CHAP. VII.] DEATH OF MUSTAPHA III. 469 score of her warlike preparations, and was also to obtain a portion of Wallachia; while she engaged to assist the Porte in recovering all the conquests of the Russians, and to compel them to evacuate Poland. Kaunitz's secret object in this treaty we have already seen. Russia showed herself so compliant, that the Austrian minister did not think it necessary to ratify the treaty, although he received a good part of the subsidy. The campaign of 1771 was unimportant on the Danube; but the Russians, under Dolgorouki, subdued the Crimea, as well as Arabat, Jeniclava, Kertsch, Kaffa, and the isle of Taman. The Tartars now submitted to Russia, on condition of retaining their ancient customs, and Catherine appointed a new Khan. We have already mentioned the truce of 1772, and the Congress of Fockshan; which, however, like a subsequent one at Bucharest, proved fruitless. The war, when renewed in 1773, went in favour of the Turks. The Russians were compelled to recross the Danube, and remain on the defensive. Sultan Mustapha died towards the end of this year (December 24th). His death had little influence on the course of events. His weak brother and successor, Abdul Hamed, then forty-eight years of age, was in the hands of the war party. The ensuing campaign was opened with great pomp by the Turks in April 1774, but they were soon so thoroughly beaten as to be glad of a peace on almost any terms. Never was a celebrated treaty concluded in so short a space of time, as that dictated in four hours by Count Romanzoff, in his camp at Kutschuk Kaiwardschi (July 16th), where the Turks were almost entirely surrounded. By this peace the Tartars of the Crimea, Kuban, &c., were declared independent of either empire, and were to enjoy the right of electing their Khan from the family of Zingis; only they were to recognise the Sultan as Caliph and head of their religion. Russia restored to the Tartars all her conquests in the Crimea, &c., retaining only Kertsch and Jenikala. She also restored to the Porte Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, &c., and the islands in the Archipelago; retaining Kinburn and its territory, Asof, the two Kabardias, but evacuating Georgia and Mingrelia. The Turks, however, abandoned the tribute of young men and women, which they had been accustomed to exact from these countries; and they agreed to pay four million roubles for the costs of the war. Poland, which had caused the breach between the two empires, was not even named in the treaty.49 The treaty will be found in Wilkinson's Account of Moldavia and Wallachia. 470 RUSSIAN PRETENDERS. [BOOK VI. A year after this peace, the Porte ceded to Austria the Bukovina, or Red Forest, a district formerly belonging to Transylvania, and which connected that country with the newly-acquired kingdom of Galicia. During the course of this war (1773), Catherine II. was alarmed by the rebellion of a Cossack deserter named Pugatscheff, who personated the character of Peter III., to which prince he bore some resemblance. Many thousand discontented Cossacks flocked to his standard, and at one time it was apprehended that Moscow itself would rise in his favour. But the peace put an end to his hopes, and he was shortly afterwards captured and executed.50 50 Peter III. had also been personated in Dalmatia by a Montenegrin adventurer named Stefano. An insurrection which he excited in 1767 was quelled in the following year. CHAP. VIII.] JOSEPH II., EMPEROR. 471 CHAPTER VIII. In the preceding chapter we have anticipated some of the facts of Austrian history, which we now resume. We have already alluded to the election of Maria Theresa's eldest son as King of the Romans, in May 1764.1 The sudden and unexpected death of his father, Francis I., in the following year, gave him the Imperial crown, with the title of Joseph II. The Emperor and Imperial Court were celebrating at Innsbrück the marriage of his second son, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, with Maria Louisa, Infanta of Spain, when one evening, on entering his son's apartment, he sank into his arms in a fit of apoplexy, and immediately expired, August 18th 1765. Francis I. was fifty-eight years of age at the time of his death. at the time of his death. He was a goodhumoured, polite gentleman, with so little ambition, that he was better pleased to appear as a private man than as an Emperor, and although Co-Regent with his wife, took little or no part in the government of the Austrian monarchy. He had enriched himself by entering into various commercial and banking speculations. The Austrian Government, therefore, proceeded in much the same train as before till the death of Maria Theresa. It was the policy of that sovereign to strengthen her connection with the Bourbon Courts. Besides the marriage of the Archduke Leopold just mentioned, she gave the hand of her daughter, Maria Antoinette, to the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XVI., May 19th 1770. Another archduchess married Ferdinand IV., King of the Two Sicilies, and a third was united with the Duke of Parma. Maria Theresa, who had experienced in her early days the evils and horrors of war, was inclined to pursue a peaceful policy. But such was not the character of her son. Although possessed of considerable talents, Joseph II. was tormented with a febrile and restless ambition, without any very fixed or definite object. During his father's lifetime, he had endeavoured to procure the reversion to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, to the prejudice of his brother Leopold; alleging, that although he should become an Emperor 1 Above, p. 440. 2 Born November 2nd 1755. 472 CLAIMANTS OF BAVARIA. [BOOK VI. on his father's death, he should not possess a foot of territory. Maria Theresa, to satisfy this craving, had promised to make him Co-Regent of Austria on the death of her husband; but, during his mother's lifetime, that office remained little more than nominal. It was chiefly through Joseph's ambition and desire of aggrandisement, that Austria was threatened with the War of the Bavarian Succession. This affair, which assumes very small dimensions, when compared with the wars of the Spanish and Austrian Successions, need not occupy any great share of our attention. By the death of Maximilian Joseph, Elector of Bavaria, December 30th 1777, the younger branch of the House of Wittelsbach became extinct, and with it the Bavarian Electorate, which had been vested only in that family. Charles Theodore, Elector Palatine, as representative of the elder, or Rodolphine, branch of the House of Wittelsbach, was undoubtedly entitled to succeed to the Bavarian dominions, with the exception of the allodial possessions. The common ancestor of the two branches, Louis the Severe, Elector Palatine and Duke of Bavaria, had divided the succession to those possessions between his two sons, Rodolph and Louis, in 1310; and the latter, after obtaining the Imperial crown as Louis V., had confirmed this partition by a treaty with his nephews, sons of his elder brother, Rodolph, in 1329. By this treaty the two contracting parties had reserved the right of reciprocal succession in their respective dominions, the Rhenish Electoral Palatinate and the duchy of Bavaria. Several claimants, however, burrowing in the inexhaustible chaos of the German archives, advanced pretensions to various parts of the Bavarian dominions. Maria Theresa, as Queen of Bohemia, claimed the fiefs of Upper Bavaria, and, as Archduchess of Austria, all the districts which had belonged to the line of Straubingen. But of this line she was not the true representative, but rather Frederick II. of Prussia, as descended from the eldest sister. Nor were her pretensions as Queen of Bohemia better founded. Joseph II. claimed several portions of Bavaria as Imperial fiefs. But his pretensions were contrary to the provisions of the Golden Bull, as well as the Peace of Westphalia and the public law of Germany, which recognises as valid such family compacts as those made by the House of Wittelsbach, even though detrimental to the rights of the Empire. Other minor claimants were the Electress Dowager of Saxony, who, as sister of Maximilian Joseph, claimed the allodial succession; and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who claimed the Landgraviate Pfeffel, t. i. pp. 472, 494. p. 246. • Ibid. p. 248. 5 CHAP. VIII.] WAR OF THE BAVARIAN SUCCESSION. 473 of Leuchtenberg by virtue of an expectative granted by the Emperor Maximilian I. to one of his ancestors. Charles Theodore, having no heirs, agreed to the claims of the House of Austria, which comprised half Bavaria, in the hope of thereby procuring protection and provision for his numerous illegitimate children; and the Court of Vienna had indulged the hope that the King of Prussia, now bent down by age and infirmities, would not endanger the glories of his youth by forcibly opposing the arrangement. The Convention, however, appeared to Frederick not only to menace the constitution of the German Empire, but, by giving to Austria so large an accession of territory, even to imperil the safety of his own kingdom. Such being his views, he formed an alliance with the Duke of Deux-Ponts, nephew of Charles Theodore, and next heir to the Bavarian duchy, whose inheritance had been mutilated without his consent; and he undertook to defend the Duke's rights against the House of Austria. Joseph II. would listen to no terms of accommodation; war became inevitable, and in 1778 large armies were brought into the field by both sides, which, however, did nothing but observe each other. Austria claimed the aid of France by virtue of the treaty between the two countries. Louis XVI., who then occupied the throne of France, pressed by his Austrian consort, Maria Antoinette, remained for some time undecided. But France, then engaged in a war with England, in support of her revolted North American colonies, wished not to be hampered with a European war, and Louis at length declared his intention to remain neutral. Yet, to appease his brother-in-law, the Emperor, who reproached him with his desertion, Louis was weak enough secretly to furnish the fifteen million livres stipulated by the treaty." Maria Theresa endeavoured to avert an effusion of blood. Without consulting her son, or her minister, Prince Kaunitz, she despatched Baron Thugut to Frederick with an autograph letter containing fresh offers of peace, and painted to him her despair at the prospect of their tearing out each other's grey hairs. But the negociations were again broken off by the anger and impatience of Joseph. The Emperor threatened, when he heard of them, to establish his residence at Aix-la-Chapelle, or some other Imperial town, and never again to return to Vienna. The campaign of 1779 was almost as barren of events as that of the preceding year. The only notable event of the war was the surprise and capture of a Prussian corps of 1200 men at Habelschwerdt by the Austrian general, Wurmser, January 18th 1779. • See next chapter. 'Soulavie, Mém. du Règne de Louis XVI, t. v. p. 53. 8 Coxe, House of Austria, ch. cxxix. 6 |