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There happened to be no lack of archdukes at that period for anything comfortable that might offer such as a throne in England, Holland, or France and the Austrian House was not remarkable for refusing convenient marriages; but the immediate future only could show whether Alexander I. of the House of Farnese was to reign in England, or whether the next king of that country was to be called Matthias, Maximilian, or Ernest of Hapsburg.
We may by effort efface the marks of our environment, but those we inherit are bred in the bone. Yolanda was not for Max. He could not control his heart; it took its inheritance of unbidden passion from a thousand scores of generations which had lived and died and learned their lesson centuries before the House of Hapsburg began; but he could control his lips and his acts.
Then it was that the enthusiasm of Hungary broke forth into that war-cry which soon resounded throughout Europe, "Let us die for our King, Maria Theresa!" In the meantime, Frederic was meditating a change of policy. He had no wish to raise France to supreme power on the Continent, at the expense of the House of Hapsburg. His first object was to rob the Queen of Hungary.
Frau Christine had seen his marriage with the Hapsburg princess awaken her sister's desire to renounce the world. Kunigunde was then a maiden of rare, majestic beauty, and only the Burgrave's exalted station had prevented his wedding "Eva," as she was called before she took the veil.
Hungary was their chief economic, political, and military bastion outside their own dominions, and the subtle bond between Magyar and Prussian notions of government, which gave them a common interest in the war, was now drawn closer by the appointment of Tisza's henchman, Count Burian, as Foreign Secretary to the Hapsburg Empire.
The records of our Foreign Office show conclusively that the Hapsburg ruler felt himself girt with difficulties: the Austrian army was as yet ill organized: the reforms after which the Archduke Charles had been striving were ill received by the military clique; and the sole result had been to unsettle rather than strengthen the army, and to break down the health of the Archduke.
Whatever may have been the political rôle thrust upon them in the sixteenth century by the Hapsburg marriages, whatever certain historians may say of the grandeur and nobility of the Spanish national character, Spain was then neither rich nor populous, nor industrious.
There was hardly a petty prince on the continent who was not drawn into the strife to decide whether Philip of Bourbon or Charles of Hapsburg, was entitled by hereditary descent to the throne of Spain. And now suddenly Charles XII. of Sweden burst in upon the scene, like a meteor amidst the stars of midnight. A more bloody apparition never emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war.
Glittering at his side were raised the lances of Marquard of Bregenz, Hartman of Dillingen, Burchard of Nellemburg, Cuno and Lutold of Achalm, Werner of Hapsburg, Adalbert of Calm, Albert of Hers, and Sandrit of Stramen.
With 'The Cranes of Ibycus' and 'The Pledge', it forms a triad which may be regarded as the choicest fruitage of Schiller's interest in the ballad. The later ones, 'The Count of Hapsburg' and 'Hero and Leander', are no less finished in the matter of form, but have more of a lyric tinge.
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