At the moment of his decease all was ready for hostility.  Two hundred thousand men formed a line from Bale to the Scheldt.  The duke of Brunswick, on whom rested every hope of the coalition, was at Berlin, giving his last advice to the king of Prussia, and receiving his final orders.  Beschoffwerder, the general and confidant of the king of Prussia, arrived at Vienna to concert with the emperor the point and time of attack.  On his arrival the prince de Kaunitz hastily informed him of the sudden illness of the emperor.  The 27th Leopold was in perfect health, and received the Turkish envoy; on the 28th he was in the agonies of death.  His stomach swelled, and convulsive vomitings put him to intense torture.  The doctors, alarmed at these symptoms, ordered copious bleeding, which appeared to allay his sufferings; but they enervated the vital force of the prince, who had weakened himself by debauchery.  He fell asleep for a short time, and the doctors and ministers withdrew; but he soon awoke in fresh convulsions, and died in the presence of a valet de chambre, named Brunetti, in the arms of the empress, who had just arrived.

The intelligence of the death of the emperor, the more terrible as it was so unexpected, spread abroad instantly, and surprised Germany at the very moment of a crisis.  Terror for the future destiny of Germany was joined to pity for the empress and her children:  the palace was all confusion and despair; the ministers felt power snatched from their grasp; the grandees of the court, without waiting for their carriages, hurried to the court, in the disorder of astonishment, and grief and sobs were heard in the vestibules and staircases that led to the apartments of the empress.  At this moment, this princess, without having time to assume black, appeared, bathed in tears, surrounded by her numerous children, and leading them to the new king of the Romans, the eldest son of Leopold, she threw herself at his feet, and implored his protection for these orphans.  Francis I., mingling his tears with those of his mother and brothers, one of whom was only four years old, raised the empress, and embracing the children, vowed to be a second father to them.

IV.

This catastrophe was inexplicable to scientific men; politicians suspected some mystery; the people poison.  These reports of poison, however, have neither been confirmed nor disproved by time.  The most probable opinion is that this prince had made an immoderate use of drugs which he compounded himself, in order to recruit his constitution, shattered by debauchery and excess.  Lagusius, his chief physician, who had assisted at the autopsy of the body, declared he discovered traces of poison.  Who had administered it?  The Jacobins and emigres mutually accused each other, the one party to disembarrass themselves of the armed chief of the empire, and thus spread anarchy amongst the federation of Germany, of which