ed
Lorraine to France. He, however, succeeded in obtaining some slight
compensation for the defrauded duke. The French court allowed him a
pension of ninety thousand dollars a year, until the death of the aged
Duke of Tuscany, who was the last of the Medici line, promising that
then Tuscany, one of the most important duchies of central Italy, should
pass into the hands of Francis. Should Sardinia offer any opposition,
the King of France promised to unite with the emperor in maintaining
Francis in his possession by force of arms. Peace was thus obtained with
France. Peace was then made with Spain and Sardinia, by surrendering to
Spain Naples and Sicily, and to Sardinia most of the other Austrian
provinces in Italy. Thus scourged and despoiled, the emperor, a humbled,
woe-stricken man, retreated to the seclusion of his palace.
While these affairs were in progress, Francis Stephen derived very
considerable solace by his marriage with Maria Theresa. Their nuptials
took place at Vienna on the 12th of February, 1736. The emperor made the
consent of the duke to the cession of Lorraine to France, a condition of
the marriage. As the duke struggled against the surrender of his
paternal domains, Cartenstein, the emperor's confidential minister,
insultingly said to him, "Monseigneur, point de cession, point
d'archiduchesse." _My lord, no cession, no archduchess._ Fortunately for
Francis, in about a year after his marriage the Duke of Tuscany died,
and Francis, with his bride, hastened to his new home in the palaces of
Leghorn. Though the duke mourned bitterly over the loss of his ancestral
domains, Tuscany was no mean inheritance. The duke was absolute monarch
of the duchy, which contained about eight thousand square miles and a
population of a million. The revenues of the archduchy were some four
millions of dollars. The army consisted of six thousand troops.
Two months after the marriage of Maria Theresa, Prince Eugene died
quietly in his bed at the age of seventy-three. He had passed his whole
lifetime riding over fields of battle swept by bullets and plowed by
shot. He had always exposed his own person with utter recklessness,
leading the charge, and being the first to enter the breach or climb the
rampart. Though often wounded, he escaped all these perils, and breathed
his last in peace upon his pillow in Vienna.
His funeral was attended with regal honors. For three days the corpse
lay in state, with the coat of mail, the
|