Priests were admitted to his chamber who performed the last offices of the Church for the dying.  With perfect composure, he made all the arrangements relative to the succession to the throne.  One after another the members of his family were introduced, and he affectionately bade them adieu, giving to each appropriate words of counsel.  To his daughter, Maria Theresa, who was not present, and who was to succeed him, he sent his earnest blessing.  With the Duke of Lorraine, her husband, he had a private interview of two hours.  On the 20th of October, 1740, at two o’clock in the morning, he died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the thirtieth of his reign.  Weary of the world, he willingly retired to the anticipated repose of the grave.

  “To die,—­to sleep;—­
  To sleep! perchance to dream;—­ay, there’s the rub;
  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
  When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
  Must give us pause.”

By the death of Charles VI. the male line of the house of Hapsburg became extinct, after having continued in uninterrupted succession for over four hundred years.  His eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, who now succeeded to the crown of Austria, was twenty-four years of age.  Her figure was tall, graceful and commanding.  Her features were beautiful, and her smile sweet and winning.  She was born to command, combining in her character woman’s power of fascination with man’s energy.  Though so far advanced in pregnancy that she was not permitted to see her dying father, the very day after his death she so rallied her energies as to give an audience to the minister of state, and to assume the government with that marvelous vigor which characterized her whole reign.

Seldom has a kingdom been in a more deplorable condition than was Austria on the morning when the scepter passed into the hands of Maria Theresa.  There were not forty thousand dollars in the treasury; the state was enormously in debt; the whole army did not amount to more than thirty thousand men, widely dispersed, clamoring for want of pay, and almost entirely destitute of the materials for war.  The vintage had been cut off by the frost, producing great distress in the country.  There was a famine in Vienna, and many were starving for want of food.  The peasants, in the neighborhood of the metropolis, were rising in insurrection, ravaging the fields in search of game; while rumors were industriously circulated that the government was dissolved, that the succession was disputed, and that the Duke of Bavaria was on the march, with an army, to claim the crown.  The distant provinces were anxious to shake off the Austrian yoke.  Bohemia was agitated; and the restless barons of Hungary were upon the point of grasping their arms, and, under the protection of Turkey, of claiming their ancestral hereditary rights.  Notwithstanding the untiring endeavors of the emperor to obtain the assent of Europe to the Pragmatic Sanction, many influential courts refused to recognize the right of Maria Theresa to the crown.  The ministers were desponding, irresolute and incapable.  Maria Theresa was young, quite inexperienced and in delicate health, being upon the eve of her confinement.  The English ambassador, describing the state of affairs in Vienna as they appeared to him at this time, wrote: