which had been more apparent than real, and yet not unimportant, was made complete by the minister’s action, the policy he pursued being such as was highly displeasing to the German Hapsburgs, who had relapsed into bigotry.  Philip III. set up pretensions to Hungary and Bohemia, as grandson of Maximilian II.  Ferdinand, who was not yet either emperor or king, got rid of Philip’s pretensions by promising to resign to him the Austrian possessions in Swabia.  This led to the fall of Lerma, and to the reunion of the two branches of the Austrian house, but for which it is probable Ferdinand II. might have been beaten in the early days of the Thirty Years’ War.  It was to Spanish aid that Ferdinand owed his early triumphs in that contest; and many years later, in 1634, the great victory of Nordlingen was gained for the Imperialists by the presence of ten thousand Spanish infantry in their army,—­that infantry which was still the first military body in Europe, not then having met with the disaster of Rocroy, which, however, was near at hand.  This was a kind of Indian-summer revival of Spanish power, and at the beginning of the new alliance between Madrid and Vienna, “there appeared,” says Ranke, “a prospect of founding a compact Spanish hereditary dominion, which should directly link together Milan with the Netherlands, and so give the Spanish policy a necessary preponderance in the affairs of Europe.”  Richelieu spoilt this fine prospect just as it seemed about to become a reality, and the Spanish Hapsburgs gradually sank into insignificance, and their line disappeared in 1700, on the death of Charles II., the most contemptible creature that ever wore a crown, and scarcely man enough to be a respectable idiot.  Such was the termination of the great Austro-Burgundian dynasty that was founded by Charles V.,—­at one time as majestic as “the broad and winding Rhine,” but again, like the Rhine, running fast to insignificance.

[30] If the house of Austria was not in the greatest danger it ever experienced in 1704, its members and officers could affect to feel all but absolutely desperate.  The following letter, written in queer German-French, by the Imperial Minister near the English court, Count John Wenceslaus Wratislaw, to Queen Anne, conveys an almost ludicrous idea of the fright under which the Austrian chiefs suffered:—­“Madame, Le soussigne envoye extraordinaire de sa Majeste Imperiale ayant represente de vive voix en diverses occasions aux ministres de votre Majeste la dure extremite dans laquelle se trouve l’Empire, par l’introduction d’une armee nombreuse de Francois dans la Baviere, laquelle jointe a la revolte de la Hongrie met les pais hereditaires de sa Majeste Imperiale dans une confusion incroyable, de sorte que si l’on n’apporte pas un remede prompt et proportionne au danger present, dont on est menace on a a craindre une revolution entiere, et une destruction totale de l’Allemagne.”  Luckily for Austria, Marlborough was a man of as much