the present case, the king should be received. The Duke of Lorraine, of whom he made the inquiry, disgusted with the mean spirit of the emperor, n.o.bly replied, "With open arms."

But the soulless Leopold had every movement punctiliously arranged according to the dictates of his ign.o.ble spirit. The Polish and Austrian armies were drawn up in opposite lines upon the plain before the city.

At a concerted signal the emperor and the king emerged from their respective ranks, and rode out upon the open plain to meet each other.

Sobieski, a man of splendid bearing, magnificently mounted, and dressed in the brilliant uniform of a Polish warrior, attracted all eyes and the admiration of all hearts. His war steed pranced proudly as if conscious of the royal burden he bore, and of the victories he had achieved.

Leopold was an ungainly man at the best. Conscious of his inability to vie with the hero, in his personal presence, he affected the utmost simplicity of dress and equipage. Humiliated also by the cold reception he had met and by the consciousness of extreme unpopularity in both armies, he was embarra.s.sed and deject. The contrast was very striking, adding to the renown of Sobieski, and sinking Leopold still deeper in contempt.

The two sovereigns advanced, formally saluted each other with bows, dismounted and embraced. A few cold words were exchanged, when they again embraced and remounted to review the troops. But Sobieski, frank, cordial, impulsive, was so disgusted with this reception, so different from what he had a right to expect, that he excused himself, and rode to his tent, leaving his chancellor Zaluski to accompany the emperor on the review. As Leopold rode along the lines he was received in contemptuous silence, and he returned to his palace in Vienna, tortured by wounded pride and chagrin.

The treasure abandoned by the Turks was so abundant that five days were spent in gathering it up. The victorious army then commenced the pursuit of the retreating foe. About one hundred and fifty miles below Vienna, where the majestic Danube turns suddenly from its eastern course and flows toward the south, is situated the imperial city of Gran. Upon a high precipitous rock, overlooking both the town and the river, there had stood for centuries one of the most imposing fortresses which mortal hands have ever reared. For seventy years this post had been in the hands of the Turks, and strongly garrisoned by four thousand troops, had bid defiance to every a.s.sault. Here the thinned and bleeding battalions of the grand vizier sought refuge. Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine, flushed with victory, hurled their ma.s.ses upon the disheartened foe, and the Turks were routed with enormous slaughter. Seven thousand gory corpses of the dead strewed the plain. Many thousands were driven into the river and drowned. The fortress was taken, sword in hand; and the remnant of the Moslem army, in utter discomfiture, fled down the Danube, hardly resting, by night or by day, till they were safe behind the ramparts of Belgrade.

Both the German and the Polish troops were disgusted with Leopold.

Having reconquered Hungary for the emperor, they were not disposed to remain longer in his service. Most of the German auxiliaries, disbanding, returned to their own countries. Sobieski, declaring that he was willing to fight against the Turks, but not against Tekeli and his Christian confederates, led back his troops to Poland. The Duke of Lorraine was now left with the Austrian troops to struggle against Tekeli with the Hungarian patriots. The Turks, exasperated by the defeat, accused Tekeli of being the cause. By stratagem he was seized and sent in chains to Constantinople. The chief who succeeded him turned traitor and joined the imperialists. The cause of the patriots was ruined. Victory now kept pace with the march of the Duke of Lorraine.

The Turks were driven from all their fortresses, and Leopold again had Hungary at his feet. His vengeance was such as might have been expected from such a man.

Far away, in the wilds of northern Hungary, at the base of the Carpathian, mountains, on the river Tarcza, one of the tributaries of the Theiss, is the strongly fortified town of Eperies. At this remote spot the diabolical emperor established his revolutionary tribunal, as if he thought that the shrieks of his victims, there echoing through the savage defiles of the mountains, could not awaken the horror of civilized Europe. His armed bands scoured the country and transported to Eperies every individual, man, woman and child, who was even suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents. There was hardly a man of wealth or influence in the kingdom who was not dragged before this horrible tribunal, composed of ignorant, brutal, sanguinary officers of the king.

Their summary trial, without any forms of justice, was an awful tragedy.

They were thrown into dungeons; their property confiscated; they were exposed to the most direful tortures which human ingenuity could devise, to extort confession and to compel them to criminate friends. By scores they were daily consigned to the scaffold. Thirty executioners, with their a.s.sistants, found constant employment in beheading the condemned.

In the middle of the town, the scaffold was raised for this butchery.

The spot is still called "The b.l.o.o.d.y Theater of Eperies."

Leopold, having thus glutted his vengeance, defiantly convoked a diet and crowned his son Joseph, a boy twelve years of age, as King of Hungary, practically saying to the n.o.bles, "Dispute his hereditary right now, if you dare." The emperor had been too often instructed in the vicissitudes of war to feel that even in this hour of triumph he was perfectly safe. He knew that other days might come; that other foes might rise; and that Hungary could never forget the rights of which she had been defrauded. He therefore exhausted all the arts of threats and bribes to induce the diet to pa.s.s a decree that the crown was no longer elective but hereditary. It is marvelous that in such an hour there could have been any energy left to resist his will. But with all his terrors he could only extort from the diet their consent that the succession to the crown should be confirmed in the males, but that upon the extinction of the _male_ line the crown, instead of being hereditary in the female line, should revert to the nation, who should again confer it by the right of election.

Leopold reluctantly yielded to this, as the most he could then hope to accomplish. The emperor, elated by success, a.s.sumed such imperious airs as to repel from him all his former allies. For several years Hungary was but a battle field where Austrians and Turks met in incessant and b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts. But Leopold, in possession of all the fortresses, succeeded in repelling each successive invasion.

Both parties became weary of war. In November, 1697, negotiations were opened at Carlovitz, and a truce was concluded for twenty-five years.

The Turks abandoned both Hungary and Transylvania, and these two important provinces became more firmly than ever before, integral portions of the Austrian empire. By the peace of Carlovitz the sultan lost one half of his possessions in Europe. Austria, in the grandeur of her territory, was never more powerful than at this hour: extending across the whole breadth of Europe, from the valley of the Rhine to the Euxine sea, and from the Carpathian mountains to the plains of Italy. A more heterogeneous conglomeration of States never existed, consisting of kingdoms, archduchies, duchies, princ.i.p.alities, counties, margraves, landgraves and imperial cities, nearly all with their hereditary rulers subordinate to the emperor, and with their local customs and laws.

Leopold, though a weak and bad man, in addition to all this power, swayed also the imperial scepter over all the States of Germany. Though his empire over all was frail, and his vast dominions were liable at any moment to crumble to pieces, he still was not content with consolidating the realms he held, but was anxiously grasping for more. Spain was the prize now to be won. Louis XIV., with the concentrated energies of the French kingdom, was claiming it by virtue of his marriage with the eldest daughter of the deceased monarch, notwithstanding his solemn renunciation of all right at his marriage in favor of the second daughter. Leopold, as the husband of the second daughter, claimed the crown, in the event, then impending, of the death of the imbecile and childless king. This quarrel agitated Europe to its center, and deluged her fields with blood. If the _elective_ franchise is at times the source of agitation, the law of _hereditary_ succession most certainly does not always confer tranquillity and peace.

CHAPTER XXI.

LEOPOLD I. AND THE SPANISH SUCCESSION.

From 1697 to 1710.

The Spanish Succession.--The Impotence of Charles II.--Appeal to the Pope.--His Decision.--Death of Charles II.--Accession of Philip V.--Indignation of Austria.--The outbreak of War.--Charles III.

crowned.--Insurrection in Hungary.--Defection of Bavaria.--The Battle of Blenheim.--Death of Leopold I.--Eleonora.--Accession of Joseph I.--Charles XII. of Sweden.--Charles III. in Spain.--Battle of Malplaquet.--Charles at Barcelona.--Charles at Madrid.

Charles II., King of Spain, was one of the most impotent of men, in both body and mind. The law of hereditary descent had placed this semi-idiot upon the throne of Spain to control the destinies of twenty millions of people. The same law, in the event of his death without heirs, would carry the crown across the Pyrenees to a little boy in the palace of Versailles, or two thousand miles, to the banks of the Danube, to another little boy in the gardens of Vienna. Louis XIV. claimed the Spanish scepter in behalf of his wife, the Spanish princess Maria Theresa, and her son. Leopold claimed it in behalf of his deceased wife, Margaret, and her child. For many years before the death of Philip II.

the envoys of France and Austria crowded the court of Spain, employing all the arts of intrigue and bribery to forward the interests of their several sovereigns. The different courts of Europe espoused the claims of the one party or the other, accordingly as their interests would be promoted by the aggrandizement of the house of Bourbon or the house of Hapsburg.

Louis XIV. prepared to strike a sudden blow by gathering an army of one hundred thousand men in his fortresses near the Spanish frontier, in establishing immense magazines of military stores, and in filling the adjacent harbors with ships of war. The sagacious French monarch had secured the cooperation of the pope, and of some of the most influential Jesuits who surrounded the sick and dying monarch. Charles II. had long been hara.s.sed by the importunities of both parties that he should give the influence of his voice in the decision. Tortured by the incessant vacillations of his own mind, he was at last influenced, by the suggestions of his spiritual advisers, to refer the question to the pope. He accordingly sent an emba.s.sage to the pontiff with a letter soliciting counsel.

"Having no children," he observed, "and being obliged to appoint an heir to the Spanish crown from a foreign family, we find such great obscurity in the law of succession, that we are unable to form a settled determination. Strict justice is our aim; and, to be able to decide with that justice, we have offered up constant prayers to G.o.d. We are anxious to act rightly, and we have recourse to your holiness, as to an infallible guide, intreating you to consult with the cardinals and divines, and, after having attentively examined the testaments of our ancestors, to decide according to the rules of right and equity."

Pope Innocent XII. was already prepared for this appeal, and was engaged to act as the agent of the French court. The h.o.a.ry-headed pontiff, with one foot in the grave, affected the character of great honesty and impartiality. He required forty days to examine the important case, and to seek divine a.s.sistance. He then returned the following answer, admirably adapted to influence a weak and superst.i.tious prince:

"Being myself," he wrote, "in a situation similar to that of his Catholic majesty, the King of Spain, on the point of appearing at the judgment-seat of Christ, and rendering an account to the sovereign pastor of the flock which has been intrusted to my care, I am bound to give such advice as will not reproach my conscience on the day of judgment. Your majesty ought not to put the interests of the house of Austria in compet.i.tion with those of eternity. Neither should you be ignorant that the French claimants are the rightful heirs of the crown, and no member of the Austrian family has the smallest legitimate pretension. It is therefore your duty to omit no precaution, which your wisdom can suggest, to render justice where justice is due, and to secure, by every means in your power, the undivided succession of the Spanish monarchy to the French claimants."

Charles, as fickle as the wind, still remained undecided, and his anxieties preying upon his feeble frame, already exhausted by disease, caused him rapidly to decline. He was now confined to his chamber and his bed, and his death was hourly expected. He hated the French, and all his sympathies were with Austria. Some priests entered his chamber, professedly to perform the pompous and sepulchral service of the church of Rome for the dying. In this hour of languor, and in the prospect of immediate death, they a.s.sailed the imbecile monarch with all the terrors of superst.i.tion. They depicted the responsibility which he would incur should he entail on the kingdom the woes of a disputed succession; they a.s.sured him that he could not, without unpardonable guilt, reject the decision of the holy father of the Church; and growing more eager and excited, they denounced upon him the vengeance of Almighty G.o.d, if he did not bequeath the crown, now falling from his brow, to the Bourbons of France.