Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/838

824 with the dignity of the two greatest potentates in Europe, to have recourse to those pitiful arts and subterfuges, which, by diplomatic corps, are too frequently considered as marks of political wisdom. All the views and pretensions of the court of Vienna were explained; and after much discussion, and many objections in the French council, a treaty of alliance was agreed on, and war again ravaged the nations. At first Prussia was rapidly victorious; and shortly after, such are the vicissitudes of war, every thing seemed to announce his ruin, and the successes of the Austrians. The empress had entirely engaged the influence of Madame de Pompadour, to whom she occasionally wrote, flattering her vanity in the highest degree; and though France was extremely injured by the war, and the defeat of Rosbach, yet Madame, regarding the treaty as her work, and the empress as her friend, would not suffer the encouragement of the idea of an accommodation with the enemy.

England and Prussia exerted their utmost endeavours to attack France and the Empress at the same time; and after much bloodshed, and various success, necessity obliged them to negociate for peace; although she was extremely mortified at the being obliged to suspend her resentment against Prussia: but from a change in the French ministry, effected by Madame de Pompadour, war was still continued, until 1762, when, after the peace between Spain, France, and England, a treaty was concluded between Prussia and the empress-queen, by which all conquests were mutually restored.

Maria Theresa was the patroness of Metastasio, the Italian poet, whose beautiful dramas were frequently acted at court by the archduchesses, her daughters, amongst whom was the late queen of France. She was much beloved in the neighbourhood of the court, and