While the emperor was thus filling all the courts of Europe with his clamor against Count Neuperg, declaring that he had exceeded his powers and that he deserved to be hung, he at the same time, with almost idiotic fatuity, sent the same Count Neuperg back to the Turkish camp to settle some items which yet required adjustment.  This proved, to every mind, the insincerity of Charles.  The Russians, thus forsaken by Austria, also made peace with the Turks.  They consented to demolish their fortress of Azof, to relinquish all pretensions to the right of navigating the Black sea, and to allow a vast extent of territory upon its northern shores to remain an uninhabited desert, as a barrier between Russia and Turkey.  The treaty being definitively settled, both Marshal Wallis and Count Neuperg were arrested and sent to prison, where they were detained until the death of Charles VI.

Care and sorrow were now hurrying the emperor to the grave.  Wan and haggard he moved about his palace, mourning his doom, and complaining that it was his destiny to be disappointed in every cherished plan of his life.  All his affairs were in inextricable confusion, and his empire seemed crumbling to decay.  A cotemporary writer thus describes the situation of the court and the nation: 

“Every thing in this court is running into the last confusion and ruin; where there are as visible signs of folly and madness, as ever were inflicted upon a people whom Heaven is determined to destroy, no less by domestic divisions, than by the more public calamities of repeated defeats, defenselessness, poverty and plagues.”

Early in October, 1740, the emperor, restless, and feverish in body and mind, repaired to one of his country palaces a few miles distant from Vienna.  The season was prematurely cold and gloomy, with frost and storms of sleet.  In consequence of a chill the enfeebled monarch was seized with an attack of the gout, which was followed by a very severe fit of the colic.  The night of the 10th of October he writhed in pain upon his bed, while repeated vomitings weakened his already exhausted frame.  The next day he was conveyed to Vienna, but in such extreme debility that he fainted several times in his carriage by the way.  Almost in a state of insensibility he was carried to the retired palace of La Favourite in the vicinity of Vienna, and placed in his bed.  It was soon evident that his stormy life was now drawing near to its close.  Patiently he bore his severe sufferings, and as his physicians were unable to agree respecting the nature of his disease, he said to them, calmly,

“Cease your disputes.  I shall soon be dead.  You can then open my body and ascertain the cause of my death.”