LEOPOLD I.
From 1662 to 1697.
Invasion of the Turks.--A Treaty concluded.--Possessions of Leopold.--
Invasion of the French.--League of Augsburg.--Devastation of the
Palatinate.--Invasion of Hungary.--Emeric Tekeli.--Union of Emeric
Tekeli with the Turks.--Leopold applies to Sobieski.--He immediately
marches to his Aid.--The Turks conquered.--Sobieski's triumphal
Receptions.--Meanness of Leopold.--Revenge upon Hungary.--Peace
concluded.--Contest for Spain.
While Europe was rousing itself to repel this invasion of the Turks, the
grand vizier, leaving garrisons in the strong fortresses of the Danube,
withdrew the remainder of his army to prepare for a still more
formidable invasion the ensuing year. Most of the European powers seemed
disposed to render the emperor some aid. The pope transmitted to him
about two hundred thousand dollars. France sent a detachment of six
thousand men. Spain, Venice, Genoa, Tuscany and Mantua, forwarded
important contributions of money and military stores. Early in the
summer the Turks, in a powerful and well provided army, commenced their
march anew. Ascending the valley of the Save, where they encountered no
opposition, they traversed Styria, that they might penetrate to the seat
of war through a defenseless frontier. The troops assembled by Leopold,
sixty thousand in number, under the renowned Prince Montecuculi,
stationed themselves in a very strong position at St. Gothard, behind
the river Raab, which flows into the Danube about one hundred miles
below Vienna. Here they threw up their intrenchments and prepared to
resist the progress of the invader.
The Turks soon arrived and spread themselves out in military array upon
the opposite side of the narrow but rapid stream. As the hostile armies
were preparing for an engagement, a young Turk, magnificently mounted,
and in gorgeous uniform, having crossed the stream with a party of
cavalry, rode in advance of the troop, upon the plain, and in the spirit
of ancient chivalry challenged any Christian knight to meet him in
single combat. The Chevalier of Lorraine accepted the challenge, and
rode forth to the encounter. Both armies looked silently on to witness
the issue of the duel. It was of but a few moments' duration. Lorraine,
warding off every blow of his antagonist, soon passed his sword through
the body of the Turk, and he fell dead from his horse. The victor
returned to the Christian camp, leading in triumph the splendid steed of
his antagonist.
And now the signal was given for the general battle. The Turks
impetuously crossing the narrow stream, assailed the Christian camp in
all directions, with their characteristic physical bravery, the most
common, cheap and vulgar of all earthly virtues. A few months of
military discipline will make fearless soldiers of the most ignominious
wretches who can be raked from the gutters of Christian or heathen
lands. The battle was waged with intense fierceness on both sides, and
was long continued with varying success. At last the Turks were routed
on every portion of the field, and leaving nearly twenty thousand of
their number either dead upon the plain or drowned in the Raab, they
commenced a precipitate flight.
Leopold was, for many reasons, very anxious for peace, and immediately
proposed terms very favorable to the Turks. The sultan was so
disheartened by this signal reverse that he readily listened to the
propositions of the emperor, and within nine days after the battle of
St. Gothard, to the astonishment of all Europe, a truce was concluded
for twenty years. The Hungarians were much displeased with the terms of
this treaty; for in the first place, it was contrary to the laws of the
kingdom for the king to make peace without the consent of the diet, and
in the second place, the conditions he offered the Turks were
humiliating to the Hungarians. Leopold confirmed to the Turks their
ascendency in Transylvania, and allowed them to retain Great Wardein,
and two other important fortresses in Hungary. It was with no little
difficulty that the emperor persuaded the diet to ratify these terms.
Leopold is to be considered under the twofold light of sovereign of
Austria and Emperor of Germany. We have seen that his power as emperor
was quite limited. His power as sovereign of Austria, also varied
greatly in the different States of his widely extended realms. In the
Austrian duchies proper, upon the Danube, of which he was, by long
hereditary descent, archduke, his sway was almost omnipotent. In Bohemia
he was powerful, though much less so than in Austria, and it was
necessary for him to move with caution there, and not to disturb the
ancient usages of the realm lest he should excite insurrection. In
Hungary, where the laws and customs were entirely different, Leopold
held merely a nominal, hardly a recognized sway. The bold Hungarian
barons, always steel-clad and mounted for war, in their tumultuous
diets, governed the kingdom. There were other remote duchies and
principalities, too feeble to stand by themselves, and ever changing
masters, as they were conquered or sought the protection of other
powers, which, under the reign of Leopold, were portions of wide
extended Austria. Another large and vastly important accession was now
made to his realms. The Tyrol, which, in its natural features, may be
considered but an extension of Switzerland, is a territory of about one
hundred miles square, traversed through its whole extent by the Alps.
Lying just south of Austria it is the key to Italy, opening through its
defiles a passage to the sunny plains of the Peninsula; and through
those fastnesses, guarded by frowning castles, no foe could force his
way, into the valleys of the Tyrol. The most sublime road in Europe is
that over Mount Brenner, along the banks of the Adige. This province had
long been in the hands of members of the Austrian family.
On the 15th of June, 1665, Sigismond Francis, Duke of Tyrol, and cousin
of Leopold, died, leaving no issue, and the province escheated with its
million of inhabitants to Leopold, as the next heir. This brought a
large accession of revenue and of military force, to the kingdom.
Austria was now the leading power in Europe, and Leopold, in rank and
position, the most illustrious sovereign. Louis XIV. had recently
married Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain.
Philip, who was anxious to retain the crown of Spain in his own family,
extorted from Maria Theresa, and from her husband, Louis XIV., the
renunciation of all right of succession, in favor of his second
daughter, Margaret, whom he betrothed to Leopold. Philip died in
September, 1665, leaving these two daughters, one of whom was married to
the King of France, and leaving also an infant son, who succeeded to the
throne under the regency of his mother, Ann, daughter of Ferdinand III.,
of Austria. Margaret was then too young to be married, but in a year
from this time, in September, 1666, her nuptials were celebrated with
great splendor at Madrid. The ambitious French monarch, taking advantage
of the minority of the King of Spain, and of the feeble regency, and in
defiance of the solemn renunciation made at his marriage, resolved to
annex the Spanish provinces of the Low Countries to France, and invaded
the kingdom, leading himself an army of thirty thousand men. The Spanish
court immediately appealed to Leopold for assistance. But Leopold was so
embarrassed by troubles in Hungary, and by discontents in the empire
that he could render no efficient aid. England, however, and other
powers of Europe, jealous of the aggrandizement of Louis XIV. combined,
and compelled him to abandon a large portion of the Netherlands, though
he still retained several fortresses. The ambition of Louis XIV. was
inflamed, not checked by this reverse, and all Europe was involved again
in bloody wars. The aggressions of France, and the devastations of
Tarenne in the Palatinate, roused Germany to listen to the appeals of
Leopold, and the empire declared war against France. Months of
desolating war rolled on, decisive of no results, except universal
misery. The fierce conflict continued with unintermitted fury until
1679, when the haughty monarch of France, who was as sagacious in
diplomacy as he was able in war, by bribes and threats succeeded in
detaching one after another from the coalition against him, until
Leopold, deserted by nearly all his allies, was also compelled to accede
to peace.
France, under Louis XIV., was now the dominant power in Europe. Every
court seemed to be agitated by the intrigues of this haughty sovereign,
and one becomes weary of describing the incessant fluctuations of the
warfare. The arrogance of Louis, his unblushing perfidy and his
insulting assumptions of superiority over all other powers, exasperated
the emperor to the highest pitch. But the French monarch, by secret
missions and abounding bribes, kept Hungary in continued commotion, and
excited such jealousy in the different States of the empire, that
Leopold was compelled to submit in silent indignation to wrongs almost
too grievous for human nature to bear.
At length Leopold succeeded in organizing another coalition to resist
the aggressions of Louis XIV. The Prince of Orange, the King of Sweden
and the Elector of Brandenburg were the principal parties united with
the emperor in this confederacy, which was concluded, under the name of
the "League of Augsburg," on the 21st of June, 1686. An army of sixty
thousand men was immediately raised. From all parts of Germany troops
were now hurrying towards the Rhine. Louis, alarmed, retired from the
Palatinate, which he had overrun, and, to place a barrier between
himself and his foes, ordered the utter devastation of the unhappy
country. The diabolical order was executed by Turenne. The whole of the
Palatinate was surrendered to pillage and conflagration. The elector,
from the towers of his castle at Mannheim, saw at one time two cities
and twenty-five villages in flames. He had no force sufficient to
warrant him to leave the walls of his fortress to oppose the foe. He
was, however, so moved to despair by the sight, that he sent a challenge
to Turenne to meet him in single combat. Turenne, by command of the
king, declined accepting the challenge. More than forty large towns,
besides innumerable villages, were given up to the flames. It was
mid-winter. The fields were covered with snow, and swept by freezing
blasts. The wretched inhabitants, parents and children, driven into the
bleak plains without food or clothing or shelter, perished miserably by
thousands. The devastation of the Palatinate is one of the most cruel
deeds which war has ever perpetrated. For these woes, which no
imagination can gauge, Louis XIV. is responsible. He has escaped any
adequate earthly penalty for the crime, but the instinctive sense of
justice implanted in every breast, demands that he should not escape the
retributions of a righteous God. "After death cometh the judgment."
This horrible deed roused Germany. All Europe now combined against
France, except Portugal, Russia and a few of the Italian States. The
tide now turned in favor of the house of Austria. Germany was so alarmed
by the arrogance of France, that, to strengthen the power of the
emperor, the diet with almost perfect unanimity elected his son Joseph,
though a lad but eleven years of age, to succeed to the imperial throne.
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 shores 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 bloody 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 nobles 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 nobles, 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 assurance to summon a diet of the nobles to
confirm this decree which defrauded them of their time-honored rights.
The nobles 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
God, 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
instituted 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 noble 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 reëstablish 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 coöperate 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 assault 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 principal 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
horsemen, and, without incumbering 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 assault, 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 coöperated 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 gratitude of the people passed 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 God 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 nobly
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,
nobly replied, "With open arms."
But the soulless Leopold had every movement punctiliously arranged
according to the dictates of his ignoble 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 embarrassed 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 assault. Here the thinned and bleeding battalions
of the grand vizier sought refuge. Sobieski and the Duke of Lorraine,
flushed with victory, hurled their masses 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 assistants, 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 Bloody 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 nobles, "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 pass 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, assumed 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
bloody 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, principalities, 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.