Presburg

“ Guided by the instinct of a woman's heart, and yielding to its impulse, she set at naught the remonstrances of her Austrian counsellors, and relied on the loyalty of the Hungarians. Proceeding to Presburg, she appeared at the meeting of the diet, told the assembled nobles the difficulties and dangers by which she was surrounded, and threw herself, her child, and her cause, upon their generosity. At that appeal every sabre leapt from its scabbard, and the shout, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresâ!" called all Hungary to arms. ”

“ After these negotiations were concluded, he received the title of Prince of Benevento, with a real feudal authority under the protectorate of France, which afforded him a revenue of 150,000 livres per annum, and made with his salary as minister for foreign affairs about 500,000 francs. [10] The peace of Presburg was certainly a most brilliant epoch in his ministry. As the representative of the magnificent military government whose grandeur overshadowed the earth, he assumed a certain degree of majesty in his manners and habits. ”

“ Two days before, Austria's brave people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with yard-long letters, the words, "Constitution" and "Free Press" upon Vienna's walls; and the people in joy cheered the inveterate liars, because the people knows no falsehood.
On the 14th, I announced the tidings from Vienna to our Parliament at Presburg. ”

“ Maria Theresa and Frederic were fairly pitted {450} against each other. It was Greek meeting Greek. The queen immediately recalled the army from Alsace, and in person repaired to Presburg, where she summoned a diet of the Hungarian nobles. In accordance with an ancient custom, a blood-red flag waved from all the castles in the kingdom, summoning the people to a levy en masse, or, as it was then called, to a general insurrection. An army of nearly eighty thousand men was almost instantly raised. ”

“ No, no, the emperor is an honest man and a faithful prince; he will share good and evil days alike with his people. A good shepherd does not leave his flock, a good prince does not leave his people.”
“But the emperor has forsaken us,” said Conrad; “it is but too true, master. All Vienna knows it, and all Vienna mourns over it. The emperor is gone, and so are the empress and the imperial children. All are gone and off for Presburg.”
“Gone! the emperor gone!” muttered Haydn, mournfully, and a deadly paleness suddenly covered his cheeks. “Oh, poor Austria! poor people! ”

“ Should the chief political offices be filled by native Hungarians, as the diet demanded? Could the co-regency of the grand-duke, which was ardently desired by the queen, be accepted by the Magyars? For two months the dispute over these problems raged at Presburg, until finally Maria Theresa herself found a bold, ingenious, and patriotic solution. The news of the Franco-Bavarian alliance and the fall of Passau determined her to throw herself completely upon the gallantry and devotion of the Magyars. It had long been the policy of the court of Vienna not to entrust the Hungarians with arms. ”

“ Vienna, all in terror, is fortifying itself; citizens toiling at the earthworks, resolute for making some defence; Constituted Authorities, National Archives even, Court in a body, and all manner of Noble and Official people, flying else-whither to covert: chiefly to Presburg, where her Majesty already is. The Archives were carried to Gratz; the two Dowager Empresses (for there are two, Maria Theresa's Mother, and Maria Theresa's Aunt, Kaiser Joseph's Widow) fled different ways,—I forget which. An agitated, paralyzed population. ”

“ When we look back upon what Austria was after the peace of Presburg, and that we contemplate her now, greater than she had ever been, with her public credit, her ascendancy among the European states, the peace and the government of her provinces, her civil and military organisation, and then consider that all this is the work of one minister, who has governed [55] the empire for the last thirty years, we may easily form an idea of some of the judgments of posterity. We are ourselves surrounded by ruins, both of men and things ”

“ A few days after the Emperor’s return, M. de Talleyrand arrived at Vienna from Presburg, to the great surprise of everybody. The Austrian ministers at Presburg had brought forward the subject of the Tyrol ”

“ The country palace of the great empress Maria Theresa was now the abode of him who had driven her grandson from his capital, defeated his army, and was just about to dictate a peace to him, the terms of which would be equivalent to a fresh defeat of Austria and a fresh victory for France. The plenipotentiaries of Austria and France were already assembled at Presburg to conclude this treaty, and every hour couriers reached Schonbrunn, who reported to the emperor the progress of the negotiations and obtained further instructions from him. ”

“ The racial enmities at this period for the moment disappeared, and Slav, German, and Hungarian nobles acted in accord. All present at the deliberations of Presburg solemnly pledged themselves to maintain the treaty with Turkey against all its opponents. The carefully-worded declaration was directly aimed at Rudolph, who still refused to sanction that treaty, and in effect the authority of the sovereign was by it tacitly suspended. Moravia very shortly followed the example of Austria and Hungary, principally through the influence of Charles, Lord of Žerotin. ”

“ On the 15th of August Sir Thomas Robinson had returned to Presburg with the intelligence of his unsuccessful mission, and of the unrelenting determination of Frederick to prosecute the war with the utmost vigor unless Silesia were surrendered to him.
These tidings struck the Austrian council with consternation. The French armies were declared to be the finest that had ever taken the field. The Prussian army, in stolid bravery and perfection285 of discipline, had never been surpassed. Germany was to be cut into four equal parts, and France was to be the sovereign power on the Continent. ”

“ I have neither troops nor supplies enough to garrison, supply, and provision Raab and Comorn, and hold Presburg, even after effecting a junction with the troops of the Archduke Palatine and the Hungarian volunteers. And the generalissimo is well aware of it, for I have always acquainted him with what occurred in my army; he knows that my forces and those of the Archduke Palatine together are scarcely twenty-five thousand strong, and that one-half of these troops consists of undisciplined recruits. He knows that the enemy is threatening us on all sides with forty thousand veteran troops. ”

“ There are the Russians! Load your pieces, pick your flints, put powder in the pan, fix bayonets, ready and—forward!" I remember one day the Emperor spoke of this oration before Marshal Berthier, who laughed at it. "That is like you," he said. "Well, all the advocates of Paris would not have said it so well; the soldier understands this, and that is the way battles are won."
When after the first campaign of Vienna, so happily terminated by the peace of Presburg, the Emperor was returning to Paris, many complaints reached him against the exactions of certain generals, notably General Vandamme. ”

“ The conspirators were appointed to wait in the church of Saint Veronica, behind the cathedral, for the signal of Leopold’s death, and thence to proceed to the convent where the heir of Ladislaus was kept, and proclaim him King. Colvellino listened to the latter part of the arrangement with a smile of scorn. They were separated by the sound of the cannon announcing the dawn of the great ceremonial.
The morning of the coronation found all Presburg awake. The streets were thronged before day with citizens; nobles hastening to the palace; troops moving to their various posts in the ceremony ”

“ He then went on to look at our army with the palatine of Russia, but our people are extremely piqued, and complain openly that the emperor did not deign to thank them for all the privations and pains they have endured, even by saluting them.
Our sick have nothing but dung to lie on; the wounded, of whom there are a great number, cannot obtain boats to go down the river to Presburg, where I could have them nursed at my own cost. They refuse to allow our dead to be buried in the cemeteries of Vienna, even the superior officers. They pillage our baggage and carry away the horses following us. ”

“ What measures, against this nefarious Prussian outbreak, hateful to gods and men, are possible, she rapidly takes: in Bohemia, in Bavaria and her other Countries, that are threatened or can help. And abates nothing of heart or hope;—praying withal, immensely, she and her People, according to the mode they have. Sending for Prince Karl, we need not say, double-quick, as the very first thing.
"Of Maria Theresa in Hungary,—for she ran to Presburg again with her woes (August 16th, Diet just assembling there) ,—let us say only that Hungary was again chivalrous ”

“ They show the future Emperor Frederick in a new light—no longer as the liberal constitutionalist, the firm admirer of England’s free polity, but as the champion of the divine right of the Hohenzollerns, with a splendid vision of a united Germany under the military protection of Prussia. At the same time there is that qualifying sentence in which the Crown Prince refers to the plan of a coronation at Berlin almost as if he and his wife had been driven to recommend it as the only solution of the King’s difficulties regarding the oath of allegiance. ”

“ The pope still called him the Marquis of Brandenburg, and the German emperor declared that, notwithstanding the adverse circumstances threatening him on every side, the King of Prussia was still a brave and undaunted adversary. His enemies, alter having for a long time declared that they would extinguish him and reduce him once more to the rank of the little Prince-Elector of Brandenburg, now began to fear him. From every battle, from every effort, from every defeat, King Frederick rose up with a clear brow and flashing eye, and unshaken courage. ”

“ I reserve for myself lest the world should think that the Prussian King cannot go to war without his tutor.” His old tutor was very angry, but he did not rebel, and in a State like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as right as the present Emperor in saying “Let one 222be King.” However, after Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive victories for his King. ”

“ Having insisted upon various conditions, prominent among them being military aid for the approaching war, he gave the imperial sanction to Frederick’s request in November 1700; whereupon the elector, hurrying at once to Königsberg, crowned himself with great ceremony king of Prussia on the 18th of January 1701. According to his promise the king sent help to the emperor; and during the War of the Spanish Succession the troops of Brandenburg-Prussia rendered great assistance to the allies, fighting with distinction at Blenheim and elsewhere. ”

“ There is no difference between the bravest soldier and the little maiden when they fall into the hands of this adversary. Hunger drove the victorious King of Prussia out of Bohemia; hunger made him abandon Silesia and seek refuge in Berlin. [Footnote: Preuss's "History of Frederick the Great."] Oh, I assure you, we will soon cease to be Prussians. While King Frederick is refreshing and amusing himself in Berlin, the Austrians have entered Glatz, and bring us greetings from our gracious queen, Maria Theresa." ”

“ His sympathies being with Frederick, he espoused his cause with sincere joy, and it was through his assistance that Frederick was able to gain possession of the imperial throne. What high value Frederick placed upon the services of Premysl may be judged from the concessions he made to him: Bohemia should forever be a kingdom; the emperor should never impose any duties upon the rulers of that country, except the three hundred horsemen to accompany them to Rome, or, in default of this, three hundred pounds of silver ”

“ But his reign was the rough, strong bridge which led to a Frederick the Great, and the reign of the Great Frederick was that other bridge which led to a powerful and dominating kingdom of Prussia,—from which was to spring a new German Empire!
If Frederick William was a tyrant of the most savage sort, on the other hand he organized industry, finance, and an army. If he was a miser in his family, he brought wealth and prosperity to his people. If he beat and cudgeled his own son for playing the flute, he left that son a kingdom and an army which were the foundation of his greatness. ”

“ In the administration of justice and the establishment of entire religious liberty, Prussia rapidly became a model which put to shame and disturbed the most of the other German States. Frederick openly declared: "I mean that every man in my kingdom shall have the right to be saved in his own way:" in Silesia, where the Protestants had been persecuted under Austria, the Catholics were now free and contented. This course gave him a great popularity outside of Prussia among the common people, and for the first time in two hundred years, the hope of better times began to revive among them. ”