the fall of the great Charles came, and brought with it the fall of
Stanislaus. Augustus re-entered Poland at the head of a Saxon army,
and Stanislaus was compelled to abdicate. Now that Augustus was dead,
Louis the Fifteenth determined to bring Stanislaus out from his
retirement of many years and set him for the third time on the Polish
throne. On the other hand, the Emperor and Russia alike favored the
son of {24} the late king, another Augustus, Elector of Saxony. The
French party carried Stanislaus, although at the time of his
abdication, three or four and twenty years before, he had been declared
incapable of ever again being elected King of Poland. The Saxon party,
secretly backed up by Russia, resisted Stanislaus, attacked his
partisans, drove him once more from Warsaw, and proclaimed Augustus the
Third. Louis of France declared war, not on Russia, but on the
Emperor, alleging that the Emperor had been the inspiration and support
of the Saxon movement. A French army under Marshal Berwick, son of
James the Second of England, crossed the Rhine and took the fort of
Kehl--the scene of a memorable crossing of the Rhine, to be recrossed
very rapidly after, in days nearer to our own. Spain and Sardinia were
in alliance with Louis, and the Emperor's army, although led by the
great Eugene, "Der edle Ritter," was not able to make head against the
French. The Emperor sent frequent urgent and impassioned appeals to
England for assistance. George was anxious to lend him a helping hand,
clamored to be allowed to take the field himself and win glory in
battle; camps and battle-fields were what he loved most, he kept
dinning into Walpole's unappreciative ear. Even the Queen was not
disinclined to draw the sword in defence of an imperilled and harassed
ally.

[Sidenote: 1735--The Emperor's denunciation of Walpole]

Walpole stuck to his policy of masterly inactivity. He would have
wished to exclude Stanislaus from the Polish throne, but he was not
willing to go to war with France. He could not bring himself to
believe that the interests of England were concerned in the struggle to
such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring
out of English blood. But he did not take his stand on such a broad
and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm
or a tenable position. Walpole did not venture to say that the
question whether this man or that was to sit on the throne of Poland