e imperial territories,
when the consternation and the danger in them should be at their height;
and then he counted on turning to his advantage the good-will of the
German princes, who, to be extricated from their difficulty, would not
fail to offer to himself, as liberator, the Imperial Crown, or, at least,
the dignity of King of the Romans and Vicar of the Empire to his son,
Monseigneur le Dauphin.

In effect, hostilities had hardly commenced on the part of the Turks,
hardly had their first successes, struck terror into the heart of the
German Empire, when the King, the real political author of these
disasters, proposed to the German Emperor to intervene suddenly, as
auxiliary, and even to restore Lorraine to him, and his new conquests, on
condition that the dignity of the King of the Romans should be bestowed
on his son. France, this election once proclaimed, engaged herself to
bring an army of 60,000 men, nominally of the King of the Romans, into
Hungary, to drive out utterly the common enemy. German officers would be
admitted, like French, into this Roman army; and more, the King of France
and the new King of the Romans engaged themselves to set back the
imperial frontiers on that side as far as Belgrade, or Weissembourg in
Greece. A powerful fleet was to appear in the Mediterranean to support
these operations; and the King, wishing to crown his generosity, offered
to renounce forever the ancient possessions, and all the rights of
Charlemagne, his acknowledged forefather or ancestor.

Whilst these dreams of ambition were being seriously presented to the
unhappy Imperial Court of Vienna, the Turks, to the number of 300,000
men, had swept across Hungary like a torrent. They arrived before the
capital of the Empire of Germany just at the moment when the Court had
left it. They immediately invested this panic-stricken town, and the
inhabitants of Vienna believed themselves lost. But the young Duc de
Lorraine, our King's implacable enemy, had left the capital in the best
condition and pitched outside Vienna, in a position from which he could
severely harass the besieging Turks.

He tormented them, he raided them, while he waited for the saving
reinforcements which were to be brought up by the King of Poland, and the
natural allies of the Empire. This succour arrived at last, and after
four or five combats, well directed and most bloody, they threw the
Ottomans into disorder. The Duc de Lorraine immortalised h