erably because of her enmity to them,--as Wallenstein and Napoleon.
Frederick the Great was in some sense an exception, as he accomplished
most of his purposes at her expense; and yet it cannot with propriety be
said that he conquered her, or that, at the utmost, he was ever more
than the equal of Maria Theresa or Joseph II., with all his undoubted
intellectual superiority. When we compare the Austria of 1813 with the
Austria of 1809, and see how wonderfully fortune had worked in her favor
under circumstances far from promising anything for her benefit, we are
not surprised that Austrians should still be full of confidence, or that
a few other men should share what seems to be in them a well-founded
hope. A belief in good luck sometimes helps men to the enjoyment of good
luck,--and if men, why not nations?

Yet against this reliance on her luck by Austria must be placed the
wonderful changes that have come over the world since those times when
it was in the power of a government like the Austrian to exert a great
influence on the course of events. Down to the time of the French
Revolution, Austrian contests were carried on against nations,
governments, and dynasties, and not against peoples. Even the wars that
grew out of the Reformation were in no strict sense of a popular
character, but were waged by the great of the earth, who found their
account in being champions of progressive ideas,--the liberalism of
those days. Almost all the renowned anti-Austrian leaders of the Thirty
Years' War were kings, nobles, aristocrats of every grade, most of whom,
we may suppose, cared as little for political freedom as the Hapsburgs
cared for it. Gustavus Adolphus could be as arbitrary as Ferdinand II.,
and some of his most ardent admirers are of opinion that he fell none
too soon for his own reputation, though much too soon for the good of
Europe, when he was slain on the glorious field of Luetzen. The most
remarkable of all the wars waged by the Austrian house against human
rights was that which Philip II. and his successor directed against the
Dutch: the latter were the champions of liberty; but the opponents of
the Spanish Hapsburgs even in that war can hardly be called the people.
They were--at least the animating and inspiriting portion of them--the
old Dutch municipal aristocracy, who on most occasions were well
supported by the people. Down to a time within living memory, the German
Hapsburgs contended only against their equa