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Perdition having reached the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, all will be well!"
Russians might have placed their Czar on the throne of the Hapsburgs in Vienna. The English Fleet might have laid Hamburg in ruins and anchored in the Kiel Canal. Men might have died in millions. Civilization itself might have been swept away. But the face of the sun, rising on Salissa day by day, was in no way darkened by horror, or crimsoned with shame.
Lastly, it would have been impossible to destroy the historic claims to leadership of the Imperial Hapsburgs, and that, more than anything else, was the rivalry the Hohenzollerns dreaded. Once more had the Germans proved themselves incapable of, and unwilling to submit to, the discipline of unity.
The insecurity of the roads and of justice in the lawless times before the election of the Hapsburgs might have impaired this great blessing; but since Rudolph had wielded the sceptre with virile energy, made commerce secure, and administered justice, confidence had also returned, and to maintain it no sacrifice should be too great.
The brunt of the defense against the common foe devolved upon Venice and the German Hapsburgs, who carried on an almost continuous war with the Turks for nearly two centuries. As late as 1683 the Mohammedans collected a large force and besieged Vienna, which might very well have fallen into their hands had it not been for the timely assistance which the city received from the king of Poland.
For exactly a month, the consequences of this event the provocation which it implied to Austria, the opportunity which it gave the Hapsburgs for a new and more formidable expression of Germanic power against the Slavs were kept wholly underground. That is the most remarkable of all the preliminaries to the war. There was a month of silence after so enormous a moment. Why?
Napoleon's treatment of her after Austerlitz had been bitter, but the Hapsburgs could not plead former friendship. Here, however, was a new development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general expediency, or, as in most cases, of both.
Here again the pride of the Hapsburgs was cut to the quick, and they disdained to submit to humiliations such as were eating the heart out of the Prussian monarchy. The Czar, too, was far from eager for war. He had sent Novossiltzoff to Berlin en route for Paris, in the hope of coming to terms with Napoleon, when the news of the annexation of Genoa ended the last hopes of a compromise.
The secret instructions given to the imperial Austrian envoy in London clearly indicated that the Hapsburgs hoped by victory to restore their influence both in Italy and Germany; for that was the meaning of "restoration to rightful owners" and the "slight rectification of their frontiers," or, in other words, the restoration of European conditions to what they had been before Napoleon's advent.
They sold to King Rudolf all the property they possest at Lucerne and in Unterwalden; and thus the town passed into the hands of the Hapsburgs. When the first Cantons, after expelling the Austrian bailiffs, had declared their independence, Lucerne was still one of Austria's advanced posts.
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