that the
succession was disputed, and that the Duke of Bavaria was on the march,
with an army, to claim the crown. The distant provinces were anxious to
shake off the Austrian yoke. Bohemia was agitated; and the restless
barons of Hungary were upon the point of grasping their arms, and, under
the protection of Turkey, of claiming their ancestral hereditary rights.
Notwithstanding the untiring endeavors of the emperor to obtain the
assent of Europe to the Pragmatic Sanction, many influential courts
refused to recognize the right of Maria Theresa to the crown. The
ministers were desponding, irresolute and incapable. Maria Theresa was
young, quite inexperienced and in delicate health, being upon the eve of
her confinement. The English ambassador, describing the state of affairs
in Vienna as they appeared to him at this time, wrote:

"To the ministers, the Turks seem to be already in Hungary; the
Hungarians in insurrection; the Bohemians in open revolt; the Duke of
Bavaria, with his army, at the gates of Vienna; and France the soul of
all these movements. The ministers were not only in despair, but that
despair even was not capable of rousing them to any desperate
exertions."

Maria Theresa immediately dispatched couriers to inform the northern
powers of her accession to the crown, and troops were forwarded to the
frontiers to prevent any hostile invasion from Bavaria. The Duke of
Bavaria claimed the Austrian crown in virtue of the will of Ferdinand
I., which, he affirmed, devised the crown to his daughters and their
descendants in case of the failure of the male line. As the male line
was now extinct, by this decree the scepter would pass to the Duke of
Bavaria. Charles VI. had foreseen this claim, and endeavored to set it
aside by the declaration that the clause referred to in the will of
Ferdinand I. had reference to _legitimate heirs_, not _male_ merely, and
that, consequently, it did not set aside female descendants. In proof of
this, Maria Theresa had the will exhibited to all the leading officers
of state, and to the foreign ambassadors. It appeared that _legitimate
heirs_ was the phrase. And now the question hinged upon the point,
whether females were _legitimate heirs_. In some kingdoms of Europe they
were; in others they were not. In Austria the custom had been variable.
Here was a nicely-balanced question, sufficiently momentous to divide
Europe, and which might put all the armies of the continent in motion.
Th