Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/437

A.D. 1734.] a rare circumstance. Augastus II., king of Poland and elector of Saxony, whom Charles XII. had pursued with such bitter enmity, died in February, and Augustus, his son, found himself opposed by Stanislaus Leczinski, who had been driven from the throne of Poland by the Swedish king. His daughter during his exile had married Louis XV. of France, and that country determined to support the father of their queen in his original right. Stanislaus, however, was ready to claim Poland before the French were prepared to give him substantial military aid. Stanislaus hastened from France to Poland, presented himself before the Poles at Warsaw, and was received with enthusiasm. The majority of the nobles who had the right of voting for their elective sovereign gave him their suffrages, and so far as the choice of the nation could decide the question, Stanislaus was once more king. But Austria and Russia determined to support Augustus, and Stanislaus was soon compelled to fly before these Russian armies, and shut himself up in Dantzic. There he was besieged by the Muscovites, the Saxons, and the section of Poles who had adhered to Augustus. Augustus himself assisted in the siege, and Stanislaus and his party made a stout defence. A place is still shown on the fortifications of Dantzic which is called the grave of the Russians, no less than six thousand of them being said to have fallen in an assault there. Stanislaus was ultimately, however, driven from the city, and Augustus was once more proclaimed king by the Russians. The war still continued, but greatly to the disadvantage of Stanislaus. The emperor of Austria, though he had allowed the czarina, Anne, to carry on the campaign against Stanislaus, was still active in assisting and encouraging Augustus, and the French determined to punish him for this interference with the rights of their protegé. Fleury, though as pacific in his disposition as Walpole, now roused himself, and finding the Spaniards ready to join against the emperor for purposes of their own, war was prepared on a considerable scale in the south as well as in the north.

It had long been the grand object of the ambition of the queen of Spain to obtain the dukedom of Parma for her son, Don Carlos. This had been accomplished two years ago. On the death of the late duke, he had been sent there under a convoy of English ships; and though the duchess-dowager declared herself enciente, and thus delayed his accession for some months, she at last confessed that she was not really so, and Don Carlos was installed in the dukedom. But this did not now satisfy his mother. She looked out for a royal crown for him, and the Two Siciles, carelessly held by Austria, presented themselves as too tempting. As soon as the French intimated a wish to join Spain against the emperor Charles, the queen of Spain wrote to her son, then only about seventeen—"The Two Sicilies, being created an independent kingdom, shall be thine; go, then, and conquer. The finest crown of Italy awaits thee!"

But before undertaking this enterprise, the French and Spaniards endeavoured to obtain the co-operation of the king of Sardinia. Charles of Austria was also soliciting him, but France and Spain outbid Austria; Sardinia joined them, and their united army suddenly burst into the Milanese, and soon overran the whole of Austrian Lombardy. Austria found itself at the moment almost deserted. Russia had secured its object in Poland, and withdrew; Denmark could afford little aid; Holland dreaded to move; and Walpole in England was steadfastly bent on peace.

Under such circumstances, the year 1734 opened with very sinister anguries for Austria. At the battle of La Crocetta, near Parma, the Austrians lost several thousand men, together with their count Mercy. The Spanish forces were nominally commanded by Don Carlos himself, who was a young man of agreeable manners, and of some ability; but the real direction of the forces lay with count Montemar. In March an army of French, Spaniards, and Italians, assembled at Perugia, and marched with Don Carlos to the conquest of Naples. They had sent proclamations before them that Don Carlos was coming to free them from the oppressions of the Germans, and that the inquisition should never be imposed upon them. The Austrians were but few in number, and ill prepared to resist. The pope, who did not like to see them on both sides of him, encouraged Don Carlos secretly, and a strong Spanish squadron following the coast, the united army marched deliberately forward, meeting with little resistance till it entered Naples. The imperial viceroy assembled about eight thousand men in Apulia, but fled before twelve thousand Spaniards, and left the command of his forces to prince Belmonte, who was defeated at Bitonto on the 25th of May, on the shores of the Adriatic, and then nearly all the towns and castles of Apulia surrendered to the Spaniards. Capua and Gaeta yielded after a siege, and Sicily was regained with far less bloodshed than it had cost to lose it before to the English fleet and Austrian army. Don Carlos was crowned king of the Two Sicilies under the title of Charles III.; and with this same title, on the death of his brother in 1759, he succeeded to the throne of Spain.

On the Rhine the emperor was not much more successful. There the celebrated prince Eugene commanded, but he was opposed by a far superior French army, under the brave and experienced duke of Berwick. The siege of Philipsburg was undertaken by the French in such numbers as made it impossible for him to cope with them, and it was going on when Berwick was killed by a cannon-ball. This distinguished son of James II. of England was sixty-four at the time of his death. He had long abandoned the cause of the pretender, his brother, who had the folly to allow himself to be made suspicious of him by his followers. Berwick in 1727 had even talked of going over to England and paying his respects to George I. He had conducted all the commands entrusted to him by Louis XIV. with the greatest ability and success, and had won from his countrymen the decisive battle of Almanza. He left behind him an illustrious name, though his fortunes had condemned him to exile, and to fight the battles of strangers.

Berwick was succeeded by the marquis d'Asfeld, who had served under him in Spain, and who was alike distinguished for his courage and his cruelty. He compelled Philipsburg to surrender, but the genius of Eugene checked much further progress, and the campaign in that quarter ended without any other event of note. Eugene himself there closed his renowned career, dying peaceably about two years afterwards in Vienna, where his tomb still attracts strangers in the cathedral of St. Stephan.

Whilst these events had been passing abroad, a sharp