The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-12-20

hand sword play, beautiful to behold, but
 nevertheless bitter. stifing. cruel work, during which many a saddle was emptied. many lives crushed out under the stamp ing hoofs of the rnaddened horses. But at last the moment long looked for, long desired. arrived. and with lightning
 rapidity Archduke Franz seized 1t.
 Squirting his horse against the wall of
 swarthy. savage Italian faces, and using
 his sword above his head. the young colo.
 nel literally threw his dragons upon their now swaying and yielding ranks. The
 men rushed forward in superb effort,
 like arrows launched from a thousand
 powerful bows. The impetuosity of their charge was Irresistible. and bore King
 Alberts troops headlong before 1t. Men
 fell on every side, to be ground into pulp
 upon the blood-soaked ground. M
 "Aboye the heilish din, the tumult and the shouting, the = wild neighing of
 chargers, and the roar of muketry and of
 cannon, rang out succession of cooly
 given orders from the ever-changing spot
 where, with the reek of smoke and car mage around him, rode Archudke, Franz. A slim, inspiring figure on his rearing, fretting, curveting charger. as he forced
 his way through a storm of blows and a. hurricane of projectiles, leading the sweep of his squadron over the lifelesss forms of the fallen. 2
 "When at length this superb feat of arms was over, the soldiers crowded shouting about him. .as
 "They had had enough of monarcks who sat sedately at home and looked upon throne as the most comfortable of resting
 places; a man of action was what they
 desired, and here. indeed was slender, blue-eyed Prince. their future Emperor and Generalessemo, who had been tried and not found wanting!
 'sTherefore, with enthusiasm raised to boiling point, as much by the modesty of his bearing as by what he had done, they rent the air with cries of "Hoch!' they kissed his hands, his clothing. his very boots--.As he came face to face with Redetzky, the grave noble-looking ola man doffed his plumed hat and bent to his sa6dle-bow, ''God grant" he said, that our soldiers may emulate Your Imperial HIghness whenever our coiors are dis played" From this hour Francis Joseph was the idol of his army and of his peo- pie, the only Emperor, it has been said, whom his people greet and welcome with loyal admiration whether he returns from battle a conuueror or conquered. The taking of the War office by the frenzied l mob reads like another storming of the Bastile.
 Count Latour was made of different stuff from de Launay, but the same fate was his. Strange with the history of the frenzy of mohs written in scarlet letters | for A world te read that noble Latour should have ordered at the last minute the guns to be swung round. the entrace left free to the mad rabble, who later, despite promises of their drunken lead CTS, were to tear the grave commander literally limb from limb
 These riots were quickly followed by the abdication of Ferdinand in favor Of his nephew, already beloved of the na- | tion.
 The biographer stays in the thread of | history to tell the legend of the ravens | of the Hapsburg House. The ravens that have betokened. according to legend, and perhaps by coincidence in reality every
 misfortune that has befallen the members of that ill-fated imperial house. These | birds of ill.omen, the writer ayers, ho- vered over Archduchess Charlotte and Maximifian during their last walk in the palace gardens before their start to Mex | leo. They bore direful omen to Marie | Louise on her way to wed Napoleon; as they had to Marie Antoinette.
 The work of Francis Joseph after the floods of 1851 that destroyed many vii.
 lages and the city of szegedin is sraphl. | cally told.
 The loss of the Italian provinces. the
 loss of Koniggratz are sympatheticaiiy | related.
 The home life of the imperial family Is | told. the continental peoples, even those of royal and imperial birth, seem to have less of reserve than even the simplest
 Anglo-SaxOn folk. The happy days at
 Laxenburg; the unhappy dissentions of
 the Empress and the ever-to-be-undaunt- ed mother of the Emperor, Archduchess
 Sophia, these dlsagreements the cause of
 the Empress's repeated absences from her
 imperial homes are all told with delicacy A..A w-.nkl given which show how Francis Joseph Is
 indeed the father of his people-stories
 of the poachers whom he forgave and made game keepers, of the little pig that
 procured an audience and won a pardon
 for the only son of his mother, and she widow! Of the small petitioner who
 won help for starving mother and baby
 sister by approaching the august Em-
 peror in person; of his visits incognito,
 to do good and learn much like the story
 book nonarchs of old; to Morovian farm
 house or Alpine chalet; of the gifts of
 the geese on St. Martins Day; of many other matters grave and gay, which only one intimate with the wearers of purple In palaces could tell.
 The family statutes of the Hapsburgs are touched on. the complete mystery that enshrouds them, strange statutes that have banished two Archdukes from House and Realms, making of the imperial klns- men plain John Orth and Leopold Vol fling.
 Life-like pictures of the imperial fam fly are given of the Emperor's father. Archduke Franz-Karl, blue-eyed, merry and placed in his carriage drawn by six gorgeously caparisoned Spanish mules with silver belled harness. Of Archduke Rainer; of Crown Prince Rudolph, the ill., fated; of Archduchess Elizabeth trebly an Austrian Archduchess; of Queen Ma ria Sophia, ex-queen of Naples sister of the Empress; many beautiful pictures that artist sketches with loving hand of the beautiful Empress whose life story she has far more fully given in The Martydom of an Empress"
 Nor Is the book without it's touches of humoP. What could be more deliciouslly funny and doubtless true, than the ac- count of Archduke Rainer's meeting on the veranda of a Swiss hotel a young American tourist. who. on the strength of a "best" friendship with the Secre- tary of the legation at Vienna undertook to give the cousin of the Emperor dots on the imperial family and their "gay goings-on."
 Everybody who has been abroad a bit has met that self-satisfied young tourist, who undertakes to teach the world of itself as he moves through it.
 The glimpse of the court of Napoleon and Eugenie is an unusual one to us of this distance and generation, the picture of Eugenie discrowned. lonely widowed and childless has been so long with US that we forget how must have been in her days of triumph when she "set her Ena nfah fnof iuaneFi0naly mt Iynna-