e
II. of England; and by thus adding to the consideration of the
House of Nassau, had opened a field for the recovery of all its
old distinctions.

The death of the emperor Charles VI., in October, 1740, left his
daughter, the archduchess Maria Theresa, heiress of his throne
and possessions. Young, beautiful, and endowed with qualities of
the highest order, she was surrounded with enemies whose envy
and ambition would have despoiled her of her splendid rights.
Frederick of Prussia, surnamed the Great, in honor of his abilities
rather than his sense of justice, the electors of Bavaria and
Saxony, and the kings of Spain and Sardinia, all pressed forward
to the spoliation of an inheritance which seemed a fair play for
all comers. But Maria Theresa, first joining her husband, Duke
Francis of Lorraine, in her sovereignty, but without prejudice to
it, under the title of co-regent, took an attitude truly heroic.
When everything seemed to threaten the dismemberment of her states,
she threw herself upon the generous fidelity of her Hungarian
subjects with a dignified resolution that has few examples. There
was imperial grandeur even in her appeal to their compassion.
The results were electrical; and the whole tide of fortune was
rapidly turned.

England and Holland were the first to come to the aid of the
young and interesting empress. George II., at the head of his
army, gained the victory of Dettingen, in support of her quarrel,
in 1743; the states-general having contributed twenty thousand
men and a large subsidy to her aid. Louis XV. resolved to throw
his whole influence into the scale against these generous efforts
in the princess's favor; and he invaded the Austrian Netherlands
in the following year. Marshal Saxe commanded under him, and at
first carried everything before him. Holland, having furnished
twenty thousand troops and six ships of war to George II. on
the invasion of the young pretender, was little in a state to
oppose any formidable resistance to the enemy that threatened
her own frontiers. The republic, wholly attached for so long
a period to pursuits of peace and commerce, had no longer good
generals nor effective armies; nor could it even put a fleet of
any importance to sea. Yet with all these disadvantages it would
not yield to the threats nor the demands of France; resolved
to risk a new war rather than succumb to an enemy it had once
so completely humbled and given the law to.

Conferences were op