of the house of Bourbon. The English nation, therefore, warmly espoused the cause of the queen of Hungary; and no sooner was it known that France, in violation of the pragmatic sanction, had formed the project of dismembering the succession of Charles VI. and placing a creature of her own upon the imperial throne, than the cry for war was loud, and for fulfilling to the utmost the treaties with the late emperor. The miscarriages in the West Indies were forgotten: the increase of taxes, which had lately occasioned so much clamour, was disregarded; and liberal subscriptions were opened, by private individuals, for the support of Maria Theresa.

George II., who seemed only to value the British crown as it augmented his consequence in Germany, was sufficiently disposed to enter into these views; and although the imminent danger to which his electoral dominions were exposed, induced him to submit to a treaty of neutrality for Hanover, that treaty did not affect him in his regal capacity. As king of Great Britain, he might still assist the queen of Hungary; he might even, it was said, hire his electoral troops to fight the battles of Maria Theresa. Of this he seemed convinced. But the leading members of the opposition in parliament had declaimed so long, and so eloquently, against continental connexions, that a change in his ministry was judged necessary, before any effectual step could be taken.

Sir Robert Walpole, whose credit had been for some time on the decline, finding he could no longer serve his master to advantage, or secure a respectable majority in the house of commons, resigned his employments, and was created earl of Orford. Mr. Sandys, a sturdy patriot, who had distinguished himself by his perseverance in opposing the measures of the late minister, was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, in the room of his political antagonist; the earl of Wilmington was placed at the head of the treasury; lord Carteret, the Cicero of the house of lords, was made secretary of state; and the eloquent and patriotic Mr. Pulteney, the most popular man in the kingdom, was restored to the dignity of a privy counsellor, and soon after created earl of Bath. Other changes of less consequence took place.

From the new ministry the most popular measures were expected: nothing ess was presumed on than a total renovation of the constitution. A number of motions to this purport were accordingly made in both houses of parliament; but, to the astonishment of the nation, they were all violently opposed, and quashed, by the very men who had lately maintained the principles on which they were founded, and whose former speeches had suggested many of them. The most important of these motions were the following three: one for appointing a committee "to inquire into the conduct of affairs during the last twenty years:" one for bringing in a bill "to repeal the act for septennial parliaments:" and one for "excluding pensioners from the house of lords," by an act of the whole legislature. In this ministerial opposition, Mr. Pulteney, immediately before he was created earl of Bath, and Mr. Sandys, the new chancellor of the exchequer, particularly distinguished themselves in the house of commons, as did lord Carteret in the house of peers.(1)

The eyes of the people were now opened; and they discovered, that the men whom they had been accustomed to consider as incorruptible patriots, and who had so long distracted the councils of the nation with their thundering orations, were only the heads of an ambitious faction struggling for power, and ready, when gratified with a share in the honours and offices of the state, to espouse measures, and adopt maxims, which they had formerly reprobated, as big with ruin and disgrace. This political apostacy was no less observable in their conduct with respect to foreign than domestic affairs. Though German subsidies, standing armies, and continental connexions had been the constant object of their indignation, while out of place, and had furnished them with the occasion of some of the finest strokes of their popular eloquence, the new ministry extended their complaisance to their sovereign

(1) Parl. Debates, 1742,

in all these particulars, much farther than their execrated predecessors. Besides providing for the subsidies to Denmark and Hesse Cassel, they procured a vote of five hundred thousand pounds to the queen of Hungary: they augmented the land forces to sixty-two thousand five hundred men: they transported into the Low Countries sixteen thousand British troops, under the earl of Stair, to make a diversion in favour of Maria Theresa, even before they were assured of the concurrence of Holland; and they ordered those troops to be joined by six thousand Hessians, and sixteen thousand Hanoverians, in British pay. This army, however, after much idle parade, went into winter-quarters, without performing any thing of consequence; the earl of Stair being employed during the greater part of the summer in fruitless negotiations with the Dutch, in order to induce them to fulfil their engagements with the late emperor.(1) The campaign was more active in Germany.

The good fortune of the elector of Bavaria terminated with his elevation to the imperial throne. The very day that he was elected emperor, under the pompous name of Charles VII., he received an account of the loss of Lintz, the capital of Upper Austria, though defended by a garrison of ten thousand French troops. Kevenhuller, the Austrian general, who had performed this important service, having dislodged the French from all the strong holds of that country, entered the emperor's hereditary dominions; defeated mareschal Thoring at Memberg, and took Munich, the capital of Bavaria. In the mean time, prince Lobkowitz, with eleven thousand foot, and five thousand horse, was appointed to observe the motions of the French in Bohemia; while prince Charles of Lorrain, at the head of thirty thousand infantry, and eighteen thousand cavalry, advanced against the Prussians and Saxons, who had invaded Moravia. They retired with precipitation, on his approach, and abandoned Olmutz, which they had taken.

The retreat of the Prussians and Saxons was considered as an event of great importance by the Austrians, as it seemed to afford them an opportunity of uniting their whole force against the French under Belleisle and Broglio, who were too strong for prince Lobkowitz singly. But the active and enterprising king of Prussia, having received a reinforcement of thirty thousand men under the prince of Anhalt Dessau, marched to the assistance of his allies in Bohemia. By his expedition and generalship, he arrived before the intended junction could be formed; and, in order to prevent it, he gave battle to prince Charles of Lorrain at Czaslaw. The disciplined troops on both sides were nearly equal; but the Austrians had the advantage of a large body of barbarous irregulars, Croats, Pandours, Talpaches, who engaged with incredible fury.(2) The Prussians were broken: the king left the field; and a total defeat must have ensued, had not the lust of plunder seized the Austrian irregulars at the sight of the Prussian baggage. Their example infected the regulars of the Austrian right wing, who also gave over the pursuit. The Prussian infantry seized this opportunity to rally: they returned to the charge; and, after an obstinate dispute, broke the main body of the Austrian army, and obliged prince Charles to retire with the loss of five thousand men.

The king of Prussia, whose loss was little inferior to that of the Austrians, sick of such bloody victories, and having some reason to suspect the sincerity of the court of France, began to turn his thoughts towards peace: and no less politic than brave, he concluded at Breslaw, without consulting his allies, an advantageous treaty with the queen of Hungary. By this treaty the archduchess Maria Theresa ceded to Frederick III. the Upper and Lower Silesia, with the county of Glatz; and he engaged to observe a strict neutrality during the war, and to withdraw his forces from her dominions within sixteen days after the signing of the articles. A treaty of peace was also con

(1) Smollett.

(2) The Croats are the militia of Croatia. The Pandours are Sclavonians, who inhabit the confines of the Drave and Save: they wear a long cloak, carry several pistols in their girdle, and use besides a sabre and poniard. The Talpackes are a sort of Hungarian infantry, armed with a musket, two pistols, and a sword.

cluded, nearly at the same time, between the queen of Hungary and Augustus III., king of Poland and elector of Saxony; by which she yielded to him certain places in the circles of Elbogen, Saltzer, Leutmeritz, and Buntzlaw in Bohemia. And he guaranteed to her the possession of the rest of that kingdom.(1)

Upon the court of France, like a clap of thunder, came the intelligence of the treaty of Breslaw: and the news which followed it, did not contribute to alleviate the consternation occasioned by that blow. The mareschals Belleisle and Broglio no sooner found themselves deserted by the Prussians, than they abandoned their magazines and heavy baggage, and retired with precipitation under the cannon of Prague. There they intrenched themselves in a kind of peninsular meadow, formed by the windings of the river Moldaw; while the prince of Lorrain, having formed a junction with the Austrian army under Lobkowitz, encamped in sight of them, on the hills of Grisnitz.

Finding themselves surrounded by superior forces, the French generals offered to evacuate Prague, Egra, and all the other places which they held in Bohemia, provided they were permitted to retire with their arms, ammunition, and baggage. This proposal, though highly reasonable, was haughtily rejected by the queen of Hungary, who insisted on their surrendering prisoners of war. Belleisle, who had assumed the command in Prague, treated the imperial demand with disdain; assuring his master, that he apprehended nothing from the enemy but famine. And the Austrian generals, though less skilful than brave, made him sensible that their approaches were not to be slighted. By cutting off his supplies, they reduced him to the greatest necessities, while they wasted and harassed his troops by perpetual assaults.

To permit the surrender of so fine an army was deemed inconsistent with the honour and glory of the French nation, as well as with its interest. Mareschal Maillebois, who commanded the French forces on the Rhine, had therefore orders to march to the relief of Prague, at the head of forty-two thousand men. When he arrived at Amberg, in the circle of Westphalia, he was joined by thirty thousand French and imperialists from Bavaria, under Seckendorff and count Saxe. Thus reinforced, he entered Bohemia without resistance. Apprized of his danger, the prince of Lorrain turned the siege of Prague into a blockade, the care of which he committed to general Festitz, with eighteen thousand men, and advanced with the main body of the army towards the frontiers of the kingdom, in order to oppose Maillebois. At Hayd he was joined by the grand Austrian army under Kevenhuller, who had followed count Saxe and Seckendorff from Bavaria. Meanwhile the mareschals Belleisle and Broglio had formed the design of joining the French army under Maillebois; and Festitz being too weak to oppose them, they broke out of Prague, and marched to Leumeritz. Maillebois was then in the neighbourhood of Egra; so that a junction seemed by no means impracticable. But prince Charles, by taking possession of the passes in the interposing mountains, utterly defeated their scheme. Maillebois was under the necessity of returning to the Palatinate, whither he was followed, and harassed on his march, by the prince of Lorrain; while prince Lobkowitz, with a strong detachment, obliged Belleisle and Broglio again to seek refuge in the capital of Bohemia.

Soon after the siege of this important place was resumed, Broglio made his escape in disguise, and took upon him the command of the French forces in the Palatinate, Maillebois being recalled; so that the fate of Prague, towards which the eyes of all Europe were now turned, rested solely on the courage and conduct of Belleisle and the small remains of that gallant army, which had given an emperor to Germany. All prospect of relief was cut off; a retreat seemed impracticable; and famine, accompanied with disease, its melancholy attendant, made cruel havoc among the French troops. The intrepid spirit of Belleisle, however, which bore him up amid all his misfor.

(1) Millot. Voltaire. Smollett.

tunes, communicated itself to both his officers and soldiers; and few days passed without sallies, in which the French had generally the advantage.

These sallies being chiefly occasioned by the zeal of the French in attacking the Austrian magazines in the neighbourhood of Prague, prince Lobkowitz, who conducted the blockade of that city, ordered them to be guarded by the flower of his army, in hopes that famine would soon compel the enemy to surrender at discretion. Now it was that Belleisle made known the resources of his genius. Having secretly formed the design of a retreat, he had, with wonderful diligence, remounted his cavalry, and sent troops of them out every day to forage. At last, by making, in one quarter of the town, a feint for a general forage, he marched out at another, with eleven thousand foot, and three thousand horse, and got a day's march of prince Lobkowitz. The great extent of the walls of Prague had rendered this attempt the more practicable; and the better to amuse the enemy, he left a small garrison in that city. He had ten leagues to march before he could reach the defiles. The ground was covered with snow, the cold excessively intense; all the inhabitants of the country were his enemies, and prince Lobkowitz, with an army of twelve thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry, hung on his rear. Under all these disadvantages, however, he reached the defiles with his army unbroken. And with so much judgment had he planned his route, that, although the Austrians occupied all the passes on the two principal roads that led to Egra, he was enabled to continue his progress, by striking through frozen marshes, which had never perhaps before been trod by the foot of man; he himself always pointing the way, though confined to his coach or sedan by a violent rheumatism. After a fatiguing march of twelve days, he reached Egra, which was still in the hands of the French, and entered Alsace without the loss of a single man by the hands of the enemy, but of a thousand in consequence of the rigour of the season.(1)

We must now turn our attention towards Italy, where the war raged, during this campaign, with no less violence than in Germany.

I have already had occasion to observe, that on the death of the emperor Charles VI., the king of Spain put in a claim to the whole Austrian succession, and that the king of Sardinia revived one to the dutchy of Milan. Both afterward thought proper to moderate their pretensions. The Spanish monarch seemed disposed to be satisfied with the Austrian dominions in Italy, which he intended to erect into a kingdom for Don Philip, his second son by the princess of Parma; and his Sardinian majesty, alarmed by the encroachments of the house of Bourbon, entered into an alliance with the queen of Hungary and the king of Great Britain, in consideration of an annual subsidy, and the cession of certain places contiguous to his dominions, though without absolutely renouncing his antiquated claim to the dutchy of Milan. All the other Italian powers affected, from fear, to remain neutral; so that, when a body of Spanish troops, under the duke de Montemar, were landed on the coast of Tuscany, towards the end of the year 1741, the grand-duke, husband to the queen of Hungary, whose territories they came to invade, permitted him to pass through his dominions. The Genoese showed no less complaisance to another body of Spanish troops: the Venetians issued a declaration to the same purpose; and the pope, as the common father of Christendom, wisely permitted both parties to take refuge alternately in the ecclesiastical state, and treated both with equal cordiality. Don Carlos, king of the two Sicilies, also declared himself neutral, though resolved to abet the claims of his family to the dutchies of Parma, Placenza, and Milan. But the appearance of an English squadron before his capital, which could soon have been laid in ashes, obliged him to submit, for a time, to a real neutrality as unnatural as that of the grand-duke.

This transaction, and others connected with it, were attended with circumstances sufficiently interesting to merit a particular detail; more especially as they lead us into the line of the naval operations of Great Britain in Europe.

(1) Millot. Voltaire. Smollett.

Admiral Haddock had cruised in the Mediterranean, with a strong fleet, ever since the breaking out of the war with Spain; and sir John Norris had repeatedly threatened the coasts of that kingdom, with a powerful armament, without performing any thing of consequence. At length, admiral Haddock seemed to have an opportunity of distinguishing himself and effectually serving his country. As he lay at Gibraltar, with fourteen stout ships, he was informed, that a Spanish fleet of twelve sail of the line, commanded by Don Joseph Navarro, with two hundred transports, and fifteen thousand land forces on board, under the duke de Montemar, had passed the straits in the night. He immediately stood to sea. He came up with the enemy, and was preparing to engage, when a French squadron, from Toulon, stood in between the hostile fleets with a flag of truce; and the commander sent a messa to the English admiral, that the French and Spaniards being engaged in a joint expedition, he was under the necessity of acting in concert with his master's allies. This unexpected interposition prevented an engagement, and the Spanish admiral proceeded with his convoy.(1)

Worn out with years, and chagrined by repeated disappointments, Haddock resigned the command of the British fleet in the Mediterranean to rearadmiral Lestock, who was soon joined by seven ships of the line, under viceadmiral Matthews, a brave and able officer. Besides being appointed commander-in-chief on that station, Matthews was vested with full powers to treat with all the princes and states of Italy, as his Britannic majesty's minister. In this double capacity, he watched the motions of the Spaniards both by sea and land; and understanding that a body of the troops of the king of the two Sicilies had, notwithstanding his pretended neutrality, joined the Spanish army, under the duke de Montemar, he sent commodore Martin with an English squadron into the bay of Naples, with orders to bombard that city, unless the king would withdraw his troops, and sign a promise, that they should not act in conjunction with Spain during the continuance of the war. The inhabitants of Naples were thrown into the utmost consternation, at this unexpected visit; and the king, being sensible that his capital, naturally much exposed by its ascending situation, was not in a state of defence, thought proper to comply with the conditions. He at first called an extraordinary council, which held several consultations, without coming to any fixed resolution. At length, the British commodore, who had dropped anchor before the town at four in the afternoon, by a noble boldness put an end to farther hesitation. On receiving an ambiguous answer, he pulled out his watch, and fixing it to the mainmast, sternly replied, that the council must come to a final determination within an hour, otherwise he should be obliged to execute his orders, which were absolute. The king's promise of neutrality was immediately sent, and the English fleet left the bay before midnight.(2) History affords few instances of such decision and despatch in affairs of equal importance.

As a prelude to the signing of this forced neutrality, which totally disconcerted the schemes of the court of Madrid, the Spanish army, under the duke de Montemar, had been obliged to retreat towards the frontiers of Naples, before the king of Sardinia and count Traun, the Austrian general. Meanwhile, Don Philip, third son of his Catholic majesty, and for whose aggrandizement the war had been undertaken, invaded Savoy with another Spanish army, which he had led through France, and soon made himself master of that whole dutchy. Alarmed at this irruption, and anxious for the safety of his more valuable dominions, the king of Sardinia returned with his forces to the defence of Piedmont, which the Spaniards in vain attempted to enter. And count Traun found himself sufficiently strong after the king of the Two Sicilies had withdrawn his troops, to maintain his ground, during the remainder of the campaign, against the Spanish army under the count de Gages, who was sent to supersede the duke de Montemar.(3)

(1) Tindal's Contin. of Rapin, vol. viii. Smollett, vol. xi. (3) Millot. Voltaire,

(2) Id. ibid.