maintain the balance of power in Europe.  One million five hundred thousand dollars were immediately voted, with strong resolutions in favor of the queen.  The Austrian ambassador, in transmitting this money and these resolutions to the queen, urged that no sacrifice should be made to purchase peace with Prussia; affirming that the king, the Parliament, and the people of England were all roused to enthusiasm in behalf of Austria; and that England would spend its last penny, and shed its last drop of blood, in defense of the cause of Maria Theresa.  This encouraged the queen exceedingly, for she was sanguine that Holland, the natural ally of England, would follow the example of that nation.  She also cherished strong hopes that Russia might come to her aid.

It was the plan of France to rob Maria Theresa of all her possessions excepting Hungary, to which distant kingdom she was to be driven, and where she was to be left undisturbed to defend herself as she best could against the Turks.  Thus the confederates would have, to divide among themselves, the States of the Netherlands, the kingdom of Bohemia, the Tyrol, the duchies of Austria, Silesia, Moravia, Carinthia, Servia and various other duchies opulent and populous, over which the vast empire of Austria had extended its sway.

The French armies crossed the Rhine and united with the Bavarian troops.  The combined battalions marched, sweeping all opposition before them, to Lintz, the capital of upper Austria.  This city, containing about thirty thousand inhabitants, is within a hundred miles of Vienna, and is one of the most beautiful in Germany.  Here, with much military and civic pomp, the Duke of Bavaria was inaugurated Archduke of the Austrian duchies.  A detachment of the army was then dispatched down the river to Polten, within twenty-four miles of Vienna; from whence a summons was sent to the capital to surrender.  At the same time a powerful army turned its steps north, and pressing on a hundred and fifty miles, over the mountains and through the plains of Bohemia, laid siege to Prague, which was filled with magazines, and weakly garrisoned.  Frederic, now in possession of all Silesia, was leading his troops to cooperate with those of France and Bavaria.

The cause of Maria Theresa was now, to human vision, desperate.  Immense armies were invading her realms.  Prague was invested; Vienna threatened with immediate siege; her treasury was empty; her little army defeated and scattered; she was abandoned by her allies, and nothing seemed to remain for her but to submit to her conquerors.  Hungary still clung firmly to the queen, and she had been crowned at Presburg with boundless enthusiasm.  An eyewitness has thus described this scene:—­

“The coronation was magnificent.  The queen was all charm.  She rode gallantly up the Royal Mount, a hillock in the vicinity of Presburg, which the new sovereign ascends on horseback, and waving a drawn sword, defied the four corners of the world, in a manner to show that she had no occasion for that weapon to conquer all who saw her.  The antiquated crown received new graces from her head; and the old tattered robe of St. Stephen became her as well as her own rich habit, if diamonds, pearls and all sorts of precious stones can be called clothes,”