The FRH of German CURSIV-SCHRIFT (current hand), which the woodcutter has appended, shut off by a square, will show English readers what the King means: an "Frh" done as by a flourish of one's stick, in the most compendious and really ingenious manner,--suitable for an economic King, who has to repeat it scores of times every day of his life!
Chapter VI.
THE BAVARIAN WAR.
At the very beginning of 1778, the chronic quarrel with Austria passed, by an accident just fallen out, into the acute state;rose gradually, and, in spite of negotiating, issued in a thing called Bavarian-Succession War, which did not end till Spring of the following year. The accident was this. At Munchen, December 30th, 1777, Max Joseph Kurfurst of Baiern, only Brother of our lively friend the Electress-Dowager of Saxony, died; suddenly, of small-pox unskilfully treated. He was in his fifty-second year;childless, the last of that Bavarian branch. His Heir is Karl Theodor, Kur-Pfalz (Elector Palatine), who is now to unite the Two Electorates,--unless Austria can bargain with him otherwise.
Austria's desire to get hold of Baiern is of very old standing;and we have heard lately how much it was an object with Kaunitz and his young Kaiser. With Karl Theodor they did bargain,--in fact, had beforehand as good as bargained,--and were greatly astonished, when King Friedrich, alone of all Teutschland or the world, mildly, but peremptorily, interfered, and said No,--with effect, as is well known.
Something, not much, must be said of this Bavarian-Succession War;which occupied, at a pitch of tension and anxiety foreign to him for a long time, fifteen months of Friedrich's old age (January, 1778-March, 1779); and filled all Europe round him and it, in an extraordinary manner. Something; by no means much, now that we have seen the issue of such mountains all in travail. Nobody could then say but it bade fair to become a Fourth Austrian-Prussian War, as sanguinary as the Seven-Years had been; for in effect there stood once more the Two Nations ranked against each other, as if for mortal duel, near half a million men in whole; parleying indeed, but brandishing their swords, and ever and anon giving mutual clash of fence, as if the work had begun, though there always intervened new parleying first.
And now everybody sees that the work never did begin;that parleying, enforced by brandishing, turned out to be all the work there was: and everybody has forgotten it, and, except for specific purposes, demands not to be put in mind of it.
Mountains in labor were not so frequent then as now, when the Penny Newspaper has got charge of them; though then as now to practical people they were a nuisance. Mountains all in terrific travail-throes, threatening to overset the solar system, have always a charm, especially for the more foolish classes: but when once the birth has taken place, and the wretched mouse ducks past you, or even nothing at all can be seen to duck past, who is there but impatiently turns on his heel?
Those Territories, which adjoin on its own dominions, would have been extremely commodious to Austria;--as Austria itself has long known; and by repeatedly attempting them on any chance given (as in 1741-1745, to go no farther back), has shown how well it knows.
Indeed, the whole of Bavaria fairly incorporated and made Austrian, what an infinite convenience would it be!
"Do but look on the Map [this Note is not by Busching, but by somebody of Austrian tendencies]: you would say, Austria without Bavaria is like a Human Figure with its belly belonging to somebody else. Bavaria is the trunk or belly of the Austrian Dominions, shutting off all the limbs of them each from the other; making for central part a huge chasm.
"Ober-Pfalz,--which used to be Kur-Pfalz's, which is Bavaria's since we took it from the Winter-King and bestowed it in that way, --Ober-Pfalz, the country of Amberg, where Maillebois once pleased to make invasion of us;--does not it adjoin on the Bohemian Forest?