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Near Saverne in Alsace bands of people go about carrying May-trees. Amongst them is a man dressed in a white shirt with his face blackened; in front of him is carried a large May-tree, but each member of the band also carries a smaller one. One of the company bears a huge basket, in which he collects eggs, bacon, and so forth.
He at last took the field; and, in the next summer, by keeping the Bavarian army employed in Suabia, prevented it from relieving Thionville, which was besieged by Conde. But the superiority of the enemy soon drove him back to Alsace, where he awaited a reinforcement.
"But what do you want me to say?" asked the prévenu, "What is all this pother about a great-coat?" Maitland was rather proud of this sentence. "It is the part of Justice to ask questions, not to answer them," said the Juge d'Instruction. "Levity will avail you nothing. Tell me, Buchanan, why did you ask for the coat at the Hôtel Alsace et Lorraine?" "In answer to that advertisement in the Times."
It was, however, a most surprising thing that a man belonging to the house of Chimay should be in the service of any lady whatever; and, the commander of Alsace returned from Malta on purpose to get him out of Madame de Pompadour's household. He got him a pension of a hundred louis from his family, and the Marquise gave him a company of horse.
The King of France, alarmed by the progress which the Austrians were making in his own territories, ordered thirty thousand troops, from the army in the Netherlands, to be dispatched to the protection of Alsace. Again the tide was turning against Maria Theresa. She had become so arrogant and exacting, that she had excited the displeasure of nearly all the empire.
Shut up the roads from Austria: Budweis, Neuhaus; seize those two Highroad Towns, and keep them, if you would hold Bohemia; the want of them was our ruin there." Your ruin, yes: but your enemy was not coming from Alsace and the southwest then. He was coming from Austria; and your own home lay on the southwest: it is all different now!
With sixty millions of people, and supported by the sentiment and arms of Germany, Austria could seize upon Alsace and Lorraine, and other parts of France, and thus reduce her strength positively as well as relatively.
Yes, France was great then, and no one could have predicted for Alsace the fate reserved for her forty-two years later. The army was the admiration of Europe. The navy had just recaptured at Navarino the prestige and power of the time of Louis XVI. Charles X. said to Mr. Hyde de Neuville: "France, when a noble design is involved, takes counsel only with herself.
His army now increased by considerable recruits, and his projects expanded in proportion as fortune favoured him. The fortress of Breysach upon the Rhine was looked upon as holding the command of that river, and as the key of Alsace. No place in this quarter was of more importance to the Emperor, and upon none had more care been bestowed.
His first campaigns in Juliers and Alsace had been made in the service of this house, and under the banner of the Archduke Leopold, against the Protestant religion and the liberties of Germany.
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