austerities, self-mortification and deeds of charity. She
died in 1720; and at her express request was buried without any parade,
and with no other inscription upon her tomb than--

ELEONORA,

A POOR SINNER,

Died, January 17, 1720.

Joseph, the eldest son of Leopold, was twenty-five years of age when, by
the death of his father, he was called to the throne as both king and
emperor. He immediately and cordially cooeperated with the alliance his
father had formed, and pressed the war against France, Spain and Italy.
Louis XIV. was not a man, however, to be disheartened by disaster.
Though thousands of his choicest troops had found a grave at Blenheim,
he immediately collected another army of one hundred and sixty thousand
men, and pushed them forward to the seat of war on the Rhine and the
Danube. Marlborough and Eugene led Austrian forces to the field still
more powerful. The whole summer was spent in marches, countermarches and
bloody battles on both sides of the Rhine. Winter came, and its storms
and snows drove the exhausted, bleeding combatants from the bleak plains
to shelter and the fireside. All Europe, through the winter months,
resounded with preparations for another campaign. There was hardly a
petty prince on the continent who was not drawn into the strife--to
decide whether Philip of Bourbon or Charles of Hapsburg, was entitled by
hereditary descent to the throne of Spain.

And now suddenly Charles XII. of Sweden burst in upon the scene, like a
meteor amidst the stars of midnight. A more bloody apparition never
emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war. Having perfect contempt for
all enervating pleasures, with an iron frame and the abstemious habits
of a Spartan, he rushed through a career which has excited the wonder of
the world. He joined the Austrian party; struck down Denmark at a blow;
penetrated Russia in mid-winter, driving the Russian troops before him
as dogs scatter wolves; pressed on triumphantly to Poland, through an
interminable series of battles; drove the king from the country, and
placed a new sovereign of his own selection upon the throne; and then,
proudly assuming to hold the balance between the rival powers of France
and Austria, made demands of Joseph I., as if the emperor were but the
vassal of the King of Sweden. France and Austria were alike anxious to
gain the cooeperation of this energetic arm.

Early in May, 1706, the armies of Austria and France, each about seventy