you to
negotiate."--"Negotiate!" answers he: and will have to pay his own
Election broken-glass, with a sublime martyr-feeling, without money from
the Sea-Powers.

Fleury has got the Sardinian Majesty; "Sardinian doorkeeper of the
Alps," who opens them now this way, now that, for a consideration: "A
slice of the Milanese, your Majesty;" bargains Fleury. Fleury has got
the Spanish Majesty (our violent old friend the Termagant of Spain)
persuaded to join: "Your infant Carlos made Duke of Parma and Piacenza,
with such difficulty: what is that? Naples itself, crown of the Two
Sicilies, lies in the wind for Carlos;--and your junior infant, great
Madam, has he no need of apanages?" The Termagant of Spain, "offended by
Pragmatic Sanction" (she says), is ready on those terms; the Sardinian
Majesty is ready: and Fleury, this same October, with an overwhelming
force, Spaniards and Sardinians to join, invades Italy; great Marshal
Villars himself taking the command. Marshal Villars, an extremely
eminent old military gentleman,--somewhat of a friend, or husband of a
lady-friend, to M. de Voltaire, for one thing;--and capable of slicing
Italy to pieces at a fine rate, in the condition it was in.

Never had Kaiser such a bill of broken-glass to pay for meddling in
neighbors, elections before. The year was not yet ended, when Villars
and the Sardinian Majesty had done their stroke on Lombardy; taken Milan
Citadel, taken Pizzighetone, the Milanese in whole, and appropriated it;
swept the poor unprepared Kaiser clear out of those parts. Baby Carlos
and the Spaniards are to do the Two Sicilies, Naples or the land one to
begin with, were the Winter gone. For the present, Louis XV. "sings TE
DEUM, at Paris, 23d December, 1733" [_Fastes du Regne de Louis XV._]
Villars, now above four-score, soon died of those fatigues; various
Marshals, Broglio, Coigny, Noailles, succeeding him, some of whom
are slightly notable to us; and there was one Maillebois, still a
subordinate under them, whose name also may reappear in this History.

SUBSEQUENT COURSE OF THE WAR, IN THE ITALIAN PART OF IT.

The French-Austrian War, which had now broken out, lasted a couple of
years; the Kaiser steadily losing, though he did his utmost; not so much
a War, on his part, as a Being Beaten and Being Stript. The Scene was
Italy and the Upper-Rhine Country of Germany; Italy the deciding scene;
where, except as it bears on Germany, our interest is nothing, as indee