pelted in his turn by the artillery of Prince Charles.  But Frederic soon turned upon his foes, who almost surrounded him with double his own number of men.  His army was compact and in the highest state of discipline.  A scene of terrible carnage ensued, in which the Austrians, having lost four thousand in killed and two thousand taken prisoners, were utterly routed and scattered.  The proud victor, gathering up his weakened battalions, one fourth of whom had been either killed or wounded in this short, fierce storm of war, continued his retreat unmolested.

While Maria Theresa, with such almost superhuman inflexibility, was pressing her own plans, the electoral diet of Germany was assembled at Frankfort, and Francis, Duke of Lorraine, was chosen emperor, with the title of Francis I. The queen was at Frankfort when the diet had assembled, and was plying all her energies in favor of her husband, while awaiting, with intense solicitude, the result of the election.  When the choice was announced to her, she stepped out upon the balcony of the palace, and was the first to shout, “Long live the emperor, Francis I.”  The immense concourse assembled in the streets caught and reechoed the cry.  This result was exceedingly gratifying to the queen; she regarded it as a noble triumph, adding to the power and the luster of her house.

The duke, now the emperor, was at Heidelberg, with an army of sixty thousand men.  The queen hastened to him with her congratulations.  The emperor, no longer a submissive subject, received his queenly spouse with great dignity at the head of his army.  The whole host was drawn up in two lines, and the queen rode between, bowing to the regiments on the right hand and the left, with majesty and grace which all admired.

Though the queen’s treasury was so exhausted that she had been compelled to melt the church plate to pay her troops, she was now so elated that, regardless of the storms of winter, she resolved to send an army to Berlin, to chastise Frederic in his own capital, and there recover long lost Silesia.  But Frederic was not thus to be caught napping.  Informed of the plan, he succeeded in surprising the Austrian army, and dispersed them after the slaughter of five thousand men.  The queen’s troops, who had entered Silesia, were thus driven pell-mell back to Bohemia.  The Prussian king then invaded Saxony, driving all before him.  He took possession of the whole electorate, and entered Dresden, its capital, in triumph.  This was a terrible defeat for the queen.  Though she had often said that she would part with her last garment before she would consent to the surrender of Silesia, she felt now compelled to yield.  Accepting the proffered mediation of England, on the 25th of December, 1745, she signed the treaty of Dresden, by which she left Silesia in the hands of Frederic.  He agreed to withdraw his troops from Saxony, and to acknowledge the imperial title of Francis I.