Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/832

818 place in your hands," said she, "the daughter and son of your king, who expect to be indebted to you for their preservation." All the Hungarian Palatines, moved by her distress, drew their sabres, and unanimously exclaimed, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!" The scene was rendered more affecting by the condition of the queen, who was then pregnant, and who, in a letter to the Duchess of Lorrain, had expressed her doubts whether she should have a town left in which she could be delivered. The ban being raised, the brave Hungarians crowded to her standard, and the diet expressed their resentment against her enemy, excluding for ever the electoral house of Bavaria from the succession to the crown of Hungary. By a pecuniary supply from England, she was enabled to erect magazines, pay her army, complete her warlike preparations, and put her places of strength in a posture of defence. Her generals opening their way into Bavaria, laid the whole country under contribution, while Count Khevenhuller compelled the French troops to retreat before him, and reduced them to the greatest distress. Many battles were fought; the Austrians and Hungarians were generally victorious, until a desperate one, when, after each had been alternately victorious, the preference remained with Prussia. The Queen of Hungary perceived the necessity of getting rid of an enemy so formidable, from his vigilance, youth, activity, prudence, and valour, in short from an union of all the qualities that constitute the great general, politician, and statesman. She therefore resigned to him all he had conquered, from a conviction that by making this sacrifice she should be enabled to preserve the rest of her dominions, and perhaps to exact from the other competitors a reparation for her losses; and the king deemed himself fortunate, in