534 O the Military Resources of the Austrian Empire. MAY, 



was inadequate to ? The combinations of diplomacy may avert for some 

 time longer the general " bouleversement," but war is inevitable, and the 

 power on whom its thunderbolts will burst with greatest fury, is Austria. 



The French revolution had absorbed the Netherlands and Holland 

 crushed the empire of Germany, and out of the spoils of Poland it had 

 constituted the duchy of Warsaw to watch the movements of Russia. At 

 the close of the war, which had raged with little interruption for more than 

 twenty years, the states of Europe could not be restored to the condition 

 in which they had been before the commencement of the tremendous and 

 protracted struggle. Many establishments in that long and dangerous 

 interval being wholly overthrown, many boundaries of countries had 

 been removed in the ravages of hostile aggression ; the negociators, 

 therefore, while they laboured to reconstruct the federative policy of the 

 European continent as much as possible, on the " status ante bellum," 

 were compelled to introduce various changes, that their arrangements 

 might be accommodated to the existing state of Europe. While Prussia 

 received large accessions of territory on the Rhine and from dismembered 

 Saxony, Austria, for the loss of her portion of Poland ceded to Russia, 

 and the Netherlands incorporated with Holland, found compensation in 

 immense acquisitions in Italy, besides a large portion of the Bavarian 

 kingdom, the Tyrol, &c. 



The sacrifices of this country during this eventful period were tremen- 

 dous. For twenty-five years she had continued with unwearied pertinacity 

 a warfare not without honour j and though often defeated in the field, the 

 glorious days of Aspern and Wagram fully re-established the reputation 

 of her armies ; and by her timely intervention in 1813, she gave the last 

 death-blow to the power of Napoleon. At that period the extraordinary 

 resources of his genius had repaired the disasters of the Russian campaign - } 

 he was still in possession of nearly the whole of the Prussian monarchy, 

 and of the strong post of Dantzig; the allied armies, disorganized by the 

 defeats of Grosberri and Bautzen, had nothing to oppose to his over- 

 whelming masses ; the star of the conqueror of Marengo again burst forth 

 in all its brightness. At this critical moment, when the destinies of 

 Europe were in the balance, Austria joined the coalition j and skilfully 

 availing herself of her proximity to Saxony, where Napoleon had concen- 

 trated his forces, she was enabled to operate immediately in the rear of 

 his front of operations upon the Elbe, and threw two hundred thousand 

 men into the scale with an almost certainty of success. The empire of 

 Italy, and her ancient influence in Germany, lost by fifteen years of 

 reverses and disasters, were both re-conquered in two months. An 

 equally favourable opportunity for a successful intervention had presented 

 itself to this power in 1807. Bonaparte had crossed the Vistula, and 

 pushed his advance under the walls of Kcenigsberg, having Austria in 

 his rear and the whole Russian Empire in his front. Had the Aus- 

 trian cabinet known how to profit by their geographical position, and 

 caused an army of one hundred thousand men to debouch from Bohemia 

 upon the Oder, the power of Napoleon would have been at an end, and in all 

 probability his army would 'not have succeeded in cutting its way back to 

 the Rhine : but she preferred waiting till she had raised her army to four 

 hundred thousand men, and two years after she assumed the offensive, 

 she was conquered; whilst, with one hundred thousand men at the period 



