and
Tuscany, but France was not willing to have Spain make so great an
accession to her Italian power. France wished to extend her area north,
through the States of the Netherlands. But England was unwilling to see
the French power thus aggrandized. England had her aspirations, to which
both France and Spain were opposed. Thus the allies operated as a check
upon each other.

The emperor found some little consolation in this growing disunion, and
did all in his power to foment it. Wishing to humble the Bourbons of
France and Spain, he made secret overtures to England. The offers of the
emperor were of such a nature, that England eagerly accepted them,
returned to friendly relations with the emperor, and, to his extreme
joy, pledged herself to support the Pragmatic Sanction.

It seems to have been the great object of the emperor's life to secure
the crown of Austria for his daughters. It was an exceedingly
disgraceful act. There was no single respectable reason to be brought
forward why his daughters should crowd from the throne the daughters of
his elder deceased brother, the Emperor Joseph. Charles was so aware of
the gross injustice of the deed, and that the ordinary integrity of
humanity would rise against him, that he felt the necessity of
exhausting all the arts of diplomacy to secure for his daughters the
pledged support of the surrounding thrones. He had now by intrigues of
many years obtained the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction from Russia,
Prussia, Holland, Spain and England. France still refused her pledge, as
did also many of the minor States of the empire. The emperor, encouraged
by the success he had thus far met with, pushed his efforts with renewed
vigor, and in January, 1732, exulted that he had gained the guarantee of
the Pragmatic Sanction from all the Germanic body, with the exception of
Bavaria, Palatine and Saxony.

And now a new difficulty arose to embroil Europe in trouble. When
Charles XII., like a thunderbolt of war, burst upon Poland, he drove
Augustus II. from the throne, and placed upon it Stanislaus Leczinski, a
Polish noble, whom he had picked up by the way, and whose heroic
character secured the admiration of this semi-insane monarch. Augustus,
utterly crushed, was compelled by his eccentric victor to send the crown
jewels and the archives, with a letter of congratulation, to Stanislaus.
This was in the year 1706. Three years after this, in 1709, Charles XII.
suffered a memorable def