n Italy, and
meeting with no force sufficiently powerful to oppose them, speedily
overran Naples and Sicily. The Spanish troops silenced the forts which
defended the city of Naples, and taking the garrison prisoners, entered
the metropolis in triumphal array, greeted by the acclamations of the
populace, who hated the Austrians. After many battles, in which
thousands were slain, the Austrians were driven out of all the
Neapolitan States, and Carlos, the oldest son of Philip V. of Spain, was
crowned King of Naples, with the title of Charles III. The island of
Sicily was speedily subjugated and also attached to the Neapolitan
crown.

These losses the emperor felt most keenly. Upon the Rhine he had made
great preparations, strengthening fortresses and collecting troops,
which he placed under the command of his veteran general, Prince Eugene.
He was quite sanguine that here he would be abundantly able to repel the
assaults of his foes. But here again he was doomed to bitter
disappointment. The emperor found a vast disproportion between promise
and performance. The diet had voted him one hundred and twenty thousand
troops; they furnished twelve thousand. They voted abundant supplies;
they furnished almost none at all.

The campaign opened the 9th of April, 1734, the French crossing the
Rhine near Truerbuch, in three strong columns, notwithstanding all the
efforts of the Austrians to resist them. Prince Eugene, by birth a
Frenchman, reluctantly assumed the command. He had remonstrated with the
emperor against any forcible interference in the Polish election,
assuring him that he would thus expose himself, almost without allies,
to all the power of France. Eugene did not hesitate openly to express
his disapprobation of the war. "I can take no interest in this war," he
said; "the question at issue is not important enough to authorize the
death of a chicken."

Eugene, upon his arrival from Vienna, at the Austrian camp, found but
twenty-five thousand men. They were composed of a motley assemblage from
different States, undisciplined, unaccustomed to act together and with
no confidence in each other. The commanders of the various corps were
quarreling for the precedence in rank, and there was no unity or
subordination in the army. They were retreating before the French, who,
in numbers, in discipline, and in the materiel of war, were vastly in
the superiority. Eugene saw at once that it would be folly to risk a
battle, and that