Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/339

 THE PRE-REVOLUTION ERA 327 although certain portions of it descended only through heirs male, and would otherwise not have come to him at all. He issued a decree called the Pragmatic Sanction, making his daughter his heir. He persuaded most of the powers to guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction, and to procure this guarantee from Saxony he promised Augustus his support. France and Spain, now closely drawn together by dynastic considerations, saw their opportunity for striking at the Hapsburg domination in Italy. The result of all the fighting in this war of the Polish succession was, that Augustus got Poland, a Bourbon prince got Naples and Sicily, France by a somewhat complicated process got Lorraine, whose duke took Tuscany in compensation and married Charles vi.'s daughter ; and Austria got practically the whole north of Italy including Tuscany. Also the guarantee to the Pragmatic Sanction was renewed. We saw that the Great Elector laid the foundations of the power of Brandenburg. He had done so partly by getting into his own hands the absolute control of the hetero- Birth of the geneous collection of provinces which formed his Prussian dominion. His son Frederick 1. obtained from the emperor the royal title as King of Prussia. Frederick's son Frederick William 1. abstained from war, and was an exceedingly rigid economist ; but he devoted himself especially to organis- ing and perfecting his army. His son Frederick 11. was to make that army the most powerful in Europe in spite of its compara- tively small numbers. In 1740 Frederick William died and was succeeded by Frederick 11. In the same year Charles vi. died, the Austrian succession was claimed by his daughter Maria Theresa 3. war of the and her husband Francis — formerly of Lorraine, now Austrian of Tuscany. The Bavarian elector asserted his own claim, and the powers in general tore up their guarantees of the Pragmatic Sanction. Frederick had a claim to the duchy of Silesia on the north-east of Bohemia. He threw his troops into Silesia, and announced to Maria Theresa that he would support the Pragmatic Sanction in arms if she would hand over the province. Maria Theresa declined Frederick's offer. The battle of Mollwitz in the follow-