flag
waved from all the castles in the kingdom, summoning the people to a
levy _en masse_, or, as it was then called, to a general insurrection.
An army of nearly eighty thousand men was almost instantly raised. A
cotemporary historian, speaking of this event, says:

"This amazing unanimity of a people so divided amongst themselves as the
Hungarians, especially in point of religion, could only be effected by
the address of Maria Theresa, who seemed to possess one part of the
character of Elizabeth of England, that of making every man about her a
hero."

Prince Charles re-crossed the Rhine, and, by a vigorous march through
Suabia, returned to Bohemia. By surprise, with a vastly superior force,
he assailed the fortresses garrisoned by the Prussian troops, gradually
took one after another, and ere long drove the Prussians, with vast
slaughter, out of the whole kingdom. Though disaster, in this campaign,
followed the banners of Maria Theresa in the Netherlands and in Italy,
she forgot those reverses in exultation at the discomfiture of her great
rival Frederic. She had recovered Bohemia, and was now sanguine that she
soon would regain Silesia, the loss of which province ever weighed
heavily upon her heart. But in her character woman's weakness was allied
with woman's determination. She imagined that she could rouse the
chivalry of her allies as easily as that of the Hungarian barons, and
that foreign courts, forgetful of their own grasping ambition, would
place themselves as pliant instruments in her hands.

In this posture of affairs, the hand of Providence was again interposed,
in an event which removed from the path of the queen a serious obstacle,
and opened to her aspiring mind new visions of grandeur. The Emperor
Charles VII., an amiable man, of moderate abilities, was quite crushed
in spirit by the calamities accumulating upon him. Though he had
regained his capital, he was in hourly peril of being driven from it
again. Anguish so preyed upon his mind, that, pale and wan, he was
thrown upon a sick bed. While in this state he was very injudiciously
informed of a great defeat which his troops had encountered. It was a
death-blow to the emperor. He moaned, turned over in his bed, and died,
on the 20th of January, 1745.

The imperial crown was thus thrown down among the combatants, and a
scramble ensued for its possession such as Europe had never witnessed
before. Every court was agitated, and the combinations of int