loor. The cry of fire, the tumult, the
bursting into the room, the dashing of the cradle and the shrieks of the
child, so shocked the debilitated king that he died within an hour.

Leopold was but eighteen years of age when he succeeded to the
sovereignty of all the Austrian dominions, including the crowns of
Hungary and Bohemia. It was the first great object of his ambition to
secure the imperial throne also, which his father had failed to obtain
for him. Louis XIV. was now the youthful sovereign of France. He,
through his ambitious and able minister, Mazarin, did every thing in his
power to thwart the endeavors of Ferdinand, and to obtain the brilliant
prize for himself. The King of Sweden united with the French court in
the endeavor to abase the pride of the house of Austria. But
notwithstanding all their efforts, Leopold carried his point, and was
unanimously elected emperor, and crowned on the 31st of July, 1657. The
princes of the empire, however, greatly strengthened in their
independence by the articles of the peace of Westphalia, increasingly
jealous of their rights, attached forty-five conditions to their
acceptance of Leopold as emperor. Thus, notwithstanding the imperial
title, Leopold had as little power over the States of the empire as the
President of the United States has over the internal concerns of Maine
or Louisiana. In all such cases there is ever a conflict between two
parties, the one seeking the centralization of power, and the other
advocating its dispersion into various distant central points.

The flames of war which Charles Gustavus had kindled were still blazing.
Leopold continued the alliance which his father had formed with the
Poles, and sent an army of sixteen thousand men into Poland, hoping to
cut off the retreat of Charles Gustavus, and take him and all his army
prisoners. But the Swedish monarch was as sagacious and energetic as he
was unscrupulous and ambitious. Both parties formed alliances. State
after State was drawn into the conflict. The flame spread like a
conflagration. Fleets met in deadly conflict on the Baltic, and
crimsoned its waves with blood. The thunders of war were soon again
echoing over all the plains of northern and western Germany--and all
this because a proud, unprincipled young man, who chanced to be a king,
wished to be called a _hero_.

He accomplished his object. Through burning homes and bleeding hearts
and crushed hopes he marched to his renown. The forc