HUNGARIAN MAJESTY ANSWERS, IN THE DIET, THAT FRENCH DECLARATION, "MAKE PEACE, GOOD PEOPLE; I WISH TO BE OUT OF IT!"--IN AN OMINOUS MANNER.
These are fine prospects, in the French quarter, of an equivalent for Schlesien;--very fine, unless Diana intervene! Diana or not, French prospects or not, her Hungarian Majesty fastens on Bavaria with uncommon tightness of fist, now that Bavaria is swept clear;well resolved to keep Bavaria for equivalent, till better come.
Exacts, by her deputy, Homage from the Population there;strict Oath of Fealty to HER; poor Kaiser protesting his uttermost, to no purpose; Kaiser's poor Printer (at Regensburg, which is in Bavaria) getting "tried and hanged" for printing such Protest!
"She draughts forcibly the Bavarian militias into her Italian Army;" is high and merciless on all hands;--in a word, throttles poor Bavaria, as if to the choking of it outright. So that the very Gazetteers in foreign places gave voice, though Bavaria itself, such a grasp on the throat of it, was voiceless. Seckendorf's poor Bargain for neutrality as a Bavarian Reich-Army, her Hungarian Majesty disdains to confirm; to confirm, or even to reject;treats Seckendorf and his Bavarian Army little otherwise than as a stray dog which she has not yet shot. And truly the old Feldmarschall lies at Wembdingen, in most disconsolate moulting condition; little or nothing to live upon;--the English, generous creatures, had at one time flung him something, fancying the Armistice might be useful; but now it must be the French that do it, if anybody! [Adelung, iii. B, 204 ("22d Angust"), 206, &c.]
Hanau Conferences having failed, these things do not fail.
Kaiser Karl is become tragical to think of. A spectacle of pity to Landgraf Wilhelm, to King Friedrich, and serious on-lookers;--and perhaps not of pity only, but of "pity and fear" to some of them!--sullen Austria taking its sweet revenges, in this fashion.
Readers who will look through these small chinks, may guess what a world-welter this was; and how Friedrich, gazing into phase on phase of it, as into Oracles of Fate, which to him they were, had a History, in these months, that will now never be known.
August 16th came out her Hungarian Majesty's Response to that mild quasi-penitent Declaration of King Louis to the Reich; and much astonished King Louis and others, and the very Reich itself.
"Out of it?" says her Hungarian Majesty (whom we with regret, for brevity's sake, translate from Official into vulgate): "His Most Christian Majesty wishes to be out of it:--Does not he, the (what shall I call him) Crowned Housebreaker taken in the fact? You shall get out of it, please Heaven, when you have made compensation for the damage done; and till then not, if it please Heaven!" And in this strain (lengthily Official, though indignant to a degree)enumerates the wanton unspeakable mischiefs and outrages which Austria, a kind of sacred entity guaranteed by Law of Nature and Eleven Signatures of Potentates, has suffered from the Most Christian Majesty,--and will have compensation for, Heaven now pointing the way! [IN EXTENSO in Adelung, iii. B, 201 et seqq.]
A most portentous Document; full of sombre emphasis, in sonorous snuffling tone of voice; enunciating, with inflexible purpose, a number of unexpected things: very portentous to his Prussian Majesty among others. Forms a turning-point or crisis both in the French War, and in his Prussian Majesty's History; and ought to be particularly noted and dated by the careful reader. It is here that we first publicly hear tell of Compensation, the necessity Austria will have of Compensation,--Austria does not say expressly for Silesia, but she says and means for loss of territory, and for all other losses whatsoever: "Compensation for the past, and security for the future; that is my full intention," snuffles she, in that slow metallic tone of hers, irrevocable except by the gods.
"Compensation for the past, Security for the future:" Compensation?
what does her Hungarian Majesty mean? asked all the world;asked Friedrich, the now Proprietor of Silesia, with peculiar curiosity! It is the first time her Hungarian Majesty steps articulately forward with such extraordinary Claim of Damages, as if she alone had suffered damage;--but it is a fixed point at Vienna, and is an agitating topic to mankind in the coming months and years. Lorraine and the Three Bishoprics; there would be a fine compensation. Then again, what say you to Bavaria, in lieu of the Silesia lost? You have Bavaria by the throat; keep Bavaria, you.
Give "Kur-Baiern, Kaiser as they call him," something in the Netherlands to live upon? Will be better out of Germany altogether, with his French leanings. Or, give him the Kingdom of Naples,--if once we had conquered it again? These were actual schemes, successive, simultaneous, much occupying Carteret and the high Heads at Vienna now and afterwards; which came all to nothing;but should were it not impossible, be held in some remembrance by readers.
Another still more unexpected point comes out here, in this singular Document, publicly for the first time: Austria's feelings in regard to the Imperial Election itself. Namely, That Austria, considers, and has all along considered, the said Election to be fatally vitiated by that Exclusion of the Bohemian Vote; to be in fact nullified thereby; and that, to her clear view, the present so-called Kaiser is an imaginary quantity, and a mere Kaiser of French shreds and patches! "DER SEYN-SOLLENDE KAISER," snuffles Austria in one passage, "Your Kaiser as you call him;" and in another passage, instead of "Kaiser," puts flatly "Kur-Baiern."This is a most extraordinary doctrine to an Electoral Romish Reich!