othing to live
upon;--the English, generous creatures, had at one time flung him
something, fancying the Armistice might be useful; but now it must be
the French that do it, if anybody! [Adelung, iii. B, 204 ("22d August"),
206, &c.]
Hanau Conferences having failed, these things do not fail. Kaiser Karl
is become tragical to think of. A spectacle of pity to Landgraf Wilhelm,
to King Friedrich, and serious on-lookers;--and perhaps not of pity
only, but of "pity and fear" to some of them!--sullen Austria taking
its sweet revenges, in this fashion. Readers who will look through these
small chinks, may guess what a world-welter this was; and how Friedrich,
gazing into phase on phase of it, as into Oracles of Fate, which to him
they were, had a History, in these months, that will now never be known.
August 16th came out her Hungarian Majesty's Response to that mild
quasi-penitent Declaration of King Louis to the Reich; and much
astonished King Louis and others, and the very Reich itself. "Out of
it?" says her Hungarian Majesty (whom we with regret, for brevity's
sake, translate from Official into vulgate): "His Most Christian Majesty
wishes to be out of it:--Does not he, the (what shall I call him)
Crowned Housebreaker taken in the fact? You shall get out of it, please
Heaven, when you have made compensation for the damage done; and till
then not, if it please Heaven!" And in this strain (lengthily Official,
though indignant to a degree) enumerates the wanton unspeakable
mischiefs and outrages which Austria, a kind of sacred entity guaranteed
by Law of Nature and Eleven Signatures of Potentates, has suffered from
the Most Christian Majesty,--and will have compensation for, Heaven now
pointing the way! [IN EXTENSO in Adelung, iii. B, 201 et seqq.]
A most portentous Document; full of sombre emphasis, in sonorous
snuffling tone of voice; enunciating, with inflexible purpose, a number
of unexpected things: very portentous to his Prussian Majesty among
others. Forms a turning-point or crisis both in the French War, and in
his Prussian Majesty's History; and ought to be particularly noted and
dated by the careful reader. It is here that we first publicly hear
tell of Compensation, the necessity Austria will have of
Compensation,--Austria does not say expressly for Silesia, but she says
and means for loss of territory, and for all other losses whatsoever:
"Compensation for the past, and security for the future; that is my
ful
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