The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1875-08-05
Distorifal
A CENTURY OF HAPSBURGS

The recent death of that old dormouse
the Emperor Ferdinand Of Austria, who
has been hybernating in ease and com
fort and obscurity for Ortwenty-seven years
at the Hradschin, enables Francis Jo-
seph to become in name, what he has
been in fact and to much purpose since
he was eighteen years old, the Emperor
of Austria, or as it is contemporaneously
styled, the Austro-H Hungarian Kingdom.
The merest glance at the work done and
the cares encountered by this consCien-
tious monarch and his hard;Worked pre-
decessors in the.past hundred years or so
since the accession of the House Of Lor-
raine, will suffice to dispel the pleasant
illusion of Beranger that
-"En rendant son peuple heureux,
II faut qu'un roi ViVe"
A hundred years of the personal history
of Hapsburg monarchs is more than
enough to accout for and explain the
querulous expostulations ofShaksspeare's
Henry Nv, with "partial sleep" for seal
ing up the shipboy's eyes and rocking his
brains Gin cradle of the rude imperious
SURGE" while yet, with all their applian-
ces and means to boot, denying repose
to kings even "in the calmest and most
stillest night" With the Hapsburgs in
view; the conscience of king" cannot
be considered an unknown quantity; the
House of Austria has certainly been true
in narrow minded way, of course--to
its faith in the principle of divine right
and its duties and labors in obedience to,
that faith. F
When the Emperor Charles vi. died,
in l740; it was in the sure conviction that
his daughter would succeed to the thone
of Germany and Austria without dispute
and would reign quietly over a peaceful
empire. Maria Theresa was happily
married to the man she loved, and the
law of succession, the celebrated "Prsg-
matte Sanction" had been most labori-
ousIy framed and most carefully placed
by treaty under "the protection of the
public faith of the whole civilized world"
In less than two years the shameless
perfidy of Frederick the Great of Prussia,
the greed of France, the ambition Of
Charles of Bavaria, the envy of Russia
and the Indifferent rapacity of England
had gone far to dismember the whole
Austrian Empire, and had pl6nted
thorn in the side of Maria Theresa which
ranked there to the day of her death.
That proud, chivalrous, liberal minded
Queen never knew a days happiness
from the moment when. helpless, ,e',cebnte,
and assailed on all sides, she was forced
to celebrate her accession to the throne
by precipitous flight into Hungary, with
the Prussians in Bohemia andsSilesia,the
French IN Flanders, Charles OF Bavaria
proclaimed Emperor at Frankfort, and
the Italian duchies all Topped off from
her possessions. To secure her revenges
became henceforth the object of her
whole life, and she, the most conscien-
tious and most Virtuons woman in Eu-
rope, and the proudest of her virtue and
her conscience, stopped to all sorts of
humiliations in order to secure the
means to punish her enemies. She gave
her beloved daughter to the heir of her
rival and enemy,to shame, humiliation
and the sCaffOld she even consented to
court Mme De Pompadour, and to ad-
dress as cousin" that butchers daughter,
that keepers wife, that lossel kings
depraved mistress, that infamous bawd
who kidnapped young girls for the Pare
a,IS-cerfsl
Her son Joseph, less proud but equally
conscientious, was still more unhappy in
his life and reign. Disappointed in love
he lived long enough to be still more dis
appointed in life. He strove ardently.
INCREASINGLY, for the reform and happi-
ness ofhis subjects, and at every point,
in every measure, was misunderstood,
foiled, rebufed, defeated, Since Peter of
Prussia, Europe had known no such
iourneymen king as tJoseph-no one so
eager to learn all the wants of his people
and acquire labOriously the whole prac-
tical trade of reigning. When he died
in 1900, from sheer exhaustion under
the weight. of reiterated disappointments
and chagrihs, he was at war with mobiles
and commonalty, with church and liber-
ais, with Belgians, and Hnngarians; the
thunders of the French Revolution were
roaring overhead, and Joseph II, went to
= his grave the unhappiest object in his
tory, well.meaning King reigning
out of his due time, disliked and tncone-
pris.
Leopold; who succeeded him, had been
both happy and useful as Grand Duke of
Tuscany. He had opened the way of
prosperity to an oppressed ard impover-
ished people, ruined by misrule under the
Medicis. He had reformed the currency
broken up monopolies, ligntened taxa
ton, and made trade free and elastic.
1t was cruel to put him upon the throne
of the discontented and distracted EN-
pire that his brother Joseph had left-so
cruel that the burden and the confusion
killed him in two years. and his son
Francis reigned in his stead.
Francis IL. found more work to do
than his abilities could compass, more
notifications to endure than his narrow
nature could we'll bear up against. The
Corsican adventurer was his prosecutor,
and his son-in-law. Dumouriezl robbed
him of Flanders, Moreau transfixed him
through Bavaria; Napoleon conquered
him at Marengo, at Mantua, at Ulrh, at
,Austerlitz, at Wagram. The Congress Of
Vienna sat in his capital, but did not res
tore him Flanders; and!for the rest of his
life Metternich reigned, not Francis.
He had the odium of Spielberg without
any benefits from it; he made desert in
the Milanese and in Venice without get
ting any peace by it. JoggiiI ~
IL i, aatnl on1 t1,o vOurrr