rely on Kaunitz, who afterward became
Prime Minister, and who shaped for all the after-years of her reign the
policy of her rule. The old ministers left her by her father were not
able to meet the new difficulties, and the sovereign was often in great
anxiety amid conflicting and hesitating counsels, for it was nothing
less than the very existence of the country that was at stake. She was
thirty-one years old when the war came to an end by the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, the particulars of which were entrusted to Kaunitz
while he was ambassador at London. By that treaty Maria Theresa gained
the final guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, though she had to cede
two of her Italian duchies to the Spanish Bourbons, and Glatz and the
much-desired Silesia to the "bad neighbor," as she always called
Frederick. She was twenty-eight when she had the pleasure of seeing her
husband elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, gaining as his wife
the title of empress, and being thus often spoken of as the
empress-queen.

The war was over, but she knew full well that it was only for a short
time, and she spent the eight years of restless peace that followed, in
the most unremitting efforts to enable her country to endure the next
attack. She had proved that she could create heroes out of common men;
she was now to extort praise even from Frederick of Prussia for
"accomplishing designs worthy of a great man." A military academy was
created at Vienna; order and economy were brought into the treasury and
the army; she established camps of instruction and went herself to visit
them, recompensing brave officers, calling forth abilities and
emulation. The Department of Justice was disjoined from that of the
Police, a superior court was established, and the direction of the
finances given to a special council, reporting every week to the
empress. She often consulted men who were not in office upon matters of
policy, and thus got many valuable suggestions. Meantime Kaunitz was
ambassador at Paris, and had been bending all his efforts to secure a
French alliance, which seemed to him of so much importance that he even
induced his royal mistress to write to the Pompadour with a view to
securing the influence of Louis XV. in the impending war. This was not
the only time that Maria Theresa sacrificed the woman in her to the
ruler, for though above all breath of scandal, and devotedly attached to
husband and children, she never forgot that she was Aust