AUSTRIA. 



137 



Aus:.ia. 



Ckirlei VI. 



.Joseph II. 



The war6 which Charles ciinied on in Germany, Ita- 

 ly, and Spain, against Louis XIV., and others, made 

 his reign conspicuous, and immortalised the talents 

 of his principal general, Prince Eugene of Savoy. 

 This prince commanded also against the Turks, and 

 compelled them to sue for the peace o( Passarowitz, 

 in 1718, the most splendid and honourable which 

 Austria had ever made. Charles VI. expired, after 

 a turbulent reign, on the 520th of October 1740, 

 leaving his elder'- daughter, the celebrated Maria 

 Theresa, who was married to the young duke of 

 Lorraine, heiress of all his possessions. In Charles 

 wa3 extinct the last of the family of Rudolf of Habs- 

 burg in the male line : With Maria Theresa's son, 

 Joseph II., who was proclaimed king of the Romans 

 in 17(>4, commenced the second royal house of the 

 Austrian family, viz. the house of Lorraine. Maria 

 Theresa, whose heroic conduct, and inconsistent and 

 tumultuous political career, are well known, died on 

 the 29th of November 1780, leaving her vast empire, 

 and an army of 300,000 men, to her son Joseph, now 

 mentioned. 



Of all the princes of the house of Austria, none 

 laboured with more sincere ardour to promote the 

 welfare of the people than Joseph II., and yet of none 

 was the reign so disastrous to his country. He was 

 not always mistaken in the views which he took of 

 the best interests of his subjects, nor perhaps in his 

 conceptions of the means of improving their condi- 

 tion ; but his precipitancy and rashness ultimately 

 defeated all his projects. He wished, at the same 

 time, to ameliorate the internal government and ad- 

 ministration of Ins vast empire, and also to extend its 

 limits ; to cultivate the lands which he possessed in 

 superfluity, and to acquire new territories ; to civi- 

 lize the millions of savages under his sceptre, and yet 

 to reduce other millions under it also ; and to finish 

 ever)' thing before it was well begun. Forgetting 

 the example of his wise and great predecessor Ru- 

 dolf of Habsburg, as well as of his illustrious con- 

 temporary Frederick of Prussia, who never studied 

 the value of any thing so much as that of time, * 

 he either rush.d prematurely upon enterprises which 

 required much delicate caution to render them pa- 

 latable to his people ; or, on the other hand, neglect- 

 ed the application of means, which, if properly timed, 

 might secure the complete accomplishment of his 

 projects. He appeared, indeed,, all his life not to 

 know, that time is one of the greatest and most es- 

 sential elements in human institutions ; and that what 

 may be prudent at one period, may even, among the 

 same people, denote absolute madness at another. 

 He pulled down churches, monasteries, and nunne- 

 ries, in one part of his dominions j :md overset all an- 

 cient investitures in another ; while, in a third, he 

 proved himself the determined and bitter enemy of 

 all that savoured of innovation. In Bohemia and 

 Hungary he favoured the Protestants, and disgusted 

 his Catholic subjects ; while in Flanders, where pub- 

 lic opinion had made eminent advances in the career 

 of complete civilization, refinement, and tolerance in 

 matters of religion, he followed a very different 

 course : thus contriving, by a singularly unfortunate 



species of political blundering, to alienate the affec- Austria, 

 tions of the great majority of his subjects, without /"-*' 



conferring any essential benefit on the remaining part 

 of them. To this we may add, his contempt for the 

 feelings, or, as he called them, the prejudices of his 

 subjects, and for what every wise prince will alwayg 

 treat with mildness, if not with respect, their ancient 

 usages, customs, and superstitions. He certainly ap- 

 peared in Austria a great deal too soon, and before 

 that country was ripe for the schemes of improvement, 

 which, in a more civilized nation, might perhaps have 

 been practicable. Had that nation possessed a more 

 intimate acquaintance with modern ideas, and with 

 the literature which has been diffused over the great- 

 er part of northern Europe in our times, he would 

 very probably have produced something among them 

 like the French revolution. The French monarch 

 did not prevent, or could not prevent, that tremen- > 



dous explosion ; but the Austrian would himself 

 have accelerated and increased it. The acting causes 

 of the French revolution were quite foreign to the 

 government, and beyond its controul ; in Austria, 

 the sources of the impending change were in the go- 

 vernment itself, and yet their results have been al- 

 most equally fatal, in the first instance, to the tran- 

 quillity and happiness of both nations. Joseph's in- 

 novations would have produced fire and fermentation 

 in France, but they excited, at the moment, only a 

 passive species of dislike and disgust in Austria, 

 Hungary, and Flanders ; which afterwards degene- 

 rated into a sort of apathy, and intellectual and mo- ' 

 ral palsy, when the hour of trial arrived. His wars, 

 or quarrels, with Turkey, Prussia, Bavaria, and 

 Flanders, accordingly terminated in a manner which 

 gave no good presage of the state of his empire as a 

 first rate power. He died on the 20th of February 

 1790, in the midst of preparations against Prussia 

 and Turkey, which promised no better consequences 

 th:in his former ill-concerted schemes. He left no 

 children, and was succeeded by his brother, Leo- 

 pold II., then grand duke of Tuscany. 



Leopold II. had reigned as a wise man and a be- Leopold If. 

 neficent prince for 25 years in his interesting and hap- 

 py province, when he was called to the throne of 

 Germany and Austria. He made peace with Prus- 

 sia and Turkey ; was involved, probably against his 

 inclination, in the tremendous revolutionary war, af- 

 terwards So ruinous to his house, and died on the 1st 

 of January 1792. His son, Francis II., succeeded Francis II. 

 him, and still reigns over the provinces which are the 

 subject of this article, as a mild, tolerant, and bene- 

 volent prince. Austria, properly so called, has lost 

 ' very little of the extent which it possessed in 996, 

 from the period in which it gave the title of mar- 

 grave to its lord, until the peace of Vienna, lately 

 concluded in October 1809. A brief summary, how- 

 ever, of the circumstances which have, since January 

 1792, conduced to bring Austria into her present 

 situation, may not, perhaps, be ill timed in 1810. 



When the revolutionary war broke out in 1791-2, 

 and the continental powers bordering upon France 

 began to be alarmed by the principles which it pro- 

 pagated, and the 9erious aspect which it assumed, 



Frederick was wont to tay, when accused of hurry r impatience, " He who gains time gains every thing.' 



VOL. III. PAKT I 



