Wilhelm's
protection. [Narrative by himself, in HISTORY, pp. 235-248.] Whereby the
Siege of Dantzig ended in chamade, and levying of penalties; penalties
severe to a degree, though Friedrich Wilhelm interceded what he could.
And with the Siege of Dantzig, the blazing Polish Election went out
in like manner; [Clear account, especially of Siege, in Mannstein
(pp. 71-83), who was there as Munnich's Aide-de-damp.]--having already
kindled, in quarters far away from it, conflagrations quite otherwise
interesting to us. Whitherward we now hasten.

Chapter IX. -- KAISER'S SHADOW-HUNT HAS CAUGHT FIRE.

Franz of Lorraine, the young favorite of Fortune, whom we once saw at
Berlin on an interesting occasion, was about this time to have married
his Imperial Archduchess; Kaiser's consent to be formally demanded and
given; nothing but joy and splendor looked for in the Court of Vienna at
present. Nothing to prevent it,--had there been no Polish Election;
had not the Kaiser, in his Shadow-Hunt (coursing the Pragmatic Sanction
chiefly, as he has done these twenty years past), gone rashly into that
combustible foreign element. But so it is: this was the fatal limit. The
poor Kaiser's Shadow-Hunt, going Scot-free this long while, and merely
tormenting other people, has, at this point, by contact with inflammable
Poland, unexpectedly itself caught fire; goes now plunging, all in
mad flame, over precipices one knows not how deep: and there will be a
lamentable singeing and smashing before the Kaiser get out of this, if
he ever get! Kaiser Karl, from this point, plunges down and down, all
his days; and except in that Shadow of a Pragmatic Sanction, if he can
still save that, has no comfort left. Marriages are not the thing to be
thought of at present!--

Scarcely had the news of August's Election, and Stanislaus's flight
to Dantzig, reached France, when France, all in a state of readiness,
informed the Kaiser, ready for nothing, his force lying in Silesia,
doing the Election functions on the Polish borders there, "That he
the Kaiser had, by such treatment of the Grandfather of France and
the Polish Kingdom fairly fallen to him, insulted the most Christian
Majesty; that in consequence the most Christian Majesty did hereby
declare War against the said Kaiser,"--and in fact had, that very day
(14th of October, 1733), begun it. Had marched over into Lorraine,
namely, secured Lorraine against accidents; and, more specially, gone
across