n that there existed an English version
of _Marianne_.

FREDERICK THE GREAT SEIZES SILESIA

MARIA THERESA APPEALS TO THE HUNGARIANS

A.D. 1740

WILLIAM SMYTH

Maria Theresa, the "Empress Queen," stands out among the most heroic
and romantic figures of the eighteenth century. She was the daughter
of Charles VI, last of the real Hapsburg emperors of Germany and
rulers of Austria. With him ended the male line of the mighty
family, but the descendants of his daughter and her husband, the
Duke of Lorraine, were known as the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine, and
gradually the second name disappeared from common usage, leaving
only the more famous half.

Having no male heirs Charles was determined that his daughter,
Maria, should succeed to all the vast Hapsburg estates, and he
entered into treaties upon the subject with the various chief powers
of Europe, yielding them substantial advantages in return for their
gossamer promise to support her in her inheritance. The moment
Charles died (1740) these treaties were thrown to the winds. Each
state planned to snatch what territory it could from the young and
apparently helpless Maria Theresa.

Frederick II of Prussia, afterward called the Great, was the first
of the robbers to move. He also had just come into power in the new
kingdom, which his father, Frederick I, had created. Part of his
inheritance was a splendid standing army, the best-drilled and most
powerful in Europe. With this he promptly overran Silesia, a
borderland composed of many little duchies and accounted one of the
most valuable provinces of the Austrian crown. Frederick openly and
cynically announced the maxim which seems in secret to have guided
many monarchs, that personal honesty had no part in the business of
being a king. His rash and conscienceless seizure of Silesia was
successful, but it proved the prelude to a quarter-century of
repeated wars which involved almost the whole of Europe and brought
his own country to the verge of ruin.

In 1740 Maria Theresa ascends the throne of her ancestors--possessed, it
seems, of a commanding figure, great beauty, animation and sweetness of
countenance, a pleasing tone of voice, fascinating manners, and uniting
feminine grace with a strength of understanding and an intrepidity above
her sex. But her treasury contained only one hundred thousan